Crib Notes

YEAR OF THE RINGTONE RAPPER: Yes, it’s Soulja Boy again.

(Photo by D. Hill)

SoundScan, the technology that tracks music sales, released its final numbers for 2007. The good news is, contrary to popular belief, the recording industry sold more units — CDs, vinyl, digital downloads, ringtones, etc. — than ever before. Consumers made 1.4 billion music purchases, an increase from 1.2 billion in 2006. The bad news is that fewer of those purchases include full-length CDs: Album sales plummeted 15 percent.

As previously noted, 2007 was something of an off-year for Atlanta’s music industry. No local artist landed an album in the year-end top 10, not even T.I. with his platinum-certified T.I. vs. T.I.P. Teenage pop-rap phenom Soulja Boy’s “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” was the year’s best-selling digital song, however. Plus, “Crank That,” Shop Boyz’s “Party Like a Rock Star” and Akon’s “Don’t Matter” all landed on the top 10 mastertone ringtones list. (To learn more about mastertone ringtones, check out the Wikipedia entry on Truetone.)

Here are the lists for 2007’s best-selling albums, digital songs and mastertone ringtones.

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Happy New Year! I just got back from a much-needed vacation, so I didn’t get a chance to share my favorite albums of 2007. So here’s my very rough list of several standouts. It’s a small sampling of the 200-300 albums I listened to — and that might be a conservative estimate. See you in ’08.

• Paul Weller, Hit Parade (Yep Roc)
• Lily Allen, Alright, Still (Capitol)
• Deerhunter, Cryptograms (Kranky)
• Carlos Niño & Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Fill the Heart Shaped Cup (Alpha Pup)
• El-P, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead (Definitive Jux)
• Lifesavas, Gutterfly: The Original Soundtrack (Quannum)
• Apples in Stereo, New Magnetic Wonder (Yep Roc)
• Battles, Mirrored (Warp)
• Feist, The Reminder (Cherry Tree/Interscope)
• The Cat Empire (Velour)
• Von Sudenfed, Tromatic Reflexxions (Domino)
• Simian Mobile Disco, Attack Decay Sustain Release (Interscope)
• Yesterdays Universe, Prepare for a New Yesterday (Volume One) (Stones Throw)
• Panda Bear, Person Pitch (Paw Tracks)
• Lavender Diamond, Imagine Our Love (Matador)
• Anthony Hamilton, Southern Comfort (Merovingian)
• Lawrence, Lowlights from the Past and Future (Mule)
• Amy Winehouse, Back to Black (Universal Republic)
• Digitalism, Idealism (Astralwerks)
• Rob Crow, Living Well (Temporary Residence)
• Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation (reissue) (Geffen)
• The Good, the Bad & the Queen (Virgin)
• Caribou, Andorra (Merge)
• The Rurals, The Grass Is Always Greener (Peng!)
• Booka Shade, DJ-Kicks (!K7)
• Prefuse 73, Preparations (Warp)
• Little Brother, Getback (ABB)
• PJ Harvey, White Chalk (Island)
• Shape of Broad Minds, Craft of the Lost Art (Lex)
• Henrik Schwarz, Live (!K7)
• M.I.A., Kala (Interscope)
• Dimlite, This Is Embracing (Sonar Kollektiv)
• Beans, Thorns (Adored & Exploited)
• Black Lips, Good Bad Not Evil (Vice)
• The Field, From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt)
• Panacea, The Scenic Route (Glow-in-the-Dark)
• Habersham, Outside the Box EP (Audio Therapy)
• Saul Williams, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust! (self-released)
• Supermayer, Save the World (Kompakt)
• Talib Kweli and Madlib, Liberation (Blacksmith)
• Ellen Allien, Time Out Presents the Other Side Berlin (Deaf Dumb & Blind)
• Meshell Ndegeocello, The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams (Universal)
• Prodigy, Return of the Mac (Koch)
• Pattie Blingh and the Akebulan 5, Sagala (Ramp)

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Dear Andisheh,

My heart goes out to you. And my ears. Though I didn’t suffer from sinusitis, I did buy an iPod for the first time in ‘07 and, yeah, it did kinda freak around with the way I listen to music.

In some ways that was a good thing. But whatever the iPod and downloadable music has done to my listening experience, I’m just glad it hasn’t deterred artists from making (or attempting to make) real albums — rather than random songs strung together on one CD. Of course, some succeeded while others sucked.

Here are some of the overrated, underrated and old albums I dug and dismissed in ‘07. Maybe some of these will help you get over your ‘year in music’ blues:

1. Best and most slept-on album (I think): Saul Williams, The Inevitable Rise and Fall of NiggyTardust — I’m starting with the big category first because, as you revealed, the iPod has your attention-span all jacked up and I know I could lose you quick. So you know the story with Radiohead, Prince, the Eagles — they all dropped nontraditional releases (online, Wal-Mart, etc.). Well, Saul Williams did, too. But instead of limiting his boldness to his method of distribution, he actually hooked up with Trent Reznor who produced the album. Need I say more? Actually, I will. You can download it for free, with liner notes and artwork included, or you can pay $5. Who does that? The reason why I “think” it was the most slept-on is because I just haven’t heard much buzz about it. But it was better than his first two albums, and it was free. Uh, I mean $5. (Think I just told on myself.)

2. Most disappointing album: Wu-Tang Clan, 8 Diagrams — Turned out all the talk leaking out of the Wu camp was semi-correct. RZA produced a pretty uneven album, shifting between that “ooh baby I like it raw” Wu fans have come to expect and some borderline campy stuff. Not necessarily commercial, but compromising (the joint with George Clinton is straight corny). I was surprised. If anything, I expected the complaints from his crew about his beats meant he was leaning too far to the left. Guess it’s hard to score Hollywood flicks and keep it grimy simulaneously. Oddly, RZA sounds better rapping over his own beats than he ever has.

3. Most over-hyped album: Kanye West, Graduation — Yep, there were a lot of Kanye West dick-riders in ‘08. And honestly, I don’t blame them. It’s hard out here for a mainstream critic. A lot of disposable music rises to the top. And I think that’s because, like the industry, a lot of music writers are still depending on the old label system for the bulk of their music. But I digress. Kanye West put out another damn good album; I can’t hate. But it was a minor triumph next to Late Registration. It makes sense that he thinks Graduation is his best ever, as he spouts in every interview. He accomplished what he sought out to: achieve stadium-status by making an album full of big, bombastic songs. You can’t compete with “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”; it’s the song of the year — not “Stronger” as Spin magazine proclaimed. And the ode to his tenuous relationship with Jay-Z, “Big Brother,” is probably one of the most honest sentiments expressed in a rap song since Scarface said “day by day it’s more impossible to cope/I feel like I’m the one that’s doing dope.” I could go on, but the point is Kanye made some of the best songs of his career. Just not the best album. (more…)

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Dear Rodney-

I used to love making year-end, top 10 lists of the music I listen to, but this year I can’t.

Here’s a list of reasons why.

1. The iPod has destroyed my ability to listen patiently — When I listened to music on vinyl, cassettes and CDs, I used to listen to albums from beginning to end. Now I skip around like mad. Even if I’m enjoying a song, I’ll skip to the next one halfway through. I’m an impatient person and iPods enable my impatience. I listen to music constantly, but I don’t think I’ve listened to 10 albums from beginning to end this year.

2. A lot of musicians I adore put out lousy records this year — Since about 1973, Bryan Ferry has been peppering his solo albums with great Bob Dylan covers. This year, he put out an entire album of Dylan covers, and it sucked. Seriously fucking awful. Brett Anderson (formerly of Suede), Crowded House and Björk all disappointed me as well.

3. My sinuses have been bugging me — For the past six months, I’ve been fighting a war of attrition against a sinus infection. Being in smoky bars, the kind where music is often performed, makes it hard for me to breathe. I’m a civil libertarian and don’t think Atlanta should outlaw smoking in bars. If the city did, however, I’d certainly see more live shows.

4. My ears have been bugging me. I photographed Deerhunter at the Earl last summer for CL and forgot to bring earplugs. My right ear has been ringing ever since. The ringing gets worse if I’m exposed to loud noises for extended periods of time.

5. I live in a townhouse now — After six years of living in single-family, detached homes, my fiancee and I moved to a townhouse in Decatur. I’ve got a decent stereo, but I’m reluctant to play music too loudly because I don’t want to annoy my neighbors. The result is that a lot of the music I listen to lately is just background music.

6. I have a loud car — I own a 1973 Mercedes-Benz 220D. It’s a lovely car, but there are two things wrong with it. Thing 1: The transmission is stuck in third gear, which means I can’t drive it right now. Thing 2: When I can drive it, it’s so damn loud that music cannot be heard over the car’s tiny, single dashboard-mounted speaker.

7. Instrumental music — Since I started working at CL full-time in March, I’ve started listening to instrumental jazz and ambient music on my iPod. I can’t make a list of it, though, because I’m not really sure what I’m listening to. Without lyrics, I have trouble remembering names of songs.

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