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My iPod #338: Kanye West ft. DJ Premiere – Everything I Am

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“Everything I Am” was a song that was made for Common that was passed on, something Kanye West mentions early in the song.

It was composed using only a Rhodes piano, a vocal sample, and some scratching, this song stands as the album’s most stripped down production. West marries a down-tempo beat to gentle piano chords that are accentuated by soulful cooing sampled from “If We Can’t Be Lovers” by Prince Phillip Mitchell.

This is soulful and mellow beat is complemented with Kanye’s very introspective lyrics about topics such as self-examination, personal troubles, his own flaws and made up gangsters.

The track features a scratched hook by DJ Premier on the vocal sample: “here we go again,” from Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise”. After West had played an early version of this record for Premier and asked him his thoughts on it. DJ Premier answered he liked the lyrics and the beat and offered to put scratches on it.

……. OK, that was a definite cop out. That’s all from RapGenius, I’m sorry.

I couldn’t put a description of the song in better words myself. Mostly because I didn’t know most of the information that is there.

“Everything I Am” is chill, man. I like it just because of its modesty and humour (something you probably wouldn’t say about him today) and because of the cool, laid back beat which you only have to nod your head to and really focus on what the man has to say.

I miss old Kanye maaaaaaan, bring him back, this is what I waaaaant.

Seriously.

My iPod #247: Soundgarden – The Day I Tried to Live

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“The Day I Tried to Live” is a track, and also was a single, from Soundgarden’s album “Superunknown”, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The band plan to reissue the whole album along with b-sides, outtakes and some cool t-shirts. You can pre-order the bundle here!

The song is another one of those which I heard for the first time when its video (above) appeared on MTV2. I liked it from that moment on. The descending bass riff at the beginning and its weird time signature (it changes from 7/4 to 4/4 throughout) was what caught my attention. The song also showed me how amazing Chris Cornell actually is as a vocalist. “Cochise”, “Black Hole Sun”, “Original Fire” – all those sung by him were some tracks that I’d seen on the TV before “The Day”, but they never exhibited the range the man possesses. At some point in “The Day”, Cornell’s sings in a low register before screaming like a banshee in a split second. All in what is probably one take too. It is incredible.

Apparently, people have taken this track to be something of a suicide kind of thing, but Cornell stated that it is simply about getting out of the house and doing normal things instead of being a recluse. It is meant to be optimistic. He said so here almost twenty years ago. I will continue to listen to it with that mindset.

My iPod #173: They Might Be Giants – Certain People I Could Name

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Today has been very unproductive. Had my breakfast about one, a shower at four…. apart from that I have just stayed in bed. All this because I was out last night for a very special event which I can barely remember going to now. What a shame.

That also meant I was could not type up my daily post. But it is all fine now, I am putting up another one later on.

It’s They Might Be Giants again, this time with the song “Certain People I Could Name” from their 1999 album “Long Tall Weekend”, the first full-length album to be released exclusively on the Internet if you didn’t know.

It was originally recorded for the previous album “Factory Showroom” but was left out.

The band’s website states this about the track: “A piano driven song with subtle charm from the Factory Showroom era. Don’t really know how this got put aside, but I suspect it was probably more due to its mid-tempo than its high quality.”

I cannot really add much to that. Listen for yourselves. 😀

My iPod #83: Razorlight – Before I Fall to Pieces

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Ah. The third single from Razorlight’s second album from 2006.

I like this song, no matter how many people may not like Johnny Borrell’s voice or as a person. The song was released as a single in December 2006, months way after the actual album was released.

I had actually heard the song before it was released as a single. In primary school, I had a friend and we were into the same music and we would talk about songs that were out and whatever. Baring in mind, we were about eleven at the time. He had this huge musical library on his computer, and I would always request songs for him to send to me through MSN. I don’t know if that annoyed him or not, because I asked for a lot of music. I will just assume that he was cool with it. He invited me around his house one time, so he probably was.

The video always confused me though. I have no idea what’s going on. It probably should have just been a perfomance video. It does feature Guy Pearce, and Scorpio from Gladiators though.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.

My iPod #17: The Offspring – All I Want

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So I’m watching standard TV one day, I change it to MTV2 and then suddenly “ALL I WAAAAAAAAAAAANT YAH YAH YAH YAH YAH” and a guy falls into a pit of mud and the video ends.

Wh-what.

I should probably start from the very beginning. Everyone knows ‘Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)‘ right? If you have heard this song, even a clip of it in the shop or an advert or what not, this is the band who made that song.

I probably knew that song when I was, like 4. It got to number one in the UK for about a week, and I think I liked it and I remember my sister singing it too. Of course then I didn’t know who it was by, but the counting in Spanish and ‘Give it to me baby, UH-HUH UH-HUHs’ were too catchy. I barely like it anymore, it’s really cheesy for me anyway. I haven’t got it on my iPod.

My cousin bought me The Offspring’s Greatest Hits compilation for Christmas 2005, but that was because I knew that songs like ‘Hit That’, ‘Original Prankster’ and ‘Can’t Repeat’ were on there, so I didn’t pay as much attention to ‘All I Want’.

I would probably talk more about how I got to like The Offspring. But that will probably in the blog for ‘Hit That’ when I come to it. Maybe next year. Or 2015.

In regards to ‘All I Want’, that split second of the ending of the video left me really puzzled. I never listened to ‘All I Want’ before so I went onto YouTube. The comments below were mostly along the lines of ‘Yeah, this song rocks’ to ‘Yeah, Crazy Taxi’ to which I thought, ‘OK… back to the video.’

The song is very quick. It’s on their album ‘Ixnay on the Hombre‘ released in 1997 and was released as the first single from it. It’s a fast, punchy, all-up-in-your-face punk song about breaking free, fuck the system, ‘I DON’T WANNA BE CONTROLLED, ‘SALL I WAAAAAAAANNT.’

Dexter Holland singing ‘Want’ in the chorus probably takes up half the song, but it’s a hell of a chorus. You just feel like running down a corridor screaming that shit.

The video is something else too. It’s pretty funny, you get the band performing the song in a house with different colour effects, a guy pushing women over, stepping in some weird shit on the ground, running past policemen on pogo sticks and random clips of a guy with sunglasses and a mask over his face whilst playing the piano. It’s crazy. It’s cool. IT’S ALLLLL I WAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNT. YAH YAH YAH YAH YAH.

Until next time.

Jamie.