(My radio show is loosely based around my journey through In the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe. I am going to try and put that in conversation with Noname on her verse in Ghetto Sage’s new song Häagen Dazs. A lot of this analysis was shared by Noname in a post I… Read More
It is the year 2018 and music lives in clouds and streams. Airpods deliver computer-generated sounds directly to our brains in hopes of harvesting the newest addition to the long list of dwindling natural resources: dopamine. This year, the new millenium claimed the Queen of Soul herself, Aretha Franklin, and the premature losses of Avicii,… Read More
Here lies 2017, the year she told you not to worry about. And look what came of it: 2017 took your net neutrality, brought Charles Murray to campus, and made your annoying twelve-year-old cousin Bitcoin rich. And what’s your consolation prize? A fidget spinner in your stocking and tide pods for Christmas dinner. More seriously—2017… Read More
Kendrick Lamar’s haunting, yet beautiful new music video for Humble warms the part of my heart that can’t stop Instagramming with the a6 filter on #vsco. It’s alarming and exposes a variety of black aesthetics pertaining to violence, endurance, pain, and sex. Directed by Dave Meyers & the Little Homies, the video is seductive… Read More
YEAR END WRAP UP Shock and surprise paved the heartbreaking year of 2016. In the most bleak corners of the year we lost more music idols and icons than we knew how to deal with. The new year was met with the terrible loss of David Bowie and soon after came the loss of Maurice White,… Read More
It’s a pleasantly quiet Sunday morning and you’re cruising down a west Oakland promenade littered with the remnants of last night’s youthful debauchery. Broken Hennessy bottles and stomped-out Swisher Sweet roaches laying damp in the gutters evoke the evening’s regrettable decisions and exacerbate your own mild hangover merely with the images they conjure. You stop… Read More
After his momentous debut in 2014 with Oxymoron, Schoolboy Q is back with Blank Face LP, a pièce de résistance for the gangsta rap genre. In some ways analogous to his first studio album with Top Dawg Entertainment, Schoolboy Q utilizes the album’s harmoniously disturbing beats to deliver his off-kilter style flow to give the… Read More
My high school friends and I didn’t know what to expect when we watched the 1981 film Polyester, directed by John Waters. Waters is a master of gross, bizarre, dark comedy, typically taking aim at the depraved denizens of white, suburban, upper-class America. In this particular film, an unfortunate housewife named Francine Fishpaw (played by… Read More
When I listen to an album the first time through, sound and overall aesthetic are the initial factors that determine how much I like it. This is especially true in the realm of gangster rap, known for the ad-libs and violent onomatopoeia. I still remember getting goose bumps when the beat dropped on Chief Keef’s… Read More
The summers of 2014 and 2015 could not have been more different for me. 2014 was the start of a new relationship, and 2015 was the difficult ending. Although the two summers were a year apart, and although they corresponded to two opposite emotional poles of my life, I associate both summers with many of… Read More
Welcome to the Spring 2016 edition of WRMC’s concert guide to the Champlain Valley and beyond! Most shows on this list take place at three main Burlington venues – The Monkey House, Signal Kitchen, and Higher Ground, but we’ve also noted a few shows worth going the extra mile (or 200) for. However, some of the… Read More