Why is no one talking about the music video crushing 30 eggman's design is amazing

Anyways I want to hear you gush about it

I have no idea because it's fantastic, it deserves a lot more talk and attention! Fortunately it's getting there in views now at a million, but there still isn't enough people talking about the awesome stuff that the video gave us! There's a lot of great things about the song and music video but of course on my blog I'm here to gush about Eggman specifically, so of course he's what I'm going to focus on here heheh. I appreciate that you're interested in my thoughts on it!

AND I COME WITH GIFS!

I love the X vibes of the animation! Bringing back the similar style and some of Eggman's common quirks from it is a nostalgic delight to see and he looks so beautiful I wanna give him a big smooch 🥰💕💜💖 I love how he still has all of his classic mannerisms and energy because I don't think he'll ever lose it. He's still dealing with defeat after defeat from Sonic like always but he still knows how to have fun as his same handsome self and for that, he's better off than some of the other characters in this video XD

I was so overjoyed to see him enter his EGG CASINO. I always love Eggman + casinos, the look and atmosphere is wonderful and the Egg Pawn esque designs are great!!

It's cute that he got a little stuck for a moment in the door there. I noticed that cheeky monitor saying 'LOL' tsk tsk XD

That's one strong little stool to be sturdy enough not to break when he sits on it but it still wasn't enough to hold this heavy man without it sinking so much that the pole bended and got scrunched up! With these details and the way his outfit doesn't seem to be the best fitting, it appears that he too has gained a bit more weight over time, just like his arch nemesis has in this video.

You know how I feel about my Eggs in casinos as I have a whole Casino AU dedicated to a version that's main focus is all his casinos. The concept of main universe Eggman actually focusing more on casinos in the future like this video seems to imply, likely because of how much of a highly reliable source of income they are to help keep his operations going for so many years, is fantastic and right up my alley! I immediately felt total adoration for the design and this was the cherry on top, I'm absolutely obsessed now!

Honestly, it's very rare that I find myself enjoying fan or even official redesigns of Eggman, I can be very picky with them because a lot of them tend to take away things I love most about his design. But this ticks all the right boxes for me and only enhances his already existing beauty and appeal, it doesn't change too much about his physical appearance and style so he still has his true essence but it changes enough for it to feel new, which is exactly how a future Eggman should be. And he's as handsome as ever, I can't stop admiring him 😍💜💕💘💖

It surprisingly suits a bunch of my exact tastes and headcanons of mine for future Eggman! Most notably the casino stuff, sexy older Eggman, and the idea that he gains more weight with time and age and keeps it. Slimming him down in redesigns is a crime but I'm all for him plumping up a bit more instead, it would make much more sense. It appears he stopped trying to bother to zip up his jacket because of that and it looks too short now, so he can't button it down either. I love how his jacket and undershirt ride up, I always treasure a peek at the precious tum 🥰

Also can we please acknowledge the cake on this man because I'm so in love fjsbfjsndngmg

His outfit appears to take some inspiration from the Sonic Prime concept art design with the open jacket and white undershirt but in my opinion, they improved on it way more and made me realize that it could be super appealing if presented in the right way. The added shoulder pads, cape, and more royal regal look with the crowned egg on the back gives it so much more style! Reminds me of one of the Boom concept art Eggman outfits blended in a bit too, especially with the yellow gloves. That might just be intentional!

I love everything about the Eggman in this video just from the few glorious moments of screentime! It really makes me wish this was actually a small series of sorts, where we could see what a future Eggman would get up to with what would change and what would stay the same, it's super interesting stuff! And if modern Eggman had to get a permanent redesign, this is the exact kind of design that I would accept and embrace wholeheartedly! :D 💕

To anyone that hasn't seen the video- please check it out because it's brilliant!

Dimension’s Ridge Announcement!

Hi everyone, With all the rise in Sonic media and the great releases coming up, such as The New sonic game in 2022,the sonic movie 2, sonic prime, and literally anything Idw has been releasing including their new side series “Imposter syndrome”, I am challenged to up my game and release information on my long running project in the works. Especially Since sonic prime and Idw is literally gonna blow out all the spoilers before I do if I don't start releasing stuff first. Since its been happening constantly, I gotta be a step ahead.

So, without further ado, I introduce you to the World of Dimension's Ridge.

Dimensions Ridge is My personal Alternate Universe that seeks to combine all aspects of sonic media. In fact, its super similar to the upcoming Sonic prime, archie and Idw Comics in this regard, with it possibly being a bit more ambitious, or at least equally as ambitious as Idw.

The Series will follow a number of favorite canon and non canon characters alike, but will also their universal counterparts and alternate universe selves.

The Main overarching plot line is that a Existence level Threat is putting everything in jepoardy. This Creature Known as an Existence Eater spreads its influence to a planet by releasing its minions into it, then after enough time, it comes to absorb the planet, thus erasing it from existence entirely, as if it had never been there in the first place. This has been happening for quite a while, until a few people caught onto it. They began leaving messages and warnings to others in a attempt to save them.

Being an existence level threat, this will take the combined effort of every Version of Sonic,Tails,Sally, Eggman and everyone else if they want anything to be left in the multi-verse. This Story is about how they all come together to do just that.

However that is the main plot. The story follows many minor or sub plotlines and stories that all connect and weave into this ultimate narrative. For Stories featuring Sonic and friends, Stories start off in the classic area and work their way into the modern area as the characters develop and mature, so we get to see and live their journey alongside them. For older characters and parents, I wanted them to have a  more staple involvement in the series, even if only at the beginning. Their Adventures as the World slowly slips into chaos can be read in War on Mobius.

While there are Prequels to the beginning of the story, such as the “Rift War.”, the main storylines that kicks off all the other starts is one of my current productions “War on Mobius.”This follows the economical and political collapse following the Recent End of The Rift War and begins the Egg Empire's rise to Power.I would like to mention that The Egg Empire Now consists of the collective versions of Eggman all working together as a family. Egg Fam for short. But we have Great additions such as boom eggman, Ova Eggman, Aosth Eggman, Satam Eggman, Russian Eggman,Eggette, and a few custom additions such as Omelette and Scramble.

Things That happen in War on Mobius will be seen effecting or influencing the states of things in my Classic Era Story “Classic adventures.” and others ones such as “The Freedom Fighters.”

Alongside canon appearances of less known or scrapped characters and designs, such as Tiara and Honey the Cat, Readers can expect appearances of my own characters, both as counterparts to main characters, and also as people who drive the story forward and show interesting and dynamic opinions of their changing world. A few Such ones would be “Tribal Ties” Focusing on the Tribes of Echidnas, Bayblonians and Pangolins Tribes, all of which play a part not only in Mobius history, but also will play a vital part in its future.

After Classic adventures, comes one of my long running claims to fame and a personal favorite of mine from my early script writing days. Zone Runners. This takes place after the Events of Classic adventures and as the world has been influenced by the political unrest in War on Mobius. It follows the Group of People on the East Side of the World as they try to fight back against the Egg Empire, Newly risen Oscillators Group, and The Very lack of Sonic and Freedom Fighter there. This series will also begin unraveling some of the mysteries behind the existence eater and the ultimate narrative. Originally this concept came from the Fleetway comics, and ever since I've been completely inspired to incorporate this into my own series. If anyone was ever on Sonic Amino, they might have seen me post things related to it back in the day.

I also wish to be a more character focused series as a whole, one who focuses on the people collectively as opposed to just Sonic himself. I want it to as if each character us actually a main character and can save the day, and that the day is only won because everyone has done their part, whether powerful or powerless.

To that End, I have many characters stories intertwine, or lead to one another. Some characters will have branching off stories, while others will be closely intertwined, and always interact with each other, regardless of who the story is currently focusing on.

A few I'd like to notable mention is, Shadow's Ark, Silvers Sanctuary, and Heir of Sol. Focusing on the characters Shadow, Silver, And Blaze Respectively.

While I have a lot of other Titles for the stories respectively, I'd just to touch on a few more before I close.

Worlds collide finally answers the question in sonic media about two planets and the dimensional connundrum of sonic rush and sonic 06. While also bringing together multiple characters who were on their own paths, for the collected purpose of setting up how everyone will be needed much later.

Dimension Forces is, a reimagined Version of Sonic Forces, including a whole new team of villains to take on the heroes from our prior stories. I call them: Forever Force. The Main Three Hitters Being the Villains Infinite, Eternity, And Enigma. In this Story we'll get to see Whispers team in action, and also get to see new stories involving Gadget and His Brother Widget, and a host of other rising heroes soldiers and returning cast members.

I also had this Idea that the wisps were able to use their abilities on their own, except in smaller weaker versions then when they had a mobians help.Thus you could call in drill air strikes and other things to help you in battle, and the flew alongside you rather than in containers. I had these idea way long ago, but what do you know Idw beat me to the punch again in rise of the wisps. However I would just like to say before they do it too, that I had the idea of the wisps combining their powers, as if anyone played Sonic simulator, you would know you can actually combine wisp powers. If its the same type, its twice as strong with a bonus effect. If its different, you can combine the strengths of two different powers. Think how eggman used cube with laser in the boss nega wisp armor.

Speaking of Sonic Simulator! Thats another Story I have plans for. Following alongside the events of Sonic colors, Sonic simulator follows the group of hedgehogs abducted from Mobius and sent to eggman's interstellar amusement park as part of an organic experiment to take out sonic. Suggested by The Leader of the Oscillators, These hedgehogs will now have to work together to prove their worth to Eggman and as worthy adversaries of Sonic! But what of their past memories? What will happen if they remember? And if they do, can they escape? Find out! Also its follow up story leads to sonic lost world.

I'd also like to talk about the Idw Verse Mini series I have been working on! Getting Art from the Talented CatRage and getting to voice my Ideas to My Friends as well as My sister, I present my own Miniseries! Mimic's misadventures!

This story takes place between  the events of Idw's Bad guys, and follows mimic's operations and struggles as he tries to complete his missions, and deal with people of similar caliber to himself. Will this mercenary manipulate his way easily out of another situation? Or has the Octopus finally met the one group who will send him back to the ocean? Find out!

Currently, this miniseries has 5 canon issues and one undecided.

1.Ghost Of The North.

2.Into the Spiders Nest

3.Hunt is on

4.Jaws of a Predator

5.Belly of the Beast

undecided: 6.Seaside Escapade.

Currently I am writing the script for Part 1 of Ghost of the North and hope to finish up the Audio drama reading for it soon.

So this is all the stuff I've had in production for the past few years! Along with my co writer Pinky heart.

Please, Please! Reblog or retweet this. It would mean the world to me. Also please! Ask as many questions as you'd like. I'll answer as many as I can, and would love to hear everyone's thoughts and opinions, as well as questions and inquires involving the series.

Hiya! Sorry if you've already answered this, but what inspired you to write your Chaos Barren Au? Btw I like the way you write sonic and fleetway's interaction with each other! Have a nice day!

@someyugoandyurimagico

I have no idea when I got this ask so I'M VERY SORRY it's taken me so long! I haven't answered this actually!

Chaos Barren was part of some fun theorizing about Movie!Sonic over a year ago. We compared his power level and skills and tossed the theory that he was either a chaos emerald or had the power of one. Then the topic came around about Boom!Sonic being so much slower and weaker than the other Sonics. In many ways, BB is faster and stronger than him.

This started the idea that there might be a reason for it. So if Sonics were partially powered through chaos, would a weaker sonic possibly indicate a chaos barren world?

The world building started here! I absolutely adore world building and loved the concept art for Rise of Lyric. I was a little possessed which is why I was able to crank out nearly 10k chapters in a week.

I started chatting with Ren and Fourth here, they helped me work out some kinks in the story, and we came up with a pretty ending for Chaos Barren. But I loved the world so much I wanted to tell more. And I wanted my favorite ship in there as well! Boomverse is so underdeveloped you can do anything you like!

Fleetway was originally going to be an antagonist. Very true to his original iteration, a god of chaos bent on power and destruction. But we realized that if he had been bound to mortals for so long wouldn't he grow to care for them? At least a little?

The answer was yes. But Fleetway doesn't care about them in the same way mortals do. He grieves their loss, but not in the same way because their energy will always be a part of him. He's selfish in the sense that he cares most about whoever his chosen is at the time. Right now their interactions are that of someone who knows a lot and is used to getting their way, but still cares about Sonic and someone who was tossed into a 'responsibility' without being told what it was.

Now, I write much slowly, but I just finished saying tonight that I wished I could dump the contents of my brain into a word doc to deliver the story. But unfortunately, I must do it the long way.

Thanks SO MUCH for the ask, I've been getting started on the next chapter and while I can't speak for speed I'm so happy to know you're enjoying it and you think about it!

Have a GREAT NIGHT

Sonic opinions - 2

In large portions of every fandom, it looks like it prevails the idea that you can only take one of two positions: praising the story in every respect, including both the ideas themselves and their execution by the writers, or admitting not to like the story and not to praise any element of it at all. I think my ideas regarding the Archie-Sonic comics and the Sonic franchise in general cannot be pigeonholed into either of these two extremes.

More below the "keep reading" cut.

I loved all the world-building in Archie-Sonic, the elements the comic introduced, their many characters and the potential to tell stories about them; I also really liked much of the art and personal styles of several artists Archie-Sonic has had throughout its history, with very few exceptions (and such exceptions include Ron Lim, of course). That's why, of all the Sonic continuities, I often use the pre-reboot Archie-Sonic comic as the primary source for world-building elements and story ideas.

What really makes me feel bad about that comic, what motivates most of my criticism, is the ideas’ execution by the main writers, as well as aspects that I think are more linked to each writer as a person, the unique way in which each of them has written their stories.

Firstly, Michael Gallagher: the writer for the first few dozen issues of the comic had a terrible sense of humour, and this hurt the comic hugely since those first issues were fundamentally based on that low-quality comedy style. The characterization of the entire cast also suffered greatly from this; in Sally's case, something quite ironic happened too: Gallagher portrayed her as bossy, annoying, temperamental, usually bickering with Sonic, and now that's also how Sally is seen by many fans of the videogames’ continuity (at best). Other than this, not much more could be said about him.

Karl Bollers wrote quite decent stories with some nice comedy, with “Return to Angel Island” being his best work, one of the best stories in the entire comic and perhaps even one of the best in the franchise; but Bollers’s work was "torpedoed" by Ken Penders and then-editor Justin Gabrie, which ruined the stories’ final versions sometimes or led to elements introduced by Bollers being "retconned" and overwritten by whatever Penders smoked and decided to do when taking over. The characterization of Fiona Fox is one of the main examples, with Bollers's Fiona being a quite under-utilized character but with a great potential that would later be wasted by both Penders and Ian Flynn. Another similar case was Sally breaking up with Sonic: Bollers tried to give context to such a drastic decision by Sally and show how she was the one who was suffering the most at that time and also that both she and Sonic were partially right, but Penders and Gabrie didn't let Bollers develop this subplot properly and all we had was a quite infamous scene that unfairly made Sally one of the most hated characters. It’s also known of several plans Bollers had for future stories, and one of them was Antoine being corrupted by the Source of All and turning into a villain; this had the potential to be a good story by subverting the concept of the Source of All and making it an actual threat, but on the other hand, it’d have meant resorting once again to the resource of "this character isn’t doing anything, let's make them evil", something quite disappointing, which later would have disastrous results when Flynn did the same with Fiona a few years later. However, these plans of Bollers were just ideas, and the quality of a story created from them still depends a lot on execution. In the end, I can't say anything about how good or bad Bollers was as a writer, simply because I have no way of knowing what his stories would have been like if he had been given more freedom and had stayed as the writer longer.

There were two writers who influenced Archie-Sonic comics far more than any other writer in its history: Penders and Flynn. The first of them was a retarded pervert with an overly inflated and fragile ego. He became obsessed with the primitive, toxic ideal of "family" North-Americans have. He wrote nonsensical, contradictory stories, having already decided the end down to the last detail long before even thinking about how the story would come to that end (I also made this specific mistake a few times when I was just starting to write fanfiction, I must admit). He increased Fiona's age in order to be able to pair her with the Don Juan that Sonic had become, which also ruined Fiona's characterization forever. The issues 150s -right before being replaced by Flynn- were the worst part of Penders’s run, as Bollers was no longer there to put a stop to his madness in any way, and it was at this time when there was the most egregious case of Penders pouring into the comic his worst perversions and retarded ideas: he hinted at a sex scene in one of the most infamous cases in the history of the entire Sonic franchise, although it wasn’t infamous for the implied sex per se but rather because what happened was technically a rape by deception; to add insult to injury, the writer implicitly blamed the victim some years later when asked about it on Twitter.

I could go on talking about “Ken Perverts”, but I think that's not necessary and would be a waste of time since, as everyone here already knows, he's been the laughingstock of the entire Sonic franchise for years; @ponett even has a whole secondary blog, @thankskenpenders, mainly dedicated to this. On the other hand, there’s still another writer who has also contributed a lot and also made huge mistakes but is not criticized in the least by almost anyone, simply because he was better than Penders.

Ian Flynn usually reduced the characters to slightly oversimplified portrayals, similar to the personalities of the characters in the most recent videogames. Under his pen, Sonic was more sympathetic but his words sometimes sounded too empty and shallow, his apologies for past mistakes didn’t lead to genuine changes on his part, and sometimes he even seemed plain insensitive to all the tragedies happening around him, especially at the Mecha Sally Arc (I nickname Ian Flynn’s Sonic "Plastic Smile" for this). Admittedly, this had already happened several times with previous writers (Penders portraying Sonic as a Don Juan, as I already mentioned), and this is why I think the original Sonic from Sonic SatAM was always better for feeling more "genuine", less "empty", and more heroic and likeable as a result. Perhaps the only ones to escape the oversimplified portrayal have been Shadow and E-123 Omega, whose characterizations in Archie-Sonic were the best in the whole franchise.

Besides, Flynn had strong favouritism for Amy Rose, which only made things worse because this Amy was much more similar to the one in the videogames from Sonic Heroes onwards. Anyway, this also happened with previous writers, like when Amy wished to be younger at the cost of a chance to save Sally's mother and no one ever berated her for it.

Let’s look at the villains. Unlike the typical Eggman from the videogames, with his follies, eccentricities and other absurd aspects, the Robotnik “inherited” by the comic from Sonic SatAM was explicitly a genocidal bastard and crueller while at the same time being sane enough to realize everything he was doing (@robotnik-mun already spoke in detail about this once); however, Flynn tried to combine the two characters into the pre-reboot Archie-Sonic Eggman, and the result created some severe problems with the stories’ tone. Something derived from this was how Sonic let Eggman live and even felt sorry for his fall into madness, in addition to treating him as if they were the Sonic and Eggman from the videogames, Sonic X or Sonic Boom; it’s worth remembering this Eggman technically is a sort of reincarnation of the SatAM Robotnik (his exact nature is quite complicated and includes parallel universes, but yes, he’s supposed to be exactly the same as the SatAM Robotnik, with memories and everything) and this Sonic is supposed to have fought a bloody decade-long guerilla war against him just like his SatAM counterpart.

Scourge was turned into a massive Mary-Sue who achieved easy victories, as subtle as a huge neon sign saying "the bad guys win"; he was also an abusive manipulator towards Fiona Fox, and Flynn was unable to show that properly for fear of making his pet look no longer cool, which makes you wonder how alike Flynn and Penders might actually be in some ways. To clearly understand the horrible damage this has caused: it not only created a generation of young Sonic fans -mostly boys from the USA- who romanticize abuse either consciously or unconsciously, but also there are even women -including scholars, committed feminists and transgender people who are also activists for social justice- who either sympathize with Scourge or think Fiona made a right, wise, rational or informed decision by joining him in the story (I’ll not give names of those women, I’m not really eager to get into heated fallacious discussions about “the true meaning of Feminism”); to top it off, among the writers who started working with Ian Flynn either on IDW-Sonic or the last years of Archie-Sonic, there’s at least one person who got the job of writing official Sonic comics after gaining quite a bit of fame with a fan-comic where they used the pairing of Scourge & Fiona to inspire its readers to feel sorry... for Scourge. And speaking of Fiona specifically: the subplot of her career as a villain was ill-conceived, was built by using as a cornerstone the A-story of Issue #150 (that quite infamous and widely known story written by Penders where Scourge may or may not have raped Bunnie by deception), and was also seemingly "abandoned" as Fiona ended up merely being Scourge's new abuse victim girlfriend and her status as a traitor didn’t even have a significant emotional effect on the Freedom Fighters.

Flynn also followed something like a pattern of taking tropes from famous works and then using them when writing the comic but not actually understanding why those tropes had worked in the first place. Perhaps the prime example of this was Scourge giving Sonic the Joker's "One Bad Day" speech: it almost felt a bit like giving the same speech to the Batman of Batman vs. Superman, as Sonic had already had a whole "bad decade" and was still a hero despite it; also, Sonic's answer to that speech (telling Scourge it only takes a tiny bit of selflessness and decency for him to be a good person) wasn’t that great, not at all compared to the mildly masterful answer Batman had originally given to the Joker in The Killing Joke, and it even made Sonic look more like a bad judge of character.

Lastly, the entire Mecha Sally Arc was poorly planned, had some contradictions with itself and with previous stories, was stretched through dozens of comic issues no matter if that felt forced, and the main events and plot twists throughout the story arc were heavily based on shock-value without giving any substance to this or making it a bit more sense when putting it under scrutiny; meanwhile, Flynn always seemed to have quite a hard time when writing long story arcs, so these long stories looked like he was trying and outright failing to imitate Toriyama (someone quite known for putting together stories ad-lib according to what seemed most convenient at the time).

Despite this, it looks like those Sonic fans who are still interested in material outside of the videogames will keep buying and reading whatever Ian Flynn or one of his colleagues writes, simply because they’re better than Penders... even though it's been 15 years since Penders wrote something official about Sonic. Seriously, we should have gotten over it by now, instead of continuing to compare all material in the franchise with Penders's work, which sets the bar too low for any official content creator. Now that I think about it, Penders's work is to the North-American Sonic canon what Sonic 2006 is to the videogames: people can criticize the latest games all they want, and rightfully so, but if someone even casually mentions Sonic 2006, any Sonic game from 2010 onwards instantly becomes a masterpiece just for being marginally better than Sonic 2006; the same happens between Penders's work on pre-reboot Archie-Sonic and any other North-American Sonic comic written by Flynn after Penders left.

Right now it looks like it's also forbidden to criticize Flynn as a writer at all just because he's much nicer in his personal life and engages with fans more directly through his podcasts, or because Flynn is truly progressive while Penders claimed to be progressive and a feminist and was affiliated with the USA Democrats but his work showed how misogynistic, perverted, retarded, reactionary and downright sick he was. Also, now saying something about Flynn other than total blind admiration for him and his work, even asking for the Freedom Fighters to return in the IDW comics, has become synonymous with agreeing with those assholes who cry "Rally4Sally" or "Udon4Sonic" on Twitter: "nostalgic" fans of SatAM and Penders's work on Archie, in their 40s or 50s, deeply conservative and absurdly paranoid, who claim that those new inclusive cartoons such as Steven Universe or She-Ra "are ruining their childhood", are mad at Flynn just because he hinted Sally and Nicole may be a lesbian couple (and in a rather platonic way, not even romantic in the traditional sense), and try to justify their own warped ideas and fantasies about SatAM by ignoring any “liberal” political messages SatAM may have had at the subtext level.

On Sundays, pretty much anything can happen, but today, all of the staff members of this team will be talking about how we got into the Sonic Fandom in the first place

Krafter: I got into the Sonic Fandom after I got a video in my recommended one day. It was a video about the best of Alfred Coleman as Dr. Eggman. I watched the video, and it was the funniest thing I had ever seen in my life. After that, I went and watched the entire SA2 Real-Time Fandub. That was when I entered the Sonic Fandom, and things just kind of snowballed from there, and now 10 months later, I’m running a Sonic Fanclub

Alydacat: Alydacat’s first experience with Sonic was finding Sonic X after they were looking for cartoons to watch. They were watching it on Youtube when they got a video from a channel that made content about Sonic recommended to them. The channel reinforced their love for Sonic, and was what ended up pulling them into the fandom

A-nonexistent-girl: A-nonexistent-girl’s first experience with Sonic was when they watched the Sonic Boom TV show in 2014, but they didn’t really get into the fandom until around 2018 Sonic Forces came

Mobicatt: Mobicatt has been involved with Sonic for as long as they could remember. When they were younger, they would watch the old shows (AOSTH, SATAM, and Underground) on Netflix. Somewhere between 2018 and 2019, they joined Deviantart and got a drawing pad. They made their own OCs, and began following fancomics like Ghosts of the Future and The Murder of Me. Mobicatt ended up getting inspired by these comics, and started making some concept art which eventually became the Unity AU that they’re working on now. They ended up leaving Deviantart and didn’t do much stuff related to Sonic during this time, but once they joined a Sonic Discord server, they began getting back into the fandom, and started drawing again

That’s how all of us at the Sonic Fanclub joined the Sonic Fandom, but we want to hear how you joined too! Reblog this post and add in the tags how you joined the Sonic Fandom

My Top 5 Games of the Past Generation Youtube Script Plus Notes

This is, more or less, the script for My Top 5 Games of the Past Generation video that I just published on Youtube: With the Xbox One and Playstation Four about to head out of the door to make ways for the Xbox Series X and the Playstation 5 respectively to lead us into the next generation of consoles were only Nintendo has been sitting comfortably with the Switch, the Wii U has been long gone and Nintendo also recently announced the official end of the Nintendo 3DS line cutting all the ties to this last generation.  With that almost everyone is now releasing their lists of the best games of the current generation, myself included, I couldn't help but notice a lot of same-soundy lists such as Game Informer's top 5 list.  I myself have to disagree with these, not to say that any and/or all five of those games on Game Informer's Top 5 aren't good, important or worth playing just that I don't think they are the best representative of this generation in terms of impact and wide appeal, so much as had the most money backing them. That these games on the list are more the best representative of the biggest Triple A titles.  The games that I had in mind are more impactful on how this generation swayed and set new standards.  I want you to keep in mind that while I liked some of these games, these aren't my personal top 5 of the past generation either but I think closer to what best represents our closing era of gaming, when I say the “best games of the current generation.”

First off I'd like to make an honorable mention of PT.  PT or playable trailer was supposed to be a demo for the new Silent Hill S game that unfortunately never came to be for the Playstation 4 from Konami.  A joint venture between film director Guillermo del Toro and the famous creator of Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima, this demo spooked the pants off of everyone and was probably the reason a lot of people decided to buy a Playstation 4.  Unfortunately Konami let Hideo Kojima go under less than favorable conditions and the demo vanished with him in time.  Since then the immersive, first person perspective horror game demo changed the landscape of what survival horror could be.  We then saw Resident Evil VII by Capcom, the Park by Funcom, Layers of Fear by Aspyr and Death Standing by Hideo Kojima's new studio Kojima Productions that were all heavily influenced by PT (this point made more obvious for Hido Kojima's Death Stranding) and the future of Survial Horror / Suspense games seems to be headed there with upcoming games like Resident Evil VIII: The Village.  The only reason this isn't officially on the list is because, well, it was sadly never a game but its influence was too important for me not to mention.

Number 5: Sonic Mania.  Ok so Sonic Mania isn't anything new but it is very important in the sense that it is a major franchise, Sonic, by a well established publisher, Sega, and they had officially given the keys of Mobius to the fandom to make a new game and it was fantastic. While that's oversimplying things a bit errr a lot, since Sega just didn't come out of the blue offering that opportunity.  Rather Sega saw a Sonic game pitched by Christian Whitehead, aka Taxman, who worked on porting previous ports of Sonic games to Mobile platforms. Why I think it is important is that this validating the bridge between fandom and passion projects in world where game hacks and fangames are traditionally shut down almost immediately after gaining the slightest attention.  While Sonic Mania isn't a fangame, its roots were deep from the Romhack community.  This represents cracking the door between what the fandom produces and what the corporate offices allow being available to consumers in a world were popular fangames and hacks result in cease and desist orders - which is why I think is very important to put Sonic Mania as the number 5 game of this console generation.

Number 4: Rocket League.  As of today, Rocket League is a now free to play game for better or for worse.  Rocket League is high-octane fun, blasting balls across various courts and fields such as basketball and football with fast automobiles but what it is most well known for is basically soccer with cars.  Rocket League is a lot of fun to play and has a large audience of  in the streaming and esports field which would be reason enough to put this game in a top 5 but what this game marks maybe even more importantly is cross console online play. While other games have and do continue to have online play across systems, back in March of 2016 Microsoft was very interested in allowing online play between Xbox One and other consoles them being extremely hopeful for Playstation 4 in particular, however Sony was holding out.  Sony was hesitant, citing their emphasis on providing a certain quality online experience but finally came to the party and in 2019 you could finally play Rocket League online with all your friends whether it be on PC, Xbox One, Switch, or Playstation 4. Since then we have had other games slowly roll out this feature such as Wargroove and the trend seems to be expanding.  I hope to see all games adopt this in the future and since Rocket League “birthed” this concept coming to the table for cross console online play for us all to enjoy, this is why I think Rocket League deserves the number 4 slot.

Number 3: Bloodborne/Dark Souls III.  This past generation and hell even to some extent decade, spanning to the PS3/Xbox 360, has lead us to compare every challenging game that comes out to Dark Souls.  Cuphead is the Dark Souls of run and gun shooters, Dead Cells is the Dark Souls of Metroidvanias, Celeste is the Dark Souls of platformers, etc.  While the meme of “X is like the Dark Souls of” is hard to find a concrete start, according to Google Trends this first seemed to spike in April of 2015 around the release of Bloodborne, the PS4 game created by FromSoftware.  While not technically a Dark Souls game, it was made by the same team and the game play and feel is very Dark Souls in the sense that I feel the phrase is used today, in contrast to the first two Dark Souls games.  Then we can see that in/and around October 2017 the trend has risen to its peak a little after a year and a half of the release of Dark Souls III.  While this justification may seem more flimsy and ultimately the Dark Souls brand was established in 2011, I do think Bloodborne/Dark Souls III is more in the zeitgeist, if you will, of the “X is like Dark Souls” comparison that has shaped the conversation of so many games today.

Number 2: Undertale.  Undertale is perhaps the darling of this generation. A game chock full of charm with multiple ways to approach it.  Will you save everyone, sacrifice everyone, or something in-between?  This game does look next gen, current gen or even comparable to past gen games until you hit perhaps the SNES or even late NES.  Maybe a number 2 spot is too high on list – this game didn't revolutionize the industry in ways that the other games on this list did nor was it the first anti-RPG of its kind, that would probably go to MOON, but Undertale just had such a powerful impact on gamers when it came out and became so unforgettable.  I feel like Undertale will be a game that we remember for a long time and to not include it in this list because its an indie game would be a real tragedy which segways me to my number 1 game.

Number 1: Shovel Knight.  Shovel Knight is the indie game that, I think, lead to the current boom of retro inspired indie games we have been enjoying.  A love letter to the NES games of the past such as Castlevania, Mega Man and Ducktales to name a few.  Shovel Knight wasn't the first retro inspired indie games but I feel like the attention to detail in trying to stay as true to what the hardware could run in terms of look, color, sound and pixel art with its overwhelming success showed that there was a market for these type of games.  Its success kickstarter in 2013 also showed that Kickstarter could be used as a viable platform to create indie games for a wider audience without having to rely on that Triple A model of good gaming synonymous with big budget corporate funding.  I firmly believe that we wouldn't have the great retro inspired games like Celeste and Dead Cells or the Kickstarter'd Yooka Laylee and Bloodstained or games that did both like Blasphemous if it wasn't for the hard-work and ingenuity that Yacht Club Games paved with Shovel Knight.

To use a popular Youtube cliché to conclude this list, “At the end of the day” I didn't make this list to put Game Informer or anyone's personal preferences down.  If you believe that they got the Top 5 games of the decade right that's perfectly ok and valid too, to have as your opinion.  I also want to reiterate that those five games – The Last of Us Part II, the Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Zelda Breath of the Wild and God of War are all important to this generation coming to a close as well in their own way.  While this list isn't my favorite games of the past generation, maybe I'll do that in the future, they are my subjective “best games list” of the past generation for what I think they did to the industry and you are free to agree, disagree, pick and choose between my list and Game Informers list or make a completely different list of your own.  I'm personally excited to see what the future of gaming has for us in this coming generation and optimistic for what's both around the corner and late into the next systems' life-cycle.  Happy gaming to you however you play.

Webpages noted: https://www.polygon.com/2020/9/17/21443683/nintendo-3ds-discontinued-lifetime-sales-hardware-software-units

https://www.fandom.com/articles/sonic-mania-just-nostalgia

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/15/15807138/sony-playstation-cross-network-play-xbox-block-response

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/were-ready-microsoft-says-about-xbox-one-ps4-cross/1100-6438654/

https://www.rocketleague.com/news/full-cross-platform-play-now-live-in-rocket-league/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yachtclubgames/shovel-knight

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidDAngelo/20140625/219383/Breaking_the_NES_for_Shovel_Knight.php

Games shown/referenced in the video:

The Last of Us Part 2

God of War

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Red Dead Redeption II

Witcher 3

PT / Silent Hill S

Sonic Mania

Rocket League

Blood Borne

Dark Souls III

Undertale

Shovel Knight

Shantae: Half Genie Hero

Cuphead

Celeste

Yooka Laylee

Mega Man 2

Ducktales

Castlevania

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Blasphemous

Dead Cells

Resident Evil 7

Resident Evil 8

Moon

Layers of Fear

The Park

Death Stranding

Bonus Footage:

Xbox Series X reveal trailer

PS5 reveal trailer

Also note: I messed up in the original video and said the phrase, “X is like Dark Souls of” spiked in April of 2015 when I should have said first peaked in January to April of 2015.  I noted it in the video but wanted to note it again, sorry.

Freedom Fighters - An Unceremonious Death

For the love of god let them die

Look, I like the Freedom Fighters. More the reboot than the preboot, they have less baggage, but still, I respect what they did. But if you’ve read my other dumb things you also know I think Red Dwarf USA had a real chance of working, so maybe I’m just insane.

Either way, this whole Rally For Sally business has been going around and disturbing the usual culprits from their dens and I feel I should say something.

“The American Canon“

This is a stupid sentence and yet thrown around as you like. There is no American canon, there is just “The Canon” and “Non-canon.” Believe it or not, the people who make the product get to decide what’s done with it and what is canon.

If you made something and then in France they made an entirely different story with concepts and themes you didn’t want to explore, you’d be hesitant about including or acknowledging it. Same with Sega of Japan.

But then why did Sega allow this to be made?

Well, I think this needs a tad bit of history behind it.

We’re going to the 90′s

Denim was in, the future was here, everything in 2000′s would be chrome and the Y2k bug was on the horizon.

Ohno

But Sega of Japan had an issue. Their arcade machines were selling like nobody’s business but they wanted that sweet console piece of the pie, but had no winning mascot. Alex Kidd, unfortunately, wasn’t moving as many consoles as they had hoped, god knows not enough to rival Mario.

They needed something cool, something different, somethi- It’s Sonic. You know it is, I know it is, I ain’t dragging this on.

It did well enough in Japan, but Sega was focusing on international markets with this game. It had a somewhat universal design, helped by the basis being Felix and Mickey Mouse which were popular around the world, with catchy songs based on both Japanese and American releases from the past.

It was going to be a hit.

Or... was it?

Did they need to do more?

Well, Sega doesn’t just have Sega of Japan. It had SOE and SOA as well. Europe and America respectively. Others too I’m sure but my memory’s off.

SoA and SoJ had a somewhat shaky relationship with each other, but then again, so did other companies back then. It was a new foray into public relations. Japan built the consoles that actually sold, America had to sell them, but there was a big gap between the countries, how things were interpreted, different values, and let’s not forget, American pride and greed.

AMERICA in the 90′s

SOJ needed this thing to sell big. Sonic was going to be a global success if they could help it. And let’s be honest, it was.

America had it’s own plans on what Sonic should be, and SOJ actually listened to some of them. Madeline Schroeder, product manager at the time for Sega in the US, actually went to Japan to say what she thought Sonic would be. As of this, they removed Madonna and Sonic’s tie-in with a band, as well as changing certain design traits in the US because “Sonic looked too Japanese.“

And then had the gall to call herself the “Mother Of Sonic”

Again, in a world where shitting on other people’s culture is a big no-no, and for good reason, how that managed to be fine is insane.

It’s a Japanese fucking product, Madeline.

Alongside this, as SOA hadn’t had much access to the Japanese backstories (although, the manuals should have been fine enough), when it came to marketing the games as an ongoing story (and ready in time for the cartoons they wanted to push) SOA made their own Sonic Bible, for use outside of non-Japanese territories.

This would have the seeds of what most people know, Freedom Fighters, Eggman once being good, Sonic being part of the good fight, etc.

[Astoundingly, when they made the cartoons and everything, Fleetway would be the one to actually stick closer to this than Archie/Satam/Underground/Aosth ever did so who’s talking about canon now huh]

Japan didn’t really notice nor take heed. One could make a good case for their complete obliviousness to what SOA was doing. You can tell because absolutely nothing from the bible/comics/magazine ever appeared in a Japanese Sonic game. Spinball was Sega Technical Institute, an American Division. Not Sega of Japan.

On top of this, as I see a bunch of people who go “Sega is disrespecting the American canon”, interesting fact. In Europe and Japan, the manual for Sonic CD clearly states Amy Rose is in the game. Sega of America actually edited this to say Sally, despite not going through and changing the sprites. If that’s not disrespect towards the creators of the games I don’t know what is.

The Canon

The problem I find with this is that, let’s be honest, if we had to look at this from an objective viewpoint:

Japan released a game.

America sought to profit off it, but didn’t like it was very much Japanese, not American.

They changed the story to be more American themed, changed the art design to look more American drawn, and ignored the Japanese additions to the games by editing out the Japanese characters in the manuals.

Because they wanted to profit off a different culture’s work by changing it wholesale so it didn’t resemble the culture it came from.

Nothing about SatAm’s premise or creation says anything about the original material it came from, just heavily adapted without any input from it’s creators to resemble a more American product.

You know how Japan saw Sonic?

This cute lad who acted more like a cartoon Felix the Cat type figure.

Now I get it, especially in the 90′s, everyone was localising. The markets weren’t as much the same, god knows they gave Ratchet attack eyebrows to be appealing etc.

But this was so anti-Japanese that the fact they were profiting at all from a Japanese product is insane.

Adventure

Ha

Back in Japan in the 90′s, they didn’t really have much of an idea what they were doing with the canon. They had plans but they seemed to be not as stable as they would have liked. The amount of games they were pumping out with different Eggman attacks and characters and if the GG games fit in with the MD games-

They needed something a bit more stable.

So when it was their time for their biggest game yet, they started to reign things in. In Japan. In Europe.

In America.

Sonic Adventure would be the basis for the stories for the next decade or so, with some revisions on what came before, what was mainline, what have you.

At this point, SOA’s cartoons had all died and the only thing remaining in the Sonic canon from that time was the Archie comic, still ongoing. But yet America still pulled this stuff off.

In the original script, Eggman is still Eggman. None of this “I AM DOCTOR ROBOTNIK, GENIUS OF THE WORLD” schtick.

No changing the manuals this time at least, so they’re getting better.

Over time, the only surviving things to come out of the canon, which Sega was nice enough to do considering, was

- Chilli-dogs - I HATE THAT HEDGEHOG - Robotnik being Maria’s surname

Didn’t you have something to say about the Freedom Fighters?

Why yes I do.

So, the Freedom Fighters for me, as much as I like them as , represent an American centrism. Not only was America not a Sega dominated market, for Nintendo did better and Europe was buying Sega consoles like candy, but the characters and show weren’t that popular outside the country anyway.

Ask someone in Europe in the 90′s who Sally Acorn was and unless they had access to a specific channel they wouldn’t have the first idea. Amy Rose, for sure, she was in the games. 

I didn’t know who Sally was until Mega Collection Plus came out, and the UK STILL manages to get Sonic games in the top of the charts when they come out.

Aosth was shown more abroad with more appeal, the comics weren’t sold internationally, let alone in Japan.

To be all “But these characters cemented the Western fanbase” is mental.

The comics sold somewhere in the tens of thousands in their hey-day. At the same time, Sonic games were selling millions. The comic and show are so old that unless you were part of the 20,000 buying the comics recently or pirated them, you don’t even know who they are.

Fleetway was the only Sonic comic we got in the UK, and there’s more fans that have grown up with Sonic Adventure being the basis which had absolutely no inspiration from the Western products.

These characters are relics of America taking the mick out of a Japanese product in order to make more money and produce shows.

To say they’ve made a big impact on Sonic in the world is really stretching it.

F.A.Q

But you said you liked the FF’s!

I do, but in the same way I like AU’s. It was interesting, of it’s time and it said a lot about the culture it was made in. Like, comparable to Tails gets Trolled or Fleetway

B-but I really like the FF’s!

Good for you, don’t let me stop you. Again, I like a bunch of the stories.

Are you a Japanese purist?

Fleetway is cool and I liked the Boom show, and I liked Robotnik better than Eggman as a name.

I heard that some Japanese fans actually liked the FF’s though...

And more power to them. Again, Red Dwarf USA does a lot to shit on what made the UK version so good but I respect what it tried to do. Again, even I like the FF’s to an extent.

Why did you write this all out?

Seeing all this Rally for Sally has brought out all the insane people who shout at SOJ for being gits for not respecting the American canon despite the American canon being born from a disrespect to the Japanese creators.

What about IDW?

Ironically I actually liked Reboot more but also I was younger when I read them.

What do you think of Tangle and Whisper getting in?

I need to read more of IDW but they’re good enough. As for getting in the games, these designs were vetted and passed through SOJ first and the comic is overseen by them. On top of this, T+W don’t come from a place of SOA taking the mick.

But Sega has used these characters before and ESTABLISHED this as canon why are they changing it now-

I see this a lot, usually with certain people. Dobson’s a good example of why this is stupid. When the Japanese revert changes made to characters like Mario/Zelda/Samus by the West, they didn’t radically change their personalities, they just reset them to what Japan intended.

Japan never intended for the FF’s, the three heavily contrasting cartoons and Knuckles is Jesus Christ Superstar.

They just reverted him back to the sole guy on Angel Island.

Do you think Sally should get in to Sonic Dash?

No more than I think Tekno or Sonia does. They’re old, irrelevant, gone. If they do get brought in for a cameo I’d be happy enough, I like dumb nods to non-canon things.

However, there are crazy people out there and you give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. Best to leave it.

Hotel?

Nilo Blues Pays Homage to Cult Anime Film Akira in “Akira Harakiri” [Premiere + Q&A]

Photo: Frank Lin

The city of Toronto never ceases to amaze us. What can arguably be considered the epicenter for a new wave of hip-hop, Toronto has become notorious for generating underground sensation after sensation. Through their cultivation of hypnotic and innovative soundscapes, to their impeccable flows and lyricism, Toronto has solidified an extensive roster of industry frontrunners, and Nilo Blues is proving to be the newest addition to the team.

Despite being a self-proclaimed poster child for Generation Z, the 21-year-old is anything but ordinary. Growing up in the Toronto art scene, Blues encompasses what it means to be a multi-hyphenate creative, utilizing his talents as a singer, rapper, dancer, and producer to tell stories that grapple with his Asian identity within the context of western society. 

His debut single, “No Risk Involved,” is an intrepid statement on Asian cultural identity and showcases how Blues’ struggle to live and create beyond rigid stereotypes has ultimately fueled him to pave his own way, in music and life. His nuanced and complex approach to the modern trap soundscape mirrors that of his own evolution and understanding of his own personal identity. Woven within his uncompromisingly honest storytelling and conviction lies the infectious hooks, melodic arrangements, and unsparing production of a true, multi-hyphenate artist. And despite “No Risk Involved” being the official introduction to his discography, we’re here to tell you that it’s just the tip of the iceberg for Blues.

As we patiently await his debut EP, set to release this summer, Blues gives us a peek at what’s to come with his most recent drop, “Akira Harakiri.” Explosive and audacious, this track has the power to cause havoc to the silencers of a corrupted system. Compiled within roaring trap-laden beats and terse hip-hop rhythms, Blues’ adroit vocals and dynamic fluidity convey a sense of fervor, all while challenging the status quo of Asian representation within American culture. 

“Akira Harakiri” pays homage to the anime that Blues grew up with, most notably the raw tenacity of Akira and the thriving energy of Dragonball Z, which influenced its sonic foundation and cinematic execution. In an effort to gain a more comprehensive understanding of his artistry, we spoke with Blues about his position in the current Toronto-trap soundscape and what motivates him to create breakout tracks like “No Risk Involved” and “Akira Harakiri.”    

Ones To Watch: It seems like dancing used to be a significant part of your life before music. What sparked your transition?

Nilo Blues: Growing up I was surrounded by music, whether it be at home or in the dance studio. I always had this natural appreciation for music grow in me because of all the different sounds I was surrounded by. I remember having 10-hour dance rehearsal days and then coming home to record photo booth videos of me and my best friend spitting melodies and lyrics over beats we found. I started producing at 16 when I discovered the iMaschine app for iPhone. I would spend hours trying to cook up beats until one day I decided to learn Ableton Live. My mentor cracked it on my laptop and started showing me the ropes, instantly I was hooked. My musical journey honestly started out from me just wanting to make music I could dance to. I owe a lot of myself to dance. 100%.

Has being a dancer influenced your creative process at all?

Dance has influenced me creatively in many different aspects of the process. Growing up as a dancer, you immediately instill a high level of discipline and work ethic as a young child. We were training like athletes and expressing like actors. It shaped the way I hear music (especially my own), it developed my approach on execution and staying on my P’s and Q’s, and it allows me to perform and add a visual component to the sonics. I grew up admiring Michael Jackson, James Brown, JT, Usher and now Bruno Mars. They all hold all aspects of their art to such a high standard. I’m trying to set that exact same standard and quality, through my own vernacular.

Growing up in what can be considered as the epicenter of Canadian hip-hop, do you think Toronto, and the artists that have put it on the map, have influenced your sound at all?

I started learning how to make music right when the 2015-2016 Toronto rap boom happened, so definitely. I feel like Toronto artists collectively do such an amazing job at emulating the vibe of Toronto. At a time where Toronto was only synonymous with Drake (the GOAT), The Weeknd, and PND, Toronto artists really stepped up to the plate and let the world hear the type of shit we’re on. It's super inspiring, and I just want to keep pushing the envelope. I’m trying to land where no one has before, and make my mark in everything I set my mind to. I’m hungry and I want to get great shit done. I thank Toronto and the lively music scene in the city for sparking that.

Your first single “No Risk Involved” highlights the misrepresentation of Asian identity in mainstream culture. Why was it so important for you to create your own narrative and debunk westernized versions of Asian culture and identity?

My family was the main inspiration for wanting to evoke that conversation. Western media loves to exploit the great ideas from different cultures without ever giving credit to the cultures that cultivated them to begin with. They perpetuate false narratives and generalize us in order to keep control. I’ve seen what my family has gone through in order to even be here. My mom is Filipino, and my dad is Viet-Chin, so I’ve had my fair share of perspectives at a young age. One thing I can guarantee is that Asians aren’t as one-dimensional as the media portrays us to be. It’s about genuinely telling our stories, and being able to control the narrative in the world we share with the culture.

How was it filming the “No Risk Involved” video? Did you have a vision for how you wanted it to look?

It was amazing. I definitely felt back in my element while performing on-screen. The positive energy and hard work by everyone on set was the difference-maker. I feel like that energy shines through the video. I’m so grateful to have had such an amazing cast and crew, they fucking killed it. As for the concept, NRI was one of the very first concepts I started developing with my team. Had my first meeting with Angelica Milash, the director of the video, and everything clicked. The inspiration was drawn from aesthetics you’d see in legendary Hong Kong movies like Young & Dangerous. We also based the female looks on different characters from movies that included Asian characters with exaggerated Asian female stereotypes.

You once tweeted “I love good music but when an artist can pull off a great visual it tells you a lot about that artist.” Do you think it’s important for artists to be active creative directors in the videos they come out with?

Personally, I love dipping my fingers in every pot when it comes to my creative direction. I believe it takes a strong team in order to create beautiful shit, and, as the artist, I want to lead the team to victory. If one of us wins, we all win. Being active as a leader is what’s important. Sharing ideas, and building with the people around you. That’s how the best ideas shine through. You just gotta be a leader with this shit. Take control of your vision and work together to execute. If you aren’t paying attention to every aspect of your craft, you’re only going to see one perspective. At the end of the day, no one will execute your own ideas better than yourself. We all have that capability.

Your newest single “Akira Harakiri” is inspired by the 1988 cult cyberpunk film Akira. How did this iconic anime influence your lyrical and production process?

I wanted the essence of the track to emulate the same essence of the movie. The production was what sparked the idea. Colin Munroe was working on the beat while we bounced ideas around and I instantly felt the beat belonged in an anime. Akira was an automatic click. This song is supposed to feel like a song The Capsules gang would bump around Neo-Tokyo. I loved the dynamic between Kaneda and Tetsuo in the film, and wanted to combine the charisma and poise of Kaneda with the maniacal energy of Tetsuo. That’s also something I want to tap into on the visual component as well. This song is an homage to a visual masterpiece, as well as an iconic moment in film and culture.

What are some of your favorite anime films?

I grew up watching anime on TV like Dragonball Z, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokémon, Digimon. As I grew older, I wasn’t exposed to as much as before, but I rediscovered my love for it in high school when I binge-watched Death Note twice in succession. Now I’m trying to watch as much as possible. I feel like I have so much to catch up on lol.

What are some of your goals for 2020? Both as an artist and as a human being?

I want to work on killing the urge of having a cigarette or vaping again. I quit at the end of 2019, and started working out four times a day with my trainer. I’m trying to stay consistent in doing my laundry but that shit fucking sucks. I'm trying to meditate more, as I’ve recently picked up on transcendental meditation and want to keep consistent. Other than that I wanna keep dropping cool shit and repping what I know best. I wanna keep pushing myself to my limits and keep evolving. I hope people find strength in my music and I want to evoke new thought and conversation.

What can we expect to hear more of in your future projects?

More genuine energy. You’ll definitely be able to feel exactly how I felt when creating the music, from the growing pains to the gratitude. More singing too. You’ll be able to identify the spectrum of my sound, and how dynamic it is.

Who are your Ones to Watch?

I’ve been on my hip-hop shit as of late, so I’ve been bumping a lot of Kaash Paige, Fivio Foreign, The Kid LAROI and shit. Deb Never is an artist that I've been wanting to work with personally. Out of Toronto, definitely keep your eye out for Stefani Kimber. One of the most talented artists I’ve ever heard and a great human being. She’s definitely one of my top Ones to Watch artists.

Rap Beast: Reminiscing the yesteryear with Malaysian’s hip hop future, Quai

The Underground Archives sits down with the up-and-coming rap personality, Quai to talk about his musical beginnings and the close friendship between him and his other artiste friends including with that of the breakout rap star, Gard.

Words by Ainaa Amirrah

Self-taught rapper, Quai proves to our local rap scene of his ability to ace as a full-time musician despite having kick-started his move independently since the very start. Having been actively surfing the scene since 2017, the man has been compared and tallied to the American rap artiste, Travis Scott, particularly for the nature of his sonic direction.

Always attempting fates, Quai tells that he never had any plan in continuing studies or even producing music right away after graduating from high school. The initial idea of producing music came from his close friends, when they had an epiphany in wanting to write and produce their own songs. Having heartily moved with the decision, he started with recording his voice by using the phone while he still had no YouTube channel or any other social media accounts to share his music with at the time. During his early days of becoming a rap artiste and being involved with the underground rap scene, he tells that he would usually his recorded music with his circle of friends for them to have a listen to it to which they would then embolden him to upload his songs on the YouTube. This was also the time when he would meet and start hanging out with the kids from tastas classofpoets, where he had met Kloud$, who had taught him all the he needed to know about English.

Consequently, the friendship that has been forged through art would see him coming out with the infectiously catchy, hook-minded track published in October 2018, “Wa Cau Lu”, and joined by two other dynamic rappers from tastas classofpoets, Heidi (formerly known as Hades) and Kloud$. Having been compared to that of Travis Scott’s potent highlights “Stargazing” and “Butterfly Effect” off the multi-platinum album Astroworld which was released during August of the same year, Quai shares that “Wa Cau Lu” was first made using the instrumental music that he found from YouTube to which, a fellow producer, Puffie Top later decided to remake the beat and reproduce the existing track, with the same vibe.

A realist such as Quai admits to having splurged his personality through his music. In the process of producing tracks, his concept has been stoned as; one had to be honest and put intention as first out of all things. His first rap was produced with beat he found on YouTube. With time, DMent Si Lain advised him to start producing his own music, enabling him as a ‘legit’ independent artiste. Working milliseconds after he got inspired, Quai is the kind of guy that will never let any drip of inspirations goes by. He admits to spending eight hours to produce his first beat. With time, it got shorter as he learned the process, step by step, carefully curated. First year in producing music, he learned how to write bars, and then mixing and making beats, and subsequently mastering.

DMent Si Lain or what Quai would call as “don” is the individual who’s responsible in teaching him the writing skills since the age of 17. Growing up, Quai listened to 5forty2, a long-standing rap group that DMent’s part of, since he was 11-year-old. “5forty2’s presence in the underground rap scene was like in the middle of the era. This makes their music and songs relevant for us to listen to even until now. The unfiltered, explicit ‘bahasa pasar’ rap, that’s the real thing! Imagine the 11-year-old me was listening to those kind of songs which really inspired me even until now,”

“It’s irony to think because when I grew up, I listened to DMent but eventually, when I’m finally a grown-up, I ended up being part of Akatsuki, a rap group that actually includes DMent. DMent is like a big brother to me; I remember being a fan of him when I were in Standard 5. I messaged him on Facebook saying “I’ve just listened to his song, I like him so much” and he humbly replied saying thank you,” he says, continuing: “I used to ask him if he still remembers the kid version of me. Funnily, he said he’s already forgotten about it because it’s been a long time.”

Quai opens up about his struggles with money management during his early days of starting out in this scene. “One of the privations I had to face with what I’m doing was budget. I had no money in the first place. I did it all by myself. I started saving up and doing part-time jobs. I started recording by using only my phone and earphones that had a mic on it.”

The first song he ever recorded using his phone and uploaded on the YouTube was “Anti”. “When I thought of its quality again, I decided to upgrade it. I studied more about mics and stuff and eventually bought the proper equipment in order to make music. For me, the most important thing is to set a standard quality on your music then the good lyrics. Essentially, both needs to be in a balance check.”

Starting off, he experienced all the things at once; from learning to make beats, being taught by his generous friends and also getting the invitations to perform at gigs. This marked the starting point of him making connections with people within the scene. He remembers his first hip hop show at Uptown Puchong. “I overcome my stage fright with the help from the OGs. They told me to chill and tell myself that I got this. Honestly, my stage fright is still somewhere around, waiting to jump on me whenever I’m performing live.”

Touching on his close friendship with a fellow breakout rap star, Gard, it is revealed that the two first found each other through Instagram where they talked and became instantly clicked; recently, the two got together rendering the heart-wrenching piece, “Mesin Masa” in Gard’s collaborative breakthrough studio effort, GARD WUZGUT’s CPR (Club Perenang Rohani). Being asked about the story leading up to his verses in “Mesin Masa”. “Untuk jiwa-jiwa 3 AM,” incepts him briefly before he would tell the whole story behind his part in “Mesin Masa”.

Having taken from GARD WUZGUT’s breakthrough extended play, CPR (Club Perenang Rohani), the track features Quai who wrote the verses while he was still in his past relationship. During the process of writing the lyrics, he confides to having locked himself in a dark room to listen to the beat of “Mesin Masa” as he had the melody felt directly right into his heart. It was as if the music knew what he had felt at the moment, heartbroken. Ironically, Quai admits that he broke up during the process of recording, which eventually assisted him to feel every word that he sung in the song.

Prior to having another collaborative breakthrough in “Mesin Masa” after that of “Wa Cau Lu” with Heidi and Kloud$, Quai and Gard have previously actively banded together including that for a 2017’s track, “Hell’O” and 2018’s track, “CREWS ONLY”. Shares him, “Hell’O” is his first trap-infused track where he eventually transitioned from producing the usual boom bap beats to trap beats, due to his personal observation towards the crowd’s interest in local music. He had experimented with such beats three years back to which he eventually realised that he had a humongous potential in producing trap music. “Honestly, I’ve been a lost man, but I slowly found myself in trap music. Trust that you got to just give yourself time and never stop learning.”

Being asked to share his piece of mind about CPR (Club Perenang Rohani), Quai expresses his amusement, where he even highlights “Wonderland” as a groovy track that you cannot not dance to it. Amused and inspired by Gard’s mixed talent of randomness and coolness, Quai tells, initially, he didn’t really get the gist of Gard’s way of expressing himself through his lyrics. But after a few times of having himself visited Gard’s bodies of work, he became immediately influenced and absorbed with the latter’s music. “I believe that Gard is the one who started to influence trap music in Malaysia. He was the one who first recognized my sound as Travis’ and he has always been the one who would motivate me to keep going even to this day.”

He describes Gard as a humble man, and the fact that Gard was under a record label at the time, made him excited when the latter had asked him to collaborate in producing songs. “Despite having already established himself as a record artiste at the time, he understood that I was still very new in this scene and he was very patient with my learning process.”

The original article was first published in The Underground Archives (Print Edition) Volume 2.

Classical Music Coming Full Circle:

Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven by Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s 2000 album “Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven” reminds us that classical music -although less relevant in today’s culture industry- has resurfaced in a striking new format. In loose terms, this record can act as a leading pseudo-classical/popular music album due to its melodic structures and “movement”-esque songs. Combining general pop music and classical music elements, it asks listeners the question, “has the separation of classical and pop come full circle without us batting an eye”? In short, yes, as I’ll discuss and elaborate on this paper. The concrete elements in sound, compositional structure, playback formats and instrumental arrangements aid in conceiving this milieu that Godspeed You, Black Emperor have created for the future of both post-rock albums as well as concept albums across the board. The culmination of these two distinct categories in music have merged elegantly and hatched the ideas of classical music built for playback, religious music concept albums, popular music in movements and the end of the classical and pop music divide.

The conception of popular music as a distinct sector of the culture industry in western societies was fueled by the broadcasting capabilities of radio stations and their monopolistic power over the media that they promote. This transition in playback technology created a marketing shift in the music-making itself, which is where the standardization of song structures becomes native in the writing process of the contemporary artist. A clear divide between what is considered classical vs. popular becomes more visible as the popular song structures and popular media promoted this idea of classical music being either dated or lacklustre in its absence of marketability as compared to pop music ideals. In the context of WWII’s technology boom, FM radio was created for broadcast leaving an important timestamp on the year 1935. As radio became one of the most prevalent sources for music playback, the artists and genres that were getting airplay created this faux facade of what the music of the day was as a whole. As many music historians would theorize, classical music by definition is written to be played and experienced at a venue for music and performed by a live symphony orchestra or arrangement of trained musicians. With new playback technology that extends far beyond the radio stations in a specific area, musicians can choose to create albums without singles or they can even make music that is made to be heard exclusively as a recorded piece. This shift is significant in the grand scheme of music and its broadcasting due to the fact that a large majority of formal western art music was only available to those that were able to attend a live performance. This limitation created barriers for some of the most highly acclaimed music with social class exclusivity, geographic exclusivity and racial exclusivity in examples like Beethoven’s 5th during The Third Reich in WWII Germany. Although live performances have remained commonplace within most of contemporary musicians’ distribution and marketing of music, there is a significant difference between the format of Handel’s Water Music (1717) and Metallica’s 18th show in Tokyo (2013) as a general example. Two key factors that distinguish a classical music performance from a popular music show -among many- include the order of songs with relevance to their discography and the sonic separation between live and recorded version of the music (including the addition of covers or altered renditions of songs ie. acoustic versions). Godspeed You! Black Emperor, along with many other conscious musical groups, typically write concept albums with a harmonious theme that spans the duration of each album. It creates a layer beyond the sound and the thematic elements that are lightly incorporated in singles while giving the sonic arrangement a texture that propels the over-arching narrative. In the unique case of their 2000 release, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, each track is between 18 and 24 minutes in length which by itself is significant enough to give indices for the concept on the record. Structurally, this album is almost an hour and a half in length while sharing the “gesamtkunstwerk” quality of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with only four songs -and sections within them- yet confines to the classification of popular music. Void of choruses, verses or musical lyrics, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven eliminates the barrier between orchestral movements and recorded songs. The record as a whole has been played front to back by the band in rare occasions on tour, but their live performances always feature a sequential order of tracks coherent with the record, as their songs are often these pseudo-movements that require a recapitulation or further exposition depending on the order of playback. These rock performances are anomalous, not only for their sound character but the etiquette that is learned then assumed by the audience members. The powerful and sobering shows are enough to make any listeners pause and enjoy the extravagance in its underlying complexity, a trait that is commonly associated with live classical performances. Music critic Bob Massey highlights these obscure elements of their live set and argues that they are precisely what push the overall extravagance, quoted as follows. “During the song's driving fugue, one bespectacled woman squatted on the floor, holding her head in her hands and swaying in time…”. As seen in a more formal example, Godspeed You! Black Emperor delivered an intense build to their 1997 awe-inspiring piece Dead Flag Blues with an inferred political context. This more recent performance of the song came shortly after the American federal election in 2017 that was won by the notoriously polarizing republican, Donald Trump. Just under 20 years after the original release of the record, Godspeed gave the song a new relevance with an orchestral delivery for a crowd to listen to in solitude. Without background information on the song or the band, the denouement of the performance indicated very early on that this wasn’t meant to be danced, clapped and sang along to, as with the majority of classical pieces. The playback of Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven serves as a staple for dismembering any generalizations for the modern musical historian’s theses on the dissimilation of classical and popular music.

With album concepts in mind, it is important to identify liturgical and secular music in both classical and non-classical music. Due to the fact that thematic concepts in music extend far beyond western art music, it becomes difficult to associate a sound with a faith or a faith with a musical structure. Whether music advocates for the practice of religion or discredits it, the context of either serves an important role in the world of music and the socio-political commentary that accompanies it. Dating back to 1741, examples like Handel’s Messiah holds a place in the heart of patrons of catholic faith and was even supported heavily by the church in its creation and initial performance. Alternatively, certain portions of the rhetoric in Bach’s Libretto includes anti-semitic messages and elitist Catholic themes to discredit the Jewish faith.  A careful dissection of Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven reveals an almost sacrilegious element to its narrative with a satirical representation of the church and its ambiguities on the second movement of the album appropriately titled “Static”. The ambiguities are hidden in the song as the religious text finds hope in this praise of a higher power, while the instrumental breaks the listener down to the point of ultimate despair in its sonic qualities. In the Early baroque period, religious music was originally required to omit polyphony in melodies as it was deemed “sacrilegious” by the church. Under these rules set by the Council of Trent, Godspeed You! Black Emperor would be effectively attacking Catholicism with a droning and irregular melodic progression. Contrasting this melodic structure, the recording and script used in the spoken vocal sample is eerily seductive and worth exploring to enhance the understanding of the album as a whole as the following lyrics demonstrate.

“It takes dedication / It takes a death / And only God can allow it / And you couldn't do it if you're not the seed of God / And so the path through the great corridors / These are corridors unto his perfection

/ That is which the prophet and the Urim and Thummim has penetrated”

Creating this barrier of exclusivity in sermon, the message illustrates the great nobility that it requires to be religious and to received by God and his praise, creating an ambiguity to the notion of Catholicism for all. The following 15 minutes of “Static” are comprised of a droning violin exposition that is built on with a relentless melody played by a cello. Before the percussion arrives to terrify the sound, listeners are already experiencing the cryptic and dystopian direction of each measure which serves as the juxtaposing element to the sampled vocal passage. As mentioned earlier, it would be impossible to create a universal generalization for a connection of faith to genre or religious intent of a record on the same basis; however, a link to the complexity and duration of faith promotion as an overall theme of a piece of music can be heavily attributed to classical works over pop albums in general. Although the main explicitly religious portion appears only on “Static”, further research of the album carries the theme in more subtle examples.  

Across the board, an industry standard for rock bands is three to five band members in live and recorded performances. This allows bands like Rush with three members to have a bassist/lead singer, lead guitarist/secondary voice and percussionist, while five piece bands like Radiohead have a singer/pianist, lead guitarist, bass guitarist, rhythm guitarist and drummer. Although the broad genre of Rock has a significant number of bands that don’t fit the confines of this generalization, there is a noteworthy contrast between these averages and Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s 11 piece band on Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven. Their current record label, Constellation Records, lists band members for this album in particular as “...Aidan, Bruce, David, Efrim, Mauro, Norsola, Roger, Sophie, Thierry…” with “Brian and Alfons” on horns. The instrumental arrangement includes two bass guitarists, two electric guitarists, two percussionists, two horns, the cello and the violin which accounts for all instrument families of a textbook symphony orchestra excluding woodwinds. Because of this arrangement, it isn’t far off to label the group as an orchestra of sorts, further revealing the connection to their revival of a classical music structure.

Extending far beyond the standard structure of song length and album running time in rock and music of the 2000’s, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven demands dissection from the record credits alone. Given the fact that popular music was generally released on LPs (<45 min.), Cassette Tapes(<60 min.) and CDs (<79.8 min.) from the second half of the 20th century up until the release of L.Y.S.F.L.A.T.H., it’s evident that G.Y!B.E. had no intention of getting their money’s worth by filling the space on a double CD, double LP or compact cassette for that matter. The running time and 4-movement structure is obscure enough to be reminiscent of classical symphonies of the “mature classic symphony” era. Effectively utilizing a fugue structure to build, express, captivate then release, this record uses a familiar format in a new light to express new ideas with a textbook structure. A fugue is constructed of an exposition, an episode, a subject statement and then finalized with a return to the episode. “Storm” introduces the album with a triumphant march that fluctuates around 98 beats per minute to introduce the anthemic theme that is being presented. “Static” and “Like Antennas to Heaven” act as episodes in which the main theme of the album are being overtly stated through vocal samples and song titles to match the instrumentation. Whether or not these similarities between classical music examples and Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven were coincidental or carefully crafted by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the record serves as a yardstick in the evolution of music as it fuses a divide that was created less than a century before its conception.

As contemporary music slowly becomes a saturated amalgamation of genres and areas of thought, it becomes more and more important to identify the significance of the conception of genres and their historical context. We find ourselves overloaded with content and must rethink things like the infamous branding of classical music as “boring” composition. To counter this argument, the billboard chart and critical success of the album is telling of the trend that can potentially follow it. Sonic resemblances to this album and structural form similarities appear on more recent records like Swans “To Be Kind” (2014) where the chart success proved to be another exposition of classical music sneaking its way back into the realm of popular music with great success. Although evolution is at stake when we fail to change and update, an objectively powerful quality is present in many century and several century old eras of music. As the separation between both sectors of music becomes more evident, the more appropriate generalization stands to say that the classical-ness of a record or pop-ness is all based on a spectrum as opposed to the polarizing distinction that we have been convinced exists. Godspeed You! Black Emperor makes use of many classical music elements to create an immersive and intense record that is worthy of finding itself in a milieu that stands with one leg in popular music while keeping their balance with the other foot in a truly classical music setting, creating an elegant staple in modern music history.

Classic/10

-C

MOON DUO share 3rd single from new dance-inspired album

'Stars Are The Light' - out Sept 27 on Sacred Bones. Hear "Eternal Shore". Today Moon Duo share the final pre-release single, “Eternal Shore,” taken from their new album, 'Stars Are The Light', out September 27th on Sacred Bones. It follows the previously released title track and “Lost Heads.” Across “Eternal Shore,” Sanae Yamada’s hazy vocals drift over reverberating synth and flitting guitar licks. She says: “The lyrics are about the search for a sense of belonging and for the truth of one’s inner being, beneath the masks we’re conditioned to wear in order to function in society.” “We were experimenting with a lot of different rhythms for this record, and this one is in 5/8ths time, which is a real departure for us,” continues Ripley Johnson. “It moves us further away from the classic motorik beat. And it’s special because it’s the first song on which Sanae wrote the lyrics and sings lead.” https://youtu.be/AEpR3JQnGWQ The band’s Sanae Yamada comments: “We have changed, the nature of our collaboration has changed, the world has changed, and we wanted the new music to reflect that.” These are songs about embodied human experience — love, change, misunderstanding, internal struggle, joy, misery, alienation, discord, harmony, celebration — rendered as a kind of dance of the self, both in relation to other selves and to the eternal dance of the cosmos. Taking disco as its groove-oriented departure point, ‘Stars Are the Light’ shimmers with elements of ’70s funk and ’90s rave. Johnson’s signature guitar sound is at its most languid and refined, while Yamada’s synths and oneiric vocals are foregrounded to create a spacious percussiveness that invites the body to move with its mesmeric rhythms. With Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3, Spectrum) at the mixing desk in Portugal’s Serra de Sintra, (known to the Romans as “The Mountains of the Moon”) the area’s lush landscape and powerful lunar energies exerted a strong influence on the vibe and sonic texture of the album. On embracing disco as an inspiration, Yamada says, “It’s something we hadn’t referenced in our music before, but its core concepts really align with what we were circling around as we made the album. Disco is dance music, first and foremost, and we were digging our way into the idea of this endless dance of bodies in nature. We were also very inspired by the space and community of a disco – a space of free self-expression through dance, fashion, and mode of being; where everyone was welcome, diversity was celebrated, and identity could be fluid; where the life force that animates each of us differently could flower.” ‘Stars Are The Light’ will be released on September 27th via Sacred Bones. Pre-order here.  Moon Duo live dates (all tickets on sale Fri June 28th): Oct 17 Ghent Videodroom Oct 18 Krakow Małopolski Garden Of The Arts Oct 20 Amsterdam Paradiso Noord Oct 21 Berlin Volksbuhne Oct 23 Zurich Bogen F Oct 24 Vevey Rocking Chair Oct 26 Angers Le Chabada Oct 28 London EartH Oct 29 Manchester Dancehouse Oct 30 Liverpool Invisible Wind Factory Oct 31 Glasgow BAAD Nov 1 Birmingham The Crossing Nov 2 Leeds Brudenell Nov 3 Gateshead The Sage Nov 4 Brighton St Bartholomew's Church Nov 5 Paris Petit Bain Nov 6 Charleroi Rockerill Nov 7 Luxembourg De Gudde Wëllen Nov 9 Utrecht Le Guess Who Nov 12 Brooklyn Music Hall of Williamsburg Nov 13 Philly Underground Arts Nov 14 Washington DC Rock & Roll Hotel Nov 15 Kingston Raven Sings the Blues @ Kingston BSP Nov 16 Montreal SAT Nov 18 Toronto Longboat Hall Nov 19 Detroit MOCAD Nov 20 Chicago Thalia Hall Nov 22 LA Lodge Room Nov 23 San Francisco The New Parish Nov 25 Portland Wonder Ballroom Nov 26 Seattle Neumos Nov 27 Vancouver Venue ‘Stars Are The Light’ track list: 1. Flying 2. Stars Are The Light 3. Fall In Your Love 4. The World And The Sun 5. Lost Heads 6. Eternal Shore 7. Eye 2 Eye 8. Fever Night Read the full article

Janelle Monae’s Grammy-Nominated ‘Dirty Computer’ Is The Album Black Women Need Right Now

Getty Image/Bad Boy Records

“I go forth alone and stand as 10,000.” — Maya Angelou

As the opener of Janelle Monae’s newest record bursts into its second track, the fluorescent pop-rap fusion of “Crazy Classic Life,” I can hear traces of the expansive synth-crazed ‘80s I was born into. Legwarmers and big hair; Phil Collins and Boy George; Flashdance and Pretty In Pink. And, of course, the way the song’s booming, frolicky production is complicated by lyrics of impending doom, “So if the world should end tonight / I had a crazy, classic life.” That last line of that otherwise upbeat hook feels holy, immortal — and timely.

When I listened to Dirty Computer for the first time, it was like hearing my Black, blue-collar, southern girlhood set to a soundtrack of big, bright ‘80s pop — only this time with the mic in my hands. For all my infatuation with the music and culture of the ‘80s, there had been a gulf between me and Sixteen Candles’ Molly Ringwald, between me and even the inevitably doomed Culture Club hook I still remember by heart: “Time won’t give me time…” Even as I watched the culture from somewhere outside it and sang along to its music, I wondered if there could ever be a time when the gulf between us would lessen — a moment in which the culture I idolized might fully be mine.

Beginning with the Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase) EP, set in the year 2719, Janelle Monae introduced her alter-ego Cyndi Mayweather, a genre-hopping, Black female android who was being hunted for the crime of falling in love with a human. Cyndi’s epic cyborg saga developed further on 2010’s critically acclaimed The ArchAndroid — a supersonic admixture of R&B and funk threaded with rock, euro-folk, rap, and cabaret — and a project that cemented Janelle as the kind of artist my college professor would call a “cat on a hot tin roof.” Or, more directly, a transgressor of genre lines, lyrically, visually, and sonically.

Noted for bringing Afrofuturism and science fiction into R&B and pop in a big way, Monae’s music has been compared to George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, her beloved former mentor Prince, and Sun Ra. Over the course of a decade and three project releases, Monae built an Afrofuturist femme-ruled universe in which she reigned as “funkstress,” defying easy categorization and, according to scholars, re-framing a historically male-centered Afrofuturism like Clinton’s into a neo-Afrofuturism that centers black women — an extraordinary feat for an artist still as early in her career as Monae.

On Dirty Computer, which is considered by some to be a sort of prequel to Cyndi Mayweather’s universe, Monae’s decade-long Afrofuturist world-building collides into biomythography, a literary genre that merges history, fact, and myth. Coupled with the fact that the album’s massive Grammy nominations precede Cyndi Mayweather’s lush 2719 “cybersoul” funkscape by exactly 700 years, the project’s timing feels mythic and magical — as if Janelle can manipulate time and space themselves to reflect her reality.

Audre Lorde coined the term “biomythography” in 1982 to house her newest project Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. The self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” created the category in response to the limitations of the genres she’d been tethered to her whole career. A convergence of history, memoir, and myth, biomythography was a space where Lorde could represent her queered, Black, working-class womanhood without the socio-political limitations of established genres that were already irrevocably male-centered and heteronormative minded. Within this new form, Lorde created a space where she could be feminine and masculine to a degree that was unacceptable to the “mainstream” literary canon or, put more simply, be her entire self.

In the case for Dirty Computer as biomythography, the “myth” is embedded in the album’s Android saga backstory. Because of it, we can see three women in Dirty Computer’s cover art: Cyndi Mayweather, Janelle Monae, and Jane 57821. Here, myth and magic create a space for the reclamation of female autonomy flying in the face of powerful, oppressive men and contextualizing female rebellion against misogyny as both an epic and a timely battle. Consider the pointed lyrical rebuttal of “I Got the Juice.” In this instance, pussy is mythical, “divine,” and has political power: It will “grab you back” and give you “pussy cataracts.” This phrasing is threaded with myth, but also functions as a real response to one of the most misogynist comments in America’s pop culture memory.

Dirty Computer’s accompanying emotion picture opens amid a cultural “cleaning” of epic proportions. As mugshot-like photos of citizens appear one after the other, Jane 57821 narrates: “They started calling us computers. People began vanishing. And the cleaning began.” Jane explains the qualifications for said cleaning — “You were dirty if you looked different. You were dirty if you refused to live the way they dictated…” — before an all-important concept emerges in the exposition’s final word, appearing on the screen just as Jane concludes: “If you were dirty, it was only a matter of time.”

Time is, in fact, the major difference between Dirty Computer and its Android saga predecessors. Monae croons in the album’s opener: “I’ll love you in this space and time,” and unlike her past work, this album’s footing is firmly in the present. In a conversation with Billboard Monae said of the project: “Overall, I wanted to reflect what’s happening in the streets right now, and what might happen tomorrow if we don’t band together and fight for love.” This is not Cyndi Mayweather’s Afrofuturist funkscape future: This is Jane 57821’s buoyant, dirty, complicated pop present where she must take full ownership of the narrative.

Dirty Computer also feels biomythographical because of its position in real time and also because of its insistence on complete ownership. Lorde created biomythography out of a very real urgency to fully manifest her multifaceted identity, to define her work as she pleased, and Dirty Computer takes the same stand. On songs like “Americans” in which present day fact and historical memory collide, Monae takes “Americans” to task for racism, sexism, and heterosexism, transforming the word “American” into a loaded, often pejorative descriptor, but still insisting matter of factly: “I’m American.” This seeming contradiction re-frames the term to center the perspective of those historically oppressed and shows Monae, again, claiming full ownership of all facets of her own narrative.

On “Django Jane,” Monae uses rap not only as a means of “leveling up” to the male-dominated hip-hop industry, proving she can flow as well as any of the boys, but as a means of unearthing rap’s historical self — as a sociopolitical expression, from the mouth of a queer, dark-skinned Black woman, no less — tucked neatly into what is overall a sonically pop-oriented record. She dedicates her Emmy to the “highly melanated / arch-Android orchestrated” before the thread of inevitable doom resurfaces: “…tuck the pearls in / just in case the world end.” Taken together, the lines celebrate Blackness at the same time they express a hyper-awareness of its dangers.

In the same Billboard conversation where Monae references the album’s timeliness, she also says: “I’ve been inspired by the people that came before me, the artists who pushed the limits of where music can go and how it can be represented visually.” It goes without saying that Monae understands her place in the present historical moment — and that she also sees herself in the long lineage of Black women before her. And though Dirty Computer is Janelle’s most personal album, the very idea of myth implies a shrouded-ness; its presence next to fact infers a degree of mystery, that even some of the facts will be veiled just as the album cover’s deified pop icon. On “I Like That” when Monae calls herself a “walking contradiction” who is “factual and fiction,” she leaves room not just for ambiguity, but the ambiguity of her choosing.

Dirty Computer, like Lorde’s Zami, takes the fact and history of Black suffering, joy, and being and wraps it in the magic of myth, making legendary meaning of the “meaningless” lives of Black women both past and present, from Lorde and Monae to their working-class mothers and beyond. In biomythography, one woman stands for many; the not one, but three possible faces we see in Dirty Computer’s album art. The elusive ambiguity that marks Dirty Computer is also its purest artistic element: Its intent, as part myth, is to memorialize the Black queer working women who were buried in unmarked pop culture graves before Monae came along to valorize them. Monae’s true work is to allow those at the paralyzed margins to take their rightful place in history and legend, creating a loving, inclusive center within the finicky confines of a bleeding pop beating heart specifically for those who have been traditionally excluded.

Dirty Computer is as important as a pop album as it is a historical moment, because it dares to center the personal (and, therefore, political) struggle of a dark-skinned, Black, pansexual woman for a pop audience not traditionally welcoming of “The Other.” Dirty Computer says that the complex embodiment of my extremes is not only possible but heroic. It bridges the gulf between me and popular culture — insists that its music can be fully mine.

Whether it wins any of the many Grammys it’s been nominated for or not, Dirty Computer is the past, present, and future aligning like stars — a biomythographically infused pop album that sings, raps, and leaps in celebration of infinitely complex outcasts like Lorde and Monae who birth new genres in the face of opposition. As Maya Angelou wrote in homage to her foremothers: “I go forth alone and stand as 10,000.” Wherever Monae lands on Grammy night, she already shines as a mythic many — Lorde and all our gloriously queer, complicated ancestors shine in her constellation.

source https://uproxx.com/hiphop/janelle-monae-dirty-computer-audre-lorde-biomythography/

NOLA's Grosser Gets Personal; Raps, Relationships, and Reality on His New Project "PONY"

Photography: Connor Crawford

Rarely does a project from an underground artist manage to strike the intricate three-way balance between raw emotional content, well executed and thoughtful rhyming finesse, and most importantly, organized packaging that is clear and concise. New Orleans based artist Grosser manages to check off all three of these boxes on his second project “Pony,” released January 21st

Production wise, “Pony” is a refreshing menagerie of booming, lo-fi production that thumps with percussive fury. Stylistic tropes of the quintessential southern sound are blended effortlessly with rugged lyricism and delivery that seems to be clearly rooted in the east coast sonic movement. This pleasantly unconventional stylistic pairing is in many ways a metaphor for Grosser himself as an artist; a VA born and raised emcee transplanted to New Orleans, a city rich with hip hop history.  

“Pony” as a project functions almost like a Pandora’s box of emotion; once you open the lid the emotion literally flies out. Grosser seems to share his deepest self with his listeners; with depression leading to despair, and finally manifesting in the cold, steeled sense of determination present throughout the entire project. This honest and thoughtful display of emotion makes “Pony” as relatable as it is inspiring; it’s the story of an emcee passionately battling his own depression. The star studded features on “Pony”, including Chicago based artist LUCKI (f.k.a. Lucki Eck$) serve to further strengthen the ability of “Pony” to stand alone as a complete project. Raw talent, thoughtful honesty, and a focused aesthetic make “Pony” a must listen and confirm Grosser as an underground emcee that deserves close attention.

  Photography: Ben Davis

I had a chance to chat with Grosser about himself as an artist, “Pony” as a project, his creative process, and the next steps for him and his sound.  

B: Let's start basic: where are you from, what’s your background, and when did you start rapping? Grosser: I was born and raised in Virginia, and then moved to New Orleans for college. I graduated from Tulane with a degree in philosophy and political science, and couldn't even come close to bringing myself to leave NOLA after I graduated. As far as rapping, I was freestyling with homies a bit at the end of high school and a lot in college, and then started writing stuff down when I was about 19. I've always been playing music though. I've played drums for over a decade and played other instruments throughout my childhood and adulthood. Rapping became my outlet as I grew older and my life circumstances began to drastically change. B: What would you say your biggest sonic influences are in general, including music outside of hip hop? G: This is a question I take very seriously I'd say the first band to really influence me deeply was Rage Against the Machine, who I probably still consider to be my favorite band. I was influenced by politically driven hip hop at first, like Immortal Technique and shit. Now a days I'm genuinely influenced by the whole spectrum, from popular top 40 to very lo-fi indie music. Obviously I'm drawn to Atlanta, Chicago, LA, New York, you know, cities with hip hop strongholds, but I'm also influenced by all the various niche movements - like what's happening in Broward county, FL right now, and all the infinitely deep corners of soundcloud in general.  I have a bunch of friends in bands here in New Orleans so I have a decent pulse on the general indie band scene. Finding new music and new influences is what gets me up in the AM.  

B: Wordup, what would you say your biggest hip hop influences have been? G: Yeesh - at the start it was just the 90s and the greats -  Nas, ‘pac, Zack de la Rocha, Immortal Technique, Tribe, Eminem, Kanye, Wayne, Company Flow, Dilla, MF DOOM, stuff like that. Then I became obsessed with Earl, still am, and now find myself influenced by a ton of different modern hip hop shit - Travis Scott, all of OF, Thug, Future, Carti, A$AP. The list is low key endless because I can be influenced not only by someone's sound but also their place in the culture/the fabric of the genre. I don't rap like Uzi but I'm definitely enamored by his and someone like Yachty's aesthetic. However, if I had to pick one rapper that I was straight taking notes from, teaching myself how to rap, it’s definitely Earl back when I was in college. Earl is a fucking mastermind - raps wise and production. B: As a white rapper, what do you feel your role is in hip hop right now, given both the tumultuous situation the country is in right now, and the revolutionary origins of the genre itself? G:  I think it's massively important for white people to be doing a lot more listening than talking, so that's what I'm focusing on. Listening to the POC and women in my community and those affected by all this madness more so than I. I'm very attracted to and identify with the revolutionary roots of hip hop.

B: If you could sum up “Pony” in three thematic concepts what would they be?  

G: I'd say the three most prevalent themes of “Pony” are the idea of self concept, battling w and understanding mental health, and relationships. B: What did this project mean to you? What do you want this project to mean for the listeners? G: First and foremost, I'm always trying to grow with each new project, even every new song I write, so that was my primary goal. I wanted to sound of “Pony” to impact the listener in a personal way, really invade the listeners brain and shit, both sonically and lyrically. But, I also see great benefit from being able to play something in public and have it be enjoyable to a general mass of people, so I try to maintain some form of radio-esque sensibility in what I'm writing these days. For the listener, I wanted “Pony” to be somewhat of a self-exposure; I find that that's generally why I make music period. I tend to feel, as many do, wholly unknown by everyone around me, and music is a way to show someone what's really going on in a matter-of-fact way. B: Talk about the influences of New Orleans and NY on your sound, as well as the ways in which these cities are different and/or the same. G: What I'll say is you just have to come here. New Orleans got me as a young kid and has turned me into an adult real fast. It's not America here, more like the northern Caribbean. The general swagger and demeanor the people is what I feed off of the most - it's pretty much impossible for one's surroundings to not bleed into their art. NY is a city that I personally have less experience in, but have spent time there and have immersed myself in the culture via art - mainly music but also visual art and poetry. I always feel like I have much less privacy in NY than in NOLA - just by nature of the design and population. New York artists were obviously the first to teach me about rap, and invented the genre itself, so I obviously owe a lot to the culture and people of NY. B: What do you think of the direction of hip hop currently, mainstream and underground? G: Shit, I think it's a goddamn renaissance. I do however think that the rapping ability of these modern guys gets overlooked and misjudged pretty immediately for a myriad of reasons; addiction to the culture over content, media representation, vocal inflection, the list goes on.  Admittedly, some of these 'rappers' aren't rapping, they are more after a pop music icon mold. That being said, the same judgements of inability were bestowed on to Young Thug until everyone looked up the lyrics to 'Halftime' on genius and tried to rap along with him, immediately realizing how fucking money he is...point being, a lot of these guys can flat out spit.

Grosser: To Me, It has some similarities to the abstract expressionist movement in the 60's and 70's. Artists were ridiculed for their lack of precision, style, ease of making work, abundance of work, perceived difficulty of work, etc etc. Just because someone closed their eyes while splattering a canvas with one color of paint doesn't remove it from genius. A similar mindset and ear; understanding this music as a 'avant-garde' movement, while treading lightly on classic examples of excellence is much needed for understanding/enjoying the raw talent of a lot of these guys. Don't get me wrong, there are a million wack rappers out there who I don't fuck with, but I just don't think that if someone doesn't bring a classically fire 16 then that removes them from the upper crust of hip hop. It’s all cyclical though, I wouldn’t be surprised if hyper-lyrical rap takes the main-stage in the coming years.

B: Art is often a reflection of life. Talk about the process; the feelings, events, passions, and people that went into the creation of “Pony”. G: I mean, for sake of not getting overly dark I won't get too deep into the details, but I had a woman in my life, and, for a thousand and one reasons, but largely due to my own deteriorating mental health at the time, it wasn't a safe or healthy relationship. All of those emotions, my battle with clinical depression, and the realities of living with all the other fun disease titles doctors want to assign are embedded into “Pony”, and pretty much all the art I do in general. Apart from my past relationship and personal battles with mental health, the concepts of truly knowing oneself (very difficult), and truly knowing other people (more difficult, probably impossible), drive a lot of my lyrical content. B: As an artist, if you could tell yourself one thing two years ago what would it be? What would you say to yourself two years from now? Where do you hope to be? G: If I could give myself a piece of advice two years ago I would say to put a chokehold on every penny you have an only spend money collabing with people that you really trust and you know you can benefit from. In two years I hope to have a big Internet following based off my music, you know, lots of Twitter and Soundcloud followers and all that, in addition to making records that people truly respect as great art. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t dream about fame, but my most important goal is to make music that leaves an impact with each listener, every single time.

Photography: Erica Lipoff

This goofy lil guy

The 15 Most Important Albums of the 2010s

From emo lofi vaporwave to another genre category that I cannot tell if Spotify is making up just to mess with me, music in the 2010s sounded more varied than ever before. Artists, mainstream and bedroom-produced alike, gave way to strict stylistic and genre conventions, ushering in a generation of music that is best described as multi-hyphenate. So, rather than end the year and decade fighting amongst ourselves as to who did what best, we wanted to take the time to reflect on a collection of albums that stood out amongst their cohorts.

These are 15 of the most important albums of the last decade. Without them, the 2010s would have sounded and looked a whole lot different. 

Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly

The idea of choosing a single Kendrick Lamar album as his most important body of work can at times feel like a fool’s errand. How do you deny the raw, unfiltered power of Section.80? The haunting reality of good kid, m.A.A.D city? The beauty found in the unexplored notes of untitled unmastered.? The life lived and lost in DAMN.? Maybe it is a fool’s errand, but To Pimp a Butterfly arguably saw Lamar at his peak, reigniting hip-hop’s long-held love affair with the sounds of funk, soul, and most notably, jazz through a story that explores themes of African-American culture, institutionalized discrimination, and racial inequality.   

Mac DeMarco - 2

By no means did Mac Demarco invent indie music, but modern-day indie music would likely not sound or look the same without him. The release of his 2012 sophomore album 2 arrived as a collection of lofi soft rock jams, but it was the standout single “Ode to Viceroy” that really cemented his place as indie music’s cool uncle. And while albums like Salad Days and Another One would see him refining his trademark sound and exploring weightier themes, it was 2 that paved the way for both DeMarco and for indie music to flourish in the coming years.

BTS - Love Yourself: Tear

A lot came and went with the 2010s, but few things brought as much staying power as K-pop. Now one of the most successful commercial genres in the world, it was BTS that served as the initial test to see if K-pop could really leave its impact on Western audiences. First making their debut in 2013, it was their 2018 concept album Love Yourself: Tear that would earn them their first spot atop the US Billboard 200, as well as making them the first Korean act to ever have an album top the Billboard charts. BTS kicked off K-pop’s global takeover in glorious fashion.

Kanye West - YEEZUS

By all accounts, YEEZUS is not Kanye West’s best album, of his career or this decade for the matter. But what it is, is the start of a figure who, for better or worse, grew beyond the realm of rap superstar and into a larger-than-life figure. YEEZUS was the beginning of a decade that would see West pushing the boundaries of his artistic genius, his role as a public figure, and questioning whether society was willing to and should separate the man from the art, the genius from the person.

Flume - Flume

The 2010s marked an electronic music boom. With festivals, from Coachella to Lollapalooza, booking more and more DJs each year, skeptics hailed it as a bubble soon to burst. In reality, it was more of a fizzle that saw EDM carving out its own seemingly-permanent niche in the music landscape. Amidst that boom, we were introduced to one Harley Edward Streten. More popularly known as Flume, his 2012 debut solo project launched his career and ushered in a wave of more subdued, adventurous future house.

ANHONI - HOPELESSNESS

No album touched upon the atrocities of our war-torn reality quite like ANOHNI’s 2016 debut album HOPELESSNESS. Produced by Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke, HOPELESSNESS is a dark experimental electronic project that does not shy away from its difficult subject matter. Rather, it parades them for all to see in haunting, angelic fashion. A world on the brink of an environmental crisis, drone warfare under the Obama administration, capital punishment, and constant government surveillance all lay the groundwork for one of the most provocative and important protest albums of the 2010s.

Frank Ocean - Blonde

Plain and simple, there is no creative out there like Frank Ocean, and his sophomore album Blonde may just be the best album of the decade. Blonde saw an Ocean unrestrained, freed from an unsavory record label deal and genre conventions. Not quite an R&B or pop album, Ocean���s sophomore effort is akin to gently floating through the inner-psyche of this idiosyncratic creative. From unexpected voicemails to space-age melodies that drift into nothingness, Blonde is Ocean’s best work to date and a high point for music as a whole.

Lil Peep - Come Over When You’re Sober, Pt. 2

The world has not been kind to emo rap or its brightest stars. 2017 saw the loss of Lil Peep. 2018 saw the loss of XXXTentacion. And most recently, 2019 saw the loss of Juice WRLD. Come Over When You’re Sober, Pt. 2, the first posthumous and final album from Lil Peep, is a heartbreaking portrait of the star that could have been. More than anything, it sounds like the beginning of a dialogue we need to start having about how do we help and protect artists at their most fragile and broken?

Grimes - Visions

Grimes gave credence to the term bedroom pop before it become a hackneyed blanket term for indie pop as a whole. Before she was an art pop purveyor or dating a tech mogul with dreams of space travel, she was an artist out of Montreal who found her footing going viral on Myspace. Blending the leftfield pop approach of Björk, experimental electronica honed during her time spent playing raves in Canada, and a knack for Logic, we were gifted with Grimes’ 2012 breakout project Visions and its alien hit “Oblivion.” It is difficult to imagine 2019’s wave of bedroom pop and anti-pop existing without Grimes’ Visions to demonstrate the worlds you can create within your cramped bedroom walls.

Tyler, the Creator - Flower Boy

If not for the release of IGOR, Flower Boy could have easily stood the test of time as Tyler, the Creator’s magnum opus. An earth-shattering project that saw Tyler examining themes of isolation, identity, and his own sexuality, it felt like listening to the birth of a whole new artist. And in many ways, it was. Flower Boy was Tyler’s first step into exploring the limits of his creative depth, sonically and artistically. This was the birth of one of the most innovative and fascinating creative minds of our generation.

Billie Eilish - WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP WHERE DO WE GO?

Billie Eilish may just be the most famous person on the planet. The pop prodigy had the eyes of the world on her before she turned 18. Suffice it to say, it would be an understatement to say that the pressure and expectations surrounding her debut album were monumental. The result? An immaculately produced piece of dark pop that saw a Takashi Murakami collaboration and proved pop stars are getting younger and younger and better and better.

88rising - Head In The Clouds

Hybrid management, record label, video production, and marketing company 88rising is bringing Asian voices into the mainstream. A powerhouse of creatives that features the likes of Joji, Rich Brian, NIKI, Higher Brothers, AUGUST 08, and more, 88rising is a veritable cultural phenomenon. That growing phenomenon was captured in full on their debut crew album, which demonstrates the collective’s range across R&B, hip-hop, and beyond. Head In The Clouds is an embodiment of the exact kind of Asian representation we need to be seeing in the music industry at large.

Beyoncé - HOMECOMING: THE LIVE ALBUM

Beyoncé’s Lemonade may be her opus, but HOMECOMING is her raison d’être. Recorded live at Coachella in 2018, the live album signaled a landmark in black excellence. HOMECOMING: THE LIVE ALBUM is the sonic telling of the black college experience, the story of the first black woman to ever headline America’s largest music festival, and an ongoing chapter of the power of black feminism. Beychella was awe-inspiring and nothing quite captures the historic experience as excellently as HOMECOMING: THE LIVE ALBUM.  

Chance the Rapper - Coloring Book

There is no denying that streaming is king. Whether that means the end of artists being able to make a living from their music is still out for debate, but one artist in particular who has benefited from music’s streaming globalization is undeniably Chance the Rapper. Releasing all of his projects either free on Soundcloud or as digital-only mixtapes, Chicago’s native son may just be the only reason the aforementioned Soundcloud still exists. And while Acid Rap first illustrated exactly what Chance could do on his own, it was Coloring Book that finally made the music industry at large pay attention, netting him the first-ever streaming-only album to ever win a Grammy.

BROCKHAMPTON - SATURATION III

The Saturation trilogy is the story of how a group of teenagers went from meeting online over a shared love of Kanye West to becoming America’s favorite boyband. It is a trilogy of unabashed creativity paired with an unmatched drive that showcases BROCKHAMPTON at their highest and lowest. The pinnacle of this journey arrives in the conclusion and ensuing climax that is SATURATION III, which turned the cult sensation into an international one. Now, with 2020 around the corner, the departure of Ameer Vann, who adorns the cover art of each part of the trilogy, Saturation stands as a crystallization of the journey BROCKHAMPTON has taken to make it to this point.

Additionally...

Various Artists - 7-Inches for Planned Parenthood

The most important albums are those that leave their mark long after a single listen, whether that be in their lasting influence or through a salient, real-world impact.

This project is a chance for artists and fans to take meaningful action to protect access to health care for millions of women, men and young people. We hope to further Planned Parenthood’s mission to build a world where we all have full control over our own bodies and can determine our own destinies - regardless of race, immigration status, socioeconomic status, gender identity, or sexual orientation. It’s writers, artists, musicians, comedians, visual artists, and other public thinkers - all making something together in support of health care and human rights.