(1st round match-up 10 of 27)
Internet fucking around with opinionz for u really is played
the fuck out now that economic realities of reality don’t match economic
realities of mythology, and the shinefaces channeled all the paid gigs through
their channels, and even that shrunk so now the only people who can afford to
freelance gig it are mostly shineface, so we get the diminishing returns of
elite points of view, and somehow if you’re unlucky enough to, you stumble into
obscure 1998 blogspot corner of the internet and hear some dumbass expound on
some dumb shit from back in the day but not even back in the day but after the
real back in the day, leading up to now, which is entirely fucked.
Tyler, the Creator – Bastard
(released December 25, 2009; #32 on 2010 Pitchfork Albums of
the Year list)
When I was young, I would’ve loved Odd Future, and I
actually did love Odd Future a bit, and still do certain portions of what once
was OFWGKTA, but as time has gone on, the novelty of shock rap loses its shock.
Also it’s like Battlestar Galactica the new version – once you gone through it
once, you know the trick endings, so ain’t no need to keep fucking with it.
Like, you’re not gonna go back and revisit Tyler having rape fantasies (unless,
like I said, you’re young, and perhaps a nihilistic white teenager). As you
age, that youthful nihilism is suddenly replaced by a more realistic and
Earth-based “fuck all y’all” which has no time for rape fantasies played out
over dope beats. In fact, the shit sounds boring. (But the beats are great!)
ONE STAR!
Drake – Thank Me Later
(released June 15, 2010; #42 on 2010 Pitchfork Albums of the
Year list)
No need to talk shit about Drake, as that’s been done to
death. Yet somehow, he still exists, and is considered a rapper, and when he
drops something new (as he recently did), the culture as seen manufactured
within digital realm pretends it is noteworthy.
I posit the same poison culture which has given us Donald
Trump as President gives us Drake the relevant rapper, though. There’s nothing
about him which has earned relevance. (Record sales are irrelevant to being a
rapper; that’s the realm of marketing alone.) This album (was it his first? I
don’t know) is pure trash, but it is a type of trash that could be marketed to
tween girls as a way for them to feel down and hardcore. OMG! He says curses!
OMG! He’s not scary-looking! OMG! Drake! This I feel, is the entire essence of
Drakehood – a maxipad commercial for those on the cusp of actually needing
tampons, but maybe not quite there just yet. He is a starter package, which
hopefully led to tween white girlz (even if boys, or not white, but you know
what I mean) get into better (meaning actual) rap music, although I have been
alive for 44 years, so I know how fucked a poison culture Amerikkka is, so more
than likely there are former tween girlz all growed up, getting married, who
special request the DJ play a radio version of old Drake song in between their
white ass family doing some white ass dabs and white ass whipping of nay nays.
Fuck. This. Poison. Culture. Zero stars.
Big Boi – Sir Lucius Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
(released July 6, 2010; #4 on 2010 Pitchfork Albums of the
Year list)
I never fucked with this album much, which is sad, because
it’s pretty good. The beats are on-point – that weird experimental but strip
club-safe style that Dungeon Family really locked down in later years. I never
really paid attention to how wild Big Boi’s style got, too, because Andre 3000’s
crazy ass always stood out, wearing zoot suits with Chief Wahoo McDaniel
head-dresses and shit, but Big Boi is a weird fucker with his linguistics as
well.
Example: The “You Ain’t No DJ” song, featuring Yelawolf. The
best is kinda crazy, yet completely appropriate in shitty rundown strip club
where you don’t feel safe having the dancers touch you, but you get drunk and
lose your fear. (Imagine what they’ve been through to lose their fear of you.)
And in terms of delivery, Big Boi is wild. I never realized until this song got
repeated like 19 times (by me, driving home from Lowe’s with plywood stuffed
into an old minivan to finish building a composting outhouse because YOU KNOW
HOW WE DO) how much Yelawolf’s style, when dialed in, is direct result of
listening to a shitload of Outkast. I don’t mean that as a derivative sounding
diss either, because when Yelawolf is dialed in, he’s pretty fucking great.
Sadly, all that realizing made me bummed out too, because
Griselda Records got signed to Shady Records, meaning Westside Gunn and Conway
got signed. Like all aging heads, I love me some Westside Gunn, but fuck, if
you think about pre-Shady deal Yelawolf dropping Trunk Muzik, and then
everything he dropped since then (which has mostly been trash), it makes one
worry. That’s the fucked up thing about Art (with capital “a”) – you want your
favorites to get paid, because we are trained to believe we are rewarded for
how good we do shit by getting paid, but all too often in Art, when someone
gets paid, their Art loses its capitalness, and becomes lower case as fuck.
Which takes us all the way back around to Outkast, and this Big Boi record,
which – though no-five star classic all-time banger – is still pretty fucking
good, long after Big Boi had to really give a shit to be good. Despite
conventional wisdom, that’s not so easy to do. THREE STARS (and honestly he
could’ve just read old notes from high school science class and beat these
other two albums… well, maybe not Bastard, but definitely Drake).
THE WINNER: Duh, Big Boi.
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