Ozzy The Painter

Shit. Welcome to the new year, I guess? 

I've been busy with a lot of new efforts. I'm looking at rebuilding this website, beginning to sketch out the next Ozzy project, and, of most immediate note, finishing up the new Chase Vibe EP. We've finished up vocals and are now in the mixing stage. I'm gonna keep the details to myself for now, lest I mess up his roll out, but rest assured this is his best and most interesting work yet, and some of my best production yet. 

Also, hasaniHarris's new record, tryinNOT2die (whomst I mixed & mastered), got a brief write-up over on minniaux.com – pop in and see what they had to say about it! 

In my last post I talked about using this space to do some introspection, making some deep dives into how I listen to music, and how I could get better at it. I think the first part of that is looking at listening environments. Not necessarily as literal as the physical room I'm in (at least this time), but the social and psychological situations I live in, and how those effect how I listen to music. I wanna take a look at three albums I listened to recently, and how my environment affected all of them in a pretty major way.

Little Dominique's Nosebleed and social setting 

Before COVID isolation began, I'd find new music because the DJ at a show spun something that caught my ear, and I'd see groups of people dancing, getting hype and chanting the words at each other progressively louder. Or maybe we'd be taking a break in the studio and someone would put on their latest earworm, gushing for a while about their favorite lines and elements of the beat. I was most often being exposed to new music in a group setting, and because of that I was being exposed to something else really valuable: I got to see how my friends and peers reacted to it, and learn what they found compelling about it. 

This is a situation I almost never find myself in anymore; I spend as little time as possible with people outside of my household, and I don't expect that to change until the world gets a COVID vaccine. I'm getting more concerned that being limited to only my perspective is narrowing how I interpret new music, and also really hurting my perception of music that is meant to be enjoyed socially. I think Little Dominique's Nosebleed by The Koreatown Oddity is one of those albums. 

I couldn't tell you exactly why I bounced off of this album the first time. It's a funny, colorful, often nostalgic look back at K-Town's childhood, punctuated by two car accidents that changed the rest of his life, as the album cover explains. It felt like an appropriate album to listen to having just heard about DOOM's passing, because his influence looms large over the project. It's a quilt of different samples from old movies, television announcements, cartoons, while K-Town brings us back to the neighborhood that gave him his name. The music, the skits, the rhyme cadence, it's all dripping in nostalgia, or I guess anemoia for me – I wasn't around yet, back when Street Fighter was the shit. 

Maybe that was why I didn't connect with it the first time? Maybe it was the one kinda homophobic line on "Attention Challenge?" Maybe I'm too preoccupied with the present to indulge in nostalgia? I shouldn't overthink it too much – art is like people, sometimes you don't click with something you thought you would on paper. But I'm still curious about what I missed. There was something so compelling about this record that it was a top 10 album of 2020 for many people. I can't shake the feeling that if I was in a hazy living room, smoke in the air, with a handful of friends around, and someone put on this record, and I could see them vibing to it, rapping along, running back their favorite parts; I feel like I would have appreciated it, or at least understood it, on a deeper level. And I really ache for a time when I can experience that again. 

Big $ilky Vol. 2 and the present moment 

There were no "weekly" posts from me the last three weeks – between the passing of DOOM, the murder of Dolal Idd at the hands of Minneapolis police, and the white supremacist assault on the Capitol, there was too much grief, anger, and confusion in my head and my social spheres for me to sit down and write about music. It seemed irrelevant, almost insulting. So I'm thankful that Big $ilky Vol. 2 was next on my listening list. 

This shit dragged me up out of a RUT. Psalm One and Angel Davanport deliver 22 minutes of unfettered confidence, coasting on top of animated, sub-busting production with bars that hit like a belt-fed machine gun, offering an indisputable fuck you to agents of patriarchy & white supremacy, the police, industry leeches, the performative woke, and entitled OnlyFans customers alike. At certain moments ("The Soft Block"), they move away from these broader categories of hater, and hone in on specific people with incisive personal details. It's not clear who exactly the targets are, but I finished the 7-song project ready to beat their asses as well; that's how infectious Big $ilky's conviction is. It's a breath of freezing winter air, a shot of adrenaline. It feels like a message that it's time to cut the overthinking and the hesitation, and to double down on my efforts for myself and my community, ready to rain hell on any opposition. 

I had a hard time with Little Dominique's Nosebleed, possibly because of how much time it spent on nostalgia and childhood – nothing wrong with those themes of course, I just wasn't in a headspace to appreciate it. In stark contrast, Big $ilky Vol. 2 is grounded in and concerned with 2020 and beyond, offering modern perspectives and radical energy, the kind that feels the most hopeful and sustainable to me right now. The present moment – our listening environment – is a flashpoint in human history, where we are reckoning with the apocalyptic legacy of whiteness, and the deeply brutal history of the united states. Some people are being forced to choose between complacent despair and righteous anger. It's obvious that Angel and Psalm are choosing to funnel anger into effective change, and much of their latest project is a reminder of how critical it is that we all do the same (a big thank you to "Church" however, for reminding us to leave ample room for pleasure). 

Angel Davanport is part of a nonprofit organization called The S.H.I.F.T. Cooperative, working to provide COVID-19 relief to underserved communities in north Minneapolis, including youth and unhoused residents. I encourage you to read more about their mission–and if you can, join me in making a direct contribution–at theshiftcooperative.com.

Green Twins and perfect timing 

There are other aspects of listening I wanna get into in the future; physical space, emotional state of mind, etc. But to close out this post, I wanna talk about a time when the music came on and everything just clicked. 

I was driving to my partner's house on Christmas Eve. It was the first snowfall of the winter in Minneapolis, at least the first that didn't melt away in the coming days. And around 4 pm, when the sun set, the snowfall quickly grew into a blizzard. It had been a particularly stressful December. I had been consumed with the familiar feeling that I was only surviving, with no direction and nothing big to look forward to. I was putting out fires, but I couldn't escape the burning building. I was Tenzin in the fog of lost souls, clinging to the contours of my personhood, straining to remember a sense of purpose beyond mere subsistence. Spending the holiday with my partner would be a welcome respite, but the heavier questions anchored me to the fog nonetheless. 

They had recently recommended Green Twins, Nick Hakim's 2017 debut album, and this drive seemed like as good a time as any to dive in. From the first second, I knew it was the perfect time. 

Without that album, the stress of the drive might have culminated into something completely different. The onslaught of snow coming into my windshield might have felt like an assault; instead it felt like the overdriven analog crackle of the percussion, the guitars, Nick's voice itself. The reduced visibility of the blizzard might have felt like the fog of lost souls; instead it felt like the lush blanket of mellotron, electric pianos, and reverb. Like a resplendent landscape, but at the same time like the lusty haze of a dimly lit room. My shitty wipers on full blast, slapping the corners of my windshield with every beat, might have felt like an annoyance and a perilous distraction; instead they felt like the steady, apparent pulse of the drums. Setting the tempo, providing direction, and clearing the way ahead. 

The album weaves harsh tension and sublime consonance together, like they're two sides of the same coin, because they are. Sometimes Nick is shrieking with dolorous yearning, sometimes he retreats to a soft-spoken croon, and he switches between the two quickly and effortlessly. And all the while that he navigates these highs and lows, the chaos and the harmony, it all centers around a longing. To be at his destination, out of the madness, in his lover's arms. In my car, at my age, at that exact moment in time, in human history, in my life, I couldn't have imagined a better soundtrack. And it happened completely by coincidence.

Ozzy