Singleversity #3

Audiversity’s weekly column on random music in exactly 144 words.

(Ed. - Originally this was called Threeversity, but in the spirit of simplicity we've decided to retroactively relabel all of these posts. The content remains unchanged.)

MA:
(#144 of a random playlist generated from my ever-changing database of 12,500+ songs)



Dr. Dre - Lyrical Gangbang - The Chronic (Death Row 1992)

"This should be played at high volume / Preferably in a residential area"
Spoken like a public service announcement, my very white friends and I did just that… for years and years. And goddamn did we think we were cool. Sure it was ’98 and the album was six years old, but we had just gotten our drivers licenses. Sure it was ’06 and the album was fifteen years old, but we had just picked up the reissue… again.
Nothing compares to:
"See ya watch and creak without a motherfuckin paddle" from Lady Rage, or
"Chewin’ motherfuckers up like a Hershey Kiss" from Kurupt, or
"Fuck it, niggas goin’ wild, every night they shoot / It's like Beirut" from RBX (and you thought Beirut was a gallivanting town of gypsy tunes and indie-pop crooners).
"Some cool shit, some cool shit." Indeed Dre. Indeed.

PM:











Last week it was the English, this week it’s women: Louis Jordan sends some words of wisdom to the single men of the world on “Beware, Brother, Beware” in this jazzy tune from 1946 during Jordan’s height on the Decca label. Alongside Decca alumni Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald (in addition to his famous backing band the Tympany Five), Jordan was a landmark musician for black artists in the 1930s and 1940s. His sense of humor is famous and his movie credentials are plentiful… But it’s his music that gets the most attention and his nonstop energy makes him a one-stop party playlist. There’s a wilder, faster version out there that got a live retouching (and a shorter title in “Beware”) by Quincy Jones in 1956, but this original rendition shows the original is already alive with tongue-in-cheek sass and energetic jive.

JR:



(Disclaimer: Jordan is in character with his entry; he is in absolutely no danger of "combusting in front of masses of dead-eyed consumers," so please do not fret for his mental health. --Ed.)

To those unfamiliar with Prurient, you are lucky. Naive, but lucky all the same. Fortune has deftly guided you away from the shadows. Hands out of the darkness grasping at thin air, don't let them get ahold of you; they will rip and tear away parts of your self, constaints of your own being, that you didn't even know existed until they were lost. I work too much. And its all at the expense of my youth. Certain days I'm bursting at the seams, like at any point I may just combust in front of masses of dead-eyed consumers. To hear Prurient is to understand life's violent nature, its thoughtless abuses; watch Dominik Fernow as he fights invisible demons, drawing them forward and obliterating them all in a violent show of force. I know those sounds too well, and I'd rather forget them.