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 Suburbs.  That'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."

ALL I NEED IS 5 JOINTZ

Here some joints I been listening to, I listen to music a lot cause I like it.

EARL SWEATSHIRT - FAUCET
Never been a huge Joy Division fan, but Ian Curtis hanging himself after watching Stroszek is mos def in my Top 5 suicides of all time.   This song reminds me of that, only it makes me sad imagining Earl dangling from a ceiling fan wearing a 5-panel hat.  Step ya game up doggy, you ain't wanna die in anything less than a Panama.

STARLITO & KEVIN GATES - STUDIO AND GAS STATIONS COMING SOON
I don't really fuck wit Gates beyond a detached "yeah he got skillz" level.  Ol' dude is too emo, plus he look like a fat dyke according to an ingeniously stupid YouTube comment I once read, but I was a Cuban Linx stan in my teenage years and I'm easily seduced by a genuine rap collab.  Starlito is the definitive rapper's rapper, but that's a limiting accolade.  Take it as it is: he'll never be better than a master craftsman.  He consistently drops well engineered joints that just ain't got the je ne sais quoi that the Frenches always be talkin bout.  Nothin really push ya wig back.  Rap Game Gordon Lish, John Sayles.

RICH HOMIE QUAN - FLEX (OOOOHOHOHOHOO)
"Trap Queen" mighta spawned a thousand thinkpieces, but this is the best Song Of The Summer.  Just cause Clear Channel playin a song you like for 6 months straight, and maybe u heard it while u was applyin ur genitals to a foreign body, don't mean it's the Song Of The Summer all of a sudden.  Song of January maybe :/.  SMH, I thought we was livin in the accelerated Internet age or somethin, time feelin like analog molasses.  We got calendars for a reason.

DYNAS FT. SLICK RICK - WHO U?
Don't know what the fuck a Dynas is, but he don't get in the way of the Rapper Emeritus too much.  Remember that Nike jingle where Rakim goes, "Age don't count in the booth / When your flow stay submerged in a fountain of youth," except he literally sounds like his iron lung is collapsing?  Slick Rick actually preserved his flow.  It's all about the Ricola, my binaca.

LIL WIKI AND GOOGS
True story, I discovered Ratking when I was browsin Aron Bondaroff's abandoned Off Bowery channel.  I didn't run to my local A&R community outreach center or nothin, but I did think to myself, "Yo, these kids could help me sell $35 tshirts one day."

2013 WAS A GAS: THE YEAR IN REVIEW!

Wussup to all my peepers, midnight creepers, and all my degenerates who masturbate into sneakers!  It's time for RPA MSUIC HISTERIA to wrap up the year once again.  Now I know my updates is sporadic and all, but I prefer to think of them as spo-radical!  Namean?  Like this post if u agree.

All in all, 2013 was a wack year for rap music.  But I am nothing if not an eternal optimist, and so I look to the raps that tickled my fantasy, the ones that made me laugh and cry, rather than dwelling on the raps that diminished my already threadbare hopes for the human race.  Shall we proceed?  I do say we shall!

MIGOS

Group of the year!  This is the shit the streetz was bumpin in 2013 (J-Hole, stand up!).  Bonus points for bein the whipping boy for every rap purist decrying the state of rappity rappin.  In short, their cadences were the illest; we will one day speak of them in the same reverential, slightly embarrassed tones with which we invoke the name of DAS EFX. 

RUN THE JEWELS

 

Mane.  Would you look at EL-P?  That off-kilter red skully, the black t-shirt terminating in white person tattoos, the Napoleon dynamite glasses frames - affectations that make him look identical to the articles of human filth who make their daily exodus at the Lorimer St. L stop.  For much of my youth I nursed an analogous distrust of the man, much of which was informed by SCOTT SEWARD's tone-deaf, yet devastating, review of FANTASTIC DAMAGE.  Like, that review was wack and all, but kinda cut to the marrow of what made EL-P irritating.  "Step Father Factory?"  That was some emo crybaby shit.

Then one day I realized: my distaste for EL-P was rooted in my own self-hatred!  Word!  EL-P was actually fairly dope if you could excuse all the pretension and self-indulgence.  And you know what he did this year?  He cut down all that artsy fartsy shit by doing an album with a REAL RAPPER (C) instead of one of those compulsive masturbator DEF JUX fags.

RUN THE JEWELS probably used the word "fuckboy" more than any other rappers this year; and for that alone, they make this prestigious list!

LIL SNUPE DIED :(



I ain't hear LIL SNUPE till I checked one of those wack HIP HOP TXL compilations that's always gettin mad downloads on Datpiff.  At first I was like, "Fo rill - his name is LIL SNUPE?  Why don't he just call himself LIL NOTJORIOUS B.I.G. or LIL LL KOOL JAY?"  I heard him again on the DJ MUSTARD Ketchup tape that came out this summer.  At this point I still wasn't sold, but I'd begun to accept that he was someone I'd be hearing from for a while.

Then he got shot over video games or some dumb shit.  SMH.  Anyway, like the death groupie I is, I revisited some of his old freestyles on the YouTubes and was pleased with what I heard.  In a lot of clips you can see MEEK MILL encouraging him to spit some real shit - dat roaches, rats, and poverty flow - and the dude came through with the squalidest imagery.  His freestyle prowess was a welcome atavism in these readin off yo Blackberry ass times.  Before he got capped over Super Smash Brothers, SNUPE was starting to remind me of another Louisiana spitter who never reached his prime.

EARL SWEATSHIRT

"Had a spark when thou started /  But nowest thou ist just garbage" - Jayson-Z, "Ye Olde Takeover"

ODD FUTURE was a breath of fresh air when they came out, but look at em now!  TYLER THE CREATOR is as used-up as a 30 year-old running back.  Dude has been wack and irritating since he got out of the Tumblr ghetto.  Fuck you, TYLER THE CREATOR.  I will fight you.

HODGY BEATS and all them other cats were always just some banal dickriders, so where does that leave us?  EARL SWEATSHIRT, kid!  The main event.  His Doris LP surpassed expectations to the same extent that TYLER's post-Bastard output has sucked balls.  Man, them bars is mad dense.  We need to exercise our close reading tools on some of them verses!

And da best part?  The album is short as fuck, totes catering to my generation's Internet-addled attention spans.  EARL is a true poet, the Tennyson of our times, a prophet of peace, and a beacon of

FUTURE & RICK ROSS

"Bugatti" and "U.O.E.N.O." was the songs of the year, and you know this wasn't 'cause of ROCKO or ACE HOOD.  Whether you like it or not, ROZAY's rape-y ass lyrics was definitely da bars of the year.  And as much as young men aspire to be fat, disgusting frauds like RICK ROSS, I don't think his lyrics had any appreciable effect on sex crimes this year.

Now would be the time to reminisce on the many occasions I woke up in new Bugattis this year, but I am legally required to remain silent on this subject (I may or may not have left some hot DNA on the seatz).

CHANCE THE RAPPER

White America's new favorite negro performer!

SUMMARY
2013 was highly, highly wack.  I could sift through some of the chaff - the also-rans and kind-of-were's - but I'm tired and quite obviously lazy.  See you in 2014, bitches!