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.