A Glimpse Inside The Mind of a Chameleon.

djchameleon · 08-18-2013, 10:51 PM

Razor’s Edge 8/6

Hugh Laurie - Didn't It Rain?

There were about four or five excellent releases this week(the week of August 6th) but I HAD to shine the spotlight on Huge Laurie. Yes that Hugh Laurie the one from House and Black Adder for you folks across the pond that knows his comedic background. Let’s stumble through all of the instruments that Hugh knows how to play. If you know anything about him you most likely already know piano and guitar but did you know that he also plays harmonica, drums, and saxophone? This is Hugh’s second album and it covers tango, blues, jazz and R&B. All you need to know about this album before going into it is that Hugh puts his own interpretation on some great classics. Even if you don’t know where the classic songs originated from you may end up researching it to find them and do a little comparison. I know I use this phrase quite often but I was definitely surprised by this album and how much I ended up enjoying it. The album opens up with "The St. Louis Blues," which is a blues/jazz standard reinterpreted on the album (as are most of the tracks). "Junkers Blues" is the next track on the album, originally recorded by Champion Jack Dupree, and is faithful into the original but still managing to breathe some life into the track. The third track, "Kiss of Fire," is another classic track, originally made famous in 1952 by Georgia Gibbs. The fourth track, "Vicksburg Blues," is another blues classic. I’m pretty sure you get the gist of what I mentioned earlier.

~~Soulflower~~ · 08-19-2013, 01:03 PM

Very entertaining! Nice journal!

djchameleon · 08-20-2013, 02:51 PM

Razor’s Edge 8/13

K. Michelle - Rebellious Soul

I first heard about K. Michelle through plug. I believe it was Arya playing her hit single that she has out or I’m assuming so. I don’t listen to the radio much these days. The song that gets played is V.S.O.P. and it has hit written all over it. So if it’s not getting radio play then that’s a crime in and of itself. This album was so so for me. Out of 11 tracks I ended up liking five of them. Can’t Raise A Man spoke so much to me because it’s a situation that a large majority of my female friends go through when they are messing with these ****boys(immature dudes that aren’t about ****). In the lyrics she says:
Listen,
He got older, but never grew,
For his life he can't tell the truth.
How to love he ain't got a clue,
Playing games like he'll never lose you.

Try to talk to him, can't get through,
Every day he's a different dude.
These are the signs of a grown ass boy,
Better run for the hills, I'm just trying to keep it real.

You can't raise a man, he's already grown, what you gonna do?
You wonder why he acts like a boy. If he wasn't raised right before you
Girl, you ain't never gonna change nobody, if he don't wanna, you can't make nobody.
'Cause you can't raise a man, no, no.

V.S.O.P. , Pay My Bills, Ride Out and When I Get A Man were definitely my songs. When I first heard that one of those tracks was called pay my bills. I was like oh brother not another female singing about having a dude pay her bills while she’s pretending to be independent. Thanks a lot Beyonce. When I heard the hook though :

I'mma **** you
Like I'm tryna pay bills
Georgia power
Cable bill
Baby sitter
Tonight you will

I sighed in relief that it wasn’t the typical direction I thought it was going to go. It actually turned out to be pretty raunchy. I love it. She spends a majority of the album trying to work through her issues with different failing relationships but she brags about how she toys with men and makes them their bitch essentially.

djchameleon · 08-20-2013, 02:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by realtalk92

Very entertaining! Nice journal!

Thanks for the compliment.

I have a few more surprises in store once I get the time to jot them down.

djchameleon · 11-01-2013, 04:44 AM

*blows off the dust that has accumulated*

*furiously swipes away the cobwebs in this joint*

I will be updating my journal very soon. What I have planned is to catch up with my weekly album reviews aka my Razor Edges that are pretty dull since I have to go all the way back to August. I will release one of those each day til I'm caught up to the current edition of that series.

I'm also thinking about writing out mini-reviews of the last half of my 31 nights of terror. I watched the entire Hellraiser franchise and some great horror movies that were recommended to me by the one and only bob. He wants to know what I thought of the fourth film in the Hellraiser franchise so I'm going to put that mini review in here along with reviews of the other films he recommended to me.

I have two writing projects that I'm working on but one has a bit higher priority than the other because it has a bloody deadline. I have 30 days to write a 50k word novel and I'm kind of freaking out about it. I don't like to think negatively but I don't feel like I'm going to hit that goal in time. This will be an excellent chance to flex my writing muscles a bit and shoot for the stars.

So stay tuned.

Entries are coming very soon.

djchameleon · 11-03-2013, 07:40 AM

Razor’s Edge 8/20

A$AP Ferg – Trap Lord

A$AP Ferg is part of the A$AP Mob. Pretty much everyone inside of the mob uses the prefix A$AP and tack on their own name after that. I was never really a big A$AP Rocky fan but I can’t deny that he gets some really well produced beats to rap over. A$AP Ferg’s Shabba became a summer anthem for some people even though his official album dropped near the end of the summer. The single was burning up the hip hop charts. The thing about the song is that a large majority of people that love the song have no idea who Shabba Ranks is. The only way younger people may know about him is if they happen to be West Indian. Shabba Ranks was a super popular dancehall artist from late 80s to about mid-90s. I feel like his most noticeable song is probably “Mr. Loverman”.

A$AP Ferg falls into the cliché of coming from nothing and having to decide if he’s going to find peace in a neighborhood filled with violence or take over the neighborhood through drugs and violence. I shouldn’t say it’s a cliché because it is very much a reality for some people. To be honest, I only came back to this album because of three specific tracks and the rest of the album is pretty much throwaway material imo. He has a few tracks where he decides to take it slow with his ballads and show that he does have some sensitivity hiding behind the emotional front/armor that he keeps up but by that point in the album. I’m already done and over it. There is an incomplete feel to this album like it was meant to be a mixtape. Maybe one day he'll release the other half of it or on his next album produce a more coherent and cohesive album.

The stand out tracks to me are “Shabba”, “Lord” and “Hood Pope”.

djchameleon · 11-06-2013, 03:35 AM

Razor’s Edge 8/27

Goodie Mob – Age Against The Machine

When this album dropped I played it to death and found myself mainly likely the tracks in the middle with the intro and closure tracks not doing too much for me. What essentially happens is that Cee-Lo decides to get the group back together and forces in his experience doing his solo pop work into Goodie Mob’s scheme. He also decides to show off that he can still spit on the mic even though he hasn’t really done it in some time. On the track “Pinstripes” he matches wits with T.I. to showcase those rhyming skills are still intact.

I do tend to make fun of conscious rap but I secretly love it and Goodie Mob does a good job of giving some tracks that should speak to the masses but the masses aren’t ready to hear this level of truth. “Nexperiance” touches on the state of hip hop today, Power talks about white power from a black perspective. The name of the track used to be White Power but they ended up cutting off the white part of it. I also read an interview where Cee Lo wanted Em to jump on the track and spit a verse but it didn’t end up happening. The song Amy pops up later in the album to touch on race relations specifically interracial relationships. Janelle Monae hops on their track “Special Education” to give the kids something to hope for and remind them that it’s good to be special in their own way and I always laugh when this gets mentioned but to them VIP stands for Very Insecure People. No sir, VIP will forever be stuck in my mind as Very Important Penguin from a sign that the Techno Penguins were holding at E-Zoo.

The tracks that Cee-Lo end up taking over pretty much are “Power," "Vallelujah," "Ghost of Gloria Goodchild" and "Amy". They sound like songs that were probably cut from his solo albums or that he was getting ready to put on a new solo album but decided to put the Mob back together and included them on this album. Once you hit the song, “I’m Set” that’s where the meat/heart of the album comes into play and the next six or seven tracks are really great. This is album is like a really good sandwich that’s stuck in between some nasty Wonder Bread. I suggest throwing away the slices and just eating the meat from the middle.

Unknown Soldier · 11-08-2013, 03:40 AM

Gotta say DJ, that's one hot picture of K.Michelle.

djchameleon · 11-09-2013, 04:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

Gotta say DJ, that's one hot picture of K.Michelle.

I would agree with you but there is something off about her face so it ruins the rest of the picture for me.

djchameleon · 11-09-2013, 05:57 AM

Razor’s Edge 9/3

Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks

I went into this album expecting to hear standard fare NIN but what I ended up receiving was so much more. This album reminds me of the same accessibility that With Teeth has but toned down even further at different spots. Also you can hear the optimism in many of his tracks. No longer does he sound like an angry young person needed to vent and spiraling downward (yes pun intended). As I was listening to this album, I feel like he has gone in this direction before with being drenched with a keyboard sound but I can’t recall which album it is exactly. I definitely have to go back through his discog and find out.

Find My Way, Everything and Satellite ended up being the tracks that I would constantly go back to this album to repeat. I ended up listening to the deluxe version so I was treated to 3 remixed tracks which didn’t really end up going over well. Trent’s production skills are top notch and I trust him more than the people that ended up remixing three tracks from this album.

08-19-2013, 01:03 PM	#22 (permalink)
~~Soulflower~~ Account Disabled Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 2,304	Very entertaining! Nice journal!