Oddisee
“Ready To Rock”

This is one of the finest songs of the year - easily. Easily. Everything about it is great: the first minute introduction, the teensy Jungle Brothers drums along with all the other weirdo production choices.

[Side Note: Kanye has to be the dean of the school of weird production spandrels. Consider the left-right ping pong pan tambourine during the Chris Rock part of “Blame Game”. Once you notice it, you won’t stop noticing it. There are at least twenty other weird small touches like that, almost all of which I forget immediately only to come screaming back into my face like Meek Mill up in Chris Brown’s ugly mug each time I listen to them]

The double-time rap part is cool, etc. Mostly this song just feels good, and it’s thematically obvious but super fine. A great first track.

If the whole album were this good, it would be a good, nay great, album. Almost by nature the rest of the album isn’t quite this high. (Again, to invoke Kanye, there are ways of sustain opening track energy for a whole album, but it’s hard.) But it’s still one of the modern classic big-C Classic type albums. Highly recommended.