What was the first album you ever bought? Pick your favorite song off that album.

:cat-typing:

Oh boy: my first album was The College Dropout. My friend Callie and I pooled our money to buy the album. She ripped the CD and burned a copy for me. I remember this vividly: she drew the teddy bear on the copy she gave me. 🥰 I treasured that CD and I'm pretty sure it's around here somewhere.

That was back in 2004, back when I knew him as Kanye West, the guy who was in a really bad car accident. I loved the album and was a Kanye fan for the next dozen years. His behavior over the last decade has forced me to think a lot about nuance and separating the artist from the art and what it means to cancel someone. (I even outlined a book called "Cancelled" that I wanted to write to explore the whole situation.)

Over the years, Kanye has been both harmful and hurtful. Last month, Ye wrote some of what I had been wanting to hear from him in his most recent apology. It's a fine start but it's incomplete. He'll have to say more and let his future actions and words speak loudly for him in the years to come.

These days, I still enjoy the music that Kanye made when I hear it. Depriving myself of his music would not serve me. But as a self-respecting (Black) person, I can't condone the things he says (or their impact). In researching and writing this post, I learned:

His father, Ray West, is a former Black Panther and was one of the first black photojournalists at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Ray is alive to witness his son's behavior.

Anyway, my favorite song on the album is Spaceship (feat. GLC & Consequence).

🎧 I scrobble on libre.fm, last.fm and ListenBrainz.

What song makes you want to take a midnight drive?

As soon as I saw this prompt, I thought "OK, so which song from Outrun am I going to choose?".

I initially discovered this Kavinsky album long ago and it was an instant classic. Over the years, it has become one of my go-to albums for buckling down to focus and get things done!

I think it works really well as a complete album: I don't listen to individual tracks here and there. I consume the album whole and sometimes a few times in a row.

A song from the 1980s that you like or means something to you.

The 1980s are the most difficult decade for me to choose a song from. For any other decade from the 1920s onward, I feel like I have a lot of options to choose from. The 1980s appeals to me the least of any decade that makes sense to choose for this question. Since everything is relative, it's also true that there is a lot of great music from the 1980s that I enjoy.

A song from the 1980s that I really LOVE is Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell".

My father introduced me to Billy Idol and I've been a lifelong fan of his music since that introduction. The opening notes of Rebel Yell are especially distinctive. I had the absolute delight to see Billy Idol play this track and so many other favorites right here in Pittsburgh in May 2023. That was one of my favorite concert experiences. The urgency in Billy's recorded and live music is exhilarating. I listened to the song twice while recording this and greatly enjoyed each playthrough!

This song has many sound effects that clearly mark it as a product of the 1980s. Billy Idol provides an example of how good music from the 1980s can be. While some of the ingredients of this song are shared, Billy's recipe is unique and he rocks as a result.

🤘

A song from your most listened to artist of the last 20 years.

I would need to spend a lot of time writing to explain how incredibly precious this song is to me. Jimi Hendrix is the first musician I remember listening to through headphones. That first song was Purple Haze, the first track on Are You Experienced. I fell in love with that album and the rest of Jimi's music that year. Fast forward to today, I've scrobbled 200,000+ tracks on last.fm over the last 19 years and Jimi Hendrix remains my number one most listened to artist of all time.

While I enjoy his collection too deeply to choose a single favorite, Little Wing remains uniquely transporting to me after years of familiarizing myself with his catalog. That's a remarkable feat for a song I've listened to hundreds of times.

What’s a song that helps you focus or concentrate?

It's definitely Revenger by F.O.O.L.

I love using this for focus and concentration whether I'm at my keyboard or at the gym. It's a super versatile hype song. I originally discovered this song via the "Fendetta's Beats playlist". (I was looking for "cyberpunk EDM". If that sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend this playlist -- if you're open to Spotify.)

The sole spoken line in the song is well-timed at a fairly early drop. It's haunting -- in a good way.

I love this song so much that when I heard it just now, I just had to tell someone about it. I decided this would be a great opportunity for my first "Crucial Tracks" post!