Music for a Monday

Citing a rapper's improvement seems like the critic's "he speaks so well," doesn't it?

(NB: Please note that this is getting posted so late because The Jesus and D'Brickashawn were in town over the weekend, and I got worn out from the usual array of late nights and bizarre circumstances. And also know this: if you're a girl and you're cute and you're sarcastic, do NOT wait until we've been flirting for 2 hours--grabbing my shirt, palming my back, pulling me over when any other dude steps to you, parlez vous francais, mi amor, merci, oui oui, bon bons and all that good stuff--to tell me that you have a boyfriend with whom you've been beefing a lot lately. That doesn't get anybody anywhere.)

- Lil' Wayne, "They Still Like Me"
You know how some hip-hop critics complain that too many hip-hop fans moan and groan about the mid-90s and how shitty hip-hop is now? Theoretically, the functionally anachronistic dissidents wrongly and myopically carry on about a bygone era, dwelling in the past to the extent that they neglect the present, unfairly limiting the genre as they glorify the pedantic (Little Brother often gets cited in this slot) and sleep on the revelatory. Well guess what? Too many of these fucking critics either: secretly come from New Orleans; started listening to rap music in 1998; aspire to nothing more than to vicariously live out romanticized notions of drug dealing and weapons possession; have lost touch with reality; get sauced WAY too hard, evidenced by the frequent and, frankly, galling assertion that Lil' Wayne is a great rapper. If you read music websites and magazines and blogs enough, you see this vulgar absurdity packaged as esoteric, ennui-laden insight far too frequently.

The latest maddeningly laughable attempt to elevate Lil' Wayne comes from Evan McGarvey of Stylus Magazine (HT: Ian), who actually wrote (and which I emphasized):

"The album is the second in a mix-tape series with the ever-evolving, Oedipal djinn Lil’ Wayne. His Cash Money shtick behind him, Wayne has gone though a tight cycle of mutation recently—the dying CM fires on 2002’s 500 Degreez, cackling, witty, 8-bit bloodbaths on 2004’s Tha Carter, and the best of the bunch, last year’s feral, image-driven Tha Carter II—that’s made his increasing demands for a place at the table with Jay-Z, Marshall Mathers-era Eminem, Ghostface, and Mos Def seem cautiously reasonable. "

I. Shit. You. Not. That's the future of music journalism in this country (and yes, you're right--we're effed.) Even worse, McGarvey goes to (went to?) the University of Michigan, and this bullshit claim now ascends to the Pantheon of All-Time Embarrassing Michigan Moments, alongside Ann Coulter's graduation from the Law School, the University scheduling some Xerox repairman as a graduation speaker, any football game in which Michigan has a narrow lead in the fourth quarter with Lloyd Carr in command, and Ed Martin's involvement with the basketball program. Kudos, then, to Evan. It's a rare moment when one man can author a timeless legacy of stupidity and douche-baggery that recasts rich University lore.

What we're always told by Lil' Wayne's small but vocal legion of misguided fans (they all seem to be writers who probably have secret meetings at which they make group decisions about how to ruin taste--can't wait for that new Jeezy, huh guys?) is that to hate on Wayne is to foolishly disregard the marked improvement he's made as an MC since he first appeared in the late 90s with Cash Money. That might be the stupidest fucking argument I've ever heard given the context. Think about it this way: The Knicks won 23 games this season. If they win 30 next year and 38 the year after that, they will have gone through a "tight cycle of mutation," leaving behind the cackling bloodbath of ineptitude that was 2005-2006 and channeling their feral basketball tenacity and grandiloquence-driven whateverness to command a seat at the table with...the Orlando Magic and Boston Celtics and the Golden State Warriors. Going from 23 wins to 38 doesn't make the Knicks championship contenders; it makes them decent at best. And if anything, you'd like to think that as they played more, they'd naturally get better: repetition breeds mastery and immersion in the field would help the players add new skills thanks to experience and wisdom. Why are we celebrating mediocrity and giving out verbal hand jobs as though they were party favors?

Just listen to the song above. "Test me when I'm chillin' and I kill you from my patio"? Oh yeah, tell Rakim and Kane and all them to slide down a seat so that Lil' Wayne can get situated. That sounds like the kind of rhyme that a teenager--this ABOMINATION of a human--would write while trailing his parents through a Home Depot.

Generally, it's great to be a Wolverine. Maybe not today. And if you've come here to praise Lil' Wayne, buy some real rap records and get back to me.

- Little Brother ft. Legacy, "The Olio" (Prod. by 9th Wonder)
Legacy is grimy. It doesn't matter what he's rhyming over: he just sounds tough and gritty and angry. Maybe not angry in a physically menacing fashion, but rather in that threatening intelligent fashion--he doesn't want to slow down to fully explain how badly you've pissed him off, and he's just gonna come at you with a torrent of informed thought. Phonte, who has yet to record a wasted verse, doesn't fully marshal the totality of his wit and humor, but he's reliably solid. Pooh, who tends to sound better over the harder beats, does, in fact, "attack the rap." His flow really matches up well with the 9th Wonder soundscape. And 9th, for his part, puts together a serious, moving collection of strings that possesses more energy than some of the blander Minstrel Show beats. Also, the adlibs on the track make me think it was originally intended for Minstrel Show. I wish it had made the record; it would have lent it some sonic diversity.

- Camp Lo, "Milky Lowa" (Prod. by 9th Wonder)
Does it even matter what they rhyme over? The way that they play with words and sounds; the invocation of that decadent, distorted imagery; those memorable voices--it's all just Camp Lo. No one could possibly care that 9th Wonder made this track. Right?

- Papoose, "Play Ya Cards Right"
At the risk of getting told to go back to Atlanta and cut my dreadlocks or whatever the fuck Kay Slay threatens people with when he's getting ignorant, I want to just put this out there: Papoose is getting worse and worse by the minute. When he first came out, he was really impressive: he was flipping metaphors, dropping assonance bombs, carving out some sort of oddly credible niche as this gully philosopher type who was street but was also gonna treat his woman like he'd want a man to treat his daughter. It was all somewhere between intriguing and genuinely exciting. And he rhymed with such irrepressible fury, a true verbal assault. But then his mixtapes got weirder and increasingly boring; his stage show was sloppy and underwhelming; and his flow emerged as a novelty since he can't ride a beat, he just does his cyborg rapper thing. When he finally got put on for real--that track he does with Busta, "Get Right"--he trotted some of the lamest verses in his catalogue. "Even the sun gotta go down so we can see the moon shine"? "These boys can't mess with me on my worst day/So how they gonna mess with me on my birthday"? "I'm the son of song"? Excuse me? Lame, lame, lame. Oh, and let's not forget, "Now I got the club on me like a steering wheel." That still makes me cringe.

Pap's latest mixtape, Boyz in the Hood, is loaded with these tracks on which he just jacks some famous beat and gets all Papoose over them. Sadly, this is the song on which he comes closest to matching up his cadence and delivery with the music. On another one, "Russian Roulette," he steals Michael Jackson's "Dirty Diana" and it sets the genre back about twenty years. It is literally a miscarriage of music.

- Nashawn, "Write Your Name"
The latest Nas weed-carrying relative destined for failure and widely held contempt, Nashawn's track "Write Your Name" is emblematic of his entire record, Napalm. It might have a few good ideas on it, but it's so generic and executed so poorly that you just want it to end.

- MC Travel (a.k.a. Jamie Radford), "Dumb Steps"
If you'll recall, MC Travel is an Athens, GA music legend, an independent voice in the hip-hop community who crafts these electronic soundscapes that wouldn't strike you as especially hip-hop were it not for his rhyming over them and the southern-rap name checking. But if Mobb Deep can get away with not rhyming at all and Kanye West can rap over pop songs, who are we to tell Travel that he's mischaracterized his music? I mean, does De La's "Me, Myself, and I" sound anything like Rick Ross's "Hustlin'"?

On his debut album, appropriately titled Athens, Travel uses all 12 tracks to showcase a singular vision for hip-hop that is less about traditional boom-bap formulas or emulation of contemporary popular styles and more about the admirable pursuit of a unique, eclectic sound. Blending acoustic guitars, drum patterns, haunting background vocals, and a host of synthesizer chords, Travel constructs a multipart musical collage that smacks of varied influences, from house to hip-hop to rock to that ambient shit that Enya makes.

And as a rapper, Travel is an earnest fellow who sounds relieved to have found both an outlet and an audience for his relatable stories and endearing celebration of everyday life--break ups, going to college, quitting a job. For whatever reasons, Travel is one of those MCs who sounds like he's yelling a little too much when he rhymes: though not fully nasal, his voice lacks the lucid bass that some other rappers command. This gives many of his songs a tinge of manic urgency that enhances the emotional appeal of the music but also makes the rhyming a little tedious at times. Some of this also owes to the shitty microphones with which struggling musicians must work when they record their own shit.

Athens will not be for everyone, and it sadly does not contain the coke raps that characterize the great hip-hop of this age (I don't think there are many images on this record that the Hughes Brothers could put into a movie, and as many internets critics will tell you, that's what you need for great rap). But it is a different, engaging style of hip-hop that is brave, and therefore rewarding for listeners. It's refreshing to listen to an album that is so transparent and proud of this honesty.

- Gucci Mane, "745"
I know that you were worried, but stop that fretting, you nattering nabobs of negativity: Gucci Mane is back! And better yet, he's "the ghetto trophy"; he's rich; he doesn't smell pussy, he just smells Jeezy; he loves beef and that's why he's looking for Shawn Carter at the 40/40 club; and the guy must have gone to Prodigy's Academy for MCs Who Don't Rhyme Good, rhyming "beef" with "streets" and "n***a" with "mirror." Thank God he's out of jail.

- Tiffany Affair ft. Jody Breeze "Start a Fire" (Stream)
As far as those generic R&B/rap collabos with a tweaked version of a known beat go, this one's not bad. An easy listen on a Saturday night.