95 North. . . The Newspaper

J. Cole's most recent album,  KOD , arrived at an interesting point in pop music: Lil' Pump and the other lil's are dominating the headphones of teenagers, filling in a cultural void with blue hair, Xanax, learn, and generally ignorant behavior. Such is the long-told story of youth. 50 years ago the Beatles were wearing their mops, smoking marijuana, and perfecting the devils music. They said they were bigger than Jesus. People burned their records. Old timers complained about the hippies. Those hippies grew up, and complained about the gen-X kids who were fed a steady diet of malaise, Beavis and Butthead , punk rock, and Mad Magazine . Those kids grew up and had millennial's- a generation of spoiled, but poor kids who whiz through life on apps, killed the traditional music business, elected Obama, and deferred their student loans. J. Cole, born in 1985, is a millennial, and perfectly typifies the general experience of a millennial in many ways. His first album,...

Sitting around the house- cold night- haven't posted since June. Here are some songs that have me feelin' some type of way right now: "Luna" by the Smashing Pumpkins: Ah, the melodrama, as Pumpkins lead singer guides us through a heavy, melodic haze steered by a a clean strummed electric. He poses a series of questions: what do we do for those we love? How do we express that love? Sometimes you gotta take a chance, and say it somehow. "Beautiful Loser" by Bob Seeger: Ain't we all beautiful losers? Wanting the wisdom of the elderly and the dreams of a young gun. Wanting to explore the world like Jack Keroac somehow paired with the domestic tranquility of an afternoon with the kids and the two car garage. Bob knows we can't have it all. Hear all about it here, served to us with the steak, eggs, and potatoes Midwestern rock of Bob Seeger. "Emaline" Ben Folds Here, Ben Folds does what he is good at: banging solo on the piano, find...

There's too much to say about Kendrick Lamar. I don't know where to begin. Some brief history? The 30-year-old rapper from Compton, CA has recently released an accompanying album to the movie  Black Panther , kicking off what promises to be a big year for our man Kung Fu Kenny. Kendrick packs a lot of punch. In his 2017 album DAMN , his short, jumpy, and bold mini-essays on identity and spiritual quest over tight-knit beats earned him a place in the spotlight. Per Kendrick, the album is designed to be listened to  either forwards or backward . 2015's To Pimp a Butterfly was sprawling, artistic, free-form jazz that found its heart in Harlem, California, Israel, and South Africa in equal parts. Prior to Butterfly , Lamar (he always has been) was big on concept albums- g ood kid, m.A.A.d City  and Section 8.0 were both like novels. While kid  was Kendrick's autobiography, Section 8.0 looks at a generational struggle through the lens of two ...

Lauryn Hill, of Orange County New Jersey, still stands today as one of the greatest female rappers of all time. Her career, which started out with the famed super-group (featuring Wyclef Jean) the Fugees churned out deeply meaningful, soulful hip-hop in songs like  "Killing me Softly ", which explored emotional territory previously unexpressed in mass-selling hip-hop. The Fugees owed much of their success to Hill's talent as a singer, rapper, and musician. She's handy with the guitar, political theory, and theology, a triple-threat of sorts that armed her to compose songs that were confrontational, meditative, and most of all. . . true. Hill built on her success with the Fugees by cutting one of the most critically claimed and essential hip-hop albums of all time, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill , released in 1998 (the golden year of rap? Outkast's Aquemini   was released the same year). Fame did something funny to Lauryn Hill, like it does to so many ot...