Eat Pray Thug is going to be the biggest hip hop album of March 2015 and my advice is you go and listen to it immediately, and, if you can, bang it. If the title doesn't strike you as clever or funny it may be time to give up on humor – the songs may change your mind anyway or they might make you angry, saddened, or incredibly hyped-up. It's out on 10 March and it's probably not going platinum (I hope I'm wrong) but I'll be damned if a more important record drops the same day or even this month. The stream is up on NPR, the PR/hype campaign is in effect, and creator Himanshu Suri has repeatedly pondered quitting rap during its creation. What's not to love?
What's it about? A kaleidoscopic amount of things, all of which deserve to be heard. A description would be insufficient. Listen to it: it's big, it's deep, it's love, it's honesty, it's drugs, it's fear, it's freedom, it's excruciating awareness and painful memories. First listen I was torn between appreciative laughter and stunned silence, the whole time the production, delivery, and content repeatedly wowed me. It made me troubled and giddy. I am currently rationing my plays so I can enjoy the album when it drops... it's so enjoyable ('Flag Shopping' is raw and real and awesome - classic Heems) that the danger lies in overdoing it.
Clocking in at under 40:00, this is Himanshu's most consistent and focused work to date, and it builds up to some incredible moments. There is a plethora of serious business to be alarmed about and a few very nice irreverent lines to chuckle about (sometimes the two collide), and it may or may not be discussed to death in a week's time so do yourself a favor if you give the smallest shit about rap and listen to the stream. It helps to know the artist and fortunately he's got two excellent mixtapes (Nehru Jackets, Wild Water Kingdom) to introduce you to his perspective. If you like the above, there's always Das Racist to listen to – if somehow you've been asleep for the past five years and missed out.
You shouldn't've been sleeping on Heems: Eat Pray Thug proves that much. When the hype settles, the qualities of this album will stand strong, its content will still ring true, and its creator will probably disappear into a humble life of giving back to the community, appreciating and creating art, and joining the young adult cult. Still, if that's the price we pay for Eat Pray Thug, it was all worth it.
If you can't feel this album you're a square, you're part of the problem, etc... you don't even have to like it to get the sense it's important, maybe even urgent. It is important. I might even drop a review next week to celebrate, and maybe three people will read it. It'll be alright. Life goes on. Nobody ever needed my help to sell records or anything.
3/4/15
Officially Dying Blog Gains Interest of Automated Surfing Computer
Hi NSA, I can see you too.
Hi Google, thanks for having my back.
FBI? I don't think so but maybe you're snooping on the behest of one of those evil corporations I always talk about despising. In which case [redacted].
The mystery continues, but one other detail needs to be included and that is that all of the incoming 120 that happened in one hour, probably almost instantaneously, they were running Chrome and their OS was Linux. Fairly certain all the hits came from the USA but I can't get accurate stats about that.
Linux and Chrome is what I'd call a power combo. Definite non-pleb computer user.
What the hell kinda thing happened there? That's too many views to be human.
Plus humans don't care about me. You don't need to understand stats to be kinda surprised at that.
This is a dying blog. I haven't been relevant or trending since the Jesse Navarro thing in 2010.
Well automated crawler, I hope you found what you were searching for.
Put me in the search engine as 'dying and irrelevant blog with really good writing and a cool perspective'.
Do my SEO? Help monetize? I will write speeches for your bosses and their bosses, too.
Maybe you'll leave me a spam comment about NFL jerseys and were actually acting out of China.
Who are you? Give me a shout sometime and lend me your organization's computing power.
We will have fun and maybe help take down some miscreants.
Save the world. Crash Facebook permanently. Fire that blowhard millionaire guy from his own company.
I have other good projects around in my head that I can dig up...
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