I left my patience back at 30th Street Station
Mix 31: Weirdos, sellouts, noise-makers, and Paris Hilton revisited.
Can you believe I’ve got another vacation post lined up? I’ll have to cobble together a greatest hits intro: since a few Paris Hilton conversations bubbled up this past week, I figured I would excerpt (after cleaning up a bit — unbelievably, my copy editing has improved over the years) some stuff I wrote about Paris Hilton’s debut album Paris back in 2006 that you can’t easily find online now.
August 21, 2006, “Paris and the pop star terrorist fun house”
[Written during my first listen to the album]
One notable thing about the Paris album that might be unique is how insanely overdubbed her vocals are. You can make out multiple vocal tracks (four-plus easy, maybe like ten or twenty, but hard to tell), it’s a really interesting treatment of a weak voice. It obviously doesn’t improve her voice, and there don’t seem to be any egregious Autotune moves, but it creates this army of vapidity that has a real charm to it.
…There’s an illusory charm to the whole album, like you keep getting glimpses of a real person, but no, that one’s just a mirror, chasing these infinite shadow Parises through the song.
August 23, 2006, “Watching Paris Hilton legdrop New Jack through a press table”
[Discourse on Paris Hilton as an extended pro-wrestling metaphor]
With Paris, there’s the urge to dismiss [the music], because it’s easier to call it fake. People think: if it just wasn’t Paris Hilton, I could enjoy myself. But it is her—here in front of me is the target of all of my frustrations about everything I can think of, sex, money, social position, apathy, all rolled into a convenient mascot. And she’s good; maybe you just don’t like her technique, but it’s good for what it is. And I'm conflicted! But that’s part of the thrill, part of the conversation.
August 24, 2006, “Aly and AJ Unplugged Frankenstein”
[A round-up of heinous articles about Paris Hilton]
[Paris Hilton is] a Frankenstein of ideas, maybe bad and destructive ones; she’s an amalgam of the projections of guilt and shame and terror about how we’re living with Paris and we choose to continue living with her, no matter how much we hate it (not everyone hates it). We may not have created her—she was born into it, too —but we’re nourishing her somehow, this Paris-Frankenstein, just by acknowledging her existence, and she just came out with an album and asked, “could you make it with me?” or maybe “would you make it with me, please?” And there’s that instinct to say yes, yes, yes, because why wouldn’t you make it with the Paris of Paris? But what about Paris as Frankenstein?
[Re: the UK Observer headline “MY AMERICAN NIGHTMARE: A US that chooses as its sweetheart a billionaire heiress notorious for hardcore sex is no place to be”]
So Paris is despicable for 1) being born (well, being born rich, but what was she supposed to do about that part? Keep it under wraps, I guess) and 2) being in a notorious sex tape. Hm, I thought it was notorious because her spiteful ex made it public without her consent.
There is (much) more of this, but I don’t want to tempt the email cutoff. I eventually put some of these ideas together into a column for Stylus Magazine. The better Paris-referencing column (“it’s a post-Paris world we’re living in…”) sketches out the aftermath of the 2006-7 tabloid nadir one year later and kinda-sorta predicts the recession and Disney buying Star Wars.
Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5 // Mix 6 // Mix 7 // Mix 8 // Mix 9 // Mix 10 // Mix 11 // Mix 12 // Mix 13 // Mix 14 // Mix 15 // Mix 16 // Mix 17 // Mix 18 // Mix 19 // Mix 20 // Mix 21 // Mix 22 // Mix 23 // Mix 24 // Mix 25 // Mix 26 // Mix 27 // Mix 28 // Mix 29 // Mix 30
MIX 31: I LEFT MY PATIENCE BACK AT 30TH STREET STATION
1. Quavo f. Lenny Kravitz: Fly
It’s crass, it’s stupid, it’s amazing. When I did a big survey of 1998 music, I didn’t hesitate to put one of this song’s predecessors, Queen f. Wyclef Jean, Pras, and Free’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” on the mix I called Floating High Above the Mall, leading into “Intergalactic” by the Beastie Boys and…whaddaya know, “Fly” by Lenny Kravitz. If there were still malls, I would love to hear this playing on the speakers. You can practically smell the Cinnabon.
2. Juliana, LAGOS: Manhattan
As you’ll see in my Mexican block this week, I’m getting a lot of my sugar high chart-pop fixes from Latin America these days (Mexico made a better espresso!), in this case a disco-pop single from a Colombian singer who toys with a few Eilish-isms.
3. Shan Yi Chun (單依純): 純妹妹
One from Michael Hong’s Mando Gap playlist. This might be the best Chinese track I’ve heard this year, mildly glitchy but remains steady, if low-flying, even when she inserts little Mariah whistle-sing runs.
4. Jiojio: 8PM
Decaffeinated Italian dance-pop. That’s OK, with real caffeine I really don’t notice the difference anymore; you get used to it eventually.
5. Two Shell f. Sugababes: Round
A remix of Sugababes’ “Round Round” that I assumed used a sample, and was therefore an update of a previous 2022 remix. But Sugababes get a full co-credit— turns out they re-recorded the vocals for it.
6. Jane Remover: Flash in the Pan
Melancholy sing-rap over the sort of cerebral/bodily distinction-collapser production that Jane Remover specializes in. Bonus point for mentioning what I assume is Philly’s 30th Street Station, a place where you will inevitably lose your patience should you spend enough time there. Why are we still participating in the charade of lining up for ten minutes before going down to the train platform??
7. Foudeqush f. Girl Ultra: Mmm
8. Yeri Mua: Traka
9. Go Golden Junk f. RIXXIA, RIVVAA: Pumpiri
Three from Mexico, where a growing number of strivers, influencers, hucksters, and weirdos have melded elements of hyperpop, reggaeton, and a splash of dembow into a bubbly alt-pop scene that to my ears consistently beats the A-pop “pop girlies.”
10. Young Gatillo, Angel Dior: Choco
A rare return-to-form appearance from Angel Dior, who has spent most of the past year getting too big to sound like Bugs Bunny playing the whole baseball game by himself. Here he’s mostly supporting Young Gatillo, but you can at least hear the old Angel Dior bouncing off the walls in the background.
11. Sarahmée: Ayoye
Montreal Afrobeats that forefronts French vocals and veers into dembow cadence—a trendy cosmopolitan melting pot.
12. De Tories, Slim DC: Funky808
Here’s a South African barcadi-tagged holdover from my scan of Glenn McDonald’s revamped genre tag crawler. If you think this feels long at eight minutes, just wait until the next song!
13. Jay Park f. Jessi, Awich, MILLI, Ramengvrl, Lil Cherry, Mirani, Maliibu Mitch, CAMO: Xtra McNasty
Jay Park has collected an overstuffed posse of Asian and Asian-American women rappers for what is basically a six-minute cypher showcase. Featuring Korean-Americans Jessi and Lil Cherry; Awich from Japan; MILLI from Thailand; Ramengvrl from Indonesia; Mirani and CAMO from South Korea; and Maliibu, the half-Vietnamese rapper from Maliibu N Helene (of “Figure 8” fame). You feel every second of this song’s six minutes, so it helps to be actively rooting for at least one participant (for me it was MILLI, with a great verse in English).
14. Ice Spice: TTYL
Ice Spice’s scatology has gone from amusing to concerning, but her album is brief and not bad. This was the song I liked the most from it, minor and unapologetically grubby (also: no poop—the phrase “talk shit” is not followed by any overly literal elaboration, thank god).
15. jump2k, LAZER DIM 700, glixkz: luh twan (pt. 1)
A somewhat inexplicable and borderline unlistenable collaboration in a painfully discordant subgenre called jumpstyle. But I won’t get in any further over my head determining how finely you can slice a dance subgenre into microgenres; I only need to know whether it’s worth making my ears bleed. Kieron Press-Reynolds’s rundown in Resident Advisor mentions jumpstyle as part of a larger trend piece.
This is the first Lazer Dim feature on one of my mixes, but mostly for how he gets swept into the surroundings. The folks who recommend this stuff to me (this came from Ryan Dee’s playlist) seem to find more going on in the rest of his stuff than I do.
16. CHXSE WAVE f. IVRIA: Похожи
Noisy, but easy listening compared to the last track, some phonk that I assumed was Russian but appears to be from a Brazilian producer and Danish singer.
17. Yuri: Kashika
A spare, spiky Japanese avant-pop song that sounds like they fashioned the rhythm after a whack-a-mole machine, and whose provenance I was not diligent enough to sort out this week.
18. Yuri Redicopa, DJ MOTTA: Festa do Yuri
A pretty baile funk track, floats along on its guitar line, with no amount of gun-cocking or mixed-in-the-red mouth clave able to pierce the beauty.
19. 163 braces: 黎明
Another keeper from Michael Hong’s playlist, and one of the few names in Chinese pop that I always look for in my playlists. Here it sounds like she’s reaching back to confessional teenpop, usually good for auto-inclusion in a mix.
20. Granat Garden: По шляху іти
Have to pull the parachute, this mix is a bit more intense than usual. So here’s some lightly agitated jazz-rock from Ukraine to help cool down.
21. Malu Magri: Tuas Veias
An under-the-radar Brazilian disco-samba throwback that sounds much older than it is, effective retro fetishism.
22. LP Giobbi, Mascolo: So Nice to Be in Love
American DJ who is classically trained and chooses instead to tinker around with house piano, an impulse I understand at a deep level. Reminds me of the very brief debut period where SAULT sounded like they just wanted to soundtrack a block party (“Don’t Waste My Time”).
23. Goat: Ouroboros
When you’re not sure how to end a mix, you could do worse than just give it to Goat. This one’s a little funkier than they usually get.
***
That’s it! Until next time, keep it funky, or at least somewhat funkier than usual.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Jane Remover’s “Flash in the Pan”
Here's the link for Ross Hoffman's "heiress to the throne: dancing in the royal suite" where he compellingly details how, for him, the Paris album, and lead singer/lead narrator Paris herself, "develop an extremely vivid and fascinating sense of identity and personality." (Linking it for your readers. I know you know the article - you probably were the one who introduced me to it - and you may even have it pasted to your wall.) Is a moving blogpost, by someone moved by a - genuinely - moving album.
http://mincetapes.blogspot.com/2006/10/heiress-to-throne-dancing-in-royal.html
Central America as productive as Vietman it seems, I've been jamming Cafe Vot by V# + Larria the best of their colabs so far