Anders Holm

"Another recent album that I love, and will probably always love. Again, this dude just has a sound that I’m like, ‘This guy knows exactly who he is.’ For 12 or 13 tracks or however many it is, he has a consistency where you recognize that it’s definitely a Twin Shadow song. A lot of albums could have 10 songs where they all kind of sound the same. But these all sound different. They all sound to me like fucking radio hits but he hasn’t really popped yet. But I recommend his album Forget to anybody."

"I’ll just drop The Weeknd House of Balloons, which I call black Portishead. [Laughs] It’s like, ‘Who is this dude? This can’t be a real person, right?’ That echo just seems like it was recorded—or wasn’t recorded—in some black hole and it was a sound just coming out and it just sucked you in. I could listen to that album 200 million times over and it still sounds fresh every time. “To me, the lyrical content—I don’t know how much it means to him, as far as personally. But, I’m a guy that listens to David Bowie who was like, “Yo, your mom doesn’t know if you are a boy or a girl.” Just saying stuff—shocking, but I don’t know if it’s for shock’s sake. I’m sure he is not trying to do that. But it doesn’t sway me from the music. ‘Yeah, come over, I’ll get you real high and I’ll fuck you and maybe never call you again.’ To me, he is telling a story and we have all seen the movie Seven. That doesn’t mean he beat him and barbed-wired his ankle to a chair and his whole stomach explodes. But it’s fascinating"

"R.Kelly’s Chocolate Factory. I went back and forth with some of these albums because I really like Double Up for whatever reason, it was just something I spun for three months straight. I could just turn it up in the car and drive around. It was just a big album. You know, kind of ridiculous, kind of big in scope. But Chocolate Factory, you just throw that album on, and from beginning to end it’s pretty sick. Do you want to listen to ‘Step In The Name Of Love’ and crank that up? Or, he’ll break it down with ‘Dream Girl.’ That’s a song you can put on a mix for your girl or whatever and she’ll come over and you’ll have a pretty good afternoon. ‘Ignition” is on there, the remix. I played “Dream Girl” at my wedding during cocktail hour."

"I stole that from my brother. I was like, ‘What is this?’ I was in seventh grade or eighth grade and it was another album where it kind of takes you somewhere. You are like, This isn’t human. This was just dropped by a spaceship and it’s not a person singing this song or creating these beats. This is just a space alien.’ Portishead’s production is just insane beats you would expect to be on a KRS-One album. But then there's this little white girl with an angel voice singing over it. It was a cool juxtaposition. I like ‘It’s A Fire.’ That’s a chill song with kind of a military drum thing going on, like a drummer boy."

"This album was like, ‘Yup, he knows exactly what he’s doing.’ Every album that he does is going to be dope. ‘Good Life’ is a classic to me forever. You put that CD on in any situation and things will start jumping. People will sweat that College Dropout, it was cool. I got a lot of songs on there that I like. Late Registration was real hot. He let people know how good he was with production on that album. He had songs that kind of trailed off and he could do his thing and there was no one rapping. On My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, to me, you can dial it back. People sweated him for doing his thing and sure, do your thing. But I don’t know, three of those songs I could of have gone with ending 60 seconds earlier."

"I will give Last Cab In California honorable mention, but I will stick with Deee-Lite, World Clique. Again, I am all about production. I just like listening to beats and cool sounds. They didn’t sound like anything at the time. I know everybody knows ‘Groove is in the Heart’ but that’s like the fifth best song on that album. They even had the look. They were funky, ‘70s, but hip-hop at the same time. One dude was Asian with goggles on and she had this soul voice and they had heavy piano. I always liked it. That’s just another album that’s upbeat. Maybe not the most masculine one, but whatever, man. I don’t care. I just picture ‘90s black chicks in biker shorts on the grind with Eric B. breaking down to those songs."

"Beastie Boys and David Bowie are two of my favorite artists. The David Bowie album I am going to choose is Scary Monsters, which is kind of different. He always reinvented himself and he was doing something in the 1980s with Scary Monsters that nobody was doing. You can kind of hear stuff on that album that a lot of groups are doing now like, 'Aw, yeah I know where you got that from. That’s off that album.' It’s not one of his most popular albums to everybody, but I think it’s my favorite. There was a song on that, ‘Teenage Wildlife,’ and if you don’t like that, we don’t have to associate with each other. If you don’t get that song—it's cool man, I’ll see you around. “‘Teenage Wildlife’ is just epic. It’s like five or six minutes long and it kind of crescendos and builds into this insane vocal of Bowie wailing. I think I would pay $5,000 dollars to see footage of that recording session. I don’t know how he hits the notes that he’s doing and how long he does it but he’s just belting it out. You know he was feeling something when he was doing it. It’s just a cool song."

"To me, they had the one of the best senses of humor in hip-hop. At the time, people were trying to be serious and shit. They were like, ‘Hey, man it’s about rapping and getting girls.’ Their album had like 20 tracks on it. It’s a sick album. Some of the samples on there are classics to me. That’s another album where I can just always have that on my iPhone and be playing that in my car. If I am going to go for a run, I’ll throw that on. I just think those dudes were hilarious and they did it right and they weren’t cynical. They weren’t about dropping knowledge during that time of conscious rap. They were these smart dudes that were like, ‘Just because we are smart doesn’t mean we have to preach."