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Monday, January 09, 2006

music stuff: soul xmas mixtape, soul sides best of 2005, kelefa sanneh

Got away from doing any posts the past week.  Here are a handful of music links.

Anj and I spent part of the Friday before we left for Christmas vacation downtown shopping for some Christmas music. I didn't realize what a large subindustry that is. We ended up with something unpromisingly titled "Smooth Grooves: Sensual Christmas", but you can see that the tracklisting looks promising, and some of them were good.

It was only after Christmas that I checked in Mark Anthony Neal's blog and discovered that he had put together his own Soul Christmas Mix-Tape.

And it was after that that I checked in on Soul Sides, and found that he'd posted the mp3s: soul sides: THE SOUL CHRISTMAS MIXTAPE (A M.A.N./S.S. COLLABORATION) Unfort I didn't d/l them (for next year!) before he took them down.

I did grab some of his selections of the best tracks of 2005;
soul sides: BEST SONGS OF 2005 (#1-5) and soul sides: BEST SONGS OF 2005 (#6-10). Some of those tracks are still up, but not for much longer, I imagine.

A few of those tracks I'd heard during the year, and it nice to see them recognized: one of Common's tracks, the K-otix track, that remix of "1 Thing" that he put at #1.  But he also highlighted some tracks that I wouldn't have heard or at least recognized otherwise, like the Three 6 Mafia track or the Young Jeezy...just goes to show why Soul Sides is a regular stop for me. 

Speaking of Young Jeezy, that reminds me of a fascinating article by Kelefa Sanneh that ran a few months ago in the NYT: "Cracking The Code In Hip-Hop" .

You know you're somewhat removed from the streets when you're getting schooled on the latest in hip-hop semiotics via the Arts section of the NYT. But Sanneh's doing a good job bringing hip hop and R&B into the Times--it's why I always look for his byline.

BTW, Young Jeezy came in #1 on Sanneh's year-end list.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is no other Christmas song can compare to Donny Hathaway and "This Christmas". Shake a hand, shake a hand.

Suman said...

Thanks for the comment, JC. Luckily the Donny Hathaway track was on the on the "Sensual Christmas" disc we bought. Donny Hath has been in somewhat heavier rotation recently around our place--Anj picked up a compilation in Dec.