What I’ve been bumping in 2010.  Mostly.

(Can’t read?  Download links are way at the bottom.)

Deuces Remix by Chris Brown f. Drake, T.I. Kanye West, Fabolous, and Andre3000

I didn’t rank the tracks, but there’s a reason this got listed first.  It’s easily the most bumpable track of 2010.  I loved it for it’s 90s crew track sensibility.  Every verse is pretty butter (if you’re into reciting verses), with the exception of T.I., who lucked out by getting the best part of the beat; that dangerous bass-drop.  Comedian Asis Ansari had a tweet in the fall asking if anybody else had problems listening to anything other than this track.  I had an extreme problem bumping anything after it once it started.  And I don’t know why?  It ain’t Miles Davis on shrooms, it’s a just a break-up song.  I guess that’s why, break-up songs are the shit.  If you start feeling gay and guilty by the time Fabo comes on,  Andre3000, one of the kings of the girl-verse, acts as clean-up hitter to bring that shit home.

All I Want is You – Miguel f. J. Cole

Here’s another one that reminded me of the 90s.  The structure, the drumline, the quality of the guy’s voice.  It all reminded me of a one-off from a 90s mixtape.  But I refuse to think that the only reason I like this shit is because it reminds of the 90s.  It’s thoroughly great R&B/Pop.  You’re dumb if you’re not trying to hit falsetto notes by the bridge and rap-walking when J.Cole brings it back.  Mock singing this to your girlfriend when she’s in a bad-mood will get you funny points that will hopefully lead to make-up sex.  Unless, you’re broken up.  Then that’s sad.  Even though BREAK-UP SONGS ARE THE SHIT!

My Black Everything – The Dream

I’m telling you . . . 2010 was the shit for R&B.  Whenever I hear this shit I have to roll my eyes, look up at the ceiling and say “guyyyy . . .”  then scrunch my face and roll my neck back and forth.  Did you know that this guy’s responsible for “UMBRELLA” and “SINGLE LADIES?”  Two of the most annoying tracks of our generation.  So it’s no surprise that he wrote the single most ridiculous line of the year: “lip-syncing on my microphone, still got my fitted on. sidenote- you should download this as your ringtone.”  But I don’t give a fuck.  Get the album.  If you know what you’re getting into, which is clear from the first bars, then you’ll get why I keep calling this guy a genius.  (He’s also an’ 81 baby.  Big up ’81 babies!)

Repeat – KJ

I’ve probably thrown this statement around a lot over the years but this song defines me.  This is what my heart sounds like when you put an ear to my chest and I’m in a good mood.  I put this on and I want to dapz EVERYONE I see on the street.  I keep talking about how I run tracks on repeat for days, this song is called repeat and that’s all it did all year.  I mean, it actually repeats seamlessly.  Of course this is from Toronto.

I Made It – Andy Milonakis

A friend said that if I was in a movie and I had my own entrance/walking scene music, it would be this song.

White Lies (Rusko Euphoria Remix) – Mr. Hudson

This shit is more Rusko’s than Mr. Hudson’s.  I don’t think I’ve ever listened to the original.  2010 was the year we started getting into the dubstep pretty heavy.  This was the tune that set it off for me.  Funny, because it’s probably the least dub-steppy track ever.

Fall In Love (Your Funeral) – Erykah Badu

There’s nothing I can say new about this album.  Classic Erykah, she brought it back, reh, reh, reh.  This is the kind of track that comes on and makes a cutie come out slow-dipping with the shoulders and hips.  She ties her hair up and keeps her face to the side.  Smiling as she bites her lip, not giving a shit that you’re there.

Shiny Suit Theory – Jay Electronica f. Jay-Z and The Dream

2010 was pretty much the year of Jay Electronica’s arrival.  He one-upped Drake by headlining shows and not even dropping a mixtape.  He had a few features, but I think the guy went on tour with 2 tracks and filled the rest of the show with talking.  Anyway, he’s finally signed and is supposed to put out an album.  We’ll see if he’s the saviour everyone wants him to be.  I love his lyrics, myself.  He reminds me of the homeless maniacs I used to have conversations with on summer nights.

Love – Nneka

Nneka’s cute as shit, even though she’s serious as fuck.  (Please don’t tell her I said so.)

Audio Dope II – Curren$y

This guy’s my dude.  2010 found me behind the wheel late at night much of the year.  The Pilot Talk album is made for driving.  This guy is a refreshing addition to a long line of ultra-chill talk-shit emcees.  Everything that comes out his mouth is popcorn and butter.  Responsible for my favorite line in music this year:  “Break your foot tryna kick it how I kick it.  Kill yourself tryna live how I’m living.  SPITTA!”

Fancy – Drake f. Swiss Beats

This wasn’t on the list initially, until I remembered that there was a couple weeks I bumped this hard when nobody was really around.  It’s pretty faggy, but I can’t deny that I love songs that are specifically made for women to go bananas to.  Drake’s a fucking genius for this one.  How the hell did T.I. make it on this shit too?

Be Still – Big Boi f. Janelle Monae

This album was so big.  At the beginning of the year I came back to Toronto after a year long sojourn in The Philippines and (surprise! surprise!) didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do with my life.  The whole point of the trip was to come back with all that shit figured out.  I had acquired all this knowledge and experience and felt incapable of bearing that responsibility.  So I was pretty stressed for a lot of 2010.  Bothered.  This is my favorite track off the album.

Highway Steam – Hooded Fang

I bought this album when I moved into my apartment just at the end of 2010.  It played every morning while I started my day for almost 2 weeks straight.  It’s perfect for that shit.  It’s Filipino content, meaning there’s a Filipino in the band.  Daniel Lee has the most butter voice of our generation.  And this shit is from fucking Toronto.  Of course it is.

Forever – Little Dragon

Ok, this didn’t drop in 2010.  But I never even knew who they were before January last year.  A revelation for sure.  And sexy as shit.  Gotta quote my homey Centeno for this one: “I wanna drink her bath water.”  Pretty much.

Street Shit – Sean Price

Ppppppp!!

Now or Never – The Roots

The album got reviewed a lot at the end of the year.  A lot of people were saying it was Black Thought’s great return.  That he expanded his subject matter.  Reh! reh! reh!  Man!  Black Thought ain’t go nowhere.  That dude was always fucking dope.  Now he’s better.  As you’d expect from an artist.  I think everybody had this joint on the bump heavy this year because it summarized the thoughts and feelings of a lot of the older Hip-Hop heads going into the new decade.  That the top is right over the horizon if we’re willing to push and if you haven’t gotten there yet, it taught you to accept your circumstances.  This is how’s it gonna be- no private jets and entourage for you.

Tigallo for Dolo – Little Brother (Phonte)

I don’t care if Phonte ever raps again.  As long as he drops these solo two verse progress reports every other year.  This guy’s humour and perspective helped shaped the general sensibility of my young adult life.  “I’d rather be a lonely wolf, than a sheep that’s bored.”

Stop, Look . . . Listen to Your Heart – Circle Research

Summer.  Excuse me?  Put this one on and everyone shuts up and nods.  A future Toronto classique.  Certainly one of the best-dressed.

Make You Mine – Breakbot

I bumped a shit-load of Breakbot in 2010.  I couldn’t really pick from the tracks.  I chose this one.  Very safe, good times, good times shit.

Number One Hit – R. Kelly

My boss at work, this little Italian chick with a big booty was going crazy about this one in December.  “R. Kelly really knows how to write a RnB tune.”  We sorta share the same love and interest in shit like that.  She went to show me what she was talking about and I was hooked for a good minute.  I’m a big fan of  when R. Kelly embraces his Chicago roots and bumps out a steppin’ tune.  Makes you wanna by a suit with the shoulders and shiny ass shoes.  Nobody does write an R&B tune like R. Kelly and if you listen to the end of this track you’ll hear why nobody should.  GET IT, ROBERT!

Honourable Mention:

Times Neue Roman – Cotabato

My homeys.  Had to run that.

THANKS!

-mlv

Full Playlist: http://www.mediafire.com/?ox5ld2a4syhb3sv

Been sitting at the screen awhile now.  Sometimes I get up, circle the room, go downstairs, open the fridge, look, close the fridge.  I even left the house.  But generally I’ve been coming back to the screen.  Resolving to face the ______ page like a man.

I don’t know how it is for other people, but my process is a long process of waiting.  Insane waiting.  It’s probably not the most productive, but I manage to work through it.

So like I’m sitting in a waiting room for something not all that great to happen, I gotta distract myself.  My dentist used to have fish and a Bi-way connected to it.  Just thought I’d bring that up.

I’m pretty excited about my distraction these days.  It’s a novel called Ilustrado by a Filipino authour named Miguel Syjuco.  I knew of it before I picked it up, I even met the guy at a reading.  So the guy and his novel are the darlings of the literary world at this moment.

He’s probably in Europe right now, banging a Parisian waitress in between interviews at various bistros.  Fuck knows?  I was pretty jealous and held off from reading the book for a quite a bit.  But then it was just sitting there.

I’m not a literary type.  I like writing.  I like reading.  But in general, I don’t get or hate the people who do it.  Fuckin smarty-pants’ most of them.  Which is still what I think of the guy.  Still, I’ve been having trouble putting his book down.

This is not a review.  Or a critique.  Fuck I know about that?  But it’s good.  So good, I felt compelled to post an excerpt before I’ve even gotten through the book.

And fuck it, I’m proud.  I’m proud we kinda came from the same place (he lives in Montreal now).

For Filipinos kids who used to hear Dwende stories when they were kids.  Or anyone else who believes in mythical creatures.  Here it is:

Dulcé and Jacob looked behind them as they sprinted.  “I told you,” Jacob said huffing and puffing, “They’re going to eat us alive!  We should’ve only gone there while it was still light.  We should’ve listened to old Gardener.”

At the end of the fence, they crouched down and hid.  In the alley, in the full moon’s blue cast, the dwendes came skipping along.  Six of them.  Their eyes glowed like insane fireflies, and their flowing silver beards fluttered like smoke.  They stopped and sniffed the air.  They were tiny, cute even, but possessed an air of vicious territoriality.

“We can’t go home,” Dulcé whispered, “they’ll find out where we live.  They’ll hurt my family.”

“I told you,” was all Jacob could reply.  “I told you. We shouldn’t have disturbed their tree.  I told you.”

Dulcé had a sudden idea.  “Follow me,” she whispered, before jumping into the alley, in full view of the dwendes.  Jacob crouched, shocked, frozen.  He was used to following Dulcé’s craziness, but this was too much.  The dwendes smiled, clapped their hands happily, bared their razor-sharp teeth, and skipped forward at full speed toward the kids.  “Come on!” Dulcé said, pulling Jacob by the shirt.  The two ran toward Dulce’s backyard, their breaths and hearts and the cracking of the underbrush the only things they could hear.

-from QC Nights, Book Two of Crispin Salvador’s Kaputol trilogy

SO YEAH . . . still banging out the book.  You gotta read it to get why there’s a Dwende story in a novel called Ilustrado and why the excerpt is written by another writer.  It’s the style.  It’s this Po-Mo who-what? that makes my head spin trying to talk about it.  Just go read it.

-mlv

I’m pretty good with general Philippine knowledge.  Even before I went, I think I knew quite a bit for someone who virtually knew nothing.  But it wasn’t until I took Carlos Celdran‘s tour that I finally learned that the United States bombed the shit out of Manila during World War II.  I wonder why that is?

My Father’s a pretty educated dude and my Lolo was in the military.  Usually, when I heard about the United States relationship to The Philippines the language circled around the vicinity of “they saved us.”  (Except, my Dad.  Pops would never say that.)

Could it be that the folks who run the United States are so good at skewing history and conditioning minds that they can turn a bombing where over 100, 000 civilians were killed into an act of heroism?

A year after learning this, I’m still getting over it.  I don’t think I ever will.  Which is good.  Which is why you should also know this and know more.  I mean, just wait until you hear what the pretenses for the bombing were.  Why was The Philippines bombed?  Weren’t they fighting the Japanese?

If this is all news to me, and I had to make an effort to find it, I wonder if those kids in the subway laughing at their buddy imitating Ne-yo even ever thought about it.

Or maybe I’m wrong about what I used to hear.  Maybe it wasn’t the States skewing history.  Maybe it’s Filipinos trying to forget.

As you’ll see from this short clip, retracing these photographs, there is so much more to learn.

Peace,

-mlv

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This video clip is a companion piece to GMA’s feature found here.  If you or someone you know are going to be in the Manila area anytime in the future please feel free to contact me or Carlos Celdran at his Website so you can book a time slot to take any one of his many tours.  It’s a must do.  Then after that, get back at me, so we can set you up to volunteer.  Then . . . then . . . then . . . all the possibilities and we’re here playing video games.

(after edit) If you are in Manila right now Carlos will be presenting the juxtaposed photos at Silverlens Gallery on July 1, 2010 at 6pm.  GO!

23 June 2010.

Back in ’94 during (Catholic School) Confirmation Classes (grade eight) I made a mixtape for a girl from one of the other schools and wrote a stupid letter in the liner notes.  This mixtape didn’t even have music on it.  I gave her a blank tape as an excuse to write to her†.  She’s kept it ever since and though I hardly see her nowadays, she never lets me live it down.  She’s keeping the tape, but she made me a photo-copy for a going away present.

In honour of the first performance of Leonard Cervantes new musical Shotgun Wedding: A Nineties Musical Mixtape About Nine Months of the Best Years of Our Lives this Saturday (June 26 2010), I decided to finally fill that blank.

Ok.  So a lot of the songs on this mix are from after 1994, but I was 13 and had like 2 tapes (no older siblings). Besides, in 2010, who the hell can remember what was released when?

I refrained from arranging the tracks in any order.  A little bit because that would take forever, but mostly to encapsulate the way that memories of the 90s- for those of us old enough to have memories of the 90s- blur into each other and play out like one long continuous summer.  When love was real and we were immortal.

Play it on shuffle.  Then keep it on repeat if you dig it.

Some of the songs are near and dear to me.  I still listen to them.  Some of the tracks I haven’t thought about in ages, but they caught me in the gut after the first few bars or at the chorus (“Ooooo, shit! I remember this).  The rhythms I heard whispering from my best friend’s fly older sister’s room while trying to catch a glimpse through the crack in her door on my way to the washroom.  My very first experiences with love.

As an ’81 kid, I got to hit the stage of conscious thought, yet never reached adult-hood, in the 90s.  So I was mature enough to be critical of my music and surroundings, but still dumb enough to just be plain stupid in love with something for no good reason . . . “YA DUN KNOW!”  Even though the 90s were an era of innocence for me, everything mattered.

So I bugged over that dumb little note on that blank-tape as much as I’m bugging over this blog-post.

This is for Gap Anoraks, Dep gel, CK1, The Lion King, those stupid plastic zig-zaggy things that hold your hair back, coloured contacts, Sun-in, B-boying in the basements, popping the ‘M&M’ off the top of your cap for headspins, beefs with ‘Sauga boyz, crushes on ‘Sauga girls, Malvern house parties, writing in her agenda, free refills at Taco Bell, debut-crashing, 10 in a Honda Accord- 8 in the front, 2 in the trunk, holding down mute during a three-way phone call to get to the truth, ‘black’ hair, one pant leg rolled up, the other tucked in your sock, WetJam ‘jams’, R.A.R.E. Sounds, Bag of TriX! saying “ketchup!” at a Mcdonald’s drive-thru and getting a bag full of food at the window, khakis, towels around the neck, half-tops, and those pretty-somethings in capris and white tennis shoes at PND.

dreamin eyes (dilla remix) – d’angelo
touch me tease me (f. foxy brown) – case
ones for the money – horace brown
shorty swing my way – kp & envi
ditty – paperboy
baby luv (remix) – groove theory
he’s mine (remix f. grand puba) – mokenstef
so anxious – ginuwine
keep it real (f. jay-z & coko) – jon b.
freekin u (ghost and rae remix) – jodeci
renee – lost boyz
go down – sa-deuce
i get so lonely – janet jackson
when boy meets girl – total
tell me what you like – guy
kick your game – tlc
my love is the shhh – something for the people
just wanna please u (stevie j remix) – mona lisa f. the lox
that’s the way love goes – janet jackson
mary jane – mary j. blige
you’re the one – swv
head over heels (f. nas) – allure
bump n’ grind (remix) – r. kelly
everyday & everynight – yvette michele
butta love – next
can’t you see? (f. biggie) – total

Download: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UPSJJG27

[big up to the khats at the MASSIVE for their musical connoisseurship. this tape is mostly their work.]

-mlv

†There was some logic behind this.  Some.  It was the last week of Confirmation Class at church.  All I really wanted to do was to get this girl to remember me somehow.  I had no time to make a whole mixtape.  Remember, back then we had to record shit in REAL-TIME.  I think I only had two tapes at the time anyway (Freakin You by Jodeci and The What by Biggie Smalls).  So I thought I could tell her “you could put anything you want on it” and it would be cool.  Cool was never really my thing.  We’re still friends, though.  So it kinda worked.

back in The Philippines

i got a kick out of

hopping on busses

and going where ever that bus needs to go

sometimes i needed to go there

sometimes i needed to go there

to find out if i needed to go there

there was always a good reason

to hop on a bus and move.

when i think of the philippines

it’s from a bus

watching it go by-

school, ball court, rizal statue

school, ball court, rizal statue

school, ball court, rizal statue

plotting what i’d do for her

if i could do anything for her

and mostly

this was the soundtrack.

-mlv

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been having trouble NOT watching this.

best shit i’ve seen today (in awhile).

i fucking love this guy.

-mlv

I’m not one of those “old school is better” khats.  But shit, they tried to tell us didn’t they?

[excerpt]

GET LAID

MEET YOUR FAMILY

SEE THE COUNTRY

DO SOMETHING GOOD

ROLL w/ THE RICH

MEET A GIRL/FALL IN LOVE

BEWARE OF THE GAYS

(yeah, I was some shit.)

-mlv

Out front of Mom’s house
there’s a large tree
that hangs over
a walk-way that crosses the house

Across the walk-way
there’s a bulb lamp
that lights the complex

I go for a smoke
after a day and night
of nothing
and see a spider

A good swing
from the lamp
is a set of young branches

The spider’s having
a go at it-
a good arm’s length

It makes it.

It rests in the leaves
a bit

There’s a good spot
in between the young branches
catching light off the lamp

The dumber bugs
are all flying into the lamp
circling the lamp
and flying into the lamp

A glint of light
from a single thread
and the spider’s moving
across, building

There’s a bit of wind
but it’s only a matter of time

-mlv

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