From the Department of Things That Are Kinda Weird: I don't know if it's just me or it's a system-wide thing, but YouTube's auto-play feature keeps playing Mariah Carey songs after I watch the excellent new video from local alt-rap tour de force kidDead. It's not what I would play after some kidDead — I'd probably opt for Sage Francis or Atmosphere — but somewhere in the cloud there's an algorithm that thinks kidDead and Mariah are like peanut butter and chocolate. I'm okay with this and have no problem acquiescing control of the cosmic jukebox to our robot overlords. Also, "Infinity" is kind of awesome. It works as a nice rainbow chaser after the profound and unflinching existential dread of KD's addiction-exploration.
The "Patrick Swayze" video is a haunting, intense experience — it even comes with a warning that the video could "potentially trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy." With a stark, brooding beat from Phantom Farmer and video production from the gang at Villain Place, "Patrick Swayze" is a horror story plain and simple. "Patrick Swayze" takes drug-glamour — a trope so essential to much of modern hip-hop — and flips the script, humanizing the experience of addiction in an honest manner that we don't hear very often. The track appears on KD's excellent Rap and Destroy album and stands as another example of why the dude is one of the most interesting characters in the Music City rap underground.
You can catch kidDead kick off the No Genres, No Masters tour with Floridian punk-duo Mainstream Filth and sorta-local electro weirdo Taco Supreme at The Stone Fox tonight. Show starts at 10 p.m., tickets are five clams.
