{"type":"doc","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"text":"","type":"text"}]}]}

Zoe Challenger

The young Nigerian phenom brought his unique take on Afropop to the newly opened venue.


Zoe Challenger for MPR

Photos: Rema brings Afropop to Uptown Theater

Each week, we add new music, older tracks, which are known as “Gold adds”, and tracks that might not fit our general format, but still deserve a place in rotation because they serve our mission of showing the depth, breadth, and influence of Black musical expression - These are known as “Variety adds.”

. If you make music and want it considered for rotation, 

 If you want to give feedback directly, reach out to me at jgreen@mpr.org.

Tune in to hear our host Sanni B. live on The Message from 10 AM to 1 PM Monday through Thursday!

Keep all these tracks in one place with the 

 Spotify playlist. This playlist is updated weekly with all the new adds. When that playlist is cycled with new tracks, the tracks live forever on the 

 playlist. That playlist contains all of the music that we've added since the week of July 11, 2022 in chronological order of when it was added. All of the tracks available on Spotify, at least.

Julian Green built and manages the music library for Carbon Sound and oversees content creation.  


Julian Green

All of the tracks added to rotation on Carbon Sound the week of July 31, 2023.


Image for New on Carbon Sound Spotify playlist

Natalia Toledo

New on Carbon Sound

Old on Carbon Sound

New Music on Carbon Sound - Week of July 31, 2023

National Book Award winner and New York Times bestselling author Hanif Abdurraqib has a lot going on. Aside from winning a MacArthur Genius Grant and writing some of this century’s most vital 

 at the Walker Art Center. Dubbed the “Black VHS Experience,” these five films explore the interplay between music and the moving image, particularly Black music in 90s films. 

At the series’ first screening last Friday, Abdurraqib came to introduce the seminal film, “The Five Heartbeats” (1991). Upon taking to the mic, Abdurraqib reflected on his ties to the city: “I published my first book here, through Button Poetry. I’m also a lifelong Timberwolves fan, for better or for worse.”

Before the first screening, Abdurraqib took some time to chat with Carbon Sound about his connection to Minneapolis and what music means to him.

First and foremost, how are you liking Minneapolis?

I like it a lot. I’ve been [to Minneapolis] a lot and I’ve spent a lot of time here… I’m on my way now to one of my favorite sneaker shops in the city. So it's good to return to these corners of the city that mean a great deal to me. This is one of my favorite Midwestern places. It’s good to be back.

Speaking of the Midwest — In your work, particularly your essay collection “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us,” you touch a lot on the Midwest and its influence in American music. For instance, J Dilla, Michael Jackson, and Aaliyah all grew up in this region. What are your thoughts on what Minnesota in particular has to offer? We have Prince, for starters.

Speaking of the Midwest — In your work, particularly your essay collection “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us,” you touch a lot on the Midwest and its influence in American music. For instance, J Dilla, Michael Jackson, and Aaliyah all grew up in this region. What are your thoughts on what Minnesota in particular has to offer? 

Of course. There’s Prince and the Minneapolis sound. There’s also a massively important punk scene that came out. I love The Replacements. I’ve always loved punk and rock in general. Hüsker Dü… Semisonic. To some degree, The Jets are from here. They’re a band I adore. Something massively overlooked, at least in my mind, is how there’s a deep hip-hop scene in the Twin Cities.

Last night, [local performer and organizer] Tish Jones hosted 

 at the Walker. I went, and it was great. It was an ode to hip-hop and all the local artists in the scene. The Twin Cities’ contributions to music are vital. Prince and [Bob] Dylan headline that conversation, but there’s a lot of glossed over things that make this place so great.

For your Walker film screening series, you mentioned that you’re trying to create a sort of logical arc in the way you’ve picked and sequenced these five films. Tell me more about that. 

For your Walker film screening series, you 

 that you’re trying to create a sort of logical arc in the way you’ve picked and sequenced these five films. Tell me more about that. 

 of their soundtracks. Music plays a role in how these movies come across. So, it was easy for me to sequence these films as if I was sequencing a playlist, just basing it off of the music of the films. 

I really wanted to start with the more upbeat sonic templates. So start out with a “Five Heartbeats”

or “Sister Act” kind of thing, and then get into sounds that were a bit heavier or a bit weightier. 

We're watching these films, but they require close listening as well. So I really wanted to treat it as though it was also a listening practice. And the order of the films have a sonic arc to them. Narrative arcs too, but the sonic arc is really palpable.

In reference to this being a listening practice, what do you want the viewers/listeners to get out of it?

The soundtrack of the film allows us to step inside the way a song enhances a moment, and then exiting that film experience as a witness. I think we can apply some of those enhancements to our own curation of sound to get us through the day. 

This is why I'm so particular about the soundtracking of my own life. I'm so particular about placements in playlists, or what purposes a playlist can service. 

 That's because I go about it like I'm scoring a film. Which is not to add importance to my life, I don't think my life is a film, but I'm saying treat it that way, give [your life] that opportunity. It allows me to put the focus and put some rigor into the sound that accompanies it.

Let’s talk about these soundtracks. They’re all pretty influential, especially “Set It Off” and “Sister Act.” What’s your emotional connection to them?

We had “Sister Act” on VHS because my grandmother was living with us for a while. She was very Christian, and also loved Whoopi Goldberg a great deal. She would watch “Sister Act" religiously. I remember she lived in a room upstairs and I would sneak up the stairs and sit in the doorway and watch with her. 

“The Five Heartbeats” soundtrack was on a cassette tape that my dad played in the car. We played it all the time in the house when I was younger too. I came to love these songs independently of the films they were attached to. That to me is the mark of a good soundtrack. With “The Five Heartbeats,” those songs were made specifically for the film, those songs were made to kind of sink into the film. They were required to. But these are also standalone great songs. 

There are two kinds of soundtracks. Soundtracks like “The Five Heartbeats” where the songs are engineered to stitch the film together. The other soundtrack is where you just get a bunch of good artists to make new songs. In “Set It Off,” there’s an incredible 

 that you can only hear on that soundtrack. They didn’t put it on any albums.

Both of those modes entice me. I like the new Spider-Verse soundtrack because they just let Metro Boomin work. They gave him space and told him to get some artists to do some songs. That felt like a kind of a call back to an era that I really loved.

What's your favorite song in movie usage? Now that you bring it up.

Oh, gosh. I have a few. I don't really love the movie “City of Angels,” but the use of “Iris” [by Goo Goo Dolls] is fantastic. And I don't even know how much I like “Iris” at its face-value. That's one of those situations where the song maybe surpasses the film for me. 

Another one would have to be in the first “Creed” movie. There’s a scene where the villain boxer comes out and they play Krept & Konan’s “Don’t Waste My Time.” That’s such a perfect encapsulation of that song. This works on TV too. In the opening scene of “The Americans,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” is playing. Yo, that shit is perfect. 

I'd love to hear more. It sounds like what you're saying is that it's kind of a symbiotic thing. Both the song and the scene are amplified by each other.

Yeah, the song is redefining or expanding our ideas of what a scene can be. I think this is in part because I grew up in the music video era. So I believe songs should be a visual experience. I'm still a music video watcher, but I think it is safe and fair to say that the music video as a form and the attention paid to it has begun to dwindle. 

So what do we do then? I still have an interest in seeing songs spring to life in any kind of way that is useful visually. That’s why I turn to film and television.

You mentioned that music video viewership has been dwindling. Given the rise of Spotify and TikTok, I’m curious, what are your thoughts on this?

I mean, I was a big music video person. I still am. I remember when Rihanna released the music video for “Work.” I remember it vividly because it was one of the last times I felt like there was real excitement in a music video premiere. We knew what time it was premiering on YouTube. People were watching it in real time together, people were responding to it in real time together. And that was really cool to me. I kind of miss the communal witnessing of a single thing that we could share together. 

This did not happen, obviously, in the original music video era that I grew up in. We were watching them on MTV. But I think the music video is an opportunity to be a kind of short film, or a film that is not fully realized, but is still rich and textured. So I look at a director like Hype Williams. Have you seen his film “Belly”? It came out in ‘98.

I don't think so. I definitely will after this conversation.

To be clear, “Belly” is not a good movie. [laughs] But it’s an aesthetically beautiful movie. Hype Williams is primarily a music video director. So essentially, he just directed a film that maybe should have been a music video. His training, his brain is wired towards music video-making and colors and lighting. There's a real generosity in how he sees Black people — he understands how to light them well. 

The music video is an opportunity for risk taking. There has to be a place for that. There has to be a place for that kind of imagination to flourish.

This film series also solely focuses on 90s films, given this was a vibrant time in terms of representation of Black music in film. How would you say this representation has changed since? Have you noticed any trends?

I think that so much of Black music in film falls on the biopic now. I guess that’s kind of always been the case. But I think the thing about “The Five Heartbeats” is that it was kind of a reimagining of the Black biopic, right. And that was cool to me. 

There are so many ways that music can be used and shaped, Black music specifically, where it doesn't need to be at the forefront of the film. It can be in the backdrop, a generous backdrop.

I'm not anti biopic. I'm not opposed to them, but I think there's so many of them that try to capture a full life. I think they're most useful when they’re attempting to capture a moment. I think there was a broader imagination for how Black music could live in film back then.

Last question: Aside from your upcoming book, There’s Always This Year,and your event series at the Walker, what else can we look forward to seeing from you in the coming weeks and months?

Last question: Aside from your upcoming book,

and your event series at the Walker, what else can we look forward to seeing from you in the coming weeks and months?

In terms of stuff that the public can touch, I'm still 

 pretty regularly. I’ve been doing some smaller, more intimate readings, spending a couple nights at a time in one place. I do hope to come back [to the Twin Cities] in the next couple of months and do one here. It's been good to get back to my roots of more small-scale, quieter reading spaces. 

Hanif Abdurraqib’s Black VHS Experience film screening series will continue through the rest of the summer at the Walker Art Center. The next screening is “Sister Act.” 

Find more info on Walker Art Center’s website.

Fatima Rahman

The MacArthur Genius Grant awardee chatted with Carbon Sound about the intentions behind his new series at Walker Art Center.


Person stands outside with hands in pockets

Photo by Maddie McGarvey, courtesy Hanif Abdurraqib

Exploring the Black VHS Experience with Hanif Abdurraqib

Bora ⠀

The singer’s career-spanning set show at Huntington Bank Stadium brought out highlights from 2022’s RENAISSANCE and a lot more. 


Julian Dakdouk

Beyoncé shines and thrills in Minneapolis

Aaliyah Demry

Minneapolis multidisciplinary artist XINA’s carefully curated lineup showcased Black femme empowerment.


Derrick Gichaba for MPR

Enter the XINAVERSE

“Don't Even Go There” (Badboyz Vocal Mix)

“In Ayia Napa” (Todd Edwards Perfect Paradise Vocal)

All of the tracks added to rotation on Carbon Sound the week of July 17, 2023.


New Music on Carbon Sound - Week of July 17, 2023

Joely Kelzer

Explore Sahbabii’s world of metaphor on his 2020 LP “Barnacles” with Joely Kelzer.


Barnacles

Sahbabii

Sahbabii-isms: Interpreting Sahbabii’s Top 10 Best Lines On “Barnacles”

“How I’m supposed to have a good time/When death and destruction’s all I see?” Vince Staples wonders on sophomore LP 

, before launching into a dance-ready chorus: “Party people, yeah! Party people I like to see you dance!”

(2017), a nihilist meditation on the rapper’s then-newfound fame. A foray into the avant garde, the record has aged almost too well, warping and stretching the sounds of the now au courant sounds of Detroit techno and UK garage. 

Above all else, it's a summer record through and through, the songs drenched in the lurid oranges and blues of its cover: “Slide 'round with my drop top up or down, you down to ride?”

Staples’ public persona correlates very little with the noisy strangeness of 

. Reliably mum when it comes to talking music, eking information from the rapper is like pulling teeth. In both Vulture and New York Times interviews, when asked about 

’s sound, Staples replied glibly, “I don’t know.” A 

, though hilarious, revealed little besides the name of the album’s eponymous fish (“Karl”) and Staples’ thoughts on singer-songwriter SZA (“I love her that’s my son”).

 the phrase “big fish theory”: “[The meaning] is a secret. But what I can promise you is that it has nothing to do with actual living, breathing fish. It has nothing to do with the ‘big fish, small pond’... and it has nothing to do with the term ‘there are more fish in the sea.’”

Bolstered by a murderer’s row of talent, 

 also boasts an almost obscene lineup — The best in electronica (Flume, the late SOPHIE), rap mainstays (A$AP Rocky, Juicy J, Ty Dolla $ign), and literally anyone else (Kilo Kish, Bon Iver, Damon Albarn) make an uncredited cameo or two. In album highlight “Yeah Right,” Kendrick Lamar swoops in and annihilates a jagged SOPHIE beat.

Amid the glimmering production credits, Staples stands at the album’s swirling epicenter, cycling through anger, indifference, and wry humor. “Clap your hands if the police ever profiled… Ain’t no gentrifying us, we finna buy the whole town,” the rapper proclaims in brutal cut “SAMO.” “Tell the one percent to suck a dick because we on now.”

 found me at age 17, shy and secretive about my interests. Upon first listen, it felt 

, something my disdainful teenage self could hardly believe. A then-newfound acolyte of both Staples and SOPHIE, the seamless alchemy of techno and rap scratched an itch in my brain, transporting me somewhere far beyond my listless, suburban upbringing. In a rare stroke of great taste, my 17 year old self had discovered the best album of the 2010s and claimed it as my own.

’s dystopian, experimental soundscapes were my eventual gateway to legions of great work: The musical stylings of Staples’ friend and collaborator Earl Sweatshirt, SOPHIE’s PC Music label and her subsequent hyperpop revolution, and (inevitably) Odd Future. Though I’ve caught plenty of flack for queueing 

 up on aux (one time, notably, “This song sounds like my dishwasher”), I feel a strange protectiveness over this LP: This is 

Many would disagree — A stark remove from Staples’ normal, 90s-tinged flow, 

 as a less digestible record. Years later, Staples himself revealed, “A lot of people hated 

 more than anything else I’ve ever done, and that’s my most successful album to date. A lot of people didn’t like it at all.” 

Perhaps as a result, Staples has yet to touch this sound since. His most recent release, 

t (2022), grapples with his upbringing on the north side of Long Beach, equal parts an ode to California as well as a eulogy to friends loved and lost. 

, the former a story-driven, traditional LP that merely alludes to Staples’ stardom.

 was likely a one-time phenomenon, its legacy lives on. I certainly will never forget it.

Six years after its release, the rapper’s foray into experimentalism leaves a lasting impact.


Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Coachella

Def Jam Recordings

The Lasting Impact of Vince Staples' Big Fish Theory

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Make your voice heard and vote for your favorite songs by the legendary artist here.

Tune in to hear our countdown of your choices for the 10 best Beyoncé songs at noon central during The Message with Sanni Brown on Carbon Sound on Wednesday, July 19.

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Lil Uzi Vert, the elusive rapper who has previously made headlines for attempting to buy a planet and undergoing a $26 million forehead diamond implant, made headlines again for revealing that they are nonbinary in July of 2022. Receiving mostly supportive comments on social media following the announcement, the rapper joins the ranks of other artists like Kehlani and Sam Smith who use the singular they pronoun or are openly nonbinary. The positivity from this headline broke a trend of negative press and online buzz for the rapper; pointing to disappointing snippets released after Uzi’s debut 

 as well as a lukewarm response to last year’s 

EP, YouTube thinkpieces and hip-hop forums aplenty debate whether Uzi has “

”, the artistic brilliance from their earlier Soundcloud era lost forever.

Lil Uzi Vert has never been a stereotypically masculine rapper. Their flamboyant style and shrugging off of traditional styles of expression for men in rap are arguably a major part of their appeal. In any case, Uzi seems to be enjoying an uneventful transition into a more openly queer life, something that is too often taken for granted in an age where “coming out” as non-straight or non-cisgender still feels like an exhausting and unending rite of passage.

I’m happy for Uzi. So why am I left with a sour taste in my mouth?

Because as each of these headlines pass, a more damning headline is further buried, one that isn’t about their opulent expressiveness, planetary acquisitions, or new album: allegations of stalking and mental and physical abuse against their ex-girlfriend, Brittany Byrd, in July of 2021. 

, after Uzi discovered that Byrd and rapper Saint Jhn were at a cafe in West Hollywood together, they entered the building, struck Byrd in the face multiple times, and pointed a gun to her stomach before leaving; Byrd was hospitalized for her injuries. 

Just as with other high-profile cases of domestic abuse and sexual violence from 

, the allegations against Uzi made headlines but were quickly buried. Searches for “Lil Uzi Brittany Byrd'' return articles emphasizing Byrd’s conflicting accounts of the incident, or ignore her injuries by focusing exclusively on the interaction between Uzi and Saint Jhn, portraying the incident more as jealous ex-collaborator beef than an instance of domestic assault. (Uzi was featured on Saint Jhn’s 2020 song “High School Reunion, Prom”.) On the subreddit r/liluzivert, a post with the title “

” [sic] is populated with comments discrediting Byrd’s account and calling her ugly and brain-dead. Other posts make a running joke of Byrd’s supposed unreliability and paint her as needy and attention-grabbing.

These kinds of posts are likely to see a resurgence with the release of Uzi’s long-awaited third studio album, 

, on June 30. The album is an adventurous but uneven attempt to solidify Uzi as a true punk-rock rapper; thrashing electric guitar, breakbeat drum loops, and autotuned growls contribute to a maximalist listening experience that is frenetic and unpredictable. Despite these elements, it sometimes feels as though Uzi leans too heavily on the record’s production – as well as a lengthy feature from deathcore band Bring Me The Horizon – to provide 

with a true punk rock feel. It doesn’t help that there’s no unified sonic identity to the album, perhaps owing to the astonishing 56 producers credited on the record. 

Despite critics and fans alike bemoaning 

’s hour-and-a-half runtime and thematic inconsistency, excellent tracks still abound. “x2” highlights solid Uzi wordplay over a bubbly, frantic beat. “Nakamura” marries arena rock with a throaty, autotuned chorus to perfectly evoke the Japanese wrestler they so idolize. And the addictive Nicki Minaj collab “Endless Fashion” is a case study of how to sample a song as ubiquitous as “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” and still make it lyrically inventive and intriguing. Maybe David Guetta and Bebe Rexha’s rendition would’ve been a tad more memorable if they had only evoked Chrome Hearts, Carhartt, and Natalie Nunn’s chin within the first minute.

glaringly omits the charges leveled against Uzi, despite them actively undergoing probation, community service, and rehabilitation for the incident. (Uzi recounts their seven months of inpatient care on “

,” which coincided with many of the internet allegations of “falling off.”) It’s hard to say why the media has seemed to turn a blind eye, but the fact that Uzi has never been a stereotypically straight or masculine rapper works, in my mind, like a double-edged sword. Bigoted attitudes make Uzi’s nonbinary presentation an easy target for mockery, painting them as a harmless purse-wearer and 

 even when faced with serious assault allegations. (And, as they make clear in the 

, the gay rumors are categorically false.) Flattening queer-presenting people as cute but harmless individuals does not only serve to put queer expression into a box, but it also protects queer abusers from being held accountable for their actions – and allows rappers like Uzi to get away with larger-than-life publicity stunts that obfuscate the ugly truth.

Anyone is capable of committing abusive and violent acts that are rooted in patriarchy, even if they themselves aren’t straight or cisgender. Until Lil Uzi Vert makes a public statement about their alleged assault, it’ll be hard for me to be excited for 

, much less their broader journey as an androgynous, trend-setting rapper. And until hip-hop and the broader music industry can see queer people as people, inherently worthy of respect but also capable of violence, testimonies like Brittany Byrd’s will continue to be swept under the rug.

Kaj Johnson

The rapper’s rambunctious third album Pink Tape is breaking the internet. It’s also another attempt to shift the narrative from allegations of their abusive behavior.


Stories

Photos: Rema brings Afropop to Uptown Theater

New Music on Carbon Sound - Week of July 31, 2023

Exploring the Black VHS Experience with Hanif Abdurraqib

Get the Carbon Sound app

Beyoncé shines and thrills in Minneapolis

Enter the XINAVERSE

New Music on Carbon Sound - Week of July 17, 2023

Sahbabii-isms: Interpreting Sahbabii’s Top 10 Best Lines On “Barnacles”

Connect with Carbon Sound

The Lasting Impact of Vince Staples' Big Fish Theory

Vote for your Top 10 Beyoncé Songs!

Lil Uzi Vert’s Skeletons in the (Glass) Closet

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