Shadcore
Aux Tales
Self-released, 2018
Aux Tales
Self-released, 2018
"If
music be the food of love, play on."
Let’s call it a multimedia chain reaction. Before the release a few months ago, I had been intending to review the self-titled album from Common’s new jazz-rap group August Greene. I got distracted earning money to eat or something and chose, unwillingly, to give it a pass (the previewed tracks were beautiful, and I’d recommend reading the touchingly brutal review by Tom Breihan over at Stereogum.) Salt was rubbed into this critical guilt wound recently when I saw Common in the documentary Feel Rich: Health Is the New Wealth, in which health-hoppers frame the logic of eating well and self-care from the perspective of the culture. In need of more grub themed rhyme schemes, and unable to keep listening to Ham ‘N’ Eggs by A Tribe Called Quest on a loop, just in time came Aux Tales, the new “audio soul food” full length from St. Pete’s homegrown farm-to-table vocalist, Shadcore. My next connection will have to be to get over to Ray’s Vegan Soul downtown, since every time I’ve tried in the past it’s been closed, and writing this review has made me a very hungry vegan.
Booting things off here is the tinted-sunglasses-in-the-nightclub number, Two Commas. This is one of the few moments on the record when Shad comes close to making a glitzy club ready tune, with most of the rest sitting comfortably in the “comfy chair listening” column. I don’t know Shadcore as a person as well as I might like, but it was a little jarring initially to hear him talking about making fat stacks and cucumber-surpassing levels of green. (“Why does everyone always say how nice and down to Earth I am? I’m more three-dimensional than my niceness! It makes me so MAD!” And thus the Shadzilla is released.) As an opening statement of determination I get it. It’s aspirational, and by the second verse is framed around providing for his family, that old Shadcore chestnut. Even if it is done by becoming the “fourth member of Migos” (they’re a family too, I suppose). And compared to many rappers (such as the young ambassadors of luxury car-smashing Lil Pump, Lil Xan and Migos’s Offset) perhaps a mere $1 million goal is still showing modesty, like when the UN laughed at Austin Powers for demanding such a small amount in ransom in 1997. Humility perception: retained.
We slip-scratch into #OKYRIS, a homefront-spat boom bap slice about keeping the domestic peace. The hook explains the acronym: “Okay, You’re Right, I’m Sorry.” Many in our digital age, particularly many men, could learn to step back from a situation and decide if it’s really worth arguing over. I think the message is a little bit patronising, but at least Shad didn’t take the opportunity to make a load of okra puns (blech). At other regular intervals throughout Aux Tales he makes his respect and worship of women clear as day: the five-a-day wordplay smoothie of Fruit Cocktail, and Evidence Weather or Not outtake My Umbrella, indicate that a lot of romancing happens in the produce section. The latter track (featuring James Cory) has as much robotic pop funk as a collaboration between Pharrell and Jay Kay from Jamiroquai; just walking in on that session would make you break out in sequins and giant hats. It is evident that this formula would have made for a terrible Evidence song (though Shadcore could be seen as a non-monotonous Mr Slow Flow at times).
If you want real tender loving care though, Rashadcore knows that the way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach. For the Valentines Day video release of Pillow, Shad and friends are at the second front of capitalism, the home. What could be more romantic than wishing to soothe your beloved from the horrors of the work every day economy, wish as you might to shield them entirely? To update a George Orwell quote, in impersonal times, showing kindness is a revolutionary act. Way to take an unabashed seduction song and make it political, Radical Beat. It’s a wonder my girlfriend isn’t more irked on those days when she comes home from a 10 hour shift and I’m bashing righteous broadsides out on this keyboard; maybe I need to invest in Rashad’s custom love song services. There’s another great guest verse from Shad’s fellow TRC emcee and romantic Jay Ack (now a content creator at Ambrosia For Heads), with Florida schmoozer Joshua Cruz on the R&B love hook.
The remaining tracklist is something of a smörgåsbord: hot and cold, Meat Tornados and minimalist liquid diets. On Shadzilla 2 the Tron-in-Tokyo atmosphere of the original (from the artist’s 2015 album Oh My Shad!) has been replaced with a destructive stroll through a Japanese rock garden. It suggests -- along with the many local references on the album -- that Shad is perhaps comfortable being a big mic beast in a small bay. Then we go to the lobby for snacks in the form of AUX Tales (Tenderlude), where Big Rube (Dungeon Family member famous for providing interludes and guest spots for Outkast, Killer Mike, Rapsody and the deliciously-named Denzel Curry) complains about the current state of hip hop in an Iggy Pop-style horrorcore vignette. This topic is visited again on the spoken word AUX Capella and on the upturned-pot beat of Crock-Pot, where ‘Core, like Eminem on the new Royce Da 5'9" cut, takes aim at the “microwave generation” of instant gratification rap fans. This accusation surely applies to more of life and more of us than just the youthful trap banger crowd. I personally am a completely impatient cook. I like my microwave the way most people like their cell phones, radiation concerns conveniently shrunk in the mind. But we are supposed to be inheriting a grandma slow cooker and I do like to spend huge amounts of time working on these write-ups. Crock-Pot ironically has some of the fastest rapping on display here and brings new meaning to the phrase made from scratch.
Auxiliary roles are supportive roles, whether they are familial, comfort food or spiritual. For many people eating is basically a religion, and religion is a type of nourishment. The sobering track The Passion is about the crucifixion of Jesus, what the recently deceased black liberation theologist Rev. Dr. James Cone called a "first-century lynching," and it’s not difficult to see why when you hear the graphic details laid out here. The theme continues with album closer His Side, a gospel number featuring Kayla and Tasanee, and dedicated to Shad’s late family pastor (whose words, if I’m not mistaken, previously appeared on the Oh My Shad! cut PSTA To Escalades). Amidst these two tough lovies we have the uplifting Earth-level song Black Don’t Crack; I’ve already mentioned Kay and Ack, so let’s round out The 3 Jays with a relevant reference to a recent video by WBAI’s Jay Smooth. The first verse is from the perspective of a white person who’s “woke like a teenager on Elm street,” i.e. the kind we all like to think we are. By the end of the kid-friendly rhyme however the track has transitioned into Shadcore conversing with a wise child, like on Erykah Badu’s Amerykahn Promise, with respect shouted out to great (and thus “beautiful”) black icons. The named include Muhammed Ali, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, St. Pete’s Angela Bassett and Harriet Tubman (who will now be replacing murdering asshole Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill sometime “after 2026” - keep up that horse and buggy pace, fellas).
Some unpopped kernels in the popcorn. I’ve now made a few allusions to the perception of speed. As I wrote at the time, Oh My Shad! is a rather mid-tempo listening experience overall, and the same can be said of Aux Tales. The difference is that on average OMS! has a more up-tempo first half. Waiting for this album to crank up with My Umbrella or Crock-Pot feels just a little too late. In a related criticism, I also find myself wishing for just a bit more tempeh on the bones of some of these beats. I’m not sure exactly what’s missing (I hear that a possibly juicier version of Fruit Cocktail went astray), but there’s a clue to what’s happening in AUX Capella, two minutes of nothing but Shadcore’s compelling voice and vinyl dust. I can relate to this impulse. I have no trouble understanding the value of great visual design, artist photographs and video embeds, but I want you to hear and feel my words above all else. That’s why my website looks like a paper grocery bag crossed with an obscenity-filled music journal. The basic Aux Tales CD package is skeletal because Shad made a separate high quality lyric book. Admittedly, I have that personal liking for microwaves and fast riffs, so make of this critique what you will. Also in the personal taste column (again with the caveat that I am a food mile-logging English vegan, so most Floridians find my dietary desires unusual) would be a craving for more direct commentary on food politics, like Beef by Boogie Down Productions or dead prez’s Be Healthy. Strengthening your Shad-core! Protein!
But perhaps, like a self-important restaurant patron, I am demanding too much of my working musician waiter (Rashad, so dedicated to his art and vision, literally hand delivered this album to my kitchen, and it wasn’t the first time). Arguably the previous association I had between food and music when it comes to Shadcore allowed the concept to unreasonably balloon in my mind, like a giant freegan marshmallow in a microwaved s’more, that would never reach the high watermark of my American-adopted appetite. The metaphors and puns here are all tasty, the variety of subject matter nutritious whether they veer more towards Aux tales or Oxo tales. Like the standard communications aux port, this album is transmitting messages across lines, and they are positive food for the soul, bringing satisfaction to that rumble in your stomach. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go spend some hours in the kitchen, where I will hopefully not make as much mess as a radioactive sea monster.
Aux Tales is out now, and can be streamed and bought in CD and download formats at Shadcore.com.
Let’s call it a multimedia chain reaction. Before the release a few months ago, I had been intending to review the self-titled album from Common’s new jazz-rap group August Greene. I got distracted earning money to eat or something and chose, unwillingly, to give it a pass (the previewed tracks were beautiful, and I’d recommend reading the touchingly brutal review by Tom Breihan over at Stereogum.) Salt was rubbed into this critical guilt wound recently when I saw Common in the documentary Feel Rich: Health Is the New Wealth, in which health-hoppers frame the logic of eating well and self-care from the perspective of the culture. In need of more grub themed rhyme schemes, and unable to keep listening to Ham ‘N’ Eggs by A Tribe Called Quest on a loop, just in time came Aux Tales, the new “audio soul food” full length from St. Pete’s homegrown farm-to-table vocalist, Shadcore. My next connection will have to be to get over to Ray’s Vegan Soul downtown, since every time I’ve tried in the past it’s been closed, and writing this review has made me a very hungry vegan.
Booting things off here is the tinted-sunglasses-in-the-nightclub number, Two Commas. This is one of the few moments on the record when Shad comes close to making a glitzy club ready tune, with most of the rest sitting comfortably in the “comfy chair listening” column. I don’t know Shadcore as a person as well as I might like, but it was a little jarring initially to hear him talking about making fat stacks and cucumber-surpassing levels of green. (“Why does everyone always say how nice and down to Earth I am? I’m more three-dimensional than my niceness! It makes me so MAD!” And thus the Shadzilla is released.) As an opening statement of determination I get it. It’s aspirational, and by the second verse is framed around providing for his family, that old Shadcore chestnut. Even if it is done by becoming the “fourth member of Migos” (they’re a family too, I suppose). And compared to many rappers (such as the young ambassadors of luxury car-smashing Lil Pump, Lil Xan and Migos’s Offset) perhaps a mere $1 million goal is still showing modesty, like when the UN laughed at Austin Powers for demanding such a small amount in ransom in 1997. Humility perception: retained.
We slip-scratch into #OKYRIS, a homefront-spat boom bap slice about keeping the domestic peace. The hook explains the acronym: “Okay, You’re Right, I’m Sorry.” Many in our digital age, particularly many men, could learn to step back from a situation and decide if it’s really worth arguing over. I think the message is a little bit patronising, but at least Shad didn’t take the opportunity to make a load of okra puns (blech). At other regular intervals throughout Aux Tales he makes his respect and worship of women clear as day: the five-a-day wordplay smoothie of Fruit Cocktail, and Evidence Weather or Not outtake My Umbrella, indicate that a lot of romancing happens in the produce section. The latter track (featuring James Cory) has as much robotic pop funk as a collaboration between Pharrell and Jay Kay from Jamiroquai; just walking in on that session would make you break out in sequins and giant hats. It is evident that this formula would have made for a terrible Evidence song (though Shadcore could be seen as a non-monotonous Mr Slow Flow at times).
If you want real tender loving care though, Rashadcore knows that the way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach. For the Valentines Day video release of Pillow, Shad and friends are at the second front of capitalism, the home. What could be more romantic than wishing to soothe your beloved from the horrors of the work every day economy, wish as you might to shield them entirely? To update a George Orwell quote, in impersonal times, showing kindness is a revolutionary act. Way to take an unabashed seduction song and make it political, Radical Beat. It’s a wonder my girlfriend isn’t more irked on those days when she comes home from a 10 hour shift and I’m bashing righteous broadsides out on this keyboard; maybe I need to invest in Rashad’s custom love song services. There’s another great guest verse from Shad’s fellow TRC emcee and romantic Jay Ack (now a content creator at Ambrosia For Heads), with Florida schmoozer Joshua Cruz on the R&B love hook.
The remaining tracklist is something of a smörgåsbord: hot and cold, Meat Tornados and minimalist liquid diets. On Shadzilla 2 the Tron-in-Tokyo atmosphere of the original (from the artist’s 2015 album Oh My Shad!) has been replaced with a destructive stroll through a Japanese rock garden. It suggests -- along with the many local references on the album -- that Shad is perhaps comfortable being a big mic beast in a small bay. Then we go to the lobby for snacks in the form of AUX Tales (Tenderlude), where Big Rube (Dungeon Family member famous for providing interludes and guest spots for Outkast, Killer Mike, Rapsody and the deliciously-named Denzel Curry) complains about the current state of hip hop in an Iggy Pop-style horrorcore vignette. This topic is visited again on the spoken word AUX Capella and on the upturned-pot beat of Crock-Pot, where ‘Core, like Eminem on the new Royce Da 5'9" cut, takes aim at the “microwave generation” of instant gratification rap fans. This accusation surely applies to more of life and more of us than just the youthful trap banger crowd. I personally am a completely impatient cook. I like my microwave the way most people like their cell phones, radiation concerns conveniently shrunk in the mind. But we are supposed to be inheriting a grandma slow cooker and I do like to spend huge amounts of time working on these write-ups. Crock-Pot ironically has some of the fastest rapping on display here and brings new meaning to the phrase made from scratch.
Auxiliary roles are supportive roles, whether they are familial, comfort food or spiritual. For many people eating is basically a religion, and religion is a type of nourishment. The sobering track The Passion is about the crucifixion of Jesus, what the recently deceased black liberation theologist Rev. Dr. James Cone called a "first-century lynching," and it’s not difficult to see why when you hear the graphic details laid out here. The theme continues with album closer His Side, a gospel number featuring Kayla and Tasanee, and dedicated to Shad’s late family pastor (whose words, if I’m not mistaken, previously appeared on the Oh My Shad! cut PSTA To Escalades). Amidst these two tough lovies we have the uplifting Earth-level song Black Don’t Crack; I’ve already mentioned Kay and Ack, so let’s round out The 3 Jays with a relevant reference to a recent video by WBAI’s Jay Smooth. The first verse is from the perspective of a white person who’s “woke like a teenager on Elm street,” i.e. the kind we all like to think we are. By the end of the kid-friendly rhyme however the track has transitioned into Shadcore conversing with a wise child, like on Erykah Badu’s Amerykahn Promise, with respect shouted out to great (and thus “beautiful”) black icons. The named include Muhammed Ali, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, St. Pete’s Angela Bassett and Harriet Tubman (who will now be replacing murdering asshole Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill sometime “after 2026” - keep up that horse and buggy pace, fellas).
Some unpopped kernels in the popcorn. I’ve now made a few allusions to the perception of speed. As I wrote at the time, Oh My Shad! is a rather mid-tempo listening experience overall, and the same can be said of Aux Tales. The difference is that on average OMS! has a more up-tempo first half. Waiting for this album to crank up with My Umbrella or Crock-Pot feels just a little too late. In a related criticism, I also find myself wishing for just a bit more tempeh on the bones of some of these beats. I’m not sure exactly what’s missing (I hear that a possibly juicier version of Fruit Cocktail went astray), but there’s a clue to what’s happening in AUX Capella, two minutes of nothing but Shadcore’s compelling voice and vinyl dust. I can relate to this impulse. I have no trouble understanding the value of great visual design, artist photographs and video embeds, but I want you to hear and feel my words above all else. That’s why my website looks like a paper grocery bag crossed with an obscenity-filled music journal. The basic Aux Tales CD package is skeletal because Shad made a separate high quality lyric book. Admittedly, I have that personal liking for microwaves and fast riffs, so make of this critique what you will. Also in the personal taste column (again with the caveat that I am a food mile-logging English vegan, so most Floridians find my dietary desires unusual) would be a craving for more direct commentary on food politics, like Beef by Boogie Down Productions or dead prez’s Be Healthy. Strengthening your Shad-core! Protein!
But perhaps, like a self-important restaurant patron, I am demanding too much of my working musician waiter (Rashad, so dedicated to his art and vision, literally hand delivered this album to my kitchen, and it wasn’t the first time). Arguably the previous association I had between food and music when it comes to Shadcore allowed the concept to unreasonably balloon in my mind, like a giant freegan marshmallow in a microwaved s’more, that would never reach the high watermark of my American-adopted appetite. The metaphors and puns here are all tasty, the variety of subject matter nutritious whether they veer more towards Aux tales or Oxo tales. Like the standard communications aux port, this album is transmitting messages across lines, and they are positive food for the soul, bringing satisfaction to that rumble in your stomach. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go spend some hours in the kitchen, where I will hopefully not make as much mess as a radioactive sea monster.
Aux Tales is out now, and can be streamed and bought in CD and download formats at Shadcore.com.
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