fourfour

This one is the healer

The first thing you need to know about Erykah Badu's New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh) is that there is nothing you need to know about it. It is as satisfying of an experience and as perfect of a statement as anyone is likely to make via pop music this or any year. There is not a doubt in my mind that every particle of sound on this thing is vibrating at the exact frequency that Badu intended. The lyrics may lack the depth and wit of Badu at her observational best ("Otherside of the Game," "Tyrone"), but Ankh's verbal simplicity keeps this consciously introspective effort from seeming too indulgent (it's a slippery slope, too: "consciously introspective" is like the bib tied on before the buffet). 

And there I go letting you know about it. My apologies for being unnecessary -- think of this as an ode. That, too, is how I think of Ankh - it's a serpentine ode to the concept of space and time. The two factors are what separate the "two emotions humankind experience," as a robo-voice explains in the intro to "Love": "fear has a long and slow frequency vibration to it, while love has a very rapid and high frequency." Per this theory (which places all other emotions felt on a spectrum between these extremes), fast and slow are as fundamental to feeling as they are to this album ("There's a strong undercurrent of bottom, a rumbling to these songs that feels good to me," Erykah has said). An overall sense of flux is evident in the lyrics, too, as Ankh finds Badu pushing oncoming love away ("You better go back the way you came...You don't want to fall in love with me," she warns in "Fall in Love (Your Funeral)") or leaving it as a form of beckoning ("Somebody say come back / Come back baby come back / I want u to need me" in "Window Seat").

It vibrates between and around musical eras, too. Guided by Badu's old-lady voice, which is so dialed into the interests of youth, it at one point gets chopped and screwed and makes note of it, Ankh sounds both like yesterday and today, if you account for both the old-school samples and the postmodern consciousness of sampling. Regarding the latter point, "Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY)" uses unique elements of both Junior M.A.F.I.A.'s "Get Money," and the song it originally sampled, Sylvia Striplin's "You Can't Turn Me Away." It is a mash-up celebration of the musical art of recycling that forcibly merges the more distant past with the not-so-distant past. The whole album is that kind of celebration, really -- Andy Kellman put it perfectly when he wrote that it "sometimes resembles a glorified mixtape." "Fall in Love (Your Funeral)" uses another relatively well-known sample (Eddie Kendricks' "Intimate Friends," which provided the foundation of Sweet Sable's "Old Times Sake," among tracks), and "Gone Baby, Don't Be Long" sounds like it does (Wings' "Arrow Through Me" gives the track that same humid, gliding feel that the Isley Brothers' "Footsteps in the Dark" gave Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day"). There are times when Erykah's own past is recounted, like in the Jay Dilla production "Love," which samples Badu's own "The Healer" ("This one is for Dilla...") or the reference to "Otherside of the Game" in "Gone Baby" ("I know you got to get your hustle on"). I wonder if this specific referencing is, in fact, a reference, as it recalls the way MC Lyte's yelp of "Shut the fuck up!" in "I Cram To Understand U (Sam)" later served as the foundation for her own "Shut the Eff Up! (Hoe)." And on the repetition tip, as on Mama's Gun, Ankh ends with a 10-minute+, three-movement suite, "Out My Mind, Just in Time." When she gets to the line that goes, "20 feet out of ashes I can rise / like birds and children I can fly," it's all you can do to keep from saying, "Duh!"

Explicit repetition is often the signal of an artist not having anything new to say, of going through the motions like anyone finds themselves doing at their job occasionally or just repurposing what already worked. Here, it sounds like honest rumination, the declaration of imperfection. After all, it seems ridiculous that a single song would allow a person to move on from an issue -- especially a person like Badu, who's so naked regarding her status as a work in progress.

Don't forget that as a sequel to 2008's New Amerykah Part One (4th World War), this album is inherently a conversation with a past (that album was digital and political; this one's analog and personal). This album has been hailed for its relative accessibility, and indeed, it sounds like a nice balance struck between the languid sounds of Baduism and the woozy, freaked-out New Amerykah Part One. Instead of enveloping you in a warp of weird, this one sneaks up and taps you on the shoulder with its sense of the bizarre, like when the gentle piano chords and ?uestlove's stick-y shuffle are interrupted with handclaps and stomps in the bridge of "Window Seat," or when she announces she'll "crochet for you" in "Out My Mind" or the gloriously staggered multi-tracked vocals of "Gone Baby" or the chair creaking heard in "20 Feet Tall" (that's gotta be a "Sometimes It Snows in April" reference, right?). It goes to show that sometimes a little bit of weird is weirder than really weird -- or at least more compelling.

In her somewhat opaque introduction in the album's liner notes, Badu writes, "I don’t know much for sure, but I think it is safe to say that I am an artist." Indeed, in a field full of marketing schemes masquerading as artistry, Badu is the real deal. Every time I experience something of hers -- a concert, a video, an album -- I'm so thankful that we have this person, who's more or less on the musical mainstream, doing whatever the fuck she wants intelligently, accessibly, beautifully. This woman is a treasure. That may go without saying, but still I feel like I can't say it enough.

Angels abortion

It was a stupid idea from the beginning: Mariah was set to call “Take 2!” on her Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel album via a “remix” disc called Angels Advocate that was supposed to be released today (per its most recently announced release date – like its source album, it was pushed back a few times). It's important to understand that Memoirs is Mariah’s lowest-selling full-length (to put its failure into perspective, at just under 460,000 copies, it has sold about 176,000 fewer copies than the Glitter soundtrack in the U.S.). Refusing to take the public’s dismissal lying down is something new for Mariah, who’s always put the pop in populist, tirelessly mentioning her 18-song string No. 1 hits, performing her arguable signature “Hero” at virtually every show despite having expressed ill feelings toward it, and distancing herself from projects that weren’t the mega-hits they were crafted to be (I’ve read her write off Glitter’s failure by pointing out that it was a soundtrack and not an actual Mariah Carey album, even though she performed and wrote every track). For some reason, she didn’t care this time about the apparent lack of interest: embarrassingly low sales (even for this crippled record-buying market) and one measly Top 10 single ("Obsessed") out of three releases weren’t going to stop her from making sure people understood her vision. Or...something?

See, the fact that Memoirs was her first album not to feature guest rappers since 1995’s Daydream (or lead guest vocalists, period, since 1993’s Music Box) seemed to be a major part of that vision. Memoirs was crafted to be a cohesive album, the yin to the yang of its wildly diverse (and in my view, wonderful) predecessor E=MC².  A very shallow pool of producers (including Tricky Stewart on 15 of the album's 17 tracks, and his close collaborator The-Dream on many of them) confined the sound to a tempered collection of plunking pianos and cleaned-up 808s borrowed from the Dirty South. To my ears, this detrimentally limited the color palate. That album is not without highlights, but it is dull taken as a whole. Like a muse with a mouth on her, Mariah has always benefited from collaboration, at times even translating that hallowed voice into the style of her guest (see the crowning moment of her career, the Bone Thugs-n-Harmony collaboration, “Breakdown”). Memoirs was firsthand evidence of just how reliant on new blood (or at least different blood) Mariah’s creative energy is.

I’d like to think that she sensed this folly and immediately she scrapped that solo idea and then creativity dictated that she should be reconstructing these songs with guests. The truth is that it wasn’t until after “H.A.T.E.U.” unfairly tanked that the Angels Advocate project took flight, and so this backpedaling undoubtedly got its push from the public’s reception, not Mariah’s inspiration. If anything, she took over the toilet bowl from music listeners to shit on her own artistic vision and convert it to something more marketable with additional boldface names. A version of “Inseparable” featuring Trey Songz leaked, sounding every bit the pile of whipped air that it did on Memoirs...except this time with Trey Songz. Somewhat sloppily, two Advocate singles were released simultaneously at the beginning of the year: “Angels Cry” converted into a duet with Ne-Yo and “Up Out My Face” featuring Nicki Minaj, whose catchphrases, self-fellating comparisons, and Family Guy approach to referencing (it doesn’t matter if it’s smart or applicable, so long as it’s a reference!) make her an ideal collaborator for this project. Minaj doesn’t only shit on the notion of artistry, she does so on the entire notion of communication. (I’ll say a lot more about this scourge on pop music when her album comes out, as I like her less each day that goes by. For now, my assessment of Minaj is that she is a  geyser of unclever nonsense, and as such, a human waste of time.) Anyway, when neither of those singles took off, Angels was aborted, marking Mariah’s second major failure in six months. You know things are bad when your face-saving solution ends up to be a big face-palm.

It’s just as well, really. While I’d like to hear what Mary J. Blige contributed to “It’s a Wrap” and I’d give my eye teeth to hear Jodeci singing on “The Impossible” (both duets were promised in interviews leading up to the expected release), I doubt that the results would have been satisfying. Cutting out Mariah’s vocals here and there to make room for guests barely counts as remixing (especially when it omits the best part of the song, as does the leaked revamp of “Ribbon,” which excises the gorgeous chorus to make room for The-Dream and Ludacris). A woman who would once record several different sets of vocals to fit remix formats knows better than this. (“I Still Believe,” for example, sported one set of vocals for its original version, two different sets for two R&B remixes and a house-mix set, as well.) Only the resung “H.A.T.E.U.” remix, which samples Ghost Town DJs’ “My Boo” and is by far the best thing to come from this era, suggests any additional effort on her part. The scrambling to enhance what was already released has its foundation back in the days of Mottola, but with the primary changes (apparent in Advocate's seven or so leaked remixes) amounting to beefing up star power, the idea of Angels Advocate felt like Mariah’s workhorse ethic perverted. It’s true what they say: old gray mare just ain’t what she used to be.

After this exponential failure, where is Mariah left? Just where I like her, it happens: in the underdog house. Mariah is at her most fascinating when she is flailing. She was barely worth paying attention to when all she had to do was open her mouth to sell millions of records and be inescapable for the next six months. Her failures, her diminished voice, her determination to overachieve have blessed her career and music with character. She is miles away from the melismatic deer in spotlights that she was in 1990. As much as I look down on the idea of Angels Advocate, I have to admit that even that fits into her career in a fascinating way, that its desperation rings true. Though Memoirs suggested otherwise, there’s rarely a dull moment with Mariah. She comes to us with enough publicized stats under her belt to be pop music’s answer to a baseball player, and that makes loving Mariah something of a sport. You take the defeats with the victories. You get pissed when she’s off her game because you know she’s capable of better. You hold your breath has she goes up for the notes (and down for them, as well). But regardless of whether she connects with the ball, you know it’s only a matter of time before she’s up again. For me, the excitement of that alone has yet to wane.

HorRENdous

If Ren was so annoying...

...then why does her elimination feel like such a loss?

Theo wants inside

Here's some Friday stupidity for your ass: clips I slapped together from the VHS Home Alone: A Kid's Guide to Playing It Safe When You're on Your Own, featuring Malcolm-Jamal Warner playing the different types of creeps who attempt to non-forcibly enter the houses of unsuspecting kids. We've already seen the different types of strangers you meet out and about, but here's what happens when they come to your front door. Chilling! In fact, I don't know what's scarier: a creep in an aviator cap doing a Pee-Wee Herman voice or Malcolm-Jamal Warner's apparent assumption that such specimens actually exist in nature. The real creeps are the quiet ones, at least in my experience. Although, obsession be damned, I was never fortunate enough to get into a real tangle with a real stranger in my youth. Such a deprived 80's childhood I lived. :(

From the mouth of Biebs

I know that he actually looks like that lesbian Dani from the first season of Tila Tequila's awful reality show, but when I listen to Justin Bieber's music, all I can envision is Nate the Great. Here we have a child who's outfitted way beyond his years -- instead of an oversize Sherlock Holmes hat, Bieber has an album that he could spend the next 15 years growing into. On My World 2.0, his first full-length, he refers to an object of desire as "my dear." He promises to buy (another? the same one?) a ring. He talks about unconditional love, his "biggest weakness" ("your lips"), reciprocal smiling, things being "meant to be," being "stuck in a moment," and proceeding with love that's destined to fail ("Ain’t no way it’s gonna end right, but we are too foolish to stop"). He compares his relationship with a presumed female to Adam and Eve, Sonny and Cher, Romeo and Juliet, and Bonnie and Clyde. He notes with wisdom and bemusement, "So crazy is this thing called love." My favorite line on the whole album is, “I’m gonna lace you with pearls from every ocean that we swim in." Hilarious. As someone who turned 16 this month, Bieber was 15 at the oldest when he recorded this stuff. Most kids at that age barely know what to do with their boners by themselves; he waxes his like it's a philosopher's stone.

The tunes themselves come off as hand-me-downs from established stars -- the admittedly infectious "Somebody to Love" is a full-on rip-off of David Guetta and Kelly Rowland's "When Love Takes Over." Also, I hear bits of "Halo" in "Stuck in the Moment," "Dirrty" in "Runaway Love," any lite electro ever in "Baby" and "Till the End of Time" in the only track on the album that I find lovable without reservation (this is as unconditional as it'll ever get!), "Up." There Bieber is, halfway between Pixar and Russ Meyer. The album is even branded with a visual bid for maturity. Look at that cover -- he's staring back at you with foreboding accusation, like a parent peering into his patchouli-reeking kid's bloodshot eyeballs.

This is all ridiculous not just because it's coming from a 15-year-old, but it's coming from one who sounds 12. Bieber can carry a tune, yes, but he rarely does so for 30 seconds without at least one burst of shrillness. At times, he sounds like Fergie battling strep throat (this happens usually when he sings lower, which has the practical effect of a kid on the phone trying to impersonate his father to call out sick to school). I understand that pop music has a long legacy of promoting precociousness in kids, but, if you haven't noticed, "Baby" is no "I Want You Back." The novelty of kids spouting love platitudes and miming heartache has run its course, and there's something about Bieber's shtick that strikes me as desperate. His team really, really wants to hammer home that this silly little person is a heartthrob and they're so concerned with authenticity that he's billed first in the writing credits of all 10 of My World 2.0's songs (at least, according to Wikipedia). Maybe his tween fanbase is lovestruck enough to buy that, but I find it all very implausible.

But it's not impossible. Who knows, really, how much input Bieber had in all this? There is something authentic about him puffing out his maturity. It's been a long time since I was Bieber's age, but I do remember thinking back then that I was way older, more sophisticated, more knowledgeable and more capable than I actually was. That, I suspect, is a constant mark of teenagehood, a thread through generations. I'm not sure if all the details are perfect here, that the illusion of being grown among 15-year-olds necessarily manifests itself in pleading for dreams to be made into reality or lacing girls with pearls, but the degree of ridiculous seems about right coming from the teenage mouth. Bieber is then an everyman of his age bracket, one who reminds everyone that getting older has its perks.

None of My World 2.0's lines are more telling than, "This life’s too long, and this love’s too strong." Only someone all of it ahead of him would call life "long." And really, viewed from that perspective, My World 2.0 is his juvenilia, just a trifling document of transition (that it is indistinguishable from all other Top 40 fare in 2010 really makes its of-the-moment status conceptually perfect). Either this kid will go on to Timberlakeian heights or find a bin to call home in the backstreet. Time will tell, but either way we'll look back and laugh. Given how cringe-inducing one's youth can be in retrospect, I'd say the kid's doing pretty well for himself already.

My cat the stupid-head

I recently discovered that a great way to get Winnie to stop begging for whatever I'm eating (in this case, carrots) is to merely present him with the hand that I'm not eating with. That is distraction enough, it turns out. Very, very intelligent animal.

I know that this is just further confirmation of what we already know (Winston is a dolt). Whatever. I like feeling justified.

Naduawful

Naduah learned about a cardinal sin of ANTM the hard way:

Thou shalt not forsake thy bleached eyebrows under any circumstances. They are a gift from God. Your renovated body is a temple blessed by Lord Tyra.

Whatchu smokin' 'bout, Whitney?

I know that taking someone's words out of context, chopping them up and rearranging them is kind of cheating (virtually anyone saying anything can sound funny with such treatment), but fuck it -- sometimes you just gotta entertain yourself. And so I did:

Granted, if the video source weren't LOL-full in the first place, I wouldn't have been so inspired. This really just consolidates her weirdness. I didn't put the "onion soup" or non-scary costumes or put the jazz hands in her mouth! Also, she seems to be having a great time, so I guess I'll be pounding B-12 this weekend at whatever rager I inevitably find myself at.

I think this might be the first video I've seen where the many YouTube captions that get it wrong...

 

...are about as coherent as the ones that (mostly) get it right...

 

The Monster's Christmas OR Childhood rediscovered

I would like to introduce you to your new (and my old) favorite song:

I think that works quite well out of context, but if you must know what the hell is going on...

Album catch-up (March 2010 edition)

I've been keeping up with new music releases of this abysmal year in pop so far (Taio Cruz hit No. 1? Kill me now.), but I've fallen behind in writing about them. Here's a batch of views that marks the start of an attempt to reconcile the two...

Ludacris Battle of the Sexes

Egocentrism runs so deep in hip-hop that anyone openly considering the point of view of another deserves a pat on the back. It’s so frequently misogynistic, too, that a man considering a woman’s point of view deserves two. And so two pats are all Ludacris gets for Battle of the Sexes, a concept album that fails primarily because it lacks strife. Luda says, “Drop it like it’s hot,” and his anonymous arsenal of women willing to pose as his hoes ask, “How low?” In the somewhat hypnotically minimal single “My Chick Bad,” a metaphor-deficient Nicki Minaj concurs with the titular statement by comparing herself to Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees. (‘Cause they’re bad, get it? ) Some sniping in a song-length radio call-in interlude aside, the biggest battle here comes via Monica who sings about not being able to live with or without her object of desire (Luda, I guess?), but then that battle seems to occur mostly internally, anyway.

Any turn that could produce juicy results is zigged instead of zagged: Luda’s ego is too big to bring on a foil that would contest his claims in “I Do It All Night.” Even worse is when he gets around to taking a progressive stance like, "If men sleep around we some playas but for women they be sayin', ‘Hey ho,’" it turns out that he at least passively agrees with the sentiment – he leaves it to Lil’ Kim to argue the counterpoint, and even though she’s as obvious as a pasty, she’s the best thing about this album.

It’s an even bigger shame that the only thing Battle has going for it is its failed concept – musically, it’s the same old 808’s and breaks, and lyrically Luda sounds like he just doesn’t give a fuck anymore. His chick “rides that dick and handles that liquor,” doesn’t need a horse or a saddle (“I’mma give you this dick to ride”) and otherwise sucks his dick at every turn (at least metaphorically). Said chick (whomever she is on whatever track) tends to be at lock horns with his perspective at best. What a dull battle to behold.