Not A Blogger

Oh You Didn't Know...

2011-01-17T11:55:00.005-05:00

Dear Reader That Forgot You Still Had Me On Your Google Reader Feed,

In case, you've been on pins and needles trying to figure out what happened to me since my last post, I decided to quietly shut down operations on Not A Blogger due to the heartbreak of LeBron Raymone James crushing all my hopes and dreams.

But fear not! For I have taken my talents to the Passion Of The Weiss where I will be "employed" (in the sense, Jeff is not paying me at all) as a staff writer for the newly re-designed site. If you've missed some of my work over the last two months check the archives but here's a post I wrote today on the hooligans in Odd Future:

I Can't Go To Sleep: Tyler, The Creator - Bastard

C'est La Vie!

No Words... Lil Wayne Has A Crush On Rafael Nadal Edition

2010-08-27T12:47:00.004-04:00

Sometimes these things just write themselves...

Self-imposed summer sabbatical to end soon, y'all

I'll Sleep When Justin Bieber Is Dead

2010-07-06T20:12:00.011-04:00

"This is the most thugged out photo of the Biebster I could find on the internet and he still looks like a muppet."

As far as elaborate in-jokes on Twitter go, El-P's remix of Justin Bieber's "Baby" might as well be a "Modest Proposal" in terms of morose, we-are-going-there balls. El-P through the sheer force of his epically misanthropic will manages to turn Bieber's fledgling bubblegum soul into something approaching raw adult sexuality; an impressive feat alone if for nothing other than Bieber looks positively molestable by traditional Catholic standards and this remix makes his boyish falsetto seems shockingly sexy. (I don't think there is a "pause" button large enough to innoculate myself from the inherent, Uncle Chester creepiness of that previous sentence. The cops are knocking on my door as we speak.)

To say this song is superior to the original is a gross understatement. This song is superior to nearly everything you will ever hear. El-P's genius has always lied in his ability to use various elements of different musical genres as patische to serve his nihilistic musical world view. The Sam Kinison adlibs and (so expensive that it can't possibly be legal) sample of Paul McCartney's "Live And Let Die" is one thing but El-P manages to wield to Bieber's preteen falsetto as almost ambient noise on the track. Bieber's goofy "ahhs and oh girls" become geuinely sexy when combined with El-P's trademark synth buzz because El-P manages to add the tinge of menace that Justin Bieber's voice and music simply lack. If pre-teen girls managed to fawn obsessively over him when he was a nonthreatening, Disney-approved sex symbol, imagine the pandemonium he would cause if he performed this version at a concert. Kenny McCormick would be getting blown behind a T.G.I. Friday's for sure.

This song would be considering a raging success if it introduced one Justin Bieber fan to the music of El-P but this song simply kills. Terresterial radio needs to imbrace this song with the quickness.

Download: Justin Bieber - "Baby (El-P Death Remix)" (Via Definitive Jux)

No Words... Sookie Stackhouse Edition

2010-06-22T10:01:00.002-04:00

What... the... fu...

I mean... Yeah, totally. But still...

Drake - Thank Me Later: Review

2010-06-16T17:09:00.011-04:00

"Absolutely."

Who are we to judge? Maybe sleeping with swaths of women of a certain scandalous nature is as emotionally unfulfilling as Aubrey “Drake” Graham seems to suggest it is? Perhaps, having sex in a dorm room with your significant other is far superior than access to more beautiful strange than one reasonably knows what to do with? After all, we’re not famous (unless you are. In which case, I have to ask why are you wasting your time reading my blog when you could dipping your balls into Alison Brie? Priorities.) so how can we properly judge if it is as awful as Drake says it is.

It’s not like Drake is the first famous person to suggest that it truly sucks duck nuts living a life of unimagined privilege and wanton debauchery. It’s a theme our celebrity population have been desperately trying to convey to us for years. Consider how many of our more famous brothers and sisters have spoke of the hardships of lack of privacy, disloyal friends and sex addiction only to find their pleas for help ignored and ridiculed by a callous, unfeeling public desperate to feed the maw of celebrity schadenfreude but indifferent to it’s plight. Think of how many great works of arts have emerged from this lonely sentiment. Think of the poignancy that seeps from the dramatic pours of Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard”, West’s “808s & Heartbreak” and Lohan’s “Rumors.” The lonesome wail of celebrity’s bitter catch-22 can be found in Drake’s melancholic masterpiece of moodiness, “Thank Me Later,” screaming in silent suffering.

What is evident about “Thank Me Later” is that Drake’s ability to convey his heartbreaking sense of pain is not compromised by his meager ability to convert “word thoughts” into rhythmic speech patterns. Drake is not a subtle writer nor talented rapper for there is no idea or emotion that can’t be conveyed through the power of beautiful cliché. What Drake does is emote his emotions in a sing-song shorthand that allows the listener to breeze over his breathtaking sense of entitlement and connect with the wounded teen soap star deep within all of our eternal souls.

Critics may scoff at Drake’s shallow misery as the petulance of an untalented hack given too much but it is only because these critics have lost their ability to feel emotions as deep and profound as the artist. Only a heartless cynic could deny such totems of naked humanity like “Miss Me” where Drake drunkenly proposes to an indifferent Nicki Minaj or the moment where he claims that he is an underground rapper although his ascent to pop stardom was clearly orchestrated by powerful music executives enamored with the magnitude of his eyebrows? Who can’t sympathize with that sort of anguish?

What makes Drake's music so powerful? The simplicity and lack of nuance is where the beauty lies. Drake's music, devoid of complexity, speaks to a generation of lost children desperately typing their thoughts 140 characters at a time to a cruel and indifferent world. Drake's narcissism should not be seen as a sign of weakness but as a sign that he better understands the world around him. A world where mundanity bears the direst of consequence and drama can be found in the tiniest of inconvenience. What is Drake? Drake is the zeitgest of youth culture itself.

Thank you later, Drake? No. I will thank you now. I will thank you for making it kosher to feel emotion again in commercial hip hop. I will thank you for helping me cope with the ragged truths of existence. I will thank you for helping me realize who I am as a human being. Who am I? I am a Drake fan. God save my soul.

Or it could be that Drake writes really, really, really, really, really catchy hooks? Seriously, try to stop humming "Light Up."

Adjusted Pitchfork Score: 6.9

On Bombast And King Crimson Samples: A Prayer For Lorne Michaels

2010-06-02T17:47:00.004-04:00

"Call me when he starts sampling Night Ranger..."

Before we proceed with this de-facto review of Kanye West’s "Power," I want to make the most potentially and deliberately ignorant series of statements I might ever write quite clear. I do not care about sampling King Crimson in the slightest. Roughly a week ago, I was blissfully unaware of this band’s existence and was content to live in a universe where they did not exist. I do not have an opinion on King Crimson. I do not care about your opinion about King Crimson. In fact, I’m kind of resentful of being forced to live in a world where I’m forced to think about the implications of a King Crimson sample. Why? Because King Crimson does not matter. If they did, I most assuredly would have, at least, have HEARD of them. But I haven’t. So I can be reasonably be assured that a King Crimson sample is irrelevant to any possible enjoyment or hatred of a Kanye West song. Act accordingly, music geeks.

As for the offending song, Kanye West’s "Power", I like it more than I hate it. The song sounds like the mutant off-spring of Kanye’s production on "The Takeover" and Kanye’s (ghost producer’s) more bombastic production on "Swagger Like Us." This is a good thing. I thought "808s and Heartbreak" was a unique if slightly undercooked excursion into emo synth pop & b but it was not the Kanye West, I signed up for when I bought into the "College Dropout" hype. A return to the sample driven bombast of his earlier work would not only be welcome but a logical progression in the wake of his recent career missteps. I welcome this sound.

The song falls apart in terms of an attempt to address those aforementioned career missteps. "Power" is meant to be a defiant stand against those who vilified Kanye for his VMA disaster, his rampant, unchecked ego and his growing lack of self-awareness and humor about himself. He wants people to know that he’s not changing and is upset that you would even question his greatness. The problem is that he manages to undercut his entire message by wasting time battering limp pop culture institutions like Saturday Night Live. The song almost comes across as self-parody when he wastes 8 bars going after the venerable late night comedy program. Is Kanye really so thin skinned that he would attack a program that’s spent nearly four decades lampooning every relevant pop culture figure and institution? Does he not realize how sad and humorless that makes him look? If there is a reason to hate this song, it’s that.

Just know, I do not care about King Crimson. And never will.

No Words... Love Lost Edition

2010-05-21T19:09:00.003-04:00

At what point, do we admit to ourselves that the man we loved is dead...

An Open Letter To Lebron James

2010-05-13T15:08:00.004-04:00

Dear LeBron,

I've only got one thing to say to you...

All that other shit is irrelevant. Just get your head out your damn ass and win us the fucking game.

Sincerely,

The City Of Cleveland

A Prayer For Jay Electronica & Diddy

2010-05-06T15:57:00.004-04:00

"Honestly, I'd prefer if Jay was working with the guy in the middle."

Despite the myriads of his accomplishments over the span of his career, Sean Combs’ primary talent has always been surrounding himself with far more talented individuals and making it seem like he was doing THEM a favor by gracing them with his presence. If you are in the business of selling yourself as commodity, I can think of no greater skill than being able to convince others that they should be in awe of you and your accomplishments. This can be dangerous to those he’s in business with when Diddy’s second great talent is exploiting those same talented individuals to his benefit alone. For almost twenty years, Diddy has been hip hop’s great grifter content to run an endless shell game to keep himself in eternal relevance if not revelry.

Let’s take one of Bad Boy Records’ most iconic remixes as an example of what I’m talking about: Of the participants on the "Flava In Ya Ear Remix," Biggie is dead; LL Cool J is co-starring on a NCIS spinoff with the dude who played Robin; Busta is a roided up freak; Craig Mack is trying to hustle some poor stripper into sleeping with him on the strength that he once knew Biggie; Lord knows what Rampage the Last Boy Scout is doing these days. Yet, Sean Combs stays pimping his shitty reality TV shows and Ciroc Vodka. Why? Because Diddy never loses. He has the uncanny ability of knowing when to cut and run from an artist at the exact moment they lose the ability to make him look good. It seems nearly every act that has ever worked extensively with Diddy has grown to publicly regret it. (Hell, the L.O.X. threatened to throw a refrigerator at the man!) Diddy is perhaps hip hop’s all-time most loathsome individual (a genre that features both Suge Knight AND Curtis Jackson!) which makes the shine that Jay Electronica has taken to the legendary hustler all the more troubling.

It’s becoming rapidly apparent that Jay Electronica is perhaps the last of the great classical lyricists. Kool Moe Dee, in his excellent (and grammatical error-ridden) book, "There Is A God On The Mic", postulated that each generation of rappers has a trinity of great lyricists that follow in the tradition of the greats that came before them. Electronica is a true throwback to 90s classical lyricism in the grandest sense of the term. His hyper-literate references, evocative storytelling and dense narrative descriptions clearly place him in the lineage of the Melle Mel-Rakim-Nas tradition. Like many true school 90s holdouts, I have personally bemoaned the general decline in reverence for the lyricist. To me this lack of reverence has manifested two-fold. The most obvious is the decline in lyricism in mainstream popular rap music but also the rise of "punch line" lyricism in underground and hardcore rap scenes as well. A generation of rappers raised on mixtapes and "A Milli" freestyles have grown to believe that being a great lyricist is nothing more than being able to serve up a bunch of semi-clever punch lines. I cringe whenever somebody suggests that rappers like Fabolous or even somebody as respected as Jadakiss belong in the top 5 of working lyricists. Electronica seems far less concerned with writing a hot punch line than describing emotional turmoil of telling the mother of a friend her son has been killed. This alone makes Jay Electronica a special breed of rapper.

What makes his ascent to the cusp of the pantheon even more remarkable is that it can be owed to the strength of a handful of a few truly remarkable songs. The unlikely grass roots success of "Exhibit C" on terrestrial radio has launched Jay from the territory of perennial blog hype hero to something approaching a genuine true school, lyrical-ass lyricist rap star. Granted, Jay Electronica has been backed by some powerful industry figures like Just Blaze and Erykah Badu since his breakthrough mixtape, "Act I: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge)" but his rise seems to be dictated by an organic following of fans who have discovered his music through word-of-mouth and file sharing. It doesn’t hurt that sheer infrequency of the release of his recordings have created a huge buzz amongst fans anytime Jay decides to descend from the mountain top and bless us with another track. The terrestrial breakthrough of "Exhibit C" was the logical conclusion of a growing critical mass that started way back with "Style Wars" and "Act 1" continued through "Queens Get The Money" and "Exhibit A" onward. Success has attracted a variety of industry leeches looking to mine his success for their own benefit. This is where Diddy comes in and my trepidation with his budding mentorship with Jay Electronica.

On the surface, a Diddy/Jay Elect symbiotic relationship makes a certain logical sense. It seems unlikely that Jay Elect will continue to get radio play recording largely hookless, lyric driven songs in today’s hip hop environment. Diddy with his natural pop proclivities could easily help Jay Elect form a synthesis of his music that would be more welcome within the parameters of modern terrestrial pop radio. Regardless of his own self-aggrandizement over the years, Diddy’s one unquestioned achievement is the ability to turn a very raw, uncouth Christopher Wallace into hip hop’s biggest pop star without sacrificing the edge that made Biggie a critical favorite amongst hardcore hip hop fans. It would go along way into securing Diddy’s slightly tarnished legacy as a talent scout and music executive if he could repeat the achievement with Jay Electronica. Jay Elect has already shown flashes of pop potential in the past with songs like "I Feel Good" and "Walk With Me" and considering the range of Jay’s talent, it’s within the realm of possibility that he could comfortably switch into that form of music without losing what makes Jay Electronica so great. However, part of what makes Jay Electronica so great in the first place is the natural avant-garde weirdness in his music. More esoteric fare like "Depature/Are You Watching?", "Eternal Sunshine," and "A Prayer For Michael Vick & T.I." easily match "Exhibit C" in terms of sheer lyrical prowess and have a novel weirdness that doesn’t show up as naturally as when Jay Elect works with Just Blaze et al. I’d hate for that to dissipate from his music for the sake of satisfying some major label idea of what’s considered "hot" at the moment.

The first released song in the Diddy/Jay Elect relationship has been largely encouraging in both terms of dissipating fears that Diddy will suddenly transform Jay Electronica into Danity Kane and for the potential for greatness in their partnership. "The Ghost Of Christopher Wallace" features 3 minutes of Jay Elect spitting his patented brand of lyrical flames before 4 minutes of Diddy’s legendary shit-talking. The song is meant to evoke Biggie in both name and spirit as the song plays like a new millennium version of B.I.G.’s classic "Who Shot Ya?" The song is largely a success if Diddy’s rant at the end dangerously treads towards Kanye-esque levels of ridiculous self-absorption.

Ultimately, the greatest potential problem with a Jay Electronica/Diddy professional relationship is what happens if and when Jay Electronica starts to fade from the public eye. As I mentioned before, Diddy has a natural talent of miraculously disappearing when an artist fades from the public eye. (See: Barrow, Jamal) As long as you are profitable to his brand, Diddy will find a way to exploit you for his own benefit but if you don’t you might as well as not exist. As great as "The Ghost Of Christopher Wallace" is, Diddy still manages to steal the vast majority of the time on the song and turn it into a forum for a celebration of his own achievements. That isn’t exactly a confidence booster that things will be different this time simply because Jay Electronica is the greatest thing since sliced bread was introduced to a toaster. So thank Shyne for warning me because now I’m warning you. You’ve got the mac, Jay. Tell me what you’re gonna do.

-B.J. Steiner

The Death Of "The Real Slim Shady"

2010-05-05T17:10:00.005-04:00

"I miss the blonde hair and the awkward doo rag..."

On perhaps his finest song, “The Way I Am”, Eminem lashed out against the pressure of having to continually record a “poppy sensation that got [him] rotation at rock and roll stations.” An irony that gets lost when you consider that he’s spent his career doing that exact same thing over and over to continually diminishing returns. It’s been a long time coming but Marshall Mathers finally got his wish. After five solo albums, two D12 albums, and tens of millions records sold, Eminem finally got to release a single that isn’t “My Name Is.” Eminem’s latest single, “Not Afraid,” bares no resemblance to the pop culture-lashing, pop chart chasing singles that have made him a mainstay of TRL (that still exists right? No? Well, don’t I look like an ass!) for over a decade.

“Not Afraid” is a bombastic yet a paradoxically sober affair with Eminem beating his chest and crowing that he is prepared for a life of sobriety and responsibility after years of portraying himself as an unhinged, drug-addled gremlin both in his music and his personal life. If the song has a direct predecessor, it would be T.I.’s post-weapons charge anthem, “No Matter What,” in both tone and delivery. Both songs aim at being anthemic and Eminem remains as technically virtuosic as ever but if you close your eyes, it would seem as if the words were coming out of Tip Harris’ mouth himself. The flow is so obviously similar that it seems as if Eminem locked himself in his rehab suite and listened to “Paper Trail” ad infinitum while he nursed himself into sobriety.. Even the basic song structure and subject matter bare almost identical similarity where as Tip stood defiant in the face of a long jail sentence, Em stands against the difficulties of post-rehab sobriety. If one were completely cynical, one could easily accuse Em of biting Tip’s song wholesale which makes sense if you consider that T.I. was one of the few non-Shady/Aftermath artists that Em worked with during his post-Encore/Proof’s death exile from rap music.

Ignoring issues of artistic thievery for a moment, the ultimate problem with “Not Afraid” is that it seems far more flaccid and generic than Tip’s titanic anthem. Eminem seems unsure of how to make music outside of his typical oeuvre. “Not Afraid” not only lacks the caustic wit of the Slim Shady era but it bears none of the bitter catharsis of his darker, more personal work like “Kim” or “Kill You.” The song works like a B-grade “Lose Yourself” content to kick lyrical clichés that sound as if they are the lesser aphorisms of inspiration pimps like Tony Robbins. When Eminem says that he’s “not afraid to maker a stand,” one is forced to ask “Against what?” The self-seriousness is almost laughably Keith Olbermann-like.

The question remains is how will this new Eminem function beyond this song in the absence of the artistic crutches he usually relies on. His upcoming album, “Recovery,” suggests an album that will be reaching towards something that approaches maturity but can Eminem sustain an entire album without reaching into his old bag of tricks. Does the public even want that? What if the single is received far worse than it’s predecessors and Eminem is forced to go back to the Slim Shady reserves for one last run? It’s easily conceivable that if “Not Afraid” flops, he will be making dated Tiger Woods jokes before you know it. (It should be noted that “Not Afraid’ is #2 on iTunes as I’m writing this so my postulating could be as easily redundant as an Eminem pop culture reference.) Still if the execution is slightly rote, it’s hard to fault Eminem for taking such a chance on a song like “Not Afraid” so late into his career. Eminem remains one of the few viable album-selling monsters and one must be tempted to stick with the formula that keeps him successful. If he’s going to remain a viable artist, he has to change with the times. The question is what left does he have to say?

Artistic Necrophilia Or Why We Don’t Need Liquid Swords 2

2010-04-29T17:47:00.002-04:00

“Although, I do appreciate the sentiment.”

Yesterday, RZA announced through the divine magic of Twitter that he was working with GZA on a sequel to their 1995 masterpiece, “Liquid Swords”. While my inner Wu-Tang fanboy was struck with the giddiness of a thousand shrieking Drake fans, I was torn by a profound realization that one of my favorite rappers of all-time has ostensibly hit a wall of personal creativity. It seems that despite his own personal misgivings on the concept of making a sequel to the album, it seems that GZA is out of ideas. Unfortunately, he’s not the only artist reaching into the well of artistic rehashery as their seems to be rash of sequels for decade-old classic albums on the rise.

The success of Raekwon’s “Only Built 4 Cuban Lix II” in both commercial and critical respects have lead to a string of desperate, aging rappers to believe they can return to the casino one last time and cash out on the respect and admiration their decade-old classic albums have earned. While this is not a new concept per se, the sheer volume of these half-baked ideas recently is startling. It seems that every, struggling veteran rap act from Capone-N-Noreaga (“The War Report 2”) to Sadat X (“Wild Cowboys 2”) have made plans to produce sequels to the records that made us love them in the first place in one last desperate grab for relevancy. GZA is the latest rapper to hitch his wagon to such an inherently limited concept.

It’s easy to understand why artists feel the need to make sequels to their classic records. It’s easy publicity. When an artist announces they are planning to make a sequel to a beloved album, fans get excited on the promise of a return-to-form for an artist. "Yo, GZA’s making Liquid Swords 2? Oh word? It’s about damn time he gets back to making that classic shit! "

The fan is already invested in on the record before a single line is recorded. From an economic standpoint, this makes complete sense. If you are a veteran artist struggling to maintain an audience, the idea of creating a sequel to your most enduring work is guaranteed to draw an audience out of curiosity. Even if the material has little to no relationship to the original work, the name alone is bound to draw interest. The economics of the music industry are rough enough as is so if your new work is going to be virtually ignored on it’s own merit then grafting a familiar title to an otherwise unremarkable new work is downright smart.

The problem with this practice is that at best it’s artistic necrophilia and at worst, it’s gross commercial exploitation. Raekwon’s “Cuban Linx II” was an excellent album but the practice of wantonly stealing concepts of your older work only leads down a path where neither the genre or the artist can’t grow. Stealing from your older material leads to an endless feedback loop of the same material being produced over and over again. It’s circular. You can’t grow because you are stealing from yourself and you are stealing from yourself because you can’t grow. When a significant portion of artists in the genre continue to try and remake their classic album, the inevitability of stagnancy in the genre becomes entirely manifest. This is a problem that rap music has been assuredly facing for years. While the mainstream market for hip hop has withered from major label artists continuing to compromise their art by making pandering artistic choices to appeal a wider audience, the indie market has been flooded with album after album that sounds virtually identical to each other. Hip Hop cannot sustain itself that way especially when so much of what forms hip hop’s musical identity is the recycling and reinvention of the ideas of other artists. People will simply lose interest if they listen to the same music produced over and over again.

As Raekwon proved with his album, none of this prevents GZA from making a really, really good album when it comes down to actually producing “Liquid Swords 2.” GZA might be able to successfully execute a sequel that is as darkly chilling and brooding as his original masterpiece but the simple fact remains that he will still be trading in on the promise of the original product. However, it will be comfort food designed to soothe the soul of the true school hip hop fan. As hip hop fan, I demand more of my favorite artists than to simply have my favorite album rehashed for me. Say what you want about the bubblegum pop rap of B.o.B or the emo space rap of Kid Cudi but it’s a step in a new direction. Innovation will save the genre from stagnation because liquid swords can’t carve out a new lane for hip hop to flow through. Besides does the world really need "The Hunger For More 2?" (Yes, that's happening.)Be warned.

In Memory Of... Guru

2010-04-20T08:11:00.010-04:00

This just really, really sucks. Hip Hop has suffered an unimaginable loss as Keith "Guru" Elam passed away this morning after a long battle with cancer. Guru's last days on earth were unimaginably tragic as he was shut off from his long-time friends and family by a particularly exploitative, hack producer looking to capitalize on Guru's notoriety.

However, I feel it's time like this when we shouldn't focus on the way the man died but focus on the achievements that the man have reached. When you think of New York hardcore hip hop and the 1990s, you realize that Gang Starr was synonymous with that iconic period of music Guru's work with Gang Starr stands premier. The chemistry he had with DJ Premier was quite simply impeccable. He had this almost velvet-like baritone that was employed in his trademark monotone delivery that underscored a fierceness to his rhymes. Gang Starr was a group that continued to pump out classic record after classic record; great single after great single; iconic video after iconic video.

Guru did not deserve to be treated the way he was during the last days on earth. He will be missed.

(Here's what I wrote about my favorite Gang Starr record, Moment Of Truth, way back when I started this blog in 2007: Albums You Should Own - Gang Starr's Moment Of Truth)

The Curious Case Of Die Antwoord

2010-03-10T17:40:00.006-05:00

"This is the coolest song I've ever heard."

I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty about Die Antwoord: post-modern South African rave-rap bands with aspirations of Daniel Dumile-level conceptual character performance is assuredly that new, new hotness. Outside of that truism, nearly everything about zef rap group, Die Antwoord, is starkly alien and indecipherable to Western audiences. Their breakthrough video, “Enter The Ninja”, is like peaking into a trans-dimensional portal to another universe where crew cut rocking samurais frolic with blond mulleted pixies and progeria survivors in a bizarre cartoonish landscape. What language are they rapping in? Why does it look like they broke onto the set of "Parent's Just Don't Understand?" What the fuck is "zef"? Is this shit for real? AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH THAT BLOND CHICK'S BANGS (and why am I strangely attracted to her? It's creeping me out...)?!?!?!

For those that aren't all up in the perverse bazaar of the "interwebs" the last couple of weeks, their music video, "Enter The Ninja", exploded across the internet in a wave of bemused confusion and shocked awe. Writers openly opined, whether or not, what they were watching was the work of meth head rednecks from the ghettos of South Africa or of sneering, irony-obsessed art students looking to prank music critics obsessed with the concept of authenticity. Die Antwoord claims to be a a "zef" rap group ("zef" is Afrikaans slang for redneck) consisting of lead MC Ninja, a hyper violent madman, Yo-Landi Vi$$er, a foul-mouthed pixie firecracker, and DJ Hi-Tek (not that one...), their deaf-mute producer. They identify their brand of music as a multi-cultural mish-mash of various South Africans cultures "fucked into one." Die Antwoord is loud, brash and hilarious with elements of UK Grime, 8-bit, and rave music smashed into one uber-anarchic package. The most intriguing part? It's complete conceptual performance.

Die Antwoord is the creation of long-time South African hip hop scene veteran and mixed media artist, Waddy Jones. Jones has been creating conceptual characters for his music since the mid-90s and is primarily known for his sad sack, "corporate" rapper persona, Max Normal. Die Antwoord is his latest and perhaps most brilliant creation yet. Jones plays "Ninja," the group's psychotic front-man. His character and the group plays almost as a dark parody of hip hop obsessed white kids across the globe. Ninja is covered in tattoos, bears gold fronts and speaks of his music in slightly delusional grandiose terms of cultural inclusiveness. On "Jou Ma Se Poes In A Fishpaste Jar," Jones (or rather "Ninja") repeatedly refers to himself (one assumes "ironically) as a "colored" for self-described and completely nonsensical reasons. Even the name "Ninja" itself is phonetically similar to "n-bomb" and one assumes it was chosen for it's aesthetic similarity. Meanwhile, Yo-Landi and Hi-Tek are draped in pro wrestling t-shirts and FUBU gear that is aesthetically similar (at least to Western eyes) to stereotypes of American redneck culture. It skates a very thin line between parody and just being offensive.

What separates the group is their music while delivered with a wink and a smirk is really fucking good. Their self-released debut album, "$0$", is witty, anarchic rave-rap that sport some instantly catchy hooks and bad-ass production. You can tell that Jones has been a rapper for long time because his rhymes are sharp, witty and delivered with a preciseness that belies a talented rapper. He's not some art punk fucking around with a culture and music that he doesn't understand. Meanwhile, Yo-Landi Vi$$er, the group's hypewoman and singer, is a true scene stealer.She bares a high-pitched and squeaky voice that is made incongrously hilarious by the foul-mouthed and hyper sexual nature of her rhymes and delivery. She's a pit-bull in a bad haircut. The chemistry that Ninja and Yo-Landi possess is striking. They bounce rhymes off of each other with a forceful swagger and compliment each other. "$0$", is an accomplished album musically in it's own right. The beats are obviously inspired by UK grime rap and hold your attention for it's rave inspired aspirations. Songs like "Wat Pomp" and "Wat Kyk Jy" swagger with an electronic stomp that is fresh to my ears. If this is "zef rap" than I'm definitely on board with the whole scene.

As much as I enjoy their music, I can't help but find some aspects about the group and its reception problematic though. I'm a Western critic living in New York and no matter how much I research and get to know their music, I still have a feeling their is going to be an inherent disconnect going on. "Zef culture" is something I'm not only unaware but I profoundly do not understand. If Die Antwoord is a parody of that culture then I can't help but I feel that I'm losing half the joke in translation. It's inevitable. I don't speak the language; neither literally (half of the album is rapped in Afrikaans) nor in a broader culture context. Die Antwoord also deals with some dicey cultural and racial issues that is bound to make me a little uncomfortable coming from my western sensibilities and prejudices. As previously mentioned, Ninja does refer to himself as "colored" which seems profoundly insensitive in a western context of racial boundaries due to the fact that he's a white South African. Is this kosher in South Africa, though? Am I misreading his (character's) intentions? Does it even matter? There is a moment in the video for "Wat Pomp" where Jones briefly appears in black-face that is bound to raise a few eyebrows. As a critic hailing from America, I'm resigned to shrug it off and assume that I'm simply missing the joke but it does make me rather skittish.

Regardless, I'm buying into the hype about Die Antwoord. They are the real deal. "$0$" is an early front-runner for album of the year and I can't imagine I'm going to find a group more engaging than them in this rap climate. This really is the coolest shit I've ever heard.

Video: Die Antwoord - "Wot Pomp"

Video: Die Antwoord - "Zef Side/Beat Boy"

A Few Words On Drake

2010-03-09T01:46:00.003-05:00

"This guy is a rap star. Never forget that."

Let’s face it: Drake is a rather unlikeable dude. Regardless of how you feel about Aubrey Drake Graham’s music, it’s hard to root for the guy to succeed. For one, he is a Canadian teen soap actor who by all accounts decided to arbitrarily start a rap career simply because he could. This dude should have been subject to damning Brian Austin Greenian ridicule the moment that asinine idea floated through the space between his off-puttingly bushy, caterpillar eyebrows. He’s too pretty, too Canadian, too much of a Weezy biter and his music is liked a little too much by teenage girls. No! Just no...

With all that serving as a caveat, last year’s mixtape, the “So Far Gone,” was quietly if shockingly excellent. Borrowing heavily from the spacious, sad synth minimalism of Kanye’s “808s & Heartbreak,” Drake captured an unabashedly pop melancholy that seemed strangely addictive and charming. Drake is not a great rapper and yet “So Far Gone” works without a single great or memorable line to its credit. What works is the way that Drake is able to breezily switch from rapping to this mournful teen pop falsetto and how tightly structured each of the songs on the tape are produced and written. Drake is an atomic grade hook writer and you’ll find yourself humming the melodies and words to nearly every one of these songs. The songs don’t break ground thematically as it deals with the same pitfalls of fame material that “808s & Heartbreak” dealt with but Drake manages to somehow sound less cloying and whiny than Kanye did on the record. It’s goofy if shallow fun. It’s like some sort of weird synthesis of Nelly and Slug (and miraculously not nearly as awful as one would imagine that would sound like.)

Honestly, Drake should abandon any aspirations of being a traditionally “great” rapper because whenever, he tries to rappity rap he almost always sounds ridiculous. Take Drake’s latest single, “Over”, as an example. The production is as typically immaculate as nearly everything he’s been releasing the last year but the only thing remotely memorable on Drake’s part is the hook and bridge of the song. The verse is lifted straight out of the Lil Wayne playbook of forced and awkward punchlines but unlike Weezy, Drake lacks Weezy’s natural effortlessness in his delivery to compensate for his lyrical clunkers so Drake ends up sounding...well, forced and awkward. His confidence as a rapper seems unearned so he ends up sounding like the musical equivalent of that cocky asshole that needs to constantly validate his manhood by hitting on everything with a functioning pair of legs. Drake plays against his strengths when he tries to really, really rap.

The best moments of “So Far Gone” are the moments he let’s his guard down like on “Lust For Life’ where he is lamenting about the expectations of being continually approached by groupies for sex and he kind of croons the line “And who the hell am I to say no, no, nooooo.” It kills me everytime because it expresses a weary trepidation about the direction of his life. I relate to that even if that his problems sound like the problems I only can dream about. When Drake is swaggering over “Over”, he’s totally unlikeable but on “Successful” when he’s expressing his desire to get famous he seems like a genuine human. Call me crazy but that seems like a virtue an artist should strive for.

Shadowboxin' Jeremy Roenick With Zilla Rocca

2010-03-04T16:03:00.003-05:00

"The Pinnacle Of American Cinema"

The incomparable Zilla Rocca of Clean Guns/5 O'Clock Shadowboxers/Clap Cowards fame and I recently collaborated on a piece about our mutual love of the video game artistry of NHL 94. If you aren't familiar with the game's supreme genius than quite simply you lost at childhood.

-Note: At some point in the near future, I plan to get back to updating my blog at a semi-regular interval. I plan to take a broader scope at the world so it'll probably less about rap music and more about the minutae of life. So take heart, five people who still care enough to read. I haven't quit hating on shit.

No Words... Jersey Shore Edition

2009-12-20T16:35:00.003-05:00

When Snoop's the most well-adjusted person in the photo (and Tyson's the second!), you easily have a formula for awesomeness.

Eating Zombie Bizkits With Lil Wayne: Dame Dash, Blakroc and the Rebirth Of Dwayne Carter

2009-12-18T15:07:00.002-05:00

"Like I was going to buy this album, anyway..."

When rap rock was found brutally murdered in a dilapidated mobile home on the outskirts of 8 Mile Road circa May 2004, there were very few people who shed a tear for this most maligned of musical genres. Fred Durst and his red backwards Yankees cap had long worn out their welcome on pop cultural landscape and thus the world watched in indifference as the icons of nu metal faded into inglorious obscurity. Although it was never the most critically respected of musical oeuvres, the middle class, faux-angst ridden teenage fans had grown up on these artists; and upon taking stock at their old CD booklets, learned that if one wanted to get laid by those cute, art chicks into Ani DiFranco and Ryan Adams records, they had to summarily dispose of those suspect Linkin Park records lowering their social queue. Thus, one of the most commercially successful genres disappeared into the ether; never to clumsily rhyme over distorted rock guitars, again.

Due to the hilarious serendipity of an Amazon shipping error, rap rock has returned from its grave in the last month of the last year of our indie rock overlords, MMIX, to haunt this craven world like a tracksuit be-suited zombie hellbent on fucking teen pop stars and screeching about rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ again. Two high-profile (well one is high profile, one is the the vanity project of Jay-Z’s former model moistener but let’s just say high profile for the sake of succinctness...) releases, Lil Wayne’s “The Rebirth” and BlakRoc’s self-titled debut, this last month have attempted to breathe life in to this necrotic genre with varying degrees of success.

I don’t know exactly how much cough syrup was consumed to make Lil Wayne think that he could make a rock album but it should have been immediately clear to all those concerned with selling him as an artistic genius that they needed to immediately convince Weezy that he simply had hallucinated the whole rap rock incident in one of his fevered drank-induced comas. Granted, Weezy is not the first nor the greatest rapper to fall to the siren call of the genre-bending crossover album (or as I’ve dubbed Love Below Syndrome) nor will he be the last. (Assuming, the rap industry is allowed to exist after this year.) Often when rappers reach the pinnacle of the rap genre, they feel like they need to validate their existence as “real” musicians to non-rap critics and fans. This leads to a lot of overwrought musical “fusion” and sublimation of the artists actual talent in service of hackneyed song-writing and poor (but glitterly produced) musicianship.

I’ve always found this approach vaguely disgusting as it buys into the rockist modes of thinking that rap is an inherently inferior genre. You can’t take your chair in the musical canon if your primary instrument is your speaking voice and when even the biggest names in rap buy into this mentality it only serves to reinforce this vaguely racist ideal. Granted, not all albums infected with Love Below Syndrome are worthless (Q-Tip’s eternally pushed-back jazz rap record, “Kamaal The Abstract”, is actually very solid and seems that it only languished in label hell because Jive had no idea how to promote it.) but they all seem to be working on this basic conceit. You gotta rock if you want to be taken serious as a musician.

Lil Wayne’s “Rebirth” is, of course, decidedly terrible and should serve as primary example on what not to do when attempting to make one of these records. If there is a saving grace to the few genre-fusing records that do work, its that the artist has a genuine appreciation and more importantly a deep understanding of why rock music works. (Take the Knux’s criminally overlooked hipster rap masterpiece “Remind Me In 3 Days...” as example. The Knux are incredibly skilled musicians at a variety of instruments and their music reflects that. The guitar riffs on “Cappuccino” seamlessly blend in with their electronica-influenced break beats and synthesizers to form perfectly synthesized rock-influenced rap music. The Knux understand rock music and their music reflects that.) Lil Wayne’s frame of reference seems to be lazily cribbed from watching about a half dozen old episodes of “Headbanger’s Ball” and calling it a night so he can go smoke himself retarded. Its as if he asked his producers to emulate Slash’s butt rock riffs so he can scream and warble his Weezyisms over the instrumentation in auto-tune. In a way, its kind of noble that nothing on the record resembles anything that would land itself on a Pitchfork year-end list (i.e. indie and lame) but it shows that Wayne has very little understanding of rock music in anything but a superficial way.

You would think that Lil Wayne would be a somewhat natural fit for hair metal-inspired rap music considering he seems primarily obsessed with the same lifestyle that hair metal promoted. Wayne likes to get head from slutty women, get high and do inexplicably stupid things, a sentiment that Bret Michaels assuredly sympathizes with. The problem is that Lil Wayne’s approach to writing rock music is resoundingly cliché. While Lil Wayne has grown more and more great a rap technician over the years to the point that’s impossible to deny that Lil Wayne is a great rapper (There I said it, people.), his approach to song-writing remains resoundingly insipid. When he tries to get serious like on “Misunderstood,” it ends up being rambling nonsense. So when he attempts to ply his trade to rock, a song like “Prom Queen” trades on the lowest common denominator of rock music, drawing well-worn tropes about love-gone-bad, revenge fantasies. And that’s one of the better songs on the album. In a way, Lil Wayne’s approach to rock music is the mirror approach that rock artists have towards hip hop. When Rivers Cuomo attempts to marry hip hop to his “guitar music” on the exceedingly awful “Can’t Stop Partying,” he just ends up repeating the most stereotypical elements of rap culture as if all that rap encompasses is blinged-out excess. All superficiality.

Of course, Dame Dash knows hip hop. This should be an exceedingly obvious statement considering the man was the mastermind behind Roc-A-Fella Records dominance as rap label this decade. He understands the modes of the genre and is able to discern between a good idea and a bad idea. What’s surprising is that the Black Keys know hip hop because nothing in their brand of hazy, indie blues rock suggests that they listen to anything other than Led Zeppelin II all day long. (Granted, there is nothing to suggest that they don’t listen to hip hop, either. I happen to love Ace Of Base’s “The Sign” although no one would know it, either.) Blakroc’s self-titled debut, Dame Dash’s vanity rap rock experiment with the Black Keys, might be the greatest rap rock album of all-time (depending on if you feel Rage Against The Machine qualifies) as it manages to synthesize both genres better than can reasonably be expected. The record works because it primarily defies some of the traditional aesthetics of the genre to create a newer more blues-based sound contrasting with the traditional heavy metal template that nu metal provides. Why rap rock records often fail is that being based on the aesthetics of heavy metal, the overly loud and grandiose musicianship that is a tradition in metal can overpower the spoken-word vocals of rap. The opposite is true in rap music where a great rap performance can make the production seem almost secondary. When you combine this with the clumsy rapping of nu metal singers like Fred Durst, it becomes formula for embarrassment.

The Black Keys’ brand of rock being primarily blues-based works infinitely better with the traditionally sample heavy formula of rap music production. The woozy guitar strings blend seamlessly into the background and let the rapping dominate and when you have an all-star cast of rappers like Blakroc does (Mos Def, Raekwon, RZA, Ludacris, Pharaohe Monche and the disembodied voice of Ol’ Dirty Bastard all make an appearance on the record) you want to sublimate the production into the background and let your rappers shine. “Stay Of The Fucking Flowers” and “Why Can’t I Forget About Him” sound amazing because the rappers and singers are given equal billing to the Keys production.

Dame Dash should be commended for the vision and his A&R work on this album because you can’t imagine this record would work nearly as successful without his keen ear for knowing how to put talented musicians in contact with each other. If more successful music moguls were willing to take chances like this perhaps hip hop wouldn’t be in such dire straits. This record has even done relatively well for an independent release selling 30,000 copies since its release mostly on strong word of mouth between music fans. If Lil Wayne wants to save “The Rebirth” from being a commercial and artistic disaster in the two months before it’s official release in February. He might consider calling Dash a call and see if he can’t have the Black Keys re-work the entire album for him. You never know…

Eating Leftovers With Elzhi

2009-12-11T10:52:00.004-05:00

"Ugh, Nice watch..."

I always get hostilely indignant when "rap" fans claim that Jason Powers is "boring" as if simply being preternaturally gifted at the art of rapping is somehow akin to having the scarlet letter of unforgivable wackness affixed to one's lapel . If you can't appreciate the subtle yet thrilling intricacies of Elzhi's raps that's more an indictment of your own personal attention span (or perhaps need for instant gratification with easily digestible swagger) than any flaw in Elzhi as an artist. Elzhi is a rapper meticulously obsessed with the craft of rapping and his taste in the neo-boom-bap beats in the Black Milk variety is just as impeccable. Not only that but he's a rapper that is able to translate that ability into crafting perfect, little concept songs that have fully constructed narratives, themes and morals. His lyrical flash is backed up by true substance. If that's boring to you than I'm not sure why you are even interested in listening to rap music in the first place.

Elzhi's latest offering,"The Leftovers Unmixtape," is another fine edition into the Detroit rappers growing catalog. It's mostly compromised of b-sides, rarities, and remixes from Elzhi's excellent and underrated tandem ("Euro Pass" and "The Preface") of street albums last year and for fans of Elzhi's razor sharp lyrical ass lyricism, this won't disappoint. The tape features beats from long-time Elzhi collaborators, Black Milk and DJ Dez, as well neo-Dilla beatsmith luminaries like Jake One, Oh No and Moss. While this doesn't quite match the highs of its predecessors, it does feature some particularly stirring remixes of some Elzhi's classics. "Dream", Jake One's remix of personal classic "Talkin' In My Sleep", is particularly evocative.

Download: Elzhi - The Leftovers Unmixtape

Video: 5 O'Clock Shadowboxers - High Noon

2009-12-09T19:51:00.005-05:00

For a guy I've never actually met in person, I converse with Zilla Rocca on the daily more often than I do with some of my closest friends (Shout out to the What?) so I'm going to be proud when Zilla breaks through the rap blog ghetto and turns himself into a genuine indie rap star. "High Noon" was my favorite song off of Zilla's and fellow "fruity little indie rap circle jerk" friend, Douglas Martin's 5 O'Clock Shadowboxers project from earlier this year. This is the video.

Prepare for full-on film noir awesomeness. I think more underground rappers need to have to the same level of conceptual ambition as Zilla does. If I have to listen to another goddamn "D.O.A." freestyle...

Adult Swim: Better Than Diplo

2009-12-09T11:19:00.004-05:00

"B.T.W. A.T.H.F. F.T.W."

One of my personal tests, to determine whether or not a human being is worthy of spending my precious time with, is determining if one finds the material dispensed by Cartoon Network's Adult Swim funny. If one doesn't find the comedic stylings of Master Shake (or god forbid, Frisky Dingo...) hilarious, I inherently distrust your world view and thus you must be exterminated (or at least, summarily removed from my presence) off the face of this earth. (You probably would vote for Sarah Palin, anyway, so clearly you have nothing to offer the human species.) I find Adult Swim to be great not only because their humor gels with my inherent schadenfreudic enjoyment of the cruel absurdities of the world but their celebration of all things bizarre leads them to spearhead moments of weirdo musical genius like this amazing little southern rap remix project, "ATL RMX."

The idea of a record that dares to combine the trunk rattle of Atlanta-based street rap with the sounds of the luminaries of modern avant garde, electronic beat making is going to win it's share of ironically appreciative fans and knee-jerk reactionary haters alike but it's an album (or is it more of a mixtape? At this point, the lines have been blurred so much that my screed against mixtapes, two years ago, is largely anachronistic) that deserves a more thoughtful approach than both. I've always contended that a lot of southern rap icons like Young Jeezy and Three 6 Mafia whose music is often lazily described as "gothic" or "monolithic" would sound amazing if paired with producers like El-P who specialize in ambient swaths of dystopic buzz. El-P's beat-making approach is often all dark ambient mood anyway so it seemed like a natural pairing to combine it with rappers who specialize in dysfunctional amorality. The idea being that you could amplify the strengths of the artists involved and hide their weaknesses. For example, El-P's remix of Young Jeezy's "I Got This" fills in the awkward pauses and holes in Jeezy's flow with punctuating buzzing flourishes while Jeezy's natural charm makes El-P far more palatable to casual rap fans.

Not everything works, the two Lil Jon remixes are particularly heinous, but there is a lot to love on this. Ann Arbor-based, glitch hop producer, Dabrye's remix of Goodie Mob's "Is That You God?" is pretty much perfect. While Starkey somehow manages to turn Guerrilla Zoe's "Lost" into something approaching the auto-tuned hipster hop of Kid CuDi. The best cut on the record is the previously mentioned, "I Got This (El-P Remix)," which miraculously manages to be the best Young Jeezy record released since "3 A.M."

Download: Adult Swim & Beaterator Present... ATL RMX (Left-Click) [Via Adult Swim]

Kickspit Underground Rock Festival '09

2009-12-06T12:39:00.004-05:00

Every couple of summers, I inexplicably decide to spend a few hundred dollars of my parent's hard-earned money and attend one of these outdoor music festivals and immediately regret it within the first hour of the show. For one, it serves as an instant reminder how much I hate the human race and to be herded amongst the worst of the human species, inches me ever so closer to my inevitable descent into multiple homicide, Joker-style supervillainy. Armed with this knowledge, you will realize why Saturday Night Live's pitch perfect send-up of these events resonated so spectacularly hilarious with me.

Of course, this was nothing compared to the genius of the potato chip sketch.

Blake Lively, I didn't think it was possible you could ratchet up your status within my heart but you have defied the odds and pulled it off. Serena van der Woodsen Forever! XOXO!

22 Minutes With Lupe Fiasco

2009-11-29T18:21:00.003-05:00

"Lupe Fiasco's "Tiny Toons" game is on point."

Brevity is a virtue amongst rap artists that is often far too overlooked. Somewhere along the great existential time line of human existence, rappers began assuming that the more product they could shove onto the 80 minute flux capacity of the compact disc, the more likely their record would be plucked off the crowded shelves of a record store and inserted into the warm plastic confines of a stereo disc changer. Perhaps, this was wise thought when albums were selling like they were lightly sprinkled with heroin flakes but it makes little sense in an environment when the world's biggest beef enthusiast can only sell 160,000 copies of his new record. When nobody is buying your record anyway, it makes little sense to water down the content of your record with filler tracks especially considering when most music is consumed in the solitary schizophrenia of an iPod, an artist can ill afford to waste their fan's potential time listening to a slew of ill-conceived crossover tracks. It only takes a quick flick of the wrist to switch to something better.

Lupe Fiasco must have taken that lesson because his excellent new mixtape, "Enemy Of The State: A Love Story", is an exercise in the power of limited quantity correlating with infinite quality. "Enemy Of The State" clocks in at a brisk 22:09 minutes and there is not a second wasted where Lupe is not furiously bringing glorious swaths of funeral pyre. It's been almost two years since "The Cool" established his bonafides as the premier rapper of his generation and if you had forgotten how great a rapper Lupe is, it's not going to take you very long to remember.

Lupe's primary strength is the complex density in the metaphors of his rhymes. He's the type of rapper whose lyrics are just as enjoyable being read in the liners notes as they are to listen to. You discover more depths the more you listen to him so it's extremely rewarding that "Enemy Of The State" is so brief. It allows for easily more digestible, multiple listens that allows you to explore the subtleties of his craft. His work on "The National Anthem" is a lyrical junkie's wet dream. Initially, the mixtape was released "cassette-style" (one continuously long mp3) before bootleg junkies spliced it up but I find the "cassette-style" of the tape to be incredibly fitting. Much like an old Maxell magnetic, one quickly finds oneself furiously spinning the iPod wheel in reverse in order to listen to the same lyric over and over again. Only in the digital age, you don't have to worry about popping the magnetic tape in your mp3 player. Who says technology ruins everything?

Download: Lupe Fiasco - Enemy Of The State: A Love Story [Mixtape] (Via Nah Right)

Kidz In The Hall: That One Song That Samples That One Song From That One Band That Has That One Song That I Like

2009-11-19T11:49:00.010-05:00

"Don't sit back there and act like Double-O's hair ain't luxurious when you know that it is, bitch!"

A few years back in college, I was browsing the music stacks at a Best Buy, looking for the latest Masta Ace record, when the in-store loud speakers began to the play the familiar drum patterns of a record I had become all too familiar with, Eric B. and Rakim's "My Melody." I paused for a moment to compliment the in-store D.J. for having decidedly exceptional taste for a sixteen year-old when it soon became apparent to my dawning horror that I would not be graced with the melodious baritone of Rakim's rich voice but rather the insipid strains of the pop vapidness of Teairra Marie's "Make Her Feel Good." I had been hoodwinked into the thinking I was listening to a superior song. Needless to say, I was not amused. I would go and buy the Masta Ace album at Circuit City, instead. (I was as shocked as you are that they had it. The rap selection at Syracuse area conglomerate retail chain stores is surprisingly boss.)

Later that day after I tore into Ace's masterpiece, A Long Hot Summer, for the first time (a surprisingly seminal moment of my music life since it was my belated introduction to my third favorite rapper), I began to reflect not on the universal atrociousness of Marie's blood screaming abortion but rather the curious nature of an R&B song sampling a classic hip hop jam. It seemed to me in my pre-blogger days (and before the crushing weight of disappointment morphed me into the cold-hearted hater that you know and tolerate) that if R&B was now sampling hip hop (instead of vice versa) that a critical equilibrium in the nature of the genre would soon broken and spiral rap music into the prophecies of the Pharaoh NaS and later dissected by the Prophet Sasha Frere-Jones. If R&B music was no longer producing original music breaks and instead were wantonly sampling from old school hip hop records than the delicate ecosystem of hip hop music sampling would soon eat itself and collapse into Casio keyboard fuckery or worse, start sampling from lame indie rock bands! I prayed to the Gods of the Mic this would not come to pass. Foolish, foolish mortal...

Noted hipster rap scions, Kidz In The Hall, made "history" this week when they sampled indie rock flavor of the month, Grizzly Bear's, "breakout" hit "Two Weeks" for their adventurously titled song, "Grizzly Man." A song that I've come to enjoy despite the obvious pretentious gimmickry involved with it's creation. Double-O and Naledge continue with a curious trend in hip hop as the sampling sources of the material continues to come from more and more obvious and gimmick-laden. Despite my admittedly ridiculous, curmudgeonly biases towards indie rock music in general, "Two Weeks" is actually a pretty fantastic song. Grizzly Bear's ethereal harmonies on the song remind me of Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys and they build around a hypnotic piano loop that help make the song an instant standout record. However, Kidz In The Hall specious choice to sample the song ends up sounding as pandering and pretentious as T.I. and company did when ripping off M.I.A. for "Swagger Like Us." It plays to the built-in tastes of their hipster rap audience and combined with the relative unimaginative way the song uses the source material makes the record seem like a cheap play for crossover potential. The song chipmunks Grizzly Bear's harmonies and simply speeds the piano break to hip hop level bbms. When referring to the song, noted street-oriented rap novice, Jeff Weiss said "I liked this beat better the first time, when it was called Still D.R.E."

What's more troubling is the way that Naledge seems to be mining the Clipse's flow on a Guerilla Blackian level (Word to the Passion, again). His voice and speech patterns seem to mirror the Brothers Thornton's signature growly and delivery right down to Pusha's "hyuck" adlib. It's disconcerting that Naledge would do this considering he's an artist that is fairly established in his own right. I wonder if he even noticed what he was doing.

With all that said, I still miraculously manage to enjoy the song beyond all of my critical caveats. Perhaps, I just like gimmicky source samples more than I'd care to admit.

Download: Kidz In The Hall - Grizzly Man [Via 2 Dopeboyz]

50 Cent - Before I Self Destruct: Review

2009-11-05T08:50:00.006-05:00

"A lesser man would make a joke about 50 wearing a shirt on the cover.
Luckily, I am that lesser man."

I suppose if Curtis Jackson wasn’t Keith Olbermann-certified as the “Worst Person In The World,” one could begin to feel a tiny morsel of human sympathy for the man better known to the world as 50 “Fitty” Cent. After ruling the pop music world with an iron fist for the better part of the decade, 50 has fallen hard from the throne; Kanye infamously emasculated him two y ago in their sales showdown two years ago; his latest singles have been met with scathing indifference from both radio and the critical market; he’s been reduced almost to a court jester, showing up once every few to start a ridiculous beef with another rapper; raging against a world that does not care for his antics, anymore. It’s not far fetched to suggest had not for his Pimpin’ Curly videos on ThisIs50.com, he would relegated to Papoose status on his own record label. Be that as it may, after all the drama he’s caused helping shatter the New York rap scene in his quest to conquer it; it’s hard not feel a tinge (okay, a shit load) of schadenfreudirific joy at watching 50 Cent flail helplessly at making a hit record. The man wore out his welcome long ago and watching his feeble attempts at radio play be is karmic revenge for the endless amount of careers and lives the man tried to ruin. He’s earned this treatment. The man needs to hit the restart button on the last four years of his career.

50’s latest album, “Before I Self Destruct”, is billed as an almost mea culpa for the pop corniness of his previous two forays into blatant commercial pandering. In a way, it’s his “50 Cent Begins,” a revamp of his early mixtape persona before the allure of “Candy Shop” money turned him into a living symbol of gangster homo eroticism and beef mongering. “Before I Self Destruct” is an attempt to produce a record that bangs harder and more consistently than anything he’s done since quite possibly his mixtape days. For the most part, it’s a gambit that pays off as this is a record that is some of 50’s most inspired work since quite possibly “Guess Who’s Back?” and is easily his second best album.

From the opening moments of “The Invitation” (which according to the world’s most accurate encyclopedia is produced by DJ Premier. Really?! It sounds nothing like him, boys.), this record seems to have a clear statement of purpose when 50 Cent re-counting those infamous nine shots stares himself teary-eyed in the mirror and declares to himself “you ain’t dead!” It’s a powerful moment not so much because it evokes the most famous incident in his myth but because it serves as something of a metaphor for the state of his career. 50’s career as it’s nadir but he’s not going down without a fight even if it kills him. From this moment on “Before I Self Destuct,” 50 goes into an impressive stretch run of some of his most inspired, most hardcorest, most gangsterlicious (Word to Riley Freeman.) rap songs of his career. It’s song number ten before we reach anything that can remotely considered anything approaching that would be suitable for play in the club or the radio. 50 is not playing around. For once, 50 drops the quease-inducing sex food metaphor raps and actually provides the "aggressive" sounding music he's been alleging exists in between "21 Questions" knock-offs.

For those ten or so songs, Curtis Jackson gets his swagger back and returns to the viciously sarcastic wit that made him a star in the first place. Aside from the asinine radio-friendly pandering of "The Massacre" and "Curtis," I always felt the main problem with these record were that he couldn't channel the nihilistic joy of his mixtape work into any of his hardcore material. It always appeared that he didn't care and was more content to kick half-assed gangsterisms on auto-pilot than writing anything that remotely approached his early promise as a pure gangster rapper. The only time the fun of being the evil dictator of hip hop was channeled into his music was the shit-talking spoken word interludes, he would record over at the end of his seemingly endless diss tracks . (Think the last minute of "I Run New York.") 50 regains a little bit of that ol' demonic steez back on his new album. On "Then Days Go By", he giddily brags of being sexually taken advantage of as a pre-teen by his older babysitter when he screams "Take me baby, take me!" and on "Stretch," he taunts a young heroin addict that he doesn't give a fuck he' s ruining his live because "it's a cold world we're in". These are situations aren't novel to hip hop music but you can sense the joy 50 feels in playing the villain. We're missing that.

However, after those ten songs, the record begins to slowly fall apart as the second half of the record marks 50 Cent's quixotic quest to produce something gravitating towards a hit record. His insipid single, "Baby By Me," is as flaccid and desperate as the day it was conceived in a board room at the Interscope Records building. "Ok, You're Right" marks Dr. Dre's continued descent into pop, keyboard-plinking senility while "Get It Hot" sounds like budget Timbo lame-assery. This half of the record seems so schizophrenic and out-of-character with the mission statement of the first half that it begins to compromise the whole project. There is nothing on this record that is half as essential as "I Get Money," the brilliantly misanthropic single from "Curtis," and this in itself keeps the record from truly shining.

Still if this isn’t quite his “Stillmatic”, it comes close as possible as we will ever get out of 50 Cent (and no, we will not be debating the merits of “Stillmatic” in my comment section. It’s a great album regardless if your wack-ass Jay-Z revisionism will allow you to admit it or not. Sometimes, your just going to have to agree that the consensus is right, people. This is one of those times.). “Before I Self Destruct” isn’t quite perfect but it offers a glimpse at 50 Cent at this most clear and focused as an artist as he's been since his mixtape days. Welcome back, Curtis Jackson. I will now grudgingly give you your props. Don’t fuck it up.

Wale's "Mirrors".... The Calm Before The Shit Storm?

2009-10-30T10:30:00.004-04:00

"The rest of State Property must be maaaaad..."

I have not been shy these last couple of months at expressing my trepidation regarding the prospects of quality regarding "Attention: Deficit", Wale's upcoming debut album. It seems that after Wale received near universal acclaim ("universal" meaning praise from people who don't find Gucci's jewelry/produce couplets the highest form of American poetry...) for "The Mixtape About Nothing," he's been far more concerned with hobnobbing with celebrities and updating his followers on the regularities of his bowel movement on Twitter (Seriously, have you seen how often this guy twitters? I know less about the every day's comings and goings of my closest friends than I do about this guy. Keep some mystery about yourself, dude!) than being in the studio crafting quality songs that people want to listen to. It makes one wonder if he's received too much hype too fast before he had the chance to build a solid audience or identity as an artist and instead, left him craving the fast money and limelight that a huge radio hit provides.

I have been less than ecstatic about his output that's been leaked for his album and this seemed directly tied to his obvious desires for a crossover smash (and thus far, his inability to write one). Enough blood has been spilled over the transcendent offense to the aural canals that is "Chillin", so there is no need to re-hash but the other material that has been released for the album have failed to capture my imagination as well. "Pretty Girls" was cool but it didn't help that it couldn't catch on despite that it featured the presence of every ig'nant rap fan's favorite manslaughter defendant, Gucci Mane. "World Tour" was slyly catchy but it was too derivative of a far greater Tribe Called Quest song for it to be considered a success. Meanwhile, "Let It Go (Inhibitions)" and "Contemplate", two high profile collaborations with famous artists (in this case, the Corpse Of Pharrell Williams and Rihanna) were the basic definition of album filler. It seemed the farther he strayed from his D.C. go-go influences into crossover territory the more flaccid the material became.

Today's leak du jour, "Mirrors," takes the opposite approach to the pop market pandering of "Attention: Deficit's" earlier leaks and not surprisingly, it's one of the more successful songs released from the album thus far. However, it still isn't quite the show-stopping monsters that "Back In The Go-Go" and "Nike Boots" were last year. "Mirrors" draws heavily from Mark Ronson's shockingly gutter production (who knew the Trust Fund King Of Hip Hop had these types of beats in him?) and Wale manages to acquit himself very nicely with a showy, stuterring cadence that proves he can ride a beat as well as anybody. Problem is that he's getting his shine seriously blocked by Bun B's killer sixteen (he tends to do that to even the best of rappers) and ultimately, Bun seems to make Wale seem like an afterthought on his own song. Wale has a lot of strengths as a writer (witty pop culture driven punchlines, an ability to write an issue driven song that doesn't come across as condescending, etc.) but going head-to-head against rappers of Bun's caliber is a recipe for looking foolish. He's much better at letting himself give space to muse on the song at hand than attempting to compete with other rappers for song dominance. He's just not that type of rapper. He's way better at working at a concept song and digging into the intricacies than anything else. It's definitively why "The Mixtape About Nothing" and "100 Miles & Running"(two mostly featureless records) are better than "Back To The Feature."

I'm not in FULL-ON PANIC MODE about "Attention: Deficit" because other than "Chillin", the songs have been simply unspectacular rather out right awful but I'm certainly worried that the record could be an assured disappointment. After all, I have spent quite the amount of time talking Wale up as if he's the future of hip hop. I wouldn't want to be wrong, now wouldn't I? I have a reputation to protect.

Random Notes:

- Wale and Ronson have had great chemistry ever since the initial "100 Miles & Running" mixtape two years ago. Wale should really considering working exclusively with Ronson and Best Kept Secret on all future products. They bring the best out of each other.

- This record is certainly not approaching a hit record (and I'm sure Tray is going to come wandering around to discuss some nonsense) but this is the type of stuff that Wale should be rhyming over for here on out.

- I only link to other blog's to provide zshare links because Interscope has a nasty habit of shutting your whole blog down if you deign to link to their material. Obviously, I'm interested in maintaining an accurate archive of my material. Mostly so commenters can bring up some hyperbolic comment about Saigon two years after the fact to flaunt that I once had something slightly positive to say about a rapper that he doesn't like. Consider this the trade-off, folks.

Download: Wale [Feat. Bun-B] - Mirrors [Via Nah Right]

Dear God, Why Are You Fucking With Us?

2009-10-29T12:50:00.009-04:00

"[Archived Photo]: Man Screaming Expletives In A Cemetery ( 2010). Source: The Good Doctor Zeus' Worst Nightmares, copyright B.J. Steiner, July 2010."

Dear God,

Are you fucking kidding me?! After the unmitigated disaster of the 2008 Browns and 2008/2009 Cleveland Indians, you are crushing our hopes for a championship with a wildly disappointing wannabe contender, yet again. You really are doing this to the city of Cleveland, yet again? Why? What the hell did we ever do to piss you off so much?

It's bad enough that we had to watch our last two CY Young winners be traded away and proceed to start Game 1 of the World Series for our bitter enemies but you are now fucking with LeBron James, too. The Cavaliers are only two games into the season and they look like a total, irredeemable clusterfuck. I can understand getting beat by the Celtics on Opening Night. The Celtics are a great team after all (I just got nauseous a little admitting that...) but having us getting nearly blown out by the Toronto fuckin' Raptors is beyond the pale even for your vindictiveness.

Why do you continue to build us up only to anally violate our souls with spike medieval weaponry? Was trading away Rocky Colavito that much more of an affront to you than the Red Sox trading away Babe Ruth or that damned Cubs goat? Those teams got to enjoy Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Tom Brady and the 1985 Chicago Bears. Why fuck with us in all three major sports? It's bad enough we have to tolerate the gross, spectacular incompetence of the Fake Browns. Why mess with the only thing that's remotely source of civic pride in our fair city? Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

This is bullshit so get your act together, fix up Delonte West and get the Cavaliers back in shape or we will have more than words when I see you, God. This is not acceptable.

Love,

The City Of Cleveland

Return Of The King!

2009-10-27T12:33:00.011-04:00

"Seriously, SI? What do you have against Cleveland? Wasn't this enough for you?"

Our lord and savior, LeBron Raymone James, returns to the court tonight in the first step to ending Cleveland's quixotic journey towards a professional championship. This is the best team the Cavaliers have ever assembled. Win a ring for the King.

I Heart Jay Electronica

2009-10-27T00:35:00.006-04:00

"Thankfully, this man remains immune to the insidious effects of Baduizm. Quick! Somebody develop a vaccine!"

In a world where every aspiring rapper’s hustle primarily consists of flooding the market with more disposable mixtapes and “Run This Town” freestyles than my desktop’s trash bin can conceivably handle, Jay Electronica’s approach to career promotion is shockingly spartan. It seems like ages since the man has released a full length CDQ instead choosing to release tantalizingly, short snippets of restrained brilliance in MP3 form and live performance videos to satiate the unending, rabid hunger of the internet, true school hip hop fan. In my mind, the one minute, forty-five seconds of the video preview of the Just Blaze produced “Dear Moleskine” is the most thrilling two minutes of music produced all year and it’s not even a finished song. Jay doesn't just believe in the power of quality over quantity. He believes in nothing less than flawless perfection. It's an admirable quality but it leaves the devoted fan of his with a maddening case of blue balls.

So you can imagine the school boy enthusiasm that I felt when Jay released two new, unreleased tracks within twenty-four hours of each other today. “Suckas” and “2 Step” are easily some of the best music released this all year and continues Jay’s burgeoning candidacy for the greatest rapper of his generation. Jay’s perfectionism is obvious and palpable on both of these tracks as his sheer mastery of the lyrical arts continue to astound. The man is simply not playing around. The man needs to release his debut album yesterday.

Download: Jay Electronica - Suckas [Produced By J Dilla] - via Nah Right

Download: Jay Electronica - 2 Step [Produced By Sol Messiah] - via Dot Got It

Bonus Video: Jay Electronica - Dear Moleskine [Produced By Just Blaze]

Clipse, Cam & Chicken

2009-10-25T22:26:00.005-04:00

“Welcome To 2006...”

Way before Radric Davis became the chic rapper du jour of the sneering intelligentsia, Cameron Giles and the Brothers Thronton were perennially sweeping Pitchfork’s annual overly enthusiastic ironic rapper appreciation awards. Thus, it’s “kind of big deal” that Clipse and Cam’ron would decide to collaborate on Clipse’s new single, “Popular Demand (Popeyes)” for the Clipse’s upcoming album, “’Til The Casket Drops.”

In a lot of ways, Clipse’s and Cam’s approach to crafting hipster appreciated coke rap is diametrically opposed. The Clipse are all snarling, dystopic fury and perfectly crafted, menacing punchlines while Cam assualts the boundaries of cogency with his aloof non-sequiturs and assumed superiority. On “Popeyes,” they manage to synthesize these ideas to create the best track these three rappers have been apart of since Pitchfork stopped paying attention.

Pharell provides a dusty piano break in the vein of Lupe Fiasco’s “I Gotcha” for them to snap over and they all do a strong job attacking the beat. Highlights include a particularly memorable Pusha-T verse where he curiously taunts our Lord and Savior, LeBron Raymone James, for sleeping his with sloppy seconds that Pusha takes note looks like Madonna. Why Pusha wants to be smited by God is beside the point. It sounds awesome to hear the Brothers Thornton (...and Cam) over proper Neptunes production and kicking furious brag rhymes again after hearing a series of ill-advised overt plays for the club that marked the hideous “Re-Up Gang” album.

I’m cautiously expecting good things from “Til The Casket Drops” especially since “Kind Of Like A Big Deal" has grown on me significantly.

Download: Clipse [Feat. Cam'ron] - "Popular Demand (Popeyes)" - (Via Nah Right)

No Words... Weezer F. Baby Edition

2009-10-25T17:49:00.006-04:00

"How can we take my rock guitar approach and marry it to hip hop?" - Rivers Cuomo
"Don't." - the American record-buying public

In Chuck "The Best Music Writer Alive" Klosterman's new book, Eating The Dinosaur, there is an extended essay on Rivers Cuomo (and how he kind of, sort of, vaguely relates to Ralph Nader) in which he questions the common sense assumption that anything Weezer creates is remotely ironic. Klosterman asserts that Cuomo is the most literal rock artist of all-time and this goes to explaining the universal shittiness of hist post-Pinkerton (or far more accurately post-Blue Album) career. For Weezer's sake, Klosterman had better be wrong because "Can't Stop Partying", Weezer's paradigm-shiftingly terrible collaboration with Lil Wayne, is quite possibly the worst decision in a career that includes "Beverly Hills" if the record was meant as anything other than ironic mockery of their collaborator. Actually, that's not necessarily true.

Let's examine the two possible scenarios for the creation of this record:

1. If Rivers Cuomo is completely literal and serious about this record (and he really does enjoy popping bottles of Patron in the club) than the implication is that Rivers is either legally retarded or has one of the most legendarily shitty taste in music of all-time. This song plays like what I imagine the inside of T-Pain's head sounds like. It's nothing but synth gurgles (provided inexplicably by Jermaine Dupri and Polow Da Don) and tertiary weirdo, nonsensical vocals. It's like a Fergie song fucked Conor Oberst and out spewed from her vagina a neon-glittering still born.

2. If this song is meant to be ironic than it's complete and total douchebaggery at it's finest. It trades in nothing but the rotest of hip hop tropes and stereotypes, mining these signifiers for the same type of cheap humor whenever white people engage with hip hop. It makes the song ugly. The fact that Lil Wayne, the king of ironic rap appreciation, shows up makes it completely worse. He's actively involving himself with people who would openly condescend to his music. (Wait...Actually, come to think of it. I think the second one is infinitely preferable. I actively encourage Weezy mockery on an epic scale. Fire away, Rivers! )

Ultimately, who is this song aiming to please? Consider how Weezer fans openly revolted at the disposable pop punk of "Beverly Hills," I can't imagine the horrified reaction a song that sounds like "Beverly Hills" as if it were remixed by... I guess, Jermaine Dupri and Polow Da Don, would create. Lil Wayne fans might react to this considerably better (considering they made the war crime against humanity called "Lollipop" a number-one hit) but considering the violent, bleeding anti-buzz that Weezy's rock album "The Rebirth" has generated, it would suggest that the only emotion that a song like this would create is revulsion.

Dear Diary: Not A Blogger Vs. VH1's Hip Hop Honors 2009

2009-10-14T09:46:00.008-04:00

"Where's X and Jigga?"

I’m always been a bit baffled with the VH1 Hip Honors. On one hand, it’s kind of cool to see a whole bunch of forgotten rap icons get one last moment in the sun before the cruel mistress of popular culture takes them back behind the proverbial woodshed and plants two bullets in the back of their last shreds of relevancy. We get to see acts like the Furious Five share the stage with their cultural descendants in a moment of gooey, mushy glory that reminds us why we like rap music in the first place. It’s affirming of everything we kind of love about this insane little art form.

On the other hand, it’s VH1 running the show which makes the entire enterprise seem odd and out of place. Growing up in the ‘90s, I couldn’t have imagined a platform less hip hop than VH1. The network was always the prim and prissy older sister figure to MTV’s sluttier, younger sibling. While MTV had “Yo! MTV Raps” and “Headbanger’s Ball,” VH1 was content to let Celine Dion warble over their airwaves on a 24-hour cycle. If there was anything that would make lite-FM deejays swoon in their mom jeans, VH1! would play it on an almost constant, droning loop. They didn’t even play hip hop. I can remember vividly being pissed off as a budding rap fan when they cut Left Eye’s rap out of the “Waterfalls” video for reasons that I can’t even begin to contemplate. Knowing their history, I’ve always found it to be the highest of incongruity that VH1 and not MTV (or god forbid, BET...) would host this event.

This year , VH1 has decided to abandon it’s traditional format of honoring the fifteen or so artists that a bunch of random talking heads on television retrospectives have deemed “important” and honor Def Jam Records, instead. (I guess because honoring Russell Simmons, LL Cool J, Slick Rick, Public Enemy and the Beasties Boys weren’t enough recognition for Def Jam the first time.. Yet again, they did honor Isaac Hayes for reasons that haven’t been fully explained last year so that might be more of a function that they are running out of artists that people might remember. I mean, nobody really wants to see a forty year old Skee-Lo get up on stage and do “I Wish”... well except me.) Anyway, since I wasn’t invited to go to the show, I decided to do a running diary to review the show. Hate on!

9:00 - The show opens up with the sweet, melodious sounds of a gospel choir as the show’s host, Tracy “The Dong Slayer” Morgan, dressed like a preacher in a James Brown wig proselytizes the gospel according to Brother Russell. Somewhere along the line, this turns into a rousing rendition of “Jesus Walks” which is ironic because Kanye West is way too busy upsetting white America to be bothered with these shenanigans. At one point, Tracy claims that DMX became the voice of hip hop. Apparently, hip hop is synonymous with crack.

9:03 - In the night’s first video package, LL Cool J (who couldn’t be bothered to show up tonight because he loathes the modern incarnation of Def Jam with the fire I only reserve for the Yankees and assorted professional sport teams from Boston) narrates a pretty hilarious story of how he met Rick Rubin. LL is a pretty funny dude, it turns out. Do you think though when he signed with Def Jam that he would find himself co-starring in a NCIS spin-off on CBS with Robin? Probably not.

9:05 - I lick my lips and adjust my fitted.

9:06 - The Roots come out to do “Rock The Bells” for what’s gotta be the 5,000th time on this show when all of sudden the corpse of Eminem shows up out of nowhere to join in. I gotta say watching Eminem and Black Thought go toe-to-toe as performers is some really impressive shit. They have got to be the two best pure technicians in the game and they really bring the heat with this performance.

9:10 - In what we will be the indelible image of this whole ordeal, Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons are interviewed about Public Enemy while they sitting shoeless and Indian-style in some idyllic garden at one of their mansions. It's all new-agey and stupid. I’m pretty sure if their younger counterparts could have seen how ridiculous and lame they looked twenty-five years later, they would have hung themselves in the closet in that NYU dorm room. How the mighty have fallen...

9:11 - What the fuck? Jimmy Fallon is introducing Public Enemy?! This has officially replaced “Flavor Of Love 3” as the most embarrassing moment in Chuck D’s life.

9:12 - Public Enemy does “Rebel Without A Pause” backed by virtually every vaguely “revolutionary” political musician ever. This has to be the first and only time that Boots Riley will EVER be on national television so that’s kind of notable right there. I didn’t listen to “Street Sweeper Social Club” (because I have better things to do with my life) but I heard it was pretty terrible. On the other hand, Pitchfork gave it a “3.9” which probably means it’s the rap album of the year. I will say this, though. Tom Morello continues to make weird noises out of his guitar.

9:17 - I just want you to know I think it’s incredibly disturbing to see Russell and Rick talk about wanting to make loud, angry music when they aren’t wearing any shoes. This image alone is enough to make me want to burn my copy of “Radio.”

9:19 - Scarface and Ludacris come out to a Def Jam South tribute. Scarface performs “Guess Whos’ Back” to polite indifference from the crowd. I’m blaming the crowd on that one. That song is boss. Shame on you. That would’ve killed in my apartment. Ludacris does “Southern Hospitality” to a far greater response. I find it hilarious when they do cutaways to the Def Jam dignitaries in the crowd and Kevin Liles is geeking out over the artists while Lyor Cohen looks like he’s pissed that VH1 is completely wasting his time with this foolishness.

9:25 - I got to admit these Tracy Morgan skits are hilarious. Scoopy Giles is the new, new hotness.

9:32 - Thanks, Rick! I will never get the image of Russell Simmons sweating naked in your dorm room out of my head for the rest of my life.

9:33 - Oh, man. KRS-One, Wale, and the dude from the Gym Class Heroes perform “No Sleep Til’ Brooklyn.” Whhhhhhhhhy? I’m officially in the twilight zone. And in typical KRS fashion, he promptly decides to not do the Beasties' actual lyrics and kick a random freestyle about the importance of respecting the four elements or some shit. That shit was like clockwork. Actually, that was one of the best performances of the entire show but I just want to point out that Wale is wearing a Mickey Mouse sweater. That’s a bad omen for “Attention: Deficit.”

9:40 - Apparently, Lyor Cohen signed Warren G because he was a Pete Seger and Carol Kane fan. That would not have happened if I was running Def Jam and saw those two records on his turntables.

9:41 - Warren G and Trey Songz come out to perform “Regulate.” I know Nate Dogg just had a stroke last year but couldn’t they have gotten R. Kelly to do this? I’m convinced they went with Trey Songz because Trey Songz vaguely rhymes with Nate Dogg. I just want to point out when they did a cutout to the stands, Brett Ratner was so bored that he was checking his cell phone. How dare you disrespect the power of the "Regulators," Mr. Ratner!

9:50 - Another Tracy Morgan/Scoopy Giles skit. Not as funny as first.

9:57 - So apparently, Redman called Brett Ratner’s mom a hoe to his face and thus, Ratner put his mom into the video for “Tonight’s Da Night” or something . Ratner introduces Red and Meth who do “Da Rockwilder.” I love that song but I gotta say whoever is doing the sound mix on this broadcast seriously fucked up because you can barely hear the production on any of these tracks. It’s getting really annoying. Redman is rocking a faux-hawk which makes me question my decision to write that piece championing “hipster rap” so many months ago. Had I known this would be in my future, I would’ve been listening to Gucci Mane records... Wait, no I wouldn’t!

10:00 - After a quick costume change, Method Man comes out to do “You’re All I Need To Get By” with Mary J. Blige and I thank the heavens, they are doing the vastly superior “Razor Sharp Remix” and not the uber-lame (and thus more popular) Puffy version. Note To All DJ’s: I don’t know why the Puffy version became the standardized version of that song to be played on the radio but that needs to stop. Puffy's version pales in comparison with the remix RZA did for the video. RZA’s version maintains the gritty, rawness of the album version while still being insanely catchy while Puffy’s version just lacks balls. If I wanted to listen to the equally-as-lame “One More Chance (Remix),” I would listen to the “One More Chance (Remix).” Remember, RZA > Puffy’s ghost producers. That is all.

10:05 - Apparently other than being the world’s biggest asshole, Lyor Cohen is batshit insane. Absolutely nothing in that last video package remotely approached anything resembling cogency.

10:10 - Am I reading too much into this or did Kevin Liles and some random white chick just admit to committing corporate fraud on national television? I’m sure the Internal Revenue Service would be glad to hear that Kevin Liles was writing off making it rain at a strip club as a business expense. That was awesome.

10:11 - Tracy’s outfit overdosed on the bedazzler. 50 Cent would be jealous.

10:12 - Onyx show up and do some bastardized nu-metal version of “Slam” with the Gym Class Heroes. And was I crazy or did I just hear a Rhodes synthesizer at the end of the song? I think my soul just died a little bit inside. Lyor seems annoyed with himself that he signed these clowns.

10:20 - Bill Adler speaks about how Russell and Rick’s original plan was to make the hardest, most uncompromising music possible and force the mainstream to crossover to them. I want you to remember this statement the next time you listen to the quiet storm of a Ne-Yo record.

10:21 - The hideousness of Eve’s multi-colored mullet weave is only surpassed by the monstrosity that sits atop Ashanti’s head. Ashanti’s wig looks like a cross between something Tina Turner would’ve worn to Thunderdome and a dead rat. She and the Corpse Of Ja Rule come out to do a lifeless, medley of various Murder Inc. abortions to scathing indifference from the crowd. If I had been in the audience, I would have considered chucking some cheese on stage to see if her wig was intelligent enough to run through a maze and find it.

10:27 - L.A. Reid shows up to talk about how he personally ruined hip hop. Or at least that’s what I inferred from his interview.

10:30 - When we return from commercials, Lyor Cohen offers further proof that he is totally insane. He rants something about Def Jam being blue collar (Ha!) and being able to fix cars while Death Row/Bad Boy couldn’t because they are soft and don't want to get oil dripped on them. I hate to break it to you, Lyor, but your company released “I Need Love” and as far as I can tell your company bombarded me with all the Ja Rule love songs that I could stomach a few moments ago.

10:31 - Tracy Morgan brings Oran “Juice” Jones(!!!) out for some reason. This seems like something his 30 Rock alter-ego would pull. I’m inspired. The next time I’m speaking in public, I’m going to pull an obscure 80s novelty R&B singer out of the woodwork to sing their hit song acapella, too. I wonder if Rockwell is available...

10:32 - Rick Ross gets his own tribute? What?! Why?! How?! Why?! You couldn’t have gotten Young Jeezy, at least? I’m baffled by the implications of what’s going on here. I would like to point out that Rick Ross’ DJ has managed to capture the annoyance of DJ Khaled's mixtape drops and insert them directly into the live performance medium. That’s fantastic... I’m always looking for ways artists to make their live rap performances shittier than they already are. Rick Rubin looks pained as he is forced to watch Rawse waddle about in that Fila tracksit. I know the feeling, Rubes.

10:40 - Holy shit! It’s DMX! How the hell did they get him to show up?! They must have told him he was going to be attending Tyrone Biggum’s $450,000 Crack Party, instead. Why is Gym Class Heroes re-creating “Party Up” for him? As much as I like live bands, I don’t want to hear Swizz Beatz production being recreated by the Gym Class fuckin’ Heroes or any other collection of half-rate musicians. Re-created live rap music never sounds right and ends up killing the whole vibe. I really wish artists would get off the kick that they need a band to have a hot live show. It rarely works out that way. I’d much rather listen to your DAT recorder.

10:45 - Scoopy Giles “I gotta 99 donuts but the bitch ate one.” Heh. I'm a fan of puns. Maybe, I really should get into Gucci Mane.

10:50 - The show’s finale consists of a medley of “hits” from the Def Jam artists that the show deemed not important enough to get their own segment. Kid Rock performs LL’s “I’m Bad.” (I guess white rappers from Detroit really dig LL...) EPMD performs “Crossover.” A fat, bloated Foxy Brown and Fabolous perform “I’ll Be” to hilarious schadenfreude. Ghostface and Chrisette Michelle do “Back Like That” (Ugh, really? Why not, “Run?”) to my immense disappointment. And finally, Wale comes out to do Kanye’s “Touch The Sky.” That could have been sooooooo better executed. Jay-Z or Kanye should have come out to close the show. You can't end your signature show with a performance from Wale.

10:59 - Russell Simmons comes out to do the standard Def Jam farewell as the credits roll.

Final Verdict: Would it have killed Jay-Z to show up and do “Hard Knock Life?” Doesn’t he have an album to promote? You too good to pay homage, Shawn? Fail.

As with usual with these shows, it always way more disappointing to watch than it would seem on paper. It seems like it would be awesome to watch Eminem perform “Rock The Bells” and have the greats themselves come back and perform one last time for a national audience but it always comes across as simultaneously half-assed and depressing. The newer artists always seem like they’re doing rap karaoke versions of the classics and the legends are always shells of their former selves and can’t live up to the hype of their storied past. It just doesn’t work the way you think it should.

I suppose this year was as good as any, though. I didn’t learn as much as I normally do on these shows due to the fact that the Def Jam story has been told a thousand times in a thousand places but I did discover that Lyor Cohen is apparently Gary Busey in disguise so that was fun. But before I go, I have a message from Russell Simmons...

“Thanks for coming out, God bless you and good night.”

The Inaugural Not A Blogger Cash-For-Hate FTC Advert-viewment Payola Program Spectacular

2009-10-06T17:06:00.005-04:00

"I'm the Bernie Madoff of this blog shit..."

Dear Prospective Internet Viral Blog Money-Giving Payola People Who Send Me Press Releases For Bands I Don’t Care About:

In light of recent Federal Trade Commission regulations that require bloggers to disclose any monetary or valuable goods they receive to review products, you might feel hesitant to continue to spend (or rather, waste) money on bloggers reviewing your products. Let me assure you that I, the Good Doctor Zeus, proprietor of Not A Blogger, have no ethical qualms whatsoever with the practice of blog payola and would gladly welcome any form of monetary pay that you might be willing to needlessly waste on me. I will gladly hate on the shit you send me over the internet if you pay. I look forward to…neigh…deeply crave you giving me exorbitant amounts of money to hate on artists, bands and products that I don’t remotely care for. My endless need to compromise my bloggistic integrity for greed and that’s why I’m officially announcing “The Not A Blogger Cash-For-Hate FTC Advert-viewment Payola Program.”

What is “The Not A Blogger Cash-For-Hate FTC Advert-viewment Payola Progam,” you ask? Great rhetorical question, future real estate license applicant! “The Not Blogger Cash-For-Hate FTC Advert-viewment Payola Program” is a dynamic, paradigm-shifting opportunity in which you pay me large amounts of cash or comparable assorted goods and/or trades and I will hate on my blog about an artist I don’t remotely care about so you can generate that ever elusive blog buzz that Time Magazine and other assorted publications that old white people read keep prattling on about it. It’s that easy! You pay and I hate. What an extraordinary opportunity for you to give me money that you clearly aren’t spending wisely promoting your artist!

You may skeptical about the effect that some random dude hating on his blog about your artist can have for their career so let me tell you a little bit about the program. Not A Blogger is a semi-famous hip hop blog popular amongst other hip hop bloggers that is viewed by literally dozens of people who stumble upon during their google-search for old Wu-Tang mp3s everyday. On my blog, I regularly take large steaming piles of hate on some of my least-favorite artists and without fail they are almost always, already huge hip hop stars in their own right already. Internet blog buzz is the wave of the future. It’s the cutting edge way for you to give me money and for me to use that money on my growing hooker addiction. The logical fallacies are endless!

Here’s a list of services I will provide if you sign up with the program:

1. Angry, Poorly Written Reviews

2. Snarky comments on Twitter

3, Dismissive, Condescending Essays

4. Pictures Of Your Artists’ Album Cover With The Words “Fail” Written On It

5. Pictures Of Your Artist With Jizz Drawn On Their Face in Microsoft Paint

6. Pictures Of Your Artist Photoshopped Into Gay Porn

7. Message Board Trolling

8. Noz Baiting

9. Tom Breihan Baiting

10. Lolcatz

11. Drunkenly Calling My Friend A Racist For Liking Your Album

12. Hostile Emails

13. And More…

“The Not A Blogger Cash-For-Hate FTC Advert-viewment Payola Program” is an equal-opportunity hater and will gladly hate on all forms of music regardless if I know the slightest about your artist. Actually the less I know, the more offensive and condescending my hating will be which has an added bonus of being both incredibly amusing to myself but also ensuring that I will secure a location in one of the deeper circles in Hades. Bonus! How often does a program like this where you get to actually pay somebody (but specifically me) for hating on something that you only are half-assedly trying to promote in the first place. I mean why would you be sending a complete stranger a promotional email for some shitty viral video that your band did at 3 a.m. if you aren’t fucking the dog on your band’s promotion. So why not PAY for me to hate on it? It’s clearly the delusional money making scam of the century.

I gladly will accept any or all of these forms of payment:

1. Cash

2. Check

3. Credit Card

4. Stolen Credit Cards

5. Concert Tickets

6. Beer

7. Booze

8. Porn

9. Eastern European Prostitutes

10. 1992-93 Game-Worn Mark Price Jerseys

11. X-Box Live Accounts

12. The Keys To Blake Lively’s Apartment

13. A Job I Don’t Hate

14. Or Anything Of Comparable Value….

My lack of ethical qualms knows no standard of journalistic decency that I can’t bend to fit my elastic moral relativism. There is nothing that I won’t do to make you look like a fool for spending money on a fucking blogger. Sign up today and you too can by swept on the majesty of my hatred.

“The Not A Blogger Cash-For-Hate FTC Advert-viewment Payola Program… because if you can’t buy my love, you can certainly buy my scorn." - The Good Doctor Zeus

No Words... Teddy Roosevelt Edition

2009-09-18T19:06:00.003-04:00

- The '99 version of myself would be bugging out over this line-up. The '09 Model? Not so much.

-Everybody remotely involved in this should be embarrassed they are getting eaten up by fuckin' Drag-On! Yes, Drag-On! Whom I'm quite positive has been banished from recording music since I haven't heard him rap since the Exit Wounds soundtrack. Ironically, the Exit Wounds Soundtrack was the last time, DMX, mattered in anything but drug-related arrest hilarity. I will give the Ruff Ryders this. Had Jay-Z decided to do an old school Roc-a-fella reunion, he would not have invited Amil to the proceedings. Kudos on finding, Drag-On, at whatever car wash he's working at these days.

-Eve might be the only human female that has gotten hotter as she ages. I thought she was hideous when she was rocking the Eminem-cut back when she first appeared on the scene but she's definitively smokin', now. Let that be a lesson to you, Amber Rose!

- I can't decide which member of the L.O.X. is more comatose these days. Sheek Louch wins by default since he always sort-of sucked.

- I don't understand the point of putting together a video like this for a song that's meant to be the re-introduction to Ruff Ryders and making it so fucking budget looking. So you are going to spend thousands of dollars renting ATV's and sports car but you can't spring for a camera that's slightly above your garden-variety camcorder? You can't make "Big Pimpin'" if you don't have a director who understands the concept of "white balancing," people! It kills me that cheap-ass videos like this are the reason that I had trouble finding work so much when I was working as a freelance videographer a few years back.

- Swizz Beatz should be shot... We all know why.

Well... That Was Fast!

2009-09-14T09:32:00.004-04:00

Thanks, Mr. West! Thanks to your insane selfishness, Joe Wilson is off the hook for being only the second most ridiculous person to interrupt a speech this week. Tell me I'm lying.

Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II: Review

2009-09-08T14:08:00.004-04:00

"His price is 26, son."

I am 26 years old and that places me at an age in which I’m old enough to start thinking seriously about my future but still have a yearning for the childhood obsessions that occupied my youth. I spend hours researching old Saturday morning cartoons on Wikipedia, watch old WWF (Fuck-a-World-Wildlife-Fund…it will always be the WWF to me!) matches on Youtube and cop X-Files DVDs at Best Buy. My world is rapidly changing around me as my friends start to slowly pair off and get engaged, advance in their careers and become fully function members of the vile cult known as adulthood. Meanwhile, I’m beginning to think if my reverence for the glorious, permanent juvenilia that has become my modus operandi is something that I should abandon for something approximately approaching societal norms. (I can’t keep delaying law school forever. Ugh.) All this means is that nostalgia has particular death grip on my psyche at this moment in my life. I don’t want to grow up but am self-aware enough to know that this is not a particular healthy notion to be harboring.

For me, Raekwon’s “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…Pt. II” is soaked in a particularly palpable nostalgia that evokes a particular slice of my adolescence that I have nothing but fond memories of. As a teenager, hip hop was the music I used to escape from the world and 10 years later, it is the music that I choose to examine and frame my worldview about. (write these long, winding narratives as a way to reconcile my thoughts and feelings about the world around me at large.) In regards to my long-standing love affair with hip hop, Wu-Tang has been the love of my life. The group that makes all other rap groups look second-rate.

On the surface, Cuban Linx II is an ostensibly perfect record. For an album that took nearly 14 years to make and is the sequel to one of the most highly acclaimed records in the history of the art form, it works way better than I can possibly have hoped for. It works as the type of perfect ‘90s crime epic that used to be the norm until it was abandoned for the cartoonish, uber-violent, half-baked crack rap fantasy of the Young Jeezy’s and the 50 Cent’s of the world. It is meticulous and grounded in details. It is loaded with pathos and drama and it makes the delusion of “Deeper Than Rap” seem like the highest of high comedy. And boy does it ever bang. Raekwon has not only brought out the heaviest of heavy production artillery (Dilla, Dre, RZA, Rock, Marley fuckin’ Marl) but the Wu-Tang cavalry out as well. There isn’t a wasted beat, half-assed verse or a solitary half-baked idea on the entire record. It is the type of hard-as-nails, gritty rap album that they don’t make anymore. It’s the best rap album of the year by a wide margin and that is where the problem lies.

“Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…Pt. II” relies too much on nostalgia. It is so rooted in ‘90s rap minutiae that it sounds alien in this modern rap environment and from a philosophical standpoint the record sounds almost regressive to the needs of the future of hip hop. It appeals to me because it sounds like a throwback Wu-Tang record, “No Said Date” with a more talented lead, and had this record been realized in ’99, it would be on par with the best of the Wu-Tang solos. Unfortunately, it’s 2009 and thus all this nostalgia (the kung-fu samples, the RZA and RZA-esque beats, the “Killer” dialogue) makes it inherently a limited record. It’s sort of the equivalent of a late-period Scorsese crime film. It’s highly enjoyable and well-made but it lacks the raw grit and originality of his earlier works. Its appeal is entirely based on the familiar and thus it cheapens its greatness. What does it say when the best record of 2009 sounds dated? That its success is because it’s consciously re-creating the past? You begin to wonder as a fan what that speaks about you when the big artists of the day leave you unsatisfied and what you crave most deeply is the nostalgia of your youth. Is this healthy? Or does this signal an unhealthy obsession for pangs of youth? (And why am I ending all my sentences as a rhetorical question like a Carrie Bradshaw column? And why am I making Sex in the City references in a Raekwon review? Should I cut my balls off? Is this healthy?)

I feel strange writing a seemingly negative review for a record that I happen to love. It is a record that I have been banging for a week straight and it reminds of me all the things that I miss about hip hop. I just don’t know if this is the record that I should love after all these years. Hip Hop needs more than older artists mining the exploits of their older, better records. It needs innovation. It needs somebody trying to push its boundaries. It needs to find the future. (It needs Jay Electronica to release an album.) Perhaps, this was always coming. For a genre built on the mining the works of other artists to create new, it may have been inevitable that it would run out of ideas and that eventually come to eat itself. I hope not but I’ll being “Cuban Linx II” as I stare wistfully into the past.

Random Notes:

-Who did U-God piss off to get left off the album? Even Masta Killa got two features!

-It doesn’t remotely bother me that some of these beats/samples have been used elsewhere. Nobody cared about O.C.’s second record in 1997. Nobody cares now.

- At this point, anybody who is in doubt that Ghostface is the best human being alive working in the profession of rapper is seriously kidding themselves. Everybody brings their A-game on this record and Ghost still dominates like LeBron James at a pick-up with Mark Madsen and Yi Jianlian’s practice chair.

- J Dilla should have been producing all Wu-Tang efforts from ’99 on. “House Of Flying Daggers”, “Ason Jones”, and “10 Bricks” are the three best beats on the entire album. RZA should be ashamed of himself for Dilla’s beat-making corpse sonning him on his own shit.

- How big of a fool is Dr. Dre for refusing to release this album on Aftermath? It’s not like he’s doing anything but Dr. Pepper commercials, anyway.

- Nas lost.

- If mobster bosses’ don’t pop off with lobster-sauced angel hair then they seriously need to reconsider what they are doing with their lives. I’m glad to see Deck is still bombing atomically 10 years after he mysteriously had his voice stolen by the Gentleman.

- “They found a two year old, strangled to death/with a love daddy t-shirt/ in a bag/ at the top of the steps.” Need I say more… Verse of the decade material.

Jay-Z – The Blueprint 3: Review – Part 2: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Blogs

2009-09-02T23:10:00.004-04:00

"You have my permission to hang out with Coldplay, Jay... For now..."

Commercial rap music (defined loosely as music designed for release through public consumption for profit… in all forms) is at a definitive crossroads at the moment. This is an insanely obvious point and I feel like an ill-informed Time Magazine writer for bringing it up (but bring it up I shall because clichés work for quick-hand narrative purposes. And I loves me some quick-hand narratives). Illegal downloading has slaughtered execution-style the rap music industry to the point, nobody has any notion of what is going to sell in a climate where a consumer can freely sample anything he or she (but let’s be honest with hip hop, she’s probably a he wants. Even the scions of gangster rap, the tried and true bread winner of the major label system, have watched as their Soundscan numbers march off into commercial irrelevancy (not to mention artistic bankruptcy but that’s neither here or there). This naturally created a talent vacuum at the top of the major label system and increasingly desperate record executives began looking at different types of venues to discover and cultivate new artists. Enter the blogs and the rise of hipster rap.

What would have been unthinkable just a few years prior has led the major labels to take chances on a series of oddball rap acts that derive their inspiration not from streets of Bed-Stuy but from Williamsburg and the indie culture that surrounds it. Kanye West and Lil’ Wayne (yeah, “The Carter III” is a hipster rap album, folks. Don’t front like that sounds like some Hot Boys shit!) were perhaps the forefront of the movement and one of the few artists still selling major units. Soon artists like Wale, Kid CuDi and Charles Hamilton were being snatched up by the major labels for their more off-beat sensibilities and the hype that it was generating on the blogs. This brings me to “The Blueprint 3.”

The early critical word for the third (and final?) installment has been resoundingly negative. That’s actually not a strong enough statement to convey the level of vitriol “BP3” has fostered from critics. “Blueprint 3” has been met with the type of scathing, uncontrollable rage that is saved for gun-toting, health care protesters (and their amoral, lying, greedy backers in the insurance industry looking to exploit their fear of Obama’s skin color into some delusional, twisted defense of small government. Let’s put it this way: If you aren’t for a public option, I consider you to be the lowest form of human being. How dare you attempt to prevent poor folks from acquiring a basic human necessity for survival on this planet, you selfish fuck?! Fuck you and the diseased, corrupt horse you rode in! Yeah, I’m fucking mad! Fuck you! But I digress…). Jay’s foray into hipster rap has not been met well. Admittedly, I was ready to pounce on the album myself (we all know how I love hating on shit) but a funny thing happened on the way to the meat grinder… I found I actually liked the album.

“The Blueprint 3” is Jay’s most honest and thoughtful work since he un-retired and something of quiet (or rather a loud, grandiose...) revelation for an artist whose done it all. It’s about the pratfalls of growing up when nobody wants you to change in the slightest. It’s about what you are going to do when all your friends want to do is keep you down and learning to not care about what they think, anyway. This isn’t the groan-inducing, grown man status symbolisms of “Kingdom Come” nor the forced, retro crackisms of “American Gangster.” It’s funnier and more loose than its predecessor allowing Jay to grow a bit of confidence in his new direction. Jay is finally making the record that he’s been trying to make since “The Black Album” served as the swan song to the first act of his career. He wasn’t quite ready to make this record on “Kingdom Come” where his enthusiasm for creating the world’s first adult contemporary rap album overrode any semblance of fun on the record. As for “American Gangster,” there was always something a bit dishonest with that record. On “Kingdom Come,” he spent a good portion of the record talking about how he was so grown and passed all that gun talk shit but one year later after he had released the most critically savaged record of his career, he was right back into the crack narratives talking about how he was inspired by a run-of-the-mill (albeit entertaining and well-made) gangster movie. It seemed calculated to appeal to the true school purists and new school Jeezy fans who craved Jay in his prime. It didn’t feel right. “Blueprint 3” feels right for a man who is 39 years old, married man with more responsibilities than dreams.

Sonically, this record is not going to appeal to everybody. It bares little resemblance to the classic Jay of yesteryear and has more in common with “808s and Heartbreak”, Justin Timberlake’s “FutureSexLoveSounds” and Kid CuDi than it does with “Reasonable Doubt.” It’s basically a litmus test for the futuristic, space rap that seems perpetually on the verge of breaking through and achieving mainstream notoriety. Jay’s two main collaborator’s on the album, Timbaland and Kanye West, provide Jay with some dark, foreboding spacey synth beats to rap over. “Empire State Of Mind”, “On To The Next One”, and even the much maligned “Off That” are standout tracks. If Cudi’s album had beats as good on this as Jay’s does I would be a very proud Shakerite. The production on the album, once again, belies Jay’s penchant for trying something unique in his quixotic quest to stay relevant. Personally, I feel it succeeds. The presence of blog rap luminaries such as Drake, J. Cole and Cudi himself help guide the process as well.

The album is, of course, far from flawless and Jay’s relative inexperience dabbling in with this type of music can create some missteps. “Reminder” is 4 minutes and 18 seconds of futuro asininity and “Hate” is a song that can be classified as torture weapon in 86 different countries. Of course, Jay isn’t remotely close to being a great rapper anymore and there is without a doubt a few moments of groan-inducing, sub-Kanyeezyian puns on this record (Yoga jokes, Jay? Really? Ew.) but ultimately, this isn’t really enough to sabotage the record. The music, he’s crafting is far too affecting and personal to let the little matter that Jay can’t rap anymore ruin the proceedings.

However, I do have one major caveat to the record. The continued, artistic disaster that is “D.O.A.” Now while I’ve warmed to No I.D.’s production on this (yes, it fucking bangs but that’s irrelevant to why it sucks so much...), its presence on this record is even more glaring and dishonest than I initially thought. I had thought that “D.O.A.” was suggesting Hov was going to make an elitist, true school record with sub par rapping and sniping at the younger generation’s music. This seemed completely dishonest of Jay and it created a nasty visceral distaste in me. “D.O.A.”, however, has no place on this album. It adds nothing to the proceedings and its presence almost acts as apology for betraying his New York gutter roots. It serves almost to negate the confidence he has in making such a record in the first place especially when no less than three records actually use “auto-tune.” Don’t apologize, Jay. Own up to what you are doing!

Ultimately, “The Blueprint 3” is an enjoyable if flawed record. Its definitely not one of his major artistic achievements but it does offer promise that Jay has a bit more left in the tank than I initially thought. He seems ready to finally give up the childishness of his previous swagger and street talk and focus on what matters to him now as an artist. This is far from the reputation ruining embarrassment that a few of my more histrionic colleagues are calling it. And yes, we needed another Blueprint after all.

Jay-Z – The Blueprint 3: Review – Part 1: Jay-Z Vs. The Grizzly Bear Concert

2009-09-02T01:18:00.003-04:00

"Politics As Usual."

For the last couple of months, my Sunday nights have been spent playing in the infamous Brooklyn Hipster Kickball league (Go Divine Sisterhood Of The Sacred Bleeding Heart!!!) that transforms McCarren Park into the be-jorted hipster heaven on the weekends. For the first three summers that I moved to the city, I had viewed this league as the type of precious, twee, faux-ironic, scenester bullshit that the indie culture has unfortunately come to represent in the eyes of outsiders. The spectacle of watching emaciated, bearded hipster rocking uniforms made of Snuggies and prancing about on a kickball field made my skin crawl and wish that I could afford to live in Manhattan. I felt that way until I was asked by one of my friends if I wanted to join their team. I naturally balked a bit at first but then I decided what the hell, “I’ve got nothing to do but cure my hangover, anyway.” I soon realized the playing kickball was undeniably awesome and that my fears of being infected with incurable hipster cancer were completely unwarranted. Kickball rules. I want to be 10 years old, again.

Now while you are down at the park on Sunday evenings, you can often catch the ethereal vestiges of music floating in the air, emanating from the free Pool Party concert series played down near the waterfront in Williamsburg. These concerts are usually played by some flavor-of-the-month indie rock band that has the Pitchfork crowd in a tizzy. On the promise of free alcohol and a V.I.P. pass, I have attended these shows before. They are exercise in everything that’s annoying about hipster culture. Men with pretentious facial hair. Poor Dye Jobs. Unfortunately tattooed pretty girls consciously trying to make themselves unattractive as possible. Girl Talk. You can smell the irony in the air.

Last week, Grizzly Bear (of that one song that’s kind of awesome fame…) was headlining the last show of the summer and the neighborhood was abuzz with the typical amount of ironically detached excitement that these things can foster. Basically, the few Williamsburgers that were not at the Grizzly Bear concert were down being seen in their Sunday best at McCarren either kickballing or lounging about. Around 9 o’clock, the park started to buzz with excitement as the first few conquering heroes from the concert joined the herd and informed us that they had seen a unicorn in the crowd. Shawn Corey Carter and his wife, Beyonce (and Solange but really who cares…), had graced the trust fund brigade with their presence to watch Grizzly Bear grizzly bear it up. Controversy ensued.

Since Jay-Z’s faux-fake-not (that’s a triple negative, y’all) retirement, there has been a lot of talk about Jay’s betrayal of his hip hop, drug-selling roots. Over the years, Jay has slowly taken the doo rag off, moved from button-ups and beach sandals, to keffiyehs and other assorted scarves. All of his long-time associates (except the irrepressible Memphis J. Bleek. Get that inheritance money, Malik!) have accused Jay of forgetting where he came from (or rather not making them insanely rich as he is) and abandoning them for greener pastures. His associates over the years have grown whiter and more “respectable.” He dropped Beans for Buffett, State Property for Coldplay, and Amil for Gwyneth Paltrow. Consequently, his music has shifted from tales of crack sales and gun battles to Jigga’s adventures with the yacht club. His music has been definitive narrative shift for six years now and it’s peaking with the release of his new album, “The Blueprint 3.” Jay-Z is no longer about the streets. The fact that Jay-Z would attend an indie rock concert (in 2009!) is irrefutable proof that Hov is more concerned with fitting in with white people than making music that appeals to hip hop’s core audience of people who think Gucci Mane is a genius because he’s using fourth grade vocabulary words. (Word to Andrew Noz!) Clearly, Jay hates the streets now. And as for the hipsters, Jay’s presence at one of their most sacred of institutions, at best, was trend hopping carpet-bagging and, at worst, a corruption of all that is pure and decent about indie culture. Jay-Z does not belong there.

Of course, that’s a profoundly idiotic notion and belies more on the prejudices of those making the assertion than any calculation that Hov is making. Jay-Z grew up in the Marcy Projects in the adjacent neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. If you were to walk from the corner of Marcy Ave and Flushing, it would approximately take you about 20 to 25 minutes to reach the waterfront in Willamsburg where the concert was taking place. It’s a 10 minute cab ride (5 minutes if you get lucky with the lights and traffic). He is not invading foreign turf that does not belong to him. Brooklyn is his home. The fact that Williamsburg has been overrun by twenty-something, white film students from the Midwest (Word to myself!) does not make Jay a foreigner in a distance land. When Jay was growing up in Marcy that neighborhood was populated with a majority of black faces and if anything by attending one of these concerts, it can be seen as some kind of weird, reverse colonialist hipster reclamation project. In four years of living in Brooklyn, I have met few, fellow Brooklynites living in Williamsburg that were living there longer than 10 years ago. And I can guarantee that almost nobody at that concert (including the Brooklyn-based performers) were living in the neighborhood when Jigga dropped “Reasoable Doubt.”

In some respects, you can see Jay’s gravitation towards indie rock culture as a natural evolution for an artist that’s been consistently adapting his style his entire career. People forget but Jay has been, perhaps, the most avant-garde pop rap artist of all-time. From “Hard Knock Life” onwards, Jay’s sound has consistently taken chance after chance and its consistently come out in victory. Taking cues from hipster rap and indie culture seems logical when you consider that he grew up near one of the great vestiges of urban art culture in the twentieth century and has shown an interest in cultures that extend beyond the traditional boundaries of hip hop for years. You think Jigga would’ve worked with UGK and Timbaland if he was stubborn, east-coast traditionalist (like myself)? Hell The Fuck No! What do you think “Big Pimpin” was but a play at avant-garde, southern relevancy? Becoming friends with Chris and Gwyneth seems logical when you consider the chances that he’s taken professionally over the years. And so does attending a Grizzly Bear concert? Tastes evolve as you grow. This ain’t some calculated play for hipster cool, people.

Still I had extreme reservations about “Blueprint 3.” I wasn’t sure if Jay-Z was the musician or rapper in 2009 to be able to pull off a hipster rap album. “D.O.A.” was unequivocal, reactionary basura and “Run This Town” made my body want to rapidly bleed out through my ears. When I returned home that evening from kickball (after a fucking monster game. I had like 3 unassisted double plays, a bunch of hits, and a plethora of great defensive plays. Yes, I’m bragging about kickball! WHAT?!?!) , I was dreading listening to the leak. It turns out my fears were unfounded...

To Be Continued...

Dr. Dre & Snoop Doggy Dogg - Poor Young Dave (Outtake From "The Chronic" Sessions)

2009-09-01T21:16:00.005-04:00

[From Robbie At Unkut.com:]

Did these dudes have chemistry back in '92 or what? Am I right, people?

"Poor Young Dave" is an outtake from "The Chronic" sessions and you can find a young Snoop in full-on classic storytelling mode. Dre doesn't rap on this but it doesn't really matter. The beat sounds vaguely like "Deep Cover" which is just fine by me. I could listen to classic era G-Funk beats all day long and twice on Sunday.

Download: Dr. Dre & Snoop Doggy Dogg - Poor Young Dave

In unrelated Dre news, he's an idiot for not dropping Cuban Linx II on Aftermath. You just let the best album of the last five years walk? Fail.

Not A Blogger Vs. The Britney Spears Concert: Live At Madison Square Garden (8/26/09)

2009-08-28T13:56:00.009-04:00

"It's Britney, bitch."

In the past ten years of my life, I have approximately thought for about 9.58 seconds(or approximately the amount of time that it takes Usain Bolt to run the 100 meter dash) about Britney Spears’ music in any context other than “what is this terrible noise and why is it screeching from my car radio?” (Fuck It! I’m a hater.) Let’s put it this way: my iPod currently has 12,541 unique songs on its hard drive. I have at least, one song, by virtually every major act of the last 50 years in my ever expanding collection of (“illegal”) music that is clogging up space on my hard drive. I have two Jim Jones albums, three Young Jeezy albums, an assortment of songs from some lame ass indie rock bands my friends keep pushing on me, and a Kenny G Christmas album on this joint. I’m nothing but eclectic, motherfuckers. With all of that choice, I still don’t have one single solitary Britney Jean Spears song on this piece of technology. (Not even “Toxic.” I know! Blasephemy...) That’s how little I’ve thought about her music over the last decade.

You see, I’m old school. I operate on the guiding principle that any respectable teenage male must not only refuse to listen to music produced primarily for the enjoyment of teenage girls (and consequently, kitsch-loving gay men) but fiercely deny that I would ever be worth listening to lest my fledgling sexuality be subject to the mocking of my peers. (That it how it was and that it how always shall be.) I partially attribute this steadfast dogma to forcing myself to listen to rap-rock (I know. Fail.) in the late ‘90s as a way to counteract the goofy, chaste preppiness that I was being assaulted with when I watched TRL when I came home from a hard day of underachieving at high school. However, I was also a horny teenage boy during this period which meant I was very interested in Britney Spears from a deeper “philosophical” standpoint. Britney Spears was the hottest hottie since hot came to Hot Town. Of course, I’m a Britney Spears “fan.” I spent a good portion of my teenage years “philosophizing” on how Britney would look naked over the internets. (I know. Win.) Britney Spears represented the first sex symbol of my youth that was roughly my age. To my young teenage mind, it wasn’t inconceivable that had luck plucked me from my drear suburban existence and placed me in contact with Ms. Spears that I could make her my girlfriend. I could care less about her music but her music videos... I could watch those all day as long as I was alone in a dark basement with nobody home. Pardon my euphemism. Granted, these days, Britney is better recognized as walking human catastrophe than anything remotely passable as a sex symbol but nevertheless I have fond, fond memories of when Ms. Spears was gyrating on stage in various states of undress at the VMAs when she had her fastball. I’m sure I have pictures of it buried deep within my hard drive. So when my friend who works for Madison Square Garden offered to buy a group of my friends cheap tickets for the Britney Spears Circus Tour at MSG, my instant response was “Yes. A thousand times, yes. Cop me a damn ticket. Hell the fuck yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.”

Now, of course, I won’t pay to go see Britney Spears in concert. No way. I won’t even go to a Britney Spears concert by myself even it was free. But with a bunch of my idiot, drunken, drug-addled friends? And with the promise of beer and the glorious potential of a massive trainwreck? You can’t possible contain my enthusiasm for this. I live by a guiding set of rules in my life and if offered the chance to see a potential cataclysm in person, I do not pass up on the offer. Britney Spears. Concert. 2009. Madison Square Garden. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. What I didn’t see was a trainwreck. What I saw was far more awesome.

Now because none of us gave a fuck about the opener, the thoroughly mediocre American Idol sycophant Jordin Sparks, we met up at a spectacular seedy dive bar, The Distinguished Wakamba Cocktail Lounge, on 37th and 8th at 7 p.m. before the show to start out night of debauchery. Most “dive” bars in Manhattan are these consciously crafted pseudo-hipster places with impossibly attractive bartenders and period paraphernalia picked by interior decorators in the hopes of invoking some “authentic” form of New York atmosphere circa Neveruary 1940 Question Mark. Basically, the look is so you can pretend you aren’t at one of these douchebaggy Upper East side joints but so they can still charge you Upper East side prices. This place isn’t like that. It’s a damn dive in the purest sense of the word. Upon entering the front door, you can instantly see this place has not been remotely changed roughly since its opened. The interior looks like the Copacabana circa that scene in Goodfellas in ‘62 and the few people that are actually in the bar look like they roughly have been patronizing the place since the Copa opened. Tiki torches, bamboo piping, and fake palm trees are the modus operandi for this place. Basically, if there was ever a place for a bunch of twenty-something hipsters to ironically attend a Britney Spears concert in 2009, this place was most assuredly it. We arrived ordered our drinks, passed out the tickets and talked Britney before (I shit you not, people.) being kicked out of the bar because the health inspector had shut down the bar... while we were in it. I’ve been in lot of dirty establishments in the hopes of feeding my insatiable craving for alcohol since I moved to New York. I have never been in one that required to immediately be shut down out of health concerns. Clearly, this would be a night to remember.

Upon being removed from the Wakamba Lounge out of fear that we might be infected by government-created nano-robots or something (and copping myself a delicious piece of street meat at the cart in front of the arena. Cuz lord knows, I ain’t paying 20 bucks for a hot dog in the damn Garden.), we made our to the Garden to catch the beginning of the show. The first thing you should know if you are a straight male attending a Britney Spears concert is there will be a sea of young women in various states of revealing clothes and the only other creatures with a penis in the vicinity will be far more concerned with other penii than providing anything remotely passing as competition. The demographics skew like this. 90% female, 9% gay men, .9% straight dudes being dragged to the show by their girlfriends, .1% Me. I might have been the only single, straight male in the entire concert which depending on how you look at it is either creepy, extremely uncomfortable, an opportunity or hilarious. Personally, I thought it was all the above. Luckily, any creepiness and discomfort was alleviated by, the fact, that I was drunk so it evolved strictly into being an opportunistically hilarious.

We arrived at our seats just as the giant clock counting down on the huge circular video screen in the center of the arena reached one. This being the “Circus Tour” and all (I guess because her last album was called “Circus” or whatever. I didn’t listen to it.), the gigantic stage in the center of the arena is set up like a three-ring circus (obviously, dumb-asses) complete with a ringmaster, creepy Gacy-like clowns and surprisingly brolic contortionists. As the lights dimmed, a few acrobatic set-pieces (including a legless woman on a trampoline) primed the audiences for Spears entrance. Britney descended from the rafters on glittering swing in some sort of diamond corset. We were off.

The first thing you’ll notice at the show is that Britney is not the dancer she used to be. Britney never sung with anything remotely considered skill so dancing used to be what set her apart from the rest of her teeny bop clones. Instead of elaborately choreographed dance routines that she used to execute flawlessly when she was in her prime, Britney sort of vamps and struts around the stage while her backup dancers work their asses off to make her look good. It’s sort of the equivalent of watching a veteran NBA shooting guard who has lost his ability to blow by defenders and get to the rim. Britney is settling for jump shots and while she certainly understands how to work a crowd, she is not the performer she once was. I suppose it’s understandable considering she’s had two kids, snorted up a pharmacy worth of drugs, and had a complete mental collapse over the last couple. I suppose if I married Kevin Federline then I’d probably lose my ability to crossover Shane Battier, too.

To make up for, the show pulls all stops on a visual overload of orgiastic, optic delights. There is literally not a portion of the stage that is flooded with dancers, clowns, and pyrotechnics to keep you visually in awe. Basically, there is enough flashing lights to leave a Japanese anime fan in a permanent epileptic coma. (Eat your fucking heart out, Pokemon.) To me, Britney’s music has always been irrelevant to the visuals she’s placing forth for the viewer. Britney’s primarily a visual artist working within a musical context. She’s always been selling some type of image rather than her actual music. She’s always known this and her handlers have always known this. Think about her music videos over the years, you can better remember her outfits than you can do the actual songs. The red catsuit from “Oops! I Did It, Again” and the futuristic stewardess outfit from “Toxic” are more memorable than the songs, themselves. It’s reason that she consciously chose to sex up her catholic schoolgirl look in the “…Baby, One More Time” video. You are supposed to remember the visual before you even begin to engage with the song. It’s how she sells her stuff and the “Circus Tour” is selling the visual in plenty. It’s mind effin’ blowing with all the stuff that is going on around you.

Britney does most of her hits over the course of the show and because they are so damn ubiquitous you sing-along. You just enjoy herself. Its all fantastically well executed. Its really an odd feeling to sing along to “Hit Me Baby” with 20,000 aging, twenty-something former teeny boppers but its undeniable. Britney, after all these years, is a damn professional and she knows her audience. You are in the presence of master of live performance and she will have you singing and dancing along even if you are a jaded hip hop head like myself.

We forget because she’s been with us for a decade and has moved into the Michael Jackson zone of bizarre pop iconography but Britney has managed to execute a pop career that rivals any pop star of the last century. She’s sold 6 platinum albums, made hundred of millions of dollars, had countless hits and continues to be a giant in pop culture. She’s going be with us until the day she dies a botoxed Elizabeth Taylor figure or collapses in inevitable heartbreaking fashion at a young age. There really isn’t a third option for this girl. I caught her performance when she was starting to lose what made her great in the first place but could still recognize the sexpot of my youth. It was like watching the last blazing glory of a dying phoenix. I wonder what she’s got in the next act of her life but perhaps… it’ll be stronger than yesterday.

Pen & Pixel + Ghostface = Awesome.

2009-08-27T17:00:00.005-04:00

I'm of the minority position that "The Wizard Poetry" is going to be pure, Barney Stinson-class awesome. Of course, "Baby" was meh but so have all Ghost's singles over the last couple of years and that hasn't stopped him from dropping classic after classic. Besides when Ghost tries to make a "for-the-ladies" song they end up sounding completely oddball like "Big Girls" or "Child's Play" and to tell you the truth, I think I can kind of dig an album that sounds like "Child's Play."

This is Dennis Coles that we are talking about, people. The man is allergic to wackness.

Not A Blogger Live!: Bajah + Dry Eye Crew At Lincoln Center (8/7/09)

2009-08-08T12:04:00.002-04:00

"Break out the Zubaz pants, yo!"

There is a powerful moment during Bajah + Dry Eye Crew’s electrifying live set where the band’s three rappers, Bajah, A-Klazz and Dovy Dovy, re-enact one of the most terrifying moments of their lives. Staring at the barrel of a commanding officer’s pistol, the band members are sadistically forced to freestyle rap to save their lives. Its a harrowing moment and reminder that most of will never have to face anything as remotely horrifying as war...civil war. A moment where the band forces us to take notice of the fickle cruel nature of fate and how it all can be ripped away from us at the whim of a sadist. Perhaps, this is why Bajah + Dry Eye Crew want nothing to do with the cartoonish violence that characterizes the post-50 American gangster rap scene because they lived the real thing. You don’t need street cred when you have life cred.

Bajah + Dry Eye Crew, hailing from war-torn (and Kanye West made-famous) Sierra Leone, are currently the biggest hip hop act in Africa and they are currently in the process of trying to translate their wordly, eclectic sound for American audiences. Their mixtape, “Kings Of Salone: The DJ Gravy Mixtape”, recently released at okayplayer.com for free download, is one of the most surprising and freshests releases I’ve heard all year. “Kings Of Salone” is a mish-mash of varying influences. It combines dusty, futuro hip hop-meets-african percussion, shuffling reggae-influenced melodies and twisting, dexterous dancehall vocals. It borrows from everybody from Timbaland to the Roots to El-P to Elephant Man. It’s the type of release that the Fugees would have made had Wyclef and Lauryn never started fucking. On tracks like “Rapumpum”, “Love Of My Life”, and “My Own Life”, they belie a deep understanding of the human condition and the suffering that war causes upon the people of their own land. Not to mention, a couple of the tracks the tape teases seems like it’s primed to assault the clubs (“Honda” really stands out.) This is very exciting stuff.

I caught Bajah et. al perform at the Lincoln Center Outdoor Ampitheater at Hip Hop Generation Next’s annual Global Hip Hop festival. It was a truly bizarre group with lots of aging, 60ish hippies and children swaying awkwardly to the music. I arrived late and thought I had the wrong place at first. Its not often you see people who look like my parents at hip hop show. I can only chock that up to the show being free. Bajah rocked the crowd, anyway. Perhaps due to being used to performing in front of crowds in the hundreds of thousands in their native land, the crew had a tight, polished show. Backed by a full 12-piece band, Bajah is a natural entertainer and frontman and his show includes set pieces that feature dancers, singers and live instrumentation. The band is damn good.

I feel these guys have a real shot at finding an audience in the United states. They are awesome live, they write good songs and judging by the way, they could appeal to 60ish white people they seem primed to have their debut album break out. You know if some smarmy ass bloggers (Word to myself) don’t deem these guys boring because of all that positive stuff they are preaching. Negativity is the new populism, after all. Don’t front on these cats.

Download: Bajah + Dry Eye Crew - Kings Of Salone: The DJ Gravy Mixtap e

The Importance Of Not Bitching Over Twitter About A Rap List On Somebody Else’s Fucking Blog: 6 Albums That Should Have Made Passion's Top 50 Rap List

2009-08-07T21:56:00.010-04:00

"Here I am in my smug, elitist contrarian troll glory! Witness the face of the enemy! Know thee and despair!"

“Zeus is a contrarian troll who debates not with facts and ideas but presumptions and sweeping character generalizations. He deserves nothing but my dismissal and condescension.” - Andrew Noz

A wise man once said (or a wise man I invented for the purpose of rhetorical device but I’m sure someone said something in vein. If not I said it and I’m definitely a “wise man.” No humble.) “there’s no sense in getting your panties bunched up about music lists. You look like a petulant child and the list is probably wrong, anyway.” Luckily, petulant man-childhood is the reigning philosophy of my life and due to my constant state of arrested development and immaturity, I have no qualms bitching about lists. It’s fun. After polling the crème de le crème of hip hop bloggers (including yours truly, bitches), Jeff Weiss and Jonathan Bradley have compiled a list of the Top 50 rap albums of the decade for Weiss’ blog, The Passion Of The Weiss.

While the list is most assuredly better and far more accurate than the brain trust at Pitchfork (or hell, even XXL) will inevitably trot at the end of the year, I couldn’t help but notice that my fellow bloggers inexplicably left off some of the better releases of the decade from the list, in favor, the works of Mike Skinner, extraneous MF Doom albums and mediocre Blu & Exile records. Clearly, this is unforgivably egregious and demands immediate remedy (over Twitter, of course). Luckily, my loyal readers, I am a man that has been gifted with “The Curse of Flawless And Impeccable Taste” so I will offer six records that warrant performance of the Cruciatus Curse upon my fellow bloggers for leaving them off. Consensus can be a motherfucker.

1. The Game – The Doctor’s Advocate (2006)

Jayceon Taylor is… let’s just say… a “complicated” man. To be more delicate, the Game is bat-shit fucking crazy. Of course, you wouldn’t know that had your only listening experience with the man been “The Documentary”, a record best described as “the Transformers 2 of rap music.” His record was an expensive, glossy over-produced rap record saved by the sheer amount of production talent, name-brand guests, and two monster 50 Cent-assisted singles. Game, however, was content to name-drop his way to mediocrity on his own album. You barely would have realized if he was there if he wasn’t staring at you, shirtless, on his own album cover.

“The Doctor’s Advocate” coming in the wake of Game’s ejection out of G-Unit and divorce from Dr. Dre (and the cringe-inducing psychosis these events wrought on our hero) is nothing short of revelatory, however. Its an artistic birth for a rapper who remained a creative cipher on his debut album. Not only is Game’s rapping dramatically improved but the album plays like a twisted gangster rap version of “Rumors” or a violently uncomfortable love letter from a scorned stalker to the apple of his eye. Game spends the album raging savagely against those he feels did him wrong (real or imagined) and those who would dare to keep him down. Sure, the annoying name-dropping remains but so does the razor-sharp production and his rapping and song-writing improve upon his earlier work. The name-dropping seems even creepily in place considering songs like “Doctor’s Advocate” place Game firmly in the creepy stalker vein.

This record might be the most emo gangster rap record ever recorded but still it undeniably bangs. “Lookin’ At You”, “It’s Okay (One Blood)”, “Wouldn’t Get Far”, and “Remedy” are as well-executed as anything on “The Documentary” and the deeper cuts like “One Night” and “Why You Hate The Game” are deeply engaging. Game is flawed rapper and this is a flawed record but a vivid and entertaining one. Even if Game is thin shred of sanity away from boiling Dr. Dre’s rabbit in a pot.

2. Devin The Dude – Just Tryin’ Ta Live (2002)

No rapper catches the bittersweet pangs of everyman sad-sackitude quite like Devin Copeland. His melodic, melancholy voice and off-beat, weirdo cadence captures woe better than any instrument this side of Robert Johnson’s devil-infused guitar strings. The Dude is a simple man obsessed with simple things like cheap wine, cheaper women and weed that is way to fine to be cheap and “Just Tryin’ Ta Live” is his lonely magnum opus tribute to those three things. He’s been the lonely stoner freein’ his mind way back before Kid CuDi was getting high at the triangle cutting gym class in high school. (Word to my Shaker High heads! Trust me, they get the reference…)

Make no mistake, Devin the Dude is just as emo as anything that has passed the lips of Sean Daley but he has the uncanny ability to make you laugh hysterically at his problems and not want to punch him in the face (like anytime, somebody tries to convince me to re-evaluate an Atmosphere record) when you hear him gleefully croon rap on his record. Devin injects his music with the type of southern fried funk that rattles trunks in adjoining states that keeps his albums from falling into the traps of whine rap. Devin subverts expectations of what you expect from both a Houston rapper and an emo one by gleefully bragging about his problems like his busted, broken down car (“Lacville ‘79”), neighborhood bullies (“I-Hi”), and even somebody stealing your last bag of weed (“Doobie Ashtray.”) The latter song is one of the most oddly heartbreaking songs of quiet reflection, rap music has ever produced. It’s become something of a personal anthem as I stumble home drunk and lonely at 3 a.m. by myself. (Which happens way more than I’d care to admit).

Personally, I don’t feel you can go wrong with a record where the hero is more than willing to play the fool…repeatedly… at his own expense…repeatedly. If I were a drunken fuck-up from Houston this undoubtedly would be the record that I’d make.

3. Cage – Hell’s Winter (2005)

If you are a person that believes in the inherent truth in tropes than you might ascribe to the notion that devastating personal trauma is often the genesis for great music. In fact, you might ascribe to the notion that personal trauma is the only recipe for great music. So one must wonder why it took Cage nearly a decade into his fledgling rap career to make “Hell’s Winter,” a darkly confessional album that journeys into the heart of Cage’s horrifically troubled life?

On his debut album, “Movies For The Blind”, Cage crafts violent, horrorcore fantasy and on “Hell’s Winter”, we learn where the violent fantasies come from. Backed by the Def Jux all-stars dystopic production (Total Aside: Is there another way to describe El-P’s production style? I’m tired of writing dystopic when describing him.), Cage delves into his abusive childhood, his own rampant drug addiction and the deep-seated psychological problems that accompany it. “Too Heavy For Cherubs” describes the horrors of the indescribable abuse (and I really do mean indescribable…) he faced at the hands of his junkie drug-dealing father while “Stripes” describes the pain of being ripped away from the same father by the police. By the time we hear the defiant, mournful horns on the title track, we have been painted a vivid picture of an artist’s life and pain. Its breathtaking in its candid honesty. For an artist, best known prior to this album, as the rapper who claimed Eminem stole his style from him, its remarkably ironic that Cage made the best Eminem album since “The Marshall Mathers LP.”

4. Ludacris – Word Of Mouf (2001)

It’s a fallacy to claim that Ludacris’ does not have any classic albums because, in a lot of ways, “Word Of Mouf” is the Dirth South’s answer to Jay-Z’s “Vol. 2.” It is a record jam-packed with a litany of Dirty South rap singles that ruled the radio way back in the year of our lord, 2001. What album this decade do you know that features a better collection of trunk-rattling, club assaulting, jeep bass crushing bangers than “Word Of Mouf?” “Rollout (My Business)”, “Saturday (Oooh Oooh!)”, “Area Codes”, “Move Bitch”, “Growing Pains.” That’s a murderer’s row of motherfucking club singles if I ever saw one.

The knock on Ludacris has always been that he can’t make a cohesive album to save his life. Perhaps, that’s true. However, I counter that sometimes you don’t need to make “the definitive artistic statement” to make a classic records. Sometimes the sum of the parts manage to make the whole look irrelevant. And sometimes, “Move Bitch” is such an undeniable jam slamming in the CD deck of your car that it don’t matter what you think.

5. Little Brother – The Minstrel Show (2005)

I’m always a bit baffled (but yet again, I guess I live in an ivory tower. You know because I like Edan records and write a middlebrow reactionary blog…) when a certain subset of people like to front like the “Minstrel Show” is some “boring ass, hating ass backpacker faggit shit” because when I listen to the record I hear the most incisively, hilarious record of the decade. “The Minstrel Show” is a no-holds, barred assault on the state of modern African-American entertainment and a record that’s simultaneously prophetic as fuck and an indictment of the sign o’ the times. It’s this decade’s “Stakes Is High.”

Record and released at the height of the mid-00s radio slip into uncomfortable, pseudo-minstrelsy Laffy Taffyism, Phonte, Big Pooh and 9th Wonder take aim at the elements of black culture they felt have failed them. On “Cheatin”, they hilariously send-up R. Kelly-style story tracks (if anything considering the direction of post-urine Kells this track might not go far enough) as Tigallo puts on his Percy Miracle wig and his croons his way to ignorant victory. While other tracks like the heartbreaking “All For You” take absentee fathers to task for abandoning their children. All the while, Phonte and Pooh trade witty clever couplets and craft fall-on –the floor funny type skts.

Oh, and 9th kills it with his production. Fuck what you heard!

6. J-Zone – Pimps Don’t Pay Taxes (2001)

When discussing hip hop music, I often refer to a concept about records I call “gloriously misogynistic.” A record which goes beyond the casual, ugly misogyny of the Cam’ron’s of the world, verves right pass the bounds of traditional feminist criticism and squarely into the realm of Howard Sternian “I-Can’t-Believe-He’s-It-Taking-There” hilarity. J-Zone’s hilarious “Pimps Don’t Pay Taxes” is a record that defines the concept.

J-Zone is a gifted story-teller and “Pimps Don’t Pay Taxes” spends the record giving a giant unapologetic “fuck you” to “the fake-ass activist headwrap chicks on the low kidnapping dicks”, backpacker fans demanding he “stay underground forever” and any other human being that crosses his ire. On songs like “Zone For President” and “Live From Pimp Palace East”, he describes his misanthropic ways in full assholic glory. J-Zone is a glorious bastard and he weaves his tales of Marxian anarchy to production that sounds like its channeling French New Wave cinema soundtracks and D.J. Premier. There’s no hooks on this record. Nothing resembling a hit record. And nothing that could remotely played in front of member of the opposite sex. An unapologetically, hilarious mean-spirited soundtrack to play in your Cadillac as you wave to backpackers bumping Trick Daddy.

One Final Note:

I’m often accused of being a violently contrarian prick and by own admission, I actively cultivate that impression. “Not A Blogger” was started with the distinct impression of being aggressively acerbic in my defense of my own particular worldview. A worldview I don’t expect anybody to have but myself. That’s all its EVER been. Its masturbatory, its schizophrenic and I think its also wildly fun. There is nothing I enjoy more than to hate on shit. I'm a narcissist. Sue me.

I’m completely willingly to debate the merits of an idea, as evidenced by the length page-long debates I have on the comment section but not when the opposing party isn’t necessarily being honest with their intentions. And I have distinct trouble reconciling the notion that a few select critics of Jeff Weiss’ list are being honest with their critiques of it ESPECIALLY when the vast majority of the criticism is being done in the 140 characters of asininity that are Twitter tweets. I can’t possibly take you very seriously if you can’t even bother to craft a well-rounded thought.

I mean honestly, people, Passion Of The Weiss is a privately-run blog. It’s not run by a major corporation. It does not claim major cultural cache. It’s not even fuckin’ Pitchfork. It’s the work of about a half dozen writers of various different backgrounds spread across North America who happen to all like hip hop (and happen to be white.. except Douglas. Wait… Oops.). People who do damn good work, I might add, as well. If we are to derive a lesson from a list, its that democratic process leaves absolutely nobody happy in the end… and apparently, George Washington wants MF Doom to have four albums on the top 50 (This is why I’m firmly believe in royalty.) For those who seem to think this is some sort of a vast indie rock conspiracy to ruin rap through El-P records, you need to ease up on the dramatic opening machine a little.

And yeah… Edan > Young Jeezy. Yesterday. Today. Always.

Here's my list for those that are interested:

1. Ghostface Killah - Supreme Clientele
2. Jay-Z - The Blueprint
3. Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP
4. Masta Ace - Disposable Arts (This is probably my favorite record of the decade. I love it. I could not it good conscious have it higher than the top 3, though.)
5. Nas - Stillmatic
6. Jay-Z - The Black Album
7. Ghostface Killah - Fishscale
8. Kanye West - Graduation
9. Little Brother - The Listening
10. Scarface - The Fix
11. Madvillian - Madvilliany
12. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury
13. J Dilla - Donuts
14. Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein
15. Cage - Hellz Winter
16. Masta Ace - A Long Hot Summer
17. Kanye West - The College Dropout
18. 50 Cent - Get Rich Or Die Tryin'
19. Devin The Dude - Just Tryin' Ta Live
20. Common - Be
21. J-Zone - Pimps Don't Pay Taxes
22. El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead
23. Clipse - Lord Willin'
24. Ghostface Killah - The Pretty Toney Album
25. DJ Muggs vs. GZA - Grandmasters
26. MF Doom - Operation Doomsday (This actually came out in '99. So...)
27. Edan - Beauty & The Beat
28. Lupe Fiasco - The Cool
29. The Game - The Doctor's Advocate
30. Eminem - The Eminem Show
31. T.I. - King
32. Little Brother - The Minstrel Show
33. Deltron 3030 - Deltron 3030
34. Reflection Eternal - Train Of Thought
35. Nas - The Lost Tapes
36. Lil Wayne - The Carter 2
37. Ludacris - Word Of Mouf
38. The Roots - Game Theory
39. M.O.P. - Warriorz
40. Outkast - Stankonia
41. RJD2 - Since We Last Spoke
42. Mr. Lif - I, Phantom
43. Wale - The Mixtape About Nothing (I actually didn't want to put this on here because of my strict mixtapes aren't albums rule but I felt weird leaving off my favorite release from last year.)
44. UGK - Underground Kingz
45. Dead Prez - Let's Get Free
46. Slum Village - Fantastic, Vol. 2
47. The Game - The Documentary
48. Common - Like Water For Chocolate
49. The Knux - Remind Me In 3 Days... (I like this record, a lot but I might be tripping on putting this even as low as 49.)
50. Brother Ali - Shadows On The Sun (I'm not sure I even like this record.)

No Words... Jay-Z Needs To Stop Hanging Out With Coldplay Edition

2009-08-04T12:21:00.004-04:00

This can't possibly end well...

A Prayer For Michael Jackson

2009-06-29T00:08:00.003-04:00

"There's a metaphor somewhere in this photo."

I was born on July 24, 1983 and if we backtrack nine months (and if my math holds which is definitely suspect) than it is a reasonable enough to assume that I was conceived in November in the year of our lord, 1982. (I’m not nearly enough of a Freudian masochist to ask my parents the actual details of my conception. I’m still desperately clinging to the notion that I apparited onto this Earth Adam & Eve- style. Ew.) Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was released on November 30th, 1982 so if the dates correspond it is not totally unreasonable to assume that I was conceived on the day this album was released. (Once again, Ew.) And if so, there has never been a time in my existence that Michael Jackson was not the biggest star on the planet. For people my age, it is almost as if we became Michael Jackson fans in the womb, nurturing ourselves on our mother nutrients and the sounds of “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” as we formed into human beings. We came out of the womb fully formed Michael Jackson fans, capable of moonwalking and performing the “Thriller” dance almost by osmosis. This is truth. There is nobody from my generation who is NOT a fan of Michael Jackson’s music.

However, the other truth of this is that I can’t remember Michael Jackson ever being a human being, either. By the time, I formed a true consciousness and began to form memories, Michael Jackson was already branded a freak. His face had already turned eerily white, his nose already mutilated, and his hair permed and straightened in attempt to hide the kinky Afro of his youth. I don’t remember when Michael Jackson had black skin let alone when he was fresh-faced pre-teen with a voice that most assuredly must have been stolen from an angel. He never seemed real to me. His uber-eccentric tabloid exploits and his vast personal troubles making him seem far more alien and untouchable than your typical celebrity.

And make no damn mistake, Michael Jackson was not your typical celebrity. Jackson was one of the rarefied celebrities that transcend the human condition and into precipice of living godhood. He did not belong to our kind. He belonged on Mount Olympus, or in Valhalla with the Norse Gods or on Jupiter frolicking with space aliens. Most celebrities society chooses to adorn with fame are often those who possess a talent or trait that we admire (unless, of course, they are reality t.v. stars or serial killers but even then society admires a skill they possess. It just happens to be unchecked sociopathy.) and we choose to elevate them above the rest of our kind because of it. However, most celebrities seem shockingly “human” and we revel in the schadenfreude of proving just that. They divorce. They battle alcoholism. They fuck on videotapes. Even their talents often seem as if fate had blessed the rest of us with incredible good looks or the ability to hit the high notes than we could be famous as well. Michael Jackson wasn’t like that. Michael Jackson’s talent dwarfed the ability of even are our most talented celebrities. No matter how well Justin Timberlake sings and dances, he’s not making an album as imminently flawless as “Thriller.” Its just not in him and that’s not a knock on the man. Its not in any of us. We are human. Michael Jackson was made of the celestial greatness that it is carved out of the Gods.

Michael Jackson paid for his talent as well. He lived the type of troubled and tortured lives that only afflict the genius. He spent his life being adored by nearly every human being on the entire planet but you get the sense that all he really wanted was to be secluded from the rest of the world to live and die in peace. In that sense, we should feel better that Michael Jackson’s pain is finally over. He is now in a better place. The true sadness is now that he has passed we have lost one of the last few beings of his kind. The ever expanding maw of the modern media has cheapened the concept of fame and there aren’t many beings that garner that level of worship on Earth left. Perhaps, Michael Jordan. Perhaps, Muhammad Ali. Madonna might qualify but she consciously chases that level of worship with a certain sense of superficiality as her eccentricities seem so calculated and packaged that she seems too overt for godhood. Everyone else doesn’t even come close.

Through all his trials and tribulations, we should remember that the talent the man possessed was the sort of talent that allows us to glimpse at divinity. “Thriller”, “Off The Wall”, “Bad”, these are records are not only flawless but allow us to touch something that is beyond us all even for a short moment. Hew was not among us. Do not cry for Michael Jackson. He has only returned home.

Video Of The Day: Shaquille O'Neal - No Hook [Feat. RZA & Method Man]

2009-06-25T08:04:00.007-04:00

Yeah, this actually happened. Who knew that Shaq was such a big fan of the Gravediggaz? I think I like him just a bit more now. Whenever I get around to writing my book about shitty, shitty hip hop, Shaquille O'Neal is going to be prominently involved. I'm thinking multiple chapters. I can guarantee that.

Welcome Shaq!

2009-06-25T01:02:00.004-04:00

Granted, this is the trade they should have made in February but I can't say I'm not excited right now. This will probably all end in tears but Shaq for the Corpse of Ben Wallace and Sasha Pavlovic? You kidding me?!

No Words... U-God Makes A Dope Album... In 2009!!! Edition

2009-06-24T18:53:00.005-04:00

"Apparently, U-God's entire art design budget was spent on a Jim Jones feature..."

For a relentless hater like myself, it's almost too easy to make fun of U-God. He gets into fights with Method Man and RZA. He made "Black Shampoo." He's an ungrateful lackey that spent his entire career, to his extreme and violent dismay, as a veritable punchline because of his status as being perceived as the luckiest motherfucker in rap. I mean you would be pissed too if you spent your entire career being consistently outclassed rapping next to sea of legendarily talented hall-of-famers like GZA, Ghostface and Raekwon. I mean U-God ain't exactly Method Man but he certainly ain't Melachi The Nutcracker, either. Scores of far more successful emcees would look ridiculous trying to compete with Inspectah Deck. Granted, he did make the video for "Bump" so perhaps his punchline status is well deserved.

His new album, "Dopium", is surprisingly dope, though. (Pun very intended.) It's nowhere near classic status but it follows the dogged Wu-Tang loyalist formula that Masta Killa, another Wu-Tang second-stringer, was able to ride "No Said Date" to minor classic status earlier this decade. U-God is finally smart enough to know that the only way that he's going to make any commercial noise in this climate is to drop any pretension of mainstream appeal and craft an album for Wu-Tang purists only. Most of the Clan show up to deliver a bunch of stellar guest verses and the production sounds like a reasonable enough facsimile of what RZA would produce if he hadn't gone bat-shit crazy hanging out with Quentin Tarantino and Dhani Harrison. It also features a song, "Magnum Force," featuring a trifecta of also-ran wackness when Jim Jones and Sheek Louch show up to discuss the finer art of holding the bag. It's suprisingly competent. I'm not even kidding. I listened to the record three times through today just to make sure I hadn't accidently caught a contact buzz on the way to work this morning.

And also to my extreme delight, the latter stages of the album suddenly turn into a glitch dance pop record out of fucking nowhere. Seriously. It turns into a fucking techno album. And it's not wack in the slightest. It's awesome. Seriously.

U-God - Train Trussle [Feat. Ghostface Killah & Scotty Wotty]

U-God - Magnum Force [Feat. Jim Jones & Sheek Louch]

U-God - Stomp The Roach (Remix) [Feat. GZA & Scotty Wotty]

Friends Who Make Music

2009-06-23T17:44:00.008-04:00

"I'm comfortable enough in my (relative lack of) masculinity to admit that I'm a fan of this show"

One of the more awkward aspects about being a (not a) blogger writing about music (you know, aside from all of it…) is being asked by your friends to listen and post their band’s music for your site. As any person who adheres to the most basic of social conventions can tell you, peer-to-peer human bonding requires one to like (or at least, pretend to like) your friend’s shitty band even if you’d rather stick a corkscrew into aural cavity than listen to their music. Naturally, this can be problematic when one considers oneself to be an objective critic (and in my case, somebody with flawless taste) and you have to inform your friends through your (relative lack of…) social graces that you won’t be writing a fawning piece of their industrial sludge metal band on your blog because you don’t want to compromise your objective integrity (or rather because you simply have taste…) Fortunately, I have been blessed with friends that have musical talent and I’m proud to be able to post their stuff on my blog.

5 O’Clock Shadowboxers – The Slow Twilight

Over the course of my blogging career, I have befriended (and made enemies with) many of my fellow bloggers and musicians who frequent the same corner of the interwebs that I do. Through my travels, I somehow managed to befriend the infamous rapper Zilla Rocca of Clean Guns and producer/musician Douglas Martin of Fresh Cherries from Yakima through our correspondence and daily shit-talking we all do at Passion Of The Weiss and The What? message boards. Douglas and Zilla despite being on opposite coasts have formed like Voltron to form the group, the 5 O’Clock Shadowboxers, to release their collaborative album, “The Slow Twilight”.

This album is no joke and is one of the best albums to be released recently in a year that many critics are calling a return to form for hip hop (if the form was like 2004 but still…). The Slow Twilight sounds like the artistic cousin of GZA’s “Liquid Swords” if it were mated with Edan’s “Beauty & The Beat” and channeled through a less needlessly unintelligible version of Aesop Rock (in a good way) humping a DVD of “Double Indemnity.” Zilla Rocca is obviously a very talented lyricist and song-writer (although he does fall into my number one pet peeve of all white rappers which is cramming too many words and syllables into their verses to show of their technical virtuosity. Sorry, Zill. It’s true.) as he takes effort to craft some really effecting and sad songs on this like his ode to dead-end girls from Philly on “Dead Queens.” However, the real star of the show is Douglas Martin’s murky, low-end production. Drawing heavily from familiar mood rock sample sources like Radiohead and the Velvet Underground (allegedly, I’m not nearly enough of a Lou Reed stan to tell you), Martin crafts a dark, dark noir inspired beats. The beat on “Bottomfeeders” alone might be my favorite beat done all year.

Download or Buy: 5 O’Clock Shadowboxers – The Slow Twilight

Ra Ra Riot – The Rhumb Line

I have known the dudes (and chicks) from Ra Ra Riot in one shape or the other since my days happily drinking myself steadily into oblivion at Syracuse University. Their original drummer, John Pike, before he tragically passed and their lead singer, Wes Miles, were friends with my old college roommate, Clint, and used to sit on Clint’s bed and listen to weird break-beat records in our dorm room while I played Battlefield 2 on my computer. I remember seeing them perform their first shows in the basement of grubby house parties and now, the band is breaking nationally appearing on Late Night With Conan O’Brien and touring with (Seth Cohen Approved!!!) Death Cab For Cutie and (the immortal) Vampire Weekend. Numerous number of my friends are obsessed with these dudes (since they know them, personally), so its been oddly satisfying in seeing a band I can remember from its infancy going from playing shitty parties in the ‘Cuse to selling out Webster Hall in the space of three years.

I’m not the world’s biggest indie rock fan (obviously) but I’ve always had a really good time at their shows and I purchased their debut CD when it was released last August. Ra Ra crafts sweet and peppy indie pop songs that work slightly better live than they do in recorded form. They are kind of hypnotic live due to a large part because of their high energy state shows (and the fact, their two female members are hot) as Wes Miles really brings it. “Ohh La” off their album was probably my favorite indie rock (well, the only indie song I liked) last year.

Buy: Ra Ra Riot - The Rhumb Line

Divine Minds – Divine Intervention/SoulKlap & Divine Minds – The Quan

Divine Minds, consisting of fellow Shaker Heights alums, rapper Jerrell Johnson (Black J) and producer Mike Amaddio, have been kicking in and out of my musical consciousness back since I was pretending to be a rapper myself (and no, you will die before you hear any of my old material. Asher Roth, eat your heart out..). Jerrell was a friend of my younger brother and knowing that I was a big hip hop fan myself, used to pass me his early mixtapes that he created in his buddy’s homemade studio.

Now, Jerrell and Mike are all growns up (Word to Vince Vaughn) and crafting some damn, quality hip hop in their own right. “Divine Intervention” and “The Quan” (with rapper/producer Soul Klap) are some true boom bap purist goodness filled with J’s nimble rapping and some quality Dilla-lite quality beats. Each record is primarily concerned with social and geo-poltical…um, politics and can at times be mired in the typical conscious rap tropes but its definitely worth the time to check out. “The Quan”, Jerrell’s collaboration with Soul Klap is probably the more realized mixtape of the two but both are filled with some banging beats and rapping. Plus, there has to be the first song about “Global Warming” that manages to be hard as nails.

Download: Divine Minds – Divine Intervention

Download: Soul Klap & Divine Minds Presents The Quan

Great Moments In Damon Jones' History - A Retrospective

2009-06-22T11:40:00.023-04:00

"Damon Jones shooting one of his patented ill-advised, hand-in-face jumpers."

Ask anybody who has spent a significant portion of time around me and they will inevitably tell you I'm one of the worst human beings alive to watch sports with. I'm easily angered, overly pessimistic and have a tendency to string together a veritable symphony of unspeakable expletives that will inevitably earn me a one way ticket to hell for breaking the Third Commandment (according to the one true Holy Bible, Wikipedia). I have a particularly nasty habit whenever a team that I'm rooting for inevitably starts to collapse in the third quarter of a tight game of throwing objects at-hand at high velocity at my television screen in disgust. Over the last couple of years, I have had to call Timer Warner Cable six or seven times (three alone in the Orlando series) to replace the remote control that I smashed against the wall as my teams blew a late lead.

Over the years, former Cavs basketball "great", Damon Jones has caused his fair share of household items to be destroyed in an uncontrollable rage. This is a shame because Damon Jones is also one of my favorite athletes of all-time. Damon Jones is an awesome basketball player, just not in the sense, that he's actually good at the game of basketball. He's actually pretty terrible at that. For a guy who claims to be "the Best Shooter On The Planet", he remarkably only shoots about 40 percent from three-point land which is just awful when you consider that his three-point shooting is his only on-court asset that is of any use to a team. However, what makes Damon Jones so undeniably awesome is his off-the-court antics and general tomfoolery which makes him one of the more entertaining human beings alive.

I have compiled some of the great moments from Damon Jones' career for the enjoyment of my readers. Bask in the awesomeness.

One of the key aspects of Jones' transcendence as a comedian is his ability to act like a preening jackass after the most mundane of accomplishments (like hitting an open jumper in the middle of a blowout loss) especially when it comes after missing five or six shots in a row. In this photo, Damon Jones celebrates a rebound of the open lay-up he missed on a fast break... against the Bobcats... in December... in a loss...

Damon is a master of the overly complicated handshake. It was reported that while he was performing his "duties" on the Cavs that he had a different handshake with each member of the team that he would perform before each and every game with them. It has also been reported this "influence" with Lebron James is part of the reason, the Cavs started performing their patented "pre-victory" skits before a 120-87 beat down of the Grizzlies this season (thus contributing to the ultimate demise of the Cavs this season. Son of a #%$@$ $#$%@%@$!!!!) Here we see Jones offer King James one of his patented "assists" coming out of timeout. This hand-shake proceeded to last the entirety of Mike Brown's "strategy" session.

In this photo, we witness Damon Jones' patented "let-my-assignment-blow-right-by-me" non-defense defense. We catch a small glimpse of why Damon Jones is the player he is.

Contrary to public opinion, weed carrying is an art. It requires that you put the needs of your weed owner ahead of your own. You have to be ready and willing to go the extra mile to get that high quality dank through airport security. In this photo, Damon Jones takes orders for how many blunts that Shaq and D-Wade require for their post-game smoke session.

A good weed carrier makes sure to take care of his old client's needs even after he's signed with a new owner. In this photo, Damon Jones discusses Shaq's weed requirements with the Corpse of Gary Payton, Shaq's new Secretary of Smoke.

One of the more entertaining aspects of Damon Jones' career is his tremendous sense of style. He is a man that not only knows how to sport a coat that would make Craig Sagers rock a-green-lime-suit with envy but he does it with the type of braggadocios flavor that can only come from a man who spent his career keeping Shaq and Lebron's bench warm and toasty. In this photo, DJ sports a dinner jacket from the 55-year old women's divorcée collection. Damon Jones is not afraid to look like some sort of cougar-pimp hybrid. Metallic leopard print in public? I think so.

Damon Jones knows the importance of being seen in public with athletes more talented and famous than him. He understands that, in order, to sleep with the same quality of groupies that you have to latch yourself onto a Shaq or Lebron or in this case, a Reggie Miller and a Shawn Marion. Witness how by subtly working himself into the center of the photo, he becomes a star and thus you are drawn to his charismatic magnetism and ignore the fact that he sucks at basketball. You want to be him even though you hate him with all your heart. Call him the DJ Khaled of basketball. Damon Jones is a visionary.

Being a style icon doesn't just happen overnight. You have to have role models, in order, to be able to properly dress like Hugh Hefner in public. Damon Jones knows this. In this photo, we witness Damon Jones interviewing legendarily bad dresser, Deion Sanders, on exactly how one wears a silver checkered sport suit, a pink dress shirt and a white fedora in public without looking like "Chocolate Lover"-era Big Daddy Kane in public. Clearly, Jones has taken the lessons "Prime Time" to heart.

Let's not forget his love for stupid haircuts as well.

Did you know Damon Jones signed an endorsement deal with a sportswear company in China to promote their basketball shoes simply because he was on the same team as Lebron James? Now you know and knowing is half the battle of going through the mental gymnastics that you have to make to reconcile that completely illogical thought in your head. Damon Jones endorses shoes in China.... Damon Jones endorses shoes in China!! DAMON EFFIN' JONES ENDORSES SHOES IN CHINA?!?!?!

Jones and LBJ... and the man love that dare not speak its name.

Damon Jones at his best.... Sitting on the bench... Holding Lebron's weed.... Acting Like A Clown... Not doing any harm on the basketball court... I will miss you, Damon Jones. Always and forever.

Damon Jones' career: 1998 - 2009.

My Old High School Has Gotten Gully...

2009-06-17T22:07:00.004-04:00

I have found a new personal savior in the form of an anonymous student who had the balls (or ovaries) to tell the school how they really felt. I personally always wanted to do this while I was at that miserable place but unfortunately, I never had the opportunity (nor talent or balls) to do something that unspeakably awesome. Personally, if I had done it I would have refused to apologize to anybody on general principle because I don't apologize to people whose general stupidity trumps their will to live (or in this case run a high school) but otherwise, this is the greatest prank in the history of the school. I want to thank you for restoring my faith in humanity.

On a related note, the parents in this video are the exact reason, I hated growing up in that type of overly sensitive community. How do you not find that hilarious?

I Didn’t Need Jay-Z To Tell Me That T-Pain Sucks: Shawn Carter Has His Nas Moment – A Prayer For James Cameron

2009-06-12T09:50:00.002-04:00

"New Rule: No Man Can Call Another Man Soft While Wearing A Scarf"

Personally, I blame Teddy Riley. If I were a Skynet-like supercomputer deliberating over who to send an immigrant Austrian bodybuilder (or a mimetic polyalloy Los Angeles police officer but definitely not and not limited to Kristianna Loken) back in time to terminate for their future high crimes and misdemeanors, I would undoubtedly select Edward Theodore Riley as my target. You see despite some of the genuine, thoroughbred awesomeness of Mr. Riley’s music, I hold the man most responsible for hip hop and R&B’s continued murder-suicide pact style devolution into mutual suckocity. If you want to place the ultimate embryonic blame on why hip hop has gotten so butter soft and lame (and it has nothing to do with the tightness of jeans, people) than there is no better choice than the man who brought us “new jack swing” because all that is lame and wack can be traced through his music genes to his devolutionary kin that wringing such havoc and destruction upon two of the world greatest musical genres.

Since the Great R&Bification of Hip Hop (and the Great Hip Hopification of R&B) that Mr. Riley spawned when he started lacing R&B singers with hip hop influenced beats in the late ‘80s, new jack swing has caused irreparable harm to both genres by allowing a slew of untalented hacks to irresponsibly try and mix hip hop elements with contemporary R&B elements to create an unholy Frankenstein-like creations designed to sell records to teenage girls. This has not been good to anyone. While Riley, himself, is not the biggest violator, it is undoubtedly those that followed down the dark path that he carved out for himself have done far worse than he could have possibly imagined. Much like Miles Bennett Dyson, had he known that his creation would cause such widespread destruction, he would have never combined R&B and rap music in the first place. Ultimately, I blame Teddy Riley because I blame him for T-Pain and I blame T-Pain for auto-tune…But I don’t need Jay-Z to tell me that T-Pain sucks. I figured that out on my own.

Jay-Z’s “D.O.A. (Death Of Auto-tune)”, the alleged street single, for his most assuredly ill-advised, upcoming album “The Blueprint 3”, is a “transformative” song for the artist. Granted, its song that transformative in the worst way possible but nevertheless it is a song that fundamentally changes Jay-Z as an artist but in ways that are harmful and destructive to the music. The greatest strength of Jay-Z has been his ability to adapt to the musical climate of the times. Unlike stick-in-the-mud true schoolers or his former nemesis, Nas, Jay-Z has consistently evolved and changed his sound from project to project in an attempt to stay relevant with the current musical times. Jay-Z had an uncanny knack for mining the talents of the hottest, most cutting edge producers before they became overpaid (and overrated) super producers and thus his music has been able to dominate the musical charts for going on thirteen plus years. He worked with Kanye before he was Kanye, Pharell before he was Pharell and Timbaland before he was Timbaland. The willingness to adapt and change his sound is undoubtedly the reason that he has enjoyed such longevity and acclaim compared with some of his mid-90s contemporaries. Why “D.O.A.” is such a frustrating and ultimately destructive track is that it ignores the primary idiom that has made Jay-Z so successful. He’s become a bitter hater. It is the moment that Jay-Z has gotten too old for this rap shit. It is not a good look on him.

“D.O.A.” is Hov’s old-man-yelling-at-the-young-kids-to-get-off-his-lawn moment as he lashes out against the tight jean-wearing atrocities of auto-tune (granted, something that needs to be said but not from Jay-Z) and those he sees having “ruined” hip hop with music that has a tragic lack of aggression in it’s content. Jay-Z has consciously crafted a record that is designed to be a rallying cry for hardcore hip hop that he sees to have faded from the mainstream of hip hop. This is a sentiment I can relate to, however, this record fails on pretty much all accounts.

First, musically, the record just sucks. The song uses a rather unspectacular No I.D. beat that sounds like it would be better served over Mos Def’s new record than it does for Jay-Z to be rhyming over in 2009. Granted, part of this is conceptual as Jay wants to rap over the type of backpack material that he presents as real hip hop over the overproduced tripe that is he going after over the record. Except Jay can’t rap anymore. On the record, Hov kicks this lazy, overly cocksure flow thats he’s been doing, at least, since Rick Ross’ “Hustlin’ (Remix)” and it just weak and unfocused. Lyrically, he’s treading the same sort of tired “rap sucks” waters that’s been passe’ for awhile now and coming from Jay-Z, it just sounds bitter. If you are going to tear into an entire genre of music for being wack, you’ve got to really bring it otherwise you end making yourself look worse than the music you are criticizing. This ain’t exactly “Stakes Is High,” people.

However, the primary reason why the record fails is conceptual. Why is Jay-Z making this record? He has spent his career chasing trends and staying on the cutting edge. Why is he suddenly having a problem with rappers singing in auto-tune over their records? Its not as if Jay hasn’t made some seemingly dubious record choices in the past. Let’s not forget his biggest record of all-time samples the soundtrack to “Annie,” a play that doesn’t exactly scream out bedrock hardcore gulliness. The song makes it seem as if Jay-Z is simply bitter the direction of hip hop has gone in. A notion that firmly places him into the “hip hop is dead” crowd that is populated by many a boom bapping backpacker and former rap luminaries that Jay has been chastising for years about not staying relevant including his greatest nemesis, Nas. Its hypocritical and its ugly of Jay to be making a record like this especially considering that as an executive over at Def Jam the last couple of years, he hasn’t been eager to stem the flow of this type of “soft” material. Kanye West, his most famous protege, has flourished under his watch while at Def Jam Records with music that nobody will confuse as hardcore gangsta rap anytime soon. Meanwhile, he alienated long-time Def Jam staples like LL Cool J, Method Man and Redman to the point that he actively loathe the man for his neglect to their careers. He hasn’t exactly been supporting true school hip hop while he was actually in a position to affect change. The very few critically lavished true school records that Def Jam released under his watch like Ghostface Killah’s “Fishscale” and the Roots’ “Game Theory” were basically buried and treated as tax write-offs at the expense of promoting poppy crack rap tripe like Young Jeezy and Rick Ross. Jay-Z bears huge responsibility in the way the scene has shaped itself, lately.

What ultimately makes this record so offensive is that it’s completely toothless. He spends the record lazily kicking hardcore cliches and criticizing soft, auto-tuning rappers but other than a half-hearted jab in T-Pain’s direction, he doesn’t call ANYBODY out for doing this. If Jay-Z really wants to make a statement, he would call out the artists he feels is ruining hip hop with their lack of aggression instead of making fun of their tight jeans and their brightly colored clothes. He even manages to make the song even less biting, after the fact, by giving interviews where he says that “D.O.A.” isn’t about artists like T-Pain, Kanye or Lil’ Wayne, the three biggest stars in the genre who are using auto-tune. He even spends a good portion of the song praising Kanye, DJ Khaled and Lil’ Wayne as if to mask any potential backlash the song might engender from his fellow artists. Who is this song going after then? Rob Browz? What is the point of making a record criticizing rappers for being soft and then not having the guts to call anybody out? This record just reeks of Nas-style pseudo-controversy baiting gimmickry designed to prolong your career because you can’t make hit records, anymore. The difference being that Nas has the authority and cache to pull stunts like this because of his position built as a scion of true school hip hop (that’s what recording the Bible will do for you) while Jay being considering the anti-Nas does not due to his endless chasing of the pop zeitgeist and the dollars that follow with it. It just comes across as the ultimate in hypocrisy. This is sub-50 Cent style stuff because at least, Curtis has the balls to call people out by name for material, he thinks is weak.

“D.O.A.” is the nadir in Hov’s career, a moment that is far lower and more embarrasing than any of his early career missteps like “(Always Be My) Sunshine” or “I Know What Girls Like.” This is Jay-Z’s “You Owe Me” moment. This is a song that fundamentally betrays his legacy as an artist and shifts his position from an artist that is consistently an advocate for the new and innovative in hip hop and places him firmly in the backpack territory. Congratulations, Jay-Z! You are finally rapping like Common Sense after all these years.

No Words...Further Proof Lil Wayne Is Overrated Edition

2009-06-05T12:13:00.004-04:00

It totally would make sense that Dwayne Carter would be make a song in tribute to the most overrated player of his generation.* And yes, I realize that Lakers are about to sweep the Magic in four games (and at most, five games) but we already knew that.** This is the type of karmic symmetry that you can't make up. The two most overrated figures of their generation on one song of over hyped mediocrity. Brilliant.

* I base this conclusion, on the fact, that he's spent the better part of the decade being hailed as the second coming of Jordan and the best player alive and I just don't think that's EVER been true. I've always felt that Shaq and Tim Duncan were clearly better throughout the majority of his career (more dominant at their positions, more consistently great teams, better teammates etc.) but got inexplicably written off from best player discussions because they were centers (or faux-power forward in Duncan's case). And if anybody is still thinking that he's better than Kobe needs to consider what Lebron did last series even if the Cavaliers lost. Tou switch Lebron with Kobe and the Lakers might not lose a game... the whole season.

** While what the Magic were clearly a better than my Cavaliers last round, their dominance against them was. They shot damn near 50% from three point range, shot more free-throws than the Cavs (seriously, whiny Magic fans look it up), and had six of the seven best players (Howard, Lewis, Turkogulu, Pietrus, Skip To My Lou, and Courtney Lee) in the series and STILL the Magic were two defensive stops (Rashard's last second shots in Game 1 and Game 4) from losing that series, 4-1. They played perfectly and still might have lost to the Cavs who outside of Lebron played as abysmally as you can possibly play basketball without being WNBA players. The huge defensive mismatches that the Magic presented the Cavs will be negated by the size of the Lakers backcourt and the presence of Gasol, Bynum and Odom in their front court. The conference finals proved the Cavaliers were pretenders not that the Magic were contenders. The only way the Lakers lose this series is if Shane Battier and Ron Artest suit up for the Magic and the Lakers quit on themselves. Its seriously killing me that the least-deserving team in the playoffs (outside of Detroit) is going to win the NBA Finals relatively handily.

Excuse me while I throw up.

Song Of The Day: Ray Cash - The Payback

2009-05-28T14:58:00.007-04:00

My beloved Cavaliers are in a hell of a hole due to every Cavalier not named LeBron steadfastly refusing to make open buckets this series and the Magic inexplicably playing four games in a row in "ON FIRE!" mode from NBA Jam but all is not lost. We still have Jesus Christ reincarnated in the form of LeBron Raymone James so we still have a puncher's chance to win this series as long as he's alive and breathing.

To get myself and the good people of Cleveland fired up, the theme song of the day is Ray Cash's "The Payback" from his criminally underrated 2006 debut album, "C.O.D.: Cash On Delivery." It's time to give that fat fuck Ron Jeremy impersonator, Stan Van Gundy, and the rest of the punk ass Orlando Magic a serious dose of payback...

From Cleveland to the public... FUCK YOU! It's our time. You are not taking this from us...

7 to go...

Only One Thing Left To Do...

2009-05-28T10:59:00.002-04:00

Win the whole fuckin' thing... Fuck Jobu, We are winning it ourselves, Go Cavs!

Eminem - Relapse: Review

2009-05-13T22:31:00.006-04:00

"Really, Marshall? We are biting T.I. album cover's now? C'mon, dude."

I never hated Brett Farve until he refused to retire. When I saw Brett Farve hobbling about in a Jets uniform last season, throwing ill-advised passes to the opposing squad’s players and generally axe-murdering his team’s chances with his selfish cowboyisms and morally deplorable delusions of grandeur, an internal reflex went up and I instantly took an extreme disliking to the man. This was curious because just the season before my nostalgia factor for the man was at an all-time high since I had hoped that Farve would single-handedly defeat the immoral, cheating forces of Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots in the Super Bowl thus restoring my faith in the ability of good to triumph over evil. However, after watching Farve hold the Packers hostage over the summer with his dilettantish will-he-or-won’t-he drama, I decided that Brett Farve was not the man I though he was and he should be hated with extreme fashion. There comes a time in your life when you have to know when to step down or you risk ruining your legacy for good. Brett Farve is why Eminem’s “Relapse” should not have happened. Unfortunately, it did. We are worse as hip hop fans for it.

“Relapse” is a terrible record masquerading as an average one. On the surface, the album features all the signifiers of a traditional Eminem record that made him the biggest star on the planet earlier this decade. It has the over-produced, pop-star bashing ditties ("We Made You", "Crack A Bottle"), the whiny blame-my-mom-a-thons ("My Mom", natch), the asinine Kan Kaniff/Steve Berman/Paul Rosenbergs skits, and the darkly humorous odes to blood, murder and mayhem ("3 A.M.", "Insane", etc.) that were always the red meat of Eminem’s records. If you were trying to forge a comeback after disappearing from the music industry for the better part of five tears, this would be the record that conventional wisdom would tell you to make. You simply make a record that appeals to your hardcore fans that is exactly in your wheel house and they will come back in droves as they once did. However, conventional wisdom is almost universally wrong when it comes to crafting art so it comes as no surprise that “Relapse” is super-nova collapsing epic failure.

Let me note something right off the bat. Eminem is still one of the top five best technical rappers these days. The problem with “Relapse” is not that Eminem has collapsed into a Jay-Z-esque shell of his former glory stumbling through his verses as if he forgot how to actually rhyme anymore. His rapping is not the problem. His verses are nearly flawless exercises in technical profession and one of the best strictly lyrical performances I’ve heard. The way he uses words and bounces them off each other is marvel to listen to if you are fan of rapping. The way he creates new words to rhyme with each other and his delivery is still top notch. The problem is that Eminem’s words have become shallow and overtly amoral to the point where he’s lost his most defining trait his humor.

What social critics of all kinds failed to grasp about Eminem early in his career that despite the ultra violence, the homophobia and the misogyny that there was a deep sense of dark humor that should have been obvious to anybody that listened to the record. It baffled me as sixteen year old bumping "The Slim Shady LP” in my bedroom that anybody could take this record was anything other than a comedy record granted a dark and morbid one. There is something morbidly hilarious about a song like “’97 Bonnie & Clyde” where Eminem drags his ex-wife’s body to dump in the ocean while his daughter sits in the front seat of the car. If you could get past the basic premise of the joke being a murdered woman than you could essentially see the subtle dark comedy of dragging a dead body and having to pull “A Weekend At Bernie’s” for the benefit of the cooing child in the passenger seat. This isn’t an exercise in misogyny or nihilistic violence. It’s theater of the absurd. It’s “Dick In A Box” taken to an extreme conclusion. Granted at times, Eminem’s music could get to a truly dark and nihilistic place like a song like “Kim” exposes but for the most part, the violence and misogyny was so over the top and cartoonish that it couldn’t possibly be taken seriously. You would have to be completely humorless to be offended which most parents and politicians are.

“Relapse,” however, completely loses that sense of subtle dark humor and replaces it with a more gruesome form of violence and malevolence. On the surface, the record seems to have many of signifiers of comedy (the funny voices, the pop culture references, etc.) that Eminem’s early records have but it simply lacks what made the records funny in the first place and that was the wit. It’s not really funny to describe dismembering a family member’s body with a chainsaw on it’s lone. Dismembering a family member’s body and accidentally sawing your own arm and running around chasing after it when a dog steals your severed limb is funny because what you have described is absurd and ironic (I think... Alanis Morrisette permanently destroyed my sense of the word, years ago...). Songs like “3 am” and “Same Song & Dance” aren’t funny. They are just tired and disturbing. There is nothing inherently funny about an incest gay rape story like “Insane” describes. It’s overtly gross and unnerving and I can’t imagine many people want to actually listen to it. If “Slim Shady LP” was the musical equivalent of Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” trilogy, equal parts scary and hilarious, than “Relapse” is as an Eli Roth torture porn film content on dwelling on the gore of the kill for shock value alone. The album is a cultural void.

There are lot of other problems with the album like Dr. Dre devolving into one of the world’s worst producers (Seriously, I’m loathe to listen to “Detox” now because how terrible a producer he’s become) but“Relapse” fails precisely because it fails to adhere to the law of diminishing returns. It sets out to remake “The Marshall Mathers LP” and either because Eminem lost his sense of humor because of age, stints in rehab or the death of Proof, the record is half-assed facsimile of the original. If you simply set out to re-make the same album again without attempting to grow as an artist or evolve you inevitably will find that your audience will grow up and eventually tire of your routine. It should come as no shock that each Eminem record since the seminal “Marshall Mathers LP” have sold slightly less and have been retrograding in terms of quality. The album sticks so doggedly to the Eminem formula of success that it leaves little for Eminem to expand as artist beyond his traditional parameters. This record is permanently stuck in 2002 and it suffers greatly for it. Honestly, I was hoping for a more honest and mature record from Marshall Mathers especially considering all of the real life pain and trauma that he was going through and we would get a reflective contemplative album. We didn’t. We got the musical equivalent of “Saw VI.” It’s not pretty.

Video: Eminem - 3 A.M.

Dear Lebron, Will You Please Save My Eternal Soul?: What Lebron James Means To Myself, A Franchise & The City Of Cleveland

2009-05-13T15:49:00.009-04:00

Note: I'm pretty sure I'm liberally breaking the Second Commandment with this post.

The first thing I will tell the very unfortunate psychiatrist, that has the displeasure of analyzing me when I undergo the massive psychotherapy that will accompany my inevitable mental breakdown in my thirties (and it’s coming. My friend have started to take bets about the age I’ll be when it occurs. The over/under is 32. Personally, I would take the under…), is the key to understanding my entire being starts with the fact that I grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio rooting for the multiple car crash catastrophe that is the Cleveland sports scene. Had I grown up in New Jersey where I was born rooting for the Yankees or basking in the warm sun of Miami where I spent my infancy than I would most assuredly be a much more well-adjusted person than I currently am. Unfortunately, I grew up rooting for Craig Ehlo and Jose Mesa so that alternate universe William James Steiner was not meant to be and instead I became the Good Doctor Zeus. If I had the good fortune of rooting for say the Chicago Bulls or the Dallas Cowboys or the Los Angeles Lakers, there is a good chance I might be a successful lawyer or an architect and not a entry-level office peon who writes a snarky, self-published hip hop blog (a blog that isn’t even Vibe Magazine approved, either.. I know, right?) in his spare time. Needless to say, I was not so fortunate and thusly, I suffered the many psychic scars that accompanies growing up rooting for the Cavs, Indians and Browns miserably failing year after year after year.

If there is one defining personality trait that all people from Cleveland share is our joyless, fun crushing (plus) pessimism spurred on by a collective inferiority complex that penetrates deep within our tortured, weary souls. From a young age, we are indoctrinated with “Mistake On The Lake” jokes and tales of our polluted rivers burning from raw sewage and hapless local stupidity which begins to seep deep within your soul and whisper to you in the dark night that your city is simply not good enough. We are told that our city is dreary, miserable and the sun never shines (which is not true. It just usually doesn’t shine) which after awhile begins to cut deep. Worst of all is the impending sense of doom that seems to surround our beloved sports teams. The tales of our city’s sports failures are told in hushed, whispered tones as if you do not wish to anger the gods by speaking of these stories. We huddle around each other as if we are frightened girl scouts swapping scary stories around a campfire about events that we only need one name to describe: The Shot, The Drive, The Fumble and Jose Mesa all are enough to cause a Clevelander to uncontrollably shudder and recoil in abject fear. Our scars are all too real and unlike the self-indulgent flagellation of a Cubs or Red Sox fan, we don’t have the memories of Larry Bird and Michael Jordan to fall on. We have Craig Ehlo crumbling helplessly as a triumphant MJ pumps his fist in celebration. If hope springs eternal for Cubs fans, despair reigns supreme in the city of Cleveland. Until now…

It’s been 45 years since Cleveland won a championship of any kind and we have grown tired of waiting our turn. Cleveland is a dying city. The economy has been ravaged by the destructive forces of capitalism that stole it’s steel industry and ravaged it’s infrastructure; The school systems are in shambles and the New Depression is threatening to destroy what 40 years of neglect have left behind. If professional sports are too flourish, the teams need to draw fans and in order for that the team needs to be good. Otherwise because of the economics, professional sports in Cleveland are on a ticking clock. We need to win soon or it might not happen at all. By all objectivity, it is one of the worst times in the city’s history but there is one thing our city has that the rest of the country does not and that is LeBron Raymone James, the Chosen One.

To put it in the most grandiose terms possible, LeBron James is the Messiah. Perhaps not in a sense that he’s been placed on Earth to save the human race from it’s collective sins but rather to deliver a people to the promised land of a championship and perhaps bring peace to their troubled souls. Born to a single mother in Akron, one of Cleveland’s sister cities, Lebron James is perhaps the most supremely physically gifted athlete to ever play sports and his story is nothing short of miraculous. Raised almost collectively by the community as he jumped from tentative living situation to tentative living situation over his young life, always living on the cusp of unimaginable povetry, he learned of his immense physical talents at a young age and was soon christened as the next great basketball star. This is a story of epic proportions.

Before his memorable Sports Illustrated cover at the age of 17 introduced to the rest of the country, Lebron James had already become something of a local legend around town. Growing up around town and being roughly the same age, you would hear stories of his accomplishments that couldn’t possible be true. Tall tales of young Lebron floated about claiming that could dunk the ball at six years old and that he was good enough to play in the NBA by the eighth grade. The stories always recanted second hand from somebody who claimed a friend of a friend had witnessed it. Before he was “the Global Icon”, he was Lebron James, the Paul Bunyan of Northeast Ohio. He belonged to us. So it was ultimately fitting that on June 26, 2003, a chance bounce from a ping-pong ball sent Lebron James to the local team, the historically moribund, Cleveland Cavaliers. I can remember watching it with my family on a cool June night and losing my damn mind when David Stern flipped the envelope to reveal that Cleveland had won the lottery. Lebron James was staying home.

As we all know (I figure if you read this far, you know, Lebron James’ career arc), Lebron has become the world’s best basketball player (unless you are a delusional Kobe fan which means I just feel sorry for you…) and has lived up to the insane promise that he held when he first entered the league. Lebron’s game has miraculously managed to redefine what we consider the limits of a basketball player by simultaneously combining uncontrollable power, blinding speed, wunderkind basketball intellect and virtuoso skill making him not so much the second coming of Jordan, Bird or Magic but a completely new paradigm of how we judge basketball players. He’s done this while simultaneously resurrecting his hometown team from total sports irrelevancy into being one of the premier franchises in basketball simply by existing on the team. This coupled with the fact that he’s preternaturally charismatic and a gifted showman makes him a marketing force not seen since Michael Jordan. He’s the type of man that you might instinctively hate with a seething jealous passion had he not been the coolest man in the room as well. However, it seems to be of popular opinion that there is only thing stopping Lebron James from world domination --- location. Lebron James plays in Cleveland and the world has deemed that not good enough.

The mainstream media has decided that it is destiny for Lebron James to play in New York City for the Knicks for reasons that can’t be explained logically but nevertheless has become such the prevailing wisdom that there seems to be very few sports fans that actually believe that he is going to stay in Cleveland when his contract expires in the summer of 2010. Lebron James, the hometown hero, is simply too big to play in a dying industrial wasteland like Cleveland. The conventional wisdom is that he needs the bright lights. He needs Madison Square Garden. He needs the Knicks. I won’t get into exactly why that’s such a profoundly moronic idea and how the idea doesn’t make sense in neither financial terms, exposure matters nor pure basketball reasons. The smart decision would be to stay in Cleveland for all the reasons above (the Cavs are already an elite basketball franchise, they can pay him more and the internet voids the inherent advantage New York may or may not have in terms of sheer exposure) but the real reason he shouldn’t leave is for mythic reasons.

If Lebron James stayed in Cleveland and saved professional basketball by winning multiple championships and ending a historically inept drought of failure and misery, it would make him a figure unsurpassed in terms of being beloved by any particular fan base in the history of sports. A figure rising from the dregs of a society to lead his people to the promised land after spending 60 years of wandering the desert. That’s biblical! Babe Ruth, himself, would be forced to give the man his God-like props. It’s the story of legends. A story that would echo through time. There is nothing in New York City and playing for the Knicks that can possibly measure to that. Sure, I understand the allure of living in New York, I moved there myself, but if I was given the chance to do what Lebron James has the chance of doing, I would give up the cheap thrills of beautiful women and 4 a.m. bars in a second. If Lebron were to leave and move to New York, his story instantly becomes hallow. He’d go from having the chance for immortality to becoming the Alex Rodriguez of basketball --- a shallow, soulless figure obsessed with maintaining a perfectly manicured corporate image to the point of bending ethics and morality. He’d go from a Jesus-figure to the Anti-Christ the moment he dipped his pen in the blood to sign such an unholy contract. How is this remotely appealing to anybody outside of New York? We already have one Kobe Bryant. We don’t need two.

In Cleveland, we are forever perpetually waiting for next year but this year feels different. Watching this year’s Cavaliers team has been one of the most absolute joys of my life. Not only is the basketball beautiful to watch but the team is one of the supremely likable collection of players I’ve ever had the pleasure of rooting for. There isn’t a single player on the team that I don’t like and secretly wished wasn’t on my team. Everybody from Lebron James to Delonte West to Anderson Varejao to bench warmer scrub extraordinare, Tarence Kinsey. Not only is the team the most talented team that has played in Cleveland since 1995 Indians, they are team that seems to enjoy playing with each other. Every time, any one of the players do something extraordinary or unexpected like Mo Williams winning a jump ball or Wally Sczerbiak beating his man off the dribble, the players on the bench explode in celebration. It's like watching a high school team play. Its exhilarating. Best of all, because we have Lebron James, it doesn’t feel like the axe is hovering over our heads waiting to put an end to our dreams. The Chosen One transcends Cleveland sports failure simply because he seems better than the curse Rocky Colavito placed on our city 60 years ago. He’s an Immortal. He makes his own destiny. If Lebron James can’t win in Cleveland, there isn’t a mystical being in this universe that can.

Ultimately, what really ails Cleveland is not going to be fixed by a 24 year old wunderkind playing basketball. Cleveland is in dire need of major economic restructure and return of industry to save it from its ultimate fate. That is beyond the bale of one being even a person as supremely talented as Lebron James. But he might be able to save the people of Cleveland’s souls by giving us something to root for. Something to believe in ourselves. That one of us can rise and conquer the world on nothing but talent and sheer determination. So Lebron James, will you please our eternal souls? We need it more than most....

8 more to go….

A Very Special Mother's Day Gift....

2009-05-10T12:14:00.002-04:00

Justin Timberlake is officially a comedy god. I don't know how he's managed to turn himself from a figure I loathed intensely when he was in N'Sync to one of my favorite celebrities alive but the man simply stays winning. "Motherlover", the latest early 90s cheeseball R&B pastiche from Saturday Night Live's Lonely Island and Timberlake easily lives up to the classic "Dick In The Box." I was dying last night as I watched this one live. Personally, I loved "Incredibad" and it might sneak on top my top hip hop albums of this year and this is just as funny as anything on that album.

And I'm not afraid to admit it but Susan Sarandon has still got it. I'm a little bit creeped out with myself honestly...

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!

What RZA Put Together, Let No Man Tear Asunder

2009-04-30T11:06:00.006-04:00

(Motherfucker!!!)

I can't describe how much joy seeing RZA show up in the Raekwon's gloriously grimy "Wu-Ohh!" video brings to my cynical eyes. I was heartbroken with the way Wu-Tang started feuding over the "8 Diagrams" disaster but to see them All N 2gether in the same video again brings visions of the summer of 1995 in my head, again. Please let this be the year that "Cuban Linx II" finally sees the light of day.

Asher Roth Revisted Upon The Dawning Horror That Everybody Else Is Probably Right And The Dude Might In Fact Be A Bigoted Douchebag

2009-04-29T19:38:00.010-04:00

"You guys are always going off about how much money you have. Do you realize what's going on in this world right now?' All these black rappers? African rappers? Talking about how much money they have. Do you realize what's going on in Africa right now? It's just like, you guys are disgusting. Talking about billions and billions of dollars you have. And spending it frivolously, when you know, the Motherland is suffering beyond belief right now." - Asher Roth, hypocritical black pot (Associated Press)

Dear Asher,

Duuuuuude. You can't excoriate other rappers (especially rappers who happen to be black and have grown up in miserable poverty) for wanton materialism and hedonism when you are willing to be photographed with dozens of scantily clad co-eds. Its against the rules. There is a profound difference between not patronizing Jacob the Jeweler and actually being a humanitarian aid worker in Africa. I can't tell you how on so many levels that statement is fucked up. Yes, it's true that making a song celebrating your love for your diamond necklace is incredibly shallow but so is a song celebrating beer pong. But more importantly what does that have to do with sick kids in Africa? (Well, besides the whole blood diamond thing to be fair but still...) Where are you making that brilliant intellectual leap?

And since when did it become the duty of rappers to try single handedly try and save Africa? The world has collectively decided to turn their back as Africa burn, black emcees can keep on ignoring the smell of smoke and charred ash like the rest of us if they damn well want.

I was willing to overlook the fact that you were dumb enough as a public figure to make a "nappy headed hoes" joke because nothing gets the gas face quicker than people pretending to be offended by things they aren't actually offended by because it was clear that you were making reference to the fact that you were at Rutgers University and more importantly, you weren't actively insulting anybody. This just makes me angry, though. Seriously, you need to shut the fuck up about any political statements unless you know what the fuck you are talking.
I'm retroactively removing a full mic from your album review on general principle.*

*If I were one to actively grade albums which I don't and never will. **
**Unless, of course, somebody (publications, internet, private investors, etc.) is willing to pay me to grade said albums. ***
*** I'd totally be willing to be hired by some person **** to go through your private music collection and grade your record collection, album by album, as well. This seems like an ideal job, actually.
****Preferably somebody who is rich and frivilous. *****
***** Poor and frivilous is preferable, too. ******
****** Actually, anybody willing to pay me. ********
******* I'm a whore for money. I have no shame. ********
******** It's a recession people. Don't judge.

You Can’t Kill Something That’s Already Dead (Unless It’s A Zombie): Not A Blogger’s Review Spectacular Of Asher Roth’s Asleep In The Bread Aisle

2009-04-27T17:07:00.003-04:00

"Mostly Harmless"

Chuck Klosterman’s seminal essay on Billy Joel from his book “Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs” attempts to describe Billy Joel’s lack of critical respect despite his penchant for writing airtight uber-popular love ballads. Klosterman declared Joel’s artistic credibility problem derives from the simple fact that “Billy Joel is not cool.” Now his lack of cool (much like fellow ‘70s balladeer, Barry Manilow) did not prevent him from selling records like “Freeway” Ricky Ross sold crack cocaine (not to be confused with either Freeway or Rick Ross who I most assure you never sold crack in their lives) but does prevent Billy Joel in any meaningful discussion of greatest musicians of all-time. His greatness will always be in question simply because fourteen year old boys would rather grow up to be Jimmy Page than Billy Joel. As Klosterman pointed out in the essay, this is a profoundly ridiculous way to judge the relative quality of an artist. For one, most people who are “cool” actively suck as people (at least in my estimation) and in the other, judging coolness over an artist’s talent is how we end up with Jim Jones being able to release three albums without having an actual, discernible talent.

Now, Asher Roth is not cool, either. This is a problem for him. Asher is pale and skinny, wears polo shirts and penny loafers, sounds remarkably like Eminem and is so blindingly white that his name is actually, Asher Roth. Nobody wants to be Asher Roth but unlike Joel who most critics treat as (“mostly”) harmless (if not ironically enjoyable), Roth has inexplicably garnered a level of vitriol and deep-seated hatred in bloggers and critics alike not seen since Vanilla Ice claimed he wasn’t jacking a Queen song. I’ve seen Roth declared everything from “the worst rapper in history of mankind, the universe, and the heavens above, now and forever” (roughly, I’m paraphrasing about ten billion blogger’s essays including a few writers I deeply respect ) to Roth being borderline if not out and out racist and prematurely declaring Asher’s debut record, “Asleep In The Bread Aisle” to be a lock for one of this year’s worst records. This is problematic because not only isn’t Asher Roth that terrible of a rapper but “Asleep In The Bread Aisle” is a solid if completely workmanlike record. The level of vitriol doesn’t match the content. It’s mostly harmless.

Asher Roth is certainly not a great rapper by any stretch of the imagination. As a lyricist, he is rather… let’s just say…limited. Outside of his much maligned “A Milli Freestyle” from last summer, Roth pretty much sticks to the well-worn treads of rapping about partying, girls, and weed. Nobody is going to accuse him of being Aquemini-era Andre 3000 (although, they will accuse him of being Eminem, often and frequently) anytime soon. However, contrary, what you may have heard, Asher Roth does not suck. He maybe an idiot but his flow is technically sound and he does have a penchant for dropping off-beat, pop culture referencing one-liners as highlighted by his freestyle epic opener “Lark On My Go-Kart.” Asher Roth may present himself as a living breathing frat boy cliché but he’s not a bad rapper, at least, not in a strictly technical sense. His flow isn’t off-beat and his words land where they should. If Asher Roth has one critical flaw, it would be his work is blandly enjoyable but completely unimaginative. It simply exists on a plane of commercially disposable pop music that serves as solid background music for cleaning your apartment but has very little other use. For an album as whimsically titled as “Asleep In The Bread Aisle,” the music sticks with a tried-and-trued formula and doggedly adheres to it.

However, this is actually a understated strength of the album. Roth knows his limitations as an artist and he doesn’t try to “Love Below” his album and create an ostensible piece of genius. If he were to try and do much as an artist, the album would undoubtedly be an unfocused mess and when you compound this with the fact that Roth isn’t exactly Rakim in his prime, it would assuredly make the album an abortion in the truest sense of the word. But it’s not. It’s simply a boom bap, frat rap album that exists in the vein of early Beasties and this allows Roth to craft catchy pop rap that will appeal to pop audiences. “I Love College” is a great song because it’s so dumb, affable and unassuming that it easily bridges the gap between a wide swaths of audience. Its sort of the musical equivalent of an 80s movie. It’s completely stupid and cheesy but there’s nothing I’d rather do than sit around on a Saturday afternoon in my underwear and watch Rodney Dangerfield’s stunt double try a triple lindy. The song features little goofy signifiers of college such as the “no shoes rule”, chants of “freshman”, and the unwritten rule that bouncing your ball during beer pong is profoundly pussy which is instantly identifiable to anybody who actually went to college and didn’t pretend that they were too good for a keg stand. (As a rule, the most uninteresting people I met in my four years at higher academia were those who were too holier than thou to attend frat parties as some sort of misguided and utterly asinine stand against the mainstream, sexist culture or as I liked to referred to them those that hated fun. I didn’t join a frat either but I’m not going to pretend getting smashed and puking in a trash can isn’t an awesome way to spend a Saturday Night. It totally is. Get a life, commie!)

For an artist that is so lightweight and fluffy, Asher Roth has managed to engender a particular brand of hate that I find patently unfair and hypocritical considering the decade’s long journey into the wilderness of wackness that hip hop has gotten lost in. It’s absolutely true that Asher Roth would have been laughed out of the building ten years ago but you know what, so would Soulja Boy and Jim Jones. Hip hop has long lost the remotest sense of quality control that not only an environment where it’s possible for artist like Asher Roth to achieve a degree of mainstream acceptance but ultimately, his rise was inevitable if not unavoidable. He’s the product of a decade of Soulja Boy apologists and crack rap fetishism. If you strip the gimmicky paradigm of Asher Roth being a suburban white kid rapping and deconstruct him into his simplest form than Roth becomes just another rapper with limited rapping ability who has been given far more of commercial attention than he probably deserves. This has been the narrative for almost a decade’s worth of rap music and Asher Roth is another figure that just fits right into the story. Traditional rap lyricism has watched itself slowly become increasingly irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if you can or cannot rap anymore. If you can write a hit song (and whether you like it or not, “I Love College” is a hit song), you are going to receive major label attention. Period. To harangue Asher Roth for being wack is to single out him for a widespread endemic problem with hip hop. Since when do we suddenly care about lyricism and the ability to rap well? Rick Ross is about to have his second number one album in the last two years. Wit ain’t exactly being valued at a premium these days. So why is Asher Roth suddenly the artistic anti-christ for rapping poorly?

I suppose it’s because Asher Roth is a rich white kid rapping about rich white kid things. There’s undeniable element of white privilege inherent in his music that makes people either very uncomfortable (myself included to an extent) or irrationally angry. Asher Roth may not be one of the first rappers to strip his music completely from the traditional context of the urban and the street but he’s one of the first to do it without going out of his way to acknowledge the contributions of the urban street rappers. Asher Roth has gone out of his way on numerous occasions to berate street rappers for their particular brand of conspicuous consumption of wearing diamonds and has done it in the holier-than-thou attitude of a pretentious white liberal. As Brandon Soderberg pointed out, this is problematic and probably a little bit racist as well. Roth should be the last person to critique black rappers for wearing ice not only because he celebrates his own form of conspicuous consumption in his songs (As “Blunt Cruisin’” and “I Love College” demonstrate) but also in the light of the recent Twitter/Nappy Headed Hoes fiasco that has arisen in the last couple of days. Hip hop is still a predominately black art form and a white rapper is always going to have a tentative and problematic relationship at best with the genre. Roth and his handlers should know better than to let him pop off at the mouth about a culture that he isn’t 100% accepted in.

However , I find it of interest that loudest voices of the Roth backlash are not coming from black rappers, critics or bloggers but rather Roth’s fellow brethren of the Caucasian persuasion. Asher Roth has been met with seething, scouring fury from my fellow white critics while black critics and bloggers like Toure’ and Eskay have met him with something either approaching tacit approval or at worst, resigned indifference. (Excuse me if I ignore Byron Crawford’s hate of the dude for a second. I’m talking serious critics…) I find this strange because, to me, Roth is utterly harmless. His music is too obvious to warrant serious artistic deconstruction and is generic enough that I can’t imagine that it would seriously offend people. The few songs that attempt to break the mold of frat rap like “As I Em” or “Sour Patch Kids” either reek of generic, let’s-start-a-revolution cliché prevalent in post-Rawkus indie rap (“Sour Patch Kids”) or deal with his own personal flaws and limitations (the Eminem comparison refuting “As I Em”, coincidently. the album’s best song) that one would actually have to be looking to be offended from the onset in order to actually be offended at all. It’s all too harmless. Perhaps, there is a certain funhouse reflection that white critics see in themselves when looking at Asher Roth that makes his persona too close for comfort. This is a sentiment that as a white rap fan that I can relate to. Often, I’ve found myself being reduced amongst people as “the white dude who loves rap music” and I always find myself tacitly apologizing for my taste in music. I personally don’t find it strange at all that my musical heroes are Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan but I dread having to explain why I like the music in the first place. There is a certain cultural stigma that being an unabashed white rap fan has carried that is constantly being reinforced in the media be either Jamie Kennedy-esque caricature or uber-naive MC Paul Barmanian nerdiness surrounding whiteness in hip hop. Asher Roth is perhaps the closest thing to a white blogger making a rap album there is so perhaps this brings nothing but discomfort in some. I understand the sentiment and I sort of wish that somebody rapping about the environment that I grew up in had more talent but the hate this dude is getting seems unwarranted. It just seems too personal to be simply about his music.

Perhaps, I’m wrong about all this. Perhaps, Roth just sucks and the people who rag on him are right and are right for the right reasons. I could be just jaded. Ten years of watching my favorite brand of music slowly die off into irrelevance and being replaced by an insidious, insipid bizarro version has numbed my senses to the point where I just can’t get offended by a no-talent ass clown raping the music I love anymore. I’ve seen too many Young Jeezy’s and Jim Jones’ and Soulja Boy’s get rich and famous making sub par music that the idea of another one just warrants a resigned shrug from me. Who cares? He’ll be replaced by somebody else sooner or later. Asher Roth isn’t killing hip hop because you can’t kill something that’s already dead. All I know is that I sat around listening to “Asleep In The Bread Aisle” while I was cleaning my apartment and thought it was mildly enjoyable if relentlessly stupid, turned it off and went on with the rest of my day. This seems like the approriate response. Maybe, hip hop has just passed me by. Or maybe, I’m just a sucker for Teddy Ruxtpin references… Man, that was a cool toy!

Carl Pavano... WHAT THE F...

2009-04-09T15:23:00.004-04:00

Carl Pavano: 1.0 Innings Pitched, Six Hits, Nine Earned Runs, 3 BB, 1 K, 81.00 ERA...

Mark DeRosa: .000 BA, 0 Hits, O Runs, 1 BB, 5 K....

Kerry Wood: .....

Cleveland Indians Pitching Through 23 innings: 24 Runs, 9.56 ERA, .338 BAA, 1.75 WHIP

Cleveland Indians Hitting Through 23 Innings: .179 BA, .247 OBP, .255 SLG

Ladies & Gentleman, Your 2009 Cleveland Indians! Fuck this team! They are managing to ruin even the Cavaliers for me...

South Park - Kanye West Is A Gay Fish

2009-04-09T07:30:00.007-04:00

Still after 13 seasons, South Park remains the funniest, most wicked, pop culture sacred cow skewering show on television... and it's about damn time, they cut down Kanye's massive ego in half especially considering Kanye's douchebaggery has been running uncontrollably rampant ever since he started sporting that hideous afro mullet and got addicted to the auto-tune. I'm laying even odds that Kanye West completely misses the joke of the episode and bitches about Parker and Stone in public within the next week. Count on it.

DJ Quik & Kurupt - "Hey Playa!"

2009-04-07T23:33:00.010-04:00

Thank God, there is somebody in the extended Dr. Dre/N.W.A./Death Row/Aftermath family that is still making music that is worth a damn. I was beginning to wonder if G(-Unit)-Virus that infected Interscope in the year of our lord, 2003, had spread through the ranks and completely murdered everybody's ability to make quality music that came within contact of Curtis Jackson's bucktoothed and steroid-addled aura. Luckily, Kurupt along with fellow West Coast legend, DJ Quik, remain immune to the virus as their new single, "Hey Playa!" off their impending collaborative album, "Blaqkout", proves.

I suppose it's become the vogue for former Dr. Dre proteges (See: Eminem; Rhymes, Busta - Lesser Works) to employ Middle Eastern influenced beats (and for the most part, these songs have been utterly intolerable) but "Hey Playa!" stands above the pack because the sample sounds grittier and less refined from their overproduced brethren. The track is funky, upbeat and sounds warm and inviting. For sure, this is club oriented material but this sounds neither over-produced or embarrassingly dated which often plagues veteran rappers when they try to go the modern club right. This is just fun. Kurupt has always been one of my favorite West Coast-based rappers of all-time but DJ Quik really stands out on the track. He just sounds like he's having a blast on the track.

Can we get Spice-1 or MC Eiht on the remix and fully complete the '90s West Coast rapper nostalgia circle? I'd definitely be down.

Download: DJ Quik & Kurupt - Hey Playa!

How The Mighty Have Fallen Off.../Video: Eminem - We Made You

2009-04-07T09:00:00.004-04:00

...And fallen into a bottomless pit of utter wackness. This is terrible. Everybody remotely involved with this video should be ashamed of themselves for simultaneously tarnishing their legacy and retroactively removing 1 extra mic from the "Slim Shady" and "Marshall Mathers" LPs. Just Awful. Jessica Simpson and Tony Romo? Bret Michaels? Lindsay Lohan? Star Trek?!?! It's 2009 and you are in your mid thirties! You should not still be making fun of Hollywood starlets and making fart jokes in your music videos. Can we just skip ahead to the second single where he bitches about either Kim, his mother or how the world is persecuting him? What the really sad part of this all is that Eminem still can really, really, really flow, he just has absolutely nothing left to say. Say what you want about Nas and his penchant for grandiose and incoherent statements but at least, he's trying to cover new ground with his new material, Eminem is trying to mine the same formula that went stale with his last album... which was five years ago and is a serious contender for the worst album of the decade.

This makes "Crack A Bottle" seem like "My Name Is..." and makes "My Name Is..." seem like "T.R.O.Y."...

No Words... G-20 Edition

2009-04-02T13:15:00.003-04:00

There are not enough words in the English language to describe the many...many emotions I feel from seeing this: joy, horror, confusion, transcendent delight...

If these are the people that are supposed get us out of this global clusterfuck than the human race is doomed.

100,00 years was a hell of run, ain't it?!