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.