Viewing Posts Tagged: Top Ten
Oh Santa! I almost forgive you for that flu you plagued YZ and I with this Xmas, what with all the juicy gifts you lugged down our chimney along with it. All in all, the 25th was a veritable indulge-fest, with everything on my list neatly wrapped in recycled paper under the tree…
This super-ambitious, 365 day-long, A Year of Tees project by designer Keith Walsh has resulted in a 200+ piece collection (That’s January 2010 – today) of graphically simple & bold tees…
So, quick disclaimer – back in high school, when our whole gang would head up the mountain for a snowboarding weekend, I was the geek that came along and actually didn’t do a bit of the boarding part of the weekend. I would go romping through the snow, for sure, and have a nice meal ready for my friends when they got back from their day on the slopes, but, I just wasn’t really the snowboarding type. Thus, the following top ten snowboarding gear list is based on… looks.
Winter is in full-swing here in New York: with two snow days so far and plenty of biting winds. So, instead of griping about having to trudge to the bodega for a pint of milk, grab this frosty opportunity and expand your cold-weather accessory collection! I adore busting out my winter hats, and add a few more trophies to the stockpile each year. What’s more, I’m one of those lucky people who’s coiff reacts rather well to hat hair… Etsy, queen of crafty commerce, is an endless trove of caps, cloches, balacavas and berets…
Algerian raï, Congolese soukous, Senegalese mbalax: the music of Africa is as diverse as its people, climate, food – as diverse as, well, Africa. The tie that seems to hold the continent’s music together lies in its ability to hypnotize, to start your legs moving before you realize they’re doing so, to make joy rise up and provoke a sing-along regardless of the fact that you don’t speak a word of Swahili or Bambara. Here are my African favorites of the decade – each of which represents rich memories of celebration and dancing as those were the times that I turned to these oeuvres: daily dance-a-thons rituals with my brother to Mariama by Pape & Cheikh, coasting through the Atlas mountains of Morocco with Tinariwen leading the way… Just a few more hours and we will be turning the page, welcoming a new year, a new decade – I can’t wait to see what the world of musicians have waiting in the wings for us all! Tracks after the jump!
I bought a little album called L’Ecole Du Micro D’Argent by IAM just a dozen years ago and since then, French rap has been a staple in my musical diet. I’ve discovered some incredible start-to-finish albums along the way (Taxi OST, Freeman’s L’Palais De Justice, Oxmo Puccino’s L’Amour Est Mort) along with a solid podcast: Yo La La! (although no more new episodes are being produced, you can listen to the entire archive here). I hope these ten tracks serve as a cross-section of what is best about the genre: incredible scratching, great collaborations, Arabic left and right, a diversity of regional slang, and some badass chicks who can really hold their own. Allons-y! All tracks after the jump!
