Tariq & Talib love hand motions and fitteds. And they have a birthday in common.

Today's urgent message is that it is the date of birth of 2 of the most conscious-y rappers in all of consciousness, 2 of the most all-star-ish Record Collection All-Stars in apt. 302,

Black Thought and Talib Kweli! ('72 and ' 75, respectively)

In celebration, free small-liberal-arts-school B.A.s in History or English (PolySci minors) and Whole Foods gift cards all around!





The Roots - “Double Trouble.” Tariq plus half of Black Star! (the wrong half, but still) and a little “Nautilus.” Yay. I always loved this one. All fly girls' nipples and toes numb from it doesn't sound fun but it's somehow dope. Smurfette MCs is rather comical, too.

mp3.



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At least 2 pair.

No Fendi bag or bad attitude, but still.
We got a lot of private jokes to share.

Everyone knows the greatest and most Kenwood-bumpable songs written about and named in honor of a beautiful human with breasts and hips and soft skin are "Rosanna" and "Bonita Applebum."

("Veronica" is good too, but it's about Elvis's grandma so it's not appropriate. This post is about ladies of song who dudes want to see nekkid. And "So Long, Marianne" is a throbfest of songwriting skill in the form of tortured reclusive foxiness known as Legendary Human Leonard Cohen, but it's too somber for the Kenwood, silly).

I know there are a million of 'em, named for pretty ladies Allison and dear Yvette and Sally and Jessica and Melissa and Iesha and Carolina (so good I had to link to it), but it's done. The decision has been made. It's these 2, at least for now. Only 'cause nobody ever wrote a song called "Logan."
(Pouty face)




Meet.You.All.The.Way! Sometimes the vinyl of this plays in apt. 302, but it's really more of a driving-around-in-the-Civic, end of summer knocker; if you get really lucky, you don't hit any red lights during the chorus so you can sing it freely without being self-conscious that the dude in the car next to you is watching.





Ain't no need to question the authority satisfies the "Boss me around" requirement I seek from an MC, but So far, I hope you like rap songs is the cutest line of all from the musical year of 1990. This girl has that mean physical geometry of 38-24-37, and it's the 37 that displays to the boys her bum like an apple. OH BONITA. Even I have a crush on you.

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2 Greats: Noncommittal sexytimes

Sometimes, I have found, people just want ass.

("People" ≠ good girls such as myself, of course. Hi Mom!
People = Elliot Spitzer and Vince Neil)


Your problem is that you desire naked relations with people who you don't care to spend time with otherwise, and my solution is this: make your proposal sound like either of these 2 songs.

If/when you pull a skinny girl with a master's degree, hips, and a super vocabulary as a testament to how successful this technique is, you'll have me to thank.

The Outfield - Your Love

mp3.


I ain't got many friends left to talk to/No one's around when I'm in trouble, sings Dude in Band Whose Girlfriend (Josie) is Out of Town. Aw, he needs a friend! To talk to! OH, and I almost forgot, to see naked. And to not hang out with after that, ever. Also, I think "your love" might not be code for "your couch" or "your phone" like we always thought.

Anyway, give in to the delicious, dirty, guilty pleasure ear candy of the song (the drums coming in just after minute 1, yessss, please and thank you and may I have some more) and it'll teach you how to get a commitment-challenged special friendship. Initial steps include: Be able to come up with a riff at the beginning like that, a melody like that, and be able to harmonize with your boys like that. Reverse the earth's rotation so that it's 1986 and your outfit and hair and "come home with me" game are the coolest. Voila: ass.

OR,

Funkadelic - "Hit It and Quit It"

mp3.


Be Bernie Worrell. If you're going to heed one thing I have to say, if you're going to follow just one piece of my advice, make it that one. Also, play keys. Moog, specifically. Be in a band with George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Bigfoot Brailey, Eddie Hazel. Have your synth loop be the backbone of "Mothership Connection" and "Flash Light" and basically therefore be directly responsible for the creation of Digital Underground and the musical tree known as Dr. Dre and all its associated branches. Do music things with Talking Heads, Mos Def, Les Claypool, and Prince Paul.

Some people say that this song's title is about nothing flesh-related; it's just George Clinton being cute. It's really about hitting drums and it's really about playing music, or perhaps moving one's body to music. UH, except that hitting drums = sex, playing music = sex, and moving one's body to music = sex. Every song is about sex. I mean, it is 1971 after all, let's not forget.






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It's a love that lasts forever/It's a love that has no past.

Salman's ex-wife again, and E trying to seduce me with his Rubin-esque rabbinical beard, glasses, and lovely voice.

My preliminary research tells me that sometimes boys sing songs to girls they like, and these songs contain messages like I think you are pretty and I want to be close to you and touch and kiss you. I'm still gathering all the data, though, so I am hesitant to make this my formal hypothesis. Full report pending.



That look you give that guy, I wanna see
Looking right at me.
If I could be that guy, instead of me,
I'd never let you down. I'd never let you down.




And then I went and posted some Marcia Griffiths girlyness,
because I am a girl and that is wonderful,
(We get to wear dresses and David Byrne sings about it; have you heard?)



and because this version is extra wonderful even though it lacks the crucial Billy Preston keys of the original. Also, Spector really should get his own tag on this blog. I need to act right and do it already.



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2 Greats: "Get Ready"

Trick Daddy-ish* and therefore excellent-ish,
this song is about revolution. And castanets.



Written and produced by apparently nobody, since Google hates me. It's from some mixtape a few years ago.

*Or, wait, maybe Trick Daddy is Dead-Prez-ish?






Written and produced by Smokey Robinson, this one's also about revolution (love) and the need to prepare oneself for it if you are a young lady because he's comin for you, missy. Released in February 1966, when things like A Charlie Brown Christmas were new and Berry Gordy ruled the country like a benevolent king with a music studio even though everybody thought it was Lyndon Johnson who was in charge. A young man (age 22) committed suicide by setting himself on fire in front of the White House to protest the Vietnam War; Slick Rick and Dr. Dre were babies, both born in '65 (Aww, baby Slick Rick!). Anyway, things done changed. By that I mean that nobody protests war in a super punk rock way anymore, and nobody makes pure heaven like this and puts it on the radio anymore.
(Wellllll....other than Rich Harrison, I mean)




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Bright moments always come back vivid. Dante Smith & Agatha Christie see eye to eye.

The latest in my "Superhero MC and old white lady writer" series! (It's a crowd favorite.)


“From hence I come
So here we go
Signs and wonders all along the road

Some lies open
Some lies close
Some stretchers roll with no lies at all.
Some riders don't know what they riding for

Hands on the wheel and their mind is gone
Wherever you ride, whatever your name,
This raw cold life is a beautiful thing

And we are alive in amazing times
Delicate hearts, diabolical minds

Revelations, hatred, love and war.
And more and more and more and more
And more of less than ever before
it's just too much more for your mind to absorb

It's scary like hell, but there's no doubt
We can't be alive in no time but now.”






“I like living.

I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable,
racked with sorrow,

but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”




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2 Greats: "Numbers"

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Bambaataa collaborators. OBVIOUSLY.

I. Here we go! This here's the very best bass-glitch-robot sexytimes music in all the land, and it's from the futuristic year of nineteen-hundred-and-eighty-one and is laced with some Speak & Spell hot fire. Album reissues are for people who didn't get 'em the first time, but I can endorse this anyway. And because Miami is so tie-yuuuurd, and LA is too, and Boston and NYC and Austin and Atlanta:

I'm in Düsseldorf, bitch! (sorry, Mom).



Kraftwerk - "Numbers"

mp3.




II. Queens borough presidents bring you one of the great sing-song-y hiphop choruses of all time, from the futuristic year called nineteen-hundred-and-ninety-seven.

"Hey! 'Member that time Organized Konfusion were on TV? They had backup dancers and Monch was wearing a backpack? Like, literally, a backpack? It was on BET, I'm pretty sure."

What the HAAALE.


"On the SP-1200 and 1212 you feel it
Mission to create, matrimony and reveal it
It's love in the form of life, as you know it
You skatin with the eight and I'ma damn sure show it"




PS!:

The Pointer Sisters - Sesame Street - "Pinball Number Count"

It's a damn shame that not nearly enough daughters of America are raised appropriately, spoiled with love and kindness and leftist politics and Dead shows and Sesame Street. When you raise your kid on music and it starts with this when she's a toddler, she'll turn out SO FRESH, just watch. Also, get her a Speak & Spell and she'll grow up to become both an etymology nerd and a kraut-glitch-rock aficionado. My Dr. Spock game is the tightest.



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2 Greats: James Taylor

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I'm doin my thing, you new to the game
Don't hate, "Celebrate" pa, Kool and the Gang
I don't have a big crew, just Dru and Starang
And a couple of loose screw dudes boostin' your chain

- Sean P

The beat-digging nerd in me and the folk-music-raised-me nerd in me get along so nicely! Therefore, I would now like to proclaim my love to both

James "JT" Taylor, Kool & the Gang singer and vocal ruler of ten thousand roller-skating rinks in 1982, AND

James Taylor, solo sensitive man singer and Carly Simon impregnator.

Despite this blogger being a '70s funk dorkstress who often cuddles with her vinyl copy of Wild and Peaceful, I think I maybe possible actually like '80s Kool & the Gang better than '70s Kool & the Gang! Oh my! And it's all 'cause of James "JT" Taylor's voice, so buttery.
(or maybe it's just that I still have unresolved Mase and Sean Combs Anger Issues due to the desecration of my precious 1974 banger "Hollywood Swinging"?).

"Too Hot" is about relationship conflicts,
"Get Down On It" is about getting down on it,
"Joanna" is about a lovely female type named Joanna and the fact that she never lets him down, especially at night (hollerrrr),

and

this song's about me, walking down Fairfax Ave. on a 75-degree Saturday in a cotton sundress; don't let anybody tell you different.

"Fresh"

mp3.
Remember what I said before, about his buttery vocals? Ummm, yeah, that part at the end, around 3:30.
PS, today's his birthday (08/16/53)!





In part II of the post, all I do is post a picture of the other James Taylor and hope you guys understand how he was like my mom's Elliott Smith, kind of sort of, singing about substances and loss while playing guitar.



Beautiful, dark-haired, baby James Taylor circa 1970 was the best.
Pre-balding, pre-soccer-mom, pre-awful-covers-of-Marvin-Gaye-songs James Taylor was the best.


"Sweet Baby James"

mp3.

This song's like a waltz, in 3/4 time.
And it sounds so soothing, like a lullaby, because that's what it is -
a goodnight song he wrote it for his baby nephew just after he was born. Aw.


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2 Greats: "Shotgun"

“When you've begun to think like a gun/The days of the year have already gone.”

- John Cale

Spanish woman: “You can't say Americans are not more violent than other people.”
Fred: “No.”
Woman: “All those people killed in shootings in America?”
Fred: “Oh, shootings, yes. But that doesn't mean Americans are more violent than other people. We're just better shots.”

- Barcelona

One's produced by Dilla, and one's produced by Berry Gordy. It's a matching game!
Please turn in your answers at the end of class today.





Shoot 'em 'fore they run now.






PS:

Felt - "Breaker Down Like a Shotgun"

mp3.


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