Paris - Pistol Politics (2015)

Having spent the last six months backtracking through the work of Paris one disc at a time, I've noticed both the complete absence of duds, and the fact that he's grown angrier and somehow more formidable with age. Pistol Politics is the one before the most recent album, 2020's blistering Safe Space Invader, and if it represents the lad stepping down to the release of a new one every five years - the first since 2008's Acid Reflex - it's the only aspect that's been stepped down; and this is a fucking double CD, would you believe? Never mind just rap music, you can count the number of double CDs that haven't been a complete waste of time on the testicles of one scrotal sack, and yet Pistol Politics remains fully caffeinated right to end of track twenty-seven on the second disc with not a moment wasted.

As you may be aware, Paris is a black man with things to say, and things you should probably hear regardless. You may recall certain rappers banging on about their music being edumacational back in the day, usually meaning endless bland repetition of the knowledge-wisdom-understanding mantra without truly saying anything, but Paris delivers on that ideal. You learn stuff from listening to his work. Facts I've picked up from this one, for example, being that America leads the world in just three respects - incarceration of its own people, defence spending, and grown folks who believe angels are real. There's a lot of truth that hurts here, but there's something liberating about even the shittiest news imparted in such terms.

I vaguely recall Paris once casually dismissed as also ran by one of those hairdresser magazines - Vibe, or whichever one it was - presumably meaning he'd failed to go platinum through a major label, with some half-assed analysis suggesting listeners were unable to square the hardline Black Panther politics with fat-ass street level g-funk. Of course, it depends what you call success, and never mind that he seems to have done just fine releasing artistically uncompromised material through his own label, the message delivered as funky as fuck populism being exactly why it works. It's street level communication rather than an academic treatise delivered as slogans. It's so street level that E40, the Eastsidaz and Westside Connection's WC guest on a couple of numbers proving that the common ground is a lot more expansive than purists may have realised; and sonically it spans pretty much the gamut of black music, additionally serving as a reminder of who came up with most of it - rock, blues, hip-hop, jazz, soul, p-funk, weirdy electronics, boom bap, often all jammed together on the same track, and even with a few cuts which wouldn't seem out of place on a Bill Withers album. Imagine a Public Enemy record you could slap on at a party without everyone pulling faces, or Tupac actually having done the stuff for which he's routinely credited.

As I write this, it's MLK Day here in Americaland, and somehow also the day of the presidential inauguration of the selfless multimillionaire who wants only to make America great again, even though he apparently couldn't fucking manage it first time; but listening to Paris helps, because truth is always louder and more enduring than bullshit.

The The - Ensoulment (2024)

I have a sort of knee-jerk suspicion of artists I enjoyed in my early twenties getting back in the booth all these years later, but, leaving aside that no-one wants a Flock of Seagulls reunion album, I should probably be suspicious of my suspicion as a hang-on from the punk rock programming which, for example, dictated that the Rolling Stones were fit for the knacker's yard by 1977; and while there was much fun to be had in upsetting the older generation, Miss You was unfortunately a fucking great record. In fact, even Emotional Rescue was a cracker and the revisionism now seems quaint given that they'd only been going a couple of decades; and Matt Johnson's The The are now cautiously approaching their half-century.

More crucially, The The sound as vital as ever - keeping in mind that even their early records had the quality of an extended world weary sigh set to a pounding bass drum. No-one, so far as I'm aware, ever complained about Johnny Cash or B.B. King failing to retire, and The The was never about upsetting the older generation. If it was about upsetting anyone, it was Johnson's own generation, and his focus has remained fixed even if the man himself has clocked up a few more years; and given the current state of the societal shitshow, it's amusing that you could probably characterise Ensoulment as upsetting the younger generation, at least based on the garbage to which so many of them are seen to subscribe on social media. Lyrically, Ensoulment is on target and at least as caustic as Fatima Mansions at their most blistering. Musically, it's the familiar organic blend of rock, soul, jazz, blues, country, and all the rest without fully sounding like any of them, or like the sort of worthy soundtrack to which spritely eldsters beatifically nod their heads in television commercials for prescription medication. It's pleasant but innocuous on first spin, and by the third or fourth, you can't stop playing the thing and your wife comes in from the other room to ask what you're listening to, and possibly to remind you to take your pill.

Did we ever suspect any of these people would be doing anything this good in the distant future, a quarter of the way into the next century? I had no idea myself.

Snoop Dogg - Missionary (2024)

I don't know if anyone could have foreseen a new Snoop album on Death Row given at least a couple of decades of exhausting bullshit from the label's previous owner. It's probably not such a surprise that the aforementioned former owner filed for bankruptcy in 2006 and the label has been changing hands ever since, existing mainly for the sake of collecting royalties on former glories. It could have been different - cut those losses, maybe put some effort into promoting Rage's album, maybe make something of having Kurupt, Above the Law and Crooked I on the books rather than wasting all that time on pot shots launched at former employees; but no, so never mind. Not only do we have brand new Snoop on Death Row - because he bought the label - but it's produced by Dr. Dre.

I somehow lost track of Snoop, the most recent one I own being Ego Trippin' which came out in (cough) 2008 because apparently I haven't had my finger on anything resembling a pulse for some time. I don't know that he's ever done a bad album, but the last few I heard didn't particularly grab me in a major way - nothing I regret buying, but sometimes you have to be in the right mood. So I'm hearing Missionary as a comeback by virtue of my having failed to notice the hundred or so albums he's squeezed out since I've been living in the same country. Musically it's more traditional than Dre's Compton, taking the perfectionist excess in an entirely different direction so it's almost like big band music of the sixties through a hip-hop filter, a big, brassy sound built from an entire orchestra's worth of high-definition instrumentation conveying the full range of jazzy moods. It wouldn't work were it not conducted with such an expert hand, and so the blend of John Barry scale with street level lyricism and all the funky electronics you would hope for, is honestly breathtaking. Also, Snoop himself is more lyrical than I've heard him in a while - which admittedly may be my failing to pay attention - but here he reminds us why we've heard of him in the first place, beyond his sharing a cell with Martha Stewart or mugging to the camera during the Olympics. Even 50 Cent sounds decent on this record.

First the bee population of the UK is proven to be on the increase, then Snoop releases a new album on Death Row, and I'm taking both of these as signs. Perhaps things are looking up at long fucking last, despite some unusually shitty elephants in the room.