Music in The Social Network

Over the weekend I went to see The Social Network, and totally enjoyed it. Hurray, movies that glamorize angry nerds! My friend Alex asked me if it’s better than the classic Pirates Of Silicon Valley. Nothing could be better than Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates, but Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerburg is good too.

The Mad Men theme and Autumn Leaves

Mad Men’s obsessive devotion to period accuracy has one conspicuous exception: its hip-hop theme song by RJD2. The track plays under one of television’s all-time great opening title sequences, which I can’t embed because AMC doesn’t understand how internet marketing works. Click this collage I made to watch on YouTube. The theme song is an …

Cold Sweat in the Terrordome

The internet is home to a lot of questionably legal breakbeat collections like Drumaddikt and Cyberworm’s Sample Blog. “Cold Sweat” by James Brown is always included in these collections. It’s beloved equally by hip-hop and drum n bass producers. The break is at 4:30. https://youtube.com/watch?v=pyijSTJ_BCo There’s probably a whole generation of producers who have sliced …

Eric B and Rakim

In 1987 I remember having my ears grabbed by this track on the radio called “Pump Up The Volume” by MARRS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cak1xly8oUM Now that mashups are so common, this track doesn’t sound particularly remarkable. But in seventh grade it was startling to hear a house music track full of random samples. “Pump Up The Volume” …

The Champ

Music blogs, magazines and cable channels like to run lists of the best albums of all time. Certain albums get listed again and again: Sgt Pepper, Pet Sounds, Highway 61 Revisited. If you were to compile the best albums as measured by how often they get sampled by hip-hop producers, the list would look very …

Put my thang down, flip it and reverse it

Missy Elliot is one of the most futuristic electronic adventurers out there, especially in her collaborations with Timbaland. Yet her stuff is as hot and soulful as music gets. How does she do it?

The complicated case of Antoine Dodson

Meet the most fascinating and problematic pop star of the moment, Antoine Dodson. If you’re a follower of internet memes, you know the story by now. If not: Antoine, his sister Kelly and her daughter were asleep in their apartment in the Lincoln Park housing project in Huntsville, Alabama. An intruder broke in and sexually …

Michael Jackson lives

Two things happened this week in my life as a Michael Jackson fan. First, Spike Lee threw an awesome birthday party for MJ in Prospect Park for the second year in a row. I hope he does it every year. Snoop came and did a set, and so did Warren G. I had a lot …

Ashley’s Roachclip

I’m continuing my tour through hip-hop’s most classic breakbeats with “Ashley’s Roachclip” by the Soul Searchers. The drum break at 3:36 is one of those hip-hop workhorses, like “Impeach The President” and “The Funky Drummer” and “Apache.” It seems like it’s always been there. The Soul Searchers were led by guitarist Chuck Brown, known in …

Nas Is Like

If I had to pick a single track to explain to an alien or time traveler what hip-hop is and why I love it, I think I’d pick “Nas Is Like.” Nas has a great flow full of powerful imagery, but what truly sets this track apart for me is DJ Premier’s production. It’s a …