The sea lion goes to rehab

June 16th, 2008 ydant

The television show Bones comes through again with another great song and another great artist. This time it’s more of a hip-hop piece, although you can’t quite tell that from the short bit that’s played on the show. No, what grabbed my attention was the singing and the beautiful sample played in the background.

The song is “Sea Lion” by Sage Francis. Enjoy:

I love the opening melody, but the song quickly goes from there as Francis starts speaking/singing. The man has a great sense of rhythm and can certainly keep up. The lyrics are full of metaphor and are worth at least few listens (and a read-through or two). The full YouTube pages for both of these videos contain the lyrics to the songs as well.

Paul “Sage” Francis (born November 2, 1977 in Miami, Florida) is a hip-hop artist based in Providence, Rhode Island. Sage Francis’ style blends a varying tone and delivery with subject matter that focuses on intricate sequences of widely varying imagery, metaphors, the occasional pun, absurdism, word play often times in the form of phonetic mix-ups and rhetorical excursions, and pop culture references, while including touchstones of traditional hip hop such as storytelling and self-promotion. -Wikipedia article on Sage Francis

This has everything I love about hip-hop. It’s the stories, the rhyming, the metaphor, and the visuals that have always appealed to me. Sadly, I got tired of the “bitches and hos” and money talk pretty early on and drifted away from the genre. It still has a lot of appeal, and artists like this renew my interest in the genre.

Unlike my last article on music found on this show, this artist’s works are quite available on the usual sources. Amazon is still my dealer of choice, and a couple of the albums have made it to my hard-drive already. Damn you, Amazon, for making high quality DRM-free MP3s so easy to obtain.

Here’s another great song to finish out:

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Syntax - Pride

May 31st, 2008 ydant

If you search Google for Syntax - Pride, you’ll find quite a few blog posts mentioning the song; most of which found it by watching Nip Tuck or Bones. The latter is where I first heard it (Season 1 Episode 16, I believe), and I immediately fell in love. Imagine my dismay to find out the group only lasted a year, and the album is not easy to find.

Sure, I can buy it from Amazon (and other stores), but as an import, at $25-$30, and only as a physical copy. I’ve tried to stop purchasing physical copies of music, and the fact that arbitrary limitations keep me from getting this CD at a reasonable price frustrates me. The label, for whatever reason, doesn’t want to sell this digitally, and so I’m forced to decide between not getting the music (ethically right), buying it as an import (it’s too expensive to justify), or resorting to other methods. I really do believe I should pay for the music I download (if for no reason other than to vote with my money), and I’ve all but stopped downloading music without without buying it (or it being released by the copyright holder), so it’s hard to decide what to do. If I feel strongly enough about supporting the artists and paying for the music I get, then the answer should be simple. Is music important enough to violate your own ethical code, or is it so important that to do so is deeply wrong? I am perfectly comfortable with sharing mix tapes, but downloading the whole album is acknowledging the worth of the music to you. If it’s worth something, why wouldn’t you want to help support the person who made it happen?

The song Pride is beautiful (although I’d drop the bit in the middle) and you should give it a listen. I anticipate hearing the rest of the album… somehow.

Artist:	Syntax
Album	Meccano Mind
Song:	Pride

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