78 Lil Yachty: Nuthin’ 2 Prove

Dec 2, 2018Dec 2, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 7 Comments

Longtime readers of this blog (hi, Mum!*) will know I have a bit of an obsession with Lil Yachty. I honestly think he’s a fascinating figure who has the sufficient lack of self-awareness and disregard for the supposed former statesman and accepted tropes of his genre that he could potentially create something very special. His sound is obnoxious, flagrantly disrespectful and nonchalantly artless. But then, I’m a depressingly old white idiot: the sound of 2018 should sound borderline offensive to me! Lil Yachty is 21 years old, he’s already released one stone cold classic song (fight me) and a patchy and imperfect debut album that nonetheless showed flashes of the buoyant/obnoxious/genius/overjoyed style that is all his own and that could see him take over the world before too long, to the fabulous irritation of old farts everywhere. Whether you like it or not, this was evolution and it was frickin’ exciting!

(*My Mum has far too much self-respect to read my blog. Only people with a base level of pitiful self-respect would ever waste time reading this shit. Yeah, I’m talking about you. Aunty Cheryl, however, loves it! She is, however, a shameless crack cocaine addict and, if I’m being completely honest, has been dead for 12 years next April)

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The Legit Bosses: Best 65 Tracks of 2017

Apr 21, 2018May 8, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 6 Comments

EDIT: a full 16 days after publishing this piece, I finally got round to making a Spofify Playlist. The best songs of 2017. In May 2018)

00 (alexanderlpalmer@hotmail.co.uk)

OK, 20th April and we’re almost done. Never apologise for your own timing: genius cannot be standardised by your plebeian calendar. Good things are always worth waiting for. Patience, motherfuckers, patience.

Remember (kayfabe) last year, when I broke the Legit Bosses down into about a million parts? Ten freaking YouTube videos every post?

That was a really dumb idea. You’re getting all 65 songs in one list this year.

There were exactly sixty five amazing songs released last year. If you believe that there were any more or less then you are either massively mistaken or just plain stupid. Listen and learn:

65 Vince Staples: Alyssa Interlude

Finding out that the voice sample explaining the pain that’s sometimes needed to inspire creativity is actually Amy Winehouse pushed this interlude into ‘AMAZING’ classification.

Barely two minutes long, but exhibiting the kind of experimental genius that was slightly lacking on the rest of the album. More of this in the future please, Mr Staples, and less of… erm…

Less of, like, whatever I said in my review. It was quite a long time ago…

64 Young M.A: M.A Intro

Freaking perfect introduction to the record, which I can’t help but shout along to the “Who dat?/Who dat?/Never who dat” intro with all the gusto and passion a middle aged white guy is legally allowed.

63 St Vincent: Los Ageless

Despite what my review may have led you to believe, not actually about my ex-wife wrongly claiming credit for my suicide.

My ex-wife read that review, by the way, and got in touch to correct a lot of my false assumptions. Yeah, I’ll definitely talk about that at some point. Make sure to click ‘subscribe’…

62 Tove Lo: Hey You Got Drugs

00 (alexanderlpalmer@hotmail.co.uk).jpg

A lovely ballad about a subject that I think is vastly underrepresented in sad songs. I may have slightly overrated it in my review of the album, which shows how relatively underwhelming the rest of the album is.

Also: invest in a comma maybe, Ms Lo?

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Stats Off To You, Sir 2017

Apr 12, 2018Apr 12, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

The Only Reason I Do This Fucking List

Yaaaay!! A statistical breakdown of 2017’s albums!! Suddenly, all those wasted evenings desperately bashing out 1000 words of utter shite on Muna or something finally comes to fruition!! I get to do a mathematical breakdown of the findings!! Kinda get tired reading more than 100 words but enjoy looking at pretty pictures? Yeah, me too…

This post is just for you!!

(number 3)

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21 EMA: Exile in the Outer Ring

Mar 24, 2018Mar 25, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

The Rejection of Comprehensive Reviews

Well, two out of three ain’t bad (I turned 34 after the song was released)

I’m not going to be able to give the next handful of albums the usual insightful and in depth investigation that by this point you’ve come accustomed to.

You see, my previous entry intensely debating the artistic choices made on St Vincent‘s recent album was just so emotionally draining, that I worry that if I shake have head over my keyboard there simply won’t be enough viscous creativity juice left to pour out over my next few reviews.

Regardless: here is Emalina McFunnel Armitage with her third solo album. It’s brilliant, for many of the reasons I pointed out in my 2014 reaction to her previous record.

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30 Alvvays: Antisocialites

Mar 18, 2018Mar 23, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

The Only Socialising You’ll Need

I like to think the 2017 Necessary Evil list has so far catered to a lot of different tastes and requirements:

You’ve had Mark Lenegan , for those who want gravelly voiced ginger reminding them of a time when rock music was really cool; you’ve had Lil Yachty, for those of you who want your hip-hop history disregarded and even defiled on top of saccharine pop beats; Lil Peep, for those of you who just want to soundtrack their own descent into drug-induced senselessness, overwhelmed by life’s cruel meaningless; Arca, for those of you who don’t really want to enjoy the music they listen to rather, have it drill its own importance into their cerebral cortex and splatter its definite artistic statement over the wall behind; and Björk, for the people who… erm… well I still haven’t quite figured out who that album’s for. Perhaps just Björk…

(…)

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32 Jay-Zed: 4:44

Mar 17, 2018Mar 23, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Poking a Hornets Nest for 444 Word

“OJ like: ‘I’m not black I’m OJ’/OK…’

Firstly, if you even mention the OJ Simpson case to me, you automatically have my full attention. Ever since I watched the astonishing ‘OJ: Made in America’ documentary (kayfabe) last year In have come to realise that the story of the trial is in fact the most important news story in America in the latter half of the 20th century*, narrowly beating Fabio getting hit by a goose in 1999 whilst on a rollercoaster at Busch Gardens, Williamsburg (I cannot stop referencing that incident). This is chiefly because I finally realised why he was nicknamed ‘The Juice’, and concluded that’s definitely the best nickname ever (again, narrowly beating Fabio, whose nickname later became ‘The Goose’). I have seriously watched the entire season maybe 10 times, and if I ever learned of a cinema showing its full 467 minutes run time in one sitting (which has been done in the past) I would run there faster than The Juice himself running to score a lineback overtime dunk (I’m still not sure what sport he played) or, if you prefer your similes to be a little fruitier, I would run there faster that OJ Simpson ran from [DELETED ON LEGAL ADVICE] after he [DELETED ON LEGAL ADVICE] in his [DELETED ON DATED REFERENCE ADVICE]. Ooooooh, you’re a saucy one, Alex!

The line at the top of this ‘review’ is from the man himself and quoted in one of many album highlights The Story of OJ.

The thing is…

#ClickBait (wait, is that one word…?)

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41 Shamir: Revelations

Mar 12, 2018Mar 23, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 7 Comments

I Bet You Think This Album’s About You

“You have a song/Which means you’re doing something wrong/Don’t think you’re special/’cause it’s about you”

On his second song from his second album* Shamir brilliantly showcases something quite perverse about the human psyche. Let’s imagine that I was once Shamir’s shitty ex-boyfriend: if I just left my clothes strewn across the hallway when getting undressed ready for bed; if I pretended to be, like, really into hip-hop as I felt it would somehow demonstrate affinity, and yet only ever listen to Lil Yachty on loop**; if every time I entered the house I’d bound over the sofa, snatch the remote from him and turn over from whatever faggy thing he was watching like ‘Narcos’ or ‘Gomorrah’ in order to immediately watch the highlights from last night’s WWE Raw (“No, Shammy***, you don’t understand! It’s being held in Chicago and, like, CM Punk is definitely going to make a comeback!”); whenever I’d finish the last of the milk I’d just put the carton back in the fridge; if I once acted surprised when he mentioned he’s black because I ‘Really, honestly don’t see colour’; if I said to friends that you ‘obviously’ didn’t vote for Trump; if I had an ‘All Lives Matter’ bumper sticker and don’t understand the problem with it; if I always had bad breath; if I was the absolute freaking worse. Then imagine if Shamir wrote a song outlining how big of a frickin’ arsewipe I was, basically just taking the 182 words above and making them rhyme (the fucking hack), and broadcast to all of his fans what a miserable waste of flabby-fucks-not-worth-giving I actually was. Have you ever thought how that would make me feel??

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44 Lil Yachty: Teenage Emotion

Mar 10, 2018Oct 19, 2018 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 14 Comments

The Teens are Revolting

A revolution doesn’t mean that things are being changed for the better. It just means that things are being changed

It’s for this reason that Donald Trump

is probably the most revolutionary American President in generations.

Barack Obama certainly wasn’t revolutionary: he was a notable and genuinely inspiring representation of the progress made in perhaps considering the possibilities of equal opportunities in the country (and by extension the western world) but aside from the colour of his skin his rise to power (best at school – notable stint at very high paid but extremely dull job – moves into politics – doesn’t do anything horrendously embarrassing for about a decade – gets good at public speaking – becomes president) and pretty much the entirety of his term in office was generally a cut and paste job from near enough every democratic president in history (Republicans are nearly exactly the same, except they claim their family owned a farm, wear cowboy hats on distinctly more occasions, and actually talk about guns rather than change the subject in fear of losing votes). He was smart, he said the right things, he wore the right suits, he never slagged off Will.I.Am on Twitter for declining record sales after he stopped working with him. Hopefully Obama’s time in office will encourage far more non-white feasible presidential candidates in the future, but right now the most revolutionary thing to come out of his presidency may be the future popularity of drone strikes.