13 THOUGHTZ ON THE BARTER 6

(Ed. note: had to censor the nudity for our yunger readers, so I gave him some cool cargos [or bool bargos lol].  I'll let u decide if they're pants or shorts!)

Listicle time, bitch!  These shitz is the waviest, no Dave Mariner!  For those who ain't know, listicles are a way to present ur thoughtz if you don't really feel like ordering ya shit in poisonous paragraphical structures, ya feel?  That shit went outta style when the Innanet sonned ya boy Gutenberg, that simple ass Bible printin herb.  Fuck Johan Gutenberg, we still got beef.  He knows what he did.  Anyway, ya just write shit out like it's a list even tho u ain't ranking anything, it's just a lazy way of imposing some arbitrary order to ya shitz.  Woop woop, hollaback!  Yo fa real, these listiclez is like the hors d'oeuvres of the bloggin game, so sink ya gold-plated ivory toothpicks into my mental goat cheese crostinis and expozitory jalapeno poppers!

1.  Like Based God's I'm Gay, the Carter 6 title trolling was funny until it went from soundbite to "Oh shit he actually doin this, SMDH."  Retitling it The Barter 6 gets points for stupidity, but not enough to make up for the fact that he titled his album The Barter 6.

2.  If Young Thug sets the standard for an inverse relationship between banality of name and banality of music, Young Dolph is the other extreme  Such a bizarre name, such a boring, boring rapper. 

3.  "Constantly Hating" and "Dream" have the airiness I loved in "Shine," the early noughties Cash Money smash that never was.  Makes me feel like I'm floating on a flyboard in the nude with a fistful of Xanax and a couple sea-nymphs champing at my bits.

4.  Birdman looks and sounds like someone left a loaded Po' Boy in the back of his S-Class, and the oysters just got extra pungent.  Say what you will about the most dubious man in rap, but he's the creepy manager-svengali the game needs.  The star he had tattooed on his head was one of the great Cool Dad midlife crises to play out in the public eye, the Rap Game "getting frosted tips" or "experimenting with bootcut jeans."  From a cell covered in Aaron Carter magazine clippings, Lou Pearlman nods his extraglandular turkey neck in approval.

5.  Some of the beats on Barter and the last Rich Gang tape are so smooth and lush.  I hope London on da Track is ushering in a '70s-style smooooth era of rap.  Think Steely Dan, Frankie Beverley, and the Brothers Doobie and Isley.  This the kinda shit that make you wanna dress in white linens and blow lines on a yacht wit hoes wit da Farrah Fawcett hair.

6.  I fux with albums that are under 14 songs.  Also like that there are no "name" guests besides T.I. and Boosie.

7.  Young Thug could have had a career as a voice actor or whatever it is Michael Winslow does.

8.  It will take a few years longer before Young Thug is widely acknowledged as a great rapper because 64.6% of what he says is indecipherable without conscious effort.  I though this was a stupid criticism until someone whose opinion I respect told me, "I don't like him because I can't understand what he's saying."  A major part of being a Young Thug fan is that his music needs defending.  It's a rough pearl before the dummies who can't hear the brilliance, and within that is an implicit smug superiority.  He is the posterboy of post-lyricism, a school of thought that get off on knowing better than the people who stake their reputation on knowing better.

And that's the rub.   Although the slurred articulation is integral to his delivery and style, I'll bet you there's only a handful of people walkin this planet who can recite a Young Thug song verse for verse.  He increasingly sounds like he just got some heavy oral surgery done.  There's a fine line between acknowledging that lyrics aren't everything and acting like they don't matter at all.   True, Young Thug might be one of the more inventive writers out.  But how much does that matter if most people can't hear it?

9.  1017 Thug is still the best and most varied thing Young Thug has done.  This is p good tho.

10.  Barter 6 is at least as good as To Pimp A Butterfly, if only because there is nothing as bad as "For Free?" or the open-mic-night interview with 2Pac.  "OD" mentions Mike Brown, so Young Thug is officially #conscious, OK?  Rap remains the Buzzfeed of the ghetto!

11.  Someone get this man an echoplex.

12.  My mans makes Migos Flow look like child's play on "Just Might Be."  There's a lot of rappin-ass rappin' on the whole album.

13.  Can Young Thug sustain a career on "weirdness?"  Most talk centers on Young Thug as misunderstood genius or rap Antichrist.  But what happens when his schtick gets stale and familiar, as it inevitably will?   Maybe he'll keep barreling into the unknown.  Maybe he'll stagnate and everyone will move on, as with the Gucci Craze of '09.  The forced zaniness of Wayne ca. 2010 is a chilling potential outcome, altho Thugga hasn't shown a tendency for making egregious aesthetic choices so far.

I ain't said this in a while, so here it goes: CHUUUUUCH!