Who Do You Think You Are?

I'm starting a new series of articles, to be sprinkled about this blog like cocaine at a crime scene. I'm gonna talk a bit about why I do certain things, or say things the way I do.

I'm going to start with the idea of ratings. Ratings like movies,television, or video games? No, ratings like "Best of All Time" or various "Top" whatever lists. I fucking hate these kinds of ratings, because at some point, we're splitting hairs. Realistically, if we could possibly come up with a list of, let's say, the 10 greatest albums of all time, how much better would any one album be than the next? How would you feel about an album that was at best, number 11 of all time? What if that album was your favorite album of all time? Would you care what some asshole list-maker said? Probably not, but if you did, you might email to the author to let them know. Or more likely, complain on the internet...with a link to the article...(see where I'm going with this?)...and get pageviews for the site that made the list. You'd be making someone money who only made you mad, thus losing twice. 

Even before pageviews existed, sparking debate has long been a go-to tactic for interviewers. Every so often, Mike Greenberg will point out that the best way to fill radio time is to ask people "Who's the best team/player in [fill in name of sport]?" and let the guests argue. (Since it's Mike and Mike, there's a 80% chance they'll be talking about football, but the specific sport is unimportant.) Take that same example and replace best athlete/team with best artist/album and you've just created enough content to fill several issues of Rolling Stone. 

My point is that I don't like rating anything in numerical order because it inevitably turns into a fucking circle jerk. It's like if you charged people admission to watch you masturbate, and then the audience started having an orgy, which you taped and sold for profit, Joe Francis style. On top of that, I think most of these lists have at least a couple entries designed to troll the readers. It's the same reason Lil B is on a lot of lists lately. 

So, for these reasons, I won't be making a lot of ordered lists of artists, albums, songs, or videos. My rating system is basically pass/fail. Either I like something, or I don't. Wasting time trying to decide if I like one thing more than another is a waste of my time and yours, and ultimately accomplishes nothing. I'd rather take time thinking up new ways to describe how terrible Drake is. 

Danny Brown Defines the Term "Real"

Check out this short documentary/interview with Danny Brown from Pitchfork TV. He takes a camera crew around with him and his entourage for a few days in Detroit, apparently in early February. If you're unaware of Danny Brown at this point, I really don't know what you're doing with your life. After Bonnaroo I imagine his stock will rise considerably, and deservedly so. 


In this video, you get to see where Danny's from. Detroit has been fucked up for so long, there's a joke about it in "Airplane". What I really wonder is what life was like for him as a kid. If Lupe caught a hard time in Chicago for skateboarding, what the fuck did people think of Danny's style? My guess is that he was that dude that smoked so much weed, nobody thought twice about how he looked. Considering half my friends in high school looked  like the guy you see at 3:20 into the video, I can relate.


A decent chunk of this video is dedicated to a concert performance where it appears that a shady promoter at least lied to him, and at worst didn't pay him. Which, by the way, comes as no surprise to anyone who's ever dealt with a promoter.


His speaking voice is different from his rapping voice, but that's almost necessary. Although, it would make for much more interesting interviews if he talked like that. If you've heard Danny's earlier mixtapes, you've probably noticed that his high-pitched delivery has evolved over the years. (All the way back to 2007, which is a lifetime in internet backpack rap time.) He's honed his delivery to a point where he really takes advantage of his ability to fluctuate both his pitch and sustain. (I'm using the term sustain here because I don't know shit about how to sing, but that's what I would call it with a guitar or keyboard. What I'm referring to is how long he stretches the words, and I didn't feel like "loose or tight" quite described what I meant. Anyway.) Allow me to explain with the following diagram.

As you can see, the quadrants represent the intersection of pitch and sustain. In a song like "Blunt After Blunt" he bounces around between 3 and 4, while slowly rising throughout, then stretches to the far corner quadrant of 2 with "takin' all they hooooeeeeesss." (And that's all within the first 50 seconds of the track.) On freestyles, he usually hovers around the middle of 1, where he was for more of his early stuff. Most of "Greatest Rapper Ever" is right there, with some bounces down to 4. 


As I smoke a bowl and read this, it appears that I may have taken this description way too far. But, that's how my mind "works". I'm pouring a glass of Jack and deciding at the end whether to hit publish on this whole over-analysis. Here are some videos that I'm just gonna watch again myself, if this only ever sees the recycle bin.

P.S. - I see Adult Swim is running a bump for the new Killer Mike and El-P albums. Seriously, listen to them both. It's the closest thing we'll ever see to "Fear of a Black Planet" or "AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted" again. 

Well...

My twitter account is currently suspended, because clearly I don't know what I'm doing. I've gone through the process to get it restored, but I hear that can take a week or so. I've got a couple new things in the works, and next week we'll get back to talking (complaining) about music.