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.
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
1/5/15
What Kinda Dream was 2014?
If you're reading this, you survived 2014, unlike a fairly large number of other people. Congratulations.
You may be wondering what you've gained by surviving another year. Truthfully I don't know. Maybe you lived only to find anguish and lamentation in your future. Maybe reality has a cruel sense of humor. Maybe you're fated to find true love and then lose it in a desperate struggle against the way of all things. Who knows? You got another year out of the deal, and in some way surviving Jan 1st to Jan 1st is more
Maybe you didn't survive it. Maybe, somehow, your consciousness continued to exist in a purely sophistical realm in the tiny unknowable increment of possibility between life and death. In that case, I don't know how you're reading this, because as far as I know I exist in a world shared with other fully conscious and existing beings, not in your mind. Then again maybe you're a figment of my imagination... but what would that mean... what would that make me? I've often thought that I've merely poured my attempts at writing into a dark void. Maybe I was right all along.
2014 - The Good
So what was good in 2014? There was some stuff...
The movie Birdman came out and was actually really good, good enough that if Shakespeare was around he would love it and probably encourage other people to watch it; or cry tears of joy; or demur any opinion but secretly watch it again and again, planning his own remake on similar themes... it's a great movie, and I'm speaking as a lameoid who saw it in 2015. The meta-factor is a little steep, but if you can look askance of a little bit of preciousness there is an humorous, beautifully (if not impeccably) shot masterpiece there.
John Maus hinted at a 2015 release for a new album, which is in this humble writer's opinion the best music news of 2014. Now I have most of a reason to see this year through, instead of going ahead with my original plan of throwing myself off a building in March.
Gas got really cheap. I realize it's a side-effect of a geopolitical game that only serves to stress our hopeless plight as small nothings in an unfeeling world, but... it's probably not even good news, but filling up hasn't felt so good in a long time.
The World Cup - mixed bag but let's face it, the Germany/Brazil game was the stuff of legend. What a brutal slaying. I still catch myself thinking of it from time to time when I wonder about how fucked I am compared to various World Cup games.
Uhh... there was other stuff, but I neglected to plan this post out at all, and to be honest 'good' is kind of a subjective term. Maybe you're a tineared fuck who doesn't like John Maus. Maybe you hate the idea of unrestrained fossil fuel feeding frenzies. Maybe you hate good cinematic films. Well, I know I'm a lazy bastard at the moment, and I think it's stupid to look up other people's 2014 Bad/Good lists and basically... fuck it. 2014 was mediocre, but I'll get into that a bit later.
2014 - The Bad
There's so much. I could do my research on this and go on about it until next year. Gluten-free idiocy, a continuation of the growing divide between the wealthy and poor, mediocre job markets, 'good economic news' that translates into the status quo, all sorts of murder, all sorts of unrest, a couple of unnecessary extinctions, casual brutality, hatred flaring up everywhere, the old guard firmly in control as ever. All sorts of stupidity. A dazzling galaxy of insipid and bright distractions. An increasingly etherized worldwide populace. The motherfucking internet.
There was one story that was so stupid, and such a fulfillment of a prophecy I made in the Nerd Bubble post a long time ago, that I have to include it here. It's the GamerGate scandal - a nonevent that blossomed into a great expression of childish fecklessness, misplaced values, and good old fashioned hate. I don't even really know what happened. It involved a journalist, the guy who used to date her, maybe someone else, and a bunch of what you may as well call men who proved without a doubt that they have worthless opinions and misguided priorities. I had a good chuckle every time this story reappeared, and by the time it got to the TV I was thoroughly tired of it... a worthless scandal.
Ebola, petty squabbles, a bunch of disheartening stories, The Colbert Report is over... war and rumors of war... perverts... the internet...
One whole jetliner disappeared. People got to remember this one because it's a little crazy. You'd think there would be at least one piece of debris found at this point. Was it pulled into space? Did it vanish? Did North Korea or ISIS hijack the plane, saving it for a terrible spectacle? Did they collaborate? Did you know that ISIS used to proceed with the essential blessing (non-action) of the West, way back when Assad was the main villian? What's going on with that narrative?
Meanwhile in news nobody cares about but that affected me deeply: I fucked up badly with a few experimental blog posts and it seems like I've lost basically all of my 50 person audience. I apologize for posting one or two really bad, pretty dumb, and mostly unenjoyable posts. I don't know what to do anymore. I don't like being a commentator, I don't have a special insight or overarching interest to report on, and it's really hard to do anything good. So yeah, I got a bit drunk and wrote the Ross Heffi bit. It sucked.
The Logitech thing was crazy, too. I can see you'd get an idea that I'm just a filthy mouth with no spine, but consider that social media/tech support person is not actually the project designer or parts buyer and might deserve respect. And if I fell for a fraud? Well then, I guess someone proved something about duplicity (I've been using a shitty mouse again and it hasn't stopped working, it's just really uncomfortable and unhandy). And basically every post I made since then has had as much traffic as I used to get when I still had any hopes for this blog. I've been close to jumping out of this business for a while, mostly because I'm a stupid coward and I doubt there's anything creative or fun left in me at this point. Maybe I'll push on. I want someone to pay me to write at some point in my life. I want to get published. I learn from mistakes.
I'm pretty tired. I'm only 5 days into 2015 and already it seems like all the technophiles in the world couldn't make me feel good about it. If I'm lucky... hell if we're all lucky, this will be a much better year than 2014.
You may be wondering what you've gained by surviving another year. Truthfully I don't know. Maybe you lived only to find anguish and lamentation in your future. Maybe reality has a cruel sense of humor. Maybe you're fated to find true love and then lose it in a desperate struggle against the way of all things. Who knows? You got another year out of the deal, and in some way surviving Jan 1st to Jan 1st is more
Maybe you didn't survive it. Maybe, somehow, your consciousness continued to exist in a purely sophistical realm in the tiny unknowable increment of possibility between life and death. In that case, I don't know how you're reading this, because as far as I know I exist in a world shared with other fully conscious and existing beings, not in your mind. Then again maybe you're a figment of my imagination... but what would that mean... what would that make me? I've often thought that I've merely poured my attempts at writing into a dark void. Maybe I was right all along.
2014 - The Good
So what was good in 2014? There was some stuff...
The movie Birdman came out and was actually really good, good enough that if Shakespeare was around he would love it and probably encourage other people to watch it; or cry tears of joy; or demur any opinion but secretly watch it again and again, planning his own remake on similar themes... it's a great movie, and I'm speaking as a lameoid who saw it in 2015. The meta-factor is a little steep, but if you can look askance of a little bit of preciousness there is an humorous, beautifully (if not impeccably) shot masterpiece there.
John Maus hinted at a 2015 release for a new album, which is in this humble writer's opinion the best music news of 2014. Now I have most of a reason to see this year through, instead of going ahead with my original plan of throwing myself off a building in March.
Gas got really cheap. I realize it's a side-effect of a geopolitical game that only serves to stress our hopeless plight as small nothings in an unfeeling world, but... it's probably not even good news, but filling up hasn't felt so good in a long time.
The World Cup - mixed bag but let's face it, the Germany/Brazil game was the stuff of legend. What a brutal slaying. I still catch myself thinking of it from time to time when I wonder about how fucked I am compared to various World Cup games.
Uhh... there was other stuff, but I neglected to plan this post out at all, and to be honest 'good' is kind of a subjective term. Maybe you're a tineared fuck who doesn't like John Maus. Maybe you hate the idea of unrestrained fossil fuel feeding frenzies. Maybe you hate good cinematic films. Well, I know I'm a lazy bastard at the moment, and I think it's stupid to look up other people's 2014 Bad/Good lists and basically... fuck it. 2014 was mediocre, but I'll get into that a bit later.
2014 - The Bad
There's so much. I could do my research on this and go on about it until next year. Gluten-free idiocy, a continuation of the growing divide between the wealthy and poor, mediocre job markets, 'good economic news' that translates into the status quo, all sorts of murder, all sorts of unrest, a couple of unnecessary extinctions, casual brutality, hatred flaring up everywhere, the old guard firmly in control as ever. All sorts of stupidity. A dazzling galaxy of insipid and bright distractions. An increasingly etherized worldwide populace. The motherfucking internet.
There was one story that was so stupid, and such a fulfillment of a prophecy I made in the Nerd Bubble post a long time ago, that I have to include it here. It's the GamerGate scandal - a nonevent that blossomed into a great expression of childish fecklessness, misplaced values, and good old fashioned hate. I don't even really know what happened. It involved a journalist, the guy who used to date her, maybe someone else, and a bunch of what you may as well call men who proved without a doubt that they have worthless opinions and misguided priorities. I had a good chuckle every time this story reappeared, and by the time it got to the TV I was thoroughly tired of it... a worthless scandal.
Ebola, petty squabbles, a bunch of disheartening stories, The Colbert Report is over... war and rumors of war... perverts... the internet...
One whole jetliner disappeared. People got to remember this one because it's a little crazy. You'd think there would be at least one piece of debris found at this point. Was it pulled into space? Did it vanish? Did North Korea or ISIS hijack the plane, saving it for a terrible spectacle? Did they collaborate? Did you know that ISIS used to proceed with the essential blessing (non-action) of the West, way back when Assad was the main villian? What's going on with that narrative?
Meanwhile in news nobody cares about but that affected me deeply: I fucked up badly with a few experimental blog posts and it seems like I've lost basically all of my 50 person audience. I apologize for posting one or two really bad, pretty dumb, and mostly unenjoyable posts. I don't know what to do anymore. I don't like being a commentator, I don't have a special insight or overarching interest to report on, and it's really hard to do anything good. So yeah, I got a bit drunk and wrote the Ross Heffi bit. It sucked.
The Logitech thing was crazy, too. I can see you'd get an idea that I'm just a filthy mouth with no spine, but consider that social media/tech support person is not actually the project designer or parts buyer and might deserve respect. And if I fell for a fraud? Well then, I guess someone proved something about duplicity (I've been using a shitty mouse again and it hasn't stopped working, it's just really uncomfortable and unhandy). And basically every post I made since then has had as much traffic as I used to get when I still had any hopes for this blog. I've been close to jumping out of this business for a while, mostly because I'm a stupid coward and I doubt there's anything creative or fun left in me at this point. Maybe I'll push on. I want someone to pay me to write at some point in my life. I want to get published. I learn from mistakes.
I'm pretty tired. I'm only 5 days into 2015 and already it seems like all the technophiles in the world couldn't make me feel good about it. If I'm lucky... hell if we're all lucky, this will be a much better year than 2014.
11/9/12
The Coup & Assorted Criticism, Hypery, Links
I feel like the world is generally ignorant of legendary marxist rap crew The Coup, or even worse, is actively skeptical or unreceptive to mentions of that group. I understand perfectly how people can be political, but I personally hold music to be much more honorable than politics, so the general lack of knowledge or enthusiasm about The Coup is baffling. It's understandable. I'm sure smug white people aren't The Coup's ideal audience, so lots of the people I most often deal with have nothing to say when I bring up The Coup.
Shamefully, I never really bring up The Coup at all when people ask me what I like to listen to. The near mythical production of Pam the Funkstress and Boots Riley's cutting rhymes. There was an awareness of the wrongness of things that should speak to anyone, at times. It's not particularly comfortable music, I suppose. It's a little incendiary, even. Revolutionary talk, whether posturing or not, is completely out of favor right now. It's seen something for teenagers, for the mentally unfit, or Russians, terrorists and other people we disagree with and distrust. Anywhere you look in the world, people will call revolutionaries dangerous, misguided, lazy, out-of-touch – generally before revealing their own lack of comprehension about the basic concepts of socialism or Marxism, whenever socialism is brought up. If you can't revolt and can't hold government to account, why pretend to be happy or enfranchised?
So, if you'd ask me, I'd say The Coup is important, brutally honest, unique, and unabashedly political. Music with a message is nothing new, but it is the nature of popular music to be inherently pro-capitalist or at least ignore the issue or posture about it. The status quo is referenced to establish a lack of privilege and it's on to fun verses about partying, women, crime, or drugs. Hip hop and rap are often maligned for being empty-headed and consumerist by the very people who understand or identify with it the least, and The Coup in particular would serve as an amazing rejoinder. For those reasons and more, I want to pay homage, and celebrate the release of a new album!
Shamefully, I never really bring up The Coup at all when people ask me what I like to listen to. The near mythical production of Pam the Funkstress and Boots Riley's cutting rhymes. There was an awareness of the wrongness of things that should speak to anyone, at times. It's not particularly comfortable music, I suppose. It's a little incendiary, even. Revolutionary talk, whether posturing or not, is completely out of favor right now. It's seen something for teenagers, for the mentally unfit, or Russians, terrorists and other people we disagree with and distrust. Anywhere you look in the world, people will call revolutionaries dangerous, misguided, lazy, out-of-touch – generally before revealing their own lack of comprehension about the basic concepts of socialism or Marxism, whenever socialism is brought up. If you can't revolt and can't hold government to account, why pretend to be happy or enfranchised?
So, if you'd ask me, I'd say The Coup is important, brutally honest, unique, and unabashedly political. Music with a message is nothing new, but it is the nature of popular music to be inherently pro-capitalist or at least ignore the issue or posture about it. The status quo is referenced to establish a lack of privilege and it's on to fun verses about partying, women, crime, or drugs. Hip hop and rap are often maligned for being empty-headed and consumerist by the very people who understand or identify with it the least, and The Coup in particular would serve as an amazing rejoinder. For those reasons and more, I want to pay homage, and celebrate the release of a new album!
3/16/11
The Invisible Fist
This is Historic Times has struck again!
The art of combining two not unrelated subjects into a protest metaphor is an old one, but editorial cartoons have been known to get complacent or relaxed. Often, political cartoonists take aim at lame-duck political (non)issues with a heavy-handed eagerness that belies their agenda. Some manage to be valid, serious and (darkly) humorous at the same time, but that kind of balancing act is difficult, and the public may not be comfortable with it – and newspapers are already lacking for subscribers.
I haven't seen an outstanding, explicit political cartoon in a while, and the only place I can see them done well seems to be Terrence Nowicki Jr.'s website. This man's output is consistent and some of his work borders on that level of awesomeness where substance and style are realized in equal amounts. Humor isn't always his first target, but I like the new seriousness as much as the next anonymous blogger.
The cartoon I'm blogging about is a dark one, which tends to happen when art treats the issue of corporatism. From the callous murder of the toy homunculus in the science-fiction chapter of Cloud Atlas (Oh you haven't read it? You should.), to the sanctioned slaughter of replicants in Blade Runner, the corporate scene could easily be mistaken for a large dark cloud raining on the straggling masses – and let's not forget Robocop.
In all seriousness, I do not know if Nowicki was the first to equate philandering corporations with abusive spouses, but his execution is brilliant. What the abusive figure of 'corporations' says is exactly what it says and does in real life. Have corporations abandoned ship? Always. Do they threaten to, even when they already have one foot on the neck of another populace? You bet.
Which reminds me a bit of the recent news stories about investment banker 'brain drain' which might happen if governments refuse to underwrite firms. Firstly, no other country in the world will hire an American investment banker. Sheer protectionism, not to mention the checkered past of Wall St., will keep all but the most desperate countries from – but foreign corporations hire at will, don't they? America's paymaster, at least, would never hire one of those New York gold-bugs.
That's all incidental, however, and I was digressing a little. There was supposed to be a joke about how investment bankers are not brawny enough to be worth a similar cartoon, but I suppose they have already proven themselves to be more psychologically and financially abusive – the visual metaphor escapes me. Then again, I don't have much talent in that department.
If you want to see talent in that department, I should refer you to This is Historic Times, a political cartoon I might have mentioned in the past. It's pretty good, and recently presented a rather impressive and emphatic treatment of corporate America, in which America plays the part of...
The art of combining two not unrelated subjects into a protest metaphor is an old one, but editorial cartoons have been known to get complacent or relaxed. Often, political cartoonists take aim at lame-duck political (non)issues with a heavy-handed eagerness that belies their agenda. Some manage to be valid, serious and (darkly) humorous at the same time, but that kind of balancing act is difficult, and the public may not be comfortable with it – and newspapers are already lacking for subscribers.
I haven't seen an outstanding, explicit political cartoon in a while, and the only place I can see them done well seems to be Terrence Nowicki Jr.'s website. This man's output is consistent and some of his work borders on that level of awesomeness where substance and style are realized in equal amounts. Humor isn't always his first target, but I like the new seriousness as much as the next anonymous blogger.
The cartoon I'm blogging about is a dark one, which tends to happen when art treats the issue of corporatism. From the callous murder of the toy homunculus in the science-fiction chapter of Cloud Atlas (Oh you haven't read it? You should.), to the sanctioned slaughter of replicants in Blade Runner, the corporate scene could easily be mistaken for a large dark cloud raining on the straggling masses – and let's not forget Robocop.
In all seriousness, I do not know if Nowicki was the first to equate philandering corporations with abusive spouses, but his execution is brilliant. What the abusive figure of 'corporations' says is exactly what it says and does in real life. Have corporations abandoned ship? Always. Do they threaten to, even when they already have one foot on the neck of another populace? You bet.
Which reminds me a bit of the recent news stories about investment banker 'brain drain' which might happen if governments refuse to underwrite firms. Firstly, no other country in the world will hire an American investment banker. Sheer protectionism, not to mention the checkered past of Wall St., will keep all but the most desperate countries from – but foreign corporations hire at will, don't they? America's paymaster, at least, would never hire one of those New York gold-bugs.
That's all incidental, however, and I was digressing a little. There was supposed to be a joke about how investment bankers are not brawny enough to be worth a similar cartoon, but I suppose they have already proven themselves to be more psychologically and financially abusive – the visual metaphor escapes me. Then again, I don't have much talent in that department.
If you want to see talent in that department, I should refer you to This is Historic Times, a political cartoon I might have mentioned in the past. It's pretty good, and recently presented a rather impressive and emphatic treatment of corporate America, in which America plays the part of...
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