If there’s one lesson aspiring musicians should take away from this post it’s that sometimes cultivating a memorable personality online can assist you on your path to recognition for your artistic achievements. Of course, it helps a lot if the personality you’ve fostered on these internets isn’t that of a dick. But since freedom of expression hasn’t been completely squelched in post-911 America there’s nothing anybody can do to stop you from doing that either. Granted, it doesn’t matter either way if your music is terrible, so try making some good music too.
OKP forum-member al_sharp (a.k.a. Charles Flartey) is one denizen of cyberspace who happens to be on the positive side of both the behavioral and musical equations. The most controversial interweb shenanigans he’s likely to be remembered for is his man-love for El-P (which I totally co-sign anyway) and yanking people into the Okayplayer chat-room on AIM against their will. More importantly, he’s actually talented musically. His rhythmic persona is that of lead-vocalist for Shameless Plug and the Yes Yes Y’alls, a New Jersey-based trio featuring the musicianship of Chris Renne and Ryan Gilligan that incorporates live instrumentation and digital production techniques in an effort to craft a unique brand of Pop-Rock, heavily influenced by Hip-Hop, Soul, and Electronica.
Their 2006 self-produced LP Boundaries was one of the cooler records you not only didn’t hear, but didn’t hear about, last year. The melange of varied musical influences, and Shameless Plug’s skyward-reaching vocals, reminded me a bit of Robin Thicke’s Cherry Blue Skies/A Beautiful World, even though Mr. Plug isn’t pimping the falsetto like your boy Thicke. Sadly, I lost my MP3 copy of the album in a system reformatting incident (this is the one downside I see to the digital age of music collecting, it’s far too easy for bits and bytes to just *poof* disappear) but the group is currently working on a follow-up, tentatively titled Why, Why, Why?, so I’ll be able to replace it with something new from them soon.
A trio of demo tracks from the new LP surfaced via their MySpace page not too long ago. There was “Runnin’,” an uptempo R&B-influenced Rap track propelled by snappy drum-programming, acoustic guitar picking and G-Funk-style electro-bass and synths where Shameless Plug tells listeners to “log off fam.” And “Hey You,” a super-mellow Latin-Jazz-flavored ballad peppered with stuttering drums, a delightfully cheesy synth gurgle, a Timbaland-ish bridge, and a smooth vocal performance from the Shameless one. But the song that really caught my ear was “Saint Louis (Amy’s Song),” a Soul influenced rocker with a HUGE sound, incorporating gritty organ licks, speaker-rattling bass, and even a horn section on the chorus, where Shameless Plug flexes his singing and rapping skills equally. Check it out for yourself below.
– Listen to Shameless Plug and the Yes Yes Y’alls “Saint Louis”
If you like what you hear you should be a nice guy on the internet yourself and send Shameless Plug and the Yes Yes Y’alls a friend-request on MySpace. And don’t forget to check for Why, Why, Why? when they drop it.
-El Keter