Son of Byford

The Best Albums of 2016

As the year draws to a close, I’m compelled to compile a list of the most impactful albums of the year and, as it’s been occurring to me for nearly a decade or so now, I often find that the best albums of my calendar year are rarely those released within the year. This is because my consumption patterns are erratic and as unfocused as any other aspect of my life. I simply do not listen to music…

Why Tyler’s Cherry Bomb is My Favorite Record of 2015 in 999 Words

Cherry Bomb is my album of the year. By and large, I listened to it more than anything else this year from the moment I heard it. As figurehead of Odd Future with his constant run-ins with press and advocacy groups, he’s provocateur in the purest form. But behind his brash boyishness, resides a comfortable and confident creative genius and, what’s scary is, he might be getting better with each…

Kool G Rap and the Ghost DJ…”DJ Butcher”

There are moments in your life where your whole plain is inverted. Where everything you know is wrong. Where your existence is reduced to dust. Up is down, left is right, hot is cold, and wrong is right. People…DJ Polo did none of the cuts on this record. In fact, it was some kid from the neighborhood that was enlisted by Eric B and DJ Polo to come in and do cuts. Not only that, he did what he…

Son of Byford, Signing Off

Folks, there comes a time that you have to make a change. As ambitiously as we began, like many blogs, it will also conclude. It certainly wasn’t that we didn’t enjoy ourselves, the Dirty Deacon and I. It simply isn’t possible to maintain our frantic pace and, instead of slacking off, we’ll just bow out. We’ve posted damn-near every day for the last 19 months and, as remarkable as that sounds,…

N.W.A.’s 100 Miles and Runnin’ Reviewed…25 Years Later

N.W.A. 100 Miles and Runnin’ Ruthless Records Let me just be frank. I pretty much lost all interest in N.W.A. once Cube left the crew. He always has been and always will be the standout talent of the crew. Sure, he has made more decisions and lost his edge a bit in the years since the golden era of hip hop. It happens. We all gotta grow up sometimes. It’s the politics of aging. Dr. Dre can sell a…

Line in the Sand: 100 Miles

When we last found NWA, they were left at the table by their key penman Ice Cube who wrote much of the Ruthless camp’s greatest hits, but wouldn’t sign his name on a contract that, he felt, was not going to give him his due. He bolted to the East Coast to work with the Bomb Squad, released Amerikkka’s Most Wanted and never turned back. This left NWA a bit exposed. You have to realize that Cube’s…

2 Live Crew’s Banned in the USA Reviewed in 50 Words

The 2 Live Crew Banned in the USA Atlantic Banned in the USA stretches past the usual sexual material to incorporate half-baked 1st amendment defenses. However, in the process of straying from the formula they created on As Nasty As They Wanna Be, they ended up creating a much more tame—even boring—record. Gotta stick to formula, guys.

Indecency & Obscenity: 2 Live Crew on Donahue & Geraldo

As the listeners of Banned in the USA well know by the end of the album–because they are beaten over the head with it–2 Live came into controversy with 1989’s As Nasty As They Wanna Be. They were easy targets to be honest. It wasn’t so much that their music was the first to stridently celebrate hyper sexual misogyny, it was that this was all they sang about. It was rare for them to move off the…

Too $hort’s Short Dog’s in the House Reviewed in 50 Words

byT Too Short Short Dog’s in the House Jive Sparsely produced and minimalistic lyricism makes Short Dog’s in the House an especially difficult listen. Realizing that some records are going to sound dated, this one sounds like it was recorded five years earlier the day it was released showing some scenes were more ahead than others. Definitely not essential.