Universal Music (label)
19 October 2016 (released)
19 October 2016
Soundtracks can take different forms: from a Tarantino culture-vulture taste-offering to a straight out strings-a-sweeping classi-score a la Morricone. What’s the difference between a ‘score’ and an assembled, curated soundtrack? If the former can stand alone as a collection of instrumental(s) and songs (e.g The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) does the latter require having seen the film in question? Can the choices ‘reflect’ the narrative, telling (a) story in itself? Here’s an ample sample:
Quigley’s ‘Beginning of anything’ its waif-wailing is SO 2016, a helium-ingesting Taylor Swiftian crie de couer.
Sam Hunt’s ‘Take your time’ is plaintive heart-wrench country-rap balladeering, with story-telling akin to Oran ‘Juice’ Jones’s cuckold-classic ‘The Rain’.
Kevin Gates’s (T)rapid–fire trippin’ ‘n’ hoppin’ ‘Out The Mud’, a simmering carousel of seediness, neediness and greediness.
E-40 - ‘Choices’ sees the E-man rhyming and chiming like Simon. Everyone’s got choices, he proffers, even if it’s just knowing right from wrong. A superlative call and response unit.
Jeremih ft. Lil Wayne & Natasha Mosley’s ‘All the time’ is backed by a slo-mo-go-steady crew who outline the filthy desires of all involved. Air Con One for this steamy windows-hoppin’.
Ciara ft. Ludacris ‘Ride’ sees Ciarra riding the beat as a metaphor for *coughs* She’s all lusty ‘Baby, baby’ promises punctuated with Ludacris’s fairground ride sexscapade similes and sporting point scoring. Racy.
Rae Sremmurd ‘No Type’ languid bass-thumping ‘n’ grinding littered with generous deployment of the n-word. Nawty, nawty.
Carnage ft. Migos ‘Bricks’ is vocodified slanging and bitchin’, a patois abattoir of expletives and insults.
Lapsley’s James Blakean XX-rated minimal echoes on ‘8896’ typify the innermost soul-searching of Generation Fkd. Sparse, cold and distant. Like the elders of these aforementioned public schooled ‘artistes’.
Carnage ft. I LOVE MAKONNEN ‘I Like Tuh’. Carnage, so unignorbale he features twice. He ‘likes to make money ... got the white girls talkin’ …’ No charm, all offensive is our Carn.
OG Maco ‘U Guessed It’ ‘Yeah, OG, I guessed it, more throbbing gristle to the mill, ebonies and ivories tinkled in tandem take away the anger management i’shooze inherent in thyself. Amen.
Bonnie Prince Billy’s choral-history ‘Careless Love’ signifies a horizon, an ending, (re)solution and (ab)solution.
Lady Antebellum’s ‘American Honey’ the titular track, good ol’ Southern swing-a-ling meets a Soul to Soul beat. Keep on moving … always.
Raury’s ‘God's Whisper’ the good Lord is stitched into Uncle Sham’s fabric, the book of belligerence less a hush more a punch, heresy punishable by no mercy. Gospel it o-u-t.
Razzy Bailey’s ‘I Hate Hate’ a Northern Soul-searcher that deplores malice and malevolence and exhorts love. A fitting end to a tumultuous sonic journey.
The variety and eclectism of this album captures ‘Culture 2.0’s disparate, shuffle/flick/swipe/nature of hyper-consumption, the ADHD-stractions of everyday life.
Arnold has compiled a (predominantly) time-stamped ‘cinema verite’ selection that encapsulates heady wanderlust, the feeling of ‘taking every day as it comes’ whilst living hand to mouth in the neu-‘merican Day/Nightmare. For the 99% a knowing existence of debt and enslavement reigns, longing to belong and struggling to get along in an (under)world of degradation and subjugation.
These songs set a tone and determine the mood, from sultry soundscapes and hip-hopsterism, anything goes risqué parlour ditties and minimalist trap-happy beating to woozy-indie-wormholes to escape into/within. Descent dissents.
Music is the message. The message is WATCH and LISTEN.
