The November Music Wrap-Up Podcast

The Music Wrap-Up is a monthly summary of my favorite and other notable new releases. Having trouble keeping up with all the new music? Need some music suggestions? Then the Music Wrap-Up is for you. And please support these musicians as that's the reason I'm featuring them in the first place.
November is over and the end of the year is fast approaching. Which pretty much means all of the best music of the year has been released (very little gets released in December). But don't worry, this is about November still. There were plenty of great releases for me to feature. Sure, a lot of them were EPs, but just because they're shorter than a full-length doesn't diminish their quality any bit. Plus, there are still great full-lengths from the likes of Animals As Leaders, Childish Gambino, Florence and the Machine, Quilt, Steel Panther, and Jonathan Coulton. So let's dig in to all the November has to offer, shall we?

Insufficient Funds: Childish Gambino EP

Insufficient Funds is a weekly post in which we feature a free, or very close to it, piece of media that you can enjoy without over drafting your bank account. So if you're low on funds, stay tuned to Cerebral Pop every Friday morning.
It seems the biggest enemy to Donald Glover's music career is the perception that the entire thing is some sort of joke. Whether it's the fact that everything else he's done is comedic (writing for 30 Rock, starring on Community, or performing with Derek Comedy), or the fact that everything he has released has been free, people just can't seem to take him seriously.

Maybe the release of this new self/titled EP, proving the whole music thing wasn't just a one-off experiment, will silence some of those voices. Though, even his music has never been completely serious. Just like with his full length the EP has some pretty amusing lyrics, they're never played as silly though.

Insufficient Funds: Childish Gambino - Culdesac

Insufficient Funds is a weekly post in which we feature a free, or very close to it, piece of media that you can enjoy without overdrafting your bank account. So if you're low on funds, stay tuned to Cerebral Pop every Friday morning.

While I would probably never cite rap as one of my favorite genres, I've been known to enjoy it on a few select occasions. The biggest problem I usually have with it is not being able to relate to most of the subject matter at all. So many giant egos rapping about girls and clubs and having pissing matches with other large, muscle-y men whose sides I will never take. I'm a white, mid-20s male, married with a kid, and a huge boner for all forms of media that I will never even hope to create on my own. So, it makes sense that the only rap I enjoy is the stuff that isn't written with the traditional genre conventions in mind: mc chris, Saul Williams, and now, Childish Gambino, the rap-persona of Community star Donald Glover.