Author Archives: The Music in My Ears (by Jamie Kyei)

About The Music in My Ears (by Jamie Kyei)

Just one man who's making his way through life one day at a time writing about the songs he has on his phone. And other things at some points.

#1121: Madvillain – Rhinestone Cowboy

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Well, look at that. I’m 29. Hooray? Such an ugly number. May as well be 30, am I right? Time just keeps going on. Same as it ever was. When I started this whole thing in 2013, I never really thought I’d be doing this blog 11 years later. Don’t think I ever put any sort of timing reference onto it. I’m too deep into the alphabet now, there’d be no point in stopping. Still so many good songs to write about. Writing on here keeps me focused. So thanks to anyone who reads these.

Anyway, today’s song is ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ – the final song on the Madlib and MF DOOM collaboration album Madvillainy. The album is one that I initially heard years and years ago, say 2012 or ’13, but it was probably only a couple of years ago after revisiting it again that the track stood out. I tell you, listening to music at ages 17/18 compared to ages 26/27 is a totally different ball game. My focus went straight to the instrumental, a sped-up sample of ‘Mariana Mariana’ by Brazilian singer-songwriter Maria Bethânia, which became an earworm almost instantly. I’d be singing that at random points during the day, including the sweeping string part that abruptly comes in before the vocal. And you readers out there might be thinking, “What are you talking about the sample for? The rapping’s the best part, ya dummy.” It’s true. ‘Rhinestone’ acts as a kind of victory lap for the album, or an encore, suitably represented by the sampled applause that persists throughout the song’s entirety.

With his trademark hefty vocal, DOOM delivers two fantastic verses. Lines roll into the next with effortless ease, brimming with humour, internal rhyme schemes, braggadocio, and niche references that when pieced all together make for the most engaging of listens. “Got more soul than a sock with a hole.” How’d that rhyme not been made at any point before then? The track is something of an account into the making of the Madvillainy album too. The first verse mentions his and Madlib’s goal of setting the hip-hop game on fire with their collaboration. The former would wake up, write his lines in a few hours, deliver them and sleep again. Like the track’s first verse, an unfinished version of the album was leaked, much to the duo’s frustration. And like the second, they came back to properly complete it in a form that left people standing on their feet in appreciation. By subtly bringing the listener in to the lore of the ‘Villains’, it’s such a slick way to close out the entire project.

#1120: Supergrass – The Return of…

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It’s been a long while since I’ve written about a song from Supergrass’s Diamond Hoo Ha. In fact, the two songs I wrote about from that album, I don’t even like that much anymore. Been that way for a while. Supergrass are one of my favourite bands, hands-down, no question, though I have to say that the record – their final release before initially splitting up – is my least favourite of theirs. The songs aren’t bad, but they pale in comparison to almost everything the band provided in the years before. There’s something about its production that’s always never felt right to me. To a lesser extent, it just reminds me that we’ll never get another full-length release by the band again.

All right, so I may have said the songs “pale” just a few sentences ago. But there is one that shines amongst them. The track is ‘The Return of…’, the sixth song on there, closing out Hoo Ha’s first half, and I’ll state sincerely that it may be one of the best in Supergrass’s entire catalogue. This was my third most-played song on Spotify last year. I don’t know why the realization of its greatness happened so many years on, because I owned a physical copy of the album from its year of release. Sixteen years ago. Its “return of inspiration” chorus was one that had remained in my head for some time. But it may have only been a couple of years ago where I was sitting down, listened to the whole song with some good headphones, and thought, “Wow. This song is actually really good. What the hell?”

A production trick I do appreciate on here is how particular elements of the track are separated into the two channels. In the left ear, you have the drums and the rhythm guitar. In the right, you have the lead guitar playing the main riff. In the middle is Gaz Coombes’s vocals, the bass guitar and keyboards. So with whichever earbud/headphone you’re listening to the track with, you can get two separate experiences. That’s cool. In terms of mood and lyrics, the track’s a cheery, optimistic number. The narrator here is a nothing-can-get-me-down type of person, who’s never phased by unpleasant news in the papers or on the TV, by the unpleasant people they encounter, or even when they sustain an injury caused by falling down the stairs. An enchanting, dreamy chorus ties the verses altogether and it features a screeching saxophone solo in the brought-down instrumental break, which goes all crazy once Coombes starts singing again. It’s all fantastic. I should have known this for at least 15 years. But better late than never.

#1119: OutKast ft. Khujo Goodie & Cee-Lo – Reset

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Keen-eyed readers will notice that whenever I’ve written about an OutKast song on here, they’ve always been from the duo’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below double album from 2003. That was a big, big deal. I was eight at the time, but you couldn’t escape ‘Hey Ya!’ or ‘Roses’ when those songs were around. Eight-year-old me liked the former so much, I wanted the single. My aunt got me the double album instead. I don’t think she knew the difference between a single and an album. She must have just seen ‘OutKast’ in the shop and took the first thing she saw. I didn’t have the attention span for 135 minutes of music, so it wasn’t until years later that I really sat down and gave the solo efforts of Big Boi and André 3000 my undivided attention.

If you dig deeper on here, you’ll find the majority of songs I’ve covered are from the Speakerboxxx half. So, I guess that means I like it more than The Love Below? I’m not too sure. They’re both so different from each other, it’s hard to compare. I think having liked Sir Lucious Left Foot from the get-go familiarised me to Big Boi’s style, and so it seemed like a breeze to listen through compared to 3000’s more experimental effort. ‘Reset’ is another number from Speakerboxxx. It’s not one that I have a deep connection with. In fact, the first time I think I truly listened to it was when I was on my old computer listening to my iTunes library on shuffle, while simultaneously playing a FIFA game on my PlayStation 2. There must have been no one in the house at the time, and I must have been getting bored of the game soundtrack. That hushed chorus delivered by singer Debra Killings came in along with the bloopy keyboard that mirrored the vocal melody, and I think I was instantly hooked. The whole track is smooth to the core. Very relaxing. But also very contemplative, reflective and a bit philosophical too.

Overall, the track concerns the theme of being able to take the good with the bad and having to accept that at some point, times will be incredibly tough before they get better. Big Boi starts things off by stating that things get tough from the minute you’re born. Unless you’re a twin, you’re born into this world alone and you have to fend for yourself once the umbilical cord’s cut and you’re separated from your mother. He states that from the moment fertilization occurs we’re living beings and how a fleeting sexual moment turns into a lifelong commitment very easily. Khujo Goodie shouts out his “homies on the sick side” who are dying over gang wars and his own displeasure with racists and fakers. And then Cee-Lo Green gets the final say, giving an advisory verse to not give into temptations and addictions, and to focus on the things important to you that make life worth living. This could very well have ended Speakerboxxx’s proceedings, but ‘Last Call’ arrives a couple tracks later to bring things to more of a celebratory end. But for those minutes that ‘Reset’ lasts for, it doesn’t fail in making you get all existential.

#1118: The Strokes – Reptilia

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What can you say about The Strokes’ ‘Reptilia’? I don’t think it’s unfair to say it’s one of indie rock’s most iconic songs. It’s definitely one of the band’s most popular efforts, there’s no doubt in that. You got the Albert Hammond Jr’s guitar riff during the intro. You’ve got Nick Valensi’s guitar break before the choruses. You got Nikolai Fraiture slamming that B note on the bass guitar alongside Fab Moretti’s steady drum pattern. You got Hammond Jr. doing his own solo during the chorus before Valensi carries out his guitar solo during the instrumental break. And then there’s Julian Casablancas, croony as ever on the vocals with a great melody, before going all shouty at various points. It’s one that gets the crowd cheering at every live gig the band’ll do. It’s one of my personal favourite Strokes tracks too, and one of the reasons why I always go to Room on Fire when I’m looking for a Strokes album to listen through.

The track’s one that feels like it’s always been there as long as I’ve existed. But I want to say that I can remember hearing the song for the first time too. Part of the instrumental was used on a football programme that was showing on Sky One. A programme that I couldn’t even try and think of what the title was. This was a long, long time ago. It would have been around 2003, so Room on Fire would have been out for maybe only a few months at the time. I was also eight. A short, short snippet of the song was used. Then the show carried on, and that was that. I kind of forgot about the song. Not that I even knew the song in order to forget it. I didn’t even know where it came from or who it was by. But then I saw the music video for the track on MTV2 some time later, had the feeling that I’d heard this exact same music somewhere before, and the dots suddenly connected. The Strokes videos were always being shown on MTV2, so again, I couldn’t tell you when the first time I saw it was. I did probably think that ‘Reptilia’ was a strange name for the song, though.

Speaking of the music video, it’s just so good, isn’t it? One of my favourites. One of those where if it had any other style or director or just wasn’t filmed in the same way it was, the whole music/visual aspect would be thrown off. It just matches the music perfectly. You’ll see that I haven’t once noted any thoughts on the meaning of the song. That’s because, and I’ve only realised this myself, I don’t think I’ve ever wondered what this song was about. There was once a time on Wikipedia where the track was categorised as one that was ‘about suicide’. That was a while ago too, I’m not sure that page exists on there anymore. If I did think about what the meaning was, it wouldn’t be that. Everything in the song sounds fantastic, though. Was surprised to find, after doing the research on Strokes when figuring them out initially, that this track was released as the second single from Room on Fire, with ’12:51′ being the first. Between those two, I know ‘Reptilia’ would make me more excited for a new album that was on the horizon. Seems that Fab Moretti felt the same way. Shout out to ’12:51′ though, that song’s smooth.

#1117: Nas – Represent

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Well, I can’t say I have this deep, meaningful history with Nas’s Illmatic. When I was going through the Best Ever Albums of All Time list on besteveralbums.com back around 2012/13, the album was one of the highest ranking hip-hop albums on there. Now, I wasn’t around in ’94 when Illmatic was released. I couldn’t give an impression of what initial reactions to it were by critics and the fans. But looking at the Wikipedia page, it appeared that it was a very big deal. A “landmark album of East Coast hip hop”, a “masterpiece”, “rhythmic perfection”. Illmatic’s shadow loomed so large that whenever Nas would release a new album, the new stuff would constantly be compared to it. That situation’s died down a little, now. But I’m sure whenever a hip-hop artist has a debut that’s considered a classic and other albums that aren’t as highly-regarded, they referred to as suffering from an “Illmatic situation”. That’s how much influence the album possesses.

It’s actually been a long time since I listened to the album in full. I should revisit it one of these days. I went through Nas’s discography in early 2018, a decision brought on by the release of then-new album NASIR. Although there were tracks from various albums that I thought were cool, the full-album experience on a lot of them couldn’t compare to that of Illmatic. Every album was around an hour long compared to Illmatic’s tight and compact 40-minute length. And even in that relatively short amount of time, Nas covered themes of authenticity, drug violence, his origins, and others with a flow, hunger and energy that was never truly matched in those albums that followed. With the level of maturity he approached each topic with, it’s easy to forget that he started work on the album at the age of 17, with it eventually being released when he was 20.

‘Represent’ is the ninth and penultimate track on the album. I can remember this one being an instant hit for me when I heard it that first time all those years ago. The opening rhythm got my head bopping. Then the ‘Represent, represent’ hook came in, and that was everything I needed, really. What followed were three immense verses from Nas. In the first, he “discusses” life in the projects where any minute could be your last as you could be taken out by anyone including Nas himself alongside the threat of being arrested by the police for pretty much anything. The second sees him describing the kind of person he is, where you’ll see him, what clothes you’ll find him wearing and how he’s fulfilled the rags to riches story. The final verse sees him expand on that latter point, where he emphasises on his satisfaction with the wealth he’s gained and how he could do with even more money. But he also notes that there’s the danger of losing it all. Even if he does, he has his boys from the projects that he knows will always have his back. He shouts them out in the outro; I’m sure some of them are among the people hollering and calling out. But it all revolves around that ‘represent’ hook. You’ve always got to remember where you’re from and the people who helped you when you make it big, and I think it’s a track like this that even raised Nas’s status in the ears of many listeners.