New Jersey White Boy's Rap of the Week: "Control" by Kendri...I mean Big Sean featuring Kendrick Lamar and Jay Electronica

So, I was writing another article, and I decided put it on pause, because I got “Control” on repeat. I know what you’re saying “Eric, you hate Big Sean. How could you love one of his songs?” And to that I say, you clearly missed the part where the title said “featuring Kendrick Lamar”. Now, I was planning on skipping this song – Kdot has done features, all of which have been solid, but generally not too notable. Plus, as someone who’s not too fond of BS, as Mr. Strawman pointed out earlier, I wasn’t too excited. Yes, Jay Electronica’s on it, but I don’t really care about him. He’s just not my thing.

But then I finally sat down and heard the song.

Holy fuck I’m never ever going to sleep on a Lamar feature ever again. He could be on a Solja Boy track, and I’ll sit through it. It could be 33 chapters of incoherent, outlandish storytelling, and I’ll sit through it all, just to hear Kendrick Lamar rap at the very end of it. I’ll shoot a bootlegger, that’s how good I feel about this shit.

Kendrick Lamar owns this track. Big Sean has an okay verse, starting off good, falling off, then getting average again. Like usual. Jay Electronica puts down a solid verse, like he always does, and it’s interesting and deep, and whatever. I don’t care. No one wants to hear about this shit, and I don’t want to talk about it.

I defy you to find a single rapper who’s hungrier than Kdot on this track. He starts off gentle, calmly explaining his verse’s thesis; that rappers today suck, and he’ll (figuratively) murder you with his verses. Ironically, he murdered Big Sean and Jay Electronica with the subsequent verse, and showed just how average Big Sean is to his fans.

Then his verse starts. My god does his verse start. Kendrick comes out swinging, aggressively growling out every line, which is impressive enough, until you realize that it’s over 3 straight minutes of that. That’s the longest verse on the track, and one of the longest I’ve ever heard. And to be able to keep that aggression and stick to the lyrical theme for that long is above reproach, particularly for a non-brag rap.

But just beyond his hungry delivery, beyond the great lyrics, is the theme. The message that he’s delivering with this verse. Most obviously is the call out on modern rap music. It’s been a line that Kdot has been towing for years, trying to get mainstream rap away from the weed, the bragging, the money, clothes, cars and hos, and now the club rapping about molly. He wants rappers to stop all that bullshit and start rapping about real things. Real issues facing both them, their community, and society as a whole. There are too many 2 Chainz’s and not enough Tupac’s, and Kendrick wants to turn that around.

Which brings him to his next point – calling out the pussy ass ho niggas, and claiming he’s the best. He leads off by comparing himself to Jay-Z, Nas, Eminem, and Andre 3000, saying his name should join the best rapper alive conversation. He also tells all of his contemporaries – "new niggas" like Drake, Joey Bada$$, Pusha T, etc. – to go fuck themselves if they think they can even try to enter that conversation. This is most simply stated by the Biggie influenced line, “What’s competition?” And while he may like the people he’s doing features with, he’s still going to try to beat them. Hell, he calls out Big Sean on his own track – a move that, as far as anyone can tell, is unprecedented. He also claims to not only be the King of West Coast Rap, but the King of New York too, which pissed off a lot of New York rappers. He puts out an open challenge to the entire industry, saying “come on, prove me wrong. Step up, put up 50 straight bars like I did, and do it better than me.”

Kendrick has finally arrived. This verse has stopped hip hop in its tracks, and made everyone sit back and think about this verse. Everyone is talking about it, throwing opinions out there and discussing the impact (definitely watch that link), writing and recording response tracks. As of this moment, Kendrick Lamar is at the top of the rap genre, and if you want to dethrone the King Kendrick, you can’t come at him with any weak verses. You can’t sit there and brag about the million dollar home you have, the Gucci you wear, the car you drive. You can’t talk about the drugs you do, the girls you bang, the albums you sell. You can’t even talk about the beats you get. Kendrick isn’t talking about any of that, and he doesn’t care about any of that. You want to come at him? Come at him with bars, delivery, lyrics. Come at him with substance. Elevate your game and do it better than him. And that’s his goal – to make the genre what it once was, and get that respect back. Get people to stop Instagramming and Tweeting, and starting writing and editing their lines. Make people look at rap as an art form that has substance. And I think he’ll succeed, for now at least.

“I'm tryna raise the bar high/Who tryna jump and get it?”

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.

New Jersey White Boy's Rap of the Week: Indicud by Kid Cudi

Kid Cudi is the most tragic story in music today. Some might say Amy Winehouse is much sadder story, but trust me, Kid Cudi is worst. You start off with a young star, making a name for himself in the Chicago mixtape game. He gets signed by one of the biggest, most talented Chicago rappers of all time. He lets the fame, and drugs, go to his head, and ends up a strung out, overconfident, wasted talent. Amy Winehouse was able to find dignity in death; Scott Mescudi has none left.

If there’s a better story about why you shouldn't do drugs as a famous person, Kid Cudi is it. And Indicud is his insanity plea.

Just look at the first single, “Just What I Am”. He starts off with the bridge “I. Need. Smoke. I. Need. To smoke” and the hook “I wanna get high y’all/need it need it to get by y’all”. Then he launches into a verse where he says that he’s punching walls and “fucking up [his] hand”, he doesn't need a shrink’s advice on how to deal with his mental illness (because he can diagnose and treat himself), and that his prescription isn't working compared to his usual routine of being high every waking second of the day. This is the point where family members and friends would step in and convene an intervention to get him some help.

Then in “King Wizard” he leads off with a blunt inhalation and saying “fuck you” to all the people who aren't his family, friends, fans, or “people who care about him”. In other words, if you don’t agree with him, you’re not worth his time. Which the exact symptom cocaine. And speaking of coke, “Girls” comes off as 1970’s coked up, sex-fueled LA or Miami trip through the upper class. Cudi apparently so rich that he doesn't even see any girl less than a 9 because of the places he goes, and he knows he’ll be able to have sex with all of them. It less of “I got a bunch of bitches” brag and more of a “my life is a blur, filled with drugs and sex, which is exactly what happens right people the protagonist dies in every movie like that” song.

The amount of drugs you need to think that you look good in that would make Tony Montana blush

“Afterwards” fits right into the over-confident, creepy, coke vibe of the whole thing. Michael Bolton provides some interesting vocals to the song. At first its’ a cool, fun hook he throws in – “we should go to my home/afterwards, come on/bring your friends/we should go to home/afterward, come on” he belts out in Bolton-y fashion, beckoning these hot and drunk girls to his house after the club shuts down for….  I’m assuming a nap and some prune juice, given his age. But then it repeats. And repeats. And keeps going, taking on a rapey vibe, especially considering how much older Michael Bolton than your average club girl. And then it’s just the beat, cautionary synths, and “bring your friends”. It’s creepy as hell, and makes it sound like he wants to fit a week’s worth of rape/murder into one night because he’s too busy being Michael Bolton to spread it out. It’s supposed to be Kid Cudi’s magnum opus, similar to Frank Ocean’s “Pyramids”. Except “Afterwards” has Michael Bolton, while “Pyramids” is a pretty decent song.

You can hear the cocaine seeping through every note on every track. That gaudy, over the top, flashy-but-not-substantive production. The swagging vocals with not much to back it up (“He will provide me with a nine if I need or a streetsweeper”? Really? You’ll shoot a guy Kid Cudi?). The overconfidence in the “fuck people who don’t agree with me” lyrics. The slurred, mumbled delivery. While I would say that Moon Man 2 was his most weed and depression inspired album, his last 2 albums have just become increasingly drug and psychosis inspired. It’s a tragedy to see an artist that I saw as the king of the sad and lonely turn down a path of utter self-destruction, from the relatable weed smoker to the heavy stoner to the strung out rocker to the relapsing druggy. It’s honestly one of the most poignant stories of real consequences to mental illness and heavy drug abuse on a talented individual in a long time.

Just listen to the difference between “Solo Dolo” and “Solo Dolo Part 2”. It’s insane to hear how much hear heart and honesty and realness and reality and depressing relatability he had on Part 1. Especially when you compare it to the mostly gaudy, pseudo-depressingly flashy elements of LA rich society that he had on part 2. When will he ever learn from the words in his songs that he needs honest counseling and strict rehab. He could have been a contender, and he took a dive in the 4^th to make a few bucks.

I mean, if Kid Cudi’s entire career is an act, a character, a planned stunt of some kind, it’s one of the most long term, impressive stunts I've ever seen, and rivals the Ziggy Stardust saga. I mean, look at his interview with Complex for the making of WZRD – he’s trying to be Jimi Hendrix, and we know where that ended up. And this album would be the centerpiece album in the 4 album concept career. But the thing is, I’m 99% certain that this is real life for him, and it’s horrible to have to witness it.

As a Cudi fan from the first time “Day N Nite” grace my ears so many years ago, I feel obligated to say that he needs professional help, to go to rehab, and to quit all the drugs. It’s done nothing but ruin what I saw as a thoughtful, depressed, talented artist. And it’s certainly depressing.

A Gentlemanly Conversation with Onboard Balloon

Last weekend, I sacrificed, sleep, food, social interaction, and my sanity in order to get out my latest New Jersey White Boy article. I do that on a regular basis anyway, as becoming insane is great when you need to drop a few extra pounds for swimsuit season, but I did it special for Onboard Balloon (which you should totally check out if you haven’t read it yet).

Anyway, if you know anything about my articles (which, given the stats, you don’t), I like to put a lot of background info on the artists I cover. This becomes a problem when the guys you’re writing about are more obscure than a parent’s face during a game of peek-a-boo with a baby who doesn’t have object permanence yet. And is blind. So, I did an interview with them in order to get that information. Also, they’re pretty cool, down to earth people, which is ironic, given the name of their group. If you suck and haven't read the article yet, Lee does the vocals while Keegan does the beats, and they each submitted their own answers to my interview.

How did Onboard Balloon get started?

Lee - Me and my bro were pretty heavy into music, all kinds of music. One day we just started recording our own.

Keegan - Well it kind of just oozed out of us slowly. It got started because whenever we would hang out (we lived in different towns) a lot of the conversation was about music, and I had been pelunking around on a guitar for awhile. You know, pickin and a grinnin. Then I went to audio school in phoenix and started sending him some beats. Then we bought Cakewalk and recorded some songs with some pre-recorded beats/live guitar, in a very small kitchen in a duplex in Paonia, CO (that has since burned down and turned into a Dojo) using a fold-out lawnchair/vacuum extension as a mic stand.

Why the name “Onboard Balloon”?

Lee – We made a huge list of band names when we started and picked the one that was weirdest and would make people ask us “why did you name your band that?” [We were] flipping  pages and pointing at words in an Edgar Allen Poe book [and that’s] we got that name.

Keegan - It was one on a big list of names we had picked to choose from. We did the 2^nd and 3^rd album names the same way, with the list idea. That name came from flipping through an Edgar Allen Poe book and pointing. I think it was in the story “The Balloon Hoax” but I’m not 100% on that. Other names on the list came from our minds and our friends minds. There’s not really an underlying meaning like, we’re gonna touch the sky or anything.

OBB formed back in 2007, but were you guys making music before then? And did you always dream of being hip-hop stars?

Lee - We were making music before that. Some lo fi recordings of random crazy shit. I have always dreamed of making experimental hip hop since I knew what hip hop was. But as far as the star part goes, that’s never really been a goal.

Keegan - We were making music before then, if you want to call it music. We actually recorded this CD we call Stupidest Shit Ever in the studio when it wasn’t the studio at all, just a dirty shack. It’s called that because that’s exactly what it is. I have thought about [being a hip-hop star] yes, but it’s not something we strive for. If it happens it happens. We like to river swim, go boating, and drink beer, not dream about being famous.

What’s it like working with your brother?

Lee - It’s awesome, everything just kind of falls into place in the studio.

Keegan - Most of the time it’s hilarious and there’s a lot of beer. We built our own studio (Remodeled/built inside of and old farm house) when I got back from school, so we are never rushed or paying for time. Which is probably why it takes no time at all to make a song, if that makes sense. Basically complete artistic freedom/agreement on both our parts. Did I mention beer?

Have there been any times where you and your brother gotten into a heated argument over the music?

Lee - Nope… maybe here and there we bicker back and forth for a couple minutes about certain little details but that’s about as far as it goes.

Keegan - Not that I can recall, minimalistic bickering like an old married couple maybe, but no heated arguments. Usually things move right along.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, have you felt like you’ve grown closer?

Lee - We have always been close. Onboard Balloon is a part of us forever…

Keegan - Well yes of course. It’s been a long time since we started, and it’s what we do together most.

Growing up, what artists and musicians did you guys listen to?

Lee - Me, mostly old skool hip-hop like Run DMC and the JVC Force. Anything that had a rapper saying what he thought on the mic over some beats. 

Keegan - Growing up for me my favorite was probably Nirvana. Other bands I listened to were mostly 90’s Alt. Rock bands that had the hits you know Third Eye Blind, GooGoo Dolls, Marcy Playground, etc. And of course the music that was played in our home by our dad, from the big speakers hanging from the ceiling: Queen, Styx, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Supertramp and so on. Also my dad really liked Bag-pipe music. Any hip-hop that I heard was from my brother showing it to me. I never really pursued hip-hop artists until recent years. We also listened to our Grandma Cathy play a lot. She is a long-time folk musician, since I can remember memories.

Who do you take inspiration from now?

Lee - Well now it’s totally different. Instead of bobbing my head to whatever, I really listen to what kind of message or thought or feeling the artist is trying to put out. With that said you know I don’t listen to the radio at all (unless it’s NPR). I listen to Buck 65, MF Doom, Atmosphere, Sage Francis, Aesop Rock, Mac Lethal and a lot of Modest Mouse.

Keegan - The bands that I’ve been sticking with since high school with a few new ones. Primus (saw them play in Grand Junction a month ago, blew me away), Radiohead, Modest Mouse, The Flaming Lips, The Shins, and Blind Melon. I listen to Robert Johnson and Leadbelly, along with other blues guys like James Cotton. Pink Floyd has been a huge influence for me, probably the biggest out of the old fellers named above. I also love Tony Furtado, the Barenaked Ladies, Laura Viers, John Mellencamp’s more recent stuff, April March..this list could just go on. I want to mention I love Celtic music, my favorites are Lunasa and The Old Blind Dogs. Some hard rock like Tool, System of a Down, and Korn. As for hip-hop: Sage Francis, Atmosphere, Aesop Rock, Eyedea & Abilities and Crudbump? And my Grandma who still plays to this day, as well as my whole family, musician or not.

I know that Lee has a few solo albums. Do you guys like working on your own or with other people, or do you guys prefer working together?

Lee - We love working with other musicians! Anytime we can get a new flavor into our music we are all over it! We are as experimental as it gets.

Keegan - We just do what we can between our fulltime jobs, etc. I might prefer working with my brother because we move so fast in the studio, we’ve been doing it for so long and projects don’t take long at all to finish. BUT that does not mean I don’t like working with other people, new musical experiences are great and an awesome way to learn new aspects of what we do. Where we live musicians are few and far between.

Very few rappers have come out of Colorado, and the ones that have are generally based out of Denver. How has growing up and living in small towns influenced your sound and lyrics?

Lee – Well, I think growing up out here was a blessing. If we were in the city we would probably be dead by now. I think that growing up out here has giving our music a certain kind of twang. Call me country…

Keegan - This is a very hard question, because I can’t really compare my upbringing to a big city upbringing, because I don’t know what that feels like on a direct, personal level. So I will answer it this way: The radio in our area is just awful. And when we were younger we didn’t have access to the great spectrum of online stations, music sharing websites etc. There were absolutely no independent radio stations around, every damn station played the same damn songs over and over and over and over. There was never any variety, and to this day around here the only stations that play different stuff is the college station (which barely reaches us) and public stations. I think this had a big influence on both of us to the point of anger and disgust. Which made us strive to produce something different to the best of our ability. We never actually lived in town, always about 10 miles out. So there weren’t a lot of distractions, we had the time and place to hone our craft.

How do you guys feel your music has changed over the last 5 years?

Lee - The only thing I would say has changed is the quality. We have had basically the same goal the entire time - make good music for people to listen too. It keeps getting better and better…

ONBOARD BALLOON!!

Keegan - Our music has changed for the better, big time. I mean just listen to a couple [of our] first album tracks compared to what we are doing now (both can be found at soundcloud.com/onboard-balloon). We are constantly trying new things, instruments (non-conventional & conventional), new concepts, song structures. Our live show is quite different than our albums, because it’s just us two, and we would need 4-5 people on stage to play some of our songs off the albums. It has change drastically and it will keep changing/evolving.

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New Jersey White Boy's Rap of the Week: Onboard Balloon

I saw this in a nightmare I once had.

This is an exciting day for me. With this band, I may actually out-hipster the guys at Pitchfork (I lied. No one can out-hipster Pitchfork). This article will at the very least out-hipster anything Steve has written (which is still pretty damn impressive). These guys are so underground, the world’s tallest telescope is jealous. This may be the first time we’ve actually had the chance to share an artist with the world for the first time. (I don’t count Mark’s discovery of Elle Odessa, because nobody counts Mark in anything).

Actually, to be fair, Onboard Balloon came to us. It’s a rather interesting story. Lee and Keegan Willis, the brothers who make up Onboard Balloon, had a friend named Sean (aka Gorilla Tuesday, which is an awesome nickname). Unfortunately, Sean passed away in a motorcycle accident while attending film school down in Austin, Texas. It was a sad event, and my heart goes out to the family and friends of Sean. However, a few weeks ago, OBB’s older brother Dustin (aka Worm, a slightly less awesome nickname) was trying to remember a song that was played at Gorilla Tuesday’s funeral. The brothers believed that one of the lyrics was “Frog on a log in a bog”, their search turned up our blog, and the rest is history. (The song is Authority Zero’s “Rattlin’ Bog”, which doesn’t have “Frog on a log in a bog” in the lyrics, if anyone was curious). This divine intervention has led to the first (Facebook) official friend of the blog, and hopefully a great jumping off point for a fantastic hip hop group.

As I previously stated, Onboard Balloon is made up of Lee and Keegan Willis, a pair of brothers from Peonia, Colorado and currently based out of Montrose, Colorado. Keegan is the producer, making all of the beats, while Lee takes care of the lyrics and vocals. They were originally founded all the way back in 2005, when Keegan started to send some beats over to Lee from audio school. Once Keegan got back home, they started working on their music more, until 2007 when they released their first album. They’ve actually released a bunch of albums so far, and are gearing up for their 6^th release (which is called Songs to Escape the Desert By, for those curious). They make all their music in their shed-turned-recording studio, which looks pretty sweet, from both the inside and out.

This is my favorite picture of OBB. I have no idea why.

Now, given my admission of our friendship, it’s easy to see how I might be a bit biased in my analysis of their music. But there’s a reason why I actually followed through and wrote up an article about them. We’ve gotten a few people that have contacted the blog to try to get us to listen to their music. It’s a problem that every blog, music website, and magazine faces. Hell, I’ll occasionally get messages on Youtube from some dude about how I should totally check out this or that artist. And usually they suck, which is why they’re using Youtube and emails to blogs to get their name and music out there. Naturally, most people will ignore these emails. I, however, have an open mind and will at least give the band a shot. Worse case scenario, I lost 5 minutes out of my day. Best case scenario, I find some music that deserves a spot on my hard drive. Obviously, this is one group that deserves a spot in my music folder.

Lyrically, Lee seems to be channeling Beck whenever he puts pen to paper. On the surface, it sounds like random words that sound good and rhyme are slapped together, and when said aloud it sounds like he went to a psych ward and filled out a Mad Lib with what he heard. I mean, just look at part of the hook to “Buckshot Hockey” off their new album (available at all fine retailers of music, along with all not-so-fine retailers of music soon): “Calibrated catastrophe/buckshot hockey/snot ball basket case/drunken now talking”. But somewhere beneath all that obtuse language lays something deep. What that is, I have no idea; this is some heavy shit. But in the context of the song, it’s pretty powerful. Combined with that is his command of the English language. Jay-z famously read the dictionary to expand his vocabulary, but Lee sounds like he read a dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, and rhyming dictionary. His ability to bring in so many words and have such dense rhymes blows my mind.

Speaking of Beck, OBB draws a lot from country and folk music, which isn’t something you say a lot when talking about hip-hop (unless it’s Kanye West and it’s a great article on him). On top of the very folky tune “The Ballad of Ol’ Ray Selby”, Lee tends to write ballads. For instance, “Organite” is about a small town guy who wasn’t good enough to get out of that town and do something with his life. Instead he works at a factory for low wages and spends his nights scrounging for food, getting drunk, and being arrested. It’s a story that particularly resonates today, what with the economy and all. But it also tells the hardships of small town America even in a good economy just as well as any Bruce Springsteen song can

This is DJ Steady Bakin'. He was also in that nightmare.

But what I love is Lee’s aggressively-laidback delivery. He’s got that deep, somewhat monotone voice like Open Mike Eagle. He’s also like Open Mike Eagle lyrically, which I guess goes hand in hand with that kind of delivery. But he’s also subtly aggressive, like that substitute who demanded on lecturing like he was a teacher, but also fought in Vietnam, so the class didn’t argue. I mean, you can look at “Flik the Flak” where it’s supposed to be a fun song, and it still sounds like Lee is ready to jump through my earphones and make goddamn sure that I’m having a good time. Or the last 2 tracks from “Story Time”, which are a few random tracks they posted on their SoundCloud; “Jenny” and “Emmet” are very sad, emotional songs, and Lee conveys that. He also conveys that the fact that if you’re not crying, he’ll make you cry. With his fists. But it works well within the music and really draws you in. You may not always know what he’s saying, but you’re listening intently to not only figure it out, but also to not make Lee mad.

Of course, let’s not forget his brother Keegan. His instrumentals are entirely unique. While it’s hard to differentiate between 95% of producers in today’s hip-hop arena, I can tell an OBB beat from the first few seconds. He pulls in a wide variety of sounds – Native American wooden futes and drums; rough, dark reverb-filled guitars; ethereal, dark dream-y synths; rock drums; fun, playful chimes; heavy, hard rock or grunge influenced bass lines; alternative rock-fueled, tough-sounding acoustic guitars; hip-hop style drum machine kicks and snares and claps. Keegan pulls together so many different sounds and influences, but makes them work. There’s country, folk, grunge, synth-pop, hip-hop, hard rock, alt rock, and I’m sure a bunch of other stuff I’m too stupid to notice. But it works. It works so well. His gruff/ethereal sound melds with Lee’s voice, and creates a fantastic soundscape.

Now, if you’ve noticed, I’ve mainly stayed away from their earlier releases. Mostly because I haven’t had too much time to give them a super in-depth listen, but also because they just don’t jive with me. Bad Sleep, the album released prior to Mixtape, has moments of excellence and is the best of their other albums, but as a complete package, it’s a bit lacking. Same goes for their earlier albums – they have moments of brilliance and OBB’s signature style, but they still feel like 2 guys just messing around and trying to figure this whole rap thing out. But Mixtape is where they truly shine. Lee finally found a flow and delivery that works with his lyrics and the beats Keegan is putting out are complex and interesting, and I’m actually fairly excited about their next album. It’s like they had the square and triangle blocks, and knew the holes were made up of various straight edges and corners, but couldn’t figure out how to fit the blocks in until now. Lee’s solo album Talks It Wasted is also pretty damn good, but doesn’t count because it was without Keegan.

The Willis brothers always have the expression that they're confused by this
strange, "cam-era" technology

In the mean time, check out my favorite track by them (that I’ve heard so far). I’ve already talked a bit before. “Organite” is by far their best track, hands down. As I said, it’s the story of a beaten down man, struggling to get by however he can. It’s perfectly written from a lyrical standpoint, and perfectly delivered from a vocal standpoint. There’s anger and frustration in Lee’s voice, but also a depression and weariness to it. Musically, the beat is great – it features a sad synth with a bunch of reverb and a muffled drum beat. Then the bass line comes in and hits you with some emotion, followed quickly by the wailing violins. It all comes together into one moving and amazing piece.

It feels really cool to give publicity to a great band that has yet to be discovered by larger press outlets, even if I have absolutely no sway. So, I call upon you, all 6 people that will read this, to go out and share Onboard Balloon with the world. If there’s one hip-hop group that deserves your attention this year, Onboard Balloon is it. Well, also Death Grips. But OBB too. It’s music that doesn’t hit you until your 3^rd or 4^th listen through an album, but once it does, it’s stuck in there.

You can nab Mixtape for free, support them and buy their albums, and like them on Facebook. Oh, and if you’re a big fan of cool new music and mediocre writing, you should totally like Frogs on a Log on Facebook for regular updates about music you should totally be checking out.

New Jersey White Boy's Rap of the Week: Kanye West, a Retrospective (Part 3)

SCREAMS FROM THE HATERS GOT A NICE RING TO IT or IF THEY HATE THEN LET ‘EM HATE AND WATCH THE MONEY PILE UP

Graduation is Kanye’s first great achievement, in terms of his rapping career. Yes, Late Registration and The College Dropout were great albums, with some of my favorite tracks on them. Just releasing TCD was an achievement, and being able to mix standard braggadocio and real emotions on Late Registration was a revelation. But Graduation takes what he’s done to a whole new level.

With this album, which was released in 2007, Yeezy had finally mastered the art of rapping. Yes, there is an art, much to the surprise of many. I kind of glazed over it while discussing Kendrick Lamar, but technical ability is something that all rappers have to learn, develop, and perfect before they can join the circle of greats. The easiest example to use is my boy, Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino. His very early stuff showed his lyrical ability, but his technical ability was so awful he disowned his first mixtape. I don’t even like the albums before Culdesac, because his technique was still so bad. I mean, listen to “Fresh”, or “The Rocker”, and compare it to “Bonfire” from his newest album. There’s a clear difference in his technique that just about anyone can identify.

There are 2 main aspects of technique that I’ve identified, and are worth talking about – flow, and delivery. Delivery is easy to describe, but hard to do. Simply put, it’s the inflections, tones, and pitches that an emcee uses when he or she is rapping. Just as you might sing a song quietly to convey a gentle, calm, and/or sad tone at a particular part, a rapper will change how he delivers his lines to put emphasis on a particular part. For instance, Yeezy will drop the pitch of his voice and get this growl to his voice to add anger and force to his lines. “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”, shows off this mastery of delivery. Most notably, whenever he says “Nothing” in the hook, he does his signature growl, adding this element of aggressiveness and hate to the line. But he’s also a bit condescending and sarcastic in the delivery of the line, as if he’s saying “oh yeah, I totally don’t listen to you. I don’t take your advice at all”. It helps secure and present the theme of the song, in that people think he’s so egotistical and narcissistic that he can’t hear what their critiques, but in reality he does. If he said those lines any different, the entire subtext of the song would be the exact opposite, and probably would make the track worse.

Flow is a bit harder to describe, so excuse me if this kind of hard to understand. Flow is essentially the rhythm with which you say the lyrics to the beat, much like the length and pitch of notes in singing. However, singing is different, since notes are fairly standard for each song. While they can be changed, it’s really only based on the range of the singer; they’re still either high or low notes, just higher or lower based on the voice. Same with how long the singer holds the note; it’s generally defined in the song, but can be played with depending on the singer’s rendition. Flow, on the other hand, is different for each person, and something that can be worked on and improved. Some people just have natural flow that they don’t have to work on very much, while other people spend years trying to get that right flow. Not to say singers don’t work on their craft and can learn to sing, but singing, for the most part, relies more on natural talent and understanding your range than any development, practice, and learning.

It’s impossible to show you his flow now, without you saying “So? This is exactly what rap is supposed to sound like”. And I would say you’re right. You can really only tell Kanye’s improvements if you listen very closely to his early stuff and his newer stuff over and over and over again. However, I’d go and listen to the stuff I posted in Part 1 of this dissertation/essay/super-long article/pointless exercise, and compare it to some of the tracks I talk about here, and see if you can tell the difference between the lyrical rhythm he has on those tracks compared to the rhythm he has on Graduation. You can also check the flow of those early CG tracks, and compare them to the track off of Camp, for a slightly more obvious example.

Given my current studies as a business major, I’ve become an economic expert, and know that competition is good for all the firms in the market. The perfect example is the “beef’ between 50 Cent and Kanye West when they released their albums, Curtis and Graduation respectively, on the same day. There was a rumor that 50 Cent would stop releasing solo music if he lost, however, he claimed that was untrue. Luckily, or unluckily depending on your view of his music, he lost by about 300,000 albums, 1 million to 700,000. Both good albums for the particular type of hip-hop each are in, but it’s one of the most obvious signs that “gangsta rap”, in its early 2000’s form, was dead compared to the new kind of rap Kanye was ushering in.

Now, with the production on Graduation, he took inspiration from The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and U2 to make a more stadium-friendly sound. He mostly took inspiration for his melodies and chord-progressions, but the fact that he looked to rock bands not just for samples, but as influence, is relatively unheard of in modern hip-hop. Or at least prior to 2007. Today, artists like Pitbull and Lil Wayne both try to incorporate these massive, stadium-filling beats into their albums, since they also have started to play to sell-out crowds at huge venues. However, he still kept that great acoustic instrument sound, such as his string orchestra from Late Regristation, and some nice piano parts.

The musical influence is pretty clear in songs like “I Wonder”. Sampling the vocals and piano of “My Song” by Labi Siffre, he builds a massive wall of sound filled with pounding bass drums, snare-like claps, beautiful strings, and synths that bounce between ethereal to in-your-face and distorted. However, as I’ve mentioned before, he lets the sample carry the beat, which is how you’re supposed to do it. And when he takes the piano away, either the orchestra or the synths take its place, playing the same notes and progression. But each has its own sonic texture (the most pretentious term to describe music) – the piano is quiet, intimate, and soft, the synths are scratchy, loud, and imposing, and the violins are big, warm, and beautiful. It’s just a pleasant song with an amazing melody.

He also looked to Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Modest Mouse to improve his lyrics. He realized that, while his previous lyrics were impactful, they weren’t connecting with the audiences when done live, nor did many understand the lyrics. Not only did he want to be saying something important or personal, but he also wanted to get crowds going with his words. He was also looking to improve his storytelling ability. Looking back, especially after all this analysis, I prefer the lyrics of his first two albums. They had so much more of an impact on me, and felt so much more real, personal, and important. However, I listened to them in room or on the way to school, not in a 50,000 person stadium, and I can only imagine how much more exciting and cool it must be to hear “Stronger” or “Flashing Lights” live.

As a good example of that more electrifying/story-based lyricism, let’s look at “Homecoming”. It’s the story of Kanye and his hometown of Chicago, and the love he has for it, along with the troubles they’ve had with each other. Calling the city “Windy”, in reference to Chicago being the “Windy City” (I like to think it’s also a nod at The Association song “Windy”, aka one of the whitest songs known to man). Originally recorded as “Home” for his 2003 mixtape Freshman Adjustment, he replaced John Legend’s hook after meeting with a new one written by Chris Martin of Coldplay. He also re-did the beat, switching out a soul sample for a very uplifting and powerful piano and what sounds like a recording of a concert or park. He also re-wrote some of his lyrics, and re-recorded his vocals, given his new abilities at delivery and flow. And it all comes together into a beautiful, but somewhat tragic, love song to the place he grew up.

However, he also took a lot of influence from electronic music. Looking to house, Euro-disco, and indie tunes for inspiration, he completely separated himself from the beats on his first two albums. As I described before in Part 1 and Part 2, College Dropout featured some sped-up soul samples and sparse instrumentation, and Late Registration saw Kanye move to more orchestral arrangements. However, on this album, he went for more synthesizers and house beats, along with some rave and disco sounds and elements. However, unlike many of those genres, he didn’t loop any of his beats. All of the music is organically created, which led to some very interesting, and pleasing, variations during bridges, intros, and even during verses.

“Good Life” is a perfect example of this. Based on the keyboards from “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” by Michael Jackson, along with sampling a bit of his own “School Spirit”, he crafted a fun, exciting song that makes you truly realize how far Kanye has come. From fighting to get a record released to being able to replace his teeth with diamonds, he’s got the good life. He pitched up and slowed down the P.Y.T. piano almost until they sounded his traditional sped-up soul samples, while the sample from his own song is pumped up and pitch-dropped until it sounds distorted and face-melting. It’s most certainly the best anthem for having money that I’ve ever heard, and I listen to lots and lots of rap. I think most of that can be attributed to the fact that it isn’t a song about making you jealous of his money, but rather saying how happy he’s been since he’s gotten it. As strange as it is to say this about Kanye West, but it’s a somewhat reserved braggadocio about money, cars, clothes, and women.

And let’s not forget about Kanye’s mega-hit “Stronger”. Taking the song “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Daft Punk, chopping it up, mixing it around, and adding a little Yeezy flair, West created one of the most memorable beats of not only 2007, but really, in the entirety of rap. Very rarely does the beat become more memorable than the lyrics in a rap song, but Kanye is one of the few who can do that. Hell, I can barely listen to the original without going “why is this so slow? Where’s Kan- Oh, this is Daft Punk” (as my fellow bloggers know, I am expert when it confusing songs/bands). Daft Punk even loved the track, saying “the sound was really fat. It sounds really big”, which, in the electronic scene, is a huge compliment, especially from a group known for creating “fat” and “big” sounds. And let’s not forget the hype it got for Hype Williams, who directed the video and became a household name in the music video directing.

Of course, Kanye West did take a big risk with the song “Barry Bonds”. He decided that he didn’t want any guest rappers to rap on his album. There’s very few emcees that have Kanye West’s popularity, or even less, that would release an album without any help from other rappers. While I’m sure that there are big albums out there without any guest spots, the really only other one I can think of is Nas’s Illmatic. However, he eventually would  include 2 rappers – Mos Def, who was only used for a hook on “Drunk and Hot Girls”, and Lil Wayne. Lil Wayne, in 2007, was one of the biggest rappers in the game. To include him on your album, especially when you don’t have the best rapping skills, could be disastrous; it could only further expose your flaws, and embarrass you. However, on “Barry Bonds”, Kanye destroyed Lil Wayne, who delivered an entirely forgettable verse that seemed afraid of Kanye’s verse. And after Lil Wayne wet himself on Kanye’s album, his rap stock went down, and has been sliding down ever since. And Kanye’s has only gone up, as has his ego.

This album was a new high for Kanye. It was much tighter and more cohesive than his previous two albums, and yet so much bigger. It was finally the spark that got other people excited for rap, people that wouldn’t think to listen to it. And while the term “pop-rap” is not only funny, but degrading, Kanye West was able to create a lot of pop-rap that not only had deep meaning, but also hood enough to keep more traditional rap fans happy. Which, if you think about it, is amazing, so amazing (that’s a reference from the future, because I use my time machine well). This album is even credited with the recent revival of disco and electronic-based music, which means that Pitchfork and hipsters everywhere should be thanking and praising Kanye.

Next time, we’ll explore one of the most traumatic, horrible times in Kanye’s life, some of which he brought on himself.