Autopsy of an album: Buhloone Mind State
mandrew
2,720 Posts
http://floodwatchmusic.com/blog2/2008/01/06/autopsy-of-an-album-de-la-soul/floodwatch breaks down track-by-track the lyrics, beats, and interludes of one of my favorite albums ever
Comments
Floodwatch is the man, one of my favourite music bloggers.
disagree. he doesnt seem to be into many things that are good.
bad page layout too.
Seriously, there might be no better hip hop committed to tape than, "I Am I Be," and 'Area,' is a long time favorite...when the guitar drops in 2/3s of the way in, it Frickin' kills me.
well written, but wasnt really saying anything that mindblowing.
i will be listening to the album later on. so ....props to him
I found the analysis... lacking
that would have greatly increased the value of his "revelatory" essay
undela related...
anyone remember the muro tape that had a japanese dude rapping on the second side? sayin "ayo, okose, okose..." that hsit was nice! a girl told me he was just saying "wake up wake up its the dawn of the new tokyo..." and shit like that. cool.
very good point. you're totally right about this. It makes the whole song and proves the extent of Paul's mastery of composition and arrangement.
cosine on both points
the 'analysis' really grated on me.
With which part? That bad writing is the norm in a medium with no editorial oversight and no financial incentive for improvement?
i was almost ready to take floodwatch out of my blog roll-up after the previous post, 'best of the worst of '07.' in it, he seems to make a point to put down any record that was generally accepted and praised by the public -
kanye, radiohead, feist, beirut, arcade fire, lily allen, amy winehouse, and arcade fire
these are all artists that either had a breakout year or continued their great career. to write up some halfway witty disses seems very contrived.
But I always thought bloggers are just awaiting their 15 minutes on VH1/CNN/MSNBC/Bloomberg, right?
don't good writers attract more and devoted readers, which in turn attracts (a little) more ad money, and other opportunities outside of the blog? i read matthew perpetua's fluxblog, not because of the music, but almost solely because of his writing. and over the year, i've seen him get a bunch more "guest blogging" spots and pick up other gigs.
The great - and awful - thing about blogging is that it provides an infrastructure for opinions and ideas that previously would have required a great deal of labor with very little distribution. I don't get the sense that most of these guys who write - literally - thousands of words a day on, I dunno, Madkap, are trying to "blow up" in the way Perez Hilton has. If they get even a handful of comments per post, just to show that people are reading, that's probably enough. There's something very powerful in the awareness that you have an audience, even a modest one at that, and people will go to great lengths to do whatever they think they have to to maintain/build on that audience. In most cases, the presumption is that more = better...hence why you have mini-magazines being produced weekly that dissect songs/artists/albums in ways that you never saw a generation ago because there was no medium to accommodate that volume. Even zines were hemmed in by production limitations and thus, encouraged an economy in style and language that no longer is necessary.
Part one is Ultramagnetic. Am I wrong in thinking that they are tipping the hat to Ultra?
In a perfect world, yes. In the real world...not so much. Sadly, quality of writing has very little to do with a blog's success.
Sure - hence, the "Part Two."
yeah, I was surprised he didn't pick up on that. Oh well.
I also just noticed somebody mentioned it in the comments.
It's a good read. Got me to think about a few things.
Right on, I just know that I have seen e-dudes on message boards looking for suggestions on how to "get on" in a journalistic way ask if blogs would draw attention to their writing. Interestingly enough, other e-dudes says "Yeah!"
This blog is a'ight, but I can't keep up with them anymore. I even used to have one. I didn't have any purpose for it other than to highlight music that never gets its due. All the money was coming out of my pocket with my webspace and all that. I figured that was silly. I don't have that kind of money yet.
Anyway, I agree with what you're saying. That is why I'll stick to perusing Soulstrut [and the Fader blog] for random musical knowledge. My head hurts when I try to scour the blogosphere or the radio.
Doesn't sound like he knew about the Ultra song.
I just re-read his intro and I don't recall reaction to this album being so confused. Sure, it was a "weird" album but it was De La. Am I just remembering this wrong?
Yeah, missing that is a little
I was in college at the time and it seemed instantly accepted to me -- it felt like the album they'd been building towards all along. I remember De La fans have a much harder time adjusting to Stakes Is High.
the write up... eh. found it strange that he didn't know the 5 heartbeats bit or some of the others (see ernie isley-ish guitar solo) since all the samples were listed in the album's liner notes.
the thing that confuses me about this album is the maceo part. he says "i am maceo, and i be blowin the soul out of this horn..." then they play a sampled horn riff from an eddie harris record - "the reason why i'm talking shit!" always found that odd. unless it was maceo playing on a eddie harris record.
I think it's ok if you're not aware of the Ultramagnetic MCs in this context - "Critical Beatdown" came out, what, five years before "Buhloone"?
What's wack is the "where's Part one, who cares?" dismissal. That just seems unnecessarily lazy.