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I had to log in just to see what the line was on this thing. I say this as someone with a deep love of hip-hop and avant-garde beat music - I think it's a bad record. At the same time, I'm more troubled by the response to said record than I am the content of the album itself. I'm strongly of the mind that these self-indulgent novelty records aren't a bad thing, at least in an intrinsic sense. A good point of comparison is Kid Cudi's Speedin' Bullet 2 Heaven. That album was universally derided. It's objectively a mess of amateurish musicianship and tonal inconsistency, but it's also one of my favorite concept albums. It somehow manages to say something revealing about the artist, and it does so with ugly, confused sincerity. It's a project that deserves to exist, despite its aggressive lack of coherence.  If Andre 3000 had just farted this thing out on Bandcamp, it would have been totally fine. Everyone does this these days. What's preposterous about the whole thing is that it's clearly part of a quasi-publicity stunt, timed with Andre's appearance at the Met Gala. He and his team are actively using his celebrity to push the visibility of an artistically malformed object.  I try to find virtue in everything, and I'm not so precious about my first steps into this music that I forget how much of my own output represents a work in progress. But these piano pieces are just bad. Like straight up bad. They're technically inept and unfocused, without any clarity of vision. Worse still, they sound unfinished - unmixed and unmastered, lazily sold as "sketches." The thing feels like an elaborate troll - which, if that is the case, then I take back everything I said. Job well done. Andre can do whatever he wants, obviously. He's a celebrity whose fumbling efforts at art music have an admitted element of sincerity. But what makes this thing so egregious is the mass delusion that has followed in its wake. It's been nonstop critical plaudits and (bemused) admiration from casual listeners. I kind of feel like the only people who have actually been complaining are actual art musicians in the tradition that Andre is mining, like Shipp. And it's not a matter of jealousy - not entirely, at least. If I'm understanding Shipp correctly, it's not that people want Andre's listeners for themselves. They just want acknowledgement that the work has an objective reality, and that there are metrics and criteria for even considering the continuum of Black music, art music, etc. that supersede short attention spans and faddish dilettante-ism. Because most of the listeners who grab this thing will never listen to Shipp, but it's not as if Andre seems to care about that problem one way or another.   

Wow, Rosanne Cash is about to turn 70! How does that work, anyway?

The Upper Crabtown Bonelickers - Momma's Redbone Stew!!! ( Recorded LIVE at Jimmy Clancysterner's  Aquamarine Pool Halls) Post 4th Trad-Revival Trad Revival in embryonic form.

Picasso at CMA through April. We're members, so we went twice, mostly pencil, the feature of the show. Although they peppered other masterpieces in there that CMA already acquisitioned, it really was a great showcase. Great space, great exhibition. I'd upload some pictures I took, but I have to format them to post here.      

Samara Joy's tickets are pricey in Austin too. My niece lives there and I was going to recommend that she check her out but then I saw the prices. Ouch.