Not that I listen to the radio a lot, but for about two months now, when I do, I've been listening almost exclusively to Top 40 hip hop. The exception is that on daycare-cleaning nights I listen to CDs, most commonly "Come Party with Me" by Gene Defcon, "Save Yourself" by the Make Up, "The Need is Dead" by the Need, and a compilation of earlier Bob Marley/Wailers songs. The last time I paid any real attention to popular radio was around 1990, but lately I'm bored to death with my CDs, and I haven't really had the money or the interest to go seeking out new good music, so. Plus I've been fairly bored with the rock format for a couple years now; from time to time I've suspected hip hop was the answer. Until recently it mostly hasn't been the answer, but I'm convinced that the supermainstream music factory is, in hip hop and r&b, finally again hitting its stride and generating "heights" of mass-pop quality not seen since the Guns 'N' Roses era. It's a bit weird for me to use the word "quality" here, especially given some of the lyrical content and the fact that I like art in things, but a magic carpet ride is a magic carpet ride. And besides, what would you say about the Smiths?

���� Anyway listening to JAMN 945 and its ilk means listening to the same 30 songs over and over again, one third of which seem to be by 50 Cent. You know what though? 50 Cent is not too bad. He's definitely not great, but he makes sure each song's got a decent hook and his complete and absolute slackness is a nice change from the typical rap aggression. Of course pleasantry here is often contingent on not understanding any lyrics, which I usually don't. A now-common variation on rap that I really like, having first noticed it I think in Missy Elliot's song about the rain (or was it Sonic Youth's "Bull in the Heather"?), is "spooky rap" -- minimalism and a minor key and a thin meandering riff on a guitar or a steel drum or a tin can. I guess a tin can is unlikely what with all the riches involved, but in any case, there's some creativity going on in the world of pop music production, and I'd have to say that the producers are the real stars of the moment. This is a bit of a change in my appreciation of music -- I've never been too interested in high production values, caring mostly that music sounds like it was made by people. Of course there are major label geniuses that you just have to appreciate, whether or not their music sounds like it came from space-- Jimi Hendrix and Prince for example -- anyway what got me appreciating production values were some Morning Musume songs I found on the Internet, notably "Love Machine," and "Renai Revolution." Both of those songs have a ton of weak points, but they're so crazily packed with excitement that I can't help but want to meet the people who wrote and assembled them. I have no idea how the people who put pop music together generate the kinds of sounds they do, but the same quest for ecstatic music that makes me love Sleater-Kinney and David Bowie has led to me now appreciating a portion of half of the free crap that comes over the airwaves in Boston.

���� I can't do a very good job of telling you what the specific high points of the top 40 landscape are, because I haven't paid much attention to song names. But if you're mired in the awful mediocrity of recent radio rock, consider that Janet Jackson is nowhere in sight and big name pop artists are actually putting out some entertainment:

- Justin Timberlake is doing a nice revival of a 21 year old Michael Jackson, which is nice because 21 year old Michael Jackson is one of the only irony-proof pleasures we have from the 1970s.
- Beyonce's "Crazy in Love" only barely qualifies as a song but, being a bright red cherry dipped in narcotic sugar, it hardly matters.
- Christina Aguilera is sort of a conjoined bucking bronco and rider, and while they're not the best we've ever seen, they are a conjoined bucking bronco and rider. And they seem to be trying to improve on Pat Benatar.
- Missy Elliot, if rock fans will slow their heart rates a bit, can bring those hearts to a full stop at will. And start them up a half second later. And stop. And start. And stop.
--There's more, but enough about that -- the world is after all saturated in it. And I'm sure there are a ton of better records of all kinds, but as I said, I'm only noting all this in the first place because I don't really have funds to investigate music lately. Anyway, there's something scary that's related to all this:

���� Kids come in here, into the computer lab at work, and look at websites. For example, a really cute 8 year old boy will come in and sit down and search for, say, Nas, and then he'll sit here for an hour admiring pictures of Nas wearing various colors of warm-up suit and sideways hat and tough-guy face, as intensely as an 8 year old can admire anything. Which is unfortunate.

���� Which gets us back to the Pepsi conversation, and our bad society, and determinism, and respect for what God gave us. Or whatever.
���� We are the only known intelligent life in the universe, with 40,000 years of human biological and social evolution behind us, and we drink phosphoric acid like it's water and trade our time for digital copies of "Wanksta."

�������� Blah blah blah blah.
Anyway, all this came up in my mind because Jaelene was a little while ago hopping around and singing to the radio.

���� God, I'm bored.

���� I have a ton of other stuff to write about, I just can't get a handle on any of it.

����I'm hungry too.


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