POPE BENEDICT THINKS HE'S JAY-Z EXCEPT HE WAS IN THE HITLER YOUTH AND CAN'T RAP

Maaan, it's time for me to put this sucka on blast: POPE BENEDICT XVI.  Other day this lil punk was like, "Waaah, bein the Pope is too hard.  I'm a baby, I want my mommy!"  We all knew he had a weak will cause of that lil Hitler Youth bullshit, but really bro?  You just proved you ain't bout that life.

Remember back in the day?  Real dudes like KOOL G RAP and POPE JOHN PAUL II did real thangs.  Now we just got soft-ass simps like TYGA and BENEDICT.  But yo, I gots to wonder, is this all just some ploy for publicity?  Maybe homeboy is takin a page outta JAY-Z's book and is all, "Man, I can't do nothin more with this Catholicism game.  Shit is played out.  I'm just gonna count my money and watch you fools play yourselves."

 

Flash forward 1.5 years.  BENEDICT rolls back in on the new Pope and is all, "Boy, take that silly hat off.  You ain't no Pope.  Let me get my lil sceptre and shit 'cause the Ruler is back!"  He starts issuing edicts and all that bullshit like it was the ol' days and he was Big Boss Dogg #1, full of mad braggadocio and hubris, but in the end his core audience knows homie is but a pale shadow of his former self.

DIPSET NOSTALGIA IS THE BITTEREST OF ALL

Let's take it back to '05.  DIPSET was on everybody's lips (no homo).  Viewin da whole movement thru retrospective goggles, DIPSET's greatest contribution may have been its injection of controversy back into hip-hop.  They got under everyone's skin: conservatives jizzed they pants over the giddy, amoral spectacle that was central to DIPSET's aesthetic, so unabashedly tasteless they basically delievered a VERY SPECIAL EPISODE directly into the hands and Nielsen ratings of the O'Reillys and Riveras of the world.  The loathsome creatures known as REAL HIP-HOP HEADS was always bitchin bout DIPSET cause they strayed too far from NY orthodoxy and most certainly wasn't on no "artistic" or "conscience" bullsheeit.  There was even some noise about white hipsters fetishizing DIPSET's exotic blackness, quasi-racistly, in certain rap circles.  Dayum!

I just thought it was all fun.  They were the Macho Man Randy Savages of rap.  I was 15 and felt on top of da world every time HELL RELL or 40 CAL came up on the CD changer.  But those days have long passed.  In-fighting and splintering factions threw a wrench in the gears of the purple DIPSET tank just as it was threatening to roll over the whole industry.  The tacky pink party came to an end, the hangers-on hung up their purple mink coats and went home.  All subsequent DIPSET related releases have lacked the elan of the original era.  Some cats like JUELZ SANTANA just disappeared.  The long-rumored I CAN'T FEEL MY FACE with LIL WAYNE never materialized; while WAYNE became a corny skateboarding pop star, SANTANA languished without an album in some kind of record label purgatory.

But never fear!  SANTANA is back wit a new mixtape, GOD WILL'N.  And it's very much a 2013 rap mixtape; SANTANA makes sure we know this on the corny "Blog That" ("Just put a picture up on Instagram / Now I'm in the kitchen whippin insta-grams!").  It's not bad, either--essentially what you'd expect SANTANA to be doing in 2013.  But it also means the DIPSET garishness we all love so much is almost entirely gone. 

Obviously we can't (and shouldn't) expect an artist to remain the same forever.  That's stagnation.  But within SANTANA's transition lies a message on life: appreciate what you have before it fades.  One day you're living it up in a delirious orgy of rap cliche, the next you're scrounging the darkest corners of the Internet for FREEKEY ZEKEY b-sides.

ONE TRAIN: WE GO VERSE BY VERSE Y'ALL!

 

So da new A$AP ROCKY - can't front, it's good.  He's coverin all the markets: mainstream club-banger wit "Fuckin Problems," hipsters wit da CLAMS CASINO and SANTIGOLD joints, meth-head skeezers with that weird SKRILLEX collabo.  And on "1 TRAIN," he caters to that fickle group of hobbyists known as HIP-HOP HEADS.  It's a posse cut with a roster reading like a XXL Freshmen list that shoulda been: KENDRICK LAMAR, JOEY BADA$$, YELAWOLF, DANNY BROWN, ACTION BRONSON, AND BIG KRIT.  So who go the hardest?  Let's break it down!

KENDRICK LAMAR

Kind of a forgettable verse.  Maybe we just getting used to consistent excellence?  It gets more entertaining toward the end when he sounds like he's desperately trying to keep from splattering his Fruit of the Looms with diarrhea.

JOEY BADA$$ 

Rhymes "conscious" with "conscience" and "prism" with "prison" in the first four bars.  Threw us for a loop there, BADA$$!  We was just expecting some retread NY Golden Era shit, but you flipped the script n shit!

YELAWOLF

Kills it!  Never been a big fan of his work, but he comes thru sounding like a DUNGEON FAMILY influenced Rumpelstiltskin.  I don't think I'll ever listen to his music on the regular, but thanks for the momentary entertainment, homie!

DANNY BROWN

His best work is in concept-driven songs, which doesn't lend itself well to a guest verse.  Like KENDRICK it just sounds like he's treading water.

 

ACTION BRONSON

Kills it!  Erryone knows he sounds just like GHOSTFACE, but he pushin that aesthetic to revelatory extremes, namedroppin none other than former Cleveland Indian KENNY LOFTON and comparing his girl's walk to a Chilean horse.  He even drop the weirdest boast ever, talkin bout fixin the game between Georgia Southern and Grambling.  Big money high roller!

BIG KRIT

Never paid much attention to this young man (he seems nice), and I think I'm gonna maintain like that.  He uses his verse as an opportunity to advertise his existence.  The cynical references to "choppin blades" and "grippin grain" say, "Hey hip-hop fans!  You may not have heard of me, but if you're looking for some UGK influenced rap, why not give me a listen?"

CONCLUSION
I think I'm gonna give the crown to ACTION BRONSON with a slight edge over YELAWOLF.  I ain't gonna listen to his music or nuthin, but he itched all the right spots on this track (no homo, seriously).

Imagine that: ACTION BRONSON and YELAWOLF are the winners.  For once the white man wins!

KENDRICK LAMAR: MEET THE NEW AOR

 

 

The year was 2012.  Mad heads was lost tryna find they way up outta KENDRICK LAMAR's bootyhoole.  But despite being lodged deep up in an anus, they persisted in sounding trumpets of accolade.  And it was cool.  He made good music and all.  But sometimes it all felt too well crafted, like he was following pointers out of a '70s issue of Rolling Stone.  An AOR (read: ALBUM ORIENTED ROCK) rap album.  Lacking the spontaneity and disposibility that makes popular music so irresistible.  So high concept it sometimes felt like we was listening to a PINK FLOYD album.  Wasn't no party starter. 

Dat's fine and all.  But I often feel as if music critics view popular music thru the rubric of high art, which is entirely inappropriate when you're dealin with a popular form.  I just wanna have fun and forget the worries of my shitty fuckin existence.  Dat's why I always be goin for TRINIDAD JAME$ and 2CHAINZ before I go for KENDRICK LAMAR.  Yeah, I know on a aesthetic level they far inferior, but the stupidity help me get thru the day.

So fuck it mane.  I stay tuned to Clear Channel monopoly radio, cause that shit be pumpin the hits that help a menial worker like myself carry on.  I ain't got time for an aesthetic approach to pop music.  Play me da KENDRICK LAMAR hits interspersed with some ROSCOE DASH or PRETTY RICKY or KIRKO BANGZ  -- anything that will help me swallow down the poison of trickle down economics.

WHY IS THERE A NEED FOR CHIEF KEEF TO EXIST?

 

Aight, so that "I Don't Like" shit was cute and meme-worthy and all, but this "Sosa" shit?  Is this what it's really come to?  Shit sounds like somethin from a Broadway musical about homo sailors. Where is the need for CHIEF KEEF when we already got a WAKA FLOCKA?

"I Don't Like" was hype cause it was next-level ignorant, but WAKA has staying power cause he actually has legit skills.  KEEF is like the DONOVAN to WAKA'S DYLAN, the BL'AST to his BLACK FLAG.  It's aight and errythang, but we've seen it all before and better to boot. 

I don't really fux with this shit, cause unlike WAKA, CHIEF KEEF don't seem to have even a glimmer of intelligence, and I ain't about celebratin ignorance for its own sake.  Come back harder and originaler next time, KEEF.  Til then I ain't got time fo you.  Fuck dis shit!  Save the youth!  Stay off drugs and always wear a jimmy cap when you goin up in a honey!

GUEST POST: NEW YEAR'S RAP MUSINGS FROM A PROFESSIONAL GLASS POLISHER!

As many of y'all know, I run shit in Jax Hole.  From da ski slopes to da flourishing drug trade, I'm well-known like the number man.  I used to slang herb to this herb named Fezziwig.  He wore a fedora and had a large collection of Japanese swords.  All he did was smoke weed by himself and play World of Warcraft.  I ran into him at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar the other day and he bugged me about writing for my extremely successful rap website until I said, "Aight."  Here we go!

The clock passed midnight, a grinning crowd of rubes watched the ball drop in Times Square, and 2012 floundered into the annals of history.  It was New Year's Eve and I was polishing $4 glassware for less than minimum wage.

I regarded the customers with scorn.  Drunk idiots with too much expendable income blowing noisemakers like idiot children.  "BMF" by Rick Ross floated from out of the kitchen.  We shucked and jived to the anthemic throb, trying to forget that we were actually making money at the rate of a slow trickle.

"Bands A Maker Her Dance" came next.  I wondered what a stripper feels on New Years.  Maybe it's better to start the year in a G-string than polishing water spots off a water glass.  Rick Ross bellowed, "Deez niggas won't hold me back!," and I increased my polishing speed.  But deez niggas were holding us back: busted economy, the development of an American oligarchy, all the lies, the goddamn lies!  Where is our recession rapper, one who would rap about being broke and working a job beneath your dignity?  Of realizing exactly how little your college degree is worth in today's economy?  All we have is a cartoonish, nearly self-parodic celebration of capitalism.  We love rap music as an opiate that helps us believe in a failed system.

I decided it was time to take action.  I would no longer debase myself by listening to escapist drivel.  No more rap music for me!  But then I remembered my duty as a busboy and how bad I would feel if someone died from a water spot I'd failed to remove, so I polished bravely into the future as the old world, foaming at the mouth, clipped rabidly at my heels.

BEST O' THE YEAR 2012 Y'ALL!

Another year down in the books.  It's been a good one, yo!  Personally, I been runnin shit in the J-Hole (Wyoming, stand up!) makin mad cream thru illegal means; I also got my ski instructor's license.  As far as rap goes, shit been poppin off dis year.  Let's get get get it!

2CHAINZ
He sound like a drunk uncle/goose, but you couldn't fux with the Feature King of 2012.  He'd just show up on some track, have a few great put-downs and an equal number of groaners, all delivered in an awkward, often off-beat braying.  Rap game DON RICKLES crossed with FOZZY BEAR and maybe even a little BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT.  You know why that new A$AP single sounds like it ain't even his song? Cause 2CHAINZ on it.  Well, 2CHAINZ and DRAKE, a/k/a the 21st c. rap game MARK PRICE and BRAD DAUGHERTY.

 

BLACK HIPPY/TDE

Yeah, everyone on KENDRICK LAMAR'S cojones, and rightfully so: he dropped da album of the year.  And unlike the flawed Section 80 LP, he didn't make any major aesthetic missteps, e.g. putting an MOR/Kevin Rudolf-type whiteboy singer on the chorus.  Real talk, that's one of the biggest evils in rap music these days (see BIG BOI'S Sir Lucious Left Foot for the gravest example).  But on top o' that, the underrated AB-SOUL dropped the quasi-conceptual Control System, an album that taught everyone at least one new vocabulary word ("chattel" in my case -- thanks Ab!).  And SCHOOLBOY Q continued to sound bemused and spiteful on Habits & Contradictions, talkin bout drunk drivin and all the things I love.

JUICY J - "BANDS A MAKE HER DANCE"
Dis was the biggest surprise of the year for me.  Never thought JUICY J would reinvent himself as a lovable, ageless rake, unapologetic about his inability to resist certain vices (ratchet pussy, drugs, etc).  This shit is still gettin overplayed, but still gets ppl hyped when it comes on, perhaps because it has an elusive flash of truth embedded in its Dionysian revelry.

TRINIDAD JAME$
Fuck y'all.  Lots of heads was sayin that DRAKE'S "Bitch you wasn't with me shooting in the gym" was the year's best line.  I mean it's fun to say and all, but really?  We can do better, America.  The best line of the year was obviously TRINIDAD JAMES' "Pop a molly, I'm sweatin! Woo!"  The runners-up are 2 CHAINZ' a/k/a Hair Weave Killa's "When ya girl leave me, she need a hair salon!," JUICY J'S "You say no to ratchet pussy / Juicy J cain't," and 2 CHAINZ' "She got a big booty, so I call her big booty."  There were no other good rap lines this year.  Sorry.

THIS PHOTO OF JAY-Z
Damn, look how old he look; moreover, how stupid he looks in that BBC sweatshirt and backwards cap.  You like 46, B!  Wear some age appropriate attire - Sperry topsiders, baggy Dockers, raggedy ass polo shirts. Until then, JIGGA has officially entered "Cool Dad" territory.

MEEK MILL
Along with 2CHAINZ, MEEK MILL owned this year.  He had the radio hits and rapped circles round the comp on Dreamchasers 2.  More importantly, he was involved in one of the funniest rap stories of the year, i.e., his presence in DRAKE'S posse when CHRIS BROWN got his face busted open by an errant champagne bottle.  Thank you for your service, Milly.