Kanye West – “Love Lockdown”
Y’all didn’t think this was going to happen? When Kanye was just producing, he was all like, “Man, I wanna be a rapper!” Remember? And then he was all like, “Man, I’ma stop rapping so much. I don’t even like that shit. Watch: I’m just gonna say two sentences in a row. They might rhyme. They might not. I’m crazy like that. You’re gonna love it.” And now he’s all like, “Yo, I wanna be a one a them R&B singers with those autotuners. That’s where that shit is at!” Thing is, he had to be one hell of a producer before he started rapping. And he had to be pretty decent rapper before he could get caught slipping with mediocre raps. But now he gets to be a singer after spending last year being a marginal rapper? Dude is on some reverse binoculars shit.
You know what, though?
We need Kanye, because even as a godawful singer, he’s still one hell of
a producer. He has the rare ability to
hone in on an enormously commercial trend—the autotuner—and flip it in unconventional
ways. (As Passion
of the Weiss commenter Joseph says, “My favorite thing about it is
that each chorus seems like an individual take. He lets the phrasing and sound
of the lines change throughout the chorus. It provides a nice contrast to the
rigid, auto-tuned sound.”) We need
innovative and experimental producers working in mainstream music, and Kanye is
go-to guy number one. (Singing? An experiment!) Unfortunately, none of that
makes “Love Lockdown” any good. In fact,
it’s pretty bad. It might be the worst
single of the year. And again, we should
thank him for taking that responsibility away from everybody else.
Max Tundra – “Which
Song”
Let us say, hypothetically, that the company you work for just got a new coffee machine, and that you now have so much Extra Bold Dark Magic in you that you could take out an ad on Craig’s List. You might then perhaps enjoy a glitchy pop song composed on an Amiga 500 home computer the way you enjoyed “Let’s Hear It For the Boys” when you were chillin’ in your pajamas in your grandparents’ apartment. You might marinate on the fact that, even though “Which Song” sounds ramshackle and flippant like anyone could make it, no one else actually would. You may even dig the fey, 80’s-throwback chorus. Then again, you might fear the smell of your own urine. I am told there are people like you where I am now.
Fat Bastard – “I’m the Man Out In Dallas"
Geographically, he has a point.
The Kays – “Break My Bones”
Singer/Songwriter and (full disclosure) wayward Factual Opinion writer Andre Harris drops some bedroom-recorded indie rock better than a good 75% of the songs we’ve written about for Music of the Weak. We also think he could take Bradford Cox in a fistfight, so sign us up for the newsletter.
The Mountain Goats
& Kaki King – “Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is In Another Castle"
Does John Darnielle ever stop giving? 2008 has already seen him drop one of our favorite albums of the year, as well as a book about Black Sabbath’s Masters of Reality as told from the point of view of a dude in a mental institution. Now we get this collaboration with jazz mistress Kaki King that uses Super Mario Brothers as a metaphor for… something… possibly another video game. If that weren’t enough, Darnielle tells the story through the eyes of Toad—“I told you the one thing I know how to say/ To the bright, ringing tone of 8-bit choirs.” Not quite as awesome as when my grandfather wrote the family Christmas letter in the voice of the Taco Bell Chihuahua, but it’ll do. If Darnielle and Andre 3000 are ever in the same room, the world just might explode.
-Martin Brown, 2008
wow...thank you so much!
Posted by: andre | 2008.09.16 at 20:51
"Fat Bastard – “I’m the Man Out In Dallas"
Geographically, he has a point."
Best. Review. Ever.
I just bought the Black Sabbath book by your boy off of Amazon. This site has never lead me wrong before and even had me *gasp* quoting the Economist this past week, so I'm looking forward to an enjoyable read!
Posted by: | 2008.09.18 at 10:10