No Trivia

Why Lil Wayne Is Only Sort-Of Good…
The release of ‘Da Drought 3’ has only exacerbated the on-going debate about Lil Wayne: Is he a great rapper or a complete joke? Like most debates, it too-quickly devolved into factionalism and the actual answer lies somewhere between. Only the willfully closed-minded couldn’t find something about Lil Wayne to like and only the willfully open-minded (which in reality, is just as bad) could think he’s anything close to a great rapper. I think Wayne’s positive abilities are for the most part, apparent, so I’d like to take some time to explain why Lil Wayne isn’t great while staying free of knee-jerk hatred…

So, real quick- there’s plenty to like about ‘Da Drought 3’. Lil Wayne is never boring and seems truly excited to rap. How many rappers remix a song they were already on, as he does on ‘We Takin’ Over Remix’? Weezy’s oft-quoted “…great Scott!/Storch can I borrow your yacht?” line is hilarious and self-deprecating. He throws-down his celebrity by saying he knows Scott Storch (which is only sort of cool to begin with and I think Wayne knows that) but he is also asking to borrow the dude’s yacht, meaning Wayne has no yacht of his own and if he’s not doing all that, then he’s just sort of making fun of Storch’s recent “new money”-esque fame which is also pretty great, right?

The “mixtape” has countless moments like this but I don’t know how far that will take him. He’s fun to talk about and discuss but listening to him doesn’t feel quite as fulfilling. On the Ciara remake ‘Promise’, Wayne conjures a funny mix of sincerity and creepiness but I’m not sure if it’s any good. Therein lies the problem with Lil Wayne: his ideas are better in explanation than execution. Paradoxically, rappers often get more praise for what they try to do, even if they fail, than when they actually accomplish what they set out to do. That is because a weird idea that is fully-developed, ends up pretty complex and therefore, harder to pinpoint in an 800-word review.

Devin the Dude’s mix of sincerity, comedy, and creepiness is so well-rendered, so weirdly detail-oriented, that explaining it almost always feels like you’re slighting the Dude. Wayne on the other hand, can be explained in writer-ly sound bites because what he is trying to do is never actually fulfilled in the song. There’s enough there to be impressed by, but it never gets too complex, allowing writers to project whatever they want upon the songs. Rather than stuff that is actually good, writers often like stuff that is good “in theory” and Lil Wayne is good in theory.

It is one thing to make a bunch of really sick mixtapes but it’s another thing to drop really great albums. This may sound like the “if he can’t freestyle he’s not a great MC” rule but I chalk Wayne’s lack of classic albums to one thing: fear. Afraid to alienate any aspect of his audience, he tries to precariously balance between rap radio and weirdo rap-nerd “lyricism” often using his albums for more normal stuff and mixtapes for the weirdo stuff. Everybody wins on this deal except Wayne himself, who seems a bit uncomfortable on either side.

The mixtapes complement Wayne’s numerous guest-spots and meh-to-good albums. Again, nothing wrong with that, but it feels like he’s too concerned with maintaining a certain level of fame and success to go all-out on an album, so he goes all-out on a mixtape and gets a lot of praise for it. The only mixtapes people care about are the good ones! There’s not a lot of pressure to make a good mixtape because most of them are horrible! Expectations are lowered and when you make one that is even kinda listenable, it stands out.

He’s having it both ways and that actually prevents him from being a truly great rapper. He sounds perpetually compromised, never sure whether to talk about eating a star or eating pussy and somehow unable to reconcile the two. At the same time, it’s why he might be able to become a great rapper. The greatest rappers maintain a sense of balance between so-called “true” fans and pop music fans but right now, Wayne’s is less a balance and more, a schizophrenia.

He has a hard-time navigating between personas; his lyrics are either some crazy surfer stoner shit or the same ‘CASH-MONEY’ style gun talk he’s been spitting for years. I don’t mind either, I can enjoy both, but it seems like Wayne either wears one hat or the other; he has a hard time synthesizing the two the way Wu Tang or even, Dipset can. It doesn’t feel like a rapper in-transition or anything, it’s a rapper with two discordant personalities, both of which often feel a little contrived. I think everyone’s assumption is that the weirdo stuff is more sincere than the gun-talk but I question the intentions of both.

Remember, a year ago when ‘Hustlin’ and ‘Kick, Push’ were two of the bigger songs on the radio? Knowing I’m “supposed” to be happy something like ‘Kick, Push’ is on the radio, I still couldn’t help but think: “I’m not sure which of these guys is more full of shit…” I get the same feeling from Lil Wayne, I feel obligated to embrace some of his stuff but I still can’t drum up the right amount of enthusiasm. Whether he’s rapping for the Pitchfork set or gun-talk it feels kind of calculated.

Charles Burnett’s ‘Killer of Sheep’
Charles Burnett’s ‘Killer of Sheep’, completed in 1973, sort-of released in 1977, has since then, been an unavailable film-dork rarity. The movie’s legend grew as it won a few awards and was declared a “national treasure” by the Library of Congress, yet there were still major obstacles preventing a commercial release. A black-made film about working-class blacks and absent of guns, gangs, and violence and equally absent of overt politicizing is not very marketable. Furthermore, because Burnett made the movie for film school and not for public consumption, he developed an idiosyncratic soundtrack without the consideration of legal music rights issues.

A few years ago, Milestone Films stepped-in and began the campaign to for ‘Killer of Sheep’s official release. They obtained most of the music rights and restored the movie. A few weeks ago, I was able to see ‘Killer of Sheep’ at the Maryland Film Festival, with the heads of Milestone presenting along with the lead actor Henry Saunders.

‘Killer of Sheep’ takes the rawness of the era’s blaxploitation films but leaves behind their violent stereotypes. The movie is without plot, instead providing loosely connected vignettes and scenes in early 70s Compton/Watts. It is framed around Stan, who works at a slaughterhouse, and his wife and children. Nothing big happens, no one dies, no big secrets revealed. As a lazy writer, I want to drop a grotesque cliché about how the film is about “regular people” and move on, but that’s not accurate. Burnett’s movie is about people one might actually meet but the implication of “regular people” is a romanticization or idealization of the regular, which it is not.

Nothing is idealized in Burnett’s movie. Children do not play peacefully or even, wildly organized as they do in other movies, they run around and kick up dust and throw rocks and yell things that you can barely understand. One of my favorite moments is one where Burnett, during a scene of children playing, holds on a little boy standing on a roof, hit by a rock, just standing there crying. Burnett holds on the boy, who grips his arm as he tears up but we do not hear his crying or the continued playing of the indifferent children we only hear the soundtrack playing (I think) Faye Adams’ ‘Shake a Hand’. Another scene shows Stan’s daughter singing along to Earth, Wind, and Fire’s ‘Reasons’, her voice mixed as high as the song’s.

I fear that even these scenes denote sentimentality that isn’t present in the film. Maybe it’s the black and white film, and Burnett’s tentative hand-held camera, and the naturalistic acting, and the perfect mix of irony, sympathy, and empathy but ‘Killer of Sheep’ never feels cheap or sentimental. A scene early in the movie presents two characters approaching Stan in front of his house, asking if he would like to help them kill somebody for money. He angrily dismisses them and they respond first to him and then to Stan’s wife with the “I’m just getting’ mine” speech that stands in contrast to everything Stan works for and believes. The interaction is played-out in a realistic manner and so, the thugs’ speech is never too articulate or overtly evil and Stan is both proudly proclaiming his not being a criminal and growing angry/insecure because he sees why it would be easier to be a pimp or hired gun. The movie is a series of reversals and then re-reversals like this, confounding and frustrating viewers.

When I saw the movie, the inevitably uncomfortable after-movie discussion briefly devolved into a white woman suggesting that the movie enforced certain stereotypes and generally dismal “ghetto” living. She cited a scene where Stan and a friend purchase a car engine for Stan’s truck from a Pimp. He barters with the Pimp, eventually buying it for 15 dollars. Stan and friend carry the engine to the truck and as they place the engine on the bed of the truck, it smashes Stan’s friend’s finger. Stan is left humorously trying to balance it on the edge of the bed as his friend shakes his hand, bouncing up and down in pain. The friend, having just dropped an engine on his finger, is sort of done with carrying and tries to tell Stan it will be okay on the end of the bed which it obviously will not. Against his better judgment Stan does not argue, and they jump into the truck. A wide-shot reveals the engine teetering off the edge of the truck-bed and just as the truck begins moving, the engine falls and smashes in the street.

This woman cited this as portraying the stereotypical lack of intelligence of black people, which is what she wanted the scene to be about. A “knowing” viewer will find what looks like stereotypes all through the film. What the scene is really about is Stan’s kindness, his sympathy for his hurt-fingered friend extending so far that he doesn’t want to force the friend to move the engine even though he risks breaking the engine. Burnett plays with the audience as the scene is set-up like those unfortunate Little Rascals ‘Our Gang’ episodes (something like Stymie continually throwing a rock in a tree and it hitting him in the head), echoing these racist comedies but ultimately, having nothing to do with them. This outraged woman can only perceived black movies in terms of their supporting or negating a stereotype; she refuses to see the humanity and psychology of black characters.

The title ‘Killer of Sheep’ explicitly refers to Stan’s occupation in a slaughterhouse but I believe it also points towards Stan’s opposition to a sheep-like mentality. The first scene of the movie is Stan yelling at his older son for misbehaving. The son is something of a specter of trouble in the movie, fooling around, harassing his sister, not coming when his mother calls him; there’s a sense that this child, when he grows older, might become one of the unsavory pimps we see in the movie. Often those pimp characters are given startling close-ups and we see their eyes, eyes disinterested in care or hard work; dead eyes. After the movie Henry Saunders, who played Stan, discussed the visual parallels between the sheep’s eyes in the slaughterhouse scenes and the eyes of certain characters throughout the film. The pimps and criminals of the movie are the sheep, blind followers of a code, believing they are individuals because they don’t work a conventional job.

Of course, Burnett is also a killer of sheep, destroying the audience’s sheep-like gravitation towards simple answers and interpretations in regards to black movie-making. As I was watching, I thought about what I’ve read about the movie, the way it is said to be one of the most well-wrought portrayals of black people on film but about halfway through, it occurred to me that I don’t think there’s a movie about “average” white people this well-rendered either.

For theaters in your area showing ‘Killer of Sheep’: http://www.killerofsheep.com/screenings.html.

Does His Dad Call Him “Andy”?

-‘When The Avant-Garde Sold-Out’ (from ‘16 33 45 78′): Beezer B focuses on ‘New Grass’ by Albert Ayler and properly defends it from jazz elitists. ‘Music Is The Healing Force of the Universe’ from a year later, also on Impulse!, is not as hated-upon as ‘New Grass’ but also kinda slept-on.

-Instant Club Hit: I’ve been meaning to link this for a while but I haven’t done one of these lazy-type posts in a few weeks. Dude has a bunch of old and old-ish Baltimore club mixes and stuff.

-The new Kanye video is cool, the colored smoke and Kanye with this pretty nice jacket on is awesome but overall, it’s a bit too much. Like a perfume commercial. Maybe if the Siren-like women were removed. I love when the Lamborghini drives up. Also, the strange, stutter-y editing reminds me of the Vincent Gallo-directed videos for John Frusciante. Especially because, unless Kanye is watching movies like this (and he could be), ‘Touch The Sky’ seems highly influenced by Gallo’s ‘The Brown Bunny’.

I like that the video is basically a performance video, but Kanye’s mugging and strained looks at the beginning are a little painful. The song is growing on me though. Once you pull it out of its context- or the context I placed it in- as Kanye’s big new single and it just becomes another song on the radio with a video, what Kanye is doing with it become a bit more clear. The same could be said of the video…what video looks like this? I wish Kanye’s bring back a little of his humor though. The ‘Touch The Sky’ is just as self-aggrandizing but also self-depricating.

I’m not big on fusion and I think artists are usually more effective and yes, more creative, when they sort of mine the same territory over and over. Or if they do choose to experiment, they don’t lose their original sound or sense of self, which I feel like Kanye has in just about everything post-’College Dropout’. But at the same time, that new Common song ‘People’ has a pretty good beat, so Kanye can make that stuff still…he just chooses to make fake-brooding rap? I don’t understand.

“He looks like a gay man with down syndrome”-Monique

picture from Dante Ross…

-’Party Like A Rockstar’ has a really, really, great video. I like the washed-out 70s-ish film stock. The song itself is still endlessly entertaining and when you listen to it, it’s like you’ve entered into a bizarro world where rap music has been the mainstay and there’s this new, crazy trend called rock n’roll. The Shop Boyz’s appropriation of stuff like “Totally dude” and their (on-purpose) misunderstanding of rockers (Marilyn Manson on a yacht, and talking about crowd-surfing like it’s a brand new trend) makes it feel like some sort of quick cash-in on rock. It’s like the ‘Walk This Way’ video and even song, were in reverse and Run DMC were letting Aerosmith in. It’s like when weird stuff like Christian television co-opts rap or graffiti or something to try to look cool, but they get it totally wrong. ‘Party Like A Rockstar’ is like if those Christians were into rap and were using rock as a cash-in device. Remember MC Rove? It’s like Karl Rove knew about rap music and was trying to act like a rocker.

CRAZY BRANDON’S RECORD EXTRAVAGANZA SALE
-Also, I need money because I’m going to school this summer. I’m selling some records. I will probably put them on ebay next week, but I figured I’d put them on here and give some readers a first shot if interested. Just e-mail me a price if interested and I bet we can work something out…


RAP RECORDS
-Mobb Deep – Juvenile Hell Promo-Only LP (4th & Broadway) – Plays fine, no scratches or anything. The cover is a Promo sleeve so it’s just black with the ‘4th and Broadway’ logo on it and a sticker with the name of the album and production credits.

-Mobb Deep – Murda Muzik LP (Loud Records) – Double-LP, good condition. Plays fine.

-Madlib – Beat Konducta Vol 1: Movie Scenes LP (Stones Throw) – Plays perfectly. Only listened to once or twice.

-Dr. Dre – The Chronic LP (Death Row) – Plays fine but does have some surface-y nicks and stuff.

-DJ Afrika Bambaataa – Death Mix 1 LIVE! Live! Live! – This is what looks like a bootleg copy of the first Death Mix LP. ‘Death Mix 2′ was recently re-released on CD and LP, this is the first one. The cover is a photocopy of the original front and back cover glued to a blank, white LP sleeve. The record itself has a ‘Paul Winley’ label…if you go to ebay I think the exact record I’m selling is going for like 10 bucks…this isn’t a rare original or anything.

ROCK/SOUL/EXPERIMENTAL
-Otis Redding – Live in Europe LP (Volt Records) – Cover looks like it’s from 1967, which it is. Record is in good condition though.

-Keith Fullerton Whitman – Antithesis LP (Kranky) – Played only a couple of times.

-Jerry Butler – Offering the Spice of Life LP (Mercury Records) – Double LP, has ‘One Night Affair’ on it among others. Plays fine.

-Bob Dylan – Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid OST LP (Columbia) – Plays fine. Good condition.

JAZZ
-Charlie Parker – Volume II Archive of Folk & Jazz LP (Everest Records) – Good condition. Plays fine.

-Oscar Peterson – Something Warm LP (Verve) – Cover a little messed-up but plays fine.

Sun Ra Records!!!
All of these are originals; no re-releases. Some of them are later releases of stuff originally on the El Saturn label and stuff like that, but all of them are 70s or earlier.

Label: EL Saturn
These are on colored vinyl sleeves with a photocopied cover and track listing taped on. Looking them up in pricing books they are pretty rare. All of them are in very good condition.

-Discipline 99
-Disco 3000
-The Invisible Shield (missing back-cover track-listing)

Label: ABC Impulse
-The Nubians of Plutonia
-Bad & Beautiful
-Jazz in Silhouette

Others Labels
-Sun Ra and his Arkestra – Live at Montreux (Inner City)
-Sun Ra and his Arkestra – The Solar Myth Approach Vol. 1 (Affinity)
-Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Research Arkestra – It’s After the End of the World (BASF?)
-Sun Ra – The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra II (ESP Disk)
-Sun Ra – Sun Song (Delmark Records)
-Sun Ra – St. Louis Blues Solo Piano (IAI Records)

Some Movies Rappers Should Reference Instead of ‘Scarface’.
SOHH listed a news item about a new Deniro/Pacino movie, inexplicably asking Styles P what he thought about this new, exciting movie. The item smacks of forced marketing; hyping a movie that isn’t overtly rap-related in content, using a rapper for a quote, etc. but nevertheless, Styles P’s comments were pretty interesting.

Styles discusses both actors’ appeal to “young impoverished people in the ghetto” citing their roles as “characters who came from nothing to become something” and suggesting that this shows they “understand the mentality of the poor”. You’re thinking ‘Goodfellas’ or ‘Scarface’ (or I was), but instead, Styles cites ‘Taxi Driver’ and a relatively obscure Pacino movie ‘The Panic in Needle Park’. These comments reminded me of my OhWord entry about Prodigy and blaxploitation. In it, I said Prodigy’s invocation of the Fred Williamson vehicle ‘Black Caesar’ makes more sense than the constant references to ‘Scarface,’ a quality but over-the-top cartoon of a movie. Most rap songs are not wish fulfillment but blow-by-blow descriptions, reflecting the minor victories of movies like ‘Superfly’ or ‘Black Caesar’ rather than the million dollars success of Tony Montana.

As a continuation of my post and a complement to Styles P’s comments, here’s a list of movies that rappers should probably start referencing…

Born To Win (1971).

Rap Album Equivalent: ‘Just Tryin Ta Live’ by Devin the Dude.

A former hairdresser now heroin addict named simply “J” putts around New York with his black friend Billy Dynamite, in search of drugs. More a series of scenes than a cohesive plot, ‘Born to Win’ is held together only by J, a hyper-charming piece of shit who always ends up on top. The movie can go from being deadly serious to ‘Benny Hill’ comedy and it all sort of works. At different points you feel like you’re watching different movies. When I first read that Styles P quote, this was the first movie I thought to add to this list. Although it doesn’t star Deniro or Pacino, Deniro has a very small part as an undercover cop. Available in a crappy but affordable discount DVD.

If you liked this try… Christiane F. (1981) – Teenage drug addicts in Berlin run around to David Bowie music!

Mean Streets (1973)

Rap Album Equivalent: ‘Return to 36 Chambers’ by Ol’ Dirty Bastard

You probably know about this one and maybe you even turned it off because you were expecting something closer to ‘Goodfellas’ well…give it another try. Deniro’s Johnny Boy is perhaps his most well-rendered “psycho” character, at least on par with ‘Taxi Driver’ as the acting never grows cartoonish or dependent upon indicating. When you see him blow up a mailbox with firecrackers all the way to the scene where he calls the bookie a “jerkoff”, kind of sealing his fate, there’s nothing like this wild performance. The movie is also full of really funny scenes that counter the menace that underscores it all: One of the neighborhood thugs shows everyone the tiger (?!) he bought and the scene grows even more absurd when the thug kisses the tiger like a puppy. Also the “mook” debate is pretty classic.

If you liked this try…Hi Mom! (1969) – One of the first movies by ‘Scarface’ director Brian DePalma and also starring Deniro.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Rap Album Equivalent: ‘What’s On My Mind’ by Dayton Family

Still derided as excessively violent and misogynistic (sound familiar?), Sam Peckinpah’s movie feels as stumbling drunk and fucked-up as the main character. Loser bar owner Benny (Warren Oates) needs money and takes up a reward for the titular head of Alfredo. Much of the movie is Benny driving around, in an increasingly bloodied/dirtied white suit, in shades, talking to the decapitated head of Alfredo and shooting everybody. Completely hopeless and fully aware of it, Benny comes off as a sort of brave, devoted, unfuckwithable loser. Maybe the best movie ever made?

If you liked this try…Cockfighter (1974) – Also starring Warren Oates, this time as a cockfighter who has taken a vow of silence until he wins ‘Cockfighter of the Year’.
Fingers (1978)

Rap Album Equivalent: ‘Resurrection’ by Common

Harvey Keitel plays the son of a pianist mother and a loan shark father (played by the dude who plays Pentangeli in ‘Godfather II’), unsure of which parent to follow. Sex-obsessed and conflicted beyond hope, Keitel’s Jimmy Fingers fucks girls, listens to doo-wop and classical music, auditions for piano recitals, and kicks the asses of deadbeats. Also interesting for quick appearances by a couple of dudes later to be on ‘The Sopranos’ and Jim Brown…rent it if only for the scene where Brown forces two girls to kiss and bangs their heads together!

If you liked this try… Five Easy Pieces (1970) – Another, earlier movie about a rogue male who is good at the piano.

Straight Time (1978)

Rap Album Equivalent: ‘Ain’t a Damn Thing Changed’ by Nice & Smooth.

Based on the book ‘No Beast So Fierce’ written by Edward Bunker (Mr. Blue in ‘Reservoir Dogs’), starring Dustin Hoffman as Max as a guy out of prison trying to go straight. At the mercy of his corrupt, asshole Parole Officer, Max ends up back in jail. When he gets back out, he steals his P.O’s car, handcuffs the P.O to a sign on the side of the road with his pants down (no really, he does!) and goes back to doing what he knows best: robbing jewelry stores.. Shot in realistic L.A locations with a bunch of good characters actors like Harry Dean Stanton and Gary Busey, ‘Straight Time’ glides along scene-by-scene, primarily concerned with detail and psychology over likeability and moral judgment.

If you liked this try…Straw Dogs (1971)– also starring Hoffman and from the same director as ‘Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia’; basically a movie about how sometimes violence is necessary.

Thief (1981)

Rap Album Equivalent: ‘Murda Muzik’ by Mobb Deep

The first feature by Michael Mann, who later made ‘Heat’ and ‘Miami Vice’ among others. ‘Thief’ stars James Caan as Frank, a professional thief with vague hopes of going straight. Caan is in full Sonny Corleone acting mode, speaking in contraction-less blurts of anger and just generally seeming awesome. An atmospheric electronic score by Tangerine Dream and a slow pace punctuated by scenes of violence and Caan rants, ‘Thief’ is what ‘Scarface’ should be.

If you liked this try…The Gambler (1974) – from the writer of ‘Fingers’ and also starring James Caan.

Paid Bloggers Are Assholes.
More than one person emailed or messaged me about Sean Fennessey’s entry that popped-up a few days after I posted this which, he left a comment on. I read the entry and got a little tinge of “fuck is thiisssss??” but blew it off because my first thought was “hang on to your ego, B”…but then, some other people mentioned it to me and I noticed a comment by a guy with an amazing ’Grandma’s Boy reference in his blogger name and the ever-supportive Kwis (speaking of which, hit me up for that song you mentioned, or IM: Fassbinder666) agreeing that the entry was kind of a rip. It’s not so much that the post was a rip which is fine, I liked that it was response, the sort of the “dialogue” I intended, and I certainly can’t take credit for the concept of “canon” but dude could’ve linked me… I know Mr. Fennessey is too busy interviewing Robin Thicke to cite sources, but when your entry is about the relative lack of quality in rap-writing/blogging (which are the same thing whether you like it or not) it might help to do some basic stuff like, cite sources. The entry also suffers from being pretty safe and at points, downright passive-aggressive. I know you professionals are more civilized and know where to put those daggone commas and whatnot, but it seems a little weak to talk in circles and cute one-liners (unless you’re writing for ‘Rolling Stone’ which none of you are, yet)…

Then, today, I woke up to see this. All I’m asking for is a link. Not because I’m obsessed with comment or reader numbers but just because. I also thought paid rap-blogging was a little less, well, bullshit than other divisions between “mainstream” and “underground” (knowing those terms are hyper-relative in the microscopic world of rap-blogging). It seems that just like well, everything, those with power often take without credit from those who are scrappin’ for google ads…

Noz, like John Milton, another radical who thought he was a conservative, is “of the devil’s party without knowing it” (that’s William Blake if you’re looking for source-citing): calling out iconoclasm and days later, giving props to D4L. This, if done by certain other bloggers would be evidence of their unworthiness on-par with misinterpreting a Devin the Dude song. GASP! Personally, I love it because D4L’s album is kind of good but it all seems like opinion masquerading as fact.

So, which devil’s party am I talking about? Well, primarily the one that doesn’t give a fuck about tradition; I just wish he’d admit that and not pretend to be a traditionalist. He’s also of the devil’s party of paid asshole bloggers. Posting on old-ass message boards doesn’t retain any street cred because, you’re a blogger, there’s no such thing as street cred! If one more blogger goes “gully” I might seriously go get my box-cutter. “Say it to my face” and threats of violence or fighting are so fucking retarded. You, me, we (?) sit at our laptops and write about rap music! It’s not cool. It’s not hard. Most rappers aren’t cool or hard either.

For all the ranting and raving by bloggers about rap’s lack of quality and its increasing irrelevance due to a reliance on cliché, you’d think the bloggers themselves wouldn’t act like 50 Cent. Tara Henley, when not reminiscing about the time she talked to some kid born with his heart on the outside of his body about Biggie, is mentioning how she’s getting paid or the book she’s writing or some other bullshit. There’s a disgusting hint of that in Fennessey’s entry too, when he writes “dayjob” and throws-up a link to Vibe.com (which no one reads by the way). Noz too, envelopes himself in pseudo-beef by posting cowardly one-liners instead of properly defending his points, which I KNOW he could do, he’s just lazy. Speaking of lazy…does Byron Crawford ever say anything? Only in the super-sensitive world of rap-blogging could someone with loosely-Cosby-like views be considered “controversial”…

When Fennessey talks of people, as if he’s some ruler over his subjects, saying “people, for the most part, want to agree with each other” I would say I don’t think people like to agree as much as they don’t like to feel alone. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this until, UNTIL it becomes a bunch of jerkoffs talking about ‘Illmatic’ and how it’s better than anything else because well…everybody knows that already. Is this what Noz was trying to say? Dunno because like Fennessey, he won’t come out and say much of anything. In relation to ‘Illmatic’, I’ll turn your attention to this ,a post by my friend Chris. Granted, the thoughts are little well, esoteric, but his basic point was about the conflict of the “overrated” and ‘Illmatic’ is kinda overrated. It sounds fucking great, every beat, every rhyme, but Nas isn’t saying much of anything. Does anybody have an emotional attachment to the actual music or lyrics? Maybe getting blunted to a song or fucking your girl to a song but Nas’s little secret is he’s never had dick to say…he’ll drop some third-rate knowledge and get brownie points for it but that’s about all he can do. It’s a little safe, like Noz and Fennessey’s entries.

Paradoxically, their discussions of complacency and a lack of taste are articulated in two very complacent, uninvolved entries. Calling out mediocrity through incredibly mediocre entries seems a little…retarded? Bullshit? I don’t know. Every “top” list ends up pretty boring, you fucking idiots. That’s not the point. The point is the making of the lists, everyone saying different stuff, some agreeing, some not, and some people being really outrageous and that’s great! By definition, the end-list will be kinda mediocre.

No Trivia Presents iPOD Week, Part Four: Mike’s Mixes.

Mike also made mixes. When he’d come back home for Winter or Summer break, Mike, right before you left his house for the night, would silently stick a CD-R in your hand. Always ‘IMATION’ brand, always labelled by Genre, always in his, to quote Monique “small-ass handwriting”, always around 70 minutes containing 13-14 tracks. There would also often, be one or two tracks that sort of didn’t fit, like how the 80s mix has ‘Foreplay/Long Time’ on it…Looking back, they were almost like these conceptual art projects or something. Here are a few of them.
-Click here to download ‘rap’.
-Click here to download ’soul’.
-Click here to download ’80s’.
-This one was a year before the others, the writing’s a little bigger. Click here to download ‘prog’.

No Trivia Presents iPOD Week, Part Three: Death Mix.
To download my ‘Death Mix’ as a single mp3 click here.

About a month or so after the death of my friend Mike, Monique gave me a mix she made that, to put it simply, was about Mike’s suicide. It wasn’t a bunch of songs he liked or even really songs that “reminded” us of him; it was more of a narrative or story through songs, the feelings we had in the fall-out of someone shooting themselves and also some musical act of empathy getting into Mike’s brain and just maybe, maybe what he was feeling. It’s hard to explain. It was very affecting. Others write poems about their friends or make paintings or write songs, mix CDs worked as well…it moved me to make one too.

Monique and I discussed presenting what I’ve jokingly called “death mixes” for this iPOD week but a couple of hours ago decided it was not a good idea. She had more reservations than I. For whatever reason, I’m going back on that decision and presenting mine. I don’t think it will be “fun” reading but it’s gotta be at least interesting…

1. Goodie Mob – Serenity Prayer (from ‘Soul Food’)
I thought of this as a sort of ‘preface’ to the mix, just a quick piece of advice and acknowledgment of God or religion or spirituality because I feel that anything addressing death needs to also at least address religious-type things. This I felt, was particularly important on this mix because I am a vehement disbeliever and since the mix is in some way trying to be about (ahem) healing or understanding, me acknowledging religion would be a good idea. I’ve always been moved by the serenity prayer because of its connections to addiction and its sagacious truth. There’s shit you can control and shit you can’t and you better realize that and take care of your shit. Also, I can think of no one better than Goodie Mob and no album better than ‘Soul Food’ to present the mix of anger and empathy that I felt in the wake of Mike shooting himself.

At the funeral, I read a selection from ‘La Morte D’Arthur’ by Sir Thomas Malory, which invokes Jesus and questions of the after-life. I felt it was important to find something that did this instead of picking something super-personal. At the same time, I was reading it I was thinking about how I can only be moved by the writing as an idea not as truth. Two days after Mike’s suicide I was driving with my father discussing all of the events and he admitted to me what I expected for many years…that he too, wasn’t a believer. He told me about how, the night before, my mother had asked where my father thought Mike was; the word my Dad used was “wormfood”.

2. Pharcyde – Splatitorium (from ‘Labcabincalifornia’)
This is the true beginning of the mix. The Goodie Mob was like the scrolling text at the beginning of ‘Star Wars’ or something. The idea for this song was going back, to before Mike shot himself. It was supposed to invoke the strange feeling you often have with friends, having fun, like more fucking fun than you’ve ever had before but there’s something a little off about it and you sort of realize that and part of the fun is because maybe it is too much, maybe it is out of control…Life is nothing if the reality of death and wormfood are not constantly creeping in, to feel any other way is to be in denial. The song is about smoking weed and having a good time and joking around but it has sadness underneath it, particularly through the Vince Guaraldi samples in the beat. Perhaps it’s a bit too perverse but the word “splat” being in the title too seemed appropriate on a mix about a friend who took his own life with a shotgun.

3. Dmitri Shostakovich – Allegro Molto (from ‘String Quarter No. 8 in C Minor’)
This is supposed to be the point where I or even we, my friends, realized what probably happened. See, Mike hadn’t been answering his phone or emails for a few days which was odd because we all saw or talked on a daily basis, so we went up to his apartment to find his car caked with ice (all other cars had been scraped), a Chinese menu sitting in front of his door, and the sound of the DVD menu for ‘Thief’ playing loudly from his television. Repeated knocks were not answered and it was slowly setting in on all of us that something was really wrong. The strings are like a horror movie and that’s really what it was like. So horrible its over-the-top like the strings in this song, like, totally unreal. Mike’s fucking dead? What?

4. UGK – One Day (from ‘Ridin’ Dirty’)
The transition from the chaos of the Shostakovich to the sad, laid-back qualities of ‘One Day’ is a bit like the point where the death sinks-in and you still feel awful but you’ve accepted it…for me, it was leaving Mike’s apartment complex once the police officially told us they found his body and driving back home with my friends, not really saying much. Yep, it’s true one day you’re here and the next day you’re gone.

I cry every time I hear this song, I did before Mike died but now it’s even stronger. I know it’s different because Pimp C and Bun B are discussing the loss of friends often to street violence but their sentiments about death are universal. “I saw him once before he died, wish it was twice man” is exactly how I feel. Also the line, “So shit, I walk around with my mind blown in my fuckin’ zone” describes the feeling after someone dies and exactly the feeling I felt and still feel. When someone dies, especially to suicide, everyone is so fucking afraid of it, it’s annoying. They treat you like you put the shotgun in his mouth. They judge and get freaked-out because it’s a further denial of instability and chaos and insanity and death and all the shit they’d rather not think about.

5. Fabio Frizzi – Sequence 2 (from ‘Zombie OST’)
This is the sound of the couple of days after. Just feeling worn out, almost drugged…this has this great late-70s/early-80s warm synth tone that I love and associate with almost social-realest zombie movies like Fulchi’s ‘Zombie’ (from which this song comes) or ‘Dawn of the Dead’. The end of ‘River’s Edge’ one of Mike and all of my friends’ favorite movies sort of feels like this as well. I also think the synths have a strained quality that sort of sounds like the Shostakovich strings.

6. Lee Hazelwood – We All Make the Flowers Grow (from ‘Trouble Is A Lonesome Town’)
“Wormfood” in song form. This song was intended to interact with or even, counteract the vaguely religious aspects of the Goodie Mob intro. It is also here to counteract a certain melodrama or overwrought-ness that comes from this mix being so serious or even, self-serious. We all end up in the same place and the world keeps going and no one besides the people you know gives a shit. That’s reality.

The song is darkly funny but deadly serious as well, it’s resigned in a way, accepted the fact that there’s no God or order to anything and in that resignation, finds humor and at least, the strength to articulate that resignation and not get lost in it. It’s “just” a folk/country song but through Hazelwood’s voice and really smart lyrics, you can tell that he isn’t trying to shock you with his “wormfood” assertions, it’s the kind of belief he’s earned.

7. Ekkehard Ehlers – John Cassavetes 2 (from ‘Plays’)
I thought of this song as representing the viewing and funeral aspects of going through Mike’s suicide. Like the Shostakovich, it’s string-based and like that song I feel it’s a little over-the-top, a little unreal which is exactly what it’s like to be carrying your best friend’s coffin with your other best friends…and it just keeps going, you lose a sense of how long you’ve been listening to it or when it is going to end. The experience of listening to it is to be constantly in-the-moment, temporal, which is all you can do when something really horrible happens. You’re being led around and anything can trigger bad feelings and you’re in a room or a cemetery brought together because of someone’s death and one moment you’re talking to someone about him, the next you’re giving a hug to someone you barely even know, and the next you’re laughing your ass off telling some story about some hilarious shit he once did.

8. Goodie Mob – I Didn’t Ask To Come (from ‘Soul Food’)
The strings in this beat I thought, sort of continued the strings of Ehlers’ song. I know Goodie Mob are rapping about the impoverished and true victims of an unsympathetic system but there’s an emotionally-honest aspect to them that is perfectly kept in-line with their anger and insight. Cee-Lo’s verse is the obvious connection, as he describes attending a funeral: “As he laid in his final resting place/He has such a peaceful expression on his face” I don’t know if he intended to suggest it but I’ve always read that line as being about surprise and then reassurance in that surprise: Surprised that the corpse of his friend has a peaceful expression. I recall entering the funeral home and seeing, from outside of the room, Mike’s open-casket, a bandage over his eyes because (to be real) the shotgun blast probably ripped them out of his head. He didn’t have a peaceful expression but it was still a surprise to see his face becuase it wasn’t anything how I’d imagined it to look because you can’t really imagine what it will look like. It didn’t matter that he has tons of makeup on and that his forehead had an extra like, two inches on it because they had to sort of glue the top of his head back on, at least I was seeing his face one more time.

9. Talk Talk – New Grass (from ‘Laughing Stock’)
The transition here is mainly through the drums, so it’s like the beat of ‘I Didn’t Ask To Come’ morphs into the soft, near-jazz drumming of this Talk Talk song. I don’t even know what the hell the lyrics are to this song, they are more like a mumble and that allows one to project any kind of pathos one wants to project. The progression of the song, its slow build of piano and guitar and vague electronics felt to me, like the process of adjusting to life without your best friend. The song is never about like, absolution or something, at points it comes back down, like 3:20 in when the piano takes control for a few moments, and that’s like, just when you think you maybe sort of kind of have it figured out, it hits you again: “Fuck…”

10. Love – Be Thankful (For What You Got) (from ‘Real to Reel’)
Sort of an obvious pick, at least in message, but I liked the idea of going back to the didacticism of the intro track. Basically a secular version of the Serenity Prayer.

A Review of the Other Four Minutes of Kanye West’s ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’.

-Click here to download ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’…

With Kanye, one must assume everything he is doing is obsessively planned-out and choreographed so, marketing can’t be ignored. This song is pretty-good but it doesn’t feel like single material. This sounds like a good album cut. Perhaps this is the pre-single single, something that lately, occurs with some frequency… if you’re already a big-name artist, initially, on hype alone, just about anything you release will get attention and airplay so it’s smarter to hold-back on releasing the true hit. With music sales down, it is now necessary to keep that album alive beyond that initial wave of hype. Think of how Beyonce’s album was sort of underwhelming until the third single or how the first Jeezy single was a safe ‘What You Know’ ripoff. Oddly enough, ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’ is sort of a ‘What You Know’ ripoff too but I don’t feel like this is going to blow-up and I have a feeling that’s sort of the idea. This puts Kanye’s name out there and hints at what ‘Graduation’ will sound like but he’s not giving it all up. The second single will be the ‘All Falls Down’ or ‘Gold Digger’ of ‘Graduation’.

The Jeezy referencing and the overall Southern sound might also be something of a “marketing” choice, but it’s also an active way to acknowledge the presence and importance of Southern rap. I like the idea of Kanye digging new music instead of actively opposing it; you can just imagine Kanye getting really excited by the production because, although he plays it down in certain ways, he is as much a rap fan as a rapper. His ears seem open to what has happened and what is going on in rap. He probably heard ‘What You Know’ and ‘I Luv It’ and got as excited by Toomp’s crazy synths as all the rap dorks! Kanye’s quick reference to ‘T.R.O.Y’ or those Jeezy ad-libs are fun but like the best Kanye stuff, they aren’t just fun, they have some weight attached. Tossing in those much-derided adlibs is almost an approval of them or at least, a non-condescending acknowledgement that they are now a part of rap. The ‘T.R.O.Y’ line is rap-fan homage but putting it in a song that also references Jeezy is creating a rap timeline rather than some kind of rap bell-curve or something. The reference also has real emotional weight to it, capturing some sliver of the elegiac sense of that Pete and C.L classic: “Your homies lookin’ like “Why God?” when they reminisce over you, my God.”

Kanye’s intentions are good, there are a lot of ideas rushing through ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’ and it’s refreshing to hear something with an abundance of ideas on the radio, but the actual execution is a little bumpy. The slow, Jeezy-like rapping fits the beat and makes sense, but Kanye’s lyrics aren’t really up to par. Kanye went through a significant change between ‘College Dropout’ and ‘Late Registration’; he became a much better rapper in technical terms but he got lazy with his lyrics. He depends a lot more on obvious juxtapositions, especially ones between material wealth and spiritual wellness, signifier-less name-brand referencing, and borderline pointless “clever” lines like “If the devil wear Prada/Adam and Eve wear nada”. It isn’t bad and it’s more engaging than a lot of rappers but there’s just something a little empty about it all. I don’t see what it is moving towards. He also tends to list things (“The drama, People suing me”) which takes me back to like, 11th grade creative writing class. Sad girls. Writing like this. Short fragments. Annoying. There’s some good stuff, the Fabolous-like line “Don’t ever fix your lips like collagen/Say something you gonna end up apologin” and the double-parking line, but the overall content seems a little uninspired and the delivery doesn’t help because it’s so slow that you really do end up focusing on the just-sort-of-okay lyrics. I think if Kanye blasted through the lyrics over a faster beat, his lyrical indiscretions wouldn’t stand out so much. Lines like “How you move in a room full of nose/How you stay faithful in a room full of hoes” would take on a certain power and resonance if delivered with more enthusiasm. The slow, enunciated, motivational speaker-style works for Jeezy because Jeezy never tries to be “lyrical” in the least. He sort of doesn’t have another choice in how to rap if he’s going to sound at all presentable. Kanye could run through these lines and they would sort of build and build; he wouldn’t need to affect an “intense” voice to sell them as Jeezy must do.

The beat too, is a little underwhelming, the sample is actually really strong, especially when he lets it play-out at crucial points, but another DJ Toomp synth beat is only cool when you’re not given the option of hearing something better. I mean, Kanye could create something way cooler than this, so I almost feel cheated. Here is where being less famous really does help creativity. If Kanye was still making beats for the Roc or even in his basement, he would hear ‘I Luv It’ and try to copy the sound he liked and it inevitably, would come out sort of weird and original. It would be someone else’s sound filtered through Kanye’s ear and musicality. When he “bit the drums off ‘Xxplosive” it came out weird because Kanye had to work to rip them off, he couldn’t call up Dr. Dre. Why is Kanye afraid to make shit that sounds like his old shit (spoken like a true, reactionary fan, I know)? I sympathize with the want to expand one’s sound and I’d like to think I’d be “okay” with a noble failure but I feel like very few creative ideas come out of these collaborations, it’s more like border-line fusion. I’ve never for a second thought about a Kanye/DJ Toomp collabo and I’m seriously dreading the Chris Martin of Coldplay collabo. Maybe Common should call Chris Martin the new Chris Martin?

Ultimately, the close-scrutiny I’m applying is the result of it being a single. As a song, it’s pretty good and I can imagine certain lines and sonic details (there are some subtle and effective sounds that pop-up if you listen with headphones) creeping up in the context of an album. Kanye, acknowledging some of his awards-show assholisms is interesting, even if it is a bit cloying and although I wish it were less defensive, the lines “I guess money should’ve change him’/I guess I should’ve forgot where I came from” are accurate in that, Kanye gets a lot of shit for sticking it out there. He hasn’t really grown complacent and although some of his “controversial” actions are safe, he certainly didn’t need to go on television and say “George Bush doesn’t like black people”; I still believe that comes from his heart, just like this song, for better and worse I guess.

No Trivia Presents iPOD Week, Part Two: Monique’s Playlist With Potential.

-Click here to download this mix.

For iPOD week, I agreed to “de-lurk” and take on some writing because I am a fellow Ipod owner. I have a veteran scroll wheel model from 2004. Ultimately, I’m not really sure what I think about the iPOD as a product. It seems like I’ve always had a way to make my music portable. My mom bought me my first portable tape player for Christmas when I was about 4. I can only recall two tapes that I listened to on the regular: Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ and the Oliver and Company soundtrack, specifically ‘Why Should I Worry?’ by Billy Joel (probably a thousand times). I’d say both of those things are still true to my taste…and looking back at my mom’s tape collection, other aspects of my taste are vaguely illuminated. Tapes like: Billy Ocean ‘Tear Down These Walls’, Bell Biv DeVoe ‘Poison’, Freddie Jackson ‘Just Like The First Time’, U2 ‘Joshua Tree’, Anita Baker ‘Giving You the Best That I Got’, Nelson ‘After the Rain’, Bobby Brown ‘Don’t Be Cruel’…these are among the many…you get the idea. I don’t know how many of these tapes actually were my dad’s (who was out of the picture pretty early on) but I vividly remember sitting on the floor while he was listening to records and on other occasions, watching him play the bongos in one of his many “jam” sessions with his two younger brothers.

Anyhow, I eventually ported my music around with a portable CD player (very inefficient battery usage) and then a mini-disc player (very efficient battery usage). So, in ’04…the Ipod was the logical progression of portability. Honestly, I don’t actually use it that much…but find it is really worth the money in combination with Bose noise-canceling headphones the night before a test or during plane rides. Most students on my college campus walk/run/bike with the ear bud headphones but I find that whenever I try to walk to class or just walk around with my headphones (not ear buds because they are horrible), I am always compulsively changing the track. So- to remedy this- I load mix CDs from friends or organize playlists of my own.

I consider these playlists that usually become mix CDs to be pretty personal. But it’s Ipod week…which means its mp3 (or AAC for all of you that haven’t learned how to change that) week…which is inherently connected with SHARING. The making of a true mix is an ‘art’. I completely agree with Jim Breihan when he says: “With my mixes I like to tell a story or at least make a point. I also don’t see the point of making a mix if it’s not going to have a diverse mix of music on it.”

Last summer, my friend asked me to make her a mix CD. She has since gone to France for the year and I haven’t had a chance to physically give it to her. So, it just exists as a playlist on my iTunes. With the CD, I was trying to explain rap music, why I like it, and how even though it is, now, a “mainstream” form of music, it is just as abstract (sometimes this translates to “cool”) as other less known forms of music. I had a bit of a “reality moment” last summer about my friends and I.. I was with four of my best female friends and not one of them (including the one who is African-American, like really, she was born here, her parents are from Nigeria) knew who Rick Ross was. It was in that moment that I realized just how much explaining I had to do…and not just about Rick Ross… but about rap. But there were questions too…what makes me different from these four broads that I consider my closest friends? Is it possible to be friends with someone who doesn’t understand rap?

We went to the same high school that was over 50 percent non-white…we attended the same school dances that played nothing BUT rap. In a hopeful rush of a moment, I impulsively (like most things in my life, including the writing of this entry) decided that I was going to try to explain rap, as I know it, to my friend.

‘untitled playlist’
1. Consequence ft. Kanye West, Common, Talib Kweli- ‘Wack Niggas’ (from ‘Take Em’ To The Cleaners Mixtape’)
The primary motivation for this, being the first track, was to ease my friend into this. I think it’s a track that’s really easy to like and goes with the way my friends view me. She would expect a song like this from me. Since high school, I have always been viewed as an “asshole”, so much so, that the friend in that this mix is for used to not talk to me. I think she understands this more now and I am a lot less angry and a little happier than I was in high school so it works out.

This track is legitimately hilarious. The mention of a Chrysler Sebring is so great. It’s also one of those jokes that you have to be on the level of the person saying it to get it. And that is sort of what I am proposing, as well, by using this as the first track. Sort of a message to Christine…saying that we could be on the same page and she could understand my Rick Ross jokes if she wanted to…
Side note: I like how Talib tends to be a better rapper when he doesn’t have creative control of the song. Annoying.

2. Fennesz- ‘Herbert Missing’ (from ‘Hotel Parallel’)
This is a really short, almost interlude-like song. As for the storyline of this mix, it is supposed to set the tone for the next song by representing the way one feels after saying something shitty about another person. It’s ALWAYS more complicated than criticisms.

In my post high school world, I have a heightened consciousness of how I impact those around me. Admittedly, I feel pretty horrible after I (again usually impulsively) say something mean. Like the one time, I yelled out the window to an asshole driver in a mini-cooper something about how he was Asian….Although laughing at the memory, I am completely aware of why that is a bad look. Even if the guy really wasn’t pulling up for someone to make a turn and holding up 6 cars worth of traffic…

3. The Dramatics- ‘Hey You! Get Off My Mountain’ (from ‘The Best of the Dramatics’)
I thought it was pretty important to make the connection between soul music and rap music in addition to the connection that I am inadvertently (at least initially) making with electronic music. Giving Christine the benefit of the doubt, I decided against including any more soul songs…assuming, she would get it.

The production in this song is by far what makes it what it is. It truly does sound magical. And again, in relation to the story line, its sort of supposed to be the “shook” feeling that I get post-being a jerk….and empathizing with the person that I potentially just made feel like shit.

4. Tim Hecker- ‘Neither More Nor Less’ (from ‘Mirages’)
I wasn’t aware that this was one of dead friend’s favorite songs because we never talked about this CD together but this song now, subjectively, has more meaning than it did when I first put it on this mix.

5. Masami Akita & Russell Haswell- ‘Fend Off Your Miserable Grief’ (from ‘Satanstornade’)
Tracks four and five were originally supposed to (I don’t think she (Christine) would have caught on to this without explanation) sort of illustrate/earn the idea that the person saying the shitty thing can feel equally as shitty as the person receiving the comment about making the comment. This seems like nothing, at first, or unskilled but the more you listen to it the less you are concerned with understanding it. And that is the same chain of understanding that sort of makes me feel like shit after I say something crappy. I try really hard at first to try to figure out things like: “why did I say that?”, “how does that person feel now?” etc. Then, it’s just a weird confused feeling because saying mean shit is supposed to make you feel better (or it did in middle school).

6. Brian Eno – ‘Here Come the Warm Jets’ (from ‘Here Come The Warm Jets’)
Sort of the beginning of going full circle with the idea…in that, ultimately, it doesn’t really matter about being a jerk. Primarily, this song was chosen because it’s certainly a sort of epic song that has to be earned on a mix CD and Christine has never heard it. It’s definitely, in my opinion, one of the best songs ever made.

7. Three 6 Mafia- ‘Niggaz Ain’t Barin’ That’ (from ‘Triple-Six Underground Vol. 1)
I absolutely love this song and it is over six minutes long. About three weeks ago, I was listening to this song particularly loud in my dorm room and my roommate came back. She was very confused. But she has probably caught on more over these two semesters than I think Christine ever will even after hearing this mix CD. Recently, my roommate has been into James Blunt and Baby Boy Da Prince. Although, my roommate calls rap music “ghetto music” and that is not a good look. But I don’t really know how to explain that to her…other than to say what she says all the time: “erroneous”…and hope she doesn’t say it to the wrong person.

8. Consequence ft. Rhyme Fest- ‘Yard 2 Yard’ (from ‘ Take Em’ To The Cleaners Mixtape’)
These last two songs are what I am considering the meat and potatoes of this mix. I am trying to give Christine, after getting through 6 minutes of just noise and 6 minutes of “niggaz ain’t barin that”, what I think she really wants. The song is about connection even if you’re in different areas, still being close without being close in location. Therefore, the song was fitting at the time because she was leaving for France in a couple weeks and I wanted to encourage, in a friendly way, that its great that she was doing her own thing (some of my other friends were a little disappointed that she was leaving for a whole year). “I’ll put an AK to work for a friend of me” – as a representation of my dedication to our friendship on some hilarious level that would probably end up offending her rather than communicating this message. I think its really awful when friends are sad or annoyed because you are leaving. I think it’s really important, in regard to relationships in general, for people to continue to experience different things. It keeps the conversations interesting and forces people to, at least slightly, evolve their sensibilities. Allowing people to do their own thing is certainly much more affecting than a mix CD.

9. Cam’ron ft. Juelz Santana- ‘Hey Ma’ (from ‘Come Home With Me’)
Ultimately, I think/thought this is what Christine wants. Poppy song…sort of has the exact feeling of “hanging out”…sort of an “anything can happen” feeling. But, in retrospect, I think Christine would have thought something like Atmosphere, Murs, RJd2, or Sage Francis..and maybe she would have gotten that if this mix was coming from Monique, junior year of high school…but I couldn’t afford to compromise my taste that much for the sake of a learning curve.

Maybe I wouldn’t have ever taken the time to truly explain this to her the way I have here…but that’s sort of why all this is stupid. I don’t think I can really make someone understand why rap music is good…its just sort of something one has to “know”. And, I know for a fact that Chrisine’s parents didn’t listen to the same music that mine did. Her dad is a college professor and local folk musician who specializes in the harp…my dad is sort of a dead-beat that grew up in Gary, Indiana and now is a free-lance artist in the Ft. Myers area of Florida. These things make for two different types of people and I think it’s important (now, I’ve got it) that you understand that sometimes people just aren’t going to understand things the way that you do (or understand you or your actions).

So, I don’t think that I was successful in what I was trying to “teach”. Not only because we are two people with different sensibilities but because I really don’t know if my friend will ever even hear this CD and I’m sure that if I did give it to her when I said I was going to, it would have ended up as just a bunch of random songs on her computer that might come up in a iPOD party shuffle…and that is sort of where the Ipod brings us today…which is, I spend all this time planning this (what I perceive as) involved explanation of rap music…and it ends up on a level playing field with stuff like Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart and even, a Django Reinhardt CD I let her borrow to put on her computer.

A Review of the First Thirty Seconds of Kanye West’s ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’

Click here to download ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing (Snippet)…

Time: 00:00-00:05
For a first single, this song has a strange start, those weird, out-of-tune, acappella la-la-las are pretty off-putting. When he sings “Wait til’ I get my money right” it sounds humorously out-of-tune, like a little kid singing about his money. I think this what he is going for: Kanye, the arrogant rapper singing about his money, right? Sort of.

Only “sort of” because the focus is on what to do with that money, it’s not exactly bragging. Just as ‘Gold Digger’ is the negative side of the girls one gets from fame and ‘Touch the Sky’ narrates, among other things, the dissolution of his pre-fame relationship, this song is hinting towards the stress of wealth. It is Kanye’s version of ‘Mo Money Mo Problems’ but the problems all come from within, not from outside haters or worse. Even the song’s title, ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’ has Bad-Boy era Puffy arrogance to it (his singing here is Puffy-poor as well) but the opening line reveals something more complex.

Nevertheless, the singing is really obnoxious. On ‘College Dropout,’ Kanye’s mediocre singing was sort of fun to hum or sing along with because his voice wasn’t much better than that of his listeners. Along with his slurred often stumbling flow, The singing, along with his slurred often stumbling flow, were parts of his rap-fan-turned-rapper appeal. These amateurish qualities acted as a counterpoint to his self-mythologizing and arrogance. Here it feels mocking, singing poor because he’s Kanye West godammit and he can get a way with it.

00:06-00:18
What are these really obnoxious “oh-oh-oh-oh-oh” samples? I might be able to tolerate Kanye’s bad singing or this weird sample but the two together are making me feel more and more disappointed. It reminds me of that weird “haw-haw-haw-haw-HAW” sound throughout ‘Late’ from ‘Late Registration’. Is this a sample? I assume it’s a sample but it sort of sounds like John Legend which got me excited because I think Mr. Legend was a significant part of ‘College Dropout’s sound and I prefer that to the pseudo-sophistication of ‘Late Registration’.

The beat doesn’t really sound like a Kanye West production at all. His drums are usually sort of clunky, often, drum-samples cut very short but here, the beat is sort of Southern. If not for that obnoxious sample, it would sound like it was made for Young Jeezy or something. It has a DJ Toomp-ish synth-line complimented by some claps, a tinny sound, and some conventionally-programmed drums. It sounds like it’s straight from a keyboard. Unlike most Southern production however, the beat is mixed really low and the song doesn’t really bump. Compare this beat to the leaked Common tracks. Continuing proof that Kanye really isn’t keeping all the best beats for himself…

Kanye’s lyrics are what we might expect from Kanye: a mix of the sacred and profane that will still impress the ‘New York Times’. I’ve heard it before:

“I had a dream I could buy my way to heaven
When I awoke I spent that on a necklace
I told God I’d be back in a second
Man, it’s so hard not to act reckless”.

This is the problem of the smart rapper, he is labeled “smart,” grows content, and depends on the fact that his intentions are commendable for critical praise, ignoring the fact that now, the execution of those intentions is pretty weak. They expect to get an A for Effort…just because the song isn’t totally conventional in its content does not mean they should get a free ride. He’s also rapping so damn slow. Another nod to Southern rap? I think it’s more for clarity and palatability. Kanye’s vocal inflections remind of Jay-Z’s recent whisper-rapping found all over ‘Kingdom Come’. It’s a cheap way to bring focus to lyrics, performing a passionate voice and slowing the rapping down so that the lyrics are more digestable to non-rap ears.

00:18-00:24
It starts to get really good here. The sample goes beyond the really uninteresting “oh-oh-oh-oh” into a longer sample that comes right after the line “Man, it’s so hard not to act reckless”. That last line, although not earth-shattering, when coupled with a changed vocal inflection and followed-up by the sample-change, is pretty affecting. Kanye’s recklessness is something that really is messing him up: everyone’s tired of his antics. They extend beyond publicity stunts into well, maybe some kind of legitimately psychologically-damaged need for attention…dude’s an only child, right? All of this goes along with the title ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’ as less some sort of fuck-the-world thing and more like Kanye is on Dr. Phil and admits to the moustachioed pop-psychologist that indeed, he has a problem listening to others.

00:24-00:30
And we’re back to the worst part of the song, that weak “oh-oh-oh-oh-oh” sample now isolated, not even backed by a beat, totally negating the pretty impressive part I just talked about. The song starts out pretty bad, gets okay, totally redeems itself, and then ends on a really weak note; not a good look, Kanye. I’ve heard a thirty second sample and I’m already a little leery…Seriously, what the hell is this? What am I gonna do with a 30-second sample? Unless the song is like the next ‘Shook Ones’ or some shit you can’t tease a listener like this. At the same time, I can’t wait to hear the actual song, hopefully it will be great and all I said can be a big foot in my mouth…