(1st round match-up 17 of 27)
It is a warm Friday afternoon, warm enough into the new
season that the flowers have blossomed and the flesh is flourishing and I feel
heavily inclined to not giving a fuck at work and heading out to play dominoes
with my boy somewhere where the sun shines strong and the suckas are at a
minimum. Such places getting harder to find, with incessant digital spotlight
of saw-it-firstness always scanning like lighthouse beacon of insecurity, but
them places still exist. And I hope to find one for a couple hours, and if my
man puts down that double six, I’mma hit ‘em back with the butterscotch 6/3,
clock that 15, all day long. So let’s knock this thing out real quick…
A$AP Rocky – Long.Live.A$AP
(released January 15, 2013; #39 on 2013 Pitchfork Albums of
the Year list)
I saw A$AP Rocky perform while in support of this tape, and
man that fucker’s got some charisma. The A$AP Mob is an interesting phenomenon because
I put that shit’s success entirely on the demented genius of A$AP Yams. He laid
the digital foundation, put the right crew together, and created the ambiance
which was the fog that allowed Rocky to shine like purple diamonds without
seeing any of his flaws. Listening to this again is like summertime memories
(great pre-dominoes music actually) because so early and pure and fuzzed out
and like a serving spoon of prescription cough syrup before sitting in the yard
to watch the lightning bugs raise the fuck up at twilight. The peak of this
combo of forces, led by Yams, is “Phoenix”, which remains peak Rocky, when the
beat is ethereal and his lyrics, though still sprinkled with brands and
bitches, are existential and warped. Yeah, he’s always apt to go down that
fashion ass bullshit lane he’s now too comfortable in, but back then it stayed
balanced. Once Yams left this mortal coil, Rocky lost his “Phoenix” flow, it
has felt like, so there’s a touch of melancholy to revisiting this twilight
smoke classic. SIX STARS (******)!
Chance the Rapper – Acid Rap
(released April 30, 2013; #12 on 2013 Pitchfork Albums of
the Year list)
Utilizing playlist technology, I pre-thunk this was one of
my favorite jams ever, but damn, I must’ve immediately deleted about half the
stank songs without ever knowing they existed. All the tracks I loved (and
still love) are here, but they’re peppered with stuff that goes too hard into
that Chance singing style. Herein lies my problem with Chance – he loves god a
lot. Not just vague perhaps natural world god (Allah) like I’ve come to accept
(sort of), but legit traditional Christ God. I don’t know, I ain’t really
comfortable with that at all, and I’m glad he is, but when holmes gets to
singing too much, and then you also know he loves himself some Christ God, I’m
gonna feel leery bumping up. This became more prevalent later in musical
history once he hooked up with Kanye and let Kanye listen to his Kirk Franklin
CDs, so it’s not as pronounced back on Acid Rap, so we have young, high school
flavor Chance doing his thing. It’s fun, but knowing the future always fucks up
your fun. It’s why hardcore visionary seers tend to be fucked-up alcoholics. But
props to have Chance – his Christ God beliefs and goofy good-spirited nature
make him a loveable dude, and all the charitable shit he does for Chicago show
that to be true. So off the feel-good vibes, I’ll pretend I still forgot about
those tracks I ain’t like. FIVE STARS (*****)!
Kanye West – Yeezus
(released June 18, 2013; #2 on 2013 Pitchfork Albums of the
Year list)
Two things here…
First off, screwed and chopped music is like frying
vegetables, because I actually thought I liked some of Yeezus, but it turns out
I liked OG Ron C’s chopped not slopped remix of Yeezus. When “New Slaves” was
playing but it ain’t have the “Knockin’ Pictures off the Wall” beat behind it,
I was confused as fuck for a minute. I’m down with chopped not slopped; not
down with robot fuck music like Yeezus at all. I mean I know Kanye wants to be
the new Illuminati and is trying to make cyborg babies with the Kardashian clan
a reality, but I don’t need to listen to cyborg baby-making music. Not another
second.
But that does bring me to my second point about this… Very
obviously Kanye is a huge flaming asshole. It is also very obvious that Kanye
wants nothing more than to be accepted by the most prominent huge flaming
assholes in America, and be part of their little crew, hanging out in the Hamptons,
cooking up rare albino baby steaks with Bohemian Grove barbecue sauce on it and
shit like that. But the elite circle of huge flaming assholes are racist. So
they’re racist dicks to Kanye, because duh, they’re huge flaming assholes. This
does not make Kanye not be a huge asshole himself. But it does make him a
victim of racism. We tend to normalize incidents of racism as purely unjust
situations, which on pure scale, they are unjust. But also sometimes a giant
fucking idiot self-important asshole is the victim of racism. That is wrong,
definitely. And yet it doesn’t absolve the person from being a giant fucking
idiot asshole. That is why the politically correct way to refer to Kanye was as
“enigmatic” which is kinda like the friendly way to say “problematic” which is
the trendy way of being academically smart about calling somebody a dick. (I
guess I should use a non-gendered term for that, but dick seems historically
appropriate too.) ONE STARS (*) because that is the minimum.
THE WINNER: Kanye is amazing when compared to nothing, but
just corporate robot porn music when you listen to actual decent shit. Hearing
Chance’s first mixtape right next to Yeezus was interesting here, because it
was like meeting The Life of Pablo’s parents. And though I feel like a dick for
giving the Rocky the nod over Chance, because Chance is a sweet-souled young
man trying to do good in the world, and Rocky is kind of like a budding Kanye
just with his ego checked by opiate-based drug abuses, Long.Live.A$AP is better
than Acid Rap. I apologize to decency standards, but I’m trying to be honest
here, and honesty is very rarely decent.
No comments:
Post a Comment