Mylist (The Curator)

For my second Elective course of the year, Mixtapes, we learned about the humanities behind the music. What are solfege and pentatonic notes? Where is the "home" note in this particular song? Is this song on a major or minor scale? These are some questions we thought about while learning about the historical context of music. For our project, we were asked to create a playlist to become the curator for the Pitchfork festival. We must use 5 songs and connect them back to who we are as a person and how we see the world around us. This project was simply amazing, but really hard. Sorry in advance for all the vulgar language in the music.



Hi, my name is Sean, and this is my playlist for Pitchfork. I am a very different person, so I like my music the same way. I want my playlist to be unique and like something that people don’t hear often. I personally am a musician. I’m a Hip-Hop/R&B artist. I rap, sing (although I’m not that great at it), write, and have currently started producing music. As far as the world goes, music is so diverse and different. There’s anything from Rock/Rap collabs to Hip-Hop/R&B collabs. The possibilities are endless. The world around me is cruel but full of great opportunity. Every minute you’re alive, there’s opportunity. The world is so vast and vibrant. My playlist will reflect my morals in life. Some type of originality and creativity.

Grief
Progressive/Profane track:
This song mainly consists of hard bars. The lyrics are hard-hitting and the beat compliments the lyrics perfectly. However, the delivery is very peculiar, and uncomfortable. Almost makes you feel this kind of uneasiness. Hip-Hop/Rap is the closest genre to this sound, but it almost makes you feel like this should be a separate genre. I think this song tries to give off uneasy feelings. It sounds quiet and loud at the same time, with very little repetition, besides "good grief." The tempo is also a medium-slow. While listening closely to the lyrics, you will start to realize that Earl Sweatshirt is reminiscing about the current state of his career. He highlights his thoughts and he vents about obstacles that he faces. He also speaks a lot about how dear he holds his real friends to his heart. This song came out in 2015. 2015 is the same year that people were breaking the barrier of “depression rap.” Acts like Tyler, the Creator paved the way for artists such as Earl Sweatshirt, Isaiah Rashad, etc. I think that anyone that respects real conscious rap. People that like to self-reflect and go against the status quo would love this song. This song is vulgar, however, so this song could definitely not be played in churches or at schools. The way I like to say it is, “the song is too real.” This track kind of got me into conscious music. Self-reflecting music that moves the rap game in ways that no other type of music does, is just so powerful to me.

We Don't Care
Progressive/Profane track:
Isn’t Kanye just amazing? This song right here has the most replay value on my playlist. It simply speaks to my soul in a way that other Hip-Hop/Rap music doesn’t. There’s a children’s choir implemented to give away a more soulful feeling. Kanye is the definition of unique. He uses certain instruments to glorifies pitches when they raise and drop. He’s simply a genius. The song was relatively loud and had a lot of repetition. The tempo was actually upbeat and kind of fast.The message of this song is self-explanatory. “We Don’t Care” is a very powerful song that talks about a lot of social issues in the world; specifically targeting the things that Kanye sees. It seems like Kanye uses this song to bring light to a dark topic. This song came out in 2004 when George W. Bush was president. He wasn’t the best president by any means. This was a very rough time for black people. This song is for anyone to be honest. Anyone who loves music should respect this song. There’s a bit of vulgar language, but the message is excellent. This song came out in 2004. At the time, no one sounded like this. That’s how I’m trying to be as a musician. The world is full of creativity.

Favorite Colors
Progressive/Profane track:
This song is interesting. Taylor Bennett, three-time grammy winner Chance The Rapper’s brother, created this empowering, uplifting song and chose the PERFECT feature. The feature from Kyle sealed the deal. This song quickly became a song that topped my personal chart of creativity and uniqueness. This song tries and succeeds at giving off a good feeling. A “nothing can stop me” type of vibe! This song is something you play when you’re down or you just want to have fun or be happy. It successfully gives off happy vibes and that’s just really cool to me. There's a quiet sound to this song. The tempo is just right. It's slow, but not too slow. One of my favorite parts of the song is the repetition in Kyle's verse where he repeatedly says "Ramen." This song came out not too long ago, in 2017. Musically, 2017 has been pretty inactive from a Hip-Hop standpoint. Just recently has there been some activity with Drake’s release of “More Life.” Then Kendrick Lamar’s retaliation and release of the date when his next project releases on April 7th. This song, I feel like, even though it’s much smaller scale than Drake and Kendrick Lamar, the impact on the music was still large. I think it was important to music. The diversity in this song is crazy. From the instruments to the lyrics, to the delivery of Kyle’s verse. I would think there wouldn’t be many enemies of this song. Although, there are mentions of marijuana and other things. This song is important to me because it doesn’t sound unoriginal. The world should hear this song just so they know that there are no limitations in music.

Myself
Progressive Conservative/Profane track:

This song is important because it takes that resemblance to Hip-Hop and the artist changes it to his sound. That’s why I love this artist because his versatility and his ideas are serene to me. This song is highlighting how the artist has done it all by himself. From the money to the women to the fanbase. This song seems to be a “flex song,” where Nebu glorifies his accomplishments. This song is moderate sound, so not loud or quiet. There's a bunch of repetition which works with the fast tempo. This song came out in 2016, which was a great time for this type of music. “Bubble gum rap” or “alternative rock” are some classifications of this age of music. This song definitely has some vulgar language and there’s plenty of “enemies,” but the friends are artists like me who love to hear the new and cool music. This track is powerful to me, but it also sounds great to me. Also, Nebu Kiniza is a very important artist to me because he took a sound and made it his own. He’s the most unique mainstream rapper I can think of.

Glitter Glove
Progressive Conservative/Profane track:
REESE LAFLARE, a very underrated Hip-Hop artist is one of the coolest artists in the game if you ask me. His versatility and creativity will bring him a very long way in his career. You can even call this genre “alternative rock.” This music is just great to listen to. This song is just a very fun song. It’s literally about dancing and it’s just made for the listener to “turn up” and have fun. That explains the moderately fast tempo and the catchy repetition. This song was released in 2016, where people were just getting accustomed to this type of music, so this song was just magnificent at the time, and it still is now! This song still does have some vulgar language. Some enemies may be churches and some parents, or older adults. This song is simply amazingly creative in a way that I hear it and I don’t ever want to stop listening to it. Isn’t this what the world needs?

Better Brush Your Teeth; Don't Wanna Get Yellow Fever

For the third Action Project of my Disease class, my peers and I were assigned to choose an epidemic that affected a population. The third unit of Disease is called "World," and that is exactly what we studied. We discussed, throughout the unit, how diseases affect the world; hence the term: epidemic. I chose Yellow Fever, a disease transmitted from Mosquitoes. Specifically, the Yellow Fever outbreak in Barcelona, Spain in 1821. I chose this epidemic because Yellow Fever has always been very interesting to me because there's so many Mosquitoes in the world and one could possibly end your life. This is even more interesting because I got bit by hundreds of them over the last summer. This project was not easy, but as usual, it was super fun to complete!

Below is a visual of some places that were affected by my disease:

What is Yellow Fever? Thanks for asking! Yellow Fever is a disease that you can get from Mosquitoes, normally in Tropical South Africa. The species of the mosquito is: Aedes Aegypti. Yellow Fever is commonly transmitted by the female mosquito. This disease can also affect other species of Mosquitoes. Yellow Fever annually kills 30,000 people a year and infects 200,000 people a year. Yellow Fever was the first ever human virus; discovered on the island of Barbados, in 1647.

Some symptoms of Yellow Fever are harsh fever, lost of appetite, nausea, muscle pains, mostly in back and head. In some cases, the fever keeps coming back or the body pains keep coming back, or your skin begins to turn yellow, which really makes this disease even more fatal. It can also cause kidney problems and hear failure which results in death!

The specific Epidemic I am targeting is the Yellow Fever outbreak in Barcelona, Spain, 1821. The outbreak happened through the docks coming from Cuba, apparently a brick was contagious and it got transported to people within Barcelona. It first started to affect the urban poor suburbs of Barcelona, then made its way to the center of the city. An estimated 20,000/120,000 died from the disease. That's a whole 1/6 of the FULL population of Barcelona at the time!! A quarantine was put into immediate effect, due to this epidemic. It was controlled by an estimated 15,000 soldiers! This quarantine seemed to be one of the main forms of resistance towards the disease and may be he cause of its decline. I would have suggested that the people of Barcelona use ovitraps. Ovitraps are traps that trap the eggs of insects. This idea will not only reduce mosquito populations, but it will reduce pesticides which can be harmful to humans and plants. 

Generally, a disease as fatal as yellow fever and since it can be transmitted by an insect, (mosquito) then it is definitely a potential epidemic or pandemic. So on a R Naught scale, I would say this disease is over 1. This also means that this disease has the potential to spread out of control and does not decline.

In my images you will find some patterns or epidemics I found interesting, relating to my epidemic. I used a software named GapMinder to find some relevant patterns in the way that epidemics affect other places around the same time as mine. GapMinder is a graphing program where it shows you different kinds of statistics for different countries. Something like TV sales and suicide rates. Just random things like these are examples of what you can do on GapMinder. Playing around with it, I learned about how Epidemics affected population and how drought affected population.

In the photos, you will see that I am using the software and on the software, you will see that my main out-liers are China and Indonesia in the first picture. Meaning that there was most activity in those two countries when a drought occurred. Now this is important because the holder of my disease are mosquitoes. I bet you can't guess what mosquitoes eat! They drink water, and without any water, a lot of mosquitoes die. My second image has China and India as out-liers. Now, this set of data represents populations as epidemics were happening. I found it super interesting that India and China stayed really strong in numbers, even though they are hugely populated countries.

References:
"[The "plague" of Barcelona. Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1821]." NCBI. U.S. National Library of Medicine, n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

"Gapminder." Gapminder. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.