Results tagged “column”

The typical Texas Longhorn football player stands 6-foot-2, weighs 230 pounds and likes to listen to music in the locker room before the game. He loves watching SportsCenter, playing Madden or NCAA Football video games, and will tell you he came to Texas because of the family atmosphere. Also, he loves Halle Berry.

College football is more than chest-painting, screaming fans and oversized young men crashing into each other at high speed. (Although those are two of its good points.) Look deeper and you'll discover personal, dramatic elements that rival any in pop culture, from Battlestar-Galactica-level intrigue to characters as deep and complicated as those on Mad Men.

Z-Ro and Trae’s It Is What It Is contains none of the signifiers – marquee collaborations, cross-overs, shouted intros by popular DJs - that we come to expect from modern rap albums of a certain stature. Save one Nitti beat, the album’s producers would be tough to place for those who don’t obsess over Mr. Lee’s drum sounds. Imagine watching Monday Night Football next week without Joe Theisman, Suzy Kolber, the intro clips, the crowd noise, the dozens of camera angles, the replays, and the in-game graphics. You’d see a purer, though potentially less enthralling spectacle that depended on a matchup strong enough to carry you along without ESPN’s glossy signposts. Here recording as ABN (Assholes By Nature), Houston’s Z-Ro and Trae have always been outlaws of sorts, even while occasionally finding success within the rap mainstream.

Todd Rundgren is the Costco of Rock'n'Roll. Every genre is represented. You want sweet ballads? '70s love songs so marrow-deep you know them unconsciously like you know Christmas carols? You need man-cock rock tight enough to split your spandex? Some Eastern Intrigue-chakra rockin' prog synth that makes Coheed and Cambria sound like the Jonas Brothers? So much psychedelia you can actually see Fantasia in your mind?