Welcome to How to Drob!
Starting now, I'll send you a free weekly email about music
Welcome to How to Drob, where I’m going to work the knobs, write songs and perform all at the same time.
I’m Eric Drobny. Many in my world know me as my last name, Drobny, or just the first syllable of my last name, which is pronounced like the name Rob but with a D in front of it.
I’m not a music journalist but I do talk a lot and listen to a wide variety of music. So if you want me to do the dirty work of finding stuff for you to listen to, you’re in the right place. The title of this Substack is a reference to one of the greatest diss tracks of all time, 50 Cent’s 1999 song ‘How to Rob’. I guess I’m not exactly robbing you since you don’t have to pay anything to read this but you know, time is money so.
What we’re going to do in this (roughly) weekly send is appreciate, make fun of, tear down, be entertained by and let music shower over us. Aside from sports, it’s the only inanimate thing I’ve loved my whole life and I know I’ll love for the rest of it. So that’s why I’m here. I hope you’re here for one of these reasons:
you feel like your music game is off and you want someone to do the work for you
you like my music game
you want to support me
you don’t know me at all but someone took a screenshot of something I said and you want to yell at me through the Internet
A lot of what you read about here is going to be new(ish) but you’re also going to get a healthy dose of random, old stuff I stumbled upon or was supremely late to and feel bad about. For the last five years, I’ve put together a list of new albums I love from the past year but I’ve also included this ‘whoops I was real late to this one’ section that often ends up being everyone’s favorite. And when I say ‘everyone’, I mean many of the 14 people I texted it to or shared it with in a Slack room. What music do you love from 2024? What’d you discover in 2024?
This Substack is an effort to formalize this offering and give me a chance to write about music for a couple hours a week. Sometimes the format will include many sections because I have many things swirling up top. Other times there will be one section where I just point out some absurdly obvious easter egg from a Tiny Desk.
It’ll be free for now and somewhere along the line I’ll give you the option to support me financially if you so please. I have no intention to make this my livelihood, so, again, more joy.
And now, to the ‘tent…
Bad Bunny Is In Fact Quite Good
I admit, I was pretty late on Bad Bunny.
The 2010s saw a global explosion of reggaeton, an art form most Americans were vaguely aware of after Daddy Yankee’s 2004 megahit ‘Gasolina’, a song that still instantly makes me feel like I have two hearts - one to pump blood and another to pump all the tequila in my veins. Bad Bunny was created when Puerto Rico opened its (mouth) and birthed the world’s greatest combination of rap and reggaeton. Benito was busy dropping all kinds of music on Soundcloud and making guest appearances all across the globe from 2013-18, until his first album, X100PRE came out in 2018.1
And if I was really going to out myself for being late on Maldito Conejito, I’d also tell you that during the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show, I said “Bad Bunny is only on this stage with Shakira and JLo because he’s a native Spanish speaker”. But I won’t do that. Instead I’ll only reveal to you that I remember feeling distinctly annoyed that Shakira was playing (“playing?”) an electric guitar with a capo halfway down the frets (if you’re going to commit to the bit, commit to the bit please and thank you.) But the truth is I really didn’t know much, if any of Benito’s stuff when he graced that stage. I missed the first two albums and only decided to listen to his third (and best), YHLQMDLG, three weeks after that Super Bowl appearance, when it was released. Three weeks after that, Rudy Gobert touched all the microphones and then nobody saw each other for a year. Perhaps I have a tinge of nostalgia for that album but seriously it is GOOD. Stop reading and go listen to it. Absolutely zero skips. And as a bonus, you’ll probably know (mostly) incomprehensible Spanish after a few run throughs.2 Felicidades.
Before I go too far down this rabbit hole3, the new Bad Bunny album rules. There’s a good Popcast episode about it (here’s the article version that has the YouTube link embedded in it) I highly recommend but more than anything, I would like for you to give it 5 run throughs and do your best to try and understand this very lovable, somehow-only-30-year-old. I went from being a hater to being a true believer in the span of about three weeks and I’ll bet you can do it faster than I did.
Listen for that classic reggaeton sound still worming its way into his music despite Puerto Rican flair from the 60s and 70s dominating the sound. Listen for the ballads. Listen for the first track goosebumps I’m somehow already getting despite only hearing it four times. Listen for the piano carrying the beat sometimes, not always the drums. Hell, listen for the club beats! Escuchar para las palabras probablamente tu puedes no entender. Es excelente.
It’s okay if you don’t like this album. But if you don’t like it, know that I’m officially Worried About You.
The short film attached to the album is also fantastic.
What’s Been Stuck in my Head
It’s the Fall (Autumn, excuse me) of 2006 and I’m 20. I’m studying abroad in London (I know, I know, SO ADVENTUROUS) and taking a musical theater class, as well as a Shakespeare class. I’m seeing a concert or a play or a musical every week. Someone suggests I go see Wicked. I go, knowing nothing. I return, knowing everything, defying gravity, buying green makeup, wondering how dumb I would feel if I gave up my weekly grocery bill for voice lessons.
If you missed Nikki Glaser hosting the Golden Globes, I can do nothing for you except try and convince you to watch the first 30 seconds of this clip.
If you made it through the whole 30 seconds, felicidades. And you’ll understand why Ariana Grande’s ‘Popular’ is stuck in my head. Again. For the third time in a month.
I’m a little annoyed that it’s not a Cynthia Erivo / Elphy song but them’s the musical breaks…
Something Else You Might Enjoy
I just finished S.H. Fernando’s wonderful MF DOOM bio, The Chronicles of DOOM. I first started really diving into non-radio rap and hip hop in the mid-2000s when I arrived in a dorm room and had access to thousands of songs I didn’t have to wait to download on Limewire.4 DOOM’s iconic album Madvillainy, a collaboration with superproducer Madlib, was released 6 months before I started my freshman year of college, so the 18-year-old brain was still ripe, malleable and ____. Madvillainy was basically my first interaction with both DOOM and Madlib so I hopped on the DOOM train and never looked back. For what it’s worth, the Madlib train is also a Very Good Train. Check out his Freddie Gibbs collaborations - 2014’s Pinata and 2019’s Bandada for a tiny speck of a start with his discography.
Thing I like best about DOOM: the zillion alter egos, the mask and the unadulterated creativity. My favorite artists are those that have longevity, never miss an opportunity to expand their creativity, and constantly reinvent themselves. Some others I really love that have followed that blueprint: Joni Mitchell, Prince, David Bowie5, Neil Young and Lady Gaga.
My favorite album: an impossible task but my favorite alter ego is Viktor Vaughn so if you listen to one, check out 2003’s Vaudeville Villain. I doubt anyone will suggest it as a place to start but that’s because they’re not obsessed with going against the grain. For an even crazier choice, check out his second-most-streamed-but-sort-of-hated-on-by-purists-for-dumb-reasons album collab with Danger Mouse, 2005’s THE MOUSE & THE MASK. And if you’re really feeling sick in the head, here’s a Spotify playlist I made of all of his feature appearances throughout the years (yanked from the extended discography in Fernando’s book).
Rest in Power to Daniel Dumile aka Zev Love X, aka MF DOOM, aka Metal Fingers, aka Metal Face, aka Viktor Vaughn, aka the Super Villain, aka King Geedorah.
[Apple Music page here, YT here.]
Let’s Try That Again But This Time Good
David Lynch is in my top five favorite creators of all time. I feel ultra sad that he’s gone; he gave all of us so much. In honor of something he would absolutely hate, here are my favorite Lynch facts related to music:
1: He collaborated with Lykke Ki, Flying Lotus, Sparklehorse & Danger Mouse and Karen O and many, many more. Remember: he is a painter/sculptor by training that turned himself into a director, producer, developer, actor and writer.
2: Angelo Badalementi, his forever collaborator who most famously worked with him on the Twin Peaks6 and Blue Velvet themes, also worked on the score for Twin Peaks: The Return7, which does in fact include elements of the original score.
3: Poland was one of his favorite places. He had an obsession with dark, dingy seductively gross environments (think April Ludgate-level obsession) and a lot of Poland’s cold, dark vibe fit his film aesthetic perfectly. His 2015 EP with Marek Zebrowski, Polish Night Music, fits like a glove. It’s hardly listenable but since when does that matter?
I promise promise promise that you will laugh out loud over and over again at his combo bio / autobio Room to Dream. The book is fantastic - biographer Kristine McKenna writes a real bio-style chapter about his life and then he responds to each chapter at length in his hilarious style. A fun example - I definitely laughed out loud at this note about the infamous Red Room from Twin Peaks. “Are you kidding me?” HA.
I hope you, too, will have a good day today.8 Rest easy, David Lynch.
Support local,
Drob
I live in Los Angeles. My family and I are heartbroken but safe. Please donate to the Red Cross or Pasadena Community Foundation if you can.
I can’t believe the first-ever footnote I’m going to use here includes a Pitchfork link but such is the rent-free living that said publication keeps in this here dome. This album breakdown will give you everything you need to know about X100PRE.
Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rican slang is widely known to be confusing to many Spanish speakers, including this one. He also combines words, eliminates letters and mumbles like he’s the fourth member of Migos (Caribbean Migo?) But also you simply cannot learn Spanish by exclusively listening to Bad Bunny, which is spoken from very pathetic experience. That said, the race for Who Is Most Responsible For Me Being Comfortable Speaking Spanish is a three-way tie between Bad Bunny, Universo’s Premier League announcers, and Duolingo.
LO SIENTO I CAN’T HELP MYSELF WITH THESE WORDPLAY CROSSOVER THINGYS
iTunes, which litchrally everyone used at the time, had a service I believe was called MyTunes, that allowed anyone on the same hardwired network to share their entire library, which meant we all instantly had access to something like an additional 300K songs. For free. I’m too lazy to search Reddit for why this was even legal, which I assume it wasn’t. Thank the lord for being a criminal because … DOOM.
This is a footnote about footnotes. It’s also about David Foster Wallace not David Bowie but that felt pretty close so here we are. And now for my most insufferable anecdote, I hope you’re sitting down: I read Infinite Jest (a Very Good Book) twice. Once in Kindle form because someone told me half the book is in the footnotes and it’s easier to digitally toggle than it is to physically and constantly flip back and forth between the main text and the footnotes section … and once cause I actually wanted to try it that way too. Kindle wins by a country mile.
The Best Song Of All Time.
The Return was and is really, really intense. I love some elements of it but if you’re squeamish at all, I recommend sticking to seasons 1 and 2. The Return is significantly more intense than the original, which Lynch infamously quit working on when ABC producers forced Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost to reveal Laura Palmer’s killer before the end of the second season. He threw a classic Artists’ Fit and as a result, it took 25 years for The Return to be made.
Worth noting this video was not directed by Lynch and I find that ultra-weird.
The way I ran to screenshot that albums list…