Post Malone goes Nirvana, Pharrell + Rick Rubin, 4:44
Read: Post Malone Covering Nirvana for Virus Relief? Bring on the ‘Bleach’
The New York Times
By Lindsay Zoladz
Publish Date 04/25/20
Reverence is perhaps the strongest of all the emotions. Like love, it wells up from your insides and creates the kind of rich sensual phenomenon that touches your head and your heart at once. Reverence manifests as both gift and obligation; in exchange for the pleasure you derive from something, that which you revere also requires you to protect its sanctity. When you respect something deeply, you feel as though it’s your duty to defend it from all affronts; derivations and homages, alike.
No thing fuels our collective reverence like the music of our youth. The blossoming of our sense of identity occurs at the very moment our practical independence gives us, for the first time, full control over the soundtrack to our lives. Deciding who you are and what you’re about is the exercise; music becomes the canvas.
And so, when that music, and the people who created it are criticized, bastardized, or–heaven forbid covered–we tend to bristle in a way that’s a bit hard to describe but quite easy to feel. Our protective instincts kick in, we all become Samuel L. Jackson in Django Unchained, and we prepare for battle.
Enter Post Malone covering Nirvana on a YouTube live stream. Right.
Except, maybe not? Maybe the most critical element of reverence is that it’s an invisible, internal phenomenon? And maybe the person who seems diametrically opposite the person who made your beloved thing reveres it in just the same way you do?
And maybe instead of being on high alert for infractions against the purity of our own musical purity, we can start to appreciate our collective appreciation of all of the things that are objectively wonderful?*
*It very much helps when you get Travis Barker to sit in on drums, delivering his best Dave Grohl impression. That’s certainly helpful.
Watch: Pharrell and Rick Rubin Have an Epic Conversation
GQ
YouTube
Release Date: 11/04/19
“To me, chords are coordinates…they take me to a place.”
This is the kind of quote that you imagined existed within this conversation the moment you read the title. And on that front, you were right. This is 47 minutes of two iconic producers swooning over their mutual good fortune of spending a lifetime in music. So yes, it’s absolutely full of super romantic shit like this that feels like it was genetically engineered to hit on the pleasure sensors of every person with any inclination to watch a video like this in the first place.
One of the things that’s also here is the kind of 2+2 = 5, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” style conversational wizardry that makes you feel glad to be sitting on the cameraman’s shoulder for an hour.
An example:
- Rick asks Pharrell about the music he listened to growing up.
- Pharrell names a bunch of all-time greats. (Stevie, EWF, James Brown, Chuck Brown)
- Rick hears Chuck Brown and remembers Pharrell is from Virginia.
- Pharrell confirms, mentions how huge go-go music was.
- Rick concurs, mentions when he first heard it, it blew his mind.
- Pharrell agrees. Remembers Rick produced LL Cool J’s Rock the Bells. Freaks out.
- Rick beams with pride and what can only be deep appreciation for the praise.
Somewhere in the middle of this back and forth, it dawned on me that one of Pharrell’s biggest production masterpieces (The Clipse’s 2002 hit Grindin’) is totally and completely made in the shadow of a generation of Rick Rubin production. And then the next year in 2003, Rubin was behind Jay-Z’s 99 Problems, which is about as timeless and as perfect an example of the Rick Rubin experience as I can imagine.
And, as though this weaving back-and-forth weren’t entertaining enough, add in that the entire thing is beautifully shot by GQ at Rubin’s Shangri-La sanctuary; the kind of oasis that looks especially dreamy and feels a tiny bit cruel, especially to anyone reading this from the comforts (sic) of a hundreds of square feet apartment. The sound editing is as good as the photography. Every time Rubin opens and closes his swing top glass tea bottle, i’m as rapt with attention as i’d be were I sitting across the table from Zöe Kravitz. It’s maddeningly compelling and not at all the point of the video.
A good watch for anyone who likes to nerd out on music. A mandatory watch for anyone who considers themselves any kind of student of the art form.
Listen: 4:44
Jay-Z
Spotify
Release Date: 06/30/17
Runtime: 10 tracks, 36 minutes
Four months ago, Jay-Z’s entire discography returned to Spotify, following a more than 2-year hiatus. That timeline is critical, as in June 2017 Jay-Z released his thirteenth studio album 4:44, made available exclusively via streaming through Tidal, the artist’s streaming service and Spotify’s rival.
Jay-Z didn’t put 4:44 on Spotify, and so I didn’t really listen to it. Because why on earth would I subscribe to Tidal for access to a 48-year-old rapper’s album? No doubt, one of Jay-Z’s albums is in my top-5 hip hop albums of all time, but that record came out 19 years ago. What could he have to say today that was compelling enough to garner my full attention? Why would I pay for it?
To the latter question: I wouldn’t and didn’t. But to the former, the answer is: quite a bit.
One of the few silver linings of this period of self-isolation and global unrest has been the copious time afforded to tackling one’s list of “I’ve been meaning to…” items. For me, that list comprises almost exclusively musical explorations; artist catalogs i’ve been meaning to explore, things I’ve been meaning to write, an instrument i’d been meaning to learn.
4:44 had been on my list of i’ve been meaning to listens…both because of Jay-Z’s well-earned spot in the canonical pantheon of rappers but also because of the glowing review of its sustained listenability by the great Zane Lowe of Apple Music on a recent podcast he recorded with Bill Simmons. When the album came out, i’d listened to The Story of O.J. and Family Feud and had shrugged it off as unworthy of its hassles.
Upon further reflection: holy shit. It’s good and i’m stubborn. The things he has to talk about are a life of success, and wealth, but also one of internal struggle, mistakes, regrets, and shame. He delved into the darker corners of his marital life and his mother’s sexuality. He ruminates on blackness and fatherhood, legacy and influence. It’s mature, and warm-sounding, and thoughtful, and pretty much every other positive attribute you can ascribe to such a project. It’s crushingly autobiographical in sections (Smile, 4:44), rhythmic in others (Bam, Moonlight), and soberly reflective in its tonally perfect conclusion (Legacy).
Not only is this project fairly ambitious sonically while holding the line on track-to-track consistency, but it has the side benefit of nodding toward an answer to the question my father has been posing to me consistently for 20ish years: “How does your music age? Are you going to be rapping along to Kanye when you’re 65?”
The answer is, of course, that there’s no such thing as 20-year-old people, and 60 year-old people; there’s only really time. And just as Big Pimpin’ and Change Clothes take us back to a time and place that’s nearly unidentifiable to our current selves, the same is true of Jay-Z who was making the music at the time. The maturation has been taking place all along, and it’s maybe only now that the difference seems more stark.
These days, the fact is the artist spends more of his days as Sean Carter than he does as Jay-Z. He’s a head of a multi-faceted corporation and involved in countless business ventures. He’s as much a public figure as he is an artist, and we collectively monitor and critique his speech as such.
But that reality notwithstanding, another thing is also true: Sean Carter can still rap.