I was watching one of the classic game commercials streams, and the one that was basically a music video with Shadow the Hedgehog came up. I was kinda enjoying the song that was playing, but Vinny skipped that one after a bit because it was like 5 minutes long. I was a little disappointed so just out of curiosity, I paused the video and went to find the full song. I was a little surprised to find out that the song that the band used for the commercial was just a version of a song they already had, but they changed the line at the beginning that said “Tripod, baby” to “Shadow the Hedgehog, baby.” Out of even more curiosity, I looked up the group (m-flo) on Spotify to see what other stuff they had. I tapped on one of their albums called EXPO EXPO because I thought the cover art was cool. I probably listen to that album back to back at least twice a month on average. It’s so goddamn good. The production is fucking insane and on top of the great voices and flows, it can be really entertaining to see how certain tropes of rap albums have translated over to Japan (like old grainy movie clip samples at the beginnings of songs, but they’re old Japanese samples) As a kid I listened to a lot of video game and electronic music, and as I got older I transitioned more into rap and r&b, and this album is an amazing blend of those two worlds. There’s not really any reason I’m posting this in particular, but I just wanna share the story because thought it was kinda fun (and to tell you to go listen to the album) also thanks Vinny for skipping the Shadow the Hedgehog commercial because even though I was disappointed in the moment I wouldn’t have found the album if not for that