[HH3os] Carter Heartbreak Born Like 808s trio

(1st round match-up 8 of 27)

Look, I am still trying to find a purpose and point to this project, because the law of the internet is content and usually that means visuals or videos but I am just a stupid person with a heart full of words. But this trio really woke me up, not in hashtag way where I could get arrested wearing a t-shirt about how woke I am then try and be political consultant and appear on television shows for slight fee plus hotel and per diem, but for real woke up angry militant earth lava BLOOP BLOOP BLOOP BLOOP with no snooze button option, only wake the fuck up and realize what’s been realized.

Lil Wayne – Tha Carter III

(released June 10, 2008; #11 on 2008 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

This is the album pushed as Best Rapper Alive era official example Lil Wayne, because corporate profits were built off this, unlike the mixtapes. Really the only difference between this and his mixtape run though is you ain’t heard these beats before they came out on this. I had a gig painting a storefront in a small town, and the recession had hit so the auto mashers junk tow trucks were rolling by like every hour, toting $250-$300 cars to the masher for that scrap metal money, and people would be stopping at the convenience store across the way (called Lucky’s, because of course) with “A Milli” bumping constantly. That’s definitely the memory bank banger from this album for me. But other than that, it’s really not any different than his mixtapes, except he seems to be rapping about getting pussy a whole lot more by this point, and also mentioning how he’s not from Earth. Both those things are strong exhibits that Wayne was fairly deeply dedicated to his drug abuse by this point. When all you doing is getting fucked up and making music, there’s not really anything else to but fuck and think about space.

Thinking about space and drug-induced futuristic shit is totally okay, like Cheech & Chong snorting that space week and blasting through the ceiling of their shithole house, or old prog-rock bands getting high as fuck while sticking about mathematics and devising space opera double albums. The internal exploration of creative space triggered by contemplation of external eternal space of all creation is some good shit. But it also meanders along too far at times (like this Wayne does) and also can easily take a mis-step into goofy noodling (as Wayne does, like on that “guess I’m fucking a lady cop” song). And weirdly enough, this shit isn’t as fun as his best mixtapes, which he was releasing like every other month before this came out, and I guess if your model is “release a ton of mixtapes to build up hype for actual album you get paid off of” you kinda want the album to be even half a fade of a step above the mixtapes, or else people just gonna laugh and be like “why am I gonna pay for some shit when I could get the same shit for free?” Then again that thinking sort of entirely busted the entire music industry model so I don’t even know what the business plan was, or is.

From my expert esteemed opined position, I give it THREE STARS but almost said two until I remembered all the times he pretended he was Martian.

Kanye West – 808s & Heartbreak

(released November 24, 2008; #21 on 2008 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

Space exploration through drugs is one thing, but this Kanye album might be the most disturbing thing I’ve ever forced myself to listen to in order it was created, because it is out-and-out Artificial Intelligence Illuminati cybertronic propaganda. I am not sure if Kanye is cyborg or he was promised vast wealth by cybertronic power structures and led along this path of self-genius musical manufacturing (important distinction between “manufacturing” and “creation”), though I suspect he is actually human, at least 3/4 so, and this is all done in Robert Johnson at the crossroads type way, except instead of mythology which led to amazing roots music, it’s real matrix shit that has led to fashion mall muzak being given fake street cred.
I happened to have speaker system set up outside in the back yard first time through this album, and there is no more glaring exposure of how false this Kanye music is than it being in the out-of-doors with fresh sky air overhead and crows in the distance babbling the ancient freestyles of rawest planet rock. This shit is pure manufactured copper-artery internal IED designed to turn your lava blood flow into stagnant sludge like unprocessed oil sewage. There are so many examples of very clear lyrical turns which go essentially “wow my life feels so fake, so I indulge deeply in this material distraction” and somehow it is supposed to make soulless sound soulful. I will give Kanye the benefit of the doubt and assume he is a misguided human being, but fuck man, I had a pair of Roddy Piper They Live sunglasses in like four years, but I imagine he’d be glowing silver if I looked at him. In fact the entire Kanye aura feels like some bullshit “OBEY” demand being made, which has only multiplied since he married Senora Cybertron herself. So much now is inserted into stream of consciousness by algorithms, trending topics you are tricked into even momentarily thinking about, and sometimes outright care for half a minute, to where people you know and love and assume are real living human beings who try to convince you through social media that some article about Kim K or some song with Kanye’s involvement are actually worth you wasting fucking five minutes of your shorter-than-you’ll-ever-acknowledge life. Natural stream of conscious hijacked for material purposes, which I can’t really figure out if it’s to benefit the ultra-wealthy (aka They) or to just keep all the rest of us malleable and compliant in order to remain a good “human resource”. But listening to this album, it’s not even trash, but a bonafide abomination against organic existence in this universe. And it’s got Yakubian fingerprints all over, in the sounds, in the consumerism-as-salvation lyrical content, in all the fractured ways it feels fragmented but whole, which is to give the delusion that fragmented existences can be made whole, like a computer, just run disk defrag on your heart and you’ll be okay. But also get some Louis Vutton shit. This is the cybertron battle in full – re-training human brains to think they are computational machines, and that intelligence that is artificial is actual intelligence of some sort. I don’t know man (or woman, or child), I’m bout to rip off my shirt like Alex Jones up in this motherfucker, but then even that dude has got the mechanical glow if I was to find my Roddy Piper sunglasses. Stupid is smart, up is down, bad is good, and trash is genius.

ZERO STARS, total absolute light pollution turning the world sky fogged, not a star to be seen, and ain’t none of us ever gonna be raptured to live in space if they figure that one out.

DOOM – Born Like This

(released March 24, 2009; #48 on 2009 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

After Wayne’s spacey experimentation (acceptable) and Kanye’s open flirtation with android sexuality breeding artificial intelligences in organic matter, having Doom boom through my brain was refreshing grimy sandpaper. But not literal sandpaper like you get at hardware store, because that’s weak ass manufactured sandpaper anyways, manmade artifice, but that real sandpaper, without paper, where you’re at the ocean, getting yourself immersed in the immensity of it all, but there’s rough and tumble undertow, and you get thrown, held down by that immensity in sudden baptism of what the fuck the real world really is, scraping along the bottom, scuffs to your torso, knee takes a shell shank, and then you pop up, reborn into life, baptized clean of those delusions of artifice, feeling fresh as fuck. That’s what this Doom Born Like This was when I listened to it. It made me question this entire project because obviously it is going to subject my personal being to a lot of crap ass hip hop which probably isn’t even really hip hop in the spiritual sense. And for what? Some stupid fucking project on the internet, that like a dozen people might see? Pure delusion. Please Doom, cleanse me of all this delusion, help free me from this bullshit.

NINETEEN STARS (easy)!

THE WINNER: Not even a battle really, as when you are listening to Lil Wayne’s slow demise into codeine lethargy of spirit, and Kanye’s open treachery against humanity in the name of shallow superficial greed, there is no choice but Doom. (That is literal, as well as metaphorical.)