Waaves - Afraid of Heights

This Waaves album is very solid--and this is coming from someone who has never liked Waaves and was fully prepared to bash this album. Instead of being crap, Afraid of Heights is one of my favorite of the year thus far. Listen to the standout cut from the album,  "Gimme a Knife", below.

Lupe Fiasco Blames Rap Music

Lupe Fiasco is continuing his career path towards his destined spot of  PTA Meeting supervisor with his latest effort: Criticizing violence in music!

Serious questions: Do he and KRS-One link up on weekends to talk about what it is to be a "real emcee" all day on the phone until they masturbate themselves to sleep listening to DJ Kool Herc bootlegs?

Lupe, dude, I PROMISE YOU, you are not as smart as you think you are. I'm tired of this fucking preaching.

Check out Lupe's sometimes true, mostly errant, views here.

Or, just go to your local 65 year old white lady and ask her what she thinks of hippity-hop. You will get the same answer.

Cloud Boat "Youthern"

They burned them
and they screamed
"Come down with us,
come down with us"

Rina Sawayama "Sleeping in Waking"

All I really wanna say is breathe easy
this is the time to let it go 
You will only hear this from me one more...
Don't think about me tonight

Pitchfork Festival Announces Full Line-Up

Pretty Solid: 

Beyonce "Bow Down/I Been on"

Beyonce goes in over a Hit-boy/Timbaland/The-Dream/Polow da Down joint:

How To Dress Well

How To Dress Well was fantastic on Sunday Night at Brighton Music Hall.

This performance was different from the first time I saw him at the same venue last November; this time showed Tom Krell much more relaxed drunk, leading to many terrific stories such as:

• The story of his car breaking down in "a section of Connecticut where people had no teeth". Apparently, our fearless leader had to wait it out in a Staples until helped arrived, which he described as "one of the most depressing places on Earth". 
• Tom Krell apparently met up with Maxwell after a show in New York a few days ago. Maxwell invited him to the studio where they "Took a bunch of ecstasy and listened to Juicy J" until 2 A.M. 

These two things were the reason for the performance's bumpier parts, but the highs were well worth the lows. The lack of preparation gave a markedly different feel to the performance than at his previous stop in Beantown, but even an incredibly blitzed HTDW (he was taking bottle shots on stage) is still impeccable. 

When he belted out some of the more stirring parts of the album they rang just as true as the sober, polished version, and this performance also showed Krell letting his guard down and going for the gusto which was mostly a great decision. 

Dude also rocked a black on white t-shirt depicting Kanye West as a pharaoh, soooo yeah. Epic.