Thursday, June 30, 2011

MIXTAPE FRIDAYS!


Silk Stalkings.

A Playlist. 

1 - Aaliyah - One in a Million
2 - Beck - Where It's At?
3 - Gorillaz - Hillbilly Man
4 - Tyler the Creator & Frank Ocean - She
5 - Drake - Marvin's Room
6 - Junior Boys - You'll Improve Me
7 - Holy Ghost! - Say My Name
8 - The Rapture - How Deep is Your Love
9 - Friendly Fires - Pala
10 - Lady Gaga - Heavy Metal Lover
11- The Weeknd - Coming Down
12 - Beyonce - Rather Die Young

Big Bad Wolf.

Starring Duck Sauce.


"NEW" SHIT!


  • STEREOGUM: Hear Ryan Adams’ New Alice In Chains Cover, Mandy Moore Collab
  • Her Room.

    A video.

    Starring Teyana Taylor.

    L'age D'or.

    A video.

    Starring Of Montreal.

    For Your Consideration...


  • PITCHFORK: Lil B Releases I'm Gay (I'm Happy)
  • Run The World (Girls)

    The alternate version.

    We Don't Get Down Like Y'all.


    Starring T.I. & B.O.B.

    Wednesday, June 29, 2011

    This City.

    Not Fade Away.

    A video/Buddy Holly Cover.

    Starring Florence + The Machine.

    I Might.


    Starring
    Wilco.

  • Stream here.
  • Puttin on the Ritz.

    An Ongoing Discussion/Moment of Clarity.

    Words.

    "The contrast in fortunes between those on top of the economic heap and those buried in the rubble couldn’t be starker. The 10 biggest banks now control more than three-quarters of the country’s banking assets. Profits have bounced back, while compensation at publicly traded Wall Street firms hit a record $135 billion in 2010.

    Meanwhile, more than 24 million Americans are out of work or can’t find full-time work, and nearly $9 trillion in household wealth has vanished. There seems to be no correlation between who drove the crisis and who is paying the price.

    The report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission detailed the recklessness of the financial industry and the abject failures of policymakers and regulators that brought our economy to its knees in late 2008. The accuracy and facts of the commission’s investigative report have gone unchallenged since its release in January.

    So, how do you revise the historical narrative when the evidence of what led to economic catastrophe is so overwhelming and the events at issue so recent? You and your political allies just do it.

    ...Traveling down a road unfettered by facts will take us far from where we need to be: prosecuting financial wrongdoing to deter future malfeasance; vigorously enforcing financial reforms to rein in excessive risk; and rooting out Wall Street’s conflicts of interests, abysmal governance and badly flawed compensation incentives.

    Worst of all, it will divert us from the urgent task of putting people back to work and creating real wealth for America’s future. Over the past decade, we squandered trillions of dollars on rampant speculation rather than on making investments — in technology, infrastructure, clean energy and education — that increase our productivity and economic strength. The financial sector’s share of corporate profits climbed from 15 percent in 1980 to 33 percent by the early 2000s, while financial-sector debt soared from $3 trillion in 1978 to $36 trillion by 2007. With tens of millions still unemployed, isn’t it time to shift from an economy based on money making money to an economy based on money creating jobs and genuine prosperity?

    We can still get history and the future right. But time is running out."

  • THE WASHINGTON POST: The real causes of the economic crisis? They’re history.
  • Sign O' the Times.

    A Moment of Clarity.


    Words.

    "The very idea of the Dodgers filing for bankruptcy boggles the mind. Forbes estimated the club’s value last year at $727 million — fourth among baseball’s 30 teams. Yet as the end of the month loomed, it was apparent that McCourt could not meet payroll.

    The unraveling of the Dodgers began soon after McCourt and his wife, Jamie, arrived from Boston, but the particulars have become public only since the McCourts embarked on contentious divorce proceedings last year. It turns out that the McCourts loaned themselves more than $100 million from the club to fund a lavish, multi-mansion lifestyle. As the franchise plunged into the red, Frank McCourt declined to increase ballpark security, even in the face of growing gang attendance. On Opening Day, a Giants fan was beaten unconscious — he’s still in a coma — in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium. Since then, public concerns about security, the team’s performance (it’s under .500) and pervasive disgust with the McCourts have cut attendance to near all-time lows.

    ...And so, the two institutions that have contributed the most over the past 50 years to Los Angeles’s sense of itself, to its amour propre, to its development not just as a big city but a great one, now languish in bankruptcy court..."

  • THE WASHINGTON POST: The L.A. Dodgers fall prey to CEO capitalism run amok
  • Biophilia.


  • PITCHFORK: Björk: An Interview
  • Rising.

    A video.

    Starring Kalup & Franco.

    Tuesday, June 28, 2011

    Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall.

    A video.

    Starring Coldplay.

    Love Comedown.


  • THE WASHINGTON POST: Andrew Cuomo beats the odds — spectacularly
  • RACKS REMIX.

    A video.

    Starring YC, Nelly, B.o.B., Trae The Truth, Yo Gotti, CyHi Da Prynce, Dose & Ace Hood.

    A Moment of Clarity.

    Marvin's Room.

    A video.

    Starring Drake.

    Monday, June 27, 2011

    QUESTION!


    OBAMA!:

  • THE NEW YORK TIMES: Why Is He Bi? (Sigh)
  • Automatic Stop.

    A Moment of Clarity.


    Words. For Your Consideration...

    "...We seem to be obsessed with opinions because we take them to be a marker of individual independence, distinctiveness and reasoned intelligence. Expressing opinions is how we also express our freedom of conscience and flex our political rights. But when we're obliged to have an opinion on everything, all the time, our expressions of conscience are less about independent thinking than about making stuff up.

    ...we all seem to be trapped in an opinion rat race. Public opinion polling is a growth industry in the U.S, and whether it's meaningless website "click here" polls or "American Idol," the public is constantly beseeched for opinions.

    Almost 2,500 years ago, Socrates was way out ahead on the "no opinion" option. On trial for the equivalent of heresy in Athens, he sparred with a pompous politician over the meaning of wisdom. He won: "I appear to be wiser than he," Socrates wrote, "because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."

    Beauty queens — and everyone else — should take a lesson. Especially in America. We have as much of a right to our ignorance and indifference as we do to speak our minds. We're free to say "I don't know.""

  • LOS ANGELES TIMES: The virtue of 'I don't know'
  • Crystalline.


    Starring Bjork.

  • Stream here.
  • Within & Without.


  • Stream here.
  • Friday, June 24, 2011

    For Your Consideration...


    Kreayshawn - Rich Whores

    Booty Work (One Cheek At A Time).

    A video.

    From T-Pain & Joey Galaxy.

    Moving to Mars.

    Starring Coldplay.

    Coupling.


    Words. For Your Consideration...

    "WILL the New York State Legislature ultimately put itself on the right side of history by allowing same-sex couples to marry? Many of us in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, amazed at how quickly public opinion has evolved on this issue, are eager for this historic civil rights victory.

    My hope comes with some worry, however.

    While many in our community have worked hard to secure the right of same-sex couples to marry, others of us have been working equally hard to develop alternatives to marriage. For us, domestic partnerships and civil unions aren’t a consolation prize made available to lesbian and gay couples because we are barred from legally marrying. Rather, they have offered us an opportunity to order our lives in ways that have given us greater freedom than can be found in the one-size-fits-all rules of marriage.

    It’s not that we’re antimarriage; rather, we think marriage ought to be one choice in a menu of options by which relationships can be recognized and gain security. Like New York City’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, who has been in a relationship for over 10 years without marrying, one can be an ardent supporter of marriage rights for same-sex couples while also recognizing that serious, committed relationships can be formed outside of marriage.

    Here’s why I’m worried: Winning the right to marry is one thing; being forced to marry is quite another. How’s that? If the rollout of marriage equality in other states, like Massachusetts, is any guide, lesbian and gay people who have obtained health and other benefits for their domestic partners will be required by both public and private employers to marry their partners in order to keep those rights. In other words, “winning” the right to marry may mean “losing” the rights we have now as domestic partners, as we’ll be folded into the all-or-nothing world of marriage.

    Of course, this means we’ll be treated just as straight people are now. But this moment provides an opportunity to reconsider whether we ought to force people to marry — whether they be gay or straight — to have their committed relationships recognized and valued..."

  • THE NEW YORK TIMES: Marriage Is a Mixed Blessing
  • Born in the U.S.A.



    For Clarence.

  • THE NEW YORK TIMES: Bromance With the Big Man
  • Wednesday, June 22, 2011

    Utopia & Dystopia (The Earth is On Fire).

    A video.

    Starring YACHT.

    100 Days, 100 Nights.

    A Moment of Clarity.


    Words.

    "Ever since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legendary “First 100 Days” in office — which stabilized a country ravaged by the Depression — the first 100 days of every president have been used as a measuring stick for success. That’s over. I’ve said this before, and I believe it even more strongly today: We’ve gone from the first 100 days to the “Only 100 Days.”

    Really — it feels as if Barack Obama had 100 days to push through the basics we needed to stabilize the economy and then lay the basis for his one big initiative — health care reform — and then he was preparing for the midterms, and then he was recovering from his midterm losses and then he was announcing his re-election bid and then, judging from all the Republicans who have declared for the presidency already, the 2012 race got started. As such, the chances of the two parties successfully doing something big, hard and together to fix the huge problems staring us in the face are very small — unless the market or Mother Nature imposes it upon them.

    ...There is no way that America can remain a great country if the opportunities for meaningful reform are reduced to either market- or and climate-induced crises and 100 working days every four years. We need a full-time government, and instead we’ve created a Congress that is a full-time fund-raising enterprise that occasionally legislates and a White House that, save for 100 days, has to be in perpetual campaign mode.

    ...The truth is, we need to do four things at once if we have any hope of maintaining American greatness: We need more stimulus to keep the economy from slipping back into recession. But we need to combine that stimulus with a credible, legislated, long-term plan for cutting spending and getting the deficit under control — e.g., the Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction plan. And we need to raise new revenues in order to reinvest in the sources of our strength: education, infrastructure and government-funded research to push out the boundaries of knowledge.

    That’s right. We need to do four things at once: spend, cut, tax and invest. And unless we do all four at once we’re not going to break out of our slow decline. But to do all four at once will require a new hybrid politics, which does not conform to the political agenda of either major party..."

  • THE NEW YORK TIMES: 100 Days
  • Cool.


  • PITCHFORK: Listen: Deerhunter Cover Pylon
  • 2012.

    ME: "The GOP needs to just go ahead and nominate a bumper sticker,or an Animal See & Say, or a GOP Mascot Button as their 2012 Presidential Candidate."

    STEPHEN COLBERT:


    Dirty Dancer.

    A video.

    Starring Enrqiue, Usher, & Lil Wayne.

    I Wanna Go.

    A video.

    Starring Britney Spears.

    Friday, June 17, 2011

    "HAWAIIAN AIR!"

    A video.

    Starring the Friendly Fires.

    Next 2 You.

    A video.

    Starring
    Chris Brown & Justin Bieber.

    The Edge of Glory.

    A video.

    Starring Lady Gaga.

    Thursday, June 16, 2011

    For Your Consideration.


  • STEREOGUM: Pictureplane – “Post Physical”
  • "Love me, love me!"

    "...Say that you love me."

    Words. For Your Consideration...

    "...is Weiner really a sex addict? He's clearly preoccupied with his genitals and the usage thereof, but all evidence suggests that his indiscretions had less to do with sexual relationships (at least the old-fashioned, in-person kind) than his relationship to his own masculinity. Based on what we know of his exchanges, it appears he had far more interest in his own chiseled chest than in anyone else's body parts. It would appear he's not addicted to sex as much as he's simply addicted to himself.

    ...Much has been made of Weiner's good looks (Cosmopolitan magazine once named him one of their "most gorgeous bachelors," and apparently a number of ladies on Facebook found him at least as compelling as Justin Bieber). But who are we kidding? Weiner is attractive for a politician.

    Tall and sleek and chiseled though he may be, Weiner's still the high school geek in the photo he uses to make fun of himself so no one else will. No matter how many reps he does in the gym, no matter how advantageous the angle immortalizing certain body parts, no matter how many followers he has on Twitter, Weiner is still that scrawny, nerdy kid with the frizzy hair and the embarrassing name. And nobody knows that better than Weiner himself..."

  • LOS ANGELES TIMES: Meghan Daum: Anthony Weiner's inner geekdom
  • CHURCH.

    Just you watch...

    Remember the Time...

    A Moment of Clarity.



    Words.

    "Perhaps I should thank the current crop of Republican presidential candidates for providing me with an experience I never, ever expected: During this week’s debate in New Hampshire, I had a moment of nostalgia for George W. Bush.

    Let me note that this was tempered by another response to Bush that I’ll get to. Yet compared with the New Hampshire Seven — and with today’s Republican majority in the House of Representatives — Bush was the reincarnation of Theodore Roosevelt..."

  • THE WASHINGTON POST: After GOP debate, feeling nostalgic for George W. Bush
  • Block After Block.

    A video.

    Starring Matt & Kim.

    Better With The Lights Off .

    A video.

    Starring
    New Boyz & Chris Brown.

    Novacane.

    A video.

    Starring Frank Ocean.

    The Birds (PART 1).


  • STUPIDDOPE: The Weeknd – The Birds (PART 1)
  • Never Will Be Mine.

    A video.

    Starring Rye Rye & Robyn.

    Work Out.


  • 2DOPEBOYZ: J. Cole – Work Out
  • Wednesday, June 15, 2011

    Doo Wop (That Thing).

    LIVE!

    On Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

    Unknown Mortal Orchestra.


    An album stream.

  • STEREOGUM: Stream Unknown Mortal Orchestra
  • For Your Consideration.




  • PITCHFORK: Basement Jaxx to Release Orchestral Album
  • Addicted to Love.

    Words. For Your Consideration...


    "...whether or not Weiner manages to hang on, the episode underscores how rehab has become an all-purpose laundromat for irresponsible behavior, an infuriatingly easy substitute for accepting blame and living with consequences.

    Increasingly, in our Rehab Nation, the concept of sin has been replaced by the language of addiction. Shame has been supplanted by therapeutic intervention. The disease model of misbehavior dictates that there are no bad people, only damaged individuals compelled to commit harmful acts. In this scenario, personal responsibility evaporates and virtue becomes an anachronism.

    ...We live in an age of rehab as reality show. The cable channel VH1 has aired four seasons of “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew,” which spawned a spin-off, “Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew.” If former House majority leader Tom DeLay could make it to “Dancing With the Stars,” I’m sure there’s a place on VH1 for Weiner.

    Especially when it comes to actual addictions, to drugs and alcohol, I’m sure rehab can be a helpful, if not surefire, remedy. However many times it takes Lindsay Lohan, I hope it works.

    The Weiner situation is different.

    ...Writing on Time.com, Maia Szalavitz, herself a former heroin and cocaine addict, described the dangers of defining addiction downward.

    “If anyone can go to rehab when his actions lead to public humiliation, is rehab still a medical treatment or does it become some form of absolution?” she asked. “If every time someone behaves like a jerk and the reason behind it is addiction, doesn’t that mean addiction is just an excuse for bad behavior?”..."

  • THE WASHINGTON POST: In Rehab Nation, sin becomes addiction
  • 2 Hearts.


    Starring Digitialism.

    "CLAP YOUR HANDS!"



    Calgary.

    A video.

    From Bon Iver.

    Monday, June 13, 2011

    How the Other Half Lives.

    "American Dreamin'!"

    Words. For Your Consideration...

  • GAWKER: The Real Reason Gay Men Don't Get Fat
  • The Game of Life.


    Words.

    "...Heavy users of Twitter, as Weiner used to be (he hasn’t posted since June 1), play a complicated strategy game. Like World of Warcraft and Halo, Twitter is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, but with higher real-world stakes. It is grounded in the first principles of game theory, including variations on the Prisoner’s Dilemma. You have to give to get; you have to get to give. Managing these ratios — deciding how much of your attention to expend to win attention to yourself, say — is the lion’s share of the Twitter action.

    Players of Twitter risk their reputations, their careers and their relationships. But incentives to keep playing Twitter abound, too, as Weiner discovered. Twitter can burnish reputations, as it did for Weiner when he broke news; gave fast, fresh takes; and used links inventively. It can build careers, as it also has done for Weiner, whom Newsday praised as the architect of a “new political paradigm.” And it can develop alliances, as it did by connecting Weiner to another sophisticated Twitterer, Meghan McCain, over their mutual support of gay marriage.

    ...Weiner’s Twitter game was mixed — energetic and sophisticated, but flawed. Weiner and other men in their 40s, as Marc Tracy put it recently in Tablet, “lie in the sweet spot that makes them unusually prone to this sort of Social Media Age gaffe: Too young not to be fully engaged in this hyper-fast, hyper-linked world, but too old to fully, intuitively understand its hazards.” At the same time, even Dick Costolo, the chief executive of Twitter, has admitted he doesn’t know exactly what Twitter is for. And if we don’t know what Twitter’s for, we can’t know who puts it to the best purpose. That’s why Twitter is more usefully thought of as a game than a service. Like all other immersive games — including tennis, fantasy football and chess — Twitter is spellbinding when you’re in it, and seems nuts and like a sicko waste of time when you’re not.

    In the days immediately after the Weiner revelations, according to the statisticians at TweetCongress, posts by Republicans went down 27 percent, while posts from Democrats dropped 29 percent. That’s too bad. In Weiner’s apologia speech, he urged the media not to blame social media for his personal and sexual habits. We shouldn’t. There’s nothing intrinsically immoral about Twitter. It doesn’t have to be given up like drugs. But people who use Twitter do need to improve their skills, and, more than ever, we need people who understand the massive new online game, like Anthony Weiner, to help explain it all to us."

  • THE NEW YORK TIMES: The Game of Twitter
  • Shangri-La.


  • Stream here.
  • Light of the Sun.


  • Stream here.
  • 64.

    A video.

    Starring MellowHype.

    A Moment of Clarity.


  • GRANTLAND: Dizzying Highs and Terrifying Lows
  • Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)

    A video.

    Starring Katy Perry.

    Radio Message.

    A video.

    Starring R. Kelly.

    Friday, June 10, 2011

    The Air Up There.


    Words. For Your Consideration...

    "Why do we keep on believing that we'll see the arc of LeBron James' career just around the next corner? It's all Michael Jordan's fault.

    ...As every sports fan knows, Michael Jordan's storybook career is not a typical one. Sometimes a great player gets drafted by a team that already has the highest-scoring player in NBA history and starts winning championships his rookie year. Sometimes an all-time great only starts winning when he spurns his first team. It's also possible to stay with the same franchise your whole career and never win squat, or to move from team to team in search of a trophy and never come in first. Sometimes you have a bad game. Sometimes you lose.

    And yet, Michael Jordan, the ultimate outlier in team sports, has become the bar that every basketball player must leap over. He is the basketball world's infallible older brother—Michael Jordan never would've done that, we say, tut-tutting disapprovingly when some wannabe heir has the audacity to lose a playoff series or to miss a bunch of shots in the fourth quarter.

    As every sports fan knows, Michael Jordan's storybook career is not a typical one. Sometimes a great player gets drafted by a team that already has the highest-scoring player in NBA history and starts winning championships his rookie year. Sometimes an all-time great only starts winning when he spurns his first team. It's also possible to stay with the same franchise your whole career and never win squat, or to move from team to team in search of a trophy and never come in first. Sometimes you have a bad game. Sometimes you lose.

    And yet, Michael Jordan, the ultimate outlier in team sports, has become the bar that every basketball player must leap over. He is the basketball world's infallible older brother—Michael Jordan never would've done that, we say, tut-tutting disapprovingly when some wannabe heir has the audacity to lose a playoff series or to miss a bunch of shots in the fourth quarter..."

  • SLATE: Airless: LeBron James' Michael Jordan problem.
  • Swear.


    Starring Inc.

    Coming Attractions.



  • FADER: Diplowatch 2011 #11: Major Lazer Preview Their New Album in Jamaica
  • For Your Consideration.


  • RAP RADAR: New Music: Chris Brown x SWV “She Ain’t You (Remix)”
  • A Moment of Clarity.


    "Is this thing on?"

  • THE DAILY BRIGHT SIDE: In Defense of Hipsters
  • HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE?

    Starring THE RAPTURE.

    Wednesday, June 08, 2011

    UTOPIA.


    Starring
    YACHT.

    "REAL TALK!"


    Words.

    "...if people are writing lyrics that piss you off, hurt your feelings and make you feel like shit, don’t listen to it. I don’t think the best idea is to have a boycott. Just don’t talk about them and they’ll go away. The more you talk about them, the more attention they get.

    ...There are so many great artists that are doing interesting things, that I don’t want to focus on boring people."-Kathleen Hanna

  • STEREOGUM: Kathleen Hanna Talks Odd Future
  • Sweetest Kill.

    A video.

    From Broken Social Scene.

    Love King.


  • PITCHFORK: Listen: Two New Songs from The-Dream