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Recorded Sets from Stakes Is Low 3: Hua Hsu, Mano b2b swoozydolphin

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Last year was when [Ice Spice broke through with her pop twist on drill](https://finals.blog/posts/BEST-MUSIC-2022), and in 2023 she’s been slicing deeper into pop culture, eating photoshoot after photoshoot, crossing off life goals like adding Nicki Minaj to the remix of “Princess Diana,” and crafting a SOTY contender with Pinkpantheress, the fizzy, flawless “Boys A Liar Pt. 2.”

To complete the crossover, yesterday Taylor fucking Swift dropped her remix to “Karma” with Ice rapping on it (not a hugely impactful verse, but not embarrassing by any stretch). Then later that night Taylor brought Ice on stage at MetLife stadium to the delight of 82,000 Swifties. Doesn’t get more mainstream than that. Truly crazy for an artist that started rapping recently and still has yet to release an album. 

Yes, it’s been hockey stick growth for the former volleyball player and communications major. And I’m very happy about that, for her and her producer RIOT ([whom I interviewed pre-“Munch” btw](https://finals.blog/posts/RIOTUSA-on-Ice-Spice-Clearing-Samples-and-Influencing-NY-Drill)). Especially because Ice’s stated goal was to be a global superstar. 

But I didn’t really think deeper about it until I had an argument with the homie on the phone yesterday, while I was on my way to pick my daughter up from school. I will try to recount it here.  

My friend’s contention was this type of ascent is bad. Not that Ice Spice is bad. She’s good — good voice, good POV, good instincts, good beats, good way of handling herself in the spotlight, good style. But rather, the growth has been too fast and is unhealthy for her young career, putting unrealistic expectations for more and different material on a person who might not be ready to fully deliver. My friend said that with Ice’s so far limited range and experience, positioning her at the top of the pops right out of the gate was a recipe for letdown. 

In addition, he argued her crazy arc supports a harmful idea that the way to succeed in rap is to obsessively monitor social media and hope to get extremely lucky, which downplays musical skill and and gives too much power to the socials, which are inherently evil. 

I said well, what is Ice supposed to do when a Taylor collab is on the table? Walk away?? 

He said yeah. Because what Ice Spice deserves, which we agreed on, is a long and fruitful career. And my friend said to have that, she needs to focus on her craft and to build community with other artists. 

Those were points that I had a difficult time going against, because I do admit that she could grow as a rapper, and also that she was never really in community with the rest of NY drill or wider rap, which could have benefitted her in an iron sharpening iron type way. RIOT, yes — he’s grown from working closely with A Lau, Chrissaves, and other NY producers — but Ice doesn’t have a crew, didn’t really come up doing hella features with other drill artists or dropping collab loosies or anything like that. She’s been sort of closed off from “the scene,” so much as there is one. 

But then I said, maybe that’s all fine! We’re here, now. We can’t go back in time. Why can’t Ice work on her writing, delivery and lyricism and build a musical network at the same time as her career skyrockets? And we agreed it was possible, and at this point, the only way to play things. 

In the end, I think my homie was overlooking that Ice and RIOT came up with their own angle on drill and it hit organically, way huger than they could ever have imagined. They had to ride a wave that was scary big, but they had to ride that shit. You can’t risk wasting that momentum, right? And they haven't. They've even rode it gracefully, I would say. So far there have been no musical misses, and no bricked fits.

We ended the argument by agreeing on what her next steps should be, playing my favorite game which is armchair A&R. 

And with that, I had to get off the phone, because it was time to pick my daughter up from school. And I went back to my family life where everyone thinks I’m insane and annoying for talking about music like this. 


Arguing Over Ice Spice 

![New Project (30) (1).png](https://finals.blog/api/uploads/New_Project_30_1_9c6705a2fd.png)

Now introducing Mason Stoutamire, a writer and student in California who is using Finals as a personal journal that involves music. Get ready to step into a world. Thanks Mason!
<br>
-Andrew

**Notwithstanding**

Since November of last year, I made $19,000.

And I gave most of it right away.

I divided the bit I kept between two things: food and music.

I was parked in front of the local Italian restaurant when my friend stood in front of my headlights. He could’ve texted me after he parked a few spots away but he chose to physically make himself known in my sight. He’s always been silly like that but that’s why we’re friends. I ordered the veal with a side of work gossip and camaraderie. Two bites in, I stood between it
all. Just months ago, I hated Italian food and yet here I was, eating past 10pm with work the following morning and I could recognize Andrea Bocelli on the speakers.

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I focused on my plate and recounted how, exactly, I became so comfortable with so much change in the past year.

I’m only a bit better than I was yesterday. Words come easier to me but leading to graduation, time is the only obstacle that stands between the life I want and the life I’m employed to live.

There’s not enough time for everything I want to do. It’s a daily economy. That said, my priorities are relatively unchanged.

If time is money, notwithstanding, music’s my strip club of a vice. Here’s to marrying life’s drama with music instead of practical solutions.

The world is harmonious at some points while discourteous in others. Things crash, schedules misalign, and some pieces fall apart entirely.

But crashing and articulate measures have their own unique beauty to them — they’re real and lived-in. Music that mirrors life in this way is chewed up, spit out, and served in the glimmer that it’s got.

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And Arthur Russell’s “World of Echo” has that special shine. From the muddled pulses of “being It” to the empty pop number, “Happy Ending,” there’s plenty of life to be found in the barren musical canvas. Between April and July, all I could do was appreciate the album’s cello for the way it colored my life at the time — impressively articulate in a vacuum.

The conversations between what I could afford to feel across 24 hours and what I needed to do next happened inside a 3-ton vacuum that carried me around 140 miles each day.

6 a.m.: 37 miles south from Long Beach <br>
7 a.m.: 16 miles north to Irvine <br>
3 p.m.: 16 miles south to Laguna Niguel, 37 miles north thereafter to Long Beach <br>
4:30 p.m.: 27 miles south to Irvine <br>

By 1 a.m., my car and I had little to discuss on the way home. My masks were always melted by then and I was between the hardware and the music. One night, all I could hear was whirring: whirring engines, whirring horns, whirring voices. I felt the emptiness of inadequacy. The pressures became one giant, whirring against my ears.

Even the brushes of my shallow breath took their own volume. It hardly mattered what was playing on my stereo but that night, “World of Echo” honored my deflated pride for what it was worth on the empty highway.


**In Between**

This spring, I quit my restaurant job and I began using my skills as a writer to sustain myself. Being a writer has jokingly become something tied to an imposter syndrome that perpetuates itself time and time again. It’s like me telling you that my ideas deserve to be honored before the fact instead of after. It’s like me telling you that I can sing well but only after I see the check. But I’ve never felt as much pride as when I started really considering my skills valuable. Sure, my skills are marketable in America, but I think my skills are impressive, market aside. When I put my two weeks in at the restaurant, a friend lovingly asked if I had anything else lined up.

“Don’t you worry about that part, I’ll be alright.” I replied quickly.

I started thinking about Outkast. When I was younger, I always looked to Outkast to help me reach beyond what was normal and embrace what was familiar. I remembered “Git Up, Git Out” off of “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik” being the grind-anthem for 16 year-old me, a bum. I chased my college dream like Ant and Rashad wiped those windows in the ATL montage. Similarly, I was getting out and getting what was mine.

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<br>

<br>Working is ingrained in American culture but especially in Southern California. My friend asking about my “exit plan” didn’t offend me but reminded me that I could easily fall into disorienting unemployment if I wasn't careful. Gas, alone, is $5.12 and my beloved avocado toast from down the street is $7.

On the other hand, the hand that likely inspired my move in the first place, I knew exactly how relieving it’d be if I didn’t serve tables across my transition — the excitement to dedicate my time to passion-led writing was my secret. I’m popping the shit I earned while I can, there’s a new phase afoot.

“Don’t you worry about that part, I’ll be alright.”

After I really listened to what I said, I smiled and chuckled with an optimism that I didn’t quite understand.

I was only half-joking. I had a few gigs lined up but if none of them ended up working out for anything long term, I was already so much closer to the life that I want to lead compared to last year.

My exit plan was built on the time and effort that I’ve put into the work that I eventually want to do. That’s where the security and pride come from. In my eyes, I’m already a music writer. I’m grateful and privileged to come out of two years of food service with as much integrity to keep my dreams close.

Week in and week out, I slept in many parking lots, edited multiple articles, and had a few drinks in between. And everything finished itself with an arpeggiating grace. Writing’s still been fulfilling, even on the backburner. Overcoming tough shit gave me the confidence to welcome any challenge that stands in my way.

“Doing It My Way” was the last song I played on my record player in Long Beach before moving in late July 2022. Furniture emptied and carpet left stained, I stood between the record player and the front door to take in the pressure of the precipice. Last year, the track helped me through a fumbled situationship and family difficulties. But I’m not down nor am I out this time.

The descending string progression and spoken-word bits completely capture what I now know about spring’s inspiring fleet.

I wanted this move to stand for others in my life that had any doubts about themselves. It’s okay admire about that courage. As Bobby Womack taught me last year, you’re doing it your way — that’s what’s up.

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Coming Clean With Mason Stoutamire

![Screen Shot 2023-04-22 at 11.06.59 AM.png](https://finals.blog/api/uploads/Screen_Shot_2023_04_22_at_11_06_59_AM_6eb3f64c1f.png)

Here we have Detroit’s own swoozydolphin –– producer, DJ, instrumentalist, engineer, and more –– reflecting on the magic of the recording studio. He even made a mix of all originals specifically to accompany this writing, which is at the end. Thank you swoozy!
<br> 
-Andrew

**"The medium is the message"**
*–Marshall McLuhan*

**“I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened.”** 
*–Toni Morrison, Beloved*

I’ve been recording for a long time… My first recording interface workflow was an M-Audio 2 channel usb audio interface with a bundled Pro Tools LE software over 13 years ago. I initially made some scratchy demos on it, consisting of a microkorg, guitar, bass and not much else. Things have come a *long way*. Now the tech has only gotten more sophisticated and my abilities as an engineer and musician–though there’s always more to learn–have developed into a comfortability and reliability among my peers in Audio. In all the years of being a recording artist and serving them I’ve come to value the unknowable magic that is imbued in any recording. From setting up a room to record and monitor a recording in, to the enigmatic star power of a performance; there are so many special factors that go into the final 2 channel mix that meets our ears.

To record audio is on the face simple but really quite complex technology and as an existential prompt. When an individual or group comes to record something, in effect it is about creating an *artifact* out of a sonic space. A simple expression becomes a time and place encased in amber–albeit *soundwaves, grooves on a record, digital bits*... These artifacts like all art become displaced from that place and time they originate in and going into the future only become more valuable and salient as *markers*. Markers of who people were, how they like to be remembered, what they want to be remembered.
Many stories and events are told, retold, created and happen in a recording studio. My specific studio–perennially known among collaborators in Detroit and beyond as the West Stu across iterations–is no different. Voices are developed there and they speak truth to their experiences in one way or another. I feel that I would never have enough space or ability to express what even a few recordings done there *mean* to me or the artists who recorded them. In a sense it's *all laid bare in the music.* The process of listening back always brings to mind those emotions that were so apparent in the room at the time however–remembering fortifies the whole experience.

I wonder sometimes where *posterity* comes from in this situation. Is it ego? Perhaps we document our art in this way to prove we were Here. Commerce certainly has some position in all of this. (Records were initially pressed at scale to sell *record players* etc. as the common story is told.) Regardless, to close these musings I’ll leave a few recordings I was involved in (either in tracking throughout to post-production) that mean something to me–marking my place and hopefully inspiring through these sonic artifacts that others take up the tradition and practice, taking a part of *their world* and keeping it around to return to again and again…

**“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”** 
*―Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices*

<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1498002577&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true"></iframe><div style="font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc;line-break: anywhere;word-break: normal;overflow: hidden;white-space: nowrap;text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif;font-weight: 100;"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/swoozydolphin" title="swoozydolphin" target="_blank" style="color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;">swoozydolphin</a> · <a href="https://soundcloud.com/swoozydolphin/urbansurfandfriends_sampler_fast_042223" title="UrbanSurfandFriends_Sampler_FAST_042223" target="_blank" style="color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;">UrbanSurfandFriends_Sampler_FAST_042223</a></div>


Remembering That Recording Is About Remembering

An Interview with Jockstrap

![New Project (22).png](https://finals.blog/api/uploads/New_Project_22_2d7f22feab.png)

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Do you realize when you’re in the middle of a cultural shift, or a significant moment, that it’s happening? Or only in retrospect? When you’re following events as they unfold, it can be hard to tell. 

That’s what I ponder while I listen to six recentish albums that put an exclamation point on a rich American rap/soul music ecology that has been growing for the past 5 or so years.

Those albums would be MIKE’s “Beware of the Monkey” (10k, Dec ‘22), Liv.e’s “Girl in the Half Pearl” (In Real Life, Feb ‘23), Nappy Nina’s “Mourning Due” (Lucid Haus, Feb ‘23), Maxo’s “Even God Has a Sense of Humor” (Def Jam, Feb ‘23), B Cool-Aid’s “Leather Blvd.” (Lex, March ‘23), and Navy Blue’s “Ways of Knowing” (Def Jam, March ‘23).
 
Taken together, it’s a lot of music about engaging in complex relationships with self, others, God, location, society. Raps are often profound and unhurried. Beats are sampled, glimmering, incorporating jazz, dancehall, and techno. It’s adventurous, pro-Black music, perhaps with an ethos of a deeper sort of Blackness than we get in the mainstream. Four of the six albums dropped during Black History Month. 

A smart record store would merchandise them prominently at the end of an aisle. They weren’t coordinated to be released in a sequence or listened to as a set, but to me, they all go together. 

These albums are linked by real community: everyone knows each other and guests on each other’s shit, or has performed together, or is one degree removed. There is also some visual coherence happening. Many of the acts have music videos shot by New York directors Devlin Claro Resetar or Ryosuke Tanzawa, both of whose cinematography involves dusky hues and aspects of portraiture. 

Is it too much to call it a movement? Reductive to call it all Soulquarianesque? 

What do we make of it all? While I listen/feel/think, I have questions. 

In the broadest strokes, I see the cult of Dilla being fused with the cult of Earl Sweatshirt, a Venn Diagram that I’m personally drawn to and which makes aesthetic sense. Perhaps it was an inevitable overlap.

I’m intrigued about the fact that Def Jam is twice involved (Maxo and Navy Blue). What kind of a business move is that by the label which puts out the most commercial rap on the market? The label of DJ Khaled? Is money not the point of a label like Def Jam? Are these not inherently small scale artists? Or perhaps their market value is more than I’m thinking. 

Maybe we are entering a different musical era. Do these six albums announce that we are back in Digable Planets times, when jazz-inspired Afrocentric rap could win Grammys? Now that Questlove is calling some shots over there, are things different? Is this the re-rebirth of slick?

Maybe the current healthiness of this pool signifies we are living through a changing of the rap guard on some level, and a procultural, prosocial approach appeals to who's newly in charge. How significant is Tunji Balogun as CEO at Def Jam, an artist himself who used to rap in regional micro scenes? 

Or alternatively, are we on some level witnessing a cool-kids’ earnest reaction against dorky blockbuster rap artists, an opposite, introverted movement against all their excessive marketing rollouts and rage and virality and phoniness, expressing instead a desire for realness and deep expression?

I don’t have the answers. I just have these six albums. And I know I need to sit with them awhile, still. We don’t do that enough in this era of takes, where everyone is pressured by the algorithm to weigh in during the promotional cycle and give a spicy summary before the episode’s over. This is music that deserves to decant. It will reveal itself over time, I think. 

In any case, these albums are all inspiring me to think about music in the big picture, to think about rap and R&B and how they go together, to think about waves of music that promote passive or active listening, to think about grassroots movements commodified by mainstream interests. I receive them and think, Damn. Something’s going on here. Whatever it is, I’m grateful to be in the light of the season.


Featured Post

Recorded Sets from Stakes Is Low 3: Hua Hsu, Mano b2b swoozydolphin

Posts

Arguing Over Ice Spice

Coming Clean With Mason Stoutamire

Remembering That Recording Is About Remembering

An Interview with Jockstrap

Winter Into Spring, in Six Albums