IMMA LET YOU FINISH MICHAEL, BUT BOB GELDOF HAD THE BEST WELL-MEANING MESSIAH COMPLEX OF ALL TIME

For the record, Jarvis Cocker is a useless twat and Pulp were always terrible. He's much more reasonable of late, as the lower clip illustrates, but there's still a sense of needlessly embarrassing and mocking an easy target and having a well-presented, but not totally valid reason (As if Christ iconography hasn't always been a part of rock imagery?) Running up and taking the piss out of Michael Jackson in 1996 as a drunken 30-something fool doesn't take any balls.

Now jumping onstage and shitting on a 19-year-old beloved and white popstress as an already half-reviled/half-beloved 33-year-old black man with everything to lose (including a public empathy only recently regained by your mother's death and an endearing blog epiphany following a South Park parody) and a publicly bisexual white girlfriend with a buzzcut? Balls.

For actual thought out assessments of this meme:
-Quite Possibly the Most Brilliant Hipster Runoff Post Ever, on the Subject of Kanye, Taylor Swift, and What Makes Life Worthwhile
-Brandon Cruelly Cuts Through The Bullshit. Applaud This Man.

"I Don't Want Any Gays Near Me While I'm Killin' Kids"

That timely Bill Hicks quote is inspired by the continued fuckery from the throngs of useless assholes who bring you this:



See, I got awoken out of my formerly jobless (Shout out to the MET) blog slumber yesterday after the corpse formerly known as Bol posted some Japcity videos, which had their share of funny parts, but what stuck to me was the second video he posted, where this bummy wagonrider felt the need to, like every person more concerned on what other people do than taking care of their own shit, define for himself the ideas of what is and isn't hip-hop and what is and isn't manhood. Add that to a few items in the Village Voice piece about Thug Slaughter Force and, voila, I'm resurrected from my moping in my sweaty boxers to shit on people and continue to encourage passive eugenics.

First of all, its clear these dudes are just trying to get on. Which isn't fine. Ordinarily people will just shrug and encourage people to "get money", but we've reached this ridiculous 1980's-esque orgy of blind materialism and untalented starfucking careerists, so I've long ago abandoned the idea of humoring people to just "keep grindin'" and "make that money". Fuck that. Fuck you and fuck your open breezy-assed submission to free market capitalism and all the distraction and illusion of choice that comes with it. Even in a recession, things aren't nearly as bad as they have been in the past, so continued efforts to peddle yourself and suck industrial Satan's throbbing dickclit for some Black Rob shine (i.e., like 5 minutes). So the constant excuse that "I'm just starting a movement and making money" doesn't mean shit. That line of thought makes all those involved cheap mindless whores, not businessmen and artists. The revulsion from this only comes from the huge mass of people trying to get on in some way. Competitive world aside, not everyone needs to be shopping beats and trying to model. Some people are just untalented and the sooner someone crushes their aspirations and returns them to the dredges of the night shift at the Flatbush Popeye's Chicken, the better for society, the entertainment industry, and by extension, Palestine and fat mother Gaia.

Eschewing trying to formulate any defense of supposed gay looking/dressing/acting behavior within hip-hop and the black community, the simple question to pose to Japcity and Thug Slaughter Force (fuck is this, the A-Team?) is: "Why the fuck do you care about what somebody else does?"

Its a basic question that none of these people can really ask right. To prescribe one mode of behavior, one idea of masculinity, one idea of dress and speech for all black men is to be behaving like a dictator and appointing yourself to apparently know what's best for everyone. Which, from the cliched '04 Lil'Jon beat and lack of rhyming skill, these dudes are the last people who should tell anyone what's proper.

They deny this has anything to do with homophobia, and that's true. This is pretty much heterosexism, and the lamest form since its not even perceived homsexuality people are railing against, its retro clothing. People are getting hissy fits over clothing. Clothing that is mostly copied from the 80's anyway, so to declare "tight" (really just form-fitting) clothes and wearing colors instead of looking like a bum "not hip-hop" means you never really understood the concept of hip-hop in the first place.

The "No Tight Clothes" campaign is their latest idea in a decade of trying to make it in the rap game.

Why is it that the motherfuckers bitching about what is and isn't hip-hop are usually untalented? I know that, for the most part, this decade you could throw a bottle of Alize at the McDonald's dollar menu and hit 50 cats who claim to be "old school 50 crossed with Lupe Fiasco and 2Pac", but its fatiguing to see that the attitude doesn't seem to be getting any better.

There's a part of Black on Both Sides where Mos paraphrases a quote and says something to the effect that "However hip-hop is doing is how we as a people are doing". By the looks of it, despite the weirdness and degrees of freedom that have come from hipster revivals and Afro-Punk and etc the last couple of years, you still have the mangy failures of the black community talking sideways as if they had any idea what real manhood was. Worst of all, they're proliferating the weird transgressive conservatism that seems to be pervasive in mainstream black America.

"Where'd you get that shirt from?" yells Elijah Bilal, sitting outside Lalove Uniform on Fulton Street. "Bring me one!" the 40-year-old adds, and then offers a reporter his own observation about the direction of hip-hop attire: "The tight clothes—what, the boys is gay now? Boys walking around thinking they girls, girls walking around thinking they boys . . . No wonder all the girls are dating girls—because the boys are gay!"

And Bilal isn't alone in his analysis. "I like that shirt," says a 28-year-old NYPD officer on foot who didn't want to be named. "This movement of everyone wearing tight-fitting clothes—it's not nice."

...Blanco, for his part, insists that "it's not a gay-bashing movement." On the other hand, he added, "if you are homosexual, you are not gangsta. There's nothing gangster about being homosexual."

-Quoted for maximum failure.

There's two things wrong with the last quote from Blanco, besides being cliches constantly regurgitated whenever anyone is called on this shit. One is that being gay isn't gangsta. Well, one, who still cares about what is construed as being gangsta? Besides being a nebulous concept that was never defined and since when does being what your average hoodrat or GED/Jobcore case considers "gangsta" matter outside of the projects or hood or prescribe some concept of achievement?

Also, there's the whole "being gay isn't gangsta" thing. Well, seeing as the definition of gangsta involves cliches like "not giving a fuck" and "not backing down" and occasionally fucking someone up, I'd say your local black drag queen is tougher than your average Red Hook junior high dropout. But they wouldn't know that because that lack of awareness is what being ignorant is all about. Furthermore, the extension always is "gays have no place in hip-hop". Well, I'd say considering prison culture and the prominence of gays in fashion, it has huge influence, not even to address musical contributions of people both closeted (Busta Rhymes) and out (Man Parrish). And whatever happened to being inclusive? Shit is global and multi-ethnic and its hypocritical to claim that someone can't be part of a musical genre considering history. Shit, there's plenty of gay rappers, and in twenty years, they're be a decent one to surely shut up all the naysayers.

"You walk in urban communities [like] Harlem, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and you see these young people walking around with pants sagging way down below their ass cheeks and underwear showing—what are you selling? That's much more homoerotic than fitted jeans," says Terrance Dean, author of Hiding in Hip Hop: On the Down Low in the Entertainment Industry—from Music to Hollywood, a book that electrified the music industry when it was published last month and hinted at the homosexuality of numerous unnamed music figures.

"It just so happens that heterosexual people are always emulating gay style," Dean says. "Most stylists are gay," and, he points out, those styles then make their way from international runways to inner- city neighborhoods. "I don't think it necessarily correlates with people being gay or feminine," he adds. "I think it's just fashion and hip-hop go hand in hand."

But he doesn't share TSF's fashion sense: "It's about time that people started wearing clothes that fit."

I always find it funny how much black America is associated with Democrats considering how conservative or alternatively materialistic is can be. Here's the thing. Until you start taping Noah's Arc to watch with your boyfriend in a post-gape cuddle session as you plan your next circuit party while quoting Paris Is Burning, you aren't gay. A culture and subculture can adopt aesthetics, mannerisms and etc into it, but that doesn't necessarily change that thing. Society has always been fluid, which is why the whole shitfit about Cam wearing pink and purple (more the latter, since dark purple represent royalty, not Santorum)was pathetic. If we start concretely assigning colors and etc. to gender and sexual orientation, you're limiting the possibilities of what people can do and be and forcing people to accept your definitions rather than their own, which never turns out well.

Is it really bothering dudes that people are walking around looking like Saul Williams or the Cool Kids? Yes, I think man purses are dumb, but that's because I think women's purses are equally as useless. Bad jokes are one thing and aren't really a concern, but to be so virulent and catch feelings over what someone else is wearing is just as fucking retarded as Kia Shine bragging about spending close to two grand on a pair of shoes and one pair of jeans.

Kinfolk_kia_shine-krispy-xvid-2007-dynasty
Uploaded by LIMIT-AR

I'm signing off when someone successfully promotes education as "for faggot ass niggas".

Oh, and "no homo"*.



*"No homo" is easily from 2000/2001 and remember dudes stopped using it in my high school around 11th grade, and then all of a sudden all of America knows about it. Weird.

MUNICIPAL WASTE IS GONNA FUCK YOU UP

That line last night signaled the end of yesterday night's metal show at Europa, (Skeletonwitch, Toxic Holocaust, Municipal Waste, another band I forget), wherein I officially realize I could care less about being in the pit or really doing anything active beyond dancing or crowding the stage. I gave it a shot every now and then, but I get nothing from it and I'm signed off of going to shows by bands whom I think make shitty records or I'm not already really into. The former decision is based off of boredom, the latter financial. But I made a mental note to never return to Europa for any sort of show that involves crowd participation, since the hexagonal upstairs show floor is highly unwieldy for that sort of that. A good 73% of bands sound great live regardless of shitty songs, so I can't really make a judgment until I pirate their discography, but Toxic Holocaust seemed to have really good songs. Then again, this might turn into Stinking Lizavetta all over again, when I'm wowed by something, buy/download a record, and its even worse than a T.I. record. But, my next shows are the Hives, Comedians of Comedy, maybe High On Fire, and definitely Ghostface/Rakim. Then, I'm getting a fucking job. Living is costly, son.

I have a list of things I wanted to cover for post topics, but, thankfully, they won't be quite exhausted as yet, since some real shit is going down. First of all, I, as of 5 minutes ago caught Evo Morales on the Daily Show, and during the awkward Rosetta Stone-process that was his translation (awkward for the fact that the usually annoying as shit Daily Show audience was, for once, rendered completely silent for its duration) he dropped some ill science on the audience (via a Bolivian-English Babelfish) after expressing how he felt cultural and regional differences should be understood and respected, and on his socialist grind, he said,

"I've heard a lot of talk about global warming, climate change; they don't say why, where's it coming from! Why? Where's all this coming from? Perhaps from a western culture, perhaps excesses in relation industry, perhaps excesses in luxury, excesses in consumption....and please don't consider me to be part of the 'Axis of Evil'!"

Its great that on a Viacom-owned channel with reasonably high viewer-ship, someone finally point to the elephant in the room that is industrialized consumption and consumerism, which, along with overpopulation (please, stop having so many goddamn kids), is the main underlying cause of a myriad of social woes.

I'm glad there are a few guys like Morales, despite people's meely-mouthed cocksucking of their own political ideals, whether inherited or learned from the media and feeding into their biases and myopic perspectives, provide some fresh air and at least a small feeling that in the current climate (OMFG POST-9/11 POST-MODERNISM, LOLZ!!) that there's avenues of non-PBS based discourse with people from the world community. At this point, I'd settle for someone who is, I don't know, at least 5% closer to the truth that what CNN, Fox News, and the current political parties and commentators can offer.

Cocksuckers, all of them.

On at the same time, was BET's budget-ass (seriously? I recall production values being less cable-access looking when I used to watch Rap City in junior high) attempt at a debate (although the description as a town hall discussion is a lot more apt). I'm going to scour the internet later for part 1, but part 2 was pretty predictable. Poor moderation, not enough time (two hours on air? And, from what I've seen, they're not repeating it any time soon. WTF, BET?) alloted, uninformed generalizations, people getting constantly cut-off, panel members with nothing to ass, cliches repeated*, etc. I'm not going to completely dissect every issue yet, since all the tired, retread points of order have been touched upon before and I don't have a transcript of the topics they discussed handy to e-shit all over. I do have a few beefs to nitpick about, from this gaping flapper cunt of a network.

*I'd like to take a second to bring up how dumb the myth of "white kids from the 'burbs buy hip-hop albums mostly" is. One, that shows a weird complete unawareness of the majority ethnicity in this country, Euro-Americans, and the fact that there are more than six kinds of music (I've accepted that to the casual pop consumer, they are: Rap, R&B, Rock, Techno, Country, and Metal) that aren't bogged down in race identity. Also, someone should learn statistics, since the stat given is that around 70% or more of the sales of rap albums are from white people, which would be shocking in Johannesburg or Ecuador, but not in a country with at least 200 million white people. The black population in America is outnumbered three to 1 by the majority ethnic cluster (You know...crackers.), so the primary consumers of albums for every genre will end up being white based on numbers and logistics, alone. If every black or mulatto/mixed (::cough::) identifying person in this country bought rap albums, the statistic of about 63-67% wouldn't decrease that much. I just wonder why when you Google "White people hip-hop album myth", you only get one decent response to dispel this.

Anyway, it occurs to me, watching the painfully pathetic "Hip Hop vs. America" special, how much I hate Toure. Every smug, swishy thing that comes out of his mouth and all of his terrible Rolling Stone reviews just rubbed me wrong since day one. Ever since dude was a talking head for VH1, I wished people would stop hiring him. This was emphasized at the end of the special when Toure's beak squawked something like "If you don't talk about hip-hop, YOU killed it". This is the kind of kid in my high school I'd be friends with cuz we would talk about Black On Both Sides being one of the best albums made in history of man, and then he would go on some rant about Spoon or Modest Mouse when I tried defending Three 6 Mafia or UGK. I hated those faux-bourgeoisie bohemian smug assholes. Sadly, that comprised half of my school when I went there. Anyway, what amounted in the broadcast was basically Melyssa Ford continuing to be insightful and professional, and Michael Eric Dyson continuing to, as Star from Star and Bucwild used to say, be a "slick talker".

I've known about him for a while and seen him in action before (mostly from Maher's show), and he's clearly been on another panel, because he knows how to economize the small amounts of time given on these sorts of panels. The man spit a good page of science in two minutes, whereas Nelly, bless his heart, got two salient points out the entire show (Being that people should stop clamoring for the golden age and focusing on making the present better, which is really fucking spot-on, and that the protests about "Tip Drill" prevented him from getting his half-sister her marrow, and is why she died from Leukemia, so some perspective is in order regarding his body of work and beliefs and life). He, and the rest of the panel, might've said more, but the poor editing and short duration leave that up in the air for now. I will say, I used to like Cornel West during my "Kill Whitey" teenage years, but that motherfucker is as batshit crazy as KRS-ONE and reaches more than Dhalsim. Fuck him and Mos Def* (*more on that later).

Sad that in the only section of the two night telecast I say, night two, everyone else was ineffectual. His albums are weedplates, but I love T.I. as a human being. Real talk. Ever since "Be Easy" came out and I read his XXl (or Source...can't remember. As if it really matters. The difference between then is like the difference between the Daily News and NY Post...just one has a slightly higher reading level and less messy layout) interview. But he and Nelly didn't do much but provide people unfamiliar with them as rappers and people with opportunities to go "Wow, he's so well-spoken and aware!". I was slightly hoping something past BET's notorious 7% watchability rate, but, no. Eh. Someone off this albatross of a network and hire me to make a black Telemundo. Shit'd be fly, dun. Outdated slang and all.

The one good thing BET has done of late is giving Kanye maximum exposure. Despite shitty prodcution values and attempts and special effects (Why not a cheesy star wipe to add to your easter hued-haze, BET?) Kanye proves why I feel the need to equate him as the last respite of hip-hop. I repeat, KANYE WEST IS HIPHOP. I feel the need to bring up how great his performances are, and that the only person besides Jay-Z and Eminem I've seen transcend the pattern post-Golden Era lazy-ass muffled performances (You can enunciate and keep pace on record but not on a stage standing still? Fuck outta here.). He has an understanding of gimmick and pacing and flow and what does and doesn't work in a live setting that most bands being forced down the trough of blogs and music sites have no concept of. Although, to expand an earlier point, being great live and on record aren't always correlary.

Good example: World/Inferno Friendship Society. Cute, but not good. Live, though, a great, great band that could probably, and have, play anywhere. Same with Gogol Bordello and Municipal Waste. You aren't (I hope) going to see them for their music, you're going for the experience, and the music is a placeholder, a sort of proxy to amplify the length at which you can enjoy a circle pit and etc. One of many beliefs of mine is that everything has a place, in the grand scheme there's a place and outlet for everything the human mind can create. I rag on a lot of bad, bland music these days, but that the same time, that needs to exist. Its the sort of creation/destruction or life/death thing. In the same way, its more than fine to have bands that exist only as live bands, whose quality of catalog is immaterial to how much they rule when you're 6 inches away from their sweaty Gypsy armpits. After all, the basic idea is that, though I myself fetishize albums as a whole piece of musical artistic or commercial product, music exists to be PERFORMED. Its a bummer to know that most of the albums I love, I might never see the artist live or even in their prime, (its also weird to consider how many people that doesn't bother), but the option is appreciated, especially in NYC where we're spoiled and only scene-ass hardcore kid shows don't stop here.

Basically, Kanye seems, from the three televised performances I've seen, be perfectly able to transition from serious artist (Coldplay) contrivances, to MTV Unplugged-style joking and storytelling, to Jay-Z like surprise guest baiting and confidence, to just being some hipster geek (the interplay between him and A-Trak is, quite honestly, cute. I get the feeling they read Vice and drink 8th Continent soymilk together when not cuddling during "Entourage".). I'm all for what Kanye does because, because of the law of diminishing returns in music, everyone sucks except him and the south. Seriously. Just him and the south, when it comes to people in the limelight for the moment in hip-hop. Therefore, why not cheer for the last vestige of quality? Who cares if he he always sounds like he's struggling to rap? It's endearing, and everything else he does is great, from the live show to his personality to the music itself. Plus, HE MIGHT BE GAY! How awesome would that be for this motherfucker to come out in twenty years? We still have 10 more years to wait for Busta and Jay to open up about their gape, and that's assuming their careers are still sluggish then.

No homo.

"99% of people listening (to music) ain't planning on killing people, that day"- Kanye, on not rapping about killing people

EDIT: As I watch part 1 on BET.com, it occurs that, it was actually really good. Part 2 was awful, as I mentioned earlier, but so far part 2 addressing all the major issue and hit on a lot of insightful points. I love that Nelly and Michael Eric Dyson managed to make a lot more salient points in this portion and that Nelly called the "White suburban kids buy hiphop" myth out on the statistics game, pointing out that all music genres are consumed by primary white-identifying people, being the mathematical majority. It was also great when TI yelled at Dyson "ITS NOT THAT DEEP" when Dyson did the whole "slave block" cliche correlation to video models and etc. Someone needed to say it. Way to go BET. I guess.

BET.com has all three sections. Pretty interesting.

Also Baltimore Sun had a good blurb that won't get linked for some goddamn reason.

The Kanye Minute:

I'm mad late, but fuck it, I just made this blog last week. And since this record has been talked about to death, I'm going to try and bypass anything weighty, which would just suck in comparison to the other analysis's anyway.

Essentially, its much more interesting to dissect hip-hop albums than a lot of other genres or sub-genres, since with those you're limited to rockist virtues of sound, theory, production, whatever lyrics are deemed "good", and its role or importance. Now, I absolutely hate the "rockist" perspective of music, especially the name, and I tend to gravitate towards the pop school of reviewing and criticism, since its not limiting, despite tending to favor hooks and marketability over quality and treading a line into musical gossip. Lucky for other people who detest Rolling Stone, Alternative Press, Maximum Rock n Roll, Revolver and Spin magazine for the evils they represent, hip-hop and electronica provide alternative avenues and interpretations of records.

The hip-hop avenue is sort of a like a weird hybrid of the perspectives, minus the ignorant obsessions with somehow equating live instrumentations as being more important than good songs, and plus 80's/90's hip-hop tenets (or elements, if you're KRS-One), the various aspects of turntablism and sampling/sound collage, and an urge to be famous and rich without being viewed as a sellout. It tends to both allow more freedom for interpretation and analysis, yet at once be confining to the purposely alienating and clandestine nature of loving rap. Only metal and rap have those qualities to the cultures and fanbases, which might explain why merging the two more often than not is a horrible idea.

(Hopefully later when I have more time, on I can expound on this idea, but for now a lot is implied.)

This is the default when dealing with rap albums. Figuring out what lines and inflections were ripped from earlier songs, and from what era (80's for Mos Def, 00's for Kanye), possible subliminals, meanings, intents, allusions, disses, interpolations, etc. Its odd for me to do this for every hip-hop record I've ever listened to since a)Lyrics are completely secondary to the music for me and b)This sort of complete dissection of music only gets done for albums with some sort of importance. I've never sat down with a Kings Of Leon record and really gave two thoughts to whatever Caleb Followill was howling about, but I have spent a good year and a half trying to figure out if the first two verses in "Nutmeg" means anything. (It doesn't.)

So I could've cared less about the frothy whorehouse of promotion that was Kanye vs. 50. For one, I completely dismiss the ideas of "hip-hop vs rap" or "real hip-hop". Anyone who has read or seen interviews with 80's cats, especially Rakim, knows they were into the same shit as the guys who made records the last 15 years, its just they didn't think of it, or just couldn't at the time since rap was so much on the same outrageous entertainer trip as everyone else in the 80's. Example: Rakim LOVES G-Unit. People's beacon of Golden Era greatness fiends for generic pop rap. He probably got a tear from those songs with Joe. Rakim and all the other guys who fell off or are on a smaller scale of late love head and slutty women and liquor and weed just as much as everyone else. People forget how grimy the 80's were in cities and that those dudes are arguably tougher than anyone rapping now. They all lived through and saw some hard shit, as evidenced by my favorite part of Fade to Black, when Q-Tip and Jay are reminiscing about the crack game in the 80's and how it was awful then in the streets but things are not that bad now, yet there's a lot more records about it.

All hip-hop is mainstream unless it sells beneath gold status, and even then its pretty damn popular, so the debate is moot and transgressive to me. Its idealistic to separate records based on how similar it is to Native Tongues. That shit is ALTERNATIVE, in the purist sense of the word. That sound wasn't a norm, no matter how relatively popular it got. 50 Cent is more hip-hop than Common. Shit, Tony Yayo is more hip-hop than Common. Therefore, I could give a shit about some supposed meaning behind the battle. Lupe Fiasco will never sell, Little Brother aren't any good, Common sucks, the Roots fell off, Mos Def fell off and is dangerously close to becoming Wyclef Jean, and Talib Kweli can only muster the ability to be decent, at his best. Kanye's win just mean 50 Cent will become more interesting in the coming weeks, that's all. And that's all I want from 50, anyway, to entertain me. It's all I want from Wayne, too, and all that you were supposed to take from ODB (rip).

Also, Kanye was going to win in the annals of critics and fans regardless. Everyone is aware at this point that his records will be good, so the sales battle is more of a Vegas-style distraction.

But on the topic of the record itself, I have to say, this is one of those times where I wrote a record off too soon. I was underwhelmed by the first two singles, so much so that I didn't download the record until the other week when "The Good Life" premiered and I was convinced. Now I absolutely love "Stronger", and I realized that the album, after three listens, grew on me a lot. "Good Morning" starts the album as it should, as both a declaration and song, where there's something so confident in ending every verse with a "Good Morning." Its declarative and reminds me of the "You already know what it is" looks youtube rappers give, except more weary and serious. The thing about Graduation is it feels a lot like College Dropout, which is a plus, since all the flaws in Late Registration discussed on No Trivia I agreed with. That celebratory unabashed Morehouse university sound that permeates most of Kanye's stuff is there (College hip-hop should be a genre), along with the odd adoption on 12 of the tracks of the big synths that got popularized in the last year and a half on the Rich Boy record and by Timbaland.

Now, on that, I've always noticed that since the bread-and-butter of producers and industry songwriters is being able to have quick turn-overs and adapt to new trends. Most people don't acknowledge this, but in composition of songs and melodies, there are clear differences in both halves in ever decade since the 20's. You'll never hear 60's rock basslines or melodies today, both because they're out of vogue and that it'd just come off as simulacrum and not be that good or authentic sounding. This is why since 2002 hip-hop based R&B became a real genre, the incestuous nature of everyone copying a new sound for profit in pop. Same thing with the synths in hip-hop of late. I think its cool, though I'm more surprised that so few people thought to make it such a strong melodic force on records. Now, I'm actually worried its going to get played out too quickly and ruined, since both hipster electronica and rap are relying heavily on the buzz synths since it gives such quick gratification. The very thing happened with soul samples; it became too easy and less and less special. Though I understand this, I'm still shocked that Timbaland has essentially been repackaging done-to-death electronica staples into pop. I love it, because I can finally listen to the radio again, and I can be jarred at by the trance and electro goodness of "Ice Box" and "SexyBack" at a time when fucking DAUGHTRY goes platinum.

On Graduation, its an interesting hybrid of that College Dropout feeling and these synths that either awash melody lines like T.I. (which, by the way, got away with ripping off "Hey Joe" without anyone noticing somehow) or Rich Boy, or serve as Purple-Rain era horn stabs. Sometimes I feel that its way too easy, especially "Stronger", since though it works and thats what matters, the descending synth lines based on the Daft Punk vocal line are too obvious. I could've produced "Stronger"."I Wonder" reminds me of Pharell, because most relaxed Neptunes productions have the exact same ascending melody, whether in the instrumentation or Pharell's voice, especially on the first N.E.R.D. record and these tend to be the Neptunes songs I like most or aged most gracefully. "Drunk and Hot Girls" grew on me quickly, more for Mos' bridge which is gorgeous, and the only track I didn't like was "Homecoming", simply because Chris Martin's voice was totally wrong for the track and that the track just sounded like a Be B-side, anyway.

There was a thread on allhiphop.com where someone basically brought up the rarity of a hip-hop artists (I'd argue ALL artists, but especially rare in rap) making three great albums, lest in a row. Among a small list that includes Ghostface, Boogie Down Productions and a few more, Kanye did that, and it seems like he does it easily. Lyrically, I haven't found much to get into past College Dropout, which was full of great lines that were a bit more sparse on Late Registration and almost absent on here for me, save for "Good Morning", "I Wonder", "Big Brother", and "Everything I Am". Everything else feels like Queens of the Stone Age-style place-holding for great music, which is fine with me but for a rap album, can be a bit of a let down. But the fact that "Flashing Lights" completely wrecks me (Kanye seems to have a tendency to cast hook singers with soulful yet bored voices, which works well when he does it) and that I dig 12 tracks means I'll probably get the record. Oh, and the best line I've heard on any record this year for its ability to pack in so much meaning without being preachy:

"Just last year Chicago had over 600 caskets/Man killing some wack shit/Oh I forgot...except when niggas is rappin'"