We Recommend: Your Friday Freebies

Each Friday, our contributors send in a bunch of (legally) free stuff they’ve come across this week, to help you waste your weekend. You’re welcome.

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Diss Track: Bangz Goes At Kendrick Lamar

Recommended by: Luke Ryan

Oh Bangs. You just try so hard.

While technically I’m going to call this one of Melbourne rapper Bangs’ better outings, his attempt to get involved in the brewing furore over Kendrick Lamar’s already infamous, era-defining verse in Big Sean’s ‘Control’ is, let’s say, fantastically adorable. Notable lines: “Hip-hop is dead”; and “I fuck hoes / I take ’em to da movies”.

I guess Ur Boy Bangz is all grown up.

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Mixtape: Soulja Boy’s Life After Fame

Recommended by: Rob Moran (‘Heartburn Hotel: Eating Like Elvis In His Final Days‘)

You know who was sadly forgotten in that whole Kendrick Lamar name-drop explosion? Soulja Boy. Poor lil’ Soulja Boy; he’s always forgotten. The guy just released a new mixtape and called it Life After Fame, for chrissakes. Maybe he doesn’t belong in that conversation, but nobody makes weirdo codeine-fuelled singalongs like Soulja Boy, and his latest mixtape (probably his 80th this month already) is no different. You’ll laugh for a while, then you’ll find yourself regularly yelling awesome things like “Lotsa bandz, lotsa bandz, I got lotsa bandz!” and “Versace Versace Versace Versace Versace!” and “Ferrogamo on my belt, on my belt, on my belt!” at random points throughout your day, it’s the best.

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Doodles: Google Doodles!

Recommended by: Renee Crea

I can’t stay mad at you, Google! Making people forget you’re a big, bad corporation that’s spying on them by having a relentless schedule of cute-as-hell “Doodles” is what I call public relations masterminding.

I am not ashamed to say I love Google’s Doodles; they invariably brighten my day, and the ones with games are my favourite. (Yes, I do own a PS3. What of it?) All those sweet little time-suckers are archived here. (Just type “interactive” in to search.)

There’s a particularly adorable one that Google launched this week to celebrate the Chinese festival, Qixi. I have only got to level two so far (Yes, I do own a PS3. What of it?)

Click the image to play!

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Youtube: Truly Amazing Teacher

Recommended by: Matt Akersten (editor of our sister site, SameSame.com.au)

The lucky students of this wacky science teacher will remember him forever. “He changed everything for me,” says one of them. “Greatest teacher I’ve ever had, hands down.”

But what happens when the amazing Mr. Wright gets home from school? You cry is what happens.

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Radiohead: The 8-Bit Bends

Recommended by: Mel Campbell (‘Melbourne International Film Festival Round-Up‘)

The Bends is my favourite Radiohead album. Now I can imagine playing it as a Nintendo game!

Some YouTube user called Random Guy You Don’t Know About has painstakingly recreated the entire album by hand in 8-bit – apparently it took about two weeks to do. I said I would just listen to the first track and found myself listening to the entire album. It really highlights what great work Radiohead produced.

There’s a download link too, for all your mid-’90s robot angst needs.

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Documentary: The Iraq War (1/3)

Recommended by: Matt Banham (‘Seven Things We Are Forcing You To Remember About Hotdogs‘)

Part one of a three-part documentary series on the Iraq war made by the BBC is up now on iView — but if you like, you can watch all three parts in below. You get to see some pretty big players interviewed about what they were thinking at the time — or what they say they were thinking at the time.

The documentary lets you decide for yourself what they did or didn’t know about the weapons of mass destruction, and gives a great insight into America’s stubborn foreign policy.

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Matt Banham: Jokes

Recommended by: Steph Harmon (‘The West Wing Cast Just Caught Up Over Twitter, And It Was The Best‘)

Following on from Matt Banham’s recommendation of a hard-hitting documentary about war, I would like to recommend Matt Banham’s own hard-hitting documentary about Tom Cruise.

Matt Banham’s Jokes are currently in their second season. There are a bunch more here.

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Alternatives: Lorde

Recommended by: Kyran Wheatley (‘Five Ways The World Could Actually End‘)

This week, Lorde become the first female artist to hit number one on the Billboard Alternative Charts in 17 years… SEVENTEEN YEARS! Finally we can add another name to Tori Amos, Sinead O’Connor, Kate Bush, Alanis Morissette, Suzanne Vega and Tracy Bonham (I don’t know who that is either). So to celebrate this moment in Alternative music here are to Alternative versions of Lorde’s hit, Tennis Court. (skip ahead to 40 seconds in both if you’re too busy to soak it all up)

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Writing: A Lot Of Things By Paul Graham

Recommended by: Amelia Schmidt (‘Melbourne International Film Festival Round-Up‘)

I’m going to continue sending in the nerdiest stuff ever by recommending this Essay about Essays by Paul Graham, who developed the Yahoo Store and basically invented Web Applications and spam filtering. It’s largely about the structure of essays, and unlearning the myths about essay-writing you learn in school and university; it’s also about why our brain likes essays, with a bit of history about the form itself and its original purposes. It’s thoughtful, clever and enlightening, especially to those who maybe didn’t do an arts degree.

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Tunes: R Kelly’s Remix of Phoenix’s ‘Trying To Be Cool’ AND ‘1901’/’Ignition’ Mashup

Recommended by: Andy “Candy” Huang (Junkee intern 2.0!)

You’d think a mash-up of early naughties hip hop/RnB with French wave indie rock would create a toxic anachronistic musical shift that would discombobulate the laws of time, space and all that we know is ‘hip’ and ‘cool’, right?

But no, you get this baby:

Since their unforgettable hookup at Coachella, R Kelly has stayed true to his promise (“we gotta do something else!” he said as he walked off the stage): remixing the tre cool chill/dance-y-ish ‘Trying to Be Cool,’ a track from Phoenix’s latest release Bankrupt! (For a review of reviews of this album, see ‘From All Angles‘ by Hannah Wolff, aka Junkee intern 1.0)

Yep, that’s my music-to-groove-to-on-the-weekend all set.

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