Slipknot

I first heard Slipknot when I was a child and I would play old wrestling games.  The game was blasting the music all the time so I couldn't avoid it.

I didn't really like it at first because I didn't understand it. I would always question it every time it came on. What made me like it is further understanding not just them but metal in general and how it can force out emotions from people.

I listen to all types of music, mostly found through YouTube’s and friend’s recommendations. I don't just stop at Rock or metal, I like all genres and it's difficult to categorize the kind of music I specifically listen to. 

I consider myself a serious and a general fan of music and Slipknot in general because I take the time out of my day to not just pay attention to the music but the artists as well. Knowing that, I still can be detached from the music depending on if the artist or artists intrigued me emotionally.

Slipknot makes me happy because I feel a certain energy coming from music and it forces emotions out of me faster than anything else I listen to. Whenever I would feel sad or even depressed, it would turn it into anger which made it easier to adjust to happiness.

My friends are all hip hop and rap fans and they hate some of the music I listen to. I tried to get them into it but they didn't like it which is unfortunate considering Slipknot are still active and I follow them a lot through their old and new music.

I see myself as a fan of their music and them in general because their music fits their personalities and their designs.

Slipknot are in my top favorites along with XXXTENTACION and Aimer.

Their strengths are lyrics, Melody, and Voice in general. Chorus and Breakdowns are my favorite parts of their songs.  Their weakness would be how sometimes things just come out instead of flow. The flow comes out on the bridge or the breakdown.  But It doesn't affect my enjoyment.

-Qiyshan

Bohemian Rhapsody

My introduction to the song “Bohemian Rhapsody”  by Queen, was through a youtuber named Peter Hollens. He sang the song Bohemian Rhapsody but in a musical theater type fashion.c

When I first heard it I liked the song but I wanted to hear the original version. When I heard the original version I instantly added it to my playlist.

My music playlist on my phone is all rap and hip hip but for some reason this rock band stood out to me. The song stood out to me because the flow made my ears ring (in a good way). This is a song that I barely play in front of people because they question me (not that I care, just don't feel like hearing it). I heard other Queen songs but Bohemian Rhapsody stuck out to me the most. I listen to like Dababy, Tee Grizzley, Juice Wlrd, etc, and most of them are rappers. I wouldn't say Queen is my favorite singer but Bohemian Rhapsody is one of my favorite songs. 

By Jordan Davis

C-Pop

 How I first heard about Chinese pop was when I watched a Korean show for the first time called "Oh My Ghost!"   It had no opening lyrics but it was still cool music to listen to which grabbed my attention on IRL Asian culture instead of anime or cartoon. After I watched "Oh My Ghost!", Netflix recommended more Asian shows, from Japanese to Chinese and Korean. That was when I started watching Love 020.  Then "A Love So Beautiful" came along.  When I heard the opening song " I Like You So Much, You'll Know It" I loved it automatically because of how peaceful and calm it is. 

The opening song from “Love 020” sounds like video game music when the song starts which feels like it describes someone who loves to play video games a lot. The ending song to Love 020 was relaxing and reminds me of spring/summer which was related to the opening song.  “I Like You So Much, You’ll Know It” is about a couple on what he/she likes or loves about the person as a lover. 

Obviously with C-pop, songs mostly have Mandarin lyrics about anything that's related to a show or scene. I consider myself to be a casual fan of music because I have two options for music, if I enjoy it, I enjoy it. If I don't like it, I don't enjoy the song. I get to learn other foreign languages, for instance, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. Learning about the music helps me learn more about the language.

Not a lot of my friends know about C-pop instead it's K-pop because it's more popular than C-pop. I never try to get them to know what songs I listen to because they may not like the music I listen to. C-pop is always active on social media like YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram, I don't follow them but I do love their music videos and pictures about the music. I consider myself to be a fan of the song but I would love to know who sang the song to know who they are and listen to more of their music, and to understand more about the musician. 

My favorite musician has to be Yang Yang because his song "Just One Smile Is Very Alluring" was about peace with the person you love and romance which is so lively. The song's strength was about how happy the person is with just one smile. My favorite part of the song has to be the ending of the song which has a repetition when this part comes up: "Only after meeting you did I realize how important you are to me, no else can feel your sweetest smile, I don't need to look for anyone else, because I already found you, our fate just happens to not let anyone else disturb us, only we know how beautiful our love is, I want to be around you every minute and every second, you are important to me" and the song repeats the same from beginning to end. 

-Josiah Russell

Death Grips & Me

I found out about Death Grips on some list of ‘best new music of Two Thousand Whatever’ way back shortly after The Money Store came out.  Whoever wrote the article recommended the song Get Got, and described it as unlike anything else I’d ever heard.  That’s always an intriguing notion for me, and I pretty quickly listened to the song.  I did like it, and it surely did sound very different from anything else I’d heard before.  I’ve heard people describe Death Grips as the last relevant punk band by way of Hip Hop and I think that’s a fairly good way of describing them.  Though fans of punk and fans of hip hop could very easily not like them whatsoever.   

I never listened to hip hop basically at all until like 2003 and then started out with Outkast as well as weirder stuff like El-P and Cannibal Ox and then Wu-Tang Clan shortly thereafter.  I had a basis for hip hop upon getting into Death Grips, but even still they were definitely removed from some of the more melodic stuff I tended to listen to, and this is true even now.  I basically listen to pop music and really really weird stuff, and in some bizarre way they’re a combination of the two, although if I had to pick I’d include them in with the weird stuff.   

Sometimes I find myself in states of anxiety/anger/frustration, often during the WYP summer program, and then I crave specific kinds of music that can give voice to these feelings.  When I was in high school I would listen to Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson.  Now I listen to  Death Grips.  

When I first got into them, I fell in love with their poppier songs and I couldn’t make sense of everything else they did at all.  I made a few attempts to get into them further over the years and failed.  Finally, about a year and a half ago, I was reading about them and started listening to a few of their songs I’d never heard before, and all of a sudden everything kinda clicked for me.  I fell in love in the blink of an eye.  Their sound design is very unique and seemingly effortless in a way that I’m sure was tremendously hard to achieve.  And then you have MC Ride who somehow functions as this non-stop hooks machine rage monster.  I still think he is a pretty crap lyricist, though.  Sometimes he happens upon a good line or two, and he is usually good at avoiding lyrics that are eye-rollingly, record-scratchingly bad, but he better never release a book of poetry.  I would argue that in many ways the lyrics aren’t important with him, though.  He’s gotta scream something, right?  

My wife hates them, though.  She doesn’t like angry or aggressive music, and that is basically all they are.  It’s like being married to someone with a horrible peanut allergy.  If you want a PB&J you better go eat it in the car by yourself.   But that’s okay.  I think a relationship where both people are huge Death Grips fans might be problematic.