a great time to be a hater
running through the six with my Ls
What an amazing time to be a hater, everyone!! Kendrick and Drake are the headline here – the petty patron saints of this week’s hater renaissance – but what a time to openly dislike things, and boy howdy do I love pure hating.
Firstly of course, there’s the Player Haters Ball of the Kendrick/Drake beef which has been so overwhelmingly filled with content that I pray everyone at Genius gets paid per word. It’s times like this that I really miss the Complex/VICE/Okayplayer ecosystem for the realtime liner notes from sweaty rooms of rap nerds (compliment!). That said, if you need a guide to what’s up, this TikTok explainer is right making the rounds for efficiently explaining the “everyone hates Drake” cinematic universe.
Elsewhere, Becca Rothfeld did another excellent TKO, this time on Nellie Bowles’ vacant post-progressive adults-in-the-room reactive trash:
“It was a warm sunny day, and it smelled like LA, a little acidic, a little like grilled meat,” Bowles writes of a protest in Los Angeles. I was underwhelmed by the insight that the city smells like itself and, I must confess, perplexed by the claim that it smells like grilled meat.
Excellent! How about Youth Lagoon taking on Washed Out’s weird AI-powered video that opens up a whole dialogue about how this sort of thing sucks? Also a delight!
Moms can be haters too, when they won’t let you buy a CD on 9/11.
Finally, the (correct) lukewarm reception to Dua Lipa’s tepid Radical Optimism has her fans in an uproar (“What do we want? Extremely mid pop! When do we want it? Now!”) but all I can find is enjoyable, well-written criticism. Of course, Laura Snapes’ review is worth a read.
Hate on, friends, hope you have a lovely week.
On to the positivity!! Shout out the Pulitzers for Greg Tate’s posthumous award!! As always, you can follow along on our playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, which update every Tuesday along with the newsletter. Enjoy!
Chris Cohen – Damage
LA alt-pop polymath Chris Cohen’s psych-pop takes on a 70’s taupe hue for the first single from his upcoming PAINT A ROOM. There's a slight bossa nova sadness that's more Kings of Convenience than Cohen’s old band Deerhoof, the chorus framed up by a roomy piano and tight horns. Can’t wait to hear the rest of the record.
Sleep 300 – Polykite
Brooklyn’s best hardware jockeys Sleep 300 are back with a new EP, continuing their run as a criminally slept on (pun intended!) techno act. “Polykite” and “Decoherence” in particular find the same punishing lane as Audion and Surgeon, wiping off just enough grime for their kits to allow for fractured light to break through the bass. If you were pumped up by Reznor & Ross’ blasting beats for the Challengers score, this one’s for you, but BYOTBST (Bring Your Own Tennis-Based Sexual Tension).
Sam Gendel & Sam Wilkes – GBTC
Recorded live across sets in Japan and Los Angeles, The Doober again breaks through its low-stakes environment for conversational, occasionally goofy, jazz. No one gets more out of their virtuosic output than Gendel, who continues to develop a lane that wrings maximum joy out of his experiments, no matter what they are. Also if anyone can tell me what melody this song is from, please DM me, it’s driving me nuts.
Terminal Nation – No Reform (New Age Patrol)
Don’t let the (extremely sick) album art mislead you – Terminal Nation’s second LP isn’t Dio-esque fantasy metal, it’s an unrelenting, super-heavy look at the violent price of American capitalism. “No Reform” is an incredibly heavy anti-cop anthem (“There is no reform for the murder of children / No amount of training curbs a killer’s appetite”) that’s perfect for you if were also disgusted with the NYPD’s response at Columbia last week. This rules! Eric Adams sucks!
Ted Leo – Little Dawn (demo)
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Shake The Sheets, Ted Leo dropped his demos for the record, and the biggest shocker is that they’re all…almost exactly the same as the LP? Credit it to his clarity of vision and crisp sonic style guide at the time, but everything is surprisingly similar to the final LP. That said, Leo plays drums and bass on the first half of the demos, so it’s fun hearing these with a much scrappier energy, especially on one of my all time favorites of his, “Little Dawn.”
throwback
Gil Scott-Heron – Home Is Where The Hatred Is
Had to keep it on theme this week. Also, there’s never a bad time to re-listen to GSH.
And then Steve Albini, one of rock's great haters, died, and our cup was filled to overflowing with memories of his feuds. Truly a great time to be alive. RIP.