Let Pete Rock Help You Get the Most Out of Your Weed 126
Whenever I listen to Pete Rock’s music I think of that interlude on the Chronic album where Dre says “Just give me some of that old … gangsta shit, something I could just sit back and smoke a fatass joint to.”
Pete Rock’s sound has a sort of narcotic, gauzy quality to it. I think a lot of it has to do with his sense of time, which is really elastic, like Jay Dee’s - they both chop things a little unevenly so that layers of samples are slightly out of synch with each other. Questlove talks about this somewhere, about how with people like Jay Dee, their sense of time is so solid that they can play around with it, stretch it here and there, lag behind the beat a little. This is a bit like the practice of rubato in European music, which sounds tacked on and unconvincing if the musician’s sense of time isn’t secure.
With Pete Rock’s drums I always imagine a rubber band stretching to its full tensile strength and being let go when the snare hits; it’s that sense of being forceful and flexible at the same time.
Hilary Hahn Wishes the Pope a Happy Birthday 100
This past April Hilary Hahn played the Mozart G major Concerto at the Vatican in honor of Pope Benedict XVI’s birthday, with Venezuelan wiz-kid Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Stuttgart Radiophonic Orchestra. I really love her playing - she makes such a pure singing sound on the violin, with none of that strident quality you hear so often; and she has a great way of bringing out special moments (like the beautiful minor key excursion at 3:08) without exaggerating or insisting. I wonder what the European audience made of her interpolating a bluegrass drone into her cadenza? I think it sounds great. Benedict for his part looks terrifically bored and put out by the whole thing; I guess he’s not a music lover.