The Top 5 Most Scrumptious Songs of The Month (Feb. 2021)

    The Grammy's never disappoint when it comes to big surprises! And who could have guessed this year that the Jonas Brothers (pictured above) would upset the long-raining Grammy favorites Radiohead? The music world is abuzz with this shocking result and what it means for the future of popular music. With the dethroning of Radiohead, will more experimental sounds be allowed to compete in the musicplace of ideas?

I can't think of a better time to start a series where I list the Top 5 Songs I've discovered each month. Usually, these songs won't be released that month, since most of my listening time is devoted to catching up on all the great music I've missed, which is approximately 8.9 million songs. I hear a few hundred new songs every month so even the fifth and fourth entries on these types of lists are songs I hold nearest and dearest.

5. SIHEYMN'S Lament - Liturgy (2020)

Trap Hip-Hop / Symphonic Black Metal / Djent Metal

    One of the most interesting and complex songs this year, just peep at that genre amalgamation! SIHEYM'S Lament comes off of The Origin of the Alimonies, the latest record by Brooklyn-based Black Metal group Liturgy. The album is styled as an opera explaining the genesis of Liturgy's religion/background. It's extremely sophisticated lore for anything, especially a frickin band. SIHEMYN itself is a god-being, or an aspect of a God being maybe? I can't figure it out, though lead singer Hunter Hunt-Hendrix has a YouTube series explaining it with charts and everything . Maybe someone more theologically inclined than me could tell me what's going on! 

    But in the meantime this is an epic song compacted into under 4 minutes. 

    (Normally I embed a YT video above each song entry but this one contains "nudity". It's artful, non-erotic nudity, nothing more explicit than what you'd see in a museum or photography magazine. But I link these posts to a bunch of sites, each varying in its rules upon what's acceptable. What I think is much more important is how "orb" the album art is.)

CW: Flashing Lights

4. ride - food house (2020)

Hyperpop

"I go to Target/CVS at Night

It is the only time I feel alive"

    food house the now-established group name for Hyperpop producers Fraxiom Music and Gupi, son of Tony Hawk. Fraxiom and Gupi have a history of collaboration, most notably on (CW: Flashing Lights/Intense Visuals) Thos Moser, notorious for being the greatest music video ever designed and ending the career of Italy's own Pewdiepie. Now they're a proper duo, and are already being called Hyperpop's Daft Punk.

    I want to put my finger on what genre/era this song evokes, but it's really hard. When Frax's hits the choruses, "But I ride-ide-ide-ide-ide-ide-ide", what is that exactly? 2007 Club Electronica? 2013 Dance music? I guess that's the whole point of Hyperpop, to evoke a collective past memory that isn't any one year, genre or aesthetic; the goal is to go beyond easily definable labels or descriptions. Except for Minecraft, that's universal in Hyperpop.

    Listen to this song if you miss going to Target with your friends.

3. Dirty Laundry - Danny Brown (2020)

Alternative Hip-Hop

"Fuck a stripper for some change, actual change!

Dimes, pennies, nickels; actual change!"

    First off, I'm infatuated with this beat. The beep-beep machine, the buzzing saxophone, the sludgy bass, the Benedictine chorus. It's goofy and yet has this oddly heroic quality to it, like going on an epic quest just to score some Percocet. The instrumental to this song should be the theme for all of my DnD/TTRPG games, beautiful!

    Danny Brown is in his zone, seamlessly building his own world equal parts street and weird; Danny compares smoking crack to teleporting in Star Trek. There's dichotomic thematic tension going on too, between cleanliness and filth. Cleanliness as in cleaning, washing, staying upright and out of the sight of the feds. Filth as in grime, vermin, drugs and filthy sex. It's a contrast I didn't pick up on until about my 20th listen, even when the song title, Dirty Laundry, invokes it right there! 

    It's a strange blend, and the ever charismatic Danny Brown makes it a bizzare joyride.

2. Say the Name - clipping. (2020)

Occult Hip-Hop

"CANDLESTICKS IN THE DARK, VISIONS OF BODIES BEING BURNED

CANDLESTICKS IN THE DARK, VISIONS OF BODIES BEING BURNED

CANDLESTICKS IN THE DARK, VISIONS OF BODIES BEING BURNED

CANDLESTICKS IN THE DARK, VISIONS OF BODIES BEING BURNED"

    Thomas Jefferson from Hamilton is one of the darkest, sinister rappers around, just like everyone expected. clipping. comes through with their second Horrorcore album, Vision's of Bodies Being Burned, improving and expanding on 2019's already excellent There Existed an Addiction to Blood. This album is more grand, more experimental, more malicious. Each song a tale of some depraved horror, whether that be cannibals, ancient swamp peoples or cosmological deities. 

    This song in particular is inspired by the Candyman film, one that I haven't seen but really should given how much it's discussed now as an integral part of Horror, specifically Modern Black Horror. If you've seen it, you'll get more out of this song than me. But even in my ignorance, I can feel the utter menace of this story, of Daveed Diggs prophesizing the birth of some sort of Antichrist, an event that has been brewing for centuries. 

    And that motherfucking chorus! clipping. are the first ones to acknowledge their Horrocore Hip-Hop roots, and there's no better way to do that than sampling the birthplace of Horrcore, Geto Boys Mind Playing Tricks on Me . The sample twists the lyrics from the original song, a chill-yet-eerie groove, into an occult chant. Daveed is the face of clipping., but much respect to producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes for the masterful black magic they bring on each track on the album, including this one of course.

    Speaking of black magic...

1. Spells - Backxwash feat. Devi McCallion (2020)

Occult Hip-Hop

"I told my mama that the Devil got a place for me

I'm going to Hell and I bet I'll be safe for weeks"

    

    Sometimes you can't tell you're in love with a song within twenty seconds of hearing it.

    I don't know how to even describe the beat. Intense, carrying a primordial rage that is at the same time controlled and focused. That's not even a good explanation, just listen to it, preferably on some good loud-ass speakers if your car or TV got them. The fact that Backxwash produces and raps on all her tracks is nothing short of prodigal. And her beats are nuts. In terms of musical potential, Backxwash could be the Horrorcore Kanye West, and that is not a statement I make lightly.

    Devi McCallion is one half of the Noise outfit Black Dresses, who I've tried to get into but their music is a bit too abrasive for me (yes, even for me).  Regardless, she fucking rules the chorus on this and is convincing me to give her band another shot.

    Backxwash only spits one 16-bar verse on this track, and normally that would disappoint me but damn, what a verse. It's not the most lyrically sophisticated  verse I've ever heard, but Backxwash is unparalleled in creating an atmosphere and vision: "My emotions by an off-switch in an office/While the doors are open-closing and there's no one in the corridors/[Look] At my reflection, like yeah, here's a sorry thought". And Backxwash's enunciation is on another level, a third of the words she says are like being hit with an Eldritch Blast: "Part this shit is so very simple, the karma as heaven hits you". The verse's brevity and intensity give the track a ton of replay value; I've listened to this song five times on repeat just writing this post!

    I could go on for a really long time about this track, and the breakout album it appears on, God Has Nothing to Do with This Leave Him out of It. Backxwash is just a super interesting and dope person too, her interviews are about everything from her Heavy Metal influences to what it means to be a trans woman making Hardcore Hip-Hop. I'm supadupa excited to see where she goes from here.