-Devin the Dude featuring L.C “I Can’t Make It Home”
This got a lot of satellite radio play and I guess, was “the single” from the really underwhelming Landing Gear but it still seems slept-on. It’s in-line with all of Devin’s songs, a charming storytelling rap that furthers his scruffy fuck-up persona, but it’s way more palpably depressing. You got through the stoner loneliness anthem of “Doobie Ashtray” because it was kinda funny, had a Primo beat and was called you know, “Doobie Ashtray”, but “I Can’t Make It Home” is just a really fucking sad tale of drunk-driving. And not the fun drunk-driving or even the fun because you might die drunk/drugged driving but just like, a mistake from the beginning and you’re in it until you maybe glide into your driveway crooked or get pulled over; both options have the same odds of becoming reality.The crooned chorus, the shabby melodrama of it all make the emotions behind it palpable. In some ways, a better illustration of the knowing but not smart enough self-destruction an author of minor victories and epic failures like Richard Yates mined than Sam Mendes’ adaptation of dude’s Revolutionary Road. What’s really devastating about it is how Devin’s so matter-of-fact about it, like a friend telling you what it was like to spend 24 hours in a psych ward or something…wizened and happy because now it’s at least all over.
-Zilla Rocca “The First Order of Business” (Blurry Drones Remix)
“The First Order of Business”, the best song on Bring Me the Head of Zilla Rocca gets remixed and turns the spastic hammering drums of the original into a hurricane of guitars. Sampling the Walkmen, Douglas Martin (Blurry Drones) does an appropriate garage-rock style of production, where there’s nothing fancy, just tried and true production tricks like lowering or raising the volume or slowing it down for a moment here and there…but Zilla doesn’t ever slow down, it’s just punchline after punchline in that great Philly accent he has.The punchlines though too, carry some weird hard to explain weight that’s beyond “Oh. That was very clever”, although they’re clever too. They sort of resonate because it’s the goofy observations you make with your friends—bad typos in a text message, old-ass actors playing teenagers—or they just gel together, like when he lumps a series of Frank Miller references together and keeps going without pause, giving no time for that “oh shit” moment more self-aggrandizing rappers’ll slow down for. There’s an oddly affecting point where Zilla interrupts the fun rap to say “This was the worst year of my life-“ tells you he “salvaged it”, doesn’t explain why it was bad or how he changed it and keeps going and it’s all the more affecting because of the mystery and sort of hints that whatever that “worst” is fuels his rap fervor.
-Bobby Creekwater “Goodbye”
Was gonna pick “Goodbye” from this EP because I already talked this song up, but it’s not on YouTube and “Not Yet”–and the entire BC Era EP for that matter–deserve as much hype as possible. Guys like Bobby Creekwater, forever in label limbo, will never be a superstar no matter who co-signs their talent, are supposed to be this modest but all too often, their songs all end up about their money, their label, and girls and so, it’s cool that Bobby Creek’s asserting “I won’t forget where I came from”; it really does matter to him.He also does a clever thing on this track of sort of sounding like over-enunciating Wayne on a verse, a determined pre-uses a thesaurus and figured out meter and got boring T.I on another, and also modestly reminding you that he’s not “T-Pain or Ye”. The beat though here and all of this EP is what makes it: Scrappy strings, crew vocals, some guy crooning somewhere in the background, and then atop it all typical Southern production stuff. The instruments reinforce the song’s feeling of low-to-the-ground loyalty.
-Illa J “Timeless”
I’m glad other people compared this song to D’Angelo because I was afraid that was like blasphemous or some shit, but that’s exactly what it sounds like but more importantly, what it feels like. The heart-on-the-sleeve sincerity of the song and mumbled singing of Dilla’s brother and music that has like, caves of black music history behind it in that piano jazz loop and simple drum beat that’s the root of every hip-hop song and also, a specific kind of stomping minimalism found only on Fantastic Vol. 1.That I guess, is the “timeless” part of the title as Illa J’s part’s very much concerned with the right now, owning up to his lack of experience in a way that’s not on the defensive but like, “Look, I’m figuring my shit out, calm down”. On this song, Dilla’s legacy aligns with his younger brother’s inexperience perfectly, and the confidence and classic before we even heard it beat lets Illa relax and get real. One of the most intensely personal songs released this year.
I’ll be back after the New Year, have fun and be safe.-brandon
-Jay Electronica “Extra Extra”
Ripping off Armond White’s end-of-the-year “better than” lists for movies. I twittered my better than album list if you want to check that out…
Kanye doesn’t make it easy to take him seriously, but the whole mom dying of plastic surgery thing is genuinely fucked-up and we shouldn’t forget that. While so many famous people talking about their problems seems obnoxious because it’s the same crap we all have to deal with minus the money and girls fame brings you, Kanye’s giving us an actually interesting and rarified peak into celebrity-hood and wrapping it around something that really wouldn’t have happened if he were still some nerd in Chicago making beats.
This song’s mock triumphant, the synths fart instead of pulse and the regal melody’s pretty absurd; assertive and confident but really stupid too. Lil Wayne’s goofball verse is inarguably pretty terrible, but it’s also pretty funny and if you’re listening hard enough, more forthright and honest than almost anything Kanye says on the album. He’s Kanye’s ugly weirdo demon Id, croaking and joking and saying the same bullshit Kanye’s been saying, but more vulnerable and more like, putting himself out there, not concerned with how stupid he looks or sounds.
It’s fairly clear that this song’s about his ex cheating on him and apparently cheating on him for awhile, but what’s so interesting–although frustrating too–is how Kanye sort of mumbles and rambles around the issue and never confronts it head-on. Whether this was conscious or just the result of Kanye doing his best to deal with something that’s really embarrassing–especially if you’re a guy, a famous guy at that–but even now, even as he makes an album that millions will hear, he can’t totally confront it or like, verbalize it directly.
While 808s at first, seems messy and all over the place–an impulsive, angry bitchfest by one of the few artists that’s popular and selling enough to still get away with such a thing–multiple listens pull out a non-linear but thought-out narrative of his relationship. A relationship that dissolved not long after the death of his mother, a point that West leaves only up to your reading of the gossip pages and album ender “Coldest Winter”. For all its rockist, album concessions, Kanye’s latest doesn’t actually play by anybody’s rules and, like a lot of out-there weirdo, minor masterpieces, it looks and sounds a mess at first.
The intro to “Robocop” reminds me of the stumbling drums and movie clip beginning of Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love”, an 80s art-pop classic about the fucked up fears of love and relationships (the strings are similar too). But then it just goes on some other shit, similar to the Phil Collins nod, it’s a smart attempt to resolve 80s homage with Kanye’s own musical concerns.
808s is clearly cathartic for Kanye but there’s the odd, uncomfortable (in a good way) sense that this album has all kinds of layers and weirder, more implicit digs at ex-fiancee Alexis. Does anyone else get the feeling the in-the-background talking towards the beginning of “Paranoid” is Kanye and his ex? Some drop of audio he picked up while working on a song or something? Is “Robocop” just a goofball way of calling out his maybe too concerned with the chicks he banged in the past girlfriend or was there some all-out fight between the two where, in the big, dumb heat of the moment Kanye blurted out that she was “like a Robocop”? I’ve made dumber comparisons in a fit of anger.
Are You A Serious Comic Book Reader?