Musical Ambitions

So this is the first of many music reviews/butchering that I am going to attempt. I have to start by warning all pet lovers and tree huggers that in the making of this blog, animals were tested upon in order to give me empirical test results. A few of the small cute fluffy animals used in order to compile this blog died….

So today I am going to give a very personal opinion of Kanye West’s more recent album Yeezus.

As you can see from the album cover… I am not sure what you are supposed to see

So before I start I have to warn you that I loathe Kanye. I think that he has gone beyond all sanity and now sits in a rarefied atmosphere of so much BS that not even an alien invasion on proportions larger than those seen in Independence Day can bring him down. In fact he would probably think the aliens have come to kidnap him so that he could make their (cleverer and more advance species who have travelled MILLIONS of light years) lives more inspired.

Before picture of test subject Alpha before listening to Yeezus

So I have no idea what the album name refers to. I didn’t even want to do a google search about it (If you do know what the name is about, comment so I can be more knowledgeable about such things). Google tells me the album has ten songs. The reason why I say google tells me, is when I first got the album (through illicit means obviously…. a few drug deals, some bone marrow transplanting etc), I listen to it. I didn’t add it to my itunes like I do with most other music. But I listened to it. I then waited for a week, and tried again. I waited for three weeks more and tried to listen to it again. The reason why the operative word in all of this is TRIED is because I only managed to listen to the whole album once. That was the first time.

Beta before the test. He was such a happy puppy

I felt like my ears were bleeding by the time I listened to it the second time. The beats didn’t make sense and sounded like noise. Kanye can be forgiven for his raps because it’s not like (as far as I am concerned) he is know for having lyrical content. He spends most of the album talking about things I didn’t and maybe never will understand.

I am no music guru but it felt like he either tried to hard on the beats for most of the songs. As a result some songs sound sound similar to what you would imagine the death star would make before blowing up a planet, and then putting it on a loop and then “rapping” to it. Then there were other songs that sound like he didn’t try at all, and that the song would be cool because there is random screaming in the background.

It felt like he made the album just because he had the money, and that the album was going to sell because suckers would buy the album hoping it would be great. Instead it was a pile of poo… similar to the rarefied atmosphere that he lives in.

If I was to give it a score out of 100, I would give it a mighty 10. The reason I would give it a 10 is because he managed to annoy me. I actually remember TRYING to listen to this album. More than once…. and getting more and more annoyed.

Anyway what do you think? Am I talking nonsense? Let me know. See below what his album did to the fluffy animals I tested the album on….

Test Subject Beta ultimately lost his mind and killed his family the Test Subject Alpha

He mutated into a drug fiend dog, and after a long time of using, Subject Beta came to his end/help/demise

Next on the menu will be Jay-Z

It’s late for some of us…

How I sometimes feel like when I’m talking to some people

There is a phrase that we use in Zimbabwe. We say “It’s late for you, him, her, the gwan, the team, the bar”. Basically it can be late for anything. Even an ant. When it’s used, it has various definitions. It depends on the context of use. So for example if a guy is say courting a girl, and some spectators say “ah its late for the dude”, it most likely means that from observing there is no way the guy is going to successfully court the girl. However if the reverse is said, “its late for her”, it means that he has hit her with a line that NO ONE has heard of. Or he has (I am positive this is the most appropriate place for this word) swag (shoot me later. I’m trying to stay relevant).  Another example is if there is a bar fight and you say that its late for one of the participants engaging in this show of pure animalistic behaviour, he’s the one probably getting the beating of his life.

This now brings me to Saturday night. I was sitting at home with a few friends and family (there were no more than 6 people there at any given time), when my good friend Lloyd and I realised that we were behind the curve. Not ahead of it, quite beyond. Its late for us. We are not being beaten to death by a drunken baboon jacked up on testosterone and rum and coke (See post on Tin Roof yet to be released), we are not part of the losing side, we have successfully courted our madams, so its not that either. What Lloyd was referring to was relevance.

 

We, in the slow process of ageing do not have much relevance. It all started when a song came on. I think it was Bugatti (Ace Hood, Two Chains, plus a whole bunch of other guys I have never heard of including this Two Chains and Ace Hood guy who are apparently part of this group of rappers called YMCMB which stands for Young Money Cash Money Billionaires (Thank you Bibi telling me without me having to ask Google).) where some guy sings about waking up in a new Bugatti. Heavy tune. Not sure what they are rapping about for most of the song. But anyway, as me and Lloyd sat there listening to “TWO CHAINS! FOUR BRACELETS!!!!!!!!!!” (You have to hear him shouting it out to understand. If you listen to this you will hear him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI0gk2KJeho) we came to a simple, honest conclusion. We are no longer relevant. Sure we may be part of a small generation that saw technology move from dial up internets, to fibre optic cables being laid in our neighbourhoods, from polyphonic right tones and phones with buttons, to mp3s for ring tones and phones with 4 buttons and 5 inch screens.

But you know what we DEFINITELY, TOTALLY missed out on? Pop culture. I spit whenever I have to utter those two words together. Popular culture. Urgh. So this Ace Hood guy, Two Chains… like where did they come from? Where exactly did ‘murica find these guys? So now there are all these “relevant” people in their mid-20s, listening to Ace Hood, Two Chains and Lil’ Wayne (isn’t he supposed to have graduated to just Wayne by now? I thought all the rappers who have Lil’ are supposed to graduate. Bow Wow did it… I know Lil’ John plans on being Lil’ for ever though.), they know all of their songs, the dances, the lines that are cool.

If I am to go have a beer with Lloyd at O’Hagans (HIGHLY UNLIKELY AS I WOULD RATHER LISTEN TO DROWNING CATS THAN GO TO O’HAGANS OUT OF MY OWN CHOICE), and bump into some of these more trendy mid-20s guys and so happen to have a conversation about, say sport, we would be fine. Unfortunately due to our extreme irrelevance there is nothing more we can speak to them about. We can’t speak about music coz we have not kept up, we can’t speak to them about politics because most of them haven’t formed a political position. Life is still too much about having fun for them so we can’t talk to them about work. We can’t brag about what we did on the weekend, coz we were probably at home watching TV, or at the sports club lying to each other. However if we talk about PS3 for example, we become relevant… and old at the same time.

My message to all you people out there searching hard for relevance: Look to youtube, type in the names of these artists, learn their songs, learn their dances. I am afraid that there may be a dark future where irrelevant individuals are rounded up and disposed of, bodies to be used to keep the popular culture machine running. So I urge all those feeling irrelevant, let us assimilate, join this rather strange march forward into the world of words like swag and yolo. Only use them when you feel threatened. We WILL SURVIVE!!!

He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives. – Oscar Wild