Binge This Week: Our latest round of staff suggestions

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Love on the Spectrum

OUR PICKS FOR THE WEEK AHEAD

The Sandman Neil Gaiman’s groundbreaking comic series receives an outstanding adaptation in this audio drama starring James McAvoy, Kat Dennings, Riz Ahmed, Andy Serkis, Taran Egerton, Michael Sheen and more. Audible.

PODCAST

CRITICAL ROLE

So you’re curious about Dungeons & Dragons, but you don’t want the commitment of actually playing a tabletop role-playing game. Thanks to the internet and its robust nerd culture, you can live vicariously through other people’s fantasy adventures. Podcast channels are full of folks broadcasting their games, but Critical Role is one of the biggest and most popular. Every Thursday at 7 p.m. the group—comprising its voice actors—livestreams their campaigns at twitch.tv/criticalrole, which are then available as a podcast. For all the ways to enjoy, visit critrole.com. –C. Moon Reed

MUSIC

WASHED OUT: PURPLE NOON

Thanks to artists like Tame Impala and Washed Out, it’s likely we’ll soon enter a modern-day phase of what karaoke addicts call “yacht rock.” That’s fine; after four years of orange-tinted kleptocracy, we could all do with a sailboat ride, bottomless mimosa and music that sounds like silk undergarments feel. With its fourth album, Purple Noon, Washed Out—still one Ernest Weatherly Greene Jr.—breaks decisively with the “chillwave” sound that made its early records Life of Leisure and Within and Without must-haves, embracing hookier choruses, chewier beats and more intelligible lyrics. It’s still good— “Too Late” deserves to be a radio hit, if such things still exist—but the spacey shimmer of earlier songs like “Before” is refined away. That’s all right. Once you’re onboard, it’s smooth sailing. –Geoff Carter

NOISE

RIGHT ON TIME

Hassan (Wade Vandervort/Staff)

VEGAS RAPPER HASSAN RETURNS WITH A POIGNANT NEW EP

BY LESLIE VENTURA

assan Hamilton calls himself his own worst critH ic. But it’s in that criticism that the 40-year-old rapper  nds his motivation—the need to keep going and be bigger and bolder than before.

“I’m back to dropping the bars and humor that you all love,” Hamilton wrote on the Bandcamp page for his latest EP, July’s Getting 2 Old 4 This. “After all, something has to be dope in 2020.”

Written and recorded during quarantine, the EP echoes the MC’s creative duality. “It was something to really occupy my time; otherwise I was going stir-crazy,” Hamilton says. “Plus, I wasn’t really satis ed with my last output—no disrespect to the producers. It was something to prove to myself, you know, that I still had it.”

Having dropped the impromptu recording “Carolyn Goodclown,” a response to the Mayor’s statements regarding COVID-19, in April, the creative juices just kept  owing.

“I’ve always been a  rm believer in ‘strike when the iron’s hot,’ but sometimes it just gets scalding hot, and I overwhelm myself,” Hamilton says. “One thought led to another, and next thing you know I’m hitting the pad and paper.”

The seven-song EP was produced by local MCs Phil A. and Trade Voorhees and features rapper D-Mob (“Live From Lefty’s Lounge”) and singer-songwriter Paige Overton (the Lenny Kravitz cover “Fly Away”). track “Can I Be Black” recirculated online, bringing the

“We’ve been wanting to work with each other for rapper back into the fold. years,” Hamilton says of Overton. “I poured my heart “It still rings true,” Hamilton says. “Can I be Black? out and then she put her soul on it, and it Can I exist in this society without all the turned out pretty dope.” negative perpetuations? [Without] just

There’s plenty of grit on 2 Old, but it’s looking at me as a color and not as a human standout track “Karen” that best blends being? Just let people be who they are. If Hamilton’s signature lyrical prowess and you don’t like people, leave them alone. You humor into a scathing statement against ain’t gotta attack anybody. I know it sounds white women who call the cops on Black cliché, but if you ain’t got nothin’ nice to say, people for things like bird watching and don’t say it.” existing while Black. HASSAN Getting 2 Old 4 This  nds Hamilton at

“I wanted to do that, because it’s a really hassan1. a crossroads. “I can’t just be doing this for serious situation,” Hamilton says. “People bandcamp.com the rest of my life,” Hamilton says, likening could literally get killed or arrested just behis music to a toxic relationship. “I love it, cause you felt a certain way. I’ve had friends even though I’m over it. I’m pretty sure Luke and family members who have had dated white women Skywalker wants to chill out sometimes.” who have told them, ‘You know if I call the cops, you’re But Hamilton isn’t ready to throw in the towel just going to jail?’” yet. Next year marks the 10-year anniversary of collabo

Earlier this year, the political and social climate rative LP Rap Songs with producer and MC Phil. A., and was enough for the rapper to take a break from social no matter what 2021 brings, Hamilton says his rhymes media. “It feels like 2020 is ancient Rome, social media will be there to provide some poignant comic relief. is the Colosseum, and we’re the spectators watching a “What else am I going to do?” Hamilton says. “When bloodbath,” Hamilton jokes. it comes to the microphone, that’s something I’ve

But once the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Aralways been good at. I know how to put my emotions bery and Breonna Taylor went viral, an old video for his down once you give me a pad and a pen.”