ON REPEAT: Immortal Nightbody, Gil Scott Heron, Yaya Bey, Grand Puba, Tracy + The Plastics, You’ll Never Get To Heaven
like honestly the way rent looking right now i need to be in the crib all 30 days
It’s peak “dog days” my friends. I’ve always hated that phrase—I refuse to look up why we call it that—but this week in particular I’ve been dealing with burnout. Work burnout, life burnout, world burnout. It’s safe to say my July has not been as “sky high” as I had hoped! I’m working on it, but this week’s selection has some lowkey chillers.
Here’s where these are kept for posterity in playlist form.
Immortal Nightbody “Aufhebung”
I heard something about Immortal Nightbody before I actually heard the music. Something about how it’s like Danny Brown meets Cleaners From Venus, and I’m like—how can that be? Turns out, it can be.
To let Sim Jackson tell it "Immortal Nightbody" is a code-name for an "anti-genre pop experiment" started during the pandemic after he snapped his ankle getting jumped outside of a liquor store NYE 2019. His music reflects his variegated creative influences: Post-Punk, Techno, and Shoegaze blended into contemporary rap and hip-hop.
Sounds like…my kinda shit
You’ll Never Get To Heaven “Setting Sun”
Lovely, no notes
Tracy + The Plastics '“Big Stereo”
I wasn’t familiar with Tracy + The Plastics before hearing this song. It’s the solo project of Wynne Greenwood, a performance artist who portrayed all of the members of the band. The lead singer, “Tracy” would perform live in front of a projection of drummer Cola and guitarist Nikki who would be projected behind.
Anyway, the project explored gender roles as well as the role technology was taking in the post Y2K era, amidst broader themes that Wynne would incorporate into her work, including feminism and queerism.
This sort of setup seems like a headache in 2024, let alone in the low-tech era of 2002—can you only perform in front of white walls?
If this feels like Le Tigre, you’re correct. Wynne did a lot of video work with the band for their live performances. Also unsurprised to find out she went to Rutgers, as this project reminds me of a lot of what I discovered when I began hanging out in New Brunswick.
The project was retired in 2006 so Wynne could focus on visual art, but she brought the “band” back together for a solo show at the New Museum.
Laura Michele “You Always Hurt The One You Love”
Laura Michele’s version of this Mills Brothers classic on an Atlantic City-based record label in 1989.
Yaya Bey & Exaktly “eric adams in the club”
Yaya Bey is one of the hot acts blowing up in Brooklyn and beyond right now. I don’t know how much I love this song compared to how much I love the title and forlornly nod in agreement with the little intro and the X-Files-y sound throughout.
I don’t live in New York anymore but I for some reason have a strange obsession with Eric Adams, particularly when he’s in the club, particularly next to Cara Delevingne who is not on “the most” cocaine but is certainly “the most” on cocaine, if that makes sense.
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Grand Puba “Keep On”
Certainly not a new song from Grand Puba from Brand Nubian, but new to me. Some dumbass lyrics in a very 90’s way on this one, including the classic phrase “up in her guts” which reminds me of this.
If that sample sounds familiar it’s from the beginning of this classic Gil Scott Heron song….
THE GOLD STANDARD:
Gil Scott Heron “We Almost Lost Detroit”
Released in 1977 on Bridges, “We Almost Lost Detroit” is one of the poet’s many collaborative projects with musician Brian Jackson, who is doing a lot of the “musical” part of this music. It was sampled by the likes of Common and Black Star—and it’s easily my favorite song about a power station.
On October 5, 1966, one of the coolant channels at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station off Lake Eerie started overheating. Now, my understanding of nuclear power regrettably begins and ends with Homer Simpson and I’m often typing these on a searing hot laptop whose fan is going so hard I feel like the computer might start to fly. I’m not an expert on this topic.
I would wager Gil was not an expert in chemical engineering either, but he did know far too much about how people in power tend to not value the safety of certain populations, say the residents of Detroit only 30 miles away. And it’s frustrating.
He namedrops Karen Silkwood, a chemist who exposed violations at a plutonium plant to the New York Times (and was later played by Meryl Streep) who died mysteriously a few years before this song came out.
In this particular situation, nobody died—but also no precautionary measures to evacuate or even alert the citizens about a meltdown or potential contamination were taken to avoid unwanted publicity. And just a few years after, Three Mile Island happened.
This was just another example, in an ongoing series of the people in charge not having everyone’s best interests in mind, and he’s growing weary. This is not the urgent Gil Scott Heron who talked about the revolution—he still believes in one. He’s just a bit burnt out about it.