MEEK MILL: TALENTED UNDERACHIEVER

Meek fooled us all, and we let him.  He came out the bing delivering the kind of hangin-out-the-whip bangers on which his energy is transcendent, like all those lonely bunk-bed hours spent reading soiled Dean Koontz paperbacks gave him time to refocus and streamline his attack.  Dreams Worth More Than Money is aight, but it's decisive proof that Meek is a singles artist.  Meek makes albums like he's reading a pie-chart of demographic research.  He either doesn't know how to make an album that's complementary to his skill set, or he's letting the MMG quality control inspectors meddle too much with the final product.

Someone needs to step in and save him from his worst tendencies.  Meek's always had a penchant for sentimental first-person writing, which can be one of his strengths as an artist, but not when it descends into the kind of turgid balladeering of "All Eyes On You" and "Pullin Up."  This more-is-more maximalism, where every album needs to be "like a movie," is the kind of structural defect we get when a huge swath of today's rap music is based on a misreading of Scarface (1983).  Scarface knows it's tacky and garish and absurd.  If it wasn't self-aware, it would be a mess of comical seriousness.  What somehow works in the film - the schlock and bombast, the mass-market tragedy of Tony Montana - almost never translates to the rules of pop music, despite continued attempts by the children of Cuban Linx.

Meek thinks he's a substance rapper, when style is where he truly excels.  Though generally good, his lyrics resonate more for the way he says them than what he actually says.  No wonder that Bangladesh's contribution is one of the album's best moments.  In a perfect world, Meek would choose only the kind of beats on which his style thrives: minimal, skeletal, and stark, emphasizing rhythm over melody so the raps are in the foreground.  Meek needs Jahlil Beats to lace him with a Hell Hath No Fury.  Irrespective of its critical baggage, this was the album where Pharrell ditched Chad and melody and gave the drummer everything.  This is what I want from Meek: 12 songs, ~40 mins, no lovey-dovey Top Gun soundtrack corndoggin, just flows - impregnable, impetuous, frivolous flows.

HOT TAKES IN HERRE

Been liking this hot-take formula even tho the words "hot take" sound disgusting together.  Here are four of my hottest, steamiest takes.

KODAK BLACK - FOR THE FAME
There are only two careers where stints in juvie look good on the resume: prisoner and rapper.  Kodak Black's knack for raps and incarceration suggests he will end up as at least one of the two.  IDK, maybe he is a mathlete or candystriper in his free time, but somehow I doubt it.  The game been missin a steak-and-potatoes reality rapper since Boosie went semi-Recovery on Touchdown, and Kodak seems to be auditioning for the role.  In this instance, his vocals are pitched so high his screech is more munchkin than Boosiean.  If nothing else, a teenager who namechecks Soulja Slim and Gunplay is on the right path.

NINO MAN & JADAKISS - ROAD TRIP
New York rap has been out of style for so long that New York rappers now get the same instinctive scorn Southern rappers got until '05 (at least).  Everyone likes hating New York rap more than they actually hate it.

Stop the hate.  "Road Trip" is oatmeal for the ears.

JIDENNA & KENDRICK LAMAR - CLASSIC MAN (REMIX)
Will the Kendrick bump finally allow "Classic Man" to become the hit it deserves to be?  Hearing K-Dot vamp on something besides rank body odor jazzbar pap is a bitter reminder of the rapper he was before his worst Baduistic tendencies took the reins.

SKEME & THE GAME - FIND OUT
Best song on Ingleworld 2 after "36 Oz."  Now that gay marriage is in the bag, maybe we can direct our energy to getting this Game verse stricken from the record.

BLACK SKINHEADS

Durk never poses, except with his punk vest

When drill first started really poppin my brains told me, "Yo, you should probably sit this one out."  I was in la-la love; my mindstate was more "Sending All My Love" than savage hellscape.  So to all you vociferous boosters, please pardon my relative indifference.  Guess you had to be there.

While I'll never claim to have any great love for drill music, I do respect it for having a coherent aesthetic in an age when most "genres" and "movements" are meaningless, superfluous, or nonexistent -- usually some configuration of the above.  In my 25 years on this planet, I have never seen a form of music inspire such divisive yet equally valid reactions.  Detractors commonly fixate on its nihilism and supposed simplicity, the very same features the cultural groundskeepers of yesteryear once denounced in punk and gangsta rap.  But drill has a more organic integrity than punk, a media creation that pitted together three very different bands as its figureheads.  Gangsta rap engaged the culture wars at large, whereas the debate over drill is largely intracultural.  Conversations tend to focus on debasement of genre rather than society as a whole, an irony that the Calvin Buttses of the world might consider proof of prophesy.

Ten years ago Lil Durk's Remember My Name would have been a grand exercise in dropping the ball, but fortunately for him, major label debuts just don't have the resonance they once did.  Durk's album is a relatively undistinguished project that might have been more at home on DatPiff than Def Jam, as is increasingly the case in an age when the main difference between mixtapes and albums is DMCA complaints.  This could have been a chance to make some kind of statement for drill as a music or movement or diseased stump, but Durk doesn't even give himself the chance to fail spectacularly: he compromises, resulting in an identity crisis of awkward crossover attempts amidst new iterations of his original process.

Which isn't to say the album is a failure.  Durk, like drill itself, may just not be for the pop charts.  In spite of his melodic tendencies, Durk's best music is not welcoming.  It is bleak to the very edge of Gothic, a drab funeral song accompanied by monotonous warbling.  Rather than Gangsta Rap Part Two, Durk and the drillionaires have more in common with the insular tradition of street-punk, from D-beat to the dregs of New York hardcore -- an avant-garde of the working class and not-working class, born of alienation and blight.  These are apocalyptic takes on expendable youth under late capitalism, searching for satisfaction in the mindlessness of violence and intoxicants.

This is war music for the hopeless, and much of its criticism boils down to thinly veiled disdain for the lumpenproletariat having any voice at all.  It's understandable: listen to either genre exclusively for a week, and suddenly the world seems very cold indeed.  What kind of person could subject themselves to anything but small doses?    In its relentless wallop, "500 Homicides" shares more with "The Blood Runs Red" than any superficial similarities it bears to Migos Gang's latest comic-book caper (Duck Tales of the rap game, but that's a diff'ent thinkpiece for a diff'ent day).  More surprising than Durk making concessions is the fact that Def Jam thinks it can sell his dystopian mutation of pop music.  Imperfect as Remember My Name is, I hope he succeeds.

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."

RAP-METAL APOLOGIA

Rap-metal (and all its permutations) has always been met with opprobrium, generally deserved, in a consensus so complete that the possibility of reconsideration is close to nil.  It is a music so illicit it's ostracized by even the most kneejerk contrarians.  Still, catch a millenial by the toe, and they'll probably be able to recite the lyrics to at least one Limp Bizkit song with alarming accuracy.  The breakdown of "Break Stuff" can send otherwise mild-mannered souls into mad Dionysian fits. GIVE ME SOMETHING TO BREAK, they cry. HOW BOUT YOUR FUCKIN FACE? they propose.  America, these are your sons and daughters.

The era of rap-metal, for all its popularity, will be stricken from historical record and written off as a collective mistake.  It was all of our fault.  But I remember.  I remember hearing Faith No More in the back of my mother's Subaru, when 92.3 was WXRK and the polished head of Matt Pinfield hosted The Buzz.  The Faith No More revival brought me back to two of rap-metal's finest moments: "Epic" and "We Care A Lot."  I'll give "We Care A Lot" a slight edge for the way Chuck Mosley's delivery matches the lyrics, affecting the boneheaded sincerity that "Institutionalized" and "TV Party" used to great effect.  This will always be better than Death Grips.

Keep on rap-rocking in the free world,
Rap Music Hysteria

DENZEL CURRY, SO HOT RIGHT NOW!

 

hit me with ur rhythm sword

Just when u thought u was safe from Curry jokes now that the NBA skeezon in the bag, Denzel Curry drops a double EP like he a post-hardcore band or sum shit.  When I ain't on South Beach tryna get my skin a nice butter-leather consistency (my body will be turned into a Birkin bag upon death), I'm biggin up the local talent makin waves in this cold world.  305 till I die or a life-changing event requires relocation is wat I always say.  I wanted to fux wit SGP more than I did, wasn't really feelin the gimmicky level fuckery or his Tommy Wright mixed wit Malachi The Nutcracker delivery, but in retrospect I gotta respect the legs he gave to a micro-movement.  Gotta hand it to him for releasing a record on 4AD, but Kanye already did the Factory tribute on 808s so whatever mane.

Denzel Curry been a solid 3.5/5 artist since whenever I decided to pay attention to him, 3 years ago maybe?  IDK.  My main problem with him is the same problem I got with all the other Raider Klansmen, namely a kind of rootlessness to the sound, not exactly ahistorical but ageographical for lack of an actual word.  I get it, I dig the spooky Memphis shit too, but it ain't only where you at it's also where you from.  So I'm pleased with "Delusional Shone" for reproducing the regional on a release marked for worldwide export (cf. "No Shone" by Chad & Lil Dred, "Shone" by Ball Greezy, current Jim Jones WC and future first-ballot member of da Rap Name Hall of Fame).  "Underwater" seethes with the kind of mystical-meets-political, hood-noir poetics once purveyed by Goodie Mob, but it also got ya boy stickin all over the room, feelin like Duckie with Gucci goggles in this motherfucker, u feel?  Free ya ass and ya mind will follow.

The Internet's a great tool for organizing and politickin, but it's a different animal than provincialism's community of constraint - for better or worse.  Ya boy will never stop carryin the flag for regional stylez, and Denzel pleased this tender heart even if no one else give a fuck.  Emotional connections mane, shit ain't rational but they magical.

SHINE ON BIGGA RANKIN, YOU BEAUTIFUL BLOGSPOT GOD!

Many mornings, shaving with one hand and removing hearts and horseshoes from my Lucky Charms with the other, I look to my bathroom fan and wonder why I chose Blogspot as my blogging platform.  Reality stings: I make poor decisions and my sensibilities are hopelessly stuck in 2008.

But when I hit the Next Blog>> button on the Blogspot navbar, a new world blooms.  Suddenly those are no longer digital tumbleweeds rolling soundlessly through the void - they're like-minded flâneurs gathering at a hip Parisian salon!  And while FrankieThaLuckyDog is Blogspot's most prolific content producer, Bigga Rankin is Don Blogspot for the sheer scope of his enterprises.

Bigga Rankin should be a familiar name to anyone who has listened to mixtapes in the past five years.  Who among us can forget his hosting duties on Eldorado Red's White Power?  But there's more to Rankin than mixtapes.  He is also the proprietor of around 60 dummy promotional pages on Blogspot, each with its own logo and branding.  There's Mixx Universe for hoodlums weened on '90s imagery and Upscale Media for the blue bloods; where Hunnid Proof mines generic trap aesthetics, Leggo My Mixtape cribs Pop art moves.  But despite this careful demographic outreach, every page has the same content.  This begs a question: Does Rankin have a team of minions doing his Blogspot bidding, or does he simply grasp the mystery of RSS in ways I never will?

Bigga Rankin won't be given the same leeway as Lil B, whose legion of MySpaces was seen as performance art rather than self-promotion.  Upski, patron saint of angry know-it-all whiteboys on the Rap Internet, once said, "Politics and philanthropy are artforms, just like music or dance or writing...Too many artists are using the same old mediums, and so we leave the most powerful mediums or art to the assholes."  In his own way, Don Blogspot adds business to the list.