(1st round match-up 11 of 27)
There is no intro to this one, because I am uninspired to
write an intro. Mass produced crap polished to appear hot will leave you
feeling that way – flat and uninspired.
Rick Ross – Teflon Don
(released July 20, 2010; #38 on 2010 Pitchfork Albums of the
Year list)
I am not too keen on the Rick Ross, because of the common
reasons of ya know, stealing your name from actual drug trafficking criminal
overlord, who is still alive and dislikes you using his name. Also Rick Ross
has that fucked up full torso tat style of someone who all of a sudden decided
to get tattoos over their whole body, in four months, instead of slowly
accumulating them in the traditional underclass way. But this unleashes the
unnecessary potential of a stupid gentrification of the internet hip hop
tournament of threesomes turning into long conversation on the gentrification
of tattooing, involving white women with too many colors in their tattoos, and
shitty bikers being squeezed out of the very market they created by shitty
pretend bikers. I am still firmly of the belief that the realest tattooists
should be drug addicts, either current or former, of some sort.
Nonetheless, listening to Rick Ross is like accidentally
getting one of those 20-packs of Blaxploitation DVDs – it’s all kinda crap,
none of the classics are to be found, but if you really squint your eyes (i.e.
get lifted), man, it’s not that bad! That’s Rick Ross at his finest – not that
bad (if you don’t listen too hard). TWO STARS!
Das Racist – Sit Down, Man
(released September 14, 2010; #23 on 2010 Pitchfork Albums
of the Year list)
Das Racist is comedy rap, so once you hear the comedy
schtick, there’s not much to go back to. They are both very clearly (in their
lyrics) non-whites, but they have a neo-liberalism feel to them of lack of
stabbitty history. Then again, from consulting the internet, they met at a tiny
liberal arts college, which even being non-stabbitty personal history full of
high trauma non-white can feel like being the Elephant Man (movie freak, not
reggae artist). And I can enjoy this mixtape (which appears to be before they
ever released an actual album of corporate sales tag style), but I can’t do it
enthusiastically. It sounds like the type of thing somebody would write
important sanctimonious thinkpieces about and also exactly like what I’d expect
Pitchfork to hype up. I tried to remove consciousness of such post-release
attention from my brain (and also heart) while listening, but it was impossible
to separate completely. Too easy to imagine 52-year-old “artist” white guys who
have lived off inherited wealth their entire life but have parlayed that into
important positions on various local arts boards of directors babbling to you
for a painfully long fifteen minutes about how important Das Racist are when
they hear that you freestyle a lot. TWO STARS!
Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
(released November 19, 2010; #1 on 2010 Pitchfork Albums of
the Year list)
This might be the most convoluted and drawn out Penthouse
Forum letter ever committed to popular cultural record. This album had flashes
of things that allow me to justify Kanye West’s continued existence in my pilfered
iTunes library, but then it had twice as much which was too painfully obvious a
Kanye the Fool moment. I will say TWO STARS just to be polite, and also make a
fake tie with the other two releases that are part of this tired trio.
(Oh wow, just noticed during formatting that this was THE BEST ALBUM OF 2010 according to Pitchfork. That is cause enough to suspend the metrics involved behind this entire dumbass project, but because I am a self-loathing masochist, I shall continue on.)
THE WINNER: Wow, all three got two stars. What separates one
from the other? Well the Kanye release felt like it went about 4 lifetimes in
purgatory too long to really enjoy, so that makes it lesser. And the Das Racist
one, when you listened to it the second time through, all the funny lines weren’t
as funny because you already heard them. And even though Rick Ross is corny, if
I had to pick one of these three I’d be most likely to listen to again, were
this not a stupid project where I will have to listen to one of them again, it
would be Rick Ross. So fuck it, Rick Ross wins. Who cares though? God this is
stupid.
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