-“Knocked Up?: Badu and Electronica Expecting (Maybe)” from OnSmash
-“Erykah Badu Responds To Her Critics” from Brown Sista.com
The thing about Badu and the three kids from three different dads isn’t wrong or amoral or anything like that, but it is weird and not a good look, especially because they’re all rappers. It’s the same icky feeling of some punk girl that gets with all her male friends or some like American Apparel type chick that does it with all the skinny dudes she hangs out with…you know? And dudes doing it with lots of girls or having lots of kids with lots of different girls is equally gross and problematic. Also, note to celebs: Stop writing public responses on the internet. It’s lame and it shows that you aren’t as sophisticated as your music might’ve suggested. No caps, write-out your numbers (never talk like Prince, none of this “what is it 2 u?” type shit), and just let idiots on the internet talk like idiots.
-“Try and Fuck A Black Girl” by M. Dot from Model Minority
Back when I wrote my article on how Judd Apatow’s pretty disrespectful to hip-hop, Model Minority took some of my rhetorical strategies to task and although I really think she fundamentally misread me, it’s worth a read. This post is about ‘The Wackness’, particularly a scene in which the Ben Kingsley character suggests, for er- therapeutic reasons, the main character “try and fuck a black girl”. Again, food for thought even thought I think M. Dot misread the scene. I don’t think it’s advocating the characters’ advice. Furthermore, “try and fuck a Jewish girl” would’ve gotten the same guffaw: Jewish girls are notoriously easy. But seriously folks- the real issue here is seeing the difference between actual racism/sexism and movies that present racism/sexism and don’t necessarily come-out against that thinking in super-explicit ways.
-“Flying Lotus’ Remix of ‘A Milli’: ‘Robo Tussin”
What’s interesting about this remix is how Lotus’ weirdo, blissed-out beat is still only like half as weird and out-there as Bangladesh’s original beat for ‘A Milli’. Still, it’s a really great remix with fun little tricks like looping the “you ain’t got shit” line, skipping over the “faggot” line, and just diving headfirst into layers of watery synths, clapping drums, and 8-bit video game wobbles. Doesn’t sound much like a track called ‘Robo Tussin’ though…
-Cam’ron ‘Let the Beat Build’ Free Style
Monique thinks Cam’ron should just do a mixtape where he raps over every beat on ‘Carter 3′. I think it’s a pretty good idea and only the logical extension of this mixtape madness.
-“Faces I Am Currently Admiring, The Return: Lily Cole” by Sean Fennessy from Brokedown Palace
Okay…so I’m glad dude finally posted another one of these super-creepy “faces I am currently admiring” things because I’ve been dying to make fun of it. Can we just be real here? It’s so very New York and intellectual to re-phrase a recurring series of entries that should be called “Girls I Want To Fuck” into “Faces I Am Currently Admiring”. It just really gets to me for some reason, this sense of intellectualizing beauty or trying to pass it off as some like, artistic appreciation. Also: Lily Cole, really?! She looks like Sailor Moon, dude. For others in this series by Sean “Plato” Fennessy, check out: pre-pubescent-looking asian bitch, college party looking bitch, listens to KCRW on her iBook looking bitch, and girl you dated in 10th grade who you thought was cool but you got over her by like 11th grade but then you see her at like your local hipster bar a decade later and she hasn’t changed and it’s sad as fuck looking bitch.
-“South African Chinese “Become Black” from BBC News
-“Italy criticized for fingerprinting Gypsies” from the LA Times
What’s going on in the rest of the world? America’s pretty fucked the fuck up, but what’s the deal with this shit?? Pretty depressing.
-“Fossilised ’sausages’ Could Reveal Dinosaur Colours” from NewScientist.com
“Palaeobiologists have found that 100-million-year-old fossilised bird feathers preserve microscopic colour-containing pouches. It should be possible to decode these pouches – previously assumed to be fossilised bacteria – into realistic colour patterns”
-“All Known Metal Bands” by Cosmo Lee from Invisible Oranges
Remember, hipster/indie douches don’t only appropriate hip-hop: “On one hand, this would surely make great coffee table reading. On the other hand, it is just as surely a copy-and-paste job from metal-archives.com. Essentially, the book is a print version of that website as of sometime last year. The fact that this book has an “author” (a Dan Nelson) is somewhat ludicrous. Does metal-archives.com have a potential intellectual property claim against Nelson/McSweeney’s for theft of its idea, process, and/or content? Regarding the latter, probably not; metal-archives.com doesn’t own the names of the bands it lists. However, it arguably owns the method of organization of these names, even if it’s simply alphabetical. No other site has as complete a list of metal bands, and something feels wrong about a major commercial entity profiting off the backs of an all-volunteer community. In any case, metal-archives.com most certainly lacks the resources to pursue any action against McSweeney’s.”
Comic Book for the Week: ‘Captain America: White’ #0 by Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale
The writer/artist team of Loeb & Sale return with a preview for the fourth in their Marvel Color series–previously, ‘Daredevil: Yellow’, ‘Spiderman: Blue’, ‘Hulk: Gray’– and it’s worth the money, unlike most teaser #0 type issues. Loeb & Sale’s DC Work, like Batman ‘Long Halloween’ and ‘Dark Victory’ and ‘Superman: A Man For All Seasons’ are some of my favorite comics of all-time, pure superhero stories that are also really smart, vaguely deconstructive, and emotionally affecting. The previous “colors” comics haven’t interested me enough to complete the series–but I think I should go back to them– but this seventeen-page origin story/preview’s got me fiending for the first issue this winter. It has an over-the-top, almost Sgt. Bilko type feeling that’s undercut in the final pages by the reality that the series is going to be about Bucky’s death.
Album for the Week: Mannie Fresh ‘The Mind Of…’
As some kind of predictor of rap in 2008 ‘The Mind Of…’ seems nearly prophetic. You get Lil Wayne on four tracks, including two solo performances that are presented as Wayne hi-jacking the album (‘Wayne’s Takeover 1 & 2’). This is the same year ‘The Carter’ came out and is the era that most seem to perceive as the beginning of Wayne becoming the “rapper-eater” he is today. There is also the actually sort of prophetic ‘Mayor Song’ in which Mannie calls-out the poor governing of his beloved New Orleans a year before Katrina hit. Then of course, there’s Mannie’s production which is an example of and influence on the Southern rap style everybody likes to hate so damned much…
On ‘The Mind Of..’ the production seems a little more ambitious. ‘Intro’ doesn’t lack any of the Mannie Fresh bounce but it also contains a super-clean acoustic guitar and some really great, precise soul horns and wah-ed out bass and guitar. All of the songs have live instrumentation and real, solid playing on them, but Mannie seems a little more okay with letting that sound really stray from conventions of Southern rap. The playing pops-out a little more on ‘Intro’ and this helps adjust your ear to the mid-album songs which are as much some weird new form of soul as they are rap. ‘Nothing Compares to Love’ has this strange extended chorus that feels as much like ‘Another Brick In the Wall’ as Southern chant-rap.
Movie for the Week: ‘Desire in the Dust’ directed by William F. Claxton
I intended to see ‘Hellboy 2′ and Harmony Korine’s ‘Mr. Lonely’ this weekend but plans on both farted out, so the only other movie I actually watched was this trashy Tennessee Williams x 10 Southern melodrama, ‘Desire in the Dust’. It’s all shot in real locations, interior and exterior, in really clean, widescreen black and white, but it’s still framed and edited like the sound-stage melodramas of the fifties so it gives it this weird sense of realism and tension entering the otherwise over-the-top, un-reality of the plot. The locations are gritty and characters’ sweat looks real, and there’s just a palpable sense of oppressive heat that jacks the already too-much conflict up even further.
The score by Paul Dunlap also moved it beyond post-Sirk melodrama. The score’s unexpectedly jazzy and noisy at times–honestly, I was reminded of Quincy Jones’ ‘In Cold Blood’ score– and it, like everything in the movie, was trying harder than it really needed to and made it work. An IMDB look at Dunlap shows that he did the score for Sam Fuller’s ‘Naked Kiss’, which isn’t that far-off as a comparison for ‘Desire in the Dust’: A movie that totally sticks to genre conventions but finds new and weird ways to dance around them. I’m assuming the director of this has nothing to do with the jazz photographer William Claxton, but the jazzy score and the whole look of the movie certainly fit photographer Claxton’s aesthetic.
Are You A Serious Comic Book Reader?
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men’s undershirt
9 Nov 10 at 5:30 pm