Kyle Kramer

Chicago/media people: I need your help, maybe

Thu, 30 May 2013 20:16:45 -0500

So I am moving from Chicago, and through an odd series of roommates and events, I have ended up with the entire extant archives of Stop Smiling magazine in my basement. I assume these are of value to someone, although not particularly to me and definitely not to my remaining roommates. Since I would hate to see such fine work get relegated to the fortunes of the alley in the wake of my departure, I’m hoping someone knows someone who might be able to provide these back issues a loving home or, I guess, even want to take them and resell them or something. I’m sure you could get a decent amount for them on Ebay, but I don’t have time to find out. Their preservation is ultimately preferable to their loss, in my eyes. In total, it’s about 10 bankers boxes of magazines (heavy, bulky), so transporting them will be a bit of an issue, and I can’t provide much help in that area. But if this is something you want or someone you know would want, please, please email me (kramerkp at gmail) so we can set something up!

Mega Death

Sun, 19 May 2013 22:13:25 -0500

Mega Death

"We know dog content resonates strongly online, so we have created a number of stories around the..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 23:23:24 -0500

““We know dog content resonates strongly online, so we have created a number of stories around the loving and joyful connection between dogs and owners,” Melinda Winter, senior brand manager at Milk-Bone, said in a statement. One of these stories, for instance, is a collection of 10 GIFS of dogs warmly greeting humans .”

- [via some content]

Photo

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:21:18 -0500

Nice Guys of YouTube

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:20:40 -0500

Nice Guys of YouTube

Get Online

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:57:28 -0500

badkidsjokes:

how do I get online

by hacking

urban-s0ul: nasir jones

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:21:14 -0500

urban-s0ul:

nasir jones

Photo

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 22:24:29 -0500

"I’m not going to lie, I bummed a guest seat from Russell Simmons to go to her party. I got like a..."

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:20:32 -0500

“I’m not going to lie, I bummed a guest seat from Russell Simmons to go to her party. I got like a real slick crush on her. I went to the party, she didn’t even know it. I walked right by here, she didn’t even know it. As soon as she walked in the door I walked right fucking by her, she didn’t even know. I didn’t say shit. I haven’t met her in real life. I will introduce myself. I want to get a record with her. I got a sick, sick, sick record. Let me see if I got it. I got something I’d like to write for her, give her a feel for it just to write. [Plays song] I already got my verse for it, I created the song, it’s called “Shots.” I got to pitch it, damn she might want to do it for her album! That’d be awesome. I’m going to do a record with her guaranteed. We’re gonna take steps.”

- Waka Flocka Flame, re: Miley Cyrus (the rest is great too, props to Caitlin for getting some excellent scoops)

"Paid in Full” was a hit, and a turning point: its imaginative samples inspired hip-hop producers to..."

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:16:34 -0500

““Paid in Full” was a hit, and a turning point: its imaginative samples inspired hip-hop producers to broaden their palettes, its sinuous rhymes inspired rappers to stretch out their verses, and its audacious cover helped convince rivals and fans that hip-hop fashion might mean something more luxurious than a T-shirt or a track suit. Of course, fans hoping to buy their own logo-print Gucci jackets wouldn’t have met with much success at the company’s Manhattan boutique, at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street, which sold mostly handbags and wallets. But within the emerging hip-hop industry the source of those outfits was an open secret: they came from a bustling shop seventy blocks north, in Harlem, called Dapper Dan’s Boutique.”

- This article about Dapper Dan is also a must-read if you care about hip-hop/fashion/the intersection of the two, although it’s available to subscribers only :( :(

"In addition to her media acquisitions, Rinehart financially supports a number of conservative think..."

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:07:00 -0500

“

In addition to her media acquisitions, Rinehart financially supports a number of conservative think tanks and antitax groups. “Northern Australia” is her particular hobbyhorse—a quixotic campaign to persuade the country that the hot, sparsely populated northern third of the continent should be declared a “special economic zone,” with low or no taxes or minimum wage or regulation. As she put it in a poem of her own composition, inscribed on a plaque attached to a thirty-ton boulder of iron ore outside a shopping center on the north side of Perth:

Is our future threatened with massive debts run up by political hacks
Who dig themselves out by unleashing rampant tax …
The world’s poor need our resources: do not leave them to their fate
Our nation needs special economic zones and wiser government, before it is too late.

”

- This New Yorker article about the world’s richest woman (and the Australian mining industry, free market capitalism, the media, climate change, Perth) is so fucking insane. I can’t recommend it enough. Not only is the subject incredible, it’s incredibly well-written, to the point that you don’t realize the whole article has been written around her - no interview - until William Finnegan points it out in the second-to-last paragraph. So good! And you don’t need a subscription to read it!

deadgirlfriends: hi um it is now technically march 17th in...

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:56:36 -0500

deadgirlfriends:

hi um

it is now technically march 17th in china

so here is a thing i made for your birthday

i love you

james

Elite Gymnastics/James Brooks is just the best.

Barack weighs in.

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:54:05 -0600

Barack weighs in.

"In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally..."

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:27:46 -0600

“In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally deformed, the ideology of trolls, gorgons and orcs. We believe this even when we are actually being racist…The idea that racism lives in the heart of particularly evil individuals, as opposed to the heart of a democratic society, is reinforcing to anyone who might, from time to time, find their tongue sprinting ahead of their discretion.”

- Ta-Nehisi Coates

Some things I've written recently

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 18:26:47 -0600

I haven’t been good about using Tumblr lately (catch me hanging out on Twitter instead!), and I assume all the diehard Kyle Kramer fans have seen these already, but in the interest of cataloging my recent exploits/preserving some pixels for posterity/broadening my readership(?), here are links, with tantalizing excerpts to draw you in, of things I’ve written in the past few weeks:

Complex: 40 Most Sexual Top 40 Songs

24. Next “Too Close” (1998)

Hot 100 Peak Position: 1

This song is about a challenge that all dudes have dealt with at some point or another. It’s one of those situations that is just really difficult. Like, really, really…hard. There are those who accused the acting in the video as wooden. Others who felt the lyrics were a little stiff (is it really necessary to clarify the phrase “The way that you shake it on me/Makes me want you so bad” with the adverb “sexually?”). But one thing about “Too Close” is that it got a lot of people excited, to the point that the number one song in the country AT THE HEIGHT OF THE CLINTON IMPEACHMENT SCANDAL was about getting a boner. We should erect a monument in its honor.

Chicago Tribune: Freddie Gibbs/Tree/Sasha Go Hard/Show You Suck concert review

The city’s rap scene is the most vibrant and exciting it’s been in recent memory — perhaps ever — right now, a fact underscored by both the diversity of the night’s bill and the deep catalogue of local singles played between acts. While a Chicago hip-hop show two years ago might have warmed the crowd up with national hits and a Twista song or two for the purists, Thursday’s playlist from DJ Victoriouz was heavy on tracks from artists like Chief Keef, King L and Lil Durk, all of whom have helped draw national attention to the city in recent months.

RedEye: Iceage “You’re Nothing” review

When young Danish punk band Iceage played the Empty Bottle for the first time two years ago, the show – a bloody, 20-minute thrash of an event – ended with singer Elias Bender Rønnenfelt descending the stage and stumbling out through the crowd in a daze. It was a striking gesture and an emblematic moment: In a genre of stage dives and pure releases of energy, Iceage are a band that is just as often caught in a cathartic stagger as it is in a whirlwind of rage.

theartofgooglebooks: “How pure is every page!” From p. 63 of...

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 14:29:50 -0600

theartofgooglebooks:

“How pure is every page!”

From p. 63 of Every Day: A Companion to The Birthday Scripture Text-book (1872). Original from Oxford University. Digitized September 4, 2006.

mrinnervisionz, freelance Rick James playlist consultant

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 18:00:05 -0600

mrinnervisionz, freelance Rick James playlist consultant

tumblinerb: Chance The Rapper - “Juice” (Mixtape, 2013)I have...

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 21:40:03 -0600

tumblinerb:

Chance The Rapper - “Juice” (Mixtape, 2013)

I have this theory that Chance is the first significant rapper to emerge who is entirely post-Kendrick. This is not exactly a notable distinction in of itself but what’s impressive is the Chicago rapper’s ability to wear that influence so loosely, not biting but carving it out into his own style - a less hinged and more melodic almost gospel infused whine.

It might be a jinx to the whole rap game to make this claim but it seems like the particular slipperiness and relative complexity of Kendrick’s flow(s) make him nearly impossible to bite directly. I mean he’s obviously a considerably more popular rapper than say ASAP Rocky, but you don’t see hoards of Kendrick-lite types out there like you do the aspiring rapper with a dollar sign in his twitter profile types running that god damn Lord Infamous flow fragment into the ground. Kids actually have to learn how to rap well if they want to rap exactly like Kendrick and in doing so they’ll probably also learn that rapping exactly like Kendrick is not the best idea.

Chance’s Acid Rap is coming soon. It should be good.

It’s Chance’s year.

Jeremy: i feel you re: the march toward death

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 00:39:44 -0600

Jeremy: i feel you re: the march toward death
i am about to queue up an episode of girls

"Perhaps no subdivision commemorates the strangeness of this better than one located in Henderson,..."

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 23:25:22 -0600

“Perhaps no subdivision commemorates the strangeness of this better than one located in Henderson, NV, just off Wigwam Parkway, which has the most unfortunate set of street names. In alphabetical order, it’s: Capital Gains Drive, Commodity Way, Day Trade Street, Dividend Way, Dow Jones Street, Investment Way, Large Cap Drive, and Stock Option Street. This is, arguably, your modern-day, Vegas-appropriate version of Paper Street, Church Street, Market Street, whatever. These are the source of the perverse incentives that built Las Vegas in its current form, more than the casinos, more than any immediate and corporeal industry or institution. And now they have a tragicomic edge to them. According to Zillow, had you bought a home on Investment Way in 2007 for $441,000, you could try to sell it today for just south of $100,000. A bad investment is still an investment, of course, though one doubts it was what they had in mind while naming the street. That is, if they had anything in mind at all.”

- The great Willy Staley, in a fascinating article on Las Vegas street names.