Breaking the format of this thread to note the above posted track, "dark blue room", is credited to an artist named "In_tense" in a couple other places. I am simply out of characters to edit that in lol
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What I'm listening to today: "Southside", Lil Keke
What if I spent this entire week linking classic "dirty south" hip-hop tracks I loved from 97.9 The Box back in the 90s (which, I am visiting Houston this week and their selection is still excellent). No one could really stop me.
Here's known DJ Screw associate Lil Keke, dropping an effortless flow that stuck in my head for 29 years and my favorite instance of slide guitar in the entire corpus of music. Sorry Beck
Southside
YouTube
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What I'm listening to today: "Ghetto D", Master P
Master P put No Limit Records on the map, and made New Orleans the new capital of southern hip hop, with "Ghetto Dope", an *incredibly* catchy step-by-step guide to the production, distribution, and sale of crack cocaine. This unstoppable hit could not possibly get played on the radio, leading to this *incredibly* funny radio edit which is cut up to almost near illegibility making it sound like "Ghetto D" is a rapper
Ghetto D
YouTube
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What I'm listening to today: "Writtin´ Rhymes", Timbaland and Magoo
This album dropped in the aftermath of clique co-leader Missy Elliot's "The Rain" going off like a bomb, and had like three huge hits on it, but basically no track on this album misses so I want to play you one of the lesser tracks that never got radio play. Timb and Missy became such huge multidecade cultural forces it's easy to forget when they were *hungry*, just obscure kids who produced for Alliyah
Timbaland and Magoo - Writtin´ Rhymes
YouTube
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What I'm listening to today: "The Party Don't Stop", Mia X
This is it: The greatest track No Limit ever created. Their in-house production shop ("Beats by the Pound") as their name implies were all about *quantity*, but when they cared they could deliver pure gold, deliciously cheesy like those cover photoshops. This track is perfect, a joyous block party. And Foxy Brown's here, because like, OK, it's 1997, something incredible is happening, of course Foxy Brown's here.
The Party Don't Stop
YouTube
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What I'm listening to today: "The Man Right Chea", Mystikal
Yes, my 90s southern hip hop mixtape is 50% No Limit by volume. Here's the thing: So was the radio in 1997. This is a loopy, hypnotic bit of experimental techno packaged as hip hop and I'm still kinda shocked radio stations played it
Beats by the Pound getting the most technique out of the cheapest synthesizers; Mystikal doing oddly experimental vocals that seem to have departed "rap" and approach skat singing
Mystikal - The Man Right Chea
YouTube
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What I'm listening to today: "Distant Wilderness", Goodie Mob
To close this notional "mixtape", and for historical significance, I probably *should* link "Dirty South", the Goodie Mob song that coined the phrase. (It's a pretty good song! It even has Big Boi on it!) However, instead I am going to indulge myself and just link a track I really like, even though it's on the same album as "Black Ice".
Here: A beautiful slow acoustic-folk call to revolution
Distant Wilderness
YouTube
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What I'm listening to today: "Dracula Flow 6", YoungArts 2026 winners' jazz ensemble
I had to do it to them, snipe. I went Judge Judy on that pussy, snipe. Blacked out on the Percocet, ordered a Desert Eagle off Amazon. I really did this. I'm really him. I keep my glock at the Vatican, I have the blueprint to the catacombs. My diamonds come from the most horrific situations possible. Movin like Dracula, we get it back in blood. This shit ain't nothin to me, man
"Dracula Flow 6" | Jazz | 2026 National YoungArts Week
YouTube
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What I'm listening to today: "Johnny Dang", That Mexican OT
Đặng Anh Tuấn, better known as Johnny Dang, is a Houston-area jeweler who various sources assure me locked *down* the client base of providing jewelry to professional rappers in the 00s and 10s through savvy networking and innovation in "grills". I did not know this. When I arrived in Houston a couple weeks ago this was the song The Box was playing at 1 AM as I left the airport. Absolutely phenomenal rap flow.
https://thatmexicanot.bandcamp.com/track/johnny-dang-feat-paul-wall-drodi
Johnny Dang feat. Paul Wall & Drodi, by That Mexican OT
That Mexican OT
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What I'm listening to today: "Coastline #82 (Vom Melos zur Pauke) - Sonata in three movements", Karlheinz Essl
When I first discovered modular synths I'd just search directly for videos of self-playing patches on the 0-Coast: a small dense self-contained unit that can do a ton of stuff simultaneously if you understand it, and makes no sound at all if you don't. Here, a carefully composed journey into a sentient storm of madness hand-guided by an Austrian music professor
Karlheinz Essl: Coastline #82 (Vom Melos zur Pauke) - Sonata in three movements
YouTube
1
What I'm listening to today: "Phil Cirocco demonstrating the ARP 2003 synthesizer"
Alan R. Pearlman's company produced some historically good-sounding synthesizers; their first few, up to the ARP 2600 (best known as the voice of R2-D2), were decadently knob-ridden and customizable. This one's so early it's branded "Tonus" and it has some *bizarre* capabilities, here shown off as a shakedown test immediately following a restoration with some improvised space-western jazz
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What I'm listening to today: "Alien Virus", The Bug
The Bug is a mysterious artist to me, they mostly make fuzzy abstract ambient dub but also one time I saw Earth in concert and it was just Dylan Carlson playing one guitar and The Bug playing another.
This is from an album that alternates live Bug tracks with someone named Ghost Dubs (apparently from the label The Bug started?). Thousands of insects are doing the Charleston while in the background, civilization burns
https://thebugvsghostdubs.bandcamp.com/track/the-bug-alien-virus-west-indian-centre-leeds
THE BUG - Alien Virus (West Indian Centre, Leeds), by The Bug vs Ghost Dubs
The Bug vs Ghost Dubs
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What I'm listening to today: "0:00", Li Yilei
https://liyilei.bandcamp.com/track/0-00-2
The opener to a mysterious 4-track cassette which I thiiink (per the mini-doc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9vDOiRUUyA that introduced me to Li) was Li Yilei's first release as a musician. Yilei self-describes as instrument-agnostic but this is one of their few tracks to center on guitar, a kinda pre-dusk 60s-psychadelic bootup sequence, Death in Vegas or something. Chill ambient spaceout music, a nice compact little feeling
A day in the studio with Li Yilei
YouTube
0:00, by LI YILEI
LI YILEI
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What I'm listening to today: "First Light", Elucid ft. Sebb Bash and Mattie
From the new album by the Armand Hammer member that isn't Billy Woods. Downtempo hip hop, laid-back spoken word over laid-back jam rock, Allen Ginsberg would recognize this as "rapping". It's got this indescribable feeling.
In some way I can't explain I feel like this track, and the songs "Street Magic" and "Laraaji" from the same rap clique, are all groping toward the same idea
First Light (feat. Mattie), by ELUCID & Sebb Bash
E L U C I D
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What I'm listening to today: "Boomhauer w/ dang ol' drums", David Dockery featuring voice of Mike Judge
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Boomhauer w/ dang ol' drums
YouTube
2
What I'm listening to today: "An Microtonal Jam (31 TET)", The Creepy Silence
Anarchic audio soup. In western music notes are assigned to 12 equally spaced points along the octave. What if it were 31? According to this guy, you unlock a bunch of new and forbidden scales, like the "C subminor", which he uses to make 90s style acid techno stuffed with ideas so strange I can't tell what's 31-TET and what's just odd decisions (⚠️ loud beep at 1:10). Baffling but never boring
An Microtonal Jam (31 TET)
YouTube
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