ICED OAT MATCHA #018
It's nice to see you, to see you nice!
Hello friends, old and new. This is the first time I’ve sat down and written anything since early April. If we're being literal, not that long of a time, but to me, it may as well have been forever ago. Living in a post-COVID or post-post-COVID world, depending on who you ask, has ruined my perception of time, along with having to make realizations like Vampire Weekend's debut album being 15 years old or the fact that LeBron is about to enter his 20th season in the NBA. I'm not that old but the older I get, I guess it's a matter of learning to swim against the tide and when to just flow with it.
If you haven't read any of the bullshit I publish on the internet, I created a Substack during the initial COVID-influenced lockdowns in spring 2020 to share what I was listening to, watching, reading, etc. with close friends. In the time since then, a lot of really great subcultural writing has popped up at other places, in blogs like No Bells and Finals, as well as some really great self-published stuff, notables include friends of the pub billdifferen and Caleb Catlin.
Wait a minute, number 18? Where the fuck are the first 17? Funny you mention that, kind reader, they're all right here on that aforementioned other Substack.
Meanwhile, if you aren’t already subscribed, you should do that with this handy dandy little button right here.
So then... what the hell is this dumb ass column titled ICED OAT MATCHA? For starters, I drink a decent amount of coffee and/or tea. If I patronize any place that serves fine beverages of the sort and I don't order coffee, I tend to order an iced oat matcha. As far as I know, the best matcha I have tried in Los Angeles is either from Kumquat in Highland Park or any of the Dulce locations, though I am partial to the one at USC. The matcha at Highly Likely in West Adams also has a great, well-balanced matcha. So what does that have to do with the column? Nothing. It's just a name. Here is where I talk about the music, movies, TV, books, etc. that I am enjoying — sometimes new, sometimes old — as of late, as well as a smorgasbord of other dumb stuff I enjoy like soccer, my affinity for hats with high crowns, golden age All-Japan Pro Wrestling, etc.
Now that you know all of that, you might find yourself asking: why? Maybe in the forms of “why this” or “why now” or “why at all,” all of which are fair game, but let me preface with a story. This might be a bit of a deep cut, even for people who might consider themselves Terminally Online, but many a moon ago, Kevin Cortez — the other person who kind of runs this whole shindig — and I both were part of a silly lil project called The Loud Neighbours for a short time. It was also a relatively niche blog of sorts that focused almost exclusively on music. The site and all of its contents have since been erased from the internet and there are no remains of it other than an archived interview with former editor and current sweetie Kristi Shinfuku done by Urban Outfitters.
We made no money, it was dumb, but it was fun, and that’s really it. The real punchline to this story is that the blog was conceived in 2014-15; I was in college then, doing a mix of unpaid or lowly paid stuff for places like EARMILK and other places like MTV News were beefing up their editorial in an attempt to be taken more seriously — shout out to Meaghan Garvey — while The Ringer hadn’t even existed yet. Of course, Pivot to Video happened and suddenly it felt like words that weren’t uttered on two-minute videos were worthless. This isn’t to say that I am part of a holy crusade to uphold the sanctity of language and its recording on ancient stone but simply to say that after years of not writing, I’ve found that the most important part of all of this (and really, well, anything) is not feeling like you need to do something, but rather that you want to do something.
So, now that you’ve endured all of that grandstanding, we can focus on the actual stuff we’re talking about this week. We're here to talk about some of the great new music that we have been blessed with for the end of the summer into the beginning of fall. Long intro done, back to business.
2 Slizzy 2 Sexy (Deluxe), Cash Cobain & Chow Lee
Earlier this year, Cash Cobain & Chow Lee released the wonderfully named 2 Slizzy 2 Sexy to lowkey praise. It was a continuation of the same great sample drill that has been hot in post-Pop Smoke New York for the past few years. At its peaks are songs like "HATE U DELILAH" which is, yes, a song that samples Plain White T's and is essentially if Tom Higgenson listened to more Lil Wayne and T.I. as a kid or "WAVY LADY" which reads like a horny Romeo crooning for his Juliet. The deluxe version dials up everything -- the horniness, the nastiness, the energy, the hi-hats -- to eleven.
On "ORGASM," Cash Cobain employs a Fergie sample that would put Jack Harlow to shame. It's a fun, natural evolution of where New York rap is right now, a crash course of sorts where the sample craze and the Jersey club raps that have been simmering for some time finally meet in beautiful harmony. They rehash those bumping Jersey club bass triplets on the Bandmanrill-assisted "WATERGUN" and "JUST BLICK IT," which has one of my favorite samples of recent memory. The deluxe 2 Slizzy 2 Sexy is the perfect musical form of debauchery both for the end of the summer and for those cold fall nights.
Four Songs, Blood Orange
Maybe it's just the circle I've cultivated but I feel like Blood Orange has been taken for granted of as both a musician and a songwriter. I would bet that his popularity peaked around the mid-to-late decade when albums like Solange's A Seat at the Table and his Negro Swan were released. Songwriting with such emotional depth and art centered on the Black experience inadvertently shoehorned artists like him (and Solange) into Pitchfork territory, where people could go "oh, their art is so touching" while not engaging with it other than to say it is emotional or resounding.
Four Songs is easily my favorite piece of music Dev Hynes has worked on since 2016's Freetown Sound. Through its four songs and 11 minutes, Hynes layers guitars, synths, and drums with masterful precision. It is one of the most well-mixed EPs of the year; every track contains a fog through which guitars and snares snatch at ears like lungs for air or silence through which those same sounds sound and feel ever more visceral. It feels like taking a night drive through the woods of Twin Peaks. The guitars of "Something You Know" are both haunting and beautiful, almost like taking in the waterfalls of the Great Northern Hotel. Four Songs is calculated and free, abstract and real; it is a very casual display of immaculate craftsmanship from one of music's greatest talents.
Natural Brown Prom Queen, Sudan Archives
On Natural Brown Prom Queen, Sudan Archives cuts out all the bullshit. “I’m not a woman of words, I’m a woman of action,” she said earlier this year in an interview with Alt Press. Her second studio album is an R&B album for everybody, primarily because it's made for nobody but Brittney Parks, the multi-instrumentalist who now lives in Los Angeles-by-way-of-Cincinnati. Album opener "Home Maker" is a fitting introduction to both the album and those new to the Ohio native's voice, "Don't you feel at home when I wait on you?" Her words are quite powerful but if her music is any indication, her actions are doubly so.
Through the album's nearly hour-long runtime, Parks' voice makes itself at home in various rhythms and feels. With the aid of a Boss RC-20 and her omnipresent violin, the album’s energy bounces between episodes of anxiety ("NPBQ"), episodes of full moon-induced horniness ("Freakalizer"), and being outside, like, being outside-outside ("Ciara"). Parks’ brutally honest lyricism accentuates her voice whether it’s heavy with dread (“Sometimes I think that if I was light-skinned / Then I would get into all the parties / Win all the Grammys, make the boys happy”) and full of joy (“‘She’s a hoe,’ that’s assumptions / I just wanna have my titties out”). Natural Brown Prom Queen will almost definitely end 2022 as the year’s best R&B album, an expansive sonic ride and an incredibly cathartic experience that allows the listener to feel the full spectrum of both Brittany Parks’ emotions and their own.
“Tomorrow 2,” GloRilla & Cardi B
Once in awhile, I think about Young M.A and “OOOUUU.” It is mostly just the way society views itself and our desire to compartmentalize things so as to easier process them — note, not necessarily understand, but rather, process — but most female emcees tend to get boxed into “she’s a dope female rapper” as opposed to just saying “she’s a dope rapper” or something like that. “OOOUUU” is an exception to this, standing simply as one of the great New York rap songs of the 2010s.
On “Tomorrow 2,” over a bare, hi-hat-heavy beat with a very Halloween season-piano, GloRilla and Cardi B put on one of the best rap performances of the year. Glo continues a hot run that started with the breakout of “F.N.F.” and some great features like “JUST SAY THAT” with one of my favorite hooks of the year (“Can’t say your name up in my songs, might not fuck with you tomorrow”). Cardi’s feature here is also one of the best verses of the year: casual but so cool (“She say she my opp but I don't know her, had to look her up”), instant classic one-liners (“I stay on her mind, I got condos in that bitch head”), and some nods to up-and-coming rappers (“Ridin’ with my twinnem” / … / “That n** a munch and he gon eat me like a mango”). Best as I try to put things into words, some things should simply be felt, and “Tomorrow 2” should be felt, ideally, at loud volumes, outside, a few drinks deep. (It’s just as good at a normal volume, inside, sober, for what it’s worth.)
F*ck Rehab!, 3AG Pilot & Popstar Benny
Popstar Benny is quickly cementing himself as one of the great producers of today. Like Metro Boomin of yesteryear and Pi'erre Bourne right now, his beats are canvas where rappers you had never heard of suddenly sound like the forefront of tomorrow. The texture of 3AG Pilot's voice is oddly grating yet soft and it has a good home in Benny's eccentric beats. F*ck Rehab! is more of the same from Benny but he is afforded the luxury of consistency. His drum patterns evoke Zaytoven or prime Lex Luger but his synths and keys are equally indebted to Passion Pit, Toro y Moi, or Castlevania games. In a world where rap music is constantly changing and new artists arrive by the dozen, Benny’s beats are not to be missed.
Quick Hits is back… next week!
Wait, Quick Hits? What the hell is that?
You see, Quick Hits is what we end all — well, most — of these columns with. They are essentially drops in a bucket, just a sprinkling of sugar in this stupid little drink of yours as opposed to the rest of the blurbs you just read, which for the sake of this figure of speech that I just concocted literally right not writing this, are the drink (I guess).
They range from things like songs I want to share but don’t have more elaborate thoughts on to tweets I think are funny to really expensive pants I think are cool but have absolutely no business even considering buying.
That’s why there are bullet points here, these are all supposed to be different things, except for the purposes of explaining to you what Quick Hits is, they’re just a way of breaking up what would’ve been a long paragraph or two.
It also just looks cooler like this and I’m enjoying the ironic length of this explanation.
If you’ve read this far, congratulations, you earned nothing, but thanks.
See you folks again next week. Don’t forget to sign up and to tell your friends to sign up too.