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Grammy’s are stoopid. Hip Hop is good.

Felipe — Fri, 17 Feb 2017 22:15:07 +0000

The Grammy’s are stupid. Why do they even have them? The whole industry just shows up to blow smoke up each other’s butts for 6 hours. The same 4 a**holes win every year… Artists that have been around for years win “Best New Artist”? The only one you should be allowed to win “Best New Artist” is if your FIRST album or EP dropped that year. That’s it. Washed up dead guys win “Best Rock Album”? The only reason anyone cared is cuz he died. The same idiots who win year after year are SHOCKED they win again. “Who me?! OMG I CANNOT believe this!? What an honor!” Walking up to the stage like Ron Burgundy “not ready” to play the yazz-flute then go home and make sweet sweet love to Veronica Corningstone. The idiots watching on TV take to twitter to complain about cultural appropriation. Other idiots apologize for stuff they didn’t even do. And at the end of the day, we didn’t hear of any music that isn’t heavily played on mainstream pop radio, while mega bands that sell out stadiums worldwide don’t even get a nod. But no… no… some celeb (who is more famous for being a celeb than a musician) need a 37th Grammy for a song that 94 industry pros collaborated on. How creative of that ONE artist! Amaaazing! And worst of all, network TV won’t air a new episode of Bob’s Burgers cuz they think all these dummies are watching the 43rd award show of the year.

If the stupid Grammy’s don’t bog you down too much, there’s lots of fun stuff happening in 2017 too. If you live in a cold place, then you prob got snow. Dope. If you don’t, then you’re prob nice and tan. Dope. If you like TV, Always Sunny in Philadelphia is back and crushing it. If you like to watch the news, well, you prob have no hair left. But hey, neither does Johnny Sins. So, still kinda dope. But best of all, 2017 has been real dope musically. We are fresh with new tunes that got ignored at the Grammy’s per usual (WSTR, Japandroids, the first half of Migos, Oso Oso, Cloud Nothings), as well as the arrival (finally) of some good hip hop tracks. Juicy J, Wiz Khalifa and Ty Dolla $ign gave us a sweet throwback track, feeling like old school Three Six. Lupe’s new stuff is sweet. Even J. Cole showed up. Who knew?! Here’s some hip hop to welcome you to the long weekend.

Feli Hates Award Shows

Bring Back My Name Is Earl (St. Clair)

Felipe — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 20:41:43 +0000

When I first saw this dude’s name, I thought he named himself after that amazing Zac Efron movie where he chats and plays baseball in the woods with his dead brother while sailing or whatever, but then, after looking it up, saw that was Charlie St. Cloud, not St. Clair (womp womp). Ends up Earl St. Clair, the Cleveland native, named himself “St. Clair” since his first studio in Cleveland and his second studio, upon movie to California, were both on St. Clair street! What a coinkidink! I mean, he HAD to name himself Earl St. Clair, although Earl St. Cloud woulda be tight too. When Zac couldn’t decide between his real life gf and his ghost-bro?? Heavy stuff; life is for living, amirite..? Growing up with non-ghost people in Alabama had its influences on Mr. Earl, and his fresh New Orleans-feelin, swag-steppin happy jam is great for a day like today. Def Jam describes him as an “earthy, full-bodied shouldering blend of Outkast, James Brown, and Ray Charles” (good company I’d say). His debut album “Songs About a Girl I Used to Know” is coming out shortly, and this tasty lick is right off of it. Another track worth checking is “Man On Fire,” more of a burner, then the happy dance of “Feeling Alive.” Oh ya, he and Lebron share an agent. That’s kinda cool. Cleveland’s second son.

Feli Says Happy Music Musts

Vic Mensa: genius?

Felipe — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 13:00:54 +0000

Contrary to popular belief, Vic Mensa is not a member of the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world, Mensa. In order to gain access to Mensa, you have to score in the 98th percentile or higher in a supervised IQ test (Stanford-Binet = 132 or higher; Cattell = 148 or higher). Mensa was originally formed in October of 1946 in Oxford, England. Subsequently, the American Mensa became the second major branch, and not surprisingly, runs its own exam and entrance process. Notable Mensans include the dude who created the Dilbert cartoon, 90s rapper Chino XL who feuded with Tupac (see: “Hit ‘Em Up” and “Riiiot!”), and multiple award winning porn actress Asia Ferrera (along with like a bajillion chemists and writers and whatever). Even though Vic isn’t in Mensa, he can still write it on his business card since, well, it’s his last name…(Mensah with an “h”). He’s the founder of the rap collective Savemoney, which included a whole bunch of cool artists working together, including Chance the Rapper – kinda like an young rapper incubator. Anyways, Vic reps his South Side of Chicago roots pretty hard and it seems is evolving in to an activist rapper of sorts (according to Joe Ciolli), even with Kanye as his mentor…

Fun fact: as a teenager, Vic Mensa nearly died twice. He fell off a 30-foot bridge while sneaking into Lollapalooza and needed fifteen thousand volts of electricity and three days in the hospital to bring you this song. As for this song, it’s the opening track for the soundtrack to the new movie “Birth of a Nation” – about a slave rebellion in 1831 Virginia. Movie looks decent, has a 77% on Rotten Tomatoes and the Soundtrack is worth a listen too.

Feli Thinks he belongs in Mensa

Run the Jewels & DJ Shadow don’t confirm homage to No Doubt

Felipe — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 13:02:25 +0000

We’ve covered Run the Jewels a few times, so we all already know how awesome they are. For this track we’ll focus on the DJ Shadow aspect of it, since I guess technically it’s “his” song. DJ Shadow’s Wikipedia page makes a point to let us know that Joshua Paul Davis (aka DJ Shadow) has a nickname, and that nickname is “Josh.” Just Josh. smh. I encourage all Feli Says Listen subscribers to go and edit DJ Shadow’s wiki page nickname to something more appropriate. I think I’m gonna go with “Pauly D” for now. So Pauly D is a 43 year old white guy from Davis, California who has a collection of over 60,000 physical records that he keeps scattered in storage lockers throughout San Francisco. Although some would argue a massive and fruitless expense, I guess his shtick is the skill in which he manipulates samples, taking largely unheard of pieces or rare parts or phrases and working them in to his songs. But don’t worry, Run the Jewels is on this track.

This is from Feli

Long Weekends for Winners

Felipe — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 16:30:51 +0000

It was Friday before a long weekend, and like most of you, I’m wasn’t actually working. My computer monitor might not even have be on, I wouldn’t know. People walk by your cube, you furiously hit ALT+TAB!! ALT+TAB!! (Where’s that fake excel sheet!? pick up the phone…) “…oh yes Frank. ya’know.., we’ve gotta maximize work time efficiencies and markets and synergizations… No no… totally.” So as we fake worked our way in to the weekend, we actually needed to get things organized so as to properly initiate vacay. Fun swim trunks? Good, good. Next: adequate driving/lounging/fiesta-ing music is required. But since it’s a Fake Work Friday (#FWF – btw I just invented that, feel free to use it) I needed the path of least resistance (re: “do as little work as possible”) for the weekend’s hot jams. Reaching back to previously featured artists seemed like my best bet. Getting me started was Midnight To Monaco, originally featured back in June. These duders have been releasing real fun(ky) tracks all summer. Next was Logic, originally featured back in October 2014 (ya… that’s 2 years ago), who has been blowing up the last year, and here is featured on Big Gigantic’s new track “All of Me.” Then we’ve got Get Inuit’s new track “Teriyaki,” whose fuzzy-pop is rather infectious. Closing out the official “Feli’s End of Summer Four Track Playlist” is a Country Swag prize from Brett Young and his mega-hit off his debut EP – “Sleep Without You.” Impossible not to smile during that one. And don’t try and be tough. Everyone secretly likes country. Just conform already.

So that’s what Feli Said. But since he’s lazy on #FWF, he didn’t get around to posting till today.

Leikali47 – AIM screename?

Felipe — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 13:00:01 +0000

A Bed-stuy Brooklyn native, Leikali47 is an anonymous rapper, currently in favor with Mr. Jay Z himself (he put one of her tracks on his summer playlist). Leikali47 (pronounce Leh-kay-lee) wears a ski mask (following the trend that 21 Pilots and Masked Intruder paved) and when probed, claims to wear it “at all times.” Just like Masked Intruder, the media doesn’t actually know who she is. The similarities to Masked Intruder end there though, as MI are an outlaw band on the run from the cops, play dopey pop punk, and hail from Wisconsin; while Leikali47, a rapper, wears the mask so people focus on her music and not her, so she says at first. It seems to also help with her performance and stage fright, as she was always a shy kid growing up and mostly a loner. I have to think those folks performing masked, Slipknot included, must have to lotion-up all the time, have tons of spares, and really struggle with acne, right? Why do we wear masks though? You could say the use of a mask is the physical manifestation of the concept of providing the wearer the means to transform themselves and their personality. Masks have been used since the dawn of humankind for use in everything from medicine, religion, simply decoration, and in this case, entertainment. Maybe in this case she is protecting herself more than she leads on. She can transform herself in to a new person without fear of judgement or ridicule outside of her artistry (I’d imagine a welcome reprieve many artists would like to enjoy), not to mention flipping the script as a female artist, where judging music and looks tend to go hand in hand. So ya. Her new track “Girl Gang” is pretty cool and mixes lots of sounds. I can’t say I’m huge on her other jams, but GG is tight.

Feli (& Jay Z) Say Listen

Fareoh goes great in yummy salads

Felipe — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 19:13:01 +0000

So you probs already know about Big Grams and their debut EP last year. They are the combo indie/electro/hiphop consortium comprised of Big Boi (a la Outkast) and Phantogram – and they just put out a bunch of remixes of their song “Drum Machine” – arguably the weakest song from their EP (worth checking out “Fell In The Sun” – and “Lights On”). So what’d they do? They grabbed the track and had five separate folks remix the heck out of it. This Fareoh remix is hands down the best one. Who? Well, this dude Ian Spurrier (no relation to Steve) may have to pull a MacGruber-style Vegas nightclub introduction: “Who am I, you ask!?… MY name, is Fareoh! Remember. That. Name!” But he’d have to spell it for us too cuz I have no idea how to pronounce it. Is it like the Egypt pharaohs? or like, the way too expensive grain I put in my salad at Chop’t, farro…? Well whether it be his affinity for hieroglyphics and sarcophagi, or just nutritious and delicious salads, he made a really good song.

Feli Things he’s really good at photoshop…

John Frusciante – FM

Tim — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 19:59:49 +0000

Remember John Frusciante? The guitar wunderkind from Red Hot Chili Peppers. To call him an interesting character would be an understatement. He battled heroin addiction and almost was always teetering that edge of brilliance and addiction. I’ve always thought of him as a guitarist. Certainly not a hip hop producer. But holy shit this is good. I tweeted about this months ago but could never find anything on soundcloud. This just needs to be heard cause it’s so damn good.

Action Bronson – Heel Toe

Tim — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 21:01:05 +0000

This is a TMD first. As you might know, we RARELY post hip hop. So when we do, you know it’s the dope shit. Enter Queens born, Action Bronson. I absolutely love this track and a it’s pretty fitting way to take you into a nice little mellow weekend. Enjoy.

Shad & Skratch Bastid – Classic

Molly — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 20:50:22 +0000

I’ve been looking forward to the day when I could post a new Shad track, and that day came sooner than expected. Niiiice. Honestly, I don’t know much (read: anything) about Skratch Bastid. But these beats, especially the old-school scratches (love it!), have left me wanting more. And as always, Shad brings the clever rhymes to complete the whole package.

You can download the whole The Spring Up EP for free from their Bandcamp, and you really should, because the whole thing is choice.