Sunday, September 26, 2010

Sunday, August 15, 2010

////stan


yall met my uncle?

\\\\\questions - kevin negandhi, ESPN reporter

KEVIN NEGANDHI (REAL NAME) IS THE FIRST SOUTH ASIAN SPORTS NEWS CASTER MAN. DOES HE GOT SAMMY SOSA SKIN CREAM/MICHAEL JACKSON DISEASE? OR IS HE JUST A LIGHT SKINNED BROTHER?


DID YOU KNOW THE MARKET FOR SKIN-LIGHTENING CREAMS IS MORE THAN $500 MILLION A YEAR IN INDIA? SHAME ON YOU BOLLYWOOD ACTOR SHAHID KAPOOR....


WHATEVER THOUGH. SHOUTOUT TO ABC NEWS ANCHOR VINITA NAIR... I LOVE HER JUST THE WAY SHE IS...

\\\\humor - ALL STEFON EVERYTHING

"you know that thing where a hobo becomes a millionaire and takes a big bubble bath"



"puppets in disguise. you know that thing where like alf wore a trench coat so he could go out in public"

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

\\\musiks - young l - beatin up the block

ITS LIKE THE BAY AREA PUTS WATER IN THEIR ECSTASY PILLS OR SOMETHING!?! spaced out weirdo pack kids continue doin their thing. young l dropped this vid yesterday. beat sounds like mims shit if it was made in 2050.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

\\\musiks - headless horseman + an unrelated youtube of fleetwood mac's everywhere

added a new band to the greedhead roster:

HEADLESS HORSEMAN

listen here:


and if you ever wondered what cardigans lovefool would sound like pitched down a shit ton, headless horseman got you: http://www.myspace.com/headlesshorsemanjams

entirely unrelated, fleetwood mac is so dooooope.

Monday, August 9, 2010

\\\musiks - on neo-r&b, vulnerability, and ME

the only song my parents ever played for me\\\ the only song they ever wanted to make sure i knew was not only a hindi song but a devotional hindu song, Jai Jagdish Hare, which everyone i've ever met just called the "arti". while there was tons of bollywood music around me, there certainly wasn't no beatles playing at home. there was no rolling stones in my house. NUNNUHDAT. everything western i heard was played on the radio and on mtv in the 1990s.

i've always been a fan of r&b. i like to mention how the first cassette tape i ever bought was nas - it was written. the street team at columbia or wherever he was signed to back then did a great job in my neighborhood in queens (though nowhere near queensbridge). stickers up in every park i went to. what i don't mention is how the next couple of cassettes included a lot of r&b. while there was biggie, wu, and the lost boyz there was also boys 2 men, blackstreet, 112 and, uh, mariah carey. (it was the joint with fantasy on it). though i could have done with hearing a lot less all-for-one in my house, my older sister's taste in music did rub off on me and i'm not mad at it. nah actually this all-for-one joint was aight:


more than any other r&b group of the 90s, i was a 112 fan. k-ci and jojo did their thing but i never appreciated them like 112. real talk, my screen name included a 112 at the end of it. the second i heard this joint it was over... (what "it" is and why "it" ended, i can't tell you).

features from mase and biggie never hurt. "only you" and its remix were on 112's self-titled debut record which came out on bad boy records in 1996. "112" was mad underrated. also on that record was "come see me" f/ mr. cheeks of the lost boys, the hit "cupid", and personal favorites "throw it all away" and "just a little while".

a year later inoj, also known as "not the chick from ghost town dj's but the other so so def chick", would drop one of the two hits (WHICH WERE BOTH COVERS OF OTHER SONGS???) she would be (forgotten forever) known for. with this cover of ready for the world's "let me love you down", once again an r&b song made me be like WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?

while this version, which i also recently discovered, of love you down is forever my favorite:


i FUCKS with how to dress well's version and his upcoming album on lefse records:


while i dabbled with r&b more after the 1990s it was only when r. kelly would have cam'ron on thoia thoing or something like that. i never got excited about r&b again. i'm not 100% sure r&b got worse but i definitely was not fucking with it anymore. i think in part my increasing appreciation of rock music at the turn of the millennium cancelled out any need to listen to r&b. i listen to music to feel ILL and to feel WACK. i will always have rap to feel ILL to. that's what rap is here for. i will never listen to rap to feel feelings. i will never like LL COOL J. even hey lover. fuck "hey lover". 112 was actually great to feel WACK to but then i heard radiohead and sunny day real estate and the pixies and the smiths and i was like, "i don't really think you feel THAT wack slim, q, mike, and deron".

(also, i'm pretty sure i didn't know guitars existed until i was 16. this was also the age i discovered "white friends". i'm sure these are related although not a single one of my white friends when i was 16 REALLY fucked with guitars. they were bigger on big L and biggie.)

around the time rap became less and less self-deprecating, so did r&b. no one's hearts were on their sleeves. no one was putting themselves out there. r&b was pretty much for 15 year old girls only. i was not finna listen to b2k. NOOOOOOO. chris brown was not making records for me. FUCKOUTTAHERE. then very recently, with the-dream and initially that song "mr. yeah", i started hearing the vulnerability i heard in those same rock records in r&b again. i started appreciating r&b as identity art. and in this case a person's identity was not to be praised for its intelligence as a measure of how much information one had - in a day and age where intelligence is tied to how quickly you can use your smart phone - but rather honesty, vulnerability, and things that aren't actually real like "swag". "swag" as magical realism. take "take care of me" for example. not only is the song called "TAKE CARE OF ME" but he literally sings about wearing his heart on his shirt. this song and the general appreciation of vulnerability in art feels like why seth rogen is popular. this song, specifically, feels like the scene in knocked up where dude's like "dont fuck ME over. i'm the one that gets fucked over." to katherine hegel's character. though unlike a fat white dude stoner comedy actor, the-dream's vulnerability plays off of a narcissism only furthering his vulnerability and furthering how ILLLLLL he is.

and at this same time where one has endless access to information with the internet, we see the breakdown of genre-fication. i mean, I WAS NOT THE FIRST DUDE TO LIKE BOTH RADIOHEAD AND NAS. everyone is in a band and everyone listens to everything. everyone loves j-dilla. (though most of yallll didnt fuck with him before donuts and yall are wackkkkk for that). drum machines are everywhere. every band in brooklyn and every apartment uptown has a drum machine in it. (though dipset birdganger araab muzik is still better than most of yalll on that jawn/// don't forget thatttt). everything is called dubstep. and out of this newfound a.d.d. 2010 internet shit age appreciation of r&b, vulnerability, "swag", BROWN PEOPLE ON TV AND IN MOVIES, all XL records does is win win win, corporate/pop art graphic design is cool, J-Dilla is my homeboy, and london south asian people had a head start comes... JAI PAUL. his myspace page includes references to j dilla, kfc, coca-cola, indian soda brands limca and thums up, punjabi bhangra legend charanjit singh, d'angelo and desi pantry staple tetley tea bags. the last time i thought something was this tailor-made to my appreciation was MIA and then EVERYONE loved her before the requisite EVERYONE critically panned her third release.

im slowly realizing this blog is a place i post about other peoples music only to talk about how angry i am i can't or didn't make it. whatever the case, this is SO fucking good:



*ain't finna post mp3s. just find em. y'herd?

\\\musiks - popo bros

ive posted about popo on gordongartrelle but they got hella shit going on again so im finna write some words down about them here too.



the homies popo is zeb and shoaib. they're brothers. dont mean it in some kind of brown people solidarity sense tip. they are actual brothers. although, they did play our greedhead presents minorityfest event which WAS on some pan-minority solidarity tip type joint. popo's finally got a full-length record coming out. mad decent.
this is a good place to peep some old stuff of theres, and a new song from their mixtape of demos approaching that full length. this is a good place to get that mixtape. hopefully the full-length will include this shit, which in my humble opinion gets five out of six computers on the scale i just made up:


Monday, August 2, 2010

/////music - dusk + blackdown

london,

i'm from arguably the world's illest city yet you never fail to make me jealous. its been 5 years since i lived inside you, no homo in case you're a male city. your people were kind. your books on india were more conclusive. my time at soas (school of oriental and african studies) showed me how on point your brown people game is. there's reasons for this. there always are.

in the late 1700s some of your white folk stationed in india were really into india. and not in the bad way. they wore turbans and kurta pajamas. they grew facial hair. they spoke hindi. their appropriation was from a good place. can appropriation be from a good place? then the roaring 1800s rolled in and you got salty. 1857 clearly wasn't a good year in indian-british relations. yall were wilding and we decided to wild back. bout fuckin time i thought (a hundred and fifty years later from the safety of a new england university dorm room).

then you let us into your land with other able brown bodies you ruled over and would continue to from within the confines of YOUR land this time. we hung out in the same neighborhoods as these other brown bodies. we mingled. we would eventually hang together like characters in a zadie smith novel, mix like sounds in an asian dub foundation song. mia came out and another prototype of brown illness emerged out of the u.k. while i still tried to relate to tony kanal or the brown guy from sum 41. kanal wasn't so hard. the other dude i couldn't relate to for the life of me.

now in 2010 while i get salty over not having the talent to synthesize the south asian music i grew up listening to with the "urban" (read: black) western music i grew up listening to, you got white people making gems like this:



i can rap though. and i will. all over you and your music london. all over.

himanshu

Thursday, July 15, 2010

wtf//// grace jones car ad

bob weisz just sent this out to the old gordy gartrelle crew. thought i'd share it with you.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

a list from bear in heaven's adam

one kinda cool thing about being in a band is you become friends with other people in bands. its not something you set out to do, it just happens. im pretty sure it has nothing to do with music and more to do with alcohol than anything else. people in bands like drinking together. adam from bear in heaven is one such friend in a band. he ain't too shabby looking neither (top right corner below). in fact, i used to intern for him (and others) at an editing house where they'd work on mtv shows and pepsi advertisements and things. we go back i guess? my cousin was the cfo and he told the head of the house it was crucial that we put these inventory tags on everything in case we ever move. bullshit. was a fun summer though. they had beer and stuff at the office which i didn't know happened having only worked on wall street up until then...



anyway, earlier the december 2009 week that adam sent me this list i posted lists from yeasayer's anand wilder and most amazing pianist ever vijay iyer:

http://gordongartrelle.blogspot.com/2009/12/top-5-lists-from-pianist-vijay-iyer-and.html

adam was going to chime in with his top 5 native american church songs for a list involving those other indians but then he didn't. he did chime in with his list of top 5 podcasts, most of which have to do with shamanism and entheogens.

"Man, this is nerdy and probably crazy boring too, but.... here they are, oh, btw, you can just find all these on itunes, just look em up

The Psychedelic Salon
My main man Lorenzo is my favorite. Mostly these are recordings of Terence Mckenna speaking... an unbelievably brilliant thinker, writer and theorist on many many many topics. This man has broken my mind open a million times over and I'm forever grateful for this podcast bringing me countless hours of listening and education.

Dopefiend.co.uk -Pyschonautica
Man, this kid, Max Freakout is a TRIP. Some twenty year old kid in England jumping every topic you could ever find on erowid.com . Not necessarily the most mature take on the subjects he covers, but it's definitely entertaining.

The Entheogenic Evolution
Dr. Martin Ball is pretty annoying and long winded, but I must say I've learned a whole hell of a lot about sacred mushrooms, jesus, and shamanism, just to name a few.

The Moth
I LOVE this podcast. I'm all caught up with them, bummer. Just simple 10 minute stories from a wide range of personalities. I'm a sucker for the slice of life kinda junk, I'm like with that with films too. This stuff is perfect for the commute.

Stuff You Should Know
Being a southerner.. I'm really just gettin behind these dudes' accents. They're from Georgia like myself, and just like the Moth, I rock this stuff when I have 15 mins to kill. Quick and to the point."

There you have it!

white (cte representer)

white, simply "white", is a rapper on Jeezy's CTE label. the thing about this label is everybody at this label use a code name. its no coincidence they all sold cocaine. they made a lot of money in the dope game, then they put it all in their damn chain. have a code name, they gotta have a code name. move a lot of weight then they get a code name. to reiterate, code name gold chain in the dope game, a lot of diamonds, but probably more code names...



remember that chapelle joke about how the token white boy in the set is probably the craziest because you have no idea what he did to get their respect. those types of vibes here. zip loc hip hop white boy dread lock crip flag can't stop!!! he really did it homie, his team straight guap...



are we post-racial?



i fucks with cte. lets take a trip to florida to see why else i fucks with cte. meet screwwww. fashion folk take note of how his "t-shirt v-neck but (his) pants baggy" (you know, because he carries a firearm).



cheer up screwwww, you're down with cte. 103!!! let's get it!!1

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

welcome to nehru jackets

hi there,

back in 2008 i started a blog called gordon gartrelle, http://gordongartrelle.blogspot.com, because thats what the kids were doing back then. gordon gartrelle was the name of a fictional clothing designer mentioned, and real producer working, on the 5th episode of The Cosby Show. initially a blog dedicated to south asian and south asian diasporic visual art, i slowly started to ramble more and more about other brown ppl things, fashion, and music. i invited my friends to join me and they too were good at blogging. particularly, they posted mad funny jpgz. then we all slowly stopped posting. now, because i miss writing words that don't rhyme, im starting a new blog! this is it. welcome. soon enough i'll try to post a best of gordon gartrelle to reacquaint y'all with the binness. i hope for this to be a place i can continue to do the same shit i used to do before.



and so, for my first post of words that don't rhyme i want to share with you words about words that rhyme. particularly this cat Earl Sweatshirt the homie rapper @Despotroast put me on to a couple hours ago.

show me a rapper my age that say he nice as this/
and i show you a faggot that say he hate barbra streisand flicks/
me and bernie swervin in a jeep/
im a nice guy in person but a pervert in the sheets/
and im magic with the words murder merlin over beats/
make the competition kiss the fuckin curb and then they weep/
and then they DROP...


the age he's talking about is 15, probably 16 now. (time flies fast when you're rapping). i turned 25 yesterday which isn't old at all but is older than i felt a couple days ago and now feels even older than it did a couple hours ago with the discovery of this wunderkind ass rappin rapper. (his musics playing on my itunes right now and money just said "try talking on your blog/ with your fuckin arms cut off".) as something of a rapper-guy myself i felt weird about lil b being 19 but this is some next shit. on the flipside of getting older is the joy of nostalgia and there's no lack of that here for older rap fans (not like, skinny jean nazi old but like, i dont give a fuck about the new boys old), with songs about not wanting to wake up for school and cutting class. those were my jams! while watching the following sometimes hard-to-watch video i couldnt help but think of running around causing trouble 13-deep as a 15 year old drinkin forty's, popping pills and burning Ls in new york city.

"EARL" /// Music Video. from AG Rojas on Vimeo.



asher roth, mentioned in the above track, and charles hamilton come to mind as a kindred spirit contemporaries if not influences. eminem comes to mind as a definite influence, both in money's flow and subject matter. you see, he's a little crazy. sweatshirt seems to be fascinated with violence and vomit, homies and homophobia (HE LOVES THE WORD "FAGGOT", it's allll over the jawn), raging and roofies, murder and mayhem, cocaine and couches... but hes a funny dude too. and unlike that other rapper, hes not "making fun of celebz is funny" funny. there's an interlude on his mixtape where his mother waking him up calls him a faggot and he tells her to shut the fuck up. that's not funny? that's mad funny to me. there's this youtube too:



AYO, download his mixtape EARL here and don't say i never put you on to nann.. http://usershare.net/v9dgrnwdd23f

oh and welcome to nehru jackets...