#sam herring

[beatsforbrothels]

BADBADNOTGOOD - Time Moves Slow (ft. Sam Herring)

[sinceileftyoublog]

billy woods & Kenny Segal Album Review: Maps

(Backwoodz Studioz)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

The prolific billy woods’ second album with beat mastermind Kenny Segal is centered around touring, inspired by the idea that the road--or the lack of home--is, in itself, home. On Maps, places where people reside are as constantly changing as the landscapes that pass as you’re on the highway. It’s the perfect fodder for woods’ neuroses and pessimism, the low thoughts that occur when you have too much time on your hands but still can’t make sense of your surroundings. He’s constantly searching for stimuli--weed, food, drinks--to distract himself from the human condition. Like the titular “Houdini”, Woods escapes, even if temporarily.

Segal’s hazy production is, often by way of contrast, the perfect complement to woods’ spirals, and the two work beautifully in tandem. Segal interpolates gorgeous strummed guitars and Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” as woods looks at the birds, sun, and breeze on “Soft Landing”, lamenting that their magnificence doesn’t match his own mood. He’s more straightforward on the beat-switching “Babylon By Bus”, distilling his ethos into a declaration that, “People don’t want the truth, they want me to tell ‘em grandma went to heaven.” It often feels like he’s playing tug of war with himself, on one side his perceptions--feeling pastoral dread on the devastating “Agriculture”--and on the other, the objective, bleak truths of the world, from colonialism to police brutality. The two sides, along with Segal’s intelligent contributions, come to a head on “The Layover”, a paranoia-addled tale of no fly lists and surveillance. “Finally got it to where lies is the truth and the truth is a ruse,” woods raps over a piano line, the song sporting an ever-steady groove as if to emphasize the eternal nature of his internal struggle.

Of course, and perhaps thankfully, it’s not all dark, and Maps wouldn’t be a great album without some fun. Segal’s production from track to track feels like a road trip, passing the aux cord between friends with related, but unique tastes, the piano-looped “Rapper Weed” followed by limber free jazz bop “Blue Smoke”, the industrial “Year Zero” by the gentle, lilting “Hangman”. The guest verses include woods’ usual jaunts with Armand Hammer bandmate E L U C I D, and an unexpectedly soulful chorus from Future Islands’ Sam Herring on “FaceTime”. Yet, it’s Quelle Chris and Danny Brown that steal the show, boastful, hilarious, and intense in what ironically brings moments of levity to the record. Chris brags on “Soundcheck” that he’s so good the audio engineer should have to pay for a ticket, while Brown hasn’t sounded this manically dialed in since Atrocity Exhibition. Of course, woods himself shines alongside them, as plainspoken in his sorrow that his “taxes pay police brutality settlements” as he is uproariously confident in the adage that “You can’t fix stupid.” That Maps is filled with more than just variance, references within references, synaptic, weed-influenced connections among society’s ills, is a feature, not a bug. 

woods’ modes of thought all seem to be influenced by death, the lurking presence of it, the survivor’s guilt he feels, that his son, too, will die one day. “No need to ask who sent you, it was always just a question of when,” he raps on “Hangman”, accepting even a premature fate. It’s a desolate attitude, sure, but it’s ultimately an acceptance of the chaos of the world, one that allows him to seek out and enjoy expensive Vietnamese food and cocktails even when their very existence is a product of a losing class and racial struggle. “Death in a top hat dance a jig in the street / Don't get it twisted boy, the city wicked, it'll crush you with its feet,” woods raps on “NYC Tapwater”. With Segal behind him and a Mezcal Negroni in hand, Maps is the sound of woods dancing back.

[wanologic]

💅💅💅

[pondslime]

she................................................

[rickchung]

♫ Future Islands x "The Tower" x The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

[ayo-edebiri]

The last thing she saw on Earth was him.

[bixels]

the height difference between sunset and thea... don't look at me...

[beedreamscape]

DMs kissing Sam's hand

[bet-on-me-13]

Danny commits to the Bit a bit too hard...

So! For the first few weeks after his accident, whenever Danny would try to help the people of Amity Park, he would be treated as a Villain.

No matter if he had just defeated the Big Bad of the Week or saved a Cat from a tree, everybody in town only saw him as a Monster or Villain to he feared and hunted down. Danny was really getting sick of trying to get them on his side, until Sam made a suggestion.

"Why not just...play into it?" She said, barely looking up from painting her nails.

It was just an offhand suggestion, but it stuck with Danny. Why shouldn't he lean into it? The people of Amity Park already saw Ghosts as Evil, and they already assumed he was in cahoots with the Ghosts attacking the town. Why shouldn't he just...play into it?

So he does just that.

From that day on, whenever Phantom was spotted he would dramatically monologue about his Evil Plans, or claim that another Rogues attack on the City was his own act of terror.

Box Ghost destroys the towns Warehouses? It was on his orders.

Ember mind controls masses of Teenagers? All part of his Plans somehow.

Every Adult in Town is kidnapped by Young Blood? Danny gave them over to a friend as a Gift.

He crafts an identity for himself as the most Vile and Horrible Ghost that has ever attacked the City, using his own infamy to cement his legend even more firmly. The town only sees a Monsterous Villain, who has eveded capture near effortlessly for months on end, who constantly attacks their City and gets away with it.

Of course he still needs an excuse for how his plans keep getting stopped, and he gets it when his girlfriend Valerie becomes the Red Huntress. Before that, he just claimed infighting or the Fentons getting lucky, but Valerie becoming the Town's Hero meant he had a plausible excuse for how he kept getting "Foiled".

Val was suspicious, because she was not as involved as Phantom painted her to be, but in the end she had no proof of him faking his defeats. And she couldn't come up with any explanations for why he would do that in the first place. I mean, who would fake being a Supervillain? It had to he something else.

This did come back to bite him a while later, when the Justice League decided that enough was enough, and dispatched Justice League Dark to recruit Red Huntress and help Deal with him.

Coincidentally, that was the same day Pariah Dark attacked the Mortal Realm and sucked Amity Park into the Ghost Zone.

And honestly? Danny had spent over a Year proclaiming himself as a Villain who commanded Ghosts to attack the Human Realm, and he had heard about the Right of Conquest being Absolute in the Ghost Zone, so why not make it official? Why not overthrow the Ghost King, become the Ghost King, and cement his identity as a Villain while also forbidding Ghosts from entering the Human Realm without his permission?

He may have gotten a bit carried away and forgotten that the Villain thing was a disguise...but hey! He was still preventing Ghost Attacks! ...mostly. That's got to count for something right?

He may have let the Bit run a bit too far...

...

Check the tags for more context!

[whichcouldmeanothing]

Just a really powerfully good person.

Dimension 20: Misfits And Magic 2x09 "The Magic of Creation"

[ghostlyeris]

sam's really out here, charming one supernatural entity at a time

[bluenoisen]

plunged into the deep end

[wanologic]

and they were roommates

[lilybug-02]

Woah, new character! She seems...nice?

Bug Fact: Cockroaches can hold their breath for up to 45 minutes, even when in a complete vacuum.

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Volume 2 Masterpost

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[te4k3ttle]

Is this loss

[ayo-edebiri]

Climb in, ma cherie, best see if it's a good fit.

Interview With The Vampire (2022 - ) I 1.04