DECEMBER 2020
Welcome to the Monthly post, where I lay out everything you may have missed over the past 30 or so days, name an Album of the Month, a Song of the Month, and give a little “state of the union”. Come look at some other Monthly Posts to catch up on previous months. Thank all of you for reading, and happy listening!
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Well December was…. a month. In 2020.
Thankfully, December was the last month of the long, arduous, and frankly shitty year, one that has brought out the best in people while also bringing out the worst in seemingly many more. You can take this one of two ways: on one hand, we know who the crazy fuckers are out there in the world given that they have made themselves known with their foolishness… but on the other hand we have to live with these people. Sometimes it’s comforting to keep to your shell (mine is music) and think that things might be going well, but then something like a worldwide pandemic will thrust you out of your normal life and force you to deal with the realities of living in a society. The point of all this is: keep music close, but keep the welfares and livelihoods of the people around you in your mind as well. Because, contrary to what so many people out there seem to want to believe, things are not going well out there on the streets.
But music has stayed strong. Every month had given us tape after tape, album after album, song after song, of quality material, artists who extended themselves to their limits to give us what we wanted to hear. Whether that content was evolutionary or maintaining sonic status quo, we are looking at an extremely strong year in music, specifically hip-hop. December, while letting up a bit in the quantity (which I’m not upset about, it gave me some time to breathe and revisit some other projects), still came with the quality. Just off the top of my head we saw a new Playboi Carti album, Che Noir, another Boldy James project, my favorite ANKHLEJOHN project, a twelfth (yes, 12) Flee Lord project, and an an amazing cultural statement from Your Old Droog. That last project had such a profound impact on me (as most of Droog’s albums up to this point have), that I had no trouble labeling it my Album of the Month, a distinction that represents the unchallenged growth and nuance of the artist as well as the simple fact that the album is fire as hell.
A special shoutout is needed for my Track of the Month for December as well; Che Noir and 38 Spesh are A Tier emcees, there is not doubt in my mind, but Hunger Games is my track of the month because it contains what may possibly be the best rap verse of the year, up there with KXNG Crooked on Stockholm Syndrome and Ill Conscious on Pearl Handled, from Ransom. The flow is unreal, and those BARS are some of the craziest shit I’ve heard, the crown jewel being “I used to want to be Hov until I was told mocking Jay could lead to some Hunger Games”. Bro who thinks of that shit? A genius, that’s who. Give Ransom his flowers.
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Che Noir (Feat. Ransom & 38 Spesh)
Hunger Games
Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music
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WEEKLY FIXES
Weekly Fix #49 ('20) & Week #49 ('20) Playlists (with Your Old Droog’s Dump YOD: Krutoy Edition and Che Noir’s After 12)
Weekly Fix #50 ('20) & Week #50 ('20) Playlists (with ANKLEJOHN’s As Above So Below and Rigz & Futurewave’s Substance Abuse)
Weekly Fix #51 ('20) & Week #51 ('20) Playlists (with Iceberg Theory & August Fanon’s Dispatches From The Kali Yuga and Ransom & Nicholas Craven’s Crime Scenes)
Weekly Fix #52 ('20) & Week #52 ('20) Playlists (with Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red and Navy Blue’s Song of Sage: Post Panic!)
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SINGLES
Week #49 ('20) Singles (with Kash Doll’s Bossa Nova and Vic Mensa’s BREATHE (FREESTYLE))
Week #50 ('20) Singles (with Nyck Caution’s Product Of My Environment and Erick the Architect’s Let It Go)
Week #51 ('20) Singles (with D Power Diesle’s Goodies and EARTHGANG’s Options)
Week #52 ('20) Singles (with Zach Fox’s IHY2LN + Marinate)
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ART APPRECIATIONS
Week #49 ('20) Art Appreciation (Featuring work from Gallery Province and msudrawings)
Week #50 ('20) Art Appreciation (Featuring work from Chris Murray and Manuel “Cep” Concepcion)
Week #51 ('20) Art Appreciation (Featuring work from Huey P. and Manuel “Cep” Concepcion)
Week #52 ('20) Art Appreciation (Featuring work from The Amazing Morf and Manuel “Cep” Concepcion)
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There was a lot to cover this past month, but if you use what I wrote here you can go back and either revisit or discover some amazing shit you may have missed. For all of you new guys, that’s what this post is meant to be; a rehash, a state of the union, and a compilation of a months worth of material here on Tha Soup Dude, not necessary in any way but a good time to reflect and celebrate another month of fantastic music.
Something else I do at the end of these posts: SOCIAL LINKS! YES. So let’s get this shit started with the website that has pretty much destroyed American democracy as we know it: Twitter! I have an account on there (@tha_soup_dude) that updates with all of the goings-on around here on TSDK, and I try and retweet whatever news I want y’all to see. Next is my Instagram (@thasoupdude), where I update my story in the same way I would my Twitter. I also try and do a post every week to keep people up-to-date, but lately I’ve been forgetting about it amongst all the bullshit in my life; forgive me, follow me. Then there’s the Official Tha Soup Dude’s Kitchen Facebook Group (@ThaSoupDude), where everything is posted and all that jazz. I also have an unofficial group called Drake’s Hidden Children, the birthplace all all my writings on the Internet; I used to torture those poor bastards with walls of text about what I was listening to, and decided the bring the rest of the world in on the pain by creating Tha Soup Dude’s Kitchen! Finally, and this isn’t really a sOcIaL MeDiA as much as it is an incredibly useful tool for all of you music lovers out there, is my RateYourMusic page. RYM is a website where you can catalogue, rate, and review pretty much any musical project you have every heard of (and tens of thousands you haven’t heard of). It’s a great way to get a detailed rundown on an artists discography, see everyone who contributed to a project, and mark projects off in your ever-growing library.
Not only is this the end of another month here on Tha Soup Dude’s Kitchen, this is the end of the first full year of writing coming to an end. Weeellll almost a full year: I had a bit of a breakdown around March or so this year, skipping several weeks of posts in order to…. well I really don’t know why to be honest with y’all I just kind of got overwhelmed with all of *gestures around*. Otherwise, this year was the first one where I stayed on top of the new releases, sharing everything that I loved with everyone on the internet. If I’m being real: it was hard. Probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. But, unlike anything else, there has been nothing more fulfilling for me, and I genuinely mean that from the bottom of my heart. I don’t have a kid or any shit like that so I really don’t have much to be proud of, but I can say that the work I’ve done here is some of the most important I’ve ever done. Being able to be in a position to be a gateway for people to find new things in life to love, to be a source of validation for artists (both musical and otherwise), is a place I never thought I’d be in whenever I started my musical studies.
At the end of this long year, all that I have left for y’all (besides a list of albums I fucked with in 2020) is this: thank you. Thank you for the support, words, shares, likes, comments, and listens (we’ll get a podcast back up one day, I gotta make use of these mics somehow). To my readers: thank you for your eyes, for being open minded to music that you may not have liked otherwise, and letting me lead y’all through my musical adventures. To the artists, both those who create the sounds and those who create the visuals, a big thank you is in order as well; the support and encouragement I get from you all is incredible, and being able to feel like I can reach out to literally some of my favorite artists is a feeling that I wouldn’t trade for anything. To everyone in my immediate sphere you have both my thanks… and my apologies. I have spent a lot of time doing this over the past year, and, while the pandemic has definitely stripped back a lot of social engagement time, my work here on TSDK has taken up time I could have spent with all of you. I appreciate everyone who has taken time to stay up to date not only with music but with me, Tha Soup Dude, Ian, here on my website.
We got a helluva year ahead of us if the first 8 days are anything to go off of. We can expect a lot of the same hardships, pains, and STUPID people that we had to deal with in 2020. However, if we come even close to the exceptional music that 2020 gave us, I think we have at least something to look forward to in 2021 and, whenever that stuff does eventually come down the pipe, I’ll be here to hold up that big flashing sign that says “CHECK THIS SHIT OUT”. Because that’s who I am now. Cheers.
