Thursday, July 30, 2015

LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX, BABY: THE PORNOGRAPHY OF J. COLE, THE SEXUAL LIBERATION OF YOUNG THUG!!!


On "Planes," J. COLE compares sex oral sex with him to having a foot stuck in your vagina mouth.  It is the most disturbing lyric of the year, not least because J. Cole is supposed to be a different kind of rapper.  Why does this filthmonger get a pass?  Because he's marketed as a conscious rapper?  His song about losing his virginity is supposed to be charming and self-effacing, but it's just vile and pottymouthed.  This guy makes AKINYELE sound like a shrinking violet.  He wants to be NAS, but Nas only rapped about analingus.  J. Cole is the epitome of a "nice guy" who is actually a bag of garbage.

The depth of YOUNG THUG'S lyric about going to prison and fucking your father gives bold definition to the gratuitous pornography of Cole's lyrics.  In less than a bar, Young Thug makes a provocative open-ended statement on the penal system and sexual abuse.  Insulting one's opponent is a key trope in rap, but with a wry acknowledgement of his public image's controversial gender politics, Young Thug uses it as an opportunity to subvert rap's explicit standard of heteronormativity, challenge gender norms, and silence homophobia.  Kudos to Young Thug.  He should rename himself Young Social Justice Warrior.  J. Cole should talk to a priest or a sex therapist idk fuck him.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

SPANISH GUITAR FILES: DEATH EDITION



THE LAST EMPEROR & POETIC - "ONE LIFE"
95% of the time, Spanish Guitars are used to evoke a sense of pathos in the listener.  On "One Life," ex-GRAVEDIGGA Poetic confronts the ultimate horror: slow, painful death.  Sign of the times: poptimism has established such hegemony in critical discourse that traditional underground rap is hopelessly out of style.  Catch me crying into my notepad at the Scribble Jam revival.



A-WAX, WOODIE, B-DAWG - "A REBEL'S PRAYER"
This one's for the boyz choppin meth in the trailer park.  Jersey game on flex, Woodie spittin that realness for all you sheeple. His stilted delivery sounds like a parody of a white guy rapping or EMINEM in Dr. Demento novelty-song mode, yet his white-trash pain was real.  Woodie offed himself in 2007. Rap Game William Cooper.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

ICONZ, CROOKED LETTAZ, CHEETO DUST, THE '02 VOKAL COLLECTION



I.  INTRODUCTORY ANECDOTE
My first time grinding on a shorty came back in the days when Mommy bought you a Sean John tracksuit from Macy's junior department and dropped you off at the dance in her Toyota Previa.  You'd complete the ensemble with some Dada Spreewell spinners and a throwback fitted, or maybe you'd just let ya frosted tips swang like, "Salute me or shoot me, I just don't give a fuck."  There I was, hormones fully engorged on a glandular level, brushin my Cheeto 'gainst my lady while the DJ laced up a bowdlerized version of "Get Fucked Up."   ICONZ was the crew, a missing link between the jiggy era and the ascendance of the South.  I was just tryin to keep my orange dust off her Forever 21s.

II. EXPOSITION
Who knew they had a second album?  I rode an algorithm from "Crooked Lettaz" to CROOKED LETTAZ.  My Dirty Sanchez started twitchin when I heard this shit cause them delicately plucked strings had me thinkin it was Spanish Guitars time.  Allmusic tellin me it's a koto, which seems sensual enough.  This is how Japanese thugs express their sensitivity.

III. ANALYSIS
a). Hard to believe there was a five or six year period where N.O.R.E. was a borderline popstar.  America was a land of opportunity.

b). DAVID BANNER'S whole career has been an identity crisis.  Blame the industry?  He came out in a confused era.  The South was starting to define itself on a national scale.  Spectators regarded the whole region as a monolithic slab.  "Like A Pimp" was a hit, but it was only a partial representation of Banner's persona.   Great as it was, it played into preconceived notions.  Few had developed a sophisticated vocabulary vis-a-vis Southern rap, so Banner got lost in the shuffle with the dregs of the Class of '03, a victim of timing as much as geography.  Anyone coming from the South was viewed as the Other.  Outside of DUNGEON FAMILY, there was no context for a rapper capable of introspection and club bangers; even then, DRE had to put on a wig and some silver pants before anyone saw him in the mold of P-Funk or Coltrane.  You can't flex ya nuance when mothafuckas wanna paint you with a roller.

Then KANYE came out with his Benz & backpack routine, and JAY-Z dropped his belated headwrap verses big-uppin KWELI and COMMON.  Banner tried ridin that wave like, "Hey, that's me!  I'm like that too, guys!"  But it was too late, his boogie board foundered, and he's spent the rest of his career on a road trip tryin to figure out who the fuck he is.  Let me know if he ever finds out.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

SAXOPHONES STAY GETTING THE MICHAEL KEATON TREATMENT



It's an exciting time to be a saxophone.  Plucked from near death by "GDFR," the instrument you thought Bill Clinton killed in '92 with his Brötzmann-inspired antics now enjoys a second wind with a star turn on MOZZY'S "Love Slidn."

Man is it smooth.  This the kinda shit that make you wanna put on an '80s blazer and shades, grab your Selmer, and head out to a foggy dock for some sultry wailing.  Word to Bleeding Gums, holla at Joshua Redman fighting Yo Yo Ma on Arthur.  If the saxophone can be rehabilitated, there might still be life for the hopeless case of the clarinet.

Friday, July 24, 2015

YOUNG THUG WEEK CONTINUES, AND I GUESS FUTURE RELEASED AN ALBUM TOO?


Finally listened to Dirty Sprite 2.  It's aight, but where did this "Honest sucked" memo come from?  Honest was FUTURE'S Tusk.   Not everything was great, but it was the album where he let those cellulars breathe.

Meanwhile, the appreciation for Barter 6 grows.  One thing I can respect about YOUNG THUG and Future is that neither of 'em has ever made an AOR album for the Rolling Stone ofays.  The very title of Barter 6 pokes fun at the notion of preordained classics, word to WAYNE'S pompous Carter imprimatur.  It's a slapdash mix of great songs, which is what a great pop album should be.  No grandiose statement-making, that shit is for the CHRIS GAINESES of the world, that's word to KEITH URBAN.  And hey, rap nerds hate on Carter 3, but that was the last album you'd hear blastin outta one whip in every six, that's word to Saturn.  People actually listenin to Barter 6, and we some grassroots populist soapboxers over here.  That's word to William Jennings Bryan.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

THE EDUCATION OF YAK GOTTI


 Who are you, Yak Gotti?  What are your interests?  Where are you from, where are you heading?  What's your five year plan?

YAK GOTTI is a great rap name because it twists genre convention.  An absurdist answer to the banality of the YOUNG THUG handle, it suggests an erotic fan-fic scenario in which YO GOTTI impregnates YAK BALLZ.  Though out of left field, the yak appellation makes sense in light of his debt to Thugger's yodel.  The Ricola man probably owned yaks for business and pleasure, and he is the greatest yodeler of his generation.

Yak Gotti has one of the better debut verses in recent memory with his turn on Barter 6's "Dream."  Introducing himself to with the unctuousness of a used-car salesman ("How ya doin?  I'm Yak Gotti"), the smirk quickly turns shit-eating: "I got bodies on bodies."  Yak is Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.  Beneath the gladhanding calm is a timebomb who wants to put an icepick through your eye socket.  He raps like he has a dagger grit between his teeth.  The tension between public faces makes it memorably disturbing.

Unfortunately, none of Yak's other material lives up to the high standard established on "Dream."  He shows glimmers of light occasionally, but it seems he was largely a serial trapist before Thugger turned him into the belle of the ball.  On the bright side, post-Thug bleating has officially taken root.  One of Yak's more recent verses is on an overloaded JOSE GUAPO joint, on which Yak yodels to the spirit of Young Thug for dear delivery from a clowncar of B-list bando bit players.  "Alley Oop" has a spark;  "Dripset" is a cavalcade of whatevers.

Is Yak Gotti NAS on "Live At The BBQ" or the next RBX?  More importantly, is he from Miami or Atlanta?  He got a 305 tat on his chest in the "Stick And Move" video, but the false alarm of JAY 305 taught me to tread lightly.

Monday, July 20, 2015

SPANISH GUITAR FILES: IS YOUNG THUG THE NEW DYLAN? IS DAVID BLUE THE OLD YOUNG THUG?



Fuck all those cats, yeah we doggin in here / That Bentley got brown wood like a Spalding in here

YOUNG THUG rockin a Spanish guitar, but it's through the grotesque Thugger lens, so it's one of those weird Picasso guitars where you like, "You can't be serious, Pablo Picasso, no one can play that fuckin thing. That's ridiculous."  It's introspective, but not enough to fall within the Sensitive Thug ouevre.  I appreciate the way he employs the technique of rhetorical momentum via repetition; i.e., rhyming the second to last word of the couplets while repeating the last word.  BIRDMAN, rap's Brian Epstein, nods in approval as he squirts the bounty of a hands-free orgasm all over his breezy sweatpants.

The irony of Young Thug as symbol of everything wrong with hip-hop is that he is one of the last evolving practitioners of rapping for the sake of rapping.  He is rapping about rapping even when he's not explicitly rapping about rapping.  Young Thug songs are very seldom about anything at all except language itself: exploring new possibilities and defining limitations; stretching that shit like some A.C. saltwater taffy; dislocating a word to the point of absurdity, meaninglessness, and/or unexpected meaning.  Many of his songs are based on cliched premises; the mode of expression is the true subject.  Just cause he's playful doesn't mean his work ain't serious.

Sunday, July 19, 2015

AGING DRO



Maybe one day YOUNG DRO will do ACTION BRONSON and RIFF RAFF like Willie Dixon did Led Zep.  He is the father of their polysyllabic gymnastics, their brazen shoehorn rhyming.  Until that day comes, DRO is makin one last push for redemption like Shane Falco in The Replacements.

"We In Da City" is no "Man In The Trunk" or "Who Am I" or even "FDB."  Early on, the only giveaway that it's Dro rather than a piece of the faceless trap horde is the Yucatan/"you da man" punning.  He's adapting to trends, trimming his customary verbosity to the laconic breathing exercises of an O.T. GENASIS, until, suddenly, he erupts into the kind of fast rap that now belongs almost entirely to the domain of nostalgia toward which, in his increasing irrelevance, he is angling.  Played at the right time in the right bar, this could go from a 3/5 to my favorite song.  T.I. might give Dro a bump on the remix; then again, maybe not.  T.I. is at the same place in his career as LL was in '99.

Friday, July 17, 2015

CHIEF KEEF IS OFFICIALLY OK WIT ME, ANDY MILONAKIS CAN STILL GET A BEATDOWN THO



I have been a long-time hater of CHIEF KEEF cause he seemed to be the posterboy for da gross fetishization of da poverty-ignorance-race-anger complex, but u know I'm sorta comin around I guess.  I once wrote that "Love Sosa" sound like "somethin from a Broadway musical about homo sailors," and I still agree wit dat, not just cause it is probably the best string of words I will ever write.  Fuck "Sosa" in its nautical booty. 

I am, however, starting to fuck wit da really wanky shit where he overdubs the vocals like a motherfucker. I got a thing for studio obsessives who just don't know when to leave good enough alone.  Even tho he ain't on the drugs no more (I think?) he like Brian Wilson in the Smile days sittin around his mansion twiddlin knobs on some Rainman shit, except his sandbox is a Segway or that ill Japanese robot Asimo*.

CHANCE THE RAPPER dropped an indie rock album earlier this year that was sorta like the cast of Gullah Gullah Island cliqued up wit Vampire Weekend and Anticon and some of the happier slam poets, the ones who draw smiley faces in ya latte or whatever rather than givin you the bizness on globalization and free trade and shit when you just tryin to grab a caramel mocha Frappe on the way to the Justin Bieber concert.  It garnered some Beach Boys comparisons cause there was a trumpet and they called it Surf, but really it was just straight buns from all points, granola rap at its worst and the sorta watery nerd rock you hear in a Kohl's ad.**  Besides, Chance seems too normal to ever build a Xanadu.  Brian Wilson and Chief Keef, troubled manchildren whose only function in life is to make music like some retarded ass Mozarts.***

* Fuck Asimo, we still got beef and he knows what he did.
** And I liked Acid Rain even tho I once had to witness a bunch of bros in tank tops drivin thru Manhattan blastin the joint wit CHILDISH GAMBINO out of a convertible like Ken borrowed Barbie's car and invited all da other gigolos for a joy ride.

*** Now some ppl might say DR. DRE fits the bill of da Wilsonian studio nutcase, but who actually like the shits he makin these days?  He's makin Yes records.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

FUTURE MANIFESTO

 

The raging broom of madness swept us out of ourselves and drove us through streets as rough and deep as the beds of torrents. Here and there, sick lamplight through window glass taught us to distrust the deceitful mathematics of our perishing eyes...

And on we raced, hurling watchdogs against doorsteps, curling them under our burning tires like collars under a flatiron. Death, domesticated, met me at every turn, gracefully holding out a paw, or once in a while hunkering down, making velvety caressing eyes at me from every puddle.
- Marinetti, 1909

How badly the "March Madness" video misses the mark is only to the song's credit - there's an excess of material to interpret.  A case could be made that Vincent Lou already translated the nocturnality of 56 Nights for the title song's video, but the heavy-handed insertion of Civil Rights era footage overemphasizes the political nature of "March Madness."  It's political at times, but only in passing.  The essence of Future's drug-addled stream-of-consciousness technique is that every thought is explored only in passing.

I want a video of Future driving around the margins of Atlanta in the early hours.  No themes, no concepts.  But maybe there's a reason Vincent Lou makes the big bucks and I can't even direct a Geo into a parallel space.  He did make a good one for "Codeine Crazy."

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

I LIKE SHY GLIZZY TOO MUCH



As the immortal Godfather III line goes, "What's the deal with getting pulled back in when you think you're out?"  Told myself there was no way I was gonna listen to a tape of SHY GLIZZY and his weed carriers*.  But seeing as "From The Get Go" has been on repeat all day, I'm wondering if I'm depriving myself of the kind of insolent bangers that got me into Glizzy in the first place.

Between my fondness for Glizzy and PEEDI, I have a certain weakness for the kind of antic helium-heads that others find grating.  There ain't many socially redeeming qualities to Glizzy's schtick, but he would probably tell C. Dolores Tucker the same thing PAC did.  He raps for those who wear jeans with jean shirts, and those of us too pussy to try; those who tote extendos, and those who gawk from the sidelines.  The video contains some very rare and rugged footage of Glizzy rapping on a shopping cart and flossing his Pit like a sentient accoutrement.  Modern street rap didn't know it needed a Larry Lifeless**.  Then Glizzy came along.

* Goo Glizzy one-ups the entire history of WCs by literally carrying a bag of weed @1:57.
** Kilslug comparison © The Martorialist. From an Upsidedown Cross blurb: "Mr. Larry Lifeless is a supremely strange character. He's sleazy, filthy, always drunk and high on something, and is seemingly borderline retarded."

Monday, July 13, 2015

SPANISH FLY, HAWAIIAN SHIRTS


"Try Me" was aight, but the real reason it blew up was the dissonance of a small young woman talkin about catching bodies in the context of a shimmering pop-rap single.  Rock bands been usin this tactic forever (e.g. the sizable subgenre of sunshine pop songs with suicidal lyricals), but outside of MS. LOAF and cocksure kiddie-rappers, the juxtaposition of two or more dissimilar, seemingly contradictory, elements is a relatively untapped technique in the world of rap.

"Cement Shoes" is one such exception.  A copacetic DJ SPANISH FLY yawns thru murder threatz and braggadociery, but this ain't the kind of Memphis stomper one comes to expect.  It's hypnotic and warm, more dream than nightmare, the kind of shit that make u wanna catch some Zzzzzs and bound thru the clouds but also drop some stoolies into the river before you take that dreamscape siesta.   Fly repeats "cee-ment shoes, cee-ment shoes, cee-ment shoes!" like a Mansonian mantra, whilst drawing on the phrase's concise evocation of America's urban-industrial underbelly and the nexus of allusions intrinsic to its unique configuration of eight letters: the pop-history of Palisades body dumps, Dick Tracy vs. Flattop Jones, the brute poetry co-written by Edward G. Robinson and Bugs Moran.

A true innovator in the worlds of music and style, Fly pioneered the Hawaiian shirts, clashing patterns, tube socks, and tiny shorts look later favored by TYLER, THE CREATOR.  Style experts may argue the jheri curl amidst all these elements makes the look too busy, but I think of it as the cherry on top of an advanced wardrobe.

Friday, July 10, 2015

"EPIC" FAILURE: RAP METAL APPENDIX



"Yo, Lars, I'm feelin' a little silly, my magistrate."

"Wherefore, sondula?"

"I was bumpin Faith No More's "Epic" not one month ago without realizing it was sampled on Koopsta Knicca's 'Stash Pot' remix."

"'IT'S CRYIN / BLEEDIN / LYIN ON THE FLOOR'?"

"Nah, DJ Paul looped the piano passage on the outro."

"That shit sound hainted.  Like, zoinks."

"Couldn't quite place it.  Thought it was some of that spooky Reznor shit.  He so crazy.  I saw a video once where he and David Blaine cut off their hands and went to a taxidermist and threw their stuffed hands in a fish tank.  It was très Brooklyn."

"Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson recorded an album with Jay-Z and R Kelly called Best Of Both Worlds Within One Universe On A Collision Course With The Best Of Both Worlds Within A Separate Universe (Wherein Either Universe Is Intelligible To The Other).  It is locked in a vault next to the print for The Day The Clown Cried."

"..."

"You know, Paul & Koopsta sampled my band, Metallica, on 'Torture Chamber.'  They sampled the sitar intro from 'Wherever I May Roam,' which appeared on The Black Album, our 1991 album produced by Bob Rock.  Paul called me up and asked for sample clearance.  I says to Paul, 'Of course, brah. You know I'm bout this open content shit.'  That's word to Lessig."

"'Mystical styles of the ancient mutilations / Torture chambers filled with corpses in my basement.'"

"Sometimes I think being in Metallica is my torture chamber." :/

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

OWN A PIECE OF STYLE WARS HISTORY!!


Graffiti ain't an element of rap music.  Some of its pioneers say it ain't even an element of hip-hop. My formulation is that hip-hop is an element of graffiti, but that don't clear up shit if rap music is an element of hip-hop.  Disputed taxonomy aside, Style Wars is easily a top 25 documentary, and remains essential viewing for anyone interested in the era that produced this Thing we love so much.

Certain questions remain.  How did the mild-mannered Dez become the eternally agitated KAY SLAY?  Will "Zephyr & I" be on the next Streetsweeper tape?  If, as legend has it, Cap worked in a bakery during this time, does that mean he was frosting dainty cakes in between terrorizing New York's most elite mass transit vandals?  Was Kase2 sent from the future?  And was Min referring to the swoop on Cap's "a" or his actual hair when clowning his "Lucille Ball haircut?"

IDK, but I do know that u can cop some original stickers from Min for $25.  Perfect stocking stuffers for the documentary aficionados in your life, spesh if u lost the eBay auction for a feeding tube from Titicut Follies.

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

A DISCUSSION OF SUMMERTIME '06 BY VINCE STAPLES, PT. 2



Round 2 AM the pool was filled with varicolored vomit.  Lars had stuck drumsticks in two of his orifices.  We was wasted off Miller Lites.

"Told you the VINCE album would grow on you," said Lars, waving a soiled Vic Firth in my direction.

"You was right.  I still maintain that YG and Vince are different strains of the same root sensibility.  They both the premier gangsta rap revivalists, right?  Only difference is YG fully inhabits the character.  Vince stands outside of it.  Put it this way: YG is makin Westerns, Vince is making revisionist Westerns."

"The way I see it is Vince made the album KENDRICK would have made if he wasn't so worried about bein a sympathetic character.  He's the good kid in a mad city.  Vince is less concerned with being liked."

"True, true.  It's the kinda shit Kendrick could make if he focused on making rap albums rather than 'short films.'  He's like KANYE minus the middle-class background, like this is what Ye's last two albums might have been if his celebrity hadn't metastasized to the point that everything is ultimately about Being Kanye.  Vince is more elusive. He's quicksilver.  It's like if ICE T wrote Invisible Man.  There's only one person experiencing the world as Kanye West. There are many experiencing the world in ways similar or identical to the Vince Staples concept."

"It's sort of like our Ride The Lightning."

"I hate you Lars."

Graceland came on and we danced until the early morning, Lars in his sarong and me in my Girbauds.

Monday, July 6, 2015

MY BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED BONE THUGS FANTASY


Caught a fellow rap blogger out there the other day.  He thought I was just horsin around with my online threats of violence, but the only reason ya boy resort to e-thuggin is cause it allows me to disseminate my thuggery to the masses.  Asked around the neighborhood and heard where he buys his quinoa and coconut water.  Followed him home all stealthily then when he was opening the door I struck the back of his head wit a brick.

When he woke up he was tied to one of his many IKEA chairs.  "What's this all about?" he whimpered.  "Please, my family has money!  Is it vinyl you want?  I have the original pressing of Bongo Rock!  How about this lamp?  Very rare.  The lampshade is made out of the Puerto Rican family who lived in this apartment before me!"

I slapped him in the face with a copy of n+1 lying on his coffee table.  "You know what I'm here about.  It's about BONE THUGS."

"B-b-b-bone Thugs?"

"N-Harmony, motherfucker!  You heard of 'em?  Back in the day, you and your buddies were so full of hubris.  Did you really think you could wipe PAC'S name from the books?"

"H-h-h-his raps weren't polysyllabic enough!  People were valuing content over form!  They were allowing themselves to be misled by emotion!"

I smashed his face with an unread copy of The Power Broker until his glasses shattered.  Then I ground the shards into his eyeballs with each of my thumbs.

"Who the fuck are you to be telling people how to enjoy rap?  And then you try to besmirch the Bone Thug legacy, talkin bout Waaaaah 'I Tried' is corny, AKON sucks and Lol they made a song with PHIL COLLINS, how stupid!  You can't paint they whole career with that brush!  What, you couldn't like em cause some fratboys did?  Don't hold that against Bone Thugs!  You thought they were gimmicky?  If they'd come out today rockin Supreme and Vans you'd be blowin your load."

"But F-f-f-freestyle Fellowship!"

I pulled out my Desert Eagle and stuck it in his mouth.  "Don't give me that FREESTYLE FELLOWSHIP bullsheeeeit!  You know they took that style and G'd it the fuck up!  They tweaked it: that's how culture evolves.  Catch up, slowpoke!  Tonally and thematically they had nothing in common with the Fellowship, they was Cleveland to the core!"

I cocked back the hammer.  "And look at 'em now.  They the dark-horse influence for everyone from KENDRICK to the ASAPs, and arguably anyone usin triplets in they raps.  Bet you didn't see that coming."

I wiped the tears from his eyes.  They were full of terror.  "Any last words?" I asked, removing the barrel from his mouth.

"You'll never get away with this!" he shrieked.  "I'm a whiiiiiiiite guuuuuuuy!"

Sunday, July 5, 2015

A DISCUSSION OF SUMMERTIME '06 BY VINCE STAPLES


Me and Lars Ulrich was boolin the other day when he put on the new VINCE STAPLES album.  It is called Summertime '06.  We was both nodding our heads along, but it was more like we was doin it for the other guy's sake, like we was tryin to save face and avoid an awkward confrontation if one of us was really fuckin with it.

After some intense nodding and an exchange of soulful looks that said, "Feelin this shit in my soul," I grabbed his Zune and put on last year's YG album.  We both laughed.  He leapt up outta his Endless Pool, revealing a gorgeously aged Danish body in full nudity, and tossed me a cold Miller Lite straight from the mothafuckin Rubbermaid.

"Man, I thought it was just me.  I like it but I don't love it.  It's a fuckin slog sometimes."

"I feel ya, Lars Whitemon.  He did what he was supposed to do.  I can't really even knock it, except to say I didn't want an album for the critics.  He shoulda followed EARL'S lead and cut the length in half.  Shout out to Earl, puttin out rap Paganicons while all his peers been damaged off The SuburbsThat's why it was so dope Hell Can Wait was an EP.  No one puts out EPs no more, so it was like he was flippin th' bird to the line of thinking that equates length with significance (no homo).  I be hittin the snooze button on these mumblecore interludes n shit.  ROGER WATERS ruined a generation of rappers."

"Yeah bro," said Lars as his droopy cock billowed in the wind.  "It sorta reminded of when we recorded The Black Album with BOB ROCK cause we wanted our Led Zeppelin IV moment.  We got love from critics and mainstream rock 'n' rollers, but we kinda alienated our core followers - the hopeless cretins who moved on to Vulgar Display Of Power now that we was tryin to make timeless artistic statements 'n' shit.  Did I ever tell you about Bob Rock's business cards?  They said, 'If it ain't Bob, it don't Rock.'  That's why we hired him."

"Literally don't know what you're talking about, Skeet Skeet Ulrich," I said. "I don't listen to music where the artists actually play instruments."

I hopped out the Endless Pool and took sips of the Miller Lite as I looked over the Hollywood Hills, wondering if somewhere in Los Feliz James Newsted and his protege were having a similar moment over the new MEEK MILL.  I hoped they were also nude, I hoped they were also drinking domestic beer.

"IDK," Lars said. "Maybe it will grow on you like a staph infection contracted from an improperly chlorinated Endless Pool."

Friday, July 3, 2015

2 TIMES FOR UR SOUL: THE CANONIZATION OF MAX B, THE NORMCORE OF NEW JACK SWING

1.
MAX B got shine while he was still a freeman, but no one woulda predicted how large his presence would loom over a generation of rappers who continue boogie boardin all over his "thugged-out singin JODECI in the shower" wave.  I'm workin on a diorama for my 7th grade civics class right now and I'm using MAX'S canonization as an example of democracy doin its thang.  The people spoke on this one, don't wanna see no eggheads tryin to take credit for the popular voice reaching critical mass!  Before he was upstate punchin out license plates and stackin reblogs from '90s baby Tumblr users, MAX was considered a quality practitioner of post-DIPSET aesthetics, but it was more like, "Man I miss DIPSET, MAX B still out there and he's pretty 'wavy' i guess (lol), but man NYC is so dead haha #papoosejoke #wavynotasgoodasbaaalllin"  Worse than the ex post facto shinejobs is the lamebrain NYC stans who didn't even notice a moment was happening when it was right under they nose.  BIG STAR of rap melodics 4 real.


2.
Reason #5039 that normcore is RACIST: it don't even include the #Urban aesthetics laid out by TEDDY RILEY & co!  Hillary Clinton might be the next US Prez, and she still rockin pantsuits made from material repossessed by the government in the great COLOR ME BADD Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings of '94.  Whateva happened to intellectual property, B??  Me and Lars Ulrich been talkin about this issue whenever I go over to his place for some nude swimming in his Endless Pool.  Lars had a good point:  if NORMCORE is about NORMALCY but only includes WHITE PPL, it must rest on the presupposition that WHITE PPL = NORMAL, but doesn't that imply NOT WHITE PPL are NOT NORMAL?  and isn't that RACIST?  I don't fully agree with Lars's views, but he makes some good points and he has a beautiful body for a 76 year old punk rock 'n' roller ;)

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

GUNPLAY AND DJ MUSTARD WALK INTO A DELICATESSEN



This been out for a minute, and I still feel as ambivalent as I did before it got the video treatment.  Gunplay sound good over Mustard beats, but wit YG on the track it's more like he a guest at the table, like Gunplay made some killer pastrami on rye but YG brought a proprietary blend of mustard, and so Gunplay feels conflicted about the whole thing.  He can't take full credit for how delicious the sandwiches are because YG's proprietary blend of whole-grain mustard is integral to its successful bouquet of flavors.  He sittin at Mustard's kid's table like white people at a Lord Jamar potluck.

Got another quibble with the video.  At the end Gunplay runs over the hood of a po-lice cruiser like he been possessed by the ghost of Dan Bucci.  The cop draws his gun and stands flatfooted like Otto Porter on Tony Snell, looking on as Gunplay gives the Crown Vic the business end of his Chucks and disappears into the wind.  This makes no sense.  Maybe it would be socially irresponsible to show Gunplay taking two plugs to the back - or livin up to his name and blastin caps - but rap has never been about social responsibility.

THINKING ABOUT DIPSET, TOM SNYDER, CAB CALLOWAY



1.
Why didn't Dipset ever have a white guy?  Not counting Mizzle.  For a group that was such a carefully constructed visual spectacle, they could have done a lot with a token Caucasoid placed in outlandish outfits and incongruous scenarios.



2.
Lost in most remembrances of the great Tom Snyder and Iggy Pop tête-à-tête, where a haggard Iggy describes himself, cogently, as a Dionysian artist, is the curious list of artists Iggy names as influences: Sun Ra and Howlin' Wolf are easily reconciled, Cab Calloway and Fats Waller less so. I took the liberty of transcribing the exchange.

SNYDER: The people that you're talking about could be described - in a one-word label again - as being conventional.

IGGY: No, they weren't at the time.  

SNYDER: But everything evolves, when you look back--

IGGY: They got conventional this year, but back then...back then they were sort of sleazy.

SNYDER: Indeed. As they say: jazz is rap.

IGGY:  Come on, man, not that again.  That's the bad cliche of bad cliches.  Only people who don't actually listen to rap or jazz say that.

SNYDER: I like eating creamed corn and apple pie at the State Fair.

IGGY:  And the worst is when people try to draw a straight line from Coltrane to LL Cool J as if the association somehow elevates the form.  Coltrane was working in the high art tradition. The analogy does not follow, no matter what Q-Tip tells you.

SNYDER: We had a goat when I was a kid, I named it Honus.  We were chums.  Do you want to touch my hair?  I like to make it look like a helmet.

IGGY:  But that's not to say there's no connection. The traceable connections just don't fall into the whole "because improvisation" agenda these ponytails want it to.  How about, I don't know, the stuff that actually has lyrics?  "Minnie The Moocher" is about this skeezer named Minnie who's fucking some junkie, and eventually golddigs her way to a townhouse and a diamond whip with platinum wheels.  It's like "Maria Maria" for the Geritol set.  Even Pac had to get on the remix. [simulates air horn noises]

SNYDER:  I have bad thoughts about my neighbor.

IGGY:  And Fats Waller was a funny fat guy, sort of a Harlemite Biz Markie but less talented.   Cab and Fats had songs for the smokers, too.

SNYDER:  I forgot to wear underwear today.  Nipple clamps.

IGGY:  I've had enough of this, you doe-eyed dairy farmer. I got something fo yo stinkin ass, ooooh I got somethin fo yo stinkin ass!  MY FOOT: in yo ass!   MY FIST: in yo face!  MY KNEE: in yo ribs!  MY, uh, FINGER: in yo eyyyyyyye!  Dipset, bitch.

Iggy pulls syringe from pants, stabs Snyder in jugular.   Syringe fills with blood.  Iggy drinks some and shoots the rest at camera lens.  Blood drips until entire frame is tinted red.

SNYDER [offscreen]:  Nyyaaaahhh! 

IGGY:  You nitwit! [slapping noise]

SNYDER:   Whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop!