"Writers, Musicians, and Music fans on one album that changed them."

August 2, 2020 2:35 PM

Hanif Abdurraquib's ongoing "playlist project" SIXTY EIGHT 2 OH FIVE includes year-by-year playlists and links to live performances from 1968 to 2005, and essays from friends "about a single album that turned their world upside down." Essays to date: "2005: Keyshia Cole, The Way It Is," by Nabila Lovelace; "1976: Bob Dylan, Desire," by Matt Mitchell; "1993: Janet Jackson, Janet", by Aricka Foreman; "1969: Johnny Cash, At San Quentin," by Adia Victoria; "2000: Jill Scott, Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1," by Tomás Miriti Pacheco; and "1997: Radiohead, OK Computer," by Vivian Lee; "1991: Pearl Jam, Ten," by Nicholas Russell.

More from Hanif Abdurraqib:

"It Is Once Again The Summer of My Discontent" from A Fortune For Your Disaster.

"The Summer A Tribe Called Quest Broke Up," published in Muzzle Magazine.

Reading from and discussing Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest.

An appearance at Toronto Reference Library to talk music, culture, and his new book Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest with Elamin Abdelmahmoud.

A conversation about They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us.

"And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When The Rapture Comes," "Ode to Prince," and "Ok, I'm Finally Ready To Say Sorry For That One Summer" from The Crown Ain't Worth Much (previously).

"On Summer Crushing," previously.

"I’ll Never Be My Wife’s Equal: Sometimes partnership is learning to be second best," previously.

A Night In Bruce Springsteen's America: Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib goes to a stop on The River Tour, from his writing for mtv.com (previously).

posted by mandolin conspiracy (4 comments total)

To add to the mix, Hanif is also singlehandedly writing and voicing the entire upcoming third season of KCRW's Lost Notes podcast, coming this September. (Disclosure: I'm the show's senior producer.)
posted by mykescipark at 3:35 PM on August 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

He's also a hell of a poet. From Sunday, I-80:

I will survive my grief, amen.
I have run into the darkness and arrived in the morning still living, amen.
I have made my home anywhere I still have a name, amen.

I swear that they cannot kill us all
amen.

posted by yasaman at 7:45 PM on August 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

My partner and I started something similar to this earlier in the pandemic when we realised that we, prolific music listeners, didn't want to have to choose what to listen to each day; we started a project to listen to albums from each year from 1964 to ... [we're not yet sure, present?], but rather than in the name of defining our musical tastes through playlists, use it as a means to open new avenues to music discovery. It kind of started out with around 15-20 albums and as we get on and know the music more we have more like 25-35 albums and we use Best Of and Albums That Changed [Genre] lists and the Wikipedia [YEAR] in Music article to choose what to listen to for each year then load up a playlist in Spotify. It has actually been really awesome and I have learned and discovered so much. It's fascinating to see things in their greater context and to trace the trends as they happen and who pulls from whom and how older musicians who continue to make music in later eras don't really fit in. Very different from listening to an album here and there.

We started 1964 on April 14 (which consists of 183 songs over 14 albums, totalling 8 hours and 16 minutes) and are about halfway through 1983 (which consists of 520 songs over 52 albums totalling 36 hours and 31 minutes) as of today. This guy's project will supplement our project nicely! I love reading artists talk about music that influenced them.
posted by urbanlenny at 12:22 PM on August 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

This is an amazing labor of love. I would love to do something like this (if I had the patience) but honestly I'm in enough of a self-referential COVID musical maze as it is .....
posted by blucevalo at 2:19 PM on August 4, 2020