New Jersey White Boy's Rap of the Week: Yeezus by Kanye West

Fun Fact - This picture was actually from 2006 for the cover of Rolling Stone,
after Late Registration tore up the Grammys

So, I’ve been bumping Yeezus all day, every day. And let me tell you, it’s… slightly above average.

Kanye West has spent his career trying to reconcile his two halves – his pop-rap leanings, and pushing the boundaries of rap as an art. It started out as trying to talk about real issues during the time gangsta rap was massive. It moved to pushing other boundaries, like defining stadium rap sounds (Graduation), what emo rap is (808’s and Heartbreak), and dark sounds with rap (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy). Here, we see him try to reconcile all of the iterations of Kanye, while pushing what industrial pop-rap sounds like. Think Death Grips, but meant for the radio/hood. If it sounds like a monumental task that might come out as a relatively incohesive mess, well, you’d be right.

The album essentially is in two parts – the more industrial, “fuck the system” first half, and the “I did what I wanted to do” second half. The first two singles, if you can call them that, “Black Skinhead” and “New Slaves” are standouts on the first half, criticizing corporations for exploiting people, but also the materialistic culture of young Americans who feed into it. He also addresses racism – the racism he sees from the rich white people he rubs shoulders with, along with the racism black culture throws at him for “acting white” (which might also be taken to rail against the “hood” mentality of a lot of young black people). The beats are open, dark, and rough, featuring blaring synths, distorted basslines, screams, scared panting, and heavy drums.

Where's Daniel Tosh to say "high fashion"

“I Am a God” will be the song people cite when they say how arrogant, douchey, and full of himself West is, because people don’t like to listen deeper than the music. But that’s a different article for another day. Regardless, with a title like that, it’s hard not to believe that it’s just based on his egotism. But I have a different theory, but you have to only look at this album, not at Ye, not at his public persona, nor at his earlier albums. This fits squarely in the criticism of the “hood” mentality. This is a hyperbolic brag that you would see Lil B The Based God do, who I’ve already established is a parody of the current state of rap (he named a mixtape God’s Father; come on). Lyrically, it’s a tad weak and laughable - “In a French-ass restaurant/Hurry up with my damn croissants” is an actual line from the song. He even has a conversation with Jesus, and rather than, you know, talking about real things with the GOD DAMN SON OF GOD, he chooses to spend that time bragging about how he’s “trying to stack these millions”. And every time “God” shows up, aka when “I am a God” is pitched down, Kanye screams, as though he’s being punished for saying something like that. To me, that sounds like a pretty harsh critique of the ridiculousness of the brags a lot of rappers put out (“I’m so fly I can sue an airplane”), and that by making these brags, they'll be punished in heaven for it. It’s hard to say if that’s right, but it would fit with the theme of the first half and makes me sound like an intellectual, so I’m going with that.

“Hold My Liquor” serves as a good transition from the first half of the album to the second half. Chief Keef is completely unrecognizable, slurring his way through an autotuned hook. And quite frankly, it’s the best thing Keef has ever done. He and Kanye are incredibly open and vulnerable about their alcohol abuse, saying how they “can’t handle no liquor”; they act reckless and stupid when drunk, but the pain of their daily life is too much to handle sober. However, Kanye, who has admitted to having an alcohol problem after the Swift Incident, is still (hopefully) sober 4 years later. So good for him. It also features Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) in a minimal role. It’s not a song that stands out on the album, but it is slowly becoming one of my favorite from the album.

Gasp! It's the Illuminati!

The second half of the album seems like it’s a bunch of leftover material from 808’s; a lot of depressing, break up lyrics. “Blood on the Leaves” takes an inspired, amazing sample of the Nina Simone version of “Strange Fruit”, the powerful poem/song about the brutal lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith and chops it up in a way only Yeezus could. The beat is amazing, like a more hyped up beat off of 808’s, and, like a beat off of 808’s, Kanye spends half of it “singing” with some heavy autotune. It talks about a rough divorce, along with a few recycled themes from “Gold Digger”. His character apparently married this girl while they were hitting up the club scene, and she wants to settle down a bit, but he can’t leave the nightlife. his pastor said abortion is wrong. So he loses his wife, and now is stuck in an “unholy matrimony” of paying child support to the other woman and alimony to first, making him unable to buy coke and another high-end car. I feel like he could have done something so much better with the beat and the themes of racism (you know, like what he talked about on the first half of the album) that the sample gives him. Hell, even the repetition of “blood on the leaves” could have been about the how people kill over drugs, and how it’s glorified in other rap songs. But nope, it’s a breakup song with a subplot about gold diggers and religion.
He gets a gold digging stripper or some other unreputable woman pregnant, and has to tell his wife, because that’s what a good person does. Oh, and because

The wordplay is hit or miss too, possibly intentionally. He must have been hanging out with 2Chainz 2much, because some of the lines he spits are the kind that belong in a True Religion store. “Star Wars fur, yeah I’m rocking Chewbacca”? “Eating asian pussy all I needed was sweet and sour sauce”? “Chopped ‘em both down/Don’t judge ‘em Joe Brown”? I mean, yeah, I like “your titties, let ‘em out, free at last/thank God almighty, they free at last”, but come on, that other stuff is Lil Wayne punchlines, not Kanye West punchlines. I mean, he got signed off the strength of the line “Mayonnaise colored Benz/I push Miracle Whips”. I expect better.

What I do know is that Kanye is now all about saying “fuck you” to the system. Hell, he didn't care that the album leaked. Which is the whole point of this album – Kanye made an album in protest to the consumerist society we live in today. It’s anti-corporation and anti-materialism, and a lot of it plays like he made something he truly wanted, without regard to whether it would sell. I’m actually a little surprised he didn’t release it for free, a la the amazing NO LOVE DEEP WEB. Although it would make sense, since his label seems to take down any Youtube videos of the singles. Regardless, he doesn’t care if people love this album, hate this album, or whatever. And I do commend him on trying to push the industrial sound I love from Death Grips into the pop arena, and doing what he wanted to do. But damn, I wish it was better.

Overall, it’s not Kanye’s strongest album. In fact, if you count Cruel Summer as a Yeezy album, this is his 3^rd worse. Which still makes it a better than average album (I’d give it a 6.5-7/10, if we had rating system here), and I enjoy a good portion of the tracks. “Bound 2”, “I’m In It”, and pretty much the entire first half are all things I’ll be bumping for a while. Even “Blood on the Leaves” is great solely on the strength of the production.

But his skills as a rapper have fallen off since MBDTF, even though there have been a few stellar tracks since then. I mean, you can point to the fact that he’s lost of a lot of the micromanaging of his vision like he had in the past (the number of editors, writers, producers, vocalists, and sound engineers is too damn high), or that he’s gained a level of fame that puts him out of touch with real people, or that the lack of drugs/alcohol in his system has driven him insane, or the death of his mother has left him without any guidance and in a constant state of grief. Whatever it is, Kanye needs to take a step back, raise his new daughter, and spend a lot of time working on his own stuff, by himself. It’s a shame he didn’t that here, because the potential was there.

Like this review? Like me? Love me? What to see more of me/reviews? Then the power of Yeezus compels you to like us on Facebook, because there weren't enough links here already.

Best of 2012 Round-Up: Songs to Escape the Desert By by Onboard Balloon

I know it’s been a while since we put up our Best of 2012 list, but there’s still a few albums I want to talk about from my list that I, nor anyone else on the blog or the internet, has really talked much about. I’ll get to them all eventually, but for now, enjoy my thoughts on the young-ish up-and-comers, Onboard Balloon.

If you remember from a while back, I ran a review on their last album, Mixtape, and did an interview with them. If you’re interested, I really suggest you go back and read that. If you’re lazy and don’t care too much, just know that these guys are friends of the blog, and make some interesting music. OBB is a pair of brothers working out of Colorado, making music in their shed-turned-recording-studio, and it’s not like much you’ve heard before.

Songs to Escape the Desert By sees them take on a variety of sounds. It sounds like it’s just kind of a collection of songs they’ve had around since Bad Sleep, which was released in 2011. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they’re bad; there’s a good mix of songs on here from my favorite album of their’s, Mixtape, along with a few tracks mixing in more of the traditional OBB sound.

The first few tracks, however, are a good introduction to what’s in store for the next hour. The opening track, “We are Slaves”, gives marching orders against the 1%-ers and the capitalist system in America that favors the rich and punishes the poor. It’s a hyper-liberal track that anyone over at Pitchfork would jizz their pants over. It’s also a great way to be introduced to the idea of Onboard Balloon, and what they stand for. Later on, “Starbender” takes a similar stance of hating on pop musicians with angry lyrics and hard bass line and angry guitar riff. Plus the pauses in the lyrics allowed Keegan to really do some fun, angry, and interesting instrumental stuff.

The next track, “Admittance”, smacks you in the face with the schizophrenic lyrics and beat. It frequently changes pace, and at multiple points the entire beat is completely dropped for some new instrumentation. But it’s strangely appealing; you have no idea where the song is going, but every new turn is something new and exciting. On top of that, you have Lee’s refrain of “my brain hates being trapped in me”, over and over and over again during one of those beat changes, and it just gives the song a whole new level of meaning and insight into the band.

“Barleywine Bucket Babies” shows off how weird and folksy they can get. And I’ll tell you what, this song gets weird. It’s only a banjo, and Lee’s voiced creepily doubled and letting that redneck drawl shine through. The banjo has this tin-like, twangy, clipped plucking to it, as though the musician didn’t know how to hold it properly. And the lyrics – “I was boooorrrrrnnnn in a bucket”. It’s about as backwoods as you can get without picking up a mason jar of moonshine, firing your shotgun into the air, and having sex with your cousin. It's weird, it's strange, and it's fantastic.

The rest of the songs feature these aspects in various degrees, with varying success. There’s a few songs in there that you kind of glaze over, as they meld into one another, especially given the random fade outs and beat changes that pop up from time to time in the middle of a track. This could be seen as a good thing; there’s nothing like having a well structured album with songs that sound related. But, at the same time, there aren’t too many truly memorable tracks. Sure, you can remember a line or two here and there, but you mostly glaze over those tracks.

However, there are a few tracks towards the end that really catch your attention. “Reflected” is a favorite of mine. It’s towards the back of the album, where Songs starts to drop off a bit, but it really picks the album up and drop it on your head. Much like the rest of the album, it’s essentially a spoken word poem. But instead, there’s just a simple accordion breathing, then a piano comes, then a guitar chord or two – the focus is on Lee, and on his words. And my oh my, are those words powerful. “Extremely pretty/Extreme these things”, “Close to spring time/Imma watch the Earth grow/For the 26^th time/And it’s funny, this time/It feels a little different”, “Didn’t need a receipt to release the dream”. The best part is that the poem is folded upon itself; after getting to the middle of the song, Lee then goes back and repeats each line in reverse order. Even though it’s the same path you just took, it looks different after seeing the end of it, and to see it coming from a different angle. It’s a testament to the power of words and poetic structure that tends to be lost in most music today.

“On the Roof” just sounds depressing. I have very little idea about what’s going on in the song, but the narrator is on the roof, writing about a suicide and how there aren’t any bells ringing to mourn that death, even though people are talking about it. It then delves into the narrator’s interactions with a girl who killed herself, and how he wants to kill himself too. But the hook just sounds so good, so real, so honest, that you can’t help but pay attention and listen in close.

As a whole, the album is a bit of a mish-mosh of songs and styles, but it’s still uniquely Onboard Balloon. I think they have their sound, between the tracks off of Mixtape and half of the tracks on StEtDB. They just need that one album that distills that kind of music, and a little luck. Trust me, if you like new things and mindfucking lyrics, put Onboard Balloon on your list of bands to check out.

If you want their album, you can buy it on Amazon, iTunes, or wherever you want because it’s everywhere. You should also like them on Facebook, and while you’re at it, like us Frogs on Facebook too, because we’re just as cool as OBB. At least I think we are. You decide.

Track of the Moment: NO LOVE DEEP WEB by Death Grips

 Wait, is this a timely review? Oh god, I’m setting a bad precedent, aren’t I. When the newest stuff we do is from 3 weeks ago (even then, it’s not “new”, per say), we don’t do timely stuff. Other than that one time. But I’m only doing this in a coy attempt to show that I put a lot of work into getting this article out as soon as I humanly can, god and internet god willing.

Now, you might remember the fact that I profiled Death Grips a while back. I know you do, because it keeps popping up over on the right side over there. So don’t worry, it won’t be one of my usual, long posts filled with background info. It’ll just be one of my long articles filled with hyperlinks to random stuff, because I like to put work into stuff no one cares about. Why else do you think I write for this blog?

This album is mildly disturbing. Normally, this would be a bad thing. But this is Death Grips, and it should be really fucking disturbing (that’s the official term). They really toned down the noise part of their noise-rap by cleaning up their production. They used an actual recording studio, not iPhones or whatever on previous albums, taking away that delightful low-fi homemade sound. And they didn’t have as much experimentation with samples and melodic synth riffs as they usually do, but there is still some decent riffs and Zach Hill really shows off how good at drumming he is. And their skill with producing memorable and catchy hooks have faded, although there are still some gems in there (“I got some shit to say, just for the fuck of it”).

Don't jump! You have so many more things to incoherently yell at us!

On top of that, they changed up their sound. It’s not major – you can still tell it’s MC Ride and the rest of the crew, but it’s a bit more tame. They seem to take a lot of influence from bands like Suicide (ironically, you want to do just that if you try to listen to them), Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and DNA. For those of you who aren’t friends with the bands and therefore don’t know who they are, those are No Wave bands, which focuses more on “musical textures over melodies”. If that sounds appealing, please, put away the meth. Walter White’s run is almost over. No need to keep funding him. That isn’t to say that they’re completely No Wave; they still have some great metal/hip-hop drums and angry lyrics and interesting synths, but they just don’t come out and have their way with your earholes like their previous 2 releases.

All of this is probably why they were mad at their label, on top of delaying its release. I have no idea if Epic Records made them do any of this, or they just did it themselves, but they definitely wanted to give their label the finger. They admit that the executives never heard of the tracks, they leaked it for free, and Epic shut down their website for a bit (they say they didn’t). Oh, the album art is an erect penis with the album name written on the penis in sharpie, making it nearly impossible to sell in stores or online. FYI, that link is not safe for work, and for those that clicked it and were surprised by the picture, Michael Bluth has had that same feeling.

If you can't figure out what the real album cover is based on this great replacement cover, you need to spend more time on the internet. Which is weird, because the only way you could find this blog if you spend too much time on the internet.

I can’t truly recommend this for old Death Grips fans. Yes, you should get it because it’s free, completes your collection, and is a big, waving, sharpie-covered dick to The Man. But it’s too calm and not angry enough for it to be your classic Death Grips, and it seems to take a lot of influence from No Wave to really make it interesting for Death Grips fans, or very interesting in general. It’s worth getting if only for the free aspect, but I’d have a hard time truly recommending it if it cost money. So get, try it out, worse comes to worse you delete it. It’s a solid effort and symbolizes everything Death Grips stand for, but it’s doesn’t reach the super lofty levels that The Money Store hit.

Oh, and if you’re in the Philly area, know that I’ll be seeing them on November 14^th. So if you want to party with me at what promises to be the most Death Grips-like show possible, be there. If you want to stalk me, or anyone else on the blog further, you can like the blog on Facebook.

New Jersey White Boy's Rap of the Week: The Money Store by Death Grips

There’s a running joke around the Frogs office that Mark will be able to find the only post-punk ska folk band in existence, and enjoy the hell out of them (it doesn’t matter that I’m the only that makes that joke). Well, I have a confession to make; I’m your fool, because I found the only hip-hop metal band in existence, and I enjoy the hell out of them. But we all have our chains to break, and Mark will tell you. Just ask Mark or Elliott; I’ve been listening to Death Grips pretty much non-stop the last 2 weeks, and I love it.

Death Grips is a California based hip-hop band fronted by MC Ride (aka Stefan Burnett), with Andy Morin on the keyboard/synth, and Zach Hill (of Hella, Holy Smokes, and Team Sleep fame). They’ve been together since December 2010, and have been pumping out music pretty consistently since about March 2011. It’s hard to peg their style down; MC Ride is clearly doing the whole hip-hop thing, but Morin is doing a gothic synth-pop, and Hill is just banging away at the drums like a metal band. That’s why a lot of different terms, like alternative hip-hop, experimental hip-hop, and my own personal label, rap-metal/rap-rock (yes, I know it makes them sound like an “edgier” Limp Bizkit, but it’s applicable and makes the name cool) have been applied to them. Interestingly enough, they’re the first intentionally lo-fi hip-hop group I’ve ever heard of or seen. And surprisingly, it all works together so well.

They released their first mixtape, Exmilitary back in April of 2011, but I wasn’t feeling it. There was a song or 2 that I really liked, but the rest didn’t really jive with me. Maybe I was too new to the whole experimental aspect of their act, or I just didn’t get what they were going for. Although it did get a lot of positive reviews and made a few top 10 lists, I just could not get into it. It wasn’t until Death Grips dropped The Money Store did I finally fall in love and understand why I didn’t like the mixtape. 

Once they got a record deal, and they either found their sound or got an executive to guide them in the right direction. I started listening to the many, many, many, many singles released, and I was getting ever more excited. And when I found out that the entire album was available to stream for free, I had the same scream-like-a-10-year-old-school-girl-who-just-met-Justin-Beiber-in-person reaction that Elliott had when he found out Pow Pow from Man Man was giving him drum drum lessons (see what I did there? Did you see it? Awesome, you saw it). This time around, MC Ride wasn’t just yelling out angry lines about… whatever Takyon is about as loud, metallic drum hits clanged in the back with a synth dropping a variety of pitch-shifting and almost scary notes. This time, their anger seemed directed, although I’m not exactly sure what it’s directed at, but it does have a concentrated feeling to it. And their lyrics and content fun and funny, in a Tyler, the Creator sort of way. But instead of just crazy like Tyler, they’re angry and crazy.

The appeal here is the same appeal for punk rock (not post-punk or pop-punk, but pure The Clash or Sex Pistols punk) and metal; aggression, loudness, anger, violence, dirt, mud, blood, energy. They take a new approach to what rap-rock or hip-hop, and turn it into something grimefully beautiful (yes, grimefully is a word. Look it up. Or better yet, don’t). Death Grips is able to capture and store all that rage unlike any other band I’ve heard of in the last 20 years, and release it to an unsuspecting public that wants, no, needs this kind of music. That’s one of the reasons why I loved Tyler, the Creator so much; he brought an anger and energy that was missing from most music, and especially missing from rap, given the NWA roots a lot of modern hip-hop has. Let’s take a look at a few of their songs.

If you know me, I love me some delicious lows, whether they are sexy, hard hitting, or just really loud. So not only was “System Blower” an awesome Death Grips take on dubstep, but just a dirty track that I loved the second I heard it. It’s a pretty good example of MC Ride’s vocal delivery, and how it gets swallowed up by the instrumentation behind him no matter how loud he yells. And let’s not forget those bridges with the Youtube-sampled, heavily distorted Venus Williams serve-scream right before the drop, and the “WA-WA-WA” synths blaring at you. It’s one of the few songs that I can listen to and honestly feel like flipping tables and punching holes in my walls and throwing desk lamps out of windows and kicking Steve in the face (although I do want to kick Steve in the face a lot, so that’s not all that unusual).

“The Cage” has a synth riff that I can only describe as what the Devil’s ice cream truck would play in hell. It’s a fun melody, but dark at the same time. And the pitch-shifting at the end of the riff just gives it a sinister vibe that makes you uneasy. Vocally it starts off with more a traditional vocal delivery, but even that devolves into shouting everything. And lyrically, it’s the same as a regular rap song; it’s all about killing and doing drugs, but the reason it’s so good is that it’s the grimy, dirty side of the killing and drugs. And it just comes together so spectacularly.

Of course, that’s not to say they don’t have their own softer songs. They still pack a punch, but in a more traditional way.

“Get Got”, the lead single and opening track of The Money Store, still has MC Ride mumbling through his verses, slowly building up the energy until he finishes the verse and the chorus comes in. The synthesizer has this fast, uneasy high-pitched melody to it that starts slightly off beat. It’s there almost as a buffer from Exmilitary, to show that they aren’t going to be as constantly intense here, and that they know how to make something that won’t push people away. It features some rather restrained drumming, which, after hearing the rest of the album, is an accomplishment in and of itself.

“Hacker” sees a spoken word over a beat I would expect to hear as the bridge for some indie song. Lyrically, it’s what Kurt Cobain would write if he was alive and was a rapper (although I would kill to see Zombie Cobain spit hot fire at a crowd). The hook has almost no relation to the rest of the song, which doesn’t have relation with itself. It’s a spoken word song of barely related couplets and lines, with a fun hook (“I’m in your areeeeeaaaaaaaaa”), kind of like “Something in the Way” (although it’s not an embarrassment to an otherwise fantastic album), or if Serengeti’s “California” was any good. I mean, what does “The table's flipped now we got all the coconuts bitch” have to do with stealing stuff, or being an intern at Wikileaks? It’s densely cryptic and comes at you so fast you barely have time to make sense of it all, much like most of the Death Grips material.

Much like WZRD or Swan Lake (for Elliott), Death Grips isn’t something you jump into expecting to love it, or even truly enjoy and appreciate it the first few times you listen to it. But, if you pull up the lyrics and put the album on repeat a couple of times, you’ll start to see what I’m seeing in these guys. Yes, it’s weird, it’s abrasive, but it’s smart and thoughtful at the same time, and will hold you in a death grip (man, I’m on fire with these puns). Once I’m done fixing all the stuff in my apartment that I broke from listening to The Money Store (after fixing the destruction Elliott brought to my building), I’m going to have to give Exmilitary another listen.

Check out their Soundcloud page to stream anything and everything by them (and download a few songs too), and go out and buy the album. It’ll be totally worth it. If you’re too lazy to go to another website, just check out the song/video for “The Fever”, one of my personal favorites, and the same goes for “Bitch Please”. Had The Money Store come out a little later, it would have been my #1 album out of my top 42. I cannot express this enough; buy The Money Store. Nor can I express how much I want you to like the blog on Facebook.