Courtesy of the magnificent DJ1000TimesYes (aka Chris Weingarten), we have been blessed with the Top 10 Christmas Rap songs. (His knowledge of the sub-genre is so profound that he’s even DJing an entire set of Christmas Rap songs in Williamsburg tonight.) When asked for this Top 10, he delivered it without hesitation. Mr. Weingarten is also the man who reviewed 1000 records via Twitter this year and his encyclopedic mastery of X-mas rhymes only further his legend. Streaming and downloadable songs after the jump.
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Journalist Chris Weingarten has listened to more records than you this year. One thousand to be exact. With his trusty 1000TimesYes account on Twitter, Weingarten braved through the 140-character constraints and condensed each record into a bite size review with a ranking. Some take full advantage of this limit: “872)Kid Sister/Ultraviolet: When the cool kids invite you to their party and turn out to be as boring and talentless as you suspected.#1.5.” Others are beautifully concise: “981)Kevin Drumm/Imperial Horizon: Float on.#9.”
With the understanding that Weingarten knows more about the music of 2009 than — hypothetically — anyone, we decided to tap into his twittering mind in an interview. After the jump, we give you 1,000 of Weingarten’s words on ’09 condensed into neat, tweet-sized excerpts.
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“I don’t actually remember doing the painting,” Julian Lennon admits. “But I certainly remember walking through the front gates of our house and actually showing Dad it and him saying, ‘What is that?’”
Lennon is, of course, referring to the legend behind one of his father’s most famous songs, “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” the Beatles’ classic whose inspiration comes from a drawing by Julian. Despite John Lennon’s vividly psychedelic description of Lucy — “A girl with kaleidoscope eyes” — Julian’s is remarkably subdued: “the best you can draw a child-like character at the age of four.”
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It is no secret that trade publication Billboard is painfully irrelevant. However, its latest “Artists of the Decade” list cannot be debated — it has been objectively compiled. Never mind the fact that Billboard equated “Artists of the Decade” with “the 20 music stars with the best performance on the Billboard 200 albums chart and the Hot 100 over the last ten years.” We let this happen, at least when we still bought CDs. After the jump, explanations on how Creed, Nelly, Nickelback, and others snuck into the Top 20 most-sold albums of the decade list.
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Exciting news: Your latest Flavorpill Mixtape has arrived. Your ears are salivating. Your fingers are ready to click ctrl + left click and “save as.” Ten essential downloads from this past week in music after the jump — including the solo debut from Sigur Rós’ Jónsi Birgisson and our favorite cover of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” to date. from And they’re all free for the taking! Take a listen, and then leave us a comment with what you think.
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Thanks to the kinds folks at Domino Records, we’re giving away four prize packs in celebration of Animal Collective’s latest two releases: The Fall Be Kind EP on CD and the Brothersport single on delicious Vinyl.
HOW TO ENTER: Write us a sentence or two on how you would attempt to describe Animal Collective’s music to your grandparents. (Watch this for some old folks/AC inspiration.) Be sure to include your correct email address, as we will contact the four lucky winners for shipping info.
Album art and track listings after the jump.
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These days, cells phones seem to have conquered the watch market. But no it’s time for these archaic devices to reassert themselves as the rightful masters of time. Some aspire to do so through vivid colors, crystal LED displays, and multiple dials. Others go for the “Steampunk” look, picture right (our personal favorite). After the jump, check out our top five watches worthy of the prestigious design porn tag.
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Today is the first edition of Flavorpill’s artist mixtape series. To kick it off, The Antlers’ Peter Silberman has compiled a fantastic mix of trip-hop for your listening pleasure.
Trip-Hop, etc.
Peter Silberman / The Antlers
“Some years ago, for whatever reason, I decided to try having a trip-hop radio show in college,” he explains. “Little did I know that I was going to be given three hours a week to fill with what I quickly learned is somewhat of a narrow genre. Granted, a ton of amazing music came from Bristol and wherever else in England in the nineties, but there’s also a good deal of awful trip-hop. The trick of the show became branching out — finding music that might not necessarily be categorized under the same name but shares some of the same qualities. Here’s a collection of some of the genre’s most well-known tracks, alongside some newer songs that clearly seem to share something on common with their predecessors. The truth: trip-hop may be over, but it’s still alive.”
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Exciting news: Your latest Flavorpill Mixtape has arrived. Your ears are salivating. Your fingers are ready to click ctrl + left click and “save as.” Eight essential downloads from this past week in music after the jump — all free for the taking! Take a listen, and then leave us a comment with what you think of our selections.
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Question: If they’re struggling with massive debt challenges, then why is Dubai still getting to build cool new stuff? (Yes. Glass houses. Stones. Point taken.) According to /Film, the Al Ahli Group has teamed up with Marvel to build a superhero theme park in 2012 for one billion dollars (!). It seems poised to overthrow Universal Studio’s upcoming Harry Potter park. Sure, the Harry Potter sketches are more 3D looking, but you just can’t beat riding a roller coaster in a Stark industries generator. Check out the initial sketches for the Marvel rides after the jump.
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