Listen To This While Pining: Busdriver's "I Don't Dream"

Patrick Keeler

Despair not, Bus, it's almost January

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Los Angeles MC Busdriver is usually a one-man dictionary-wrecking crew, all piss and vinegar and nerdish vengeance aimed at just about everything: haters, wack MCs, racial tension in America, you, himself.

But it's the holidays (still? yes, still), and the holidays can get you down, especially when your special someone has gone off to visit grandparents in Green Bay or something. Sometimes the stress drives us to do uncharacteristic things: gorge on figgy pudding, get sloshed on organic nog beverages, dress up cats in Star Wars costumes. In Busdriver's case, it drove him to write a wistfully glitchy slow jam called "I Don't Dream," in which he trades his nasal, syllable-cramming vitriol for a candid take on that TV on the Radio-style soul croon. I've listened to it a few times (the zSHARE page plays the song on repeat) and I already miss my sweetheart like the dickens. And she's just at the dentist.

Anyway, check it on out here, whether or not you have any holiday longing to channel through your speakers. If it whets your appetite, you can download Computer Cooties, a star-studded mixtape he released in October, at his website. And then you can catch him on tour in February with Chicago neo-rap crew Darktime Sunshine, probably. And cop his next album, as well as the debut from Physical Forms, his punk band with the dude from The Mae Shi, both of which are slated for release in 2011. See? We'll get through the holidays. Brighter days are ahead.