Hoodie Allen: Happy people levels ahead like a cheat code

Turns out those week-long, in-your-face viral ads plastered all over the Hype Machine work. And with an album cover emitting such staged school spirit, it was hard to ignore Hoodie Allen's plea for my clicks.

Long Island's Hoodie Allen is a white rapper rhyming somewhere between Asher Roth's fetishized college days and Kid Cudi's fetishized sampling. Allen's eclectic sampling puts him more in Cudi's camp, where Allen takes nods from everyone from Flight Facilities to the Black Keys to Beach House.

"Words of Wisdom" uses the vocal hook from Two Door Cinema Club's "Undercover Martyn" and throws a big, live hip-hop beat behind it. The album, Pep Rally, which is available as a free download, is a bit too light and dumb for even my tastes, but its wide range of samples and production is impressive, making it worth at least one listen if you're a fan of those sampled.

New home

Welcome to the new Make-Out Music. With a new layout. A new host. And most exciting, new posts. Make-Out Music was previously hosted by tumblr, but after a year I found it to be too cumbersome: be it the comments, the posting or just my obsessive compulsive need to design everything myself. Put simply, it wasn't for me. So here we are at Blogger, the de-facto host for most bloggers, and for good reason. It's easy and quick and that means I'll be posting several times a week as long as Google doesn't erase me from existence.

Some things may eventually be carried over from the old location, but for now let's look to the future together. If tumblr was the experiment, then this is the research paper. If you've had enough metaphors, then rest assured that was the last one. New interviews, videos, a possible podcast and, of course, great pop music shall be quickly filling up these pages so please keep in touch (via RSS/Twitter/commenting/telepathy/etc.). Also, if you have any music of your own you'd like featured, please send it in to ryan.makeoutmusic@gmail.com. All submissions are welcome.