Brace Yourself

The Bonnarro lineup is officially out today, and it's a good year for rap fans. It's funny, because for years I avoided this festival specifically for the amount of jam bands, but surprisingly few found their way to the list this year. With my wife currently pregnant, I assumed this was a non-starter, but this falls at a perfect time for one of these "baby-moons" that have suddenly become socially acceptable, so I'm thinking I might do it. 

If nothing else, I'll finally get to see Wu Tang in concert. I'm not sure if I've told the story before, but I had tickets to see them in 1997, with Rage Against the Machine, in St. Louis. The night before, they performed in Chicago, and basically self-destructed as a group. The group was at their peak, and you know what happens once you peak: you go downhill. They dropped off the tour entirely, and although I did get to see Rage, I still haven't seen the Wu in concert, and unfortunately never will see them with ODB, barring his resurrection in hologram form. (Coincidentally, I had tickets to see Smashing Pumpkins when their tour was rescheduled due to the death of their keyboardist, and subsequent arrest of their drummer on heroin charges. The next year, I missed Korn at Lollapalooza when their bassist came down with spinal meningitis.) I can't complain though, because I did get to see all three years of the Smokin' Grooves tour. Even though the first was better than the second, which was better than the third, every one was great. I'll leave you with an example of what the Fugees were like before they all lost their fucking minds:

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. 

Ayo, I'm Back!

What's happening everybody? I'm back after two weeks of feeling like straight garbage. Okay, well I was actually sick for the last week, and just really lazy for a week before that.  What did I miss? Time for a lightning round:

• Yesterday marked one year since the US government took credit for Bin Laden's death. (Or since George W. killed him with his bare hands in Iraq, according to teabaggers.)
• Prosecutors in Florida finally press charges against George Zimmerman. (Or, exactly what they would have done in the first place if he was black, or Trayvon was white.)
• Goodie Mob debuted a new song in a performance that Goodie Mob fans mostly found depressing. (Is he getting back at them for the title of that album they did without him?)

Sadly, both Dick Clark and Levon Helm passed during my absence. Dick Clark gets respect in my book for having an integrated audience on television, when people openly said the kind of racist things that would get even Glenn Beck fired today. Helm is most remembered as a guitarist, drummer, singer, and mandolin (among other instruments) player for The Band. After his cancer diagnosis in 1998, he fought back in truly inspiring fashion, performing regularly in the Midnight Ramble at his home studio to raise funds for his treatment. He went on to produce multiple solo albums for his remaining years. 

Both will be missed.

I leave you with "The Weight."

Dave Chappelle Predicted the Future

  
If you haven't heard already, which I doubt if you're reading this, a hologram* of Tupac performed with Snoop on Sunday at Coachella. In a related note, he wrote this song in '94**.

Where to begin with this? Every story I've seen mentions the same basic facts about the production: it cost between $100K and $400K, and was created over four months by the same effects company that aged Brad Pitt as Benjamin Button and put the Dragon Tattoo on Rooney Mara. The weirdest part is that it was completely CGI. With the outrageous amounts of unreleased music he left behind, you would think someone had miles of video footage. At times, the mannerisms were spot on, but there were times where he came off more "like CJ in San Andreas**."  Also, oddly enough, this was originally going to be Nate Dogg, but they decided to use Pac instead.

So what next? As I watched this, my first thought was, "How long before this catches on?" My next: "How bad is this going to get?" How long until the original members of Lynyrd Skynyrd "tour"? How long before Jimi, Janice, Jim, and Kurt perform together as "Forever 27" at a Super Bowl? (Opening act: Amy Winehouse.) Better (or maybe worse) yet, how long before kids at home can do this? Will the next Odd Future video come into your living room and destroy it? 


The amount of inner conflict I feel watching this is roughly equal to the amount of irony in a holographic image* shouting "Feel me!" On one hand I read that Afeni Shakur is proud to see her son perform, on the other hand, it feels creepy as hell. I wondered for a moment how Tupac would feel about this, but he made it quite clear that he wanted to have his music released long after his death. Had he any idea that such a technology would exist, he probably would have recorded literally years of said video footage. Remember when Wayne went to jail? How many videos and features came out while he was locked up? Hell, he had at least one studio album and several mixtapes. Aaaggghh! I just realized that he knows about this technology and is probably planning ahead! Weezy's hologram is gonna be selling kid's cereal to your grandkids' grandkids!


Ultimately, the question on the mind of anyone who makes money from entertainment is whether you'll buy a ticket to see this. Based on the price, it's not necessarily much more expensive than having to pay an actual artist. Now, this was far too short a performance to warrant a one-off expense of up to 400 stacks, but CGI is expensive as hell. The first 15 seconds of the Battleship trailer probably cost that much. I'm sure you could use retouched video for considerably less. For that initial investment though, it sounds like it may be relatively cheap to replay the same performance each time. I'm sure it takes some sophisticated equipment, but again, that's an initial investment. Dre's already announced that he's taking "Pac" on the road, so it's a matter of time before we see Nate Dogg, or even,...I can't believe I just thought of this...EAZY MUTHAFUCKIN E! 


Gonna walk away on that note.


Notes:
*This wasn't an actual hologram, but rather a Pepper's Ghost, an old magician's trick.

**