J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - January '10

Being it is the first month of a new year, and I list this bullshit every month, let us recap the entire project and parameters that entail the J.J. Krupert gaypod nonsense. First off, J.J. Krupert is the name of my gaypod, because a while back, when we first had a shuffle gaypod in this household, my middle kid, who was about 4 at the time, loved playing the DJ Z-Trip Uneasy Listening Volume 2 CD, which had a big hand in starting the mash-up genre. She didn't quite know how to say DJ. Z-Trip though, so she called it J.J. Krupert. I have taken that name and held onto it. I've actually "had" a homebirth kid already under that name, and am working on getting a social security number, and then eventually a passport for him. Even with Homeland Security and all that, you'd be surprised how easy that is to do. Through three aliases, I've had a total of 10 children born at home, 8 of which I have social security numbers for already. I've dragged my feet on J.J. though because he's so special to my heart with his fake ass. It should probably be pointed out that "gaypod" is my disaffectionate term for an Ipod shuffle, as I refuse to carry a full-sized Ipod, nor an Iphone, so I rock the little shuffle style, which is of course mad gay. With it being a Shuffle, there's only so much room, so it's survival of the fittest for songs. I started with a 1 gig shuffle, but then handed that down to my daughter and got a 2 gig shuffle right before they got rid of the old style of shuffle and replaced them with those retarded looking ones where the volume control is on the headphones.
How the monthly countdown works is very simple. I have my gaypod stats set up to keep track of play count and times skipped and all that, so that I can fully enforce the survival of the fittest, even when I'm drunk and don't remember what I heard, and knock stuff off the thing or let them be. At some point each month, I give the songs the old hockey plus/minus treatment, where you subtract times skipped from times played, to find the top played songs on the J.J. Krupert gaypod. Individual versions of a song can only be listed in the stupid countdown once, and additionally, I only allow one song per artist each month, so that if I'm just geeking all over one new CD forever, it's not just a list of all the songs from that dude. This usually means a slow climb towards a listing by songs I enjoy a ton, because it being a straight up shuffle, I can't really pick out songs, although this past month I have started using my Itunes on my computer a bit more to listen at while working at the kitchen table/home office at night.
So that's how the fuck this works. Now here are the things that I've been hearing with these things this last collected page of day block squares of time on the calendar at the hall door this month...
#1: "Popular Demand (Popeyes)" by The Clipse featuring Cam'ron - I'm from Virginia, where ain't shit to do but lounge, and honestly the only thing we've had to come from this state to make us proud in the hip hop world is The Clipse. Sure, Madd Skillz busts out his year-end wrap-up every December and makes gimmicky noise, but mostly what we're well-known for is crappy radio bullshit like Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and The Neptunes. But The Clipse has been a long-time successful, pseudo-underground, criminal element in hip hop, that's never quite blown up and never quite fallen off. I didn't even bother getting their last CD, not even from the everything-is-free rap blogosphere, but then I was reading some year-end Best Songs of '09 lists, and this one came up a bunch of times. I can dig on The Clipse, when I'm in the mood, and Cam'ron is like three-legged dogs fighting in that you just can't get enough of it but you also can't overload on it or it loses it's awesomeness. This song, even with stupid Pharrell on the hook, is a great goddamned song, and enters my The Clipse pantheon of under ten songs that I'll pump constantly in those rare times that I'm all about some The Clipse. Plus, it talks about Popeyes, which is a chicken joint that is considered great, but if you're from Richmond and not Hampton like these guys, you know the Lee's Fried Chicken by Pleasant's Hardware on Broad Street is the fucking jam and a half.
#2: "Exhibit C" by Jay Electronica - Erykah Badu's latest baby daddy has been getting the hip hop blogospheric hype job for some time now, which usually means absolutely nothing, because said internet darling gets lost in the midst of 300 other "true hip hop spirit" rappers and collectives with cybertronic comic book generated names. But this song by Jay from last year, produced very mainstreamily by Just Blaze, fucking bangs, and I actually heard it on regular people radio in Richmond last week. It's actually got me all tweaked out that maybe, just maybe, in 2010, an actual good rapper could be successful in the American music industry. Then again, who the fuck's gonna buy his shit, because everybody like me will just download it for free just like it was the mixtape he just released. I guess that's why only shitty hip hop things have vast mainstream sales success anymore, because only stupid people actually buy music. Still though, Jay Electronica, despite the wack name, gives me hope that rappers can still be tight as fuck, and smart at the same time. Plus dude is from New Orleans. He and Andre 3000 should do a tag team mixtape with a bunch of obvious samples from Erykah Badu's live album and call it Menage-a-Trois. Also, I can't remember, but Jay's kid with Badu has an even crazier name than the one she had with Andre 3000. Can he achieve financial success in 2010? Or will the poison pussy disease of Erykah Badu cripple his ill styles like it has so many before him (Andre briefly, Common, that dude from Dead Prez)? Only time will tell. But you can bump the fuck out of this (as well as "Trolley Stop") while you wait and see.
#3: "Codeine Fiend Flow" by Big Moe - This is a brief freestyle Big Moe did about dranking lean over top that "I'll Be Missing You" beat by Puff Daddy which was basically just that old The Police song anyways. But it's awesome as fuck. The whole Screwed Up Click, if they could've all lived, could've been like the Wu-Tang of the South if everything had lined up just right at some point. I mean, DJ Screw, Fat Pat, Hawk, Big Moe, Lil Keke, Lil Flip, it could've been amazing. Instead they all went their own ways to either die or whither on the vine. This came off a mix called I Ride On Guilded Spinners I got at the After The End Of The World blog that's in the links to your right somewhere. It is my favorite blog, and if there were four more like it inside the internets, the internets wouldn't be so goddamned useless. Rest in Peace Big Moe. I bet you sing screwed naturally in Heaven, because Heaven is perfect. I bet dudes in Ghetto Heaven where old Screwed Up Click members go are inebriated off codeine all day every day, naturally, and there's a secret black market drug trade in sobriety pills where you buy them and it makes you not be fucked up on codeine for a few hours, and dudes are secretly doing that all the time and making music at regular speed for fringe Ghetto Heaven cultural elements. Man, I can't wait to die to see what type of Heaven I get to go to. I'm also excited to choose my body outfit, because I assume it's like the baseball Hall of Fame, and those dudes pick one team they go in as, so in Heaven, you pick the body you were rocking at some point in your life. I might actually go with my long dreadlocks look from a few years back, although if you get to keep your brain like it is, it might be a tight style to rock the 5-year-old Raven golden blonde hair dimple smile style like I was on the Bad News Bears, and yet my brain would already know what it knows now. Would I still smile so brightly? I don't know; I'm not sure on the scientific mechanics behind emotion and whether your brain having different corners full of bullshit in it would alter that or not. Maybe genetic engineering can help us study that - whether a 5-year-old boy would smile so happily if you could inject a billion non-innocent thoughts into his skull.
#4: "Hands On The Wheel" by Willie Nelson - My folks used to play the Redheaded Stranger album all the time as a kid, so I knew this one by heart before I even knew it consciously, and to this day I’d say this is the most beautiful love song ever recorded. I mean, for real love, not wacky slow dance at the end of a movie make believe love. This is a love song with a healthy swipe of grime, just like real life is. The bride doesn’t have perfect curly golden locks in real life - she’s pregnant already. But even when you accidentally get somebody pregnant, sometimes the universe breaks just right and you can find that perfect once-in-a-lifetime love. That’s this song.
#5: "Mighty One" by Memory Man - If you are a fan of “real” hip hop as every thirtysomething white-ish boy likes to call it, and you haven’t yet heard this Wu Tang Clan vs. The D.I.T.C. mixtape that Memory Man did last year, go google it right now and dl that bitch. It’s the best post-mixtapes-mean-free-shit-on-the-internet age mixtape that’s been made thus far. Basically, it’s a mash-up that alternates between Wu verses over D.I.T.C. beats and D.I.T.C. verses over Wu beats. This is Ghostface’s “Mighty Healthy” verses over a D.I.T.C. beat that I recognize the fuck out of but can’t tell you what it is at this moment. As much as I jock Ghostface Killah as the best MC alive right now, I never really pumped Supreme Clientele too much in my lifetime. The lyrics here are new to me because of that, and it’s classic Ghost, mixing pseudo-sciences with religion with swagger with big dick boastings. I will probably continue to not really listen to Supreme Clientele, because I can’t imagine the beat behind the song making sense to me now that Memory Man brainwashed me with this mix.
#6: "Purple Rain (screwed & chopped)" by Prince - Nobody, for the most part, since DJ Screw died really highlighted the chopped part of screwed and chopped. Yeah, people have slowed a ton of music down over the years, but the chopping that Screw did was a tight ass aspect to his music. The simple repetition of notable pairs of song lines, the extra BAP BAP he had with the drumbeat just slightly off and ahead, it all added to a whole lot more than simply slowing down records. Michael 5000 Watts of Swisha House gained some fame post-Screwmously as the notable S&C expert, but right there beside him in the beginning of Swisha House was a DJ far more attuned to the spirit of screwed music than 5000 Watts money-hungry ass, in the form of OG Ron C. OG Ron C’s most notable contribution to the world has been his Fuck Action series of mixtapes, which are screwed and chopped R&B jams, and being it’s often new R&B, this means it can a lot of the times suck. Not from his effort though, just that new school R&B doesn’t hit me that hard. But he’ll throw in old school jams now and then, and this “Purple Rain” slow-mowed fiesta is awesome as fuck. I don’t even like Prince, but OG Ron C made me wanna throw the ol’ lady down on the living room floor (after spreading out a lambskin and building a fire of course) and put a baby inside her belly that we name & or an upside down ! which my gringo keyboard won’t even let me type.
#7: "Going Down" by Ani DiFranco - Every month, I think I’ve hit the wall on enjoying Ani DiFranco, and I’m gonna dump all the songs off the gaypod by her; but then when I’m looking at Itunes, I actually still like to hear those songs. At this point, I’m tired of the idea of listening to Ani DiFranco, as it’s lost it’s hipster contrarianism; but I actually still enjoy her music. I guess maybe deep down inside I’m a disillusioned lesbian.
#8: "Deep In The Mud" by Those Poor Bastards - Those Poor Bastards are the group that originally did the “Pills I Took” song that Hank Williams III spiced up and perfected on his Straight to Hell LP. I downloaded almost all their shit to give it a listen, since it’s supposed to be dark, broody country music. Well it is. It’s like gothic kids did some acid and had a bad trip watching Andy Griffith reruns. I am not sure they are that great, because basically it’s music to suicide yourself to, but there are moments where I am in the right mood and I can tolerate ten minutes of them. This “Deep In The Mud” song seems to be the one I go back to the most. But honestly, if you go out looking for this shit after reading this, it’s basically Appalachian funeral dirge music, except for-real Appalachians would pick themselves up emotionally with some bluegrass music about God. This is like there’s an alternate reality where instead, at an Appalachian funeral they wanted to just deeply immerse themselves in how shitty the world is, like basically if it rained all the time year-round in the Appalachian mountains, this is what they’d listen to in between crushing and snorting oxycontins.
#9: "Senga Abele" by Manu Dibango featuring MC Mell'o' - A couple months back, I was on a kick where I downloaded all these Rough Guide to... world music mixes, in protest against the Putamayo world music machine, but also to check out some obscure genres that I thought I might like. This was off of the Rough Guide to African Rap, which all in all is not that great a CD. I think since black people have mastered (haha, no pun intended) the rap music from the beginning, and were originally dragged to America from Africa, we’d all like to open-mindedly hope that bonafide Africans could tear it up with the hip hop music. But it’s a cultural thing, and you kinda have to be fucked in America in one way or another to kick the deep hip hop. But nonetheless, some of the stuff on this CD that moves further away from trying to be real hip hop and has a heavy African music flavor to it, that stuff gets play. And I actually have a few Manu Dibango LPs from my old crate-digging days, so I’m probably biased to check this track out more than the others. Also, my old roommate used to always say, “Man, you da bango!” when one of those records were laying out. Anyways, this is a not song I’d say you should go out immediately and try to find, but if you’re an experimental ass fool, look up the Rough Guide to African Rap, and it’ll probably make you appreciate Gucci Mane a little more.
#10: "Steeplechase Lane" by Chet Atkins - Not only is Chet Atkins awesome and a certified guitar picker/professional lounger, but this song, being an instrumental with Chet Atkins super clean guitar style, makes me feel like I’m Jed Clampett getting Jethro to drive me down to Mr. Drysdale’s bank every time I hear it.
#11: "Sunny Side Of The Mountain" by The Stanley Brothers - They played this at my dad’s funeral. Bluegrass has become so polluted with bullshit newgrass wacky side tangents that it’s diluted the inherent awesomeness of the genre with both weak ass spiritual music and hipster bullshit. The Stanley Brothers is always gonna be some straight up good to your soul bluegrass though. There is an obvious dichotomy in broke ass people’s lives of the hard partying Saturday nights and the hard praying Sunday mornings. Every now and then, like songs like this, the two are brought together, which is convenient, because sometimes it’s hard to get to sleep as Saturday night turns into Sunday morning.
#12: "Muchachita Del Oriente" by Los Mirlos - This is another song from that The Roots of Chicha: the Psychedelic Cumbias of Peru CD that I stole from inside the internet a while back. It is good shit, and makes me wish I still had lengthy moments of irresponsibility enough to get lost in the woods at night while under the influence of hallucinogenics.
#13: "On With The Show" by Motley Crue - With age, it has become apparent to me that the only good Motley Crue album is Too Fast For Love and anybody who would try to convince you otherwise is trying to have gay sex with you.