Tag: hip hop

9 Tyler the Creator: Igor

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

Why are you so frequently an absolute dick? Why do you find doing bad things so appealing, yet find admitting and explaining these bad things to other people so disagreeable? Why do you avoid being nice and doing simple nice things for people? Oh, that’s right, it’s just the way you are, isn’t it?

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“Giving a shit would be so out of character…”

 

And when did you realise that this was ‘the way you are’? When you were in your early 20s? When you turned 18 and realised that now you could legally buy alcohol there was really no need to grow as a person now you could just be drunk every waking hour*? Maybe when you were 13 you realised all the cool kids didn’t pay much attention to being nice and instead sniffed glue next to the school bins and talked about how amazing football was, so you realised that would be the direction to go in for the next twenty years or so. Maybe, when you were a six year old your mother rolled her eyes as she remarked how little you liked Brussels sprouts and challenging systematic injustices, so you subconsciously noted that was your personality. I wrote about the difficulties in truly changing yourself, or even slightly altering your perceived personality, in my Govier review, so, I dunno, maybe this post will just rehash those same ideas but just in a slightly less funny way. I mean, I don’t think it will, but there’s really no way of knowing at this point. It’s gonna be fun to work out though! MORE AFTER THE JUMP!! HIT THAT SUBSCRIBE BUTTON AS HARD AS YOU CAN!!! VALIDATE ME!!!! VAAAAAAAAAALIDAAAAAAATE MEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

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Entry #5 Future: Mask Off

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Phew, that last entry was a bit of a mess, wasn’t it? Barely mentioned the (excellent) song and just flew off into TMI land. It won’t be the last time that happens, I’ll often have something to get off my chest that I feel can’t wait until December, but I always feel that there has to be some overarching ‘point’ to each entry and this series is literally the only outlet I have for that. At least until I get around to starting ‘Sing of the Thrill’ [TITLE TO BE CONFIRMED], my long promised/threatened King of the Hill episode by episode retrospective that’s currently the second most eagerly anticipated literary operation behind George RRRRRR Martin’s ‘No, No, No, This is What Was Supposed to Happen!’. To make up for Entry #4, this time around I’m actually just going to talk about one of the greatest songs ever for a thousand words or so, all tangents and flights of fancy will be kept to an absolute minimum, and if anything I’ll be undersharing, yeah? We cool? We cool.

This post contains a lot of information cribbed from Simon Reynolds’s fantastic Pitchfork article from last year. I might call him a ‘contributor’, but the fact is that he’s very likely to sue me for royalties once the money starts rolling in.

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101 Kevin Gates: Isiah

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

My contacts in the hip hop community

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warn me that ‘Kevin Gates; is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to uninspiring anf unmemorable rap names

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I have been reliably informed that the days of exciting nom de plumes such as Old Dirty Bastard, Tyler the Creator, Slap-de-Wit the Immortal Instigator and Watch My Dicky Leg are over

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‘Nom de plume’ in French literally translates as ‘the name of plumage’, as it is common for Gallic birds to have separate names for when they are fully-feathered, as Napoleon thought it obscene that ‘le disgustient pink merdes’ be attributed the same name when they are all naked and disgusting. For example, a plucked chicken body, the like of which you’re likely to buy in Le Tesco, is called ‘poulet’, while the proper, fully feathered beauty that you’re likely to decapitate to test urban legends down at the local farm is referred to as ‘ooh la la! Les pompe poulet de cheeky cheeky plume plume!’

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My contacts in the hip hop community assure me that I shall really notice the sea change in 2017, where I’ll see new releases by ‘Geoff Turnbull’, ‘Paul Johnson’ and ‘Stuart’. Remember Stuart? Well he’s dedicated four tracks to you on his debut rap album, maybe now you’ll give him the time of day? He knows that he’ll never replace your real Dad, but your Mother loves Stuart very much, and Christmas is going to be a lot easier this year if you at least acknowledge his presence

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callback

Kevin Gates isn’t even his real name! It’s like me releasing my dope debut mixtape as Alexander Furnkwith

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My rap name would be Rhyme Minister. Rhyme Minister Yeah! Rhyme Minister Ho Need Yeah!

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It’ll be a Tony Blair reference, yes, because say what you will about his politics and the blood of half a million people on his hands, he once did that hilarious Catherine Tate bit for Comic Relief, so he’s obviously a top geezer

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See? Not bothered

Perhaps the greatest strength of Mr Gates’s (is it, like, a Bill Gates reference? Because that’s just… just…) debut album proper is how much of a fully realised solo offering: almost completely free of the endless guest spots that can far too often clutter and saturate rap albums, and with every hook and chorus coming exclusively through Gates

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And ‘Isiah’ is a procession of top quality hooks, hooks you could hang Mussolini off,

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hooks you could pester Peter Pan with, a real ‘hard hook story’, it’s an album done very much ‘by the hook’, it’s like the Farrelly Brothers film ‘Hook On You’, or the Happy Mondays song Wrote for Hook…

…by hook or by crook….

…

…

…like when Kurt Angle comes out…

and all the crowd start chanting…

…

…

…’you hook’…

…

…

…OK, I’m done…

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It’s just a shame that such a singular demonstration of Gates’s indisputable talents couldn’t have perhaps strayed a little from standard well crafted hip-hop, and no matter how fantastic its heights are, the lack of anything unique and unusual can make the record’s already testing length seem to especially drag

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‘She got me like Michael/Jackson, Jordan, it don’t matter to me’. See, that distinction really would matter to me…

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Bollocks… https://twitter.com/jamesknightbad

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oral2

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 A small but pleasant pronunciation +5

Also, I don’t know why, but I was very impressed by the correct apostrophe usege in the title of Thought I Heard (Bread Winners’ Anthem)

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As further tribute to Prince

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I think points should be awarded for any artistic license taken with spelling (not grammer though, that shit’s biblical!!), so Kevin has to be applauded for Kno One. Is it meant to be ‘know one’, as in ‘I used to know one chap who refused to acknowledge the existence of Macedonia’, or ‘no-one’, as in ‘no-one has ever been to Macedonia, so why are we putting so much trust into so called ‘experts’?’? Either way, it’s equally wrong and so equally right

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‘You the only one that my dick could get hard for/I’m confused, what the fuck you want my heart for?’ That line has to be worth a good

8 Prince Points

Metacritic: +81

Ah, come on now….

Length 63 minutes –17

Best Lyric: ‘Bad motherfucker, God complex/Motivate your ass, call me Malcolm X’ +1

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total 70

Pics stolen from:

https://intl.target.com/p/kevin-gates-islah/-/A-50489578

https://www.usbornebooksathome.co.uk/catalogue/catalogue.aspx?cat=1&area=ED&subcat=EDD&id=7608

https://www.petful.com/grooming/why-do-cats-lick-each-other/

https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-14930800-stock-footage-woman-ticking-off-grocery-list-in-grocery-store.html

https://grayciebay.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/the-journey-of-a-plump-chicken/