I have a very violent pencil

Mix 21: BZRP, Billie, bulls, baubles, bots, and bits and bobs.

John Bic

It’s an odds and sods week as I am battling a mystery illness that seems to be mutating into a second mystery illness.

• noa’s “Any Angle,” which I featured on my first mix of the year, is now a monster TikTok hit. There’s a discussion of it in the most recent This Side of Japan post. Wish I’d recorded how many views the YouTube had when I first shared it in January—I don’t remember it being popular yet!

• Charli XCX is dabbling in Brazilian funk-style clave, though jury is out on whether it’s meaningfully connected to actual funk music in any other way.

• Eminem’s new single is a good reminder that any conversation about Taylor Swift’s industry dominance that does not include Eminem is really missing a major remaining player in the superstar pantheon.¹

• Not to be confused with the Pop Pantheon, which just had a very good episode on P!nk, including a nice conversation about her role in the early 00s confessional teenpop turn with Linda Perry.

• The Best Albums of the 90s Twitter polls by Kent Beeson are now on Bluesky. I am currently getting very into the poll’s prediction brackets. (Yes, this is the closest I get to being a fantasy league nerd.) If you’re not on Bluesky, you can follow by subscribing to the newsletter.

• Speaking of Bluesky, here’s a great conversation sparked by Tom Ewing about a piece in Slate whose framing I had serious misgivings about but nonetheless documents an interesting period for late disco and funk (you just need to ignore everything about “the genre with no name” and Sabrina Carpenter).

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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: I HAVE A VERY VIOLENT PENCIL

1. Bizarrap, Lismar: Bzrp Music Session 60

Another day, another excellent BZRP session, this time with Dominican rapper Lismar, who starts with a straightforward whiplash freestyle before changing into a blond wig and channeling J.J. Fad.

2. Mc Leozin f. DJ Lucas de Paula, Deliverymusic: Fui pra Rua do Ouro

3. DJ ZL, MC Josh, Mc Pedrin do Engenha: Disso Que eu Preciso

Two funk tracks, at least one of which is from billdifferen, who has started a weekly Friday funk feature. (I think the vast majority of what he shares is not on Spotify.) The first has a Saxobeat and the second has a pretty melody that nonetheless does not technically qualify for the 2024 trend (a trend on my playlists anyway) of pretty melody use in funk, which is mostly a phenomenon of sample choices, not sung melody from the artist.

4. Chung Ha f. Hongjoong: Eenie Meenie

One of two from Jel Bugle’s 2024 playlist—this one is not the viral Pokémon remix, you’ll just need to be patient. Didn’t realize the Jukebox had covered this and I missed it — so I can just quote Isabel and call it a day:

That bass line hooks me at the start, and every time I start to worry the song’s not going to live up to it something different starts happening. Despite taking the silly hook dead seriously, to my mostly monolingual ears, Chung Ha sounds like she’s having so much fun it’s infectious, spreading to both the featured rap and to me; when I put it on while washing dishes last night, I found myself dancing along unconsciously, hands covered in suds. [8]

Though I’d probably land on a [7], so average it out with Katherine’s assessment:

Bratz: Genie Magic type beat. [6]

5. Magnito f. Mark Owi: Cartel

Another week, another amapiano-inflected Naija pop track that grabs me for no particular reason. Let’s just hand it to the summery guitar figure and call it a day.

6. Remi Wolf: Toro

I’ve been cautiously optimistic about Remi Wolf’s career for about four years now (first featured a remix of one of her early tracks on my 2020 playlist), and with this and “Cinderella” it sounds like she might finally be arriving. I give the edge of the two to “Toro,” about as a geekily horny as Billie Eilish’s “Lunch” (which I reviewed here); hard to tell what she relishes more, loud hotel sex or turning the word toreador into a hook.

7. Billie Eilish: L’Amour de Ma Vie (Over Now Extended Edit)

So, Billie Eilish. I think the new album is good, certainly her second-best after Happier Than Ever, which I underrated when it came out.² My complaints are mostly on the production side: the farther she goes along in her career the more I’m convinced that she has songwriting gifts that outpace her brother’s production savvy, which on this album sounds like it’s finally hit a wall. This song is, interestingly, sort of an exception that proves the rule: originally included as a brief “outro” on a very different song called “L’Amour de Ma Vie,” this is more accurately called “Over Now,” a chintzy Europop lark with hyperpop vocal processing that makes more sense stretched out past the “snippet” length on the album. It’s the only time the thinness feels like the point and underlines what’s good about the song.

8. Take Van: In and Out

Take Van is shaping up to be one of my favorite post-Pantheresses, seemingly unencumbered by the distinctively Emperor’s New Clothes feeling of PinkPantheress’s own diminishing returns. (PinkPantheress is to date the only celebrity I’m aware of who managed to make a Nardwuar interview feel like a confrontational journalistic exposé.)

9. Tink: Huh

Have kept light tabs on Tink since her Winter’s Diary series but never really clicked with anything after 2016. But I love this song’s hook, a disingenuously dopey “…huh?” response from a soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. The song feels like a tiny insular snow globe version of “Say My Name.”

10. Ouri: Baby Has a Frown

A different sort of inverted, recessive Destiny’s Child number, like Danny Elfman recreating an Darkchild production for a Tim Burton flick, from a Montreal artist.

11. Gavrilina: Cердце упало вниз

Another replacement-level minor-key Russian dance-pop song I won’t remember existing in a week? Yes!

12. Emma: Il Mondo Dei Baci

A lot of sound and fury in this emo kitchen-sink synth-pop, signifying…well, not nothing, but I doubt it would get that much deeper if I spoke Italian.

13. DJ Quarantine: Hey Boogie Woogie Bang Bang (Pokédance)

Finally, the viral Pokémon remix! Annoying things come to those who wait.

14. Sasuke Haraguchi: Utaubot

Some gnarly vocaloid that seems to be lyrically pieced together from a Twitter bot. I do not have the background to know what’s going on here, I just know when the robots tickle my fancy.

15. 潘Pan: Imperfect Poetry

Taiwanese artist who is working with Clams Casino among other producers on a new album, Pan the Pansexual. This is the lead single—pretty, abrasive, sounds like someone who worked with Grimes back in 2016 (under previous name Aristophanes) before Grimes…well, you know. One to keep an eye on.

16. Lisa: Hallucinate

Fun and raucous J-rock.

17. Uncle Waffles, Royal MusiQ f. Ohp Sage, Pcee, Djy Biza: Wadibusa

Always happy to find an Uncle Waffles track that breaks through — I’ve liked a lot of her work, especially her Red Dragon EP from 2022, but she tends toward the mellow, whereas on this one she leans in a bit more toward, if not sleazy, something a bit more provocative.

18. Zerrydl: O.U.A.T

Nigerian rap, nicely navigating the space between post-mumble-rap disaffection and ama/Afrobeats sumptuousness.

19. Whitelands: The Prophet & I

A recommendation from Ian Mathers, who listed this as a song of the year to date. A quick skim of press coverage ties the group to the neo-shoegaze trend, but I don’t think any old trace of vaseline on a lens necessarily qualifies you—it’s more anthemic and open-hearted than most neo-shoegaze, and I’m happy that no one has attempted to cover the (excellent) drummer’s tracks.

20. Jim Rafferty: I See Red (demo) [1982]

21. Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Everybody’s Alone [1969]

Two archival wind-downs, the first a recently re-released early recording of songwriter Jim Rafferty singing “I See Red,” a song of his popularized by Clannad, though Frida from ABBA technically got there first. The second is from the deluge of unreleased Neil Young material released in the past few years, an earlier version of “Everybody’s Alone” from 1969, which I might prefer to the fuller version he recorded a few years later. Though a YouTube commenter notes of that later version, “When Neil Young invented Pavement.”

22. The Point.: Cumbia de Medianoche

Austin trio bills itself as psych but makes an equal claim to surf with a hint of psychobilly.

23. Marit Larsen: Hun er min

Sweet string-buoyed pop ditty from Marit Larsen, seems bittersweet but she’s recording mostly in Norwegian so I can’t be totally sure. (The song title translates to “She’s Mine,” and the Marit Larsen-ness isn’t lost in translation: “I try to listen to everything she wants to say / Because she says the wrong thing, always the wrong thing at the right time / It's like she has all the answers and / She's mine.”

24. Tristan Perich, Ensemble 0: Open Symmetry: Section 4

Cerebral composer and visual artist who has done a bunch of interesting things with machine-based art creation. The right mindset for this sort of minimal music, I guess, and I like the contrast of the vibraphones against the gradual introduction of his signature 1-bit music.

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That’s it! Until next time, keep your pencils sharp, but try not to hurt anyone.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from Bizzarap & Lismar’s “Bzrp Music Session 60” (“tengo un lápiz muy violento”)

1. I think there’s probably an Eminem/Taylor Swift book to be written. (It should take seriously the ways they both perennially appeal to children.)

2. I still maintain that Billie Eilish songs often sound great covered by other artists, who don’t make some of her odder performance choices. There are some huge songs on her second album that sound self-consciously minor in her treatment of them; eventually I’ll have enough cover versions to prove this!