That’s the beauty of hip-hop. You can talk shit and make it addictive. T.I.’s “I’m Talkin’ to You” got stuck in my head again. The beat is banging. The flow is ingenious. The Southern accent is exotic. The lyric is just facetious: “I’m the best you ever heard about, fresher than you heard about / I’m strapped now pussy nigga this ain’t just word of mouth / for niggaz wit dirty mouths, I got a lotta clean pistols to wash ’em out.”
If I ever run a web design shop, I would hire my boss to be my consultant if I could afford to pay her. Her strength is that she could sell my design (not just mine, but other designers as well) way better than I could. I often say that design speaks for itself, yet my projects wouldn’t fly if I just let them up to the clients to figure out on their own. Not sure if it is because I have been working with her all these years or she is just so good at it that she could pick up my intention and explain it like she had been involved in my design thinking. I guess that’s why she’s my boss.
While Y Lan is still hot in here, let’s throw in “Em Dep Nhat Dem Nay,” a French ballad that fits so well with her whimsical personality. Although Thanh Lan is known for this tune, Y Lan has made it her own. What makes her rendition works me is the way she effortlessly rides the up-tempo arrangement.
A simple web design studio specializes mainly on comps. What a beautiful one-page design and good idea (designing the visual only).
Ella’s glossy and Louis’ grainy vocals shouldn’t be compatible, yet they made one of the finest duets of the century. With an album called The Best of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, all that it needed to say is: “Let’s [Swing] the Whole Thing Off.”
You know you’re a damn good writer when you make even shit hilarious. As recounted in “Big Boy,” a short essay in his witty Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris discovered a big turd sitting in the toilet someone left back in his friend’s bathroom. After the second flush failed, he “scrambled for a plunger and used the handle to break the turd into manageable pieces, all the while thinking that it wasn’t fair, that this was technically not [his] job. Another flush and it still didn’t go down. Come on, pal. Let’s move it.” From the way his sister pranks his father to the way his brother, “the Rooster,” talks to the old man—“The past is gone, hoss. What you need now is some motherfucker pussy” (after his mom passed away)—Sedaris’ simple, natural writing makes personal storytelling seem so engaging yet effortless.
Lost Tribe’s “Manticore,” a nice, funked-up fusion.
Damn, what a beautiful hook!
More comps to come…
NPR profiles Johnny Hartman, a jazz singer with such a deep, gorgeous baritone:
Hartman was a master of emotional expression, putting a wealth of subtle nuance into every word he sang. With any other vocalist, performing love songs with that kind of intensity could easily come across as being over the top or gushing, but Hartman’s rich, baritone voice never wavered in its sincerity.
Make sure you listen to the 54-minute program.