9.4.12
18.3.12
16.2.12
19.1.12
7.11.11
Drake And Childish Gambino: A Comparitive Study
Two Bastard Sons From TV Lore
The internets sprung twin leaks this morning, and both of those leaks are a matter of interest to different (or not) subsets of rap fans.
Due out on the same day, we have two television actors who have made somewhat successful forays into rap music. In one corner, we have Childish Gambino's Camp, which you can now stream on NPR for free. The comedian-cum-rapper's first proper effort counts 13 tracks. In the other, we have Young Money member Drake's sophomore record Take Care, boasting no less than the titanic force of guest spots from Stevie Wonder, Andre 3000 and Rihanna, as well as usual suspects Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross and The Weeknd.
Gambino Is... A Mastermind?
Let us look first at the newer rap phenom, one Childish Gambino, alias Donald Glover. He's released a few albums and EPs online, and Camp is his first foray into the retail sphere. Let us consider first his words, and then their intent.
The very name of Gambino's album (Camp) is an indicator of its lyrical content. Donald Glover is a manchild obsessed with his past, obsessed with dealing with the indignation he felt growing up, and is now still trying to process with his self-admittedly difficult transition into adulthood. He lays it all bare, explains how he never fit in at the schools he was sent to, how girls who would turn him down pre-fame now stand in line and hope to get noticed by the 'Community' star. The pain, the torture. Oh God, the ever-present torture.
Music for outcasts, as it were. 'Revenge of the Nerds' set to rhyme, however, is not a very apt comparison when you consider how Gambino approaches the situations as they are written/rapped out.
I do believe that situation is where the problem with Gambino's lyrical content arises - this music for outcasts wallows in its own lyrical pity, never trying to rise above. It's problem-orientated music. First single "Bonfire" is plenty proof of this, full of vitriol. Take, for example, the couplet of "'You're my favorite rapper now' Yeah, dude, I better be/Or you can fuckin’ kiss my ass, Human Centipede". In it we have the quintessential formula that you can apply to almost any Childish rap, that of:
(anger at outside force for past transgressions + braggadocio brought on by 'I'm famous now!' feelings) + pop culture reference + gratuitous swearing = winning combination.
Consider it for a moment. Go back to his FreEP. Pull it out and listen to 'Freaks and Geeks', what may arguably be the song that catapulted his name onto the front page of Pitchfork. Apply said formula to track. Sit back and ponder. See what I mean?
I really cannot hold this against Donald, though. Dude's got a soapbox from which to fling verbal Molotovs at every girl who ever turned him down, every bully who ever called him a faggot, for every hoodrat who ever told him he would never make it. It does grow a bit tired as one makes their way through the album's first four tracks - it's like being beaten over the head with a rubber mallet for the 15 or so minutes that it takes to make one's way through those songs. I joked that this is like listening to the rap equivalent of KoRn, though upon closer inspection Glover's lyrical content does have a certain kinship with the tortured non-genius of Jon Davis. Consider this description: "Aggressive-sounding vocals, full of lyrics that bemoan childhood trauma as well as warnings to past transgressors that meetings in the future may not go over so well." Without context, we can logically realize that that statement applies to both parties mentioned.
Childish is also a dude who yearns to be impossibly hood - he's nothing but misogynistic in his rhymes, the sheer number of boasts the dude pops out per song is also off the charts. He talks about threatening physical violence on some of those people who have wronged him, though it's quite clear that he could not carry out any of these.
Glover's stage name suits him so well when you consider that these tracks may or may not be temper tantrums set to beats, a wannabe gangster who's got his mind set on other things. He can't live the life, as he points out on Camp's opener 'Outside' - his cousin is destined for that. His cousin gives him shit for not being hard enough, so Donald gains success in other realms and then shits on the streets with tracks with enough threats in them that he would get his ass beat in any self-respecting thug milieu.
Gambino is trapped in that impossible Marshall Mathers-type situation: Now that you've gained fame through a variety of media, how do you recapture the hunger that made you what you are? Can one move beyond the still-festering feelings inside of you in order to make the same type of music fans expect from you? Glover has maintained that he has shed previous personas in order to concentrate on the 'real' him, but when does Childish just become a character, much like Eminem and Marshall Mathers are somewhat interchangeable in the public's consciousness?
I'd be more interested in seeing what happens, lyrically, to Childish's second proper outing. Will he decide to look past the problems that plague (have made?) him and try to rap about slightly different subjects? Will we expect the same? Will he grow, or will he just AC/DC out and pander to the whiny white-boy fanbase that made him? Only time will tell.
Still Got It?
Our second case study is Aubrey Graham's sophomore set. Anyone who expects rocket science out of this ladyccentric crooner will be sorely disappointed. It's all about late nights in busy locales, the regret of the morning after, the agony in Autotune. Drake is forever a minute late with Lady Luck, always down and out. Euphoria rarely enters his lexicon; his waking thoughts are definitely not dominated by emotional highs. Those glimpses rarely occur (a glaring exception to the morose nature of his rhyme could be Thank Me Later's lead-off single 'Over'), instead we get the image of Drake as that dude in the corner of the club, lamenting love with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Aubrey, plain and simple, is a sadomasochist. He's in love with the pain, always chasing the wrong tail. He's forever yearning for the stripper with the heart of gold, the girl he can bring home to mom (as long as mom's not busy crying in the new ride). Promo single 'Marvin’s Room' finds Drake calling an ex-girlfriend up drunkenly and letting her know that she can do better, and 'The Real Her' continues this motif. 'Make Me Proud' addresses the things that Drake wishes he could find in a woman, while 'Headlines' and 'HYFR (Hell Ya Fuckin' Right)' address the pitfalls of fame, as well as fires back at some of the critics who have popped up in the wake of the massive success of his first proper studio album. He could turn it all around, if he really felt like it - but what kind of gimmick is a cheery rapper?
Graham's tired, ya'll. He's tired of getting asked the same questions ('HYFR'), he's tired of shit-talkers ('Headlines'), he's tired of chasing her (whoever she may be) around (the title track),he's tired that she won't recognize that he's become famous ('Shot For Me') he's tired of the media butting into his personal life ('Cameras'). If it were up to Drake, I think, he'd find an island to rent and would hide out on it for six months. But the real truth, if we are to consider it, is much more sinister: Drake lives for the limelight, the money attached to the projects he's undertaken, the tours he's bound to bank off of. Aubrey bemoans the very things that make him rich, he claims that his life is killing him, yet at the same time he's the first to pop bottles at the club. Peep the video for 'Headlines' - Drake looks down at the ground, his face worn out. He's tired of shooting videos, his look half-awake. His crew is reppin', alright, but is Drake's brain elsewhere? Probably. The Drake Machine moves on, however. It must. To stop it puts a stop to the dollars, a stop to the videos, a stop to the women. A stop to the adventures and the possibility for more broken hearts.
Drake is in his mid-20s and his rhymes make it sound as if he's living out multiple lives in multiple locales, a man whose heart has aged well beyond its years. Every Autotuned rhyme drips with late-night agony, as if he were sitting on the edge of a bed in every swanky hotel on the East Coast, penning stanzas about what he's just undertaken. He's burnt out on the fame and on the women who zero in on him. He gets himself into situations with the wrong elements and then uses that as lyrical fodder, kind of like any writer who's looking for experiential contexts by which to later mold into paragraphs of their choosing depicting what they want, what they know, what they've lived.
Sure, Drake hits other beats: a Dirty South homage ('Under Ground Kings'), some positive vibin' ('Make Me Proud'), but by and large this is Drake's tissue party. 'Doing It Wrong' even has him admitting that he cannot watch the woman he broke up with cry in front of him. Listening to a Drake album is also a tiring exercise, but for a different reason that it was for Gambino's - this record just spends its time emoting. By all accounts it sounds as if he's had like four hundred girlfriends by this point in his life, and he's trying to rap about every single liaison he's ever had. It's less a cohesive set of songs and moreso a Rolodex dedicated to Aubrey Graham's heartache.
His thugness is always suspect - can Wheelchair Jimmy really pack heat? Could he fire, if need be?
These are questions I often struggle with when I hear older rhymes ('Ransom', for example), though thankfully he's largely abandoned that and moved onto the personal, for better or worse.
TV Titans Face Off
Childish and Drake are both people in love with their image, cultivating a certain cachet, carving out desired audiences. Gambino wants kids who are creative yet misunderstood, people who are still struggling with their issues. Drake is hoping that women will fall in love with him, and that men will envy his rather large bank account. These are balancing acts. Two men, from a dramatic background, busy creating characters that meld life as well as whimsical fantasy.
The biggest difference in-between the two is this: Childish still can't come to terms with the events life inflicted upon him, while Drake is trying to come to terms with the events that he's brought upon himself. Oh, and Drake whispers while Glover runs around maniacally growling, his voice hoarse. Donald Glover is still angry, Aubrey Graham's moved beyond into being tired. Anger isn't something he voices on too many tracks, his boasts are mostly about how much money he's made and how he's got the best kind of hurt. There's no mean intent in the majority of Drake's musings, just broken robot raps.
These are two men who are looking back at their lives, trying to make sense of it in different ways. Childish Gambino is still picking apart the pieces that fuel hatred within him, whereas Drake is just picking apart the moments that confuse and elude him. Drake's wish is to make good on his promises of smooth sailing with whoever he ends up with, while Childish just wants to fuck bitches to fill the void of his angry past. When it comes down to it, they are both Band Aid solutions - Childish is trying to create a bridge made out of flesh to fix his broken heart, while Drake is trying to reach out to those who have wronged him in order to suture shut a continual wound.
Aubrey largely objectifies women too, though he is less crass in his word choice than Childish. Whereas Childish will rap about getting dome, trying to fuck women of different ethnicities as well as just plain trying to get freaky, Drake dresses the bedroom up as a forbidden place. It's where his secrets are, it's where his heartache lies. It's a sacred place, one from which he made his career. Is either one the right path? Presumably not, but it depends on where you fall on the rap spectrum.
'Camp' is fueled by a sense of disbelief ('how fucking dare they do this to me?') while 'Take Care' is moreso a lamentation, fueled by a sense of weariness ('gotta go 'round the relationship merry go round, yet again.') The up-tempo tracks on 'Camp' do work well – take 'Bonfire', for example. Air-raid siren sample, handclaps, chants. It works well, on a musical level. As a fan of aggressive music, it's almost good enough to get me going. Sure, Childish is bitching about something, but we can live with it if the beats bang this hard. 'Take Care' is all about downtempo late-night beats, the closest thing to something fast we have is the Nicki Minaj-assisted 'Make Me Proud'. Apart from that, the music on 'Take Care' is built upon a sense of absence - silence is used to augment feeling, to control the mood. It helps contextualize Drake's mindspace.
Drake is no fool, he understands that understatement can be a grand weapon in the game of love, especially when you write about it the way he does. He uses it to his advantage, always wanting to leave more. Childish, on the other hand, over-explicates matters to the point where there is no mystery. Childish lays bare his anger, while Drake tries to drop hints and cultivate enough mystery that he hopes will attract attention. Childish is The Incredible Hulk, and Drake is Dr. Strange.
Lyrically, 'Take Care' and 'Camp' boil down to the double-edged sword of destiny - can we control it (Drake), or is it something that's thrown at us that we're meant to deal with (Childish Gambino)? Can we rise above what we've become, or will we wallow in the sheer epicness of the problem presented, and surrender ourselves to our primal feelings? Do we growl and make our voices hoarse, or do we whisper as if we were trying not to wake sleeping giants? Two kids, different backgrounds, different outcomes. Same medium, but ain't a damn thing changed.
The internets sprung twin leaks this morning, and both of those leaks are a matter of interest to different (or not) subsets of rap fans.
Due out on the same day, we have two television actors who have made somewhat successful forays into rap music. In one corner, we have Childish Gambino's Camp, which you can now stream on NPR for free. The comedian-cum-rapper's first proper effort counts 13 tracks. In the other, we have Young Money member Drake's sophomore record Take Care, boasting no less than the titanic force of guest spots from Stevie Wonder, Andre 3000 and Rihanna, as well as usual suspects Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross and The Weeknd.
Gambino Is... A Mastermind?
Let us look first at the newer rap phenom, one Childish Gambino, alias Donald Glover. He's released a few albums and EPs online, and Camp is his first foray into the retail sphere. Let us consider first his words, and then their intent.
The very name of Gambino's album (Camp) is an indicator of its lyrical content. Donald Glover is a manchild obsessed with his past, obsessed with dealing with the indignation he felt growing up, and is now still trying to process with his self-admittedly difficult transition into adulthood. He lays it all bare, explains how he never fit in at the schools he was sent to, how girls who would turn him down pre-fame now stand in line and hope to get noticed by the 'Community' star. The pain, the torture. Oh God, the ever-present torture.
Music for outcasts, as it were. 'Revenge of the Nerds' set to rhyme, however, is not a very apt comparison when you consider how Gambino approaches the situations as they are written/rapped out.
I do believe that situation is where the problem with Gambino's lyrical content arises - this music for outcasts wallows in its own lyrical pity, never trying to rise above. It's problem-orientated music. First single "Bonfire" is plenty proof of this, full of vitriol. Take, for example, the couplet of "'You're my favorite rapper now' Yeah, dude, I better be/Or you can fuckin’ kiss my ass, Human Centipede". In it we have the quintessential formula that you can apply to almost any Childish rap, that of:
(anger at outside force for past transgressions + braggadocio brought on by 'I'm famous now!' feelings) + pop culture reference + gratuitous swearing = winning combination.
Consider it for a moment. Go back to his FreEP. Pull it out and listen to 'Freaks and Geeks', what may arguably be the song that catapulted his name onto the front page of Pitchfork. Apply said formula to track. Sit back and ponder. See what I mean?
I really cannot hold this against Donald, though. Dude's got a soapbox from which to fling verbal Molotovs at every girl who ever turned him down, every bully who ever called him a faggot, for every hoodrat who ever told him he would never make it. It does grow a bit tired as one makes their way through the album's first four tracks - it's like being beaten over the head with a rubber mallet for the 15 or so minutes that it takes to make one's way through those songs. I joked that this is like listening to the rap equivalent of KoRn, though upon closer inspection Glover's lyrical content does have a certain kinship with the tortured non-genius of Jon Davis. Consider this description: "Aggressive-sounding vocals, full of lyrics that bemoan childhood trauma as well as warnings to past transgressors that meetings in the future may not go over so well." Without context, we can logically realize that that statement applies to both parties mentioned.
Childish is also a dude who yearns to be impossibly hood - he's nothing but misogynistic in his rhymes, the sheer number of boasts the dude pops out per song is also off the charts. He talks about threatening physical violence on some of those people who have wronged him, though it's quite clear that he could not carry out any of these.
Glover's stage name suits him so well when you consider that these tracks may or may not be temper tantrums set to beats, a wannabe gangster who's got his mind set on other things. He can't live the life, as he points out on Camp's opener 'Outside' - his cousin is destined for that. His cousin gives him shit for not being hard enough, so Donald gains success in other realms and then shits on the streets with tracks with enough threats in them that he would get his ass beat in any self-respecting thug milieu.
Gambino is trapped in that impossible Marshall Mathers-type situation: Now that you've gained fame through a variety of media, how do you recapture the hunger that made you what you are? Can one move beyond the still-festering feelings inside of you in order to make the same type of music fans expect from you? Glover has maintained that he has shed previous personas in order to concentrate on the 'real' him, but when does Childish just become a character, much like Eminem and Marshall Mathers are somewhat interchangeable in the public's consciousness?
I'd be more interested in seeing what happens, lyrically, to Childish's second proper outing. Will he decide to look past the problems that plague (have made?) him and try to rap about slightly different subjects? Will we expect the same? Will he grow, or will he just AC/DC out and pander to the whiny white-boy fanbase that made him? Only time will tell.
Still Got It?
Our second case study is Aubrey Graham's sophomore set. Anyone who expects rocket science out of this ladyccentric crooner will be sorely disappointed. It's all about late nights in busy locales, the regret of the morning after, the agony in Autotune. Drake is forever a minute late with Lady Luck, always down and out. Euphoria rarely enters his lexicon; his waking thoughts are definitely not dominated by emotional highs. Those glimpses rarely occur (a glaring exception to the morose nature of his rhyme could be Thank Me Later's lead-off single 'Over'), instead we get the image of Drake as that dude in the corner of the club, lamenting love with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Aubrey, plain and simple, is a sadomasochist. He's in love with the pain, always chasing the wrong tail. He's forever yearning for the stripper with the heart of gold, the girl he can bring home to mom (as long as mom's not busy crying in the new ride). Promo single 'Marvin’s Room' finds Drake calling an ex-girlfriend up drunkenly and letting her know that she can do better, and 'The Real Her' continues this motif. 'Make Me Proud' addresses the things that Drake wishes he could find in a woman, while 'Headlines' and 'HYFR (Hell Ya Fuckin' Right)' address the pitfalls of fame, as well as fires back at some of the critics who have popped up in the wake of the massive success of his first proper studio album. He could turn it all around, if he really felt like it - but what kind of gimmick is a cheery rapper?
Graham's tired, ya'll. He's tired of getting asked the same questions ('HYFR'), he's tired of shit-talkers ('Headlines'), he's tired of chasing her (whoever she may be) around (the title track),he's tired that she won't recognize that he's become famous ('Shot For Me') he's tired of the media butting into his personal life ('Cameras'). If it were up to Drake, I think, he'd find an island to rent and would hide out on it for six months. But the real truth, if we are to consider it, is much more sinister: Drake lives for the limelight, the money attached to the projects he's undertaken, the tours he's bound to bank off of. Aubrey bemoans the very things that make him rich, he claims that his life is killing him, yet at the same time he's the first to pop bottles at the club. Peep the video for 'Headlines' - Drake looks down at the ground, his face worn out. He's tired of shooting videos, his look half-awake. His crew is reppin', alright, but is Drake's brain elsewhere? Probably. The Drake Machine moves on, however. It must. To stop it puts a stop to the dollars, a stop to the videos, a stop to the women. A stop to the adventures and the possibility for more broken hearts.
Drake is in his mid-20s and his rhymes make it sound as if he's living out multiple lives in multiple locales, a man whose heart has aged well beyond its years. Every Autotuned rhyme drips with late-night agony, as if he were sitting on the edge of a bed in every swanky hotel on the East Coast, penning stanzas about what he's just undertaken. He's burnt out on the fame and on the women who zero in on him. He gets himself into situations with the wrong elements and then uses that as lyrical fodder, kind of like any writer who's looking for experiential contexts by which to later mold into paragraphs of their choosing depicting what they want, what they know, what they've lived.
Sure, Drake hits other beats: a Dirty South homage ('Under Ground Kings'), some positive vibin' ('Make Me Proud'), but by and large this is Drake's tissue party. 'Doing It Wrong' even has him admitting that he cannot watch the woman he broke up with cry in front of him. Listening to a Drake album is also a tiring exercise, but for a different reason that it was for Gambino's - this record just spends its time emoting. By all accounts it sounds as if he's had like four hundred girlfriends by this point in his life, and he's trying to rap about every single liaison he's ever had. It's less a cohesive set of songs and moreso a Rolodex dedicated to Aubrey Graham's heartache.
His thugness is always suspect - can Wheelchair Jimmy really pack heat? Could he fire, if need be?
These are questions I often struggle with when I hear older rhymes ('Ransom', for example), though thankfully he's largely abandoned that and moved onto the personal, for better or worse.
TV Titans Face Off
Childish and Drake are both people in love with their image, cultivating a certain cachet, carving out desired audiences. Gambino wants kids who are creative yet misunderstood, people who are still struggling with their issues. Drake is hoping that women will fall in love with him, and that men will envy his rather large bank account. These are balancing acts. Two men, from a dramatic background, busy creating characters that meld life as well as whimsical fantasy.
The biggest difference in-between the two is this: Childish still can't come to terms with the events life inflicted upon him, while Drake is trying to come to terms with the events that he's brought upon himself. Oh, and Drake whispers while Glover runs around maniacally growling, his voice hoarse. Donald Glover is still angry, Aubrey Graham's moved beyond into being tired. Anger isn't something he voices on too many tracks, his boasts are mostly about how much money he's made and how he's got the best kind of hurt. There's no mean intent in the majority of Drake's musings, just broken robot raps.
These are two men who are looking back at their lives, trying to make sense of it in different ways. Childish Gambino is still picking apart the pieces that fuel hatred within him, whereas Drake is just picking apart the moments that confuse and elude him. Drake's wish is to make good on his promises of smooth sailing with whoever he ends up with, while Childish just wants to fuck bitches to fill the void of his angry past. When it comes down to it, they are both Band Aid solutions - Childish is trying to create a bridge made out of flesh to fix his broken heart, while Drake is trying to reach out to those who have wronged him in order to suture shut a continual wound.
Aubrey largely objectifies women too, though he is less crass in his word choice than Childish. Whereas Childish will rap about getting dome, trying to fuck women of different ethnicities as well as just plain trying to get freaky, Drake dresses the bedroom up as a forbidden place. It's where his secrets are, it's where his heartache lies. It's a sacred place, one from which he made his career. Is either one the right path? Presumably not, but it depends on where you fall on the rap spectrum.
'Camp' is fueled by a sense of disbelief ('how fucking dare they do this to me?') while 'Take Care' is moreso a lamentation, fueled by a sense of weariness ('gotta go 'round the relationship merry go round, yet again.') The up-tempo tracks on 'Camp' do work well – take 'Bonfire', for example. Air-raid siren sample, handclaps, chants. It works well, on a musical level. As a fan of aggressive music, it's almost good enough to get me going. Sure, Childish is bitching about something, but we can live with it if the beats bang this hard. 'Take Care' is all about downtempo late-night beats, the closest thing to something fast we have is the Nicki Minaj-assisted 'Make Me Proud'. Apart from that, the music on 'Take Care' is built upon a sense of absence - silence is used to augment feeling, to control the mood. It helps contextualize Drake's mindspace.
Drake is no fool, he understands that understatement can be a grand weapon in the game of love, especially when you write about it the way he does. He uses it to his advantage, always wanting to leave more. Childish, on the other hand, over-explicates matters to the point where there is no mystery. Childish lays bare his anger, while Drake tries to drop hints and cultivate enough mystery that he hopes will attract attention. Childish is The Incredible Hulk, and Drake is Dr. Strange.
Lyrically, 'Take Care' and 'Camp' boil down to the double-edged sword of destiny - can we control it (Drake), or is it something that's thrown at us that we're meant to deal with (Childish Gambino)? Can we rise above what we've become, or will we wallow in the sheer epicness of the problem presented, and surrender ourselves to our primal feelings? Do we growl and make our voices hoarse, or do we whisper as if we were trying not to wake sleeping giants? Two kids, different backgrounds, different outcomes. Same medium, but ain't a damn thing changed.
8.6.11
7.6.11
Don't Pity Me.
I've been bad. I've been ba-ad. Goddamn terrible. I'll be the first to admit I suck.
To the -1 person reading this blog, I apologize. You may notice that this thing has laid dormant for about 3 months now. I won't bore you with meticulous personal shit as to why I don't write (moving, etc.) but the fact remains that I fucked up.
My problem is as such – I go into peaks and valleys of productivity, which causes all of my creative endeavours to take a nosedive. Sometimes I feel like when I write too much on a regular basis my head just empties out and I realize no one gives a shit about what I'm writing about. I'm bad at imposed deadlines when they come from myself.
But sometimes... Sometimes you gotta be selfish. You gotta write for yourself about the things you love. Share the shit you want to share. Isn't it the very essence of the internet (apart from pornography and narcissistic social media activities)?
The good news, though, is that I'm back on-track. I'm holding a Post It here with a bunch of topics I'd like to write about in the next little while, and I think I'll follow through. Because these topics intrigue me. And by extension, hopefully, they'll intrigue you too through my mediocre word-cramming skills.
Before that, though... A breather. Summer is indeed upon us. Time for some rap anthems. Yes? Yes. I usually use some of these song when making my way to work in the morning as part of a musical ritual I use to keep shit moving. WHITE DUDE LOVES HARD RHYMES? Better believe it. Just a few tracks, though. Let's ease each other back into this relationship. No hard kisses on the mouth, just a bit of handholding.
1. Wale feat. Rick Ross and Jadakiss - 600 Benz
2. Method Man - Bring The Pain
3. Young Jeezy feat. Plies - Lose My Mind
4. Cam'ron and Vado - Speaking In Tungs
5. Wacka Flocka Flame - Hard In Da Paint
6. Wu-Tang Clan - Careful (Click Click)
7. Big KRIT - Country Shit
8. Tyler, The Creator feat. Frank Ocean - She
9. Jamie Foxx feat. Rick Ross - Living Better Now
10. Jay Z feat. Swizz Beatz - On To The Next One
11. Yelawolf - Pop The Trunk
12. Alfamega - 4 or 5 Ways (This doesn't mean we fuckin' advocate for snitches, guys. We merely like the concept of the song. SNITCHES GET STITCHES AND BASEBALL BATS TO THE GROIN.)
13. Lloyd Banks - Beamer, Benz Or Bentley
13? Perfect number.
To the -1 person reading this blog, I apologize. You may notice that this thing has laid dormant for about 3 months now. I won't bore you with meticulous personal shit as to why I don't write (moving, etc.) but the fact remains that I fucked up.
My problem is as such – I go into peaks and valleys of productivity, which causes all of my creative endeavours to take a nosedive. Sometimes I feel like when I write too much on a regular basis my head just empties out and I realize no one gives a shit about what I'm writing about. I'm bad at imposed deadlines when they come from myself.
But sometimes... Sometimes you gotta be selfish. You gotta write for yourself about the things you love. Share the shit you want to share. Isn't it the very essence of the internet (apart from pornography and narcissistic social media activities)?
The good news, though, is that I'm back on-track. I'm holding a Post It here with a bunch of topics I'd like to write about in the next little while, and I think I'll follow through. Because these topics intrigue me. And by extension, hopefully, they'll intrigue you too through my mediocre word-cramming skills.
Before that, though... A breather. Summer is indeed upon us. Time for some rap anthems. Yes? Yes. I usually use some of these song when making my way to work in the morning as part of a musical ritual I use to keep shit moving. WHITE DUDE LOVES HARD RHYMES? Better believe it. Just a few tracks, though. Let's ease each other back into this relationship. No hard kisses on the mouth, just a bit of handholding.
1. Wale feat. Rick Ross and Jadakiss - 600 Benz
2. Method Man - Bring The Pain
3. Young Jeezy feat. Plies - Lose My Mind
4. Cam'ron and Vado - Speaking In Tungs
5. Wacka Flocka Flame - Hard In Da Paint
6. Wu-Tang Clan - Careful (Click Click)
7. Big KRIT - Country Shit
8. Tyler, The Creator feat. Frank Ocean - She
9. Jamie Foxx feat. Rick Ross - Living Better Now
10. Jay Z feat. Swizz Beatz - On To The Next One
11. Yelawolf - Pop The Trunk
12. Alfamega - 4 or 5 Ways (This doesn't mean we fuckin' advocate for snitches, guys. We merely like the concept of the song. SNITCHES GET STITCHES AND BASEBALL BATS TO THE GROIN.)
13. Lloyd Banks - Beamer, Benz Or Bentley
13? Perfect number.
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