Radio Rant: Rihanna ft. Drake – “Work”

Posted on March 24, 2016 by bgibs122

Hello, and welcome to Radio Rants. Put your mind to work on this one.

Here we are, almost at the end of Q1 for 2016, and two of the year’s most speculated “will they/won’t they?” albums are already out (ish): Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo and Rihanna’s ANTI. And what’s more, both these albums feature truly compelling music that’ll live long passed this year. How lucky we are to be alive right now. ANTI in particular has proved to be rewarding, including speculation about which of these unexpected turns was going to be the album’s big hit. Was it going to be the doo-wop soul song? What about the un-Mustardwave DJ Mustard track, or the arty R&B one? Nah, turns out hits aren’t always surprises: ANTI‘s first hit is the song with a Drake feature.

“Work” is technically ANTI‘s lead single. In case you missed it in January, “Work” came out early on the 27th with ANTI itself out that night, quickly eclipsing any discussion of the song as a standalone. What’s lost in the shuffle now is that half a day where “Work” was all we had for ANTI, and people could not get their heads around this song. Hype for a Rihanna banger was arguably at an all time high, and here she was dropping a slack, dancehall and patois filled, unhurried song that doesn’t sound like nearly any Riri single preceding it. It threw tons of fans off. It threw me off on the first listen, but honestly, I’ve always thought “Work” worked.

Getting into “Work” doesn’t require managing your expectations as much as it does recalibrating them. Rihanna single from, say, “Only Girl (In the World)” onward have been designer, speaker-destroying blockbusters; something like “Where Have You Been?” is still going to sound fit to fill a stadium when you hear it on the PA at Walgreens. “Work” comes from somewhere else entirely: with its gently thumping bass, enveloping synths, dancehall beat and flourishes, it’s a song that isn’t meant to club you over the head with sound as much as it’s meant to pull you into its own rhythms and bounce. Producer Boi-1da, a guy whose rise is inextricably tied to Drake’s, is great at this kind of inviting, electronic introspection. “Work”‘s not a revolution, but a revelation.

While that beat is part of why “Work” works, it lies at Rihanna’s feet to make the song hit home. More than anything, she sounds natural and unguarded here, which makes a whole lotta sense for “Work” when you check the lyric sheet. “All that I wanted from you was to give me/Something that I never had” isn’t supposed to come out with the same force as “Bitch better have my money” and the less showy performance is what puts “Work” above, like “You Da One.” And then there’s that hook, which is just fun. Turn that repetition over in your mouth and try not to smile or get it stuck in your head after the first full chorus; it’s just so playful. The repetition’s great, and by using Caribbean terms and Patois, the song becomes more personal (all of which are so vital that “Work” sounds kind of stupid without them).

While Rihanna and the beat sound better and better, Drake’s verse on “Work” just gets weirder and sillier the more I hear it. A big chunk of that comes down to timing: Drake is in full “I’m a trust fund, baby you can trust me” singy Drake mode here, as opposed to the last year he’s spent as bearded, buff, mean Drake. Not only is it a switch in personas, but lyrically (“If you had a twin, I would still choose you”–Aubrey, you charmer) and melodically his verse on “Work” feels like a weak regression; I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it comes out that this was an old Take Care verse dusted off. I suppose you could make the argument that this clumsiness is by design since Rihanna is singing about longing for a deeper connection with the sex, while Drake’s verse is the lyrical equivalent of “wyd?” but that doesn’t mean I’m satisfied listening to it.

As of writing this, “Work” is entering its second month at number one. It debuted in the top ten, but as with everything ANTI, it was up in the air as to where it would go once the “OMG NEW RIRI” sheen wore off. But, the song’s proved to have serious staying power since then, and one negligibly clunky Drake verse aside, I like having it around. “Work” also represents a step forward for Rihanna as an artist. It’s worth noting that she started in the mid-’00s heyday of commercial singles before pop had to sound personal, and she’s been dinged as time’s marched on for not bringing any personality. By comparison, the Rihanna we see on “Work” might not be “the real her” necessarily, but it’s still more personable than most of her previous output. It’s growth, and still sounds good. “Work” is the sound of new ideas in the air.

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Mini-Album Review Roundup: Future, Pinegrove, Saul Williams, and Animal Collective

Posted on March 11, 2016 by bgibs122

Future – EVOL
Atlanta rapper Future has put out 7 full length mixtapes/albums in the last year and a half. EVOL (no relation) is his second release of 2016, and he’ll probably have another tape on DatPiff by the time you finish reading this paragraph. While he’s spent this run firmly entrenched in his cavernous, drugged out, lean-soaked, trap sound, him and in-house producers Metro Boomin and Southside push in a different direction with each release so that each project has a distint identity. EVOL doesn’t venture outside Future’s heel persona–“Xanny Family” is about him and three women who don’t speak English getting high as shit and fucking, which might be the most Future thing ever–but it’s polished, confident, and light on its feet in a way that DS2 wasn’t. That album was out for domination, all concussive beats and piledriver deliveries that left a purple, hazing crater in its wake, while by-numbers (but still great) EVOL cuts “Ain’t No Talk” and “Maybach” temper that raw power with poise. It’s album that flexes its muscles instead of assaulting you with them.

EVOL‘s got variety, too. The horns in “Little Haiti Baby” are a great flourish, as is the sparser, plinking beat to the spitting “Photo Copies.” Elsewhere “Lie to Me” veers delightfully close to an R&B pop jam, and “Fly Shit Only” has a decadent guitar hook straight out of 80s rock. Meanwhile, it’s not hard to imagine the Weeknd assisted “Low Life” as a single. Even with some stumbles–“Seven Rings” and “Program” are redundant and the whole album is still a little too singular–EVOL does enough different for Future to still be rewarding on multiple listens. Who knows when his current streak will end, but so long as he’s coming out with replay friendly material like this, I won’t complain.

Pinegrove – Cardinal
It’s always a treat when the albums you fall for are ones you’ve never heard of. So it goes for New Jersey’s alt-country outfit Pinegrove and their new record Cardinal. Cardinal‘s been something of a word-of-mouth success, and it’s easy to see why: at 8 songs in half an hour, the record is an almost too-quick listen, and it’s produced with the warmth and intimacy of a live performance. Opener “Old Friends” properly introduces you to Evan Stephens Hall’s yearning, nervous vocals and the band’s twangy instrumentation, and “Cadmium” highlights the emotional range of both. For me, though, the album doesn’t take off until third song “Then Again,” whose rollicking chorus goes off like an R.E.M.-meets-Avett-Brothers bomb following the building tension through the album so far. It’s just an incredibly likeable song, even with its Stipe-ian inscrutability.

While Cardinal as a whole isn’t breaking any musical barriers–I’d argue it’s subtly a fantastic guitar record–a large part of why it’s great comes down to how tuneful it is. “Aphasia” shows this best with its interplay between that swooning chord progression, rise and fall melody, and backing harmonies. Those same qualities, present throughout all of Cardinal, shine through especially bright again on the emo-tinged, cathartic “Visiting” and on penultimate climax “Size of the Moon.”

The album ends with “New Friends,” capping off a half-hour of uncertainty and hesitance (“Aphasia” is named after a speech disorder, after all) with resolution in the face of the unknown. The song sounds more stable than anything else here, at one point even asking “What’s the worst that could happen?” It feels like the first time personal success is possible on Cardinal, and after spending a month with this record, I wish the same for Pinegrove itself.

Saul Williams – MartyrLoserKing
Poet/musician/artist/actor Saul Williams described MartyrLoserKing as “the last fuck I have to give,” which is a better one-liner for this political protest record than any of us would come up with. Williams has been making these quasi-genreless (hip-hop meets rock meets soul meets electronic) records since before genre cross-pollinating records were sold at Urban Outfitter, and MLK is one of his strongest. Much of that comes down to the method of attack: eschewing the lumbering productions of his past records, Williams opts for lighter, more varied, and concussive beats here that improve his own vocal dexterity and give each song their own sonic identity. The beats, be it the somber piano loop on “Horn of the Clock Bike” or scorched earth Nine Inch Nails electro-rocker “Ashes” (NIN mastermind Trent Reznor produced Williams’ 2008 The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust), feel as cerebral as Williams’ lyrics.

The most potent material is the most percussive, especially around the album’s first half. Williams’ dexterity is demonstrated best on “Think Like They Book Say,” where the drums hit in a flurry under heavy bass, synths, horns, and his own furious cadences and chants. It’s a blunt instrument of a song, but incredibly effective. A labored hacker metaphor threatens to derail “The Bear/Coltan as Cotton” and “Burundi”, but the two arguably overcome it thanks to fiery performances (“Burundi” gets a backing vocal assist from Warpaint vocalist Emily Kokal). The aforementioned “Ashes” is also a keeper, ditto for slowburning, clap-and-chant looping post-punk highlight “The Noise Came From Here.” If you want to hear Williams in slam prophet mode, there’s “All Coltrane’s Solos” at once, where him and Haleek Maul just go off over a buzzing beat.

Even if MartyrLoserKing arguably has more songs than it does ideas (“Roach Eggs” throws off momentum the album never records), the highlights here are worth revisiting. Williams reputation as a fantastic poet is well-earned, and in a year that’s politically exhausting already, sentiments like “Protect and serve/Your bullets won’t deliver the last word” and “Fuck your history teacher, bitch, I’ve never been a victim” are gratifying in a defiant, “fuck them for being wrong” type of way. Williams might be down to one measly fuck to give, but if MLK is any indication, a lone Saul Williams fuck is apparently worth a dozen normal ones.

Animal Collective – Painting With
A week or two back, I went with some friends to Cincinnati’s 21c Contemporary Art Museum. One of the exhibits I saw was a looping video of a naked black woman in knee socks reciting the lyrics to “Hey Mickey” while standing in a 70’s wood panel living room.

I’m not sure I got it exactly, but it set off my bullshit detector far, far less than Painting With does. Experimental psych pop outfit Animal Collective have always prided themselves on being weird, but this record is full of enforced quirk. They sample Golden Girls! They brought dinosaur projections and a kiddie pool to the recording studio! The lead single is a portmanteau of Florida and an art movement steeped in gimmicky weirdness for its own sake (*cough*)! And this dippy presentation isn’t even “FloriDada” or the album’s biggest issue. That would be the fact that Painting With is literally a headache to listen to.

After about twenty seconds of its four-minute run time, “FloriDada become a swirl of manic programmed drums, stretched and clipped synths, sound effects, and bounced call and response vocals for. And that claustrophobic, incessant clatter is the near entirety of Painting With‘s sound. Frantic, wide-eyed psych can be effective in bursts, but the album never relents over 12 songs in 41 minutes; when “Natural Selection” fires up halfway through, you’re already thinking “Not again.” For an album with this much stuff on it, very little sounds distinct even on repeated listens: the vocals, synths, samples, and drums rarely coalesce for a full song. The end result is an album that sounds like a ProTools project being kicked down a rather long flight of stairs.

Painting With isn’t entirely without pleasures, though. The interplay on the lurching “Lying in the Grass” works pretty well, and when the album finally finds some chill on “Golden Gal”, its touted Beach Boys influence shines through. There are fulfilling stretches on “The Burglars” and “On Delay”, and even though it marks the point where Painting With gets exhausting, that intro to “Natural Selection” is enjoyably spastic. But these aren’t enough to make the record worthwhile. Animal Collective’s always used their loudness for some greater purpose–say what you will about Centipede Hz but at least its had a point to its abrasiveness–and I can’t find one on Painting With. Its noise is just noise, and it won’t blow your mind.

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Album Review: Kendrick Lamar – untitled unmastered.

Posted on March 7, 2016 by bgibs122

When the inevitable 2010’s nostalgia kicks in, you can expect to read about the antiquated “surprise album release” on your iLid in between content pieces like “17 Social Networks You Probably Tried for a Month” and “Which Doomed Reboot of an 80s/90s Property Are You?” Even a scant two years after Beyonce made everyone lose their shit, the surprise release feels played out: sometimes you get If You’re Reading This… or a decent Wilco LP, sometimes you get a bad U2 album or duped into paying attention to Tyga. 2016’s already seen a pair of exhausting surprise releases itself with Rihanna’s ANTI finally dropping after nearly a year of “any minute now” anticipation, and the borderline performance art that’s been the The Life of Pablo release.

Yet, for untitled unmastered. the tactic makes perfect sense. From the title to the track names (“untitled 03| 05.28.2013”) to that “musty recording studio wall” green for the cover art, every non-musical aspect of the project is as unassuming as possible. And I think “project” is going to be the term I stick with for untitled unmastered.: although true it’s a collection of To Pimp a Butterfly demos, it’s more thought out than a demo comp with its own arc, from fiery beginning to interlude to sprawling 8 minute penultimate song to relatively straightforward conclusion (those same traits DQ it from mixtape status, where rappers tend to chase down every idea they have). At the same time, though, this is easily a looser creation than any of Lamar’s albums.

This is, to put it shortly, a really good look for Lamar. For everything great you can say about To Pimp a Butterfly, it sometimes felt like an album designed to avoid surface pleasures; even the more straight ahead tracks featured either slippery flows or were bookended by narrative conceits. untitled unmastered, meanwhile, calls more to mind those swing for the fences live performances, and not just because “united 03”, “untitled 05”, and “untitled 08” draw from his Colbert Report, Grammy verse, and Jimmy Fallon stints respectively. It’s because while all the jazz elements are still there, this project is about rapping first. Weird come-on intro aside, “untitled 01” is just Lamar rapping about the apocalypse with enough fury and desperation to make you think he’s seen it live, and it’s just thrilling to hear him go off. Lamar even sounds like he’s enjoying himself.

That’s another thing about untitled unmastered.: it’s the only Kendrick Lamar release that could credibly be described as “fun.” The project mostly fixates on insecurities, truth, and gets highly emotional, but also gets viciously sarcastic (“The salary, the compensation, tripled my cock size”) and downright funny at the same time. There’s a stretch in “untitled 02” where he blatantly apes Drake’s high-pitched “watch me stretch out this rhyyyyyme on every liiiiine” flow in a way that takes all the heat out of it and makes Drake sound ridiculous. It’s a blindside on a song about the push-pull between living rich and the grim realities of Compton, and damn near hilarious as a result. Lamar gets more mileage out of the recurring, dead-panned “PIMP PIMP……hoorayyy” chant than he ought to, as well. But the lightest part of the project is without a doubt the last few minutes on “untitled 07,” which is just Lamar and some friends mucking around in the studio over some guitar licks and parts of a hook that came up earlier. So much of the guy’s career has centered on his Hip-Hop Messiah status that it gets tiring; a few minutes of jokes goes a long way. I thought it was a drag on the otherwise great first two parts of “untitled 07” at first, but it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite parts of the project.

These moments of levity make the emotional center of “untitled 05” hit that much harder. Over somber jazz, Lamar, Punch, and Jay Rock unpack some of the awful shit they’ve done or considered, doubts in their abilities, grief, and anger. Lamar’s first verse–the one that oscillates between drunken soul-bearing and revenge fantasy, and was debuted at this year’s Grammy’s–is the one that hits hardest, mostly because for once the ambiguous date on the track could mean something. The track is subtitled “9.24.2014,” and “Why you wanna see a good man with a broken heart? Once upon a time I used to go to church and talk to God” means a hell of a lot more when you consider what might have broken a lot of hearts around that time. Add in mournful sax and piano, a head-tripping bassline from Thundercat, and Anna Wise’s great hook and you’ve got a downright compelling song.

Not that untitled unmastered. lacks for quality. Surprise releases can look gimmicky, but it really was great to hear new Kendrick Lamar tracks without the weight of expectations. And, by releasing a low-stakes/high-reward cut like this, he’s probably dialed back some of the hype for whatever his next full length will be. Right now, I keep gravitating toward “untitled 08”, which first appeared on Jimmy Fallon. I find it fascinating because it’s still Lamar in full try-hard mode (I’ve written before about his inability to sound casual), but over that shuffling Michael Jackson beat, he’s got a potential radio single. If he’s sitting on more like this, who knows where he could go next?

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Album Review: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – This Unruly Mess I’ve Made

Posted on February 29, 2016 by bgibs122

You almost want to feel bad for Macklemore All dude wanted to do was pop some tags, make sure his gay uncle could get married, and sell a few records DIY style. But, once 2012’s The Heist caught on, he found himself besieged on nearly all sides by conversations about appropriation, race, and privilege that only intensified after his Grammy wins over Kendrick Lamar and his earnest-but-tone-deaf response afterward. The guy went from a likable cult rapper to mainstream insurgent to a punchline all in the same album cycle. He’s spent the last few years internalizing these criticisms, nowhere more obviously than on “White Privilege II”, but still gets solidly hated on. Yet, for how much has been written about Macklemore’s place in our culture, and what that tells us about how we deal with racism, privilege, appropriate, gay rights, and authenticity, I feel like something important’s been lost in the mix about the man himself.

Namely, that Macklemore just isn’t that good an artist.

Now, let me be clear: this is not the same thing as being outright bad. Macklemore’s got a good eye for an idea and approach, a pliable flow, and near superhuman levels of humility. He is, above all else, a solidly competent rapper whose never rapped a word he didn’t believe. Where he faceplants spectacularly is in execution on every level: from one bad line to botched delivery to a tonally confused album, the Mack has a borderline pathological inability to hold it together during long stretches.

For example, This Unruly Mess I’ve Made starts with impotent Grammy/awards show/celebrity culture takedown “Light Tunnels”, and ends with the similarly self-serious “White Privilege II.” You’d think these would bookend a deep album, but the songs proceeding “Light Tunnels” are a silly ditty about mopeds (“Downtown”), a joke track (“Brad Pitt’s Cousin”), and a throwback to Mack’s days as a teenage graffiti artist (“Buckshot”). Point of fairness, the album pivots back to some serious tracks about addiction and overmedication in America after that, but even then, you’ve got chump YouTube video bullshit like “Dance Off” sprinkled in to throw off the tone. Macklemore’s at his best when he balances the goofy/serious impulses into something human.

This is why songs like “Downtown”, “Buckshot”, and “Kevin” work well enough. True, two of them are thematically similar to Mack’s biggest hits–“Downtown”, a campy, joyful mess celebrating frugality, is the album’s “Thrift Shop” while the soulful, political-through-personal-narrative “Kevin” is its “Same Love”–but those tracks sound great because Macklemore sounds at ease, plus the assists from Leon Bridges, Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee, Grandmaster Caz, and Foxy Shazam singer Eric Nally certainly help. “Kevin” in particular could come off as mawkish (“Till he’s walking ’round the city looking like a mannequin” is some entry-level writing), but it’s passionate enough and produced well enough that it transcends After School Special status. “Buckshot”, a boom-bap throwback featuring a killer KRS-One verse, is the most outright fun Mack’s ever sounded as he plays with different flows and raps with his chest puffed all the way out. These songs feel like Macklemore songs, not “Macklemore trying to be x” songs.

When you can hear Macklemore trying to be something–Important, Funny, Introspective, whatever–that’s when things fall apart. More often than not, the writing is the problem; Mack’s pen can’t match his ambitions. When he wants to be sentimental on New Dad track “Growing Up” or lay into Hollywood on “Light Tunnels”, he doesn’t offer any new or clever insights and ends up sounding trite (new dads are worried about messing up, paragon of sincerity Macklemore finds Hollywood kind of bullshit; who knew?). When he leans all the way in on humor for “Brad Pitt’s Cousin” or “Let’s Eat”, it’s corny in the worst way possible. Other times, delivery is the problem: “St. Ides” and “The Train” are just fine, but Macklemore’s so quiet on these tracks I have to think he had to take his newborn with him to the recording booth.

Another recurring problem is Mack tends to bleed into and get dunked on by his guest verses. He sounds pretty good on “Buckshot”, but KRS-One effortlessly grabs the spotlight. Chance “Second steal this month” the Rapper shows up for highlight “Need To Know”, and Macklemore’s fairly weak verse (“I only think about my come-up, capitalism!”) imitates Chance’s manic style without nearly as much substance. You get the feeling this was a collaborative track since both guys trade off on the hook, but the result is a Chance song with a Macklemore feature. But that’s still more generous than what happens on “Bolo Tie”: Mack spends most of the track almost convincingly angry–especially on that “Motherfucker you ain’t my accountant” line–but then YG shows up on the last verse/hook and just bodies him in terms of venom. Again, it’s not that Macklemore’s bad, but he tried to buffet credibility with artists who underscore his weaknesses.

It’s essential to remember this is a Macklemore and Ryan Lewis project. Lewis isn’t a cutting edge innovator, but he’s rock solid at instrument-based beats and lush productions that are surprisingly intricate. He’s got a consistency his MC would die to have: that stomping, triumphant production is at least half of why “Downtown” succeeds, and his tuneful, warm beats save the lesser tracks here from total mediocrity. It’d be great to see him work with a more capable performer–maybe he’ll show up on Leon Bridges’ or Chance’s next project.

This Unruly Mess I’ve Made saves its most unruly mess for the end: “White Privilege II.” There was talk at the song’s release that maybe it would make more sense within the context of the album, but it really doesn’t. After an uneven and milquetoast but genial record, this loosely structured, socially conscious freakout somehow comes off more left-field than it did as a standalone. It ends the album on a serious, but musically shaky note.

Like its creator, This Unruly Mess I’ve Made ends in disappointment: neither terrible nor deserving of hate, but flounders under its own expectations. I mentioned that it has its own “Thrift Shop” and “Same Love.” Tellingly, it’s missing a “Can’t Hold Us”: a chance to throw its worries to the wind and just run free. I respect Macklemore’s dedication to chasing his own vision, and maybe a project this conflicted and insecure was something he needed to get out of his system (if nothing else, I promise it’ll lower his media profile). But that doesn’t make it engaging. The title gets it right for two out of three: Macklemore made it, and the album is indeed a mess. But unruly, it ain’t.

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