This article is part of The Twelve Days of Doofmas, a daily series of articles on our favorite Christmas films that was released as Bonus Content leading up to Christmas Eve 2019.
Once again it’s time to hang up the Christmas lights and break out the eggnog. This time of year brings us many things, an abundance of feel-good movies filled with messages and morals that personify the season, great food and friends and family who are only concerned with being together, and a slew of sammie music that has slowly grown more and more hollow over the course of the years. Now, in all honesty, the music is fine, it’s functional and reinforces all the values Christmas and the Holidays uphold. But, since the olden days there hasn’t been any real innovation, in the case of Holiday movies at least they have new ones coming out constantly that TRY and do something different or unexpected. Holiday music has just grown stale, I mean the sheer amount of times Jingle Bells and White Christmas has been covered and remastered is absolutely bonkers! So with all this sameness, it’s hard to find the spice the Holidays use to have, in fact, there are only a few alternative Christmas albums that are not only good but fit the spirit of the season.
To start off we’ve gotta dive back into the ’90s! The world wide web was in full swing, we found out O.J had some pretty big hands, and Bill Clinton did NOT have sexual relations with that woman. As all these things were happening, the titan records company, responsible for greats such as Snoop Dogg and Dr.Dre, came out with a little known record in early December 1996. as a form of charity to the community they represent. ‘Christmas on Death Row’ a, well, Christmas Album made by Death Row records, gave us something entirely new and fresh to listen to during the Holiday season. Sales wise it didn’t do too bad, selling roughly two hundred thousand copies in the first month and racking in a solid amount of replays around the season. The Album itself features the legendary Snoop Dogg, the incredible Dogg Pound, and a host of other rappers and performers that were poppin’ at the time. The thing that initially drew me to this Album was my Father, he absolutely LOVES this Album, as soon as it gets remotely cold outside like clockwork he drops me a link and tells me to listen to the first song ‘Santa Claus Goes Straight To the Ghetto’; in the years since I’ve fallen in love with it. The magic of Christmas on Death Row is that it’s the perfect amalgamation of classic Christmas tunes, the chill boom-bap of 90’s rap, and a little bit of edge Death Row Records is known for. The record holds the right amount of familiarity while still feeling fresh, reenvisioned covers of the classics like ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Silver Bells’ sprinkled in-between party jams like ‘Party 4 Da Homies’ and bumpin’ tunes like ‘Christmas In The Ghetto’. Above that there’s a little bit for everyone here, you and your pops could vibe out to Snoop Dogg and O.F.T.B laying down solid bars, decorate your house with the family on any of the three Danny Brown songs, and even have a wholesome laugh on their quite sincere cover of ‘Frosty The Snowman’. If there were to be any drawbacks to this album, it would be that you probably couldn’t, or shouldn’t, play the Album in its entirety during family dinner. Maybe your family is different, but mine is quite traditional, so the occasional cuss word and explicit content won’t really fly when kids are around.
The next Album I would honestly barely even consider a Christmas Album, beyond its title and some inspirations it’s simply a well put together and enjoyable album by the late and great XXXTENTACION. ‘A GHETTO CHRISTMAS CAROL’ was released in late 2017 out of nowhere and quickly became one of the best EP’s to come out of the underground/Soundcloud rap genre, garnering an inconceivable amount of listens and constant replayability. Going into this Album you have to keep a few things in mind, for one the album is ‘inspired’ by ‘Christmas on Death Row’ and other rap albums of the sort but bears no real resemblance to the 90’s style. Along with that there is not a single cover of a classic carol or even a feelgood festive song on the album, and it’s filled with cussing, so make sure to use headphones. So the reason why I’m choosing to talk about a very unChristmas Christmas album like this is that even though it is so different and out there it still perfectly captures little explored aspects of Christmas. There are fun and joyous freestyles and hard-hitting beats mixed in with slow methodical songs that are somber and self-reflective. The songs that did it for me on this Album are ‘hate will never win’ and ‘UP LIKE INSOMNIAC’ both for very different reasons. On ‘UP LIKE INSOMNIAC’ the beat is very interesting, it’s mechanical yet simplistic in a way that works perfectly with the underground rap genre. The vocals laid down by X are freestyled and filled with fun oddities he’s known for. ‘hate will never win’ on the other hand is a slow atmospheric song speaking on the devastating incident that happened in Charlottesville earlier that year. The song is vulnerable, anti governmental, yet very hopeful and preaches a basic yet necessary message. The rest of the album falls somewhere in the middle, some being all fun and others being all too real, every song working together to create an underground rap version of Christmas. In a lot of ways, I feel the whole point of a Christmas album is not to be ‘Christmassy’ but to have songs of joy and somberness and humility, to bring those emotions out of you during this very special time of year. That’s why I know as soon as it’s remotely cold outside I’ll crank up “Christmas on Death Row’ and ‘A GHETTO CHRISTMAS CAROL’, find a nice nook to jam in, maybe even pour me a glass of nog, and I know one day I’ll tell my children to do the same.
-Jarvis
