Posthumous albums reside heavily in the realm of what-ifs and could’ve beens. Like art in a museum, they are presented to the world to enjoy, but unfortunately, without the artist’s presence to proudly stand by their work. Upon their arrival, these albums leave fans wondering a number of things: the heights their beloved artist could have reached, whether or not certain songs were altered, and if the body of work itself is what the artist wanted the world to hear. Pop Smoke’s debut album Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon is riddled with such questions.
Pop Smoke shot like a rocket onto the music scene thanks to his 2019 hit “Welcome To The Party,” which became one of the summer’s most popular releases. His summer 2019 takeover is accentuated by his debut project Meet The Woo and its standout track, “Dior.” Following his 2020 project Meet The Woo 2, Pop Smoke began the process towards his latest release and ensuring another summer takeover, but his death tragically seized that opportunity from him and left fans to grieve and explore the potential the Brooklyn rapper had in store.
With the release of Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon, fans of Pop Smoke were granted the opportunity to put their grieving on pause and celebrate the potential of the blossoming star. Unearthing eighteen new songs, and the aforementioned “Dior” single, Pop Smoke’s posthumous debut album proves the Brooklyn rapper was en route towards another belt buckle-grabbing, hip-swinging summer takeover driven by the drill rap that he helped elevate to mainstream popularity.
Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon welcomes a notable amount of artists into Pop Smoke’s playground to run amuck. Lil Baby and DaBaby join him to fantasize about nighttime occurrences on the sinister track, “For The Night,” while Quavo and Future bring awareness to the traitors of the world on “Snitchin.” Nearly doubling the number of features since his last project, Pop Smoke stands beside some of music’s most popular acts and welcomes them to take part in the demeanor he looks to enforce, even when he doesn’t need the help. “44 Bulldog” and “Gangstas” present hard-nosed efforts that creep around the alleyways under the moon unfazed by the danger that lays ahead.
The hardest pill to swallow that Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon presents is the inability for fans to see Pop Smoke live out his growth as an artist. Meet The Woo 2 failed to exemplify his range and teetered into repetitive territory, a critique that his posthumous debut album solves. Nearing the end of the album, Pop Smoke fulfills a wish to venture into the R&B world with well-executed stabs at love that stays true to Pop Smoke’s sound while bringing in new variety and range. He obsesses over his new partner and their newfound love on “Something Special” before delicately diving into the more intimate sides of his relationship on “What You Know About Love.” Ending the R&B sample trifecta with a confident shot at love on “Diana,” Pop Smoke showcases an ambitious aspiration to give listeners something new and expand his once-narrow lane.
Most posthumous albums aim to bring closure to an unexpected end like pages ripped out of a chapter before it was read. However, Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon seeks to produce something else. Pop Smoke’s posthumous debut album attempts to bring the Brooklyn rapper’s name, sound, and presence to previously untouched corners and uncharted roads once and for all. In addition to catering to the ’90s R&B fan, Pop Smoke looks to appeal to the West Coast and Latin ears respectively with “West Coast Sh*t” and “Enjoy Yourself” while the hip-hop of old is saluted with “Got It On Me” which interpolates 50 Cent’s “Many Men.”
Shooting for the stars is only possible through leaving one’s world and that’s exactly what Pop Smoke did. Avoiding the trappings that come with posthumous albums, this feels like the album Pop aimed to make and wanted the world to receive. While an attempt at a critical favorite may have been expected, Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon focuses more on commercial expansion, making Pop Smoke larger than the life he lived.
Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon is out now via Victor Victor Worldwide and Republic Records. Get it here.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group
Before the NBA begins its hopeful restart in the Disney Wide World of Sports bubble, the MLS is the first league that is efforting a campaign in Orlando with the MLS Is Back tournament. However, early returns on the soccer league’s attempt at a bubble have not been very good, as one team — FC Dallas — has already had to withdraw from the tournament due to an outbreak that saw 10 players and one coach test positive for COVID-19 while in the bubble.
Now, there is concern of another outbreak on a team as Nashville SC has reportedly had five players test positive for the novel coronavirus (with four tests still yet to come back) and as such, the second game of the tournament featuring Nashville and Chicago has been postponed.
BREAKING: @MLS confirms our report that the Nashville SC vs. Chicago Fire game tomorrow night has been postponed. 5 Nashville players have been tested positive for Covid-19, and there were also 4 inconclusive tests.
.@MLS has postponed the second match of its MLS Is Back tournament, scheduled for Wednesday between Nashville and Chicago, after 5 Nashville SC players tested positive for COVID-19. The league has already sent one team, FC Dallas home, after 10 players tested positive.
The outbreak among Nashville players after what happened with Dallas illustrates the fragility of these bubbles, and why regular testing isn’t enough if the results don’t come back prior to players participating in team activities. It’s something the NBA and other leagues must be watching closely, as it illustrates just how quickly and easily the virus can spread through a team. Allowing players to interact with each other while waiting for results does nothing to prevent the virus from spreading and raises the possibility of an outbreak that could force a team to withdraw completely.
Whether that will happen with Nashville SC remains to be seen, but what is clear is that the MLS’ restart is already on thin ice before it even begins. Hopefully the players that test positive will either remain asymptomatic or avoid a serious case and be able to make a full and speedy recovery, whether with an eye on returning to the pitch for the tournament or not.
Elisabeth Moss has been a regular on The West Wing (95 Emmy nominations), Mad Men (four-time Outstanding Drama Series winner), Top of the Lake (two Golden Globes nominations), and The Handmaid’s Tale (the first streaming show to win Outstanding Drama Series). Also, she was on one episode of Batman: The Animated Series, which rules. Moss being attached to a project usually means it’s going to be good, and for her next TV series, the Shirley and The Invisible Man star is playing a famous real-life killer.
Moss will star in the limited series Candy, “based on the true story of killer Candy Montgomery and her victim, Betty Gore,” according to the Hollywood Reporter. “Set in 1980 Texas, Candy (Moss) had it all — a loving husband with a good job, a daughter and son and a nice house in the new suburbs — and killed her friend from church with an ax.” Montgomery’s murder of Gore was previously turned into the TV movie A Killing in a Small Town, whose star, Barbara Hershey, won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress – Miniseries or a Movie. Moss better make room on her awards shelf.
In a statement, Moss said, “I have been wanting to play an anti-heroine for a while now, and have been trying to work with [executive producer Robin Veith] again after Mad Men for even longer, so when she asked me if I wanted to play a housewife from Texas who, some would say, got away with murder, I simply said, ‘Where do I sign?’ Adding the opportunity to work with [Nick Antosca] after his incredible work on The Act was like taking a delicious dessert and putting 100 cherries on top.” No network is attached yet.
“Staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others from getting sick.” Those are the words of the CDC. Traveling right now is fraught with risks and it does not look like it’s going to get better any time soon in the U.S. Getting on a plane right now means unequivocally putting yourself and others at risk in five places: at home, in the departure airport, on the plane, in the destination airport, and at your destination.
To be crystal clear, it’s far too fraught to endorse any person flying right now for non-essential purposes. Still, people do have to fly for real reasons (like medical professionals who are traveling to places with COVID-19 spikes to help out). And with flying up 400% from its lowest point in the pandemic, people are obviously flying for less urgent reasons too. For anyone making a decision to fly, you have to anticipate contending with a certain number of mask contrarians and pandemic conspiracy theorists.
To help mitigate the risks involved in flying right now, we first went to the CDC for their advice.
“Air travel requires spending time in security lines and airport terminals, which can bring you in close contact with other people and frequently touched surfaces. Most viruses and other germs do not spread easily on flights because of how air circulates and is filtered on airplanes. However, social distancing is difficult on crowded flights, and you may have to sit near others (within 6 feet), sometimes for hours. This may increase your risk for exposure to the virus that causes COVID-19.”
To expand on those guidelines, we reached out to working epidemiologists for a little more clarity. Our panel of experts is:
What would you say is the best thing to avoid at the airport if you do have to fly?
Prof. Martine El Bejjani: The best thing to avoid is the airport itself.
I want to start by saying that flying is a risky business in this pandemic. I truly understand the need to travel, be it to escape, to be reunited with loved ones, for work, or just to gain some sense of normalcy and fun. But it is fundamentally difficult and risky and should be avoided and postponed if possible because it won’t allow you to escape the pandemic. It actually puts travelers in high-risk exposure in a super uncontrolled environment with large crowds and several transactions to do.
One crucial thing to note here is when traveling, someone will be carrying their original location’s exposure and the plane/airport’s exposure to their destination (so if they are reuniting with family, they will be bringing to them these risks, and similarly on the way back). That means a lot of movement of uncontrollable risk. Also, a smart way to start is to get all information required by airlines or your destination (especially if going to another country) regarding flight regulations and requirements (some destinations require testing to be done before or upon landing) and to have information about how COVID is spreading in your origin and destination locations.
To answer your question, the way to travel safely would be to upscale the usual measures and be hyper-vigilant given the higher risk that airport and flying entail. So, I would be wearing a mask (and having extra masks to go), extra cautious about not touching my face, hyper-vigilant about hand hygiene. That means avoiding at all cost touching surfaces and making sure to wash my hands and carry sanitizers to sanitize my hands following every interaction/transaction (even giving my passport or boarding pass to custom or flight agents). It also means being hyper-vigilant about keeping distance in the sea of strangers. One more recommendation would be to speak up if things are getting too crazy. For instance, ask other people nicely in security or boarding lines to keep their distance and share your concerns with other flyers or flight attendants or agents — a risk reduction for one is a risk reduction for many.
Prof. Steve Mooney: I think in general, it’s the same as anywhere else. Try to stay away from other people, keep a mask on as much as possible, wash hands often.
Prof. Marilyn Tseng: Based on what we know about transmission of COVID-19, the thing to avoid anywhere is closed spaces with close contact with lots of people. I would say that at airports, as anywhere else public, it would be best to be in open spaces away from other people, and if there are other people, they should be keeping their breath and saliva to themselves — that is wearing masks and not yelling or talking loudly.
What would you say is the best thing to avoid while on the plane?
Prof. Martine El Bejjani: Not removing the mask and not touching surfaces. I would make sure to disinfect my tablet and seat, and just be hyper-vigilant about what I am touching, especially around the bathroom. It’s probably smart to disinfect hands even after washing them if you had to touch the bathroom door again. Touching the luggage bins, or even what is served on the plane, it is important to carry hand sanitizers and have the reflex to disinfect your hands after every movement/transaction. Of course, I would avoid getting close to other flyers.
Prof. Steve Mooney: Prior to the pandemic, I wouldn’t think twice about eating or drinking while on the plane. As much as possible, I’d now avoid anything that would involve taking off a mask where I might be sharing air with another person.
Prof. Marilyn Tseng: Again, the general guideline is as much as possible to be in open spaces away from other people. There really is no open space on an airplane, so the next best thing is maintaining space between you and others and making sure that everyone is keeping breath and saliva to themselves. One location of the airplane that is more closed-space is the toilet, so that might be one of the things to avoid on an airplane. Given the constraints of air travel, another thing to be more careful about than usual is avoiding touching your own face.
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Is paying for an extra seat between you and another passenger — similar to what Frontier Air is offering — going to make a difference?
Prof. Martine El Bejjani: I think so. Social distancing is very important. This should be offered by all airlines. Flights shouldn’t be booked to capacity. They should be booked in a way to ensure the safety of all travelers.
Prof. Steve Mooney: I’d definitely defer to the engineers who understand air circulation within planes. But from first principles, it does seem like increasing distances should decrease the shared air, which should reduce transmission risk.
Prof. Marilyn Tseng: I know that I personally would feel uncomfortable sitting right next to someone on a plane at a time when COVID-19 cases are still rising in the US. But we really don’t have enough research to know how much of a difference it makes, if any, to have an empty seat in between. The issue is that you and the other person, whether right next to you or with a seat in between (but still within 6’), are sharing the same air space for the length of the flight.
What concerns you the most when you arrive somewhere? What would you recommend as a post-flight routine?
Prof. Martine El Bejjani: My biggest concern would be the exposure from the flight and airport. So I would stick with a long quarantine (14 days from the time of arrival), especially if I am flying to see other people. It’s too stressful to think that I can carry a risk to them, especially older relatives or people at risk from complications, or people who have been working so hard to avoid the infection, I wouldn’t want to undo all their sacrifices!
Prof. Steve Mooney: I think I’d focus on getting to a place where I could wash my hands, take off my travel clothes, take off my mask, eat and drink, and generally take a deep breath and relax.
Prof. Marilyn Tseng: I haven’t traveled by air since the pandemic, but generally, I’d recommend at least a very good handwashing, and maybe also a change of clothes and shower just to feel better.
In 2015, My Morning Jacket shared their album The Waterfall, which earned the group a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Album. The band originally toyed with the idea of putting out the record in three parts, but eventually scrapped that plan in favor of a more palatable two-part record. Now, after five years, My Morning Jacket is finally ready to release the latter half of the record, The Waterfall II.
My Morning Jacket hasn’t given fans much warning before their album will see a release. The group detailed The Waterfall II on Tuesday and the record is slated to be released Friday. The 10-track project was inspired by the group’s idyllic surroundings in the secluded Stinson Beach in California, which vocalist Jim James likened to “living on our own little moon.”
In a statement, James continued: “As so many of us feel out of tune and long for the world to be a better place, we have to look to nature and the animals and learn from them: learn to love, accept, move on and respect each other. We gotta work for it and change our ways before it’s too late, and get in harmony with love and equality for all of humanity and for nature too.”
The band plans on hosting a live album listening party for fans just ahead of the record’s release on Thursday at 9 p.m. ET on My Morning Jacket’s YouTube and Facebook pages. While The Waterfall II debuts on digital platforms Friday, the record won’t see a physical release until August 28.
As teams prepare to make the journey to Orlando to begin isolation and, hopefully, get on the court next week to begin ramping up practices and workouts prior to the restarted season, there was a flurry of news regarding players that won’t be heading to Disney on Tuesday morning.
The first big domino to fall was that of Bradley Beal, as the All-Star guard was ruled out by the Wizards and will not travel with the team due to a lingering shoulder injury and concerns about worsening that during the restart. With Beal out, Washington’s hopes of reaching the postseason take a major hit, as they’re now without Beal, John Wall, and Davis Bertans. Elsewhere in the East playoff hunt, the Brooklyn Nets will likewise make the trip to Orlando without being at full strength.
Wilson Chandler and DeAndre Jordan both have already opted out of playing in the bubble, with Chandler citing family reasons and Jordan testing positive for COVID-19. They will now be joined by Spencer Dinwiddie in being ruled out, as Nets doctors have reportedly decided to sit the budding star guard out after he has been battling a symptomatic case of COVID-19 over the last week-plus. Dinwiddie tested positive once again on Tuesday after hoping to potentially return to the court this week, and announced the news on Twitter.
After another positive test yesterday and considering the symptoms, @BrooklynNets, team doctors and I have decided that it would be in the best interest for me and the team that I do not play in Orlando. I will be supporting the guys every step of the way! #AudienceOfOne
While the Nets have brought in Justin Anderson as a substitute player already, they will be without a number of key contributors as they head to Orlando and the race for the final playoff spot in the East figures to play out among two teams without most of their top players. Hopefully Dinwiddie will be clear of the virus in the near future and will be able to make a full recovery, but even if he’s cleared soon will have to simply root on his squad from home as they battle for position in Orlando.
Those who remain nostalgic about late 1990s nights spent watching MTV may have felt conflicted about Comedy Central’s decision to nab Mike Judge for a “reimagining” of Beavis And Butt-Head. The seminal MTV animated show will receive tweaks, obviously, and Comedy Central’s announcement suggested that the two juvenile delinquents have graduated into adulthood, and “[t]he Gen X defining leads are back and entering a whole new Gen Z world.” What does that mean, though?
I was kinda pulling for time travel rather than aging the duo, although the fish-out-of-water concept might not be the best option for longevity. The reimagining’s already set for at least two seasons, and Judge has stressed that “[i]t seemed like the time was right to get stupid again.” Hmm, stupid is a broad term, but it should include the pair rocking out to music videos, right?
MTV
Well, Vulture spoke with Chris McCarthy, President of Entertainment & Youth Group at Comedy Central, and the prioritization of music video interludes doesn’t sound good. It also sounds like Beavis and Butt-Head found women who wished to procreate with them, and now they’re facing realadulting challenges:
“[I]n the case of the new Beavis and Butt-head, McCarthy says Judge is looking at a show in which the iconic duo moves beyond riffs on music videos and pop culture: ‘The story that we’re talking about working with Mike is: What happens if they grow up? And what happens if they have kids?’”
Does “moves beyond” mean that the show will leave music videos in the dust, like MTV arguably has? Artists are obviously still making videos (thank goodness for YouTube), but do Beavis and Butt-Head now have other focuses in life? No time for headbanging? Say it ain’t so. I might be reading too much into things, but it’s still strange to think of these guys holding down full-time jobs and making mortgage payments and grounding their own kids.
Perhaps Judge only intends to downplay the videos and use them sparingly. That would be preferable to abandoning one of the original series’ mainstays, which would be as disappointing as writing Cornholio out of pop culture history. In the meantime, Comedy Central’s also still planning a Daria spinoff (called Jodie) that’ll be voiced by Tracee Ellis Ross, and that’s part of Comedy Central’s decision to get more serious in the already crowded adult animated market.
Linnea Siggelkow released her shimmering debut album in April under the moniker Ellis. Siggelkow can’t tour behind her record due to the pandemic, but the singer has still found ways to keep her fans engaged with her music. On Tuesday, Siggelkow shared a surprise project. The new effort is an EP of covers, and Ellis has elected to take popular songs and reimagine them as haunting electropop ballads.
Siggelkow shared her Bedroom Covers EP through Bandcamp. The singer pulled from Taylor Swift’s most recent album and turned the title track, “Lover,” into a fuzzy, synth-heavy anthem. For the remainder of her EP, Siggelkow covered Dinosaur Jr.’s 2007 track “I Got Lost” and The Used’s 2002 number “Buried Myself Alive.”
Alongside the Bedroom Covers EP, Siggelkow said the project was a way for her to find inspiration in a time that is difficult to find creativity:
I haven’t been feeling very inspired to write lately. The world is feeling equally chaotic and slow, my mind feels very strange, so I have focused on learning other people’s songs and it’s been sort of a nice break.
I wanted to cover songs by artists that have influenced me musically and as a songwriter. I love Taylor Swift’s to-the-point lyricism about her feelings, the relatability of her songs. Dinosaur Jr. is just such a cool band and J Mascis is one of my favourite guitarists. I’ve been practicing a lot more than I usually do, working on scales and trying to improve my technical skill — I want to be able to shred like J! And the Used was such a huge band for me growing up, Bert McCracken writes perfect emo songs that have stood the test of time.
Listen to Ellis cover Taylor Swift, Dinosaur Jr., and The Used above.
Bedroom Covers EP is out now via Bandcamp. Get it here.
Griselda Records‘ takeover continues with the release of the label’s latest single, Benny The Butcher’s “Deal Or No Deal.” Over a typically menacing Daringer production, Benny flexes his influence over the streets of his native Buffalo, New York, detailing drug deals, label deals, and the spoils of both. As he says at the one-minute mark of the dark song, “I make coke rap sound like a new invention.”
Benny’s single follows the release of fellow Griselda member Westside Gunn‘s second project of 2020, Flygod Is An Awesome God 2. As yet, Benny is the only member of the core trio who hasn’t yet released a project, but he’s also been the lowest-key member of the group so far. While he’s proven to be every bit as prolific as his cohorts, his production rate has also been more methodical; in the last three years since Griselda signed a label deal with Shady Records, he’s focused primarily on collaborative efforts like 2019’s Statue Of Limitations with Smoke DZA. However, in 2018, he did release Tana Talk 3, the well-received full-length album that has fans still anticipating its followup. If Benny keeps up with his labelmates Conway and Gunn, that should be coming along any day now. Stay tuned.
Listen to Benny The Butcher’s “Deal Or No Deal” above.
One of the earliest looks we get of Shannon Hoon in All I Can Say — a new documentary composed entirely of video footage self-recorded by the late Blind Melon singer from 1990 to ’95 — is on a hotel room bed in New Orleans. The date is October 21, 1995, and Hoon is in the midst of his final tour. We see him make a phone call. He doesn’t know what time it is. He says he needs some sleep.
Later, at the end of the film, this scene is revisited. More information is revealed. It appears that he’s talking to the band’s road manager. He wants to book a flight back home. He’s anxious about missing his baby daughter’s first word.
“I, like, really need to get off that fucking bus,” he pleads.
A few hours later, Hoon will climb back onto that bus and curl up by himself. A soundman will eventually attempt to wake him for a pre-show soundcheck at the famed club Tipitina’s. But Hoon, only 28 years old, will already be dead.
Anyone who comes to All I Can Say will know how it ends. In the film, Hoon’s demise is foregrounded. The point is to show the person that Hoon was beyond the broad strokes of his Wikipedia entry — a former jock from Lafayette, Indiana who fell into drugs and petty crime, and then escaped his dead-end hometown for relatively rapid stardom in Los Angeles, only to see that status disintegrate with similar quickness as the music industry moved on to another generation of bands. Just over three years after the release of Blind Melon’s platinum-selling debut, buoyed by one of the decade’s most famous one-hit alterna-wonders, “No Rain,” Hoon was a rock casualty. It’s a story as old as time. Or at least Tom Petty’s “Into The Great Wide Open.”
With its grainy VHS visual aesthetic, forged by the hours of videotape that Hoon recorded as a kind of diary charting Blind Melon’s fateful journey up and down the alt-rock mountain of success, All I Can Say might be described as an act of de-mythology. Only Hoon is the rare ’90s rock tragedy who was never really mythologized in the first place. The enduring image of the “No Rain” video isn’t of Hoon blissfully tripping on a sun-drenched hilltop, but that of the Bee Girl, portrayed by then-10-year-old actor Heather DeLoach, as a symbol of the song’s utopian idealization of lovable outsiders.
The Bee Girl was a meme for the pre-internet era, and like all memes, it had a brief shelf-life. When Blind Melon played Saturday Night Live, they were introduced in part by Chris Farley donning the yellow and black stripes. The band then proceeded to play a radically altered version of “No Rain,” rendering the once-effervescent hit into surly, slowed-down sludge. It was not a subtle display of resentment.
In retrospect, “No Rain” is a cautionary tale about the power of a single music video to completely and utterly define a band forever in the public consciousness. By the time Hoon died, his band was already being treated as an afterthought. His death was given passing notice by Rolling Stone and Spin, which just two months earlier had given withering reviews to Blind Melon’s second album, Soup. Less than two years prior to that drubbing, however, Blind Melon had been on the cover of Rolling Stone, for a profile in which Hoon’s mother confesses that when her son boarded a Greyhound bus for LA she expected “he would either come back in a body bag, or he would come back signed.” In a way, both prophecies came true.
While Rolling Stone called Blind Melon’s first album “remarkable,” it derided Soup in a stunningly mean one-and-a-half-star review as an irrelevant hippie curio. MTV similarly turned its back on the band, declining to put the video for Soup’s second single, “Toes Across The Floor,” in regular rotation even in the wake of Hoon’s death.
It’s a familiar story with the fickle music press: One day you’re the next big thing, and the next they act as if they never liked you at all. But this cruel reality also extended to Capitol, the very record label that had once, in the very near past, greatly profited off of the “No Rain” phenomenon. “After Shannon died, not one person from that record company ever called me to offer their sympathies,” Blind Melon guitarist Christopher Thorn told the A.V. Club in 2015. “They didn’t even contribute to the fund we set up for Shannon’s baby daughter, Nico. It was like we disappeared.”
All I Can Say feels like an overdue corrective to this memory-holing of Hoon and Blind Melon, who were always better, smarter, and more interesting than they were given credit for. In the film, Hoon comes across as sensitive, goofy, troubled, deeply talented, and a bit too unfocused by drugs and alcohol to fully harness his ability. Though, honestly, the same can also be said of virtually every talented musician in their mid-20s. The sadness of Hoon’s story, among other tragic consequences, is that Blind Melon seemed like they were on the verge of becoming truly great when he died. They just needed more time and, perhaps, a little more moral support. In the process of condescending to Blind Melon as an expired Buzz Bin throwaway, the rock world thoughtlessly disposed of one of the era’s most unsung and ill-fated talents.
I enjoyed All I Can Say for what it is — a low-key and often affecting inside look at the man at the head of that band. But the film’s weakness is that it never makes a case for why Hoon is actually an important artist. Blind Melon is remembered, if at all, for their hit debut LP. But Soup was the one that portended something really special, exploding the feel-good stoner rock of the first album for an alluring splatter of demented, Meat Puppets-style guitar excursions and pitch-black, end-of-the-night lyrical mojo. It’s a record that seems like it could have been made 20 years earlier (imagine if the Allman Brothers Band had made their own strung-out, post-’60s Goats Head Soup) while also feeling 20 years ahead of its time (it’s the surly, “anti-commercial” provocation that My Morning Jacket or Kings Of Leon should have made after they headlined Bonnaroo).
In the movie, you see how Hoon arrived at the cusp of artistic brilliance… as well as inside that lonely bus in New Orleans. Born on September 26, 1967, he was the youngest of three kids, and described by his mother as hyperactive. Instead of medicating him, she enrolled him in karate classes. As Hoon entered his teen years, his parents kept pushing him into sports, and he was active in wrestling, football, and pole vaulting. When Hoon’s camera in All I Can Say catches a glimpse of his senior photo, still proudly displayed in his parents’ home years later, he looks like one of the lunkheads who beat up Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid.
By the time he was 17, Hoon inevitably rebelled. He started smoking pot, growing out his hair, and writing songs. He was also getting into fights and burglarizing homes. He was arrested several times. The following year, he lit out for LA, supposedly with the law at his heels, and soon hooked up with another Lafayette bad boy done good: Axl Rose. This was around the time that Rose skyrocketed to fame with Appetite For Destruction, an album sold partly on the strength of a music video in which he plays a country bumpkin who arrives in the big, bad City Of Angels on a Greyhound bus. “Welcome To The Jungle” was Rose’s autobiography, but he could have very well also been talking about Hoon. (In the end, only one of them was “gonna die.”)
Axl is spotted briefly in All I Can Say, during a 1990 recording session for the Use Your Illusion albums in a Christmastime video that Hoon is shooting for his mother. But Rose famously had a major impact on Hoon’s career — he included Hoon on GNR’s hit power ballad “Don’t Cry” as a backing singer, and also put him in the extremely popular (and extremely pretentious) music video.
By then, Hoon had already hooked up with the other members of Blind Melon. While the film never explicitly makes the connection, it seems obvious that Hoon’s proximity to the biggest rock band in America expedited Blind Melon’s career trajectory, which hit a new peak in early 1991 when they were signed by Capitol on the strength of just a four-song demo. For the self-titled album, they linked up with producer Rick Parashar, who had just worked with Pearl Jam on their soon-to-be massively successful debut, Ten.
The first Blind Melon album feels like a jammier, more southern version of Pearl Jam, with its obvious AOR musical influences and focus on the tender and elliptical lyrical expressions of a good-looking lead singer. But whereas Ten is a collection of angsty, hard-rock brow-beaters, Blind Melon is warmer and more amiable, with an emphasis on good-time choogle that occasionally veers into slightly woolier psychedelia.
Early ’90s rock radio would soon become crowded with retreads trying to out-huff Eddie Vedder. But “No Rain” endures today as one of the most enjoyable rock hits of the era precisely because its pleasant escapism ran counter to so many of the trends of the time. At a time when grunge bands were sneering at the Grateful Dead, “No Rain” peaks with a delightfully trippy country-rock solo that tears unexpectedly out of the song’s gently glistening guitar hook.
“No Rain” put Blind Melon ahead of the curve on what would become a bumper crop of popular hippie-leaning rock bands. By the mid-’90s, Dave Matthews Band and Phish were becoming arena-rock attractions. Even Blues Traveler had multiple hit singles. Looking back, it does seem like Blind Melon were onto something as they decamped to New Orleans to start work on Soup in late 1994. The idea was to reject the sunshine pop of “No Rain” in favor of an aggressive and heady mix of smacked-out rock, lysergic folk, deadbeat funk, and New Orleans funeral marches. The kind of record that doesn’t produce hits, but does inspire an audience to become lifelong fans.
Blind Melon was among the bands who benefitted from that brief window of time when record labels and the media fetishized any music that seemed vaguely alternative. By 1995, that window had already closed, and the seeds of the music that would come to dominate the latter half of the decade – nu-metal and teen pop — were already in the process of sprouting fruit. Instead of pretending that this wasn’t the case, as many alt-rock bands did, Blind Melon made a record about it. Soup unfolds as an elegy for a scene haunted by drug addiction and lost potential. Whenever I put it on, I’m always struck by the part in “Galaxie” when Hoon sings about “the Cadillac that’s sittin’ in the back,” a line that evokes the old country music standard “Long Black Limousine,” in which the big dark car doubles as a symbol of fame and death. “It isn’t me,” Hoon hollers at unseen demons. “Oh, no, no, no it isn’t me.” No other song for me better captures the downer vibes of the mid-’90s post-alt hangover. I can only compare it to how Neil Young’s “ditch” records encapsulate the “dream is over” malaise of the mid-’70s.
Another parallel I keep coming back to for Blind Melon at this juncture is Radiohead, who released their “aggressive and heady” second album, The Bends, just five months before Soup. Radiohead’s debut album, Pablo Honey, came out four months after Blind Melon’s first album, and was similarly sold on the strength of a breakout hit, “Creep,” that for a time was more famous than the band who recorded it. With The Bends, Radiohead was trying to escape the specter of one-hit-wonderdom, and at least initially it didn’t seem wholly successful. Writing in Spin, venerable rock critic Chuck Eddy mocked Radiohead’s fear of being “pigeonholed into the only style it’s very good at.” Coincidentally, Eddy also chided Blind Melon on similar grounds for Spin‘s review of Soup.
Where Radiohead and Blind Melon diverge is that Capitol Records, who put out both The Bends and Soup, supported Radiohead and ultimately knew how to market The Bends as a forward-thinking move by an evolving band. It doesn’t appear that Soup was ever given similar consideration, nor was Blind Melon ever really positioned as a peer of up-and-comers like DMB and Phish, a shift that might have played down their early-’90s also-ran status and positioned them as a bellwether of a thriving scene.
Another crucial difference, of course, is that Thom Yorke didn’t have a drug problem. Though, in the case of Soup, drugs didn’t hurt Blind Melon’s creative process in the short term anymore than it did for the Stones or the Dead. Hoon writes about addiction with unsettling clarity in one of Soup‘s best and most frantic songs, “2×4,” in which he likens the drug buzz to someone “pouring warm gravy all over me.” This, again, both grounds Soup in the period and makes it feel like timeless classic rock. As Thorn put it to the A.V. Club, “It starts off and it’s like, ‘We’re in New Orleans. We’re out of our minds. Welcome to our record—strap your shit in.’”
Hoon’s death didn’t cause critics to revisit Soup with fresh ears. Rather, his passing was chalked up to the self-indulgence that Blind Melon’s detractors claimed had already derailed the band. When I put on Soup, it doesn’t strike me as an especially prescient album, in terms of what happened to Hoon. Instead, it seems like the work of a band in the process of figuring out who they really are and where they want to go. It’s an album brimming with ideas and possibilities, pointing toward a future in which Blind Melon might have made the ’90s psych-tinged southern-rock version of OK Computer.
The melancholy of watching All That I Can Say is how it shows that the world lost a kind and decent soul long before his time. The melancholy of listening to Soup is how it spotlights a band that never had the chance to fully live up to its promise.
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