Month 101: February
A living legend hints at filling the political superstar void, and sixteen other tracks from last month that are worth your time.
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As excited as I was to launch this recurring feature called Month 101 just a few weeks ago, the whole thing came with a certain amount of apprehension — right there in the name was a tacit commitment to do a new one every few weeks, to not forget, to not fall off. And yet, for the first 19 days of March, that's what happened anyway. And of course, the more time that goes on, the more songs I stumble upon that deserve inclusion.
All that to say, this second installment is not just a late one, but a beefy one — more than 45 minutes of music, where the usual goal is more like a half hour. Month 101 remains, as it was the first time, non-exhaustive, non-authoritative, non-anything-other-than-some-good-songs, complete with a healthy set of accompanying writeups, as well as Apple Music and Spotify playlists for your listening convenience. Of the 17 total songs that make up Month 101: February, I'm confident you'll find something to carry with you into the months ahead.
Download the playlist on: Apple Music | Spotify
**Note: One song from the list, by Defacto Thezpian, is only on Bandcamp, so doesn't appear on those playlists — you can find it by clicking a link in the story below.
J. Cole - "cLOUDs"
It's not quite "How will this affect LeBron's legacy?" but I must confess that one of my first thoughts, after listening to the wistful new song that Fayetteville native and Terry Sanford High graduate Jermaine Cole surprise-dropped via his blog last month, was whether it signaled a potential, near-future turning point in the "J. Cole fans be like" narrative — that is, that they (and he) are maybe a bit bigger on vague, performative gestures in the politically conscious direction than they are with actual political consciousness itself (not unlike LeBron's timeless reflections upon reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X: "just a smart man... a very, very, very smart man"). Especially on the song's first verse, there's a glut of the kind of lyrically dense, space-filling battle bars ("I caught a/lotta, murder charges, turn artists to martyrs") that have carried considerably less weight ever since the whole "my bad, nvm" situation with Kendrick last April. But from the second verse's opening words, there's a marked shift into a gear that, arguably, Cole hasn't found in years, if ever.
"I'm that bass in your trunk, the bullet that missed Trump/ the gun that jammed, cuz it seemed God had other plans," he starts, before calling out billionaires who profit off the world's demise, bemoaning an epidemic of children hopelessly dependent on screens, and depicting a dystopian AI future in which human-made music is all but obsolete. By the final chorus, as he sings about "gray hairs, I'm aging/faster than I thought I'd be," it seems clear that the rueful refrain has to do with a lot more than just growing old in the rap game. To critics, it could all still sound like the same old faux-political Cole, dipping his toes in the water just enough to seem provocative without actually provoking. And it's possible that, starved as we are for socially conscious rap stars (and please don't mention Kendrick "I don't know that guy" Lamar), hearing even the mildest criticism of billionaires from a mega-star can feel like the musical equivalent of a Molotov cocktail through a police windshield. Still, if this is any indication of the attitude Cole is bringing into his upcoming work, we could be in for a spate of music finally as cerebral and urgent as — to let the memes tell it — Cole fans have long only imagined it to be.
Maasho - "eyesore"
Like a 25-year-old NBA player who's been in the league since 18, Raleigh rapper/producer Maasho is both technically young and still undeniably seasoned at the same time. Since breaking through with the songs "Fresh Air" (alongside Weston Estate) and "boyfriend" in 2019, and "Lemon Baby" in 2020, he still has yet to release an album five years later — but it only takes a cursory exploration of his interim releases to understand why a faithful contingent are still patiently waiting, and lapping up whatever loosies arrive in the meantime. The latest in that vein is "eyesore," a swaggering "what do you see in him?" diatribe that, even if it loses a bit of steam somewhere in the middle, is as captivating as anything else to come out last month. Similar to recent tracks like "special" and the self-produced "GLUE," Maasho's pop sensibility is plain to see — now in even more anthemic fashion.