“Saturday Night Special”
LL Cool J feat. Rick Ross & Fat Joe
Def Jam/Virgin, 2024
This Is How Tomorrow Moves
beabadoobee
Dirty Hit, 2024
LL Cool J exists in a state of perpetual comeback; manufactured adversity is his lifeblood. When people call him soft for doing shitty movies and mushy crossovers, he busts out the rappity-rap. When people call him old and irrelevant, he noses his way to another chart-topper. After touring the country on the 50th anniversary circuit, he’s pounding his chest — he is Hip-Hop Personified. It’s bankable if reductive, discounting the nutty brilliance that buoyed even his worst ‘90s work.
How is Fat Joe the smallest man in this video? Between LL, Joe, Rick Ross, and producer Q-Tip, they’ve got four decades covered, five if you squint. One takeaway is that rap — the act of rapping, rhyming words on beat — didn’t change that much in the 21 years between LL and Ross’s debuts. But you can appreciate the nuances: LL rhymes on the snare, Ross behind it, Joe wherever he pleases. The whole thing’s a party trick, a Vegas revue, but what else would it be? It’s only a letdown when you remember “I Shot Ya (Remix)” exists.
For six weeks, rap fans have been whispering to one another: Yo, the new LL album’s actually really good. He’s been a creature of award shows and network procedurals for too long; the new record didn’t even get a Pitchfork review. It’s fine. 45 minutes is more LL Cool J than anyone needs. There’s a song called “Basquiat Energy.” You can picture A&Rs tallying tax write-offs on a cocktail napkin. Nas verse for me, Busta hook for you, Snoop cameo for them, time to close the books.
Q-Tip was last sighted in 2019, doing the beats on a Danny Brown album no one ever talked about. (An ignominious feat: Danny Brown was huge in 2019?) The new LL tracks are structurally sound, slickly layered, snaky basslines, nothing to chew on. “Scenario (Remix),” but without any edges. I think the effect’s intentional — Tip’s been doing variations on tastefully modest since Y2K — but these are instrumentals you’d expect in a Starz series about LL Cool J.
Give me Phenomenon or The DEFinition over this stuff any day. Those albums have moments that make you want to hide in the corner, but LL was in world-conquering mode. He made schlocky pop music for twenty years and needn’t be penitent — some of it was good, anyway. Flex on ‘em, LL!
Thing is, LL isn’t a leading man at this point, but he’s getting auteur treatment. A bolder producer — Madlib, maybe Alchemist, I’m spitballing — might’ve reined him in, isolated his idiosyncrasies, and deployed them like instruments. That’s Rick Rubin’s thing, if you buy the hype. The Zen guru schtick is corny as fuck (he’s Phil Jackson, But For Music), but he distills amorphous and past-their-prime acts to their component parts. Hey, Tom Petty, maybe you could play that same song, but like, slower? Hey, Jay-Z, remember when you used to travel with a turntablist?
Rubin’s coaxed a fantastic album out of beabadoobee, which is fairly miraculous. Or is it? She’s always been something of a blank canvas, a muse or avatar for male producers. Pete Robertson lent an alt-rock fuzz to 2020’s Fake It Flowers; 2021’s Our Extended Play, helmed by Matty Healy, is like a rom-com soundtrack. Most of her work traffics in empty-calorie nostalgia, ‘90s Vibes as processed by the TikTok blender, Juliana Hatfield here, “Lovefool” there. She looks like a supermodel and plays guitar like one. (It’s surprising no one else tried “Absurdly hot Filipina plays grunge in haute couture,” considering that’s literally the plot of Wayne’s World 2.)
Her last album was a market-tested snooze, but the new project, This Is How Tomorrow Moves, packages coffeehouse jams with college-radio bite. It’s still homage, but they’ve nailed the details. “Ever Seen” has the Edie Brickell guitar effect; on “Tie My Shoes,” the piano and guitar orbit one another until a sax appears, from the ether, for the final eight bars. It’s like Clarence Clemons clocking in for the coda of “Dancing in the Dark.” Rubin didn’t have to do that, and it turns a good song into a great one.
beabadoobee's graduated from singing to performing. “Take a Bite” is a masterful arrangement, but bea approaches it like a demo, traipsing through conversational syllables and inflection. A snarling bridge breaks the pace of “One Time,” propelling the languid chords in unforeseen directions. She’s always been a worthy vessel; this time around, the music’s a vessel for her.
Bushwick Ice House
35 Ingraham Street
We’d trekked to 3 Dollar Bill for the backyard Amindi show, then found ourselves foraging for food after sunset. All the entrances to the Morgan Avenue L were blocked off with yellow police tape. I’d never been to Roberta’s — one of those places that can’t possibly live up to its reputation — but the sidewalk slices were divine. They have a whole compound out there, it must get desolate in winter.
We almost tried this new place, Nectar, which had a cool outdoor space, but the cover was restrictive. We wandered around to Bushwick Ice House, which reminded us of American Ice Company in D.C., where we’d both lived briefly after college but hadn’t overlapped. A single square room, pool table; dim, charitable lighting, muting grays and wrinkles. Only got a few weird looks for wearing a mask and taking my beers out to the picnic tables.
A high male-to-female ratio, unusual in New York these days. Slum Village’s “Selfish” plays, and at least one guy mouths along to the Spuds MacKenzie verse. As I’m waiting to pay — four-dollar High Life bottles on Saturday night — a skittish dude approaches. Jeans, sweater with a midwestern football team’s crest, neither broad nor thin. Unversed in local irony, chuffing to impress his friends, too far to turn back. He descends and attempts to pick up a woman at the bar. She dispatches him expertly, graciously, letting him down easy; next time he’ll be smoother, savvier, maybe even know better.
But the bartender, the MC, master of the domain, beneficent lord of the dance. A tattooed, mustached, heroin-chic Oscar Isaac, lush around the crown, thin around the temples. When he comes outside to rip a cigarette, boyish twenty-something men gravitate like moths to a lantern. They’ve yet to arrive at a style, demeanor, or worldview befitting their Bushwick journeys; for now, he is their sensei. When someone makes a move back inside, he remembers the order and name on the tab.