Books on Tape, a one man project formed by Todd Drootin in 1999, made a name in the early part of the 2000s through a self described “beatpunk” sound spanning four albums. The group’s frantic approach to sampling became its signature sound. After a series of tours, Drootin put the band to rest in 2006 due to a foreboding indifference with music. Last year, while digging through old boxes, Drootin re-discovered a series of unreleased Books on Tape songs which make up “Retired Numbers”, the groups’ first release in six years.

“Retired Numbers” consists of six songs, though the album can be seen as one large tapestry with several movements. The opening song and lead single “Super Dr.” offers an immediate introduction to Books on Tape’s unrelenting, layered approach. “Have You Seen This Man?” picks up off the opening song and features an interplay between guitar/synth/vocal riff, a scrambled noise, and an acoustic guitar sample. The album never lets up from this frenetic pacing.

I find three qualities define “Retired Numbers” – first, as described above, its pacing (if I were on Twitter, I’d say something like this album is the Jeremy Lin of beatpunk sampled music). Secondly, the incorporation of sound in all forms which add depth to each song. Thirdly, storytelling. BoT switches sonic storylines at will, at times within a few seconds into an idea. BoT unapologetically combines these three aspects. It’s difficult to describe specific songs in a usual manner. The final song, “Safety First”, begins with guitar chords, and slowly incorporates drums, a vocal track, and a synth line before morphing into a separate song 50 seconds in. That’s how it is.

Books on Tape retired in 2006. Six years is an eternity in anything, much less music where new genres and movements seem to pop up on a daily basis. Perhaps the most significant theme of the album is that the songs were recorded in the early half of the 2000s and they do not sound out of place today. May all our past ideas be this relevant.

Download Books on Tape’s latest album “Retired Numbers” or past albums on iTunes. Like the Facebook page and of course, follow the Twitter.

Illustration by @maddisonbond

After the release of his most recent album “Life Is Good”, I did something groundbreaking: I played Nas’s discography from the end back to the start. And than a question came to me: how does an artist’s career unfold when his debut is regarded (almost) unanimously as the best album of all time in your genre?

It’s a question that after nearly 20 years is still hard to tackle, if only because it’s still hard for most to let go of the fact that Illmatic was an achievement that should be viewed isolated from the rest of Nas’s catalog, which is underrated if only because it is upheld against him as a benchmark to his debut.

It’s the cruel punishment of peaking too soon, or just simply for being the best.

This whole analysis of Nas’s career means a lot to me, if only because mid to late 1990s East Coast hip hop was my introduction into the genre — and it’s something I still hang onto today. I could care less about keeping up with new music, or knowing the lyrics to your favorite club song. It seems people just keep up with music now to be relevant in some ways. I don’t want to veer too far off and sound anti-establishment or what not — I already went through that phase when I thought swearing by Rawkus Records was some sort of declaration — I’m simply anti-poor quality.

That particular era is difficult to define, but whether it’s Pun’s “Capital Punishment”, all of Cappadonna’s guest verses on Ghostface’s debut album, those violins at the start of John Blaze, Nature spitting natural disaster rap at the start of “Banned From TV”, or that Made Men collaboration with The LOX from the Belly Soundtrack, that’s my daily rotation on the iPod.

You have to hold onto something I suppose.

The most fascinating rapper from that era for me has to be Nas.

I didn’t first hear about him from “Live At The BBQ”, I don’t think I was even in North America at that age. It was about the time when The Firm came out that I was exposed to him, and his Queensbridge counterparts whom he would later destroy and rebuild.

But seriously, I was more fascinating by “Five Minutes To Flush” than anything Nas did on that album.

I don’t have to hold onto that thought I suppose.

But once I got more familiar with Nas’s body of work, I realized that this genre of music, which was still a blank canvas to me, could be so much more. Listening to “New York State Of Mind” for the first time, I didn’t need no message board thread to tell me that I was listening to the apex of hip hop. He was going to work, painting all our canvas full, raising the bar for what music should be about.

Turns out he raised it a bit too high.

A year or so after, Nas was coming off “It Was Written” — heavily criticized because it wasn’t Illmatic (a recurring theme in Nas’s career, especially the first decade after his debut), and was planning a double album titled “I Am…Nastradamus”.

I still remember when a version of it leaked really early, the one with a handful of tracks that ended up on Lost Tapes.

If we thought “Street Dreams” and “If I Ruled The World” signaled a change in Nas’s music, this bootleg set off all alarms.

Eventually, the project was split into two albums, more profitably or what not. Think Kill Bill split into two. Same reasons.

“I Am…” was an uneven output from Nas, although when he decides to just dial it back and make a “Nas Is Like” (also, “New York State Of Mind Part. II is so underrated, especially that first verse, the end of that first verse), it makes him that much more polarizing.

Why doesn’t he just make 12 of those and call it a day? Why does he insist on working with Ginuwine, Timbaland and do songs like Dr. Knockboots (experimenting has never really served Nas right, remember “Who Killed It?”) ?

We projected all our expectations, however unrealistic and rigid onto Nas, all very unfairly I might add.

I only realize it now, but I fell into that crowd that concluded that Nas was going in the wrong direction with his music. But who as listeners are we to hold back someone from growing, from experimenting, from shifting their subject matter and persona? It was a crime for Nas to be a rapper in transition. The only crime I think he was guilty of was not being very good crossing over.

Or I just read one too many message board threads.

Of course, no discussion about Nas’s career is complete without the mention of Jay-Z, and Biggie to some extent (it’s a requirement I think).

If BIG was the street rapper who crossed over and became a huge star (Jay did the same over a larger platform subsequent), Jay came in the game, brought his own street edge and bravado with Reasonable Doubt and grew beyond just a rapper (see: businessman vs. business, man) into an entity, a brand so large that you forget he probably has as many flawed albums as Nas (Jay: I can divide too).

To summarize, BIG was what Nas could never be. Jay is who Nas wanted to be.

But Nas as himself is probably better than the two.

If so, than why does Nas’s career seems so underwhelming in retrospect. Why is he in so many ways considered a failure, a letdown?

He’s only been rapping for almost 20 years and still few rappers can stand next to him lyrically.

We might not have a fully formed view on this until he’s gone, it’s how things work. Appreciation comes after, criticism is all that exists in the present.

But we can make educated guesses.

His beef with Jay-Z was the perfect scenario in that it allowed Nas to regain his “street cred” from his fanbase. The rapper who outgrew the genre was getting took by the rapper who we always knew was the best.

Understatement: Ether was the most important record of Nas’s career.

And with his epic intro on Stillmatic, this was a sort of a Second Coming (great song by the way, one of his many from his “unreleased” catalog) for Nas. The album name (and cover) was a bold choice. Here was Nas, almost recognizing and mocking a desire to return to his Illmatic roots.

But in putting out such a competent, mostly street record in a completely different era separate from Illmatic, Nas changed the conversation and introduced this possibility: maybe there just won’t ever be another Illmatic.

It was as if this was a thought that we never ventured to entertain before this. That he must deliver a replication of his debut at least once more.

But with this change in mindset, I felt that Nas (and myself, and many fans) were finally able to or allow themselves to distance their assessment of Nas from just his debut. He was allowed to carve out another phase to his career that could work in conjunction.

His subsequent work were all above average to great. I felt both a return to his original sound and a realization of how to adapt and change as a rapper without going to extremes and making records that seemed downright uncomfortable or uninspiring (usually both).

And there’s this: trace a musician’s career through albums, and you’re bound to find criticism that overshadows their brilliance. Is this not why blogs exist? We function to point out what we don’t like, the opposite just seems to mean we’re falling in line with some mundane belief.

But in all fairness, you’re going to have to talk about Deja Vu, Silent Murder, The Foulness and all of Nas’s b-sides and unreleased records if you want to start matching discographys.

Only rappers recently brought back in hologram form can hold a candle to Nas when it comes to quantity.

Quality wise? You act like he ain’t got a belt in two classes.

All of this brings me to the release of “Life Is Good”. 20 years ago, he was a child. 10 years ago, he wore an orange valor suit with his hat cocked to the side. Today, he sits with his ex-wife’s wedding gown on his couch. If you want checkpoints, those three album cover images is a pretty simple way to get a synopsis.

This is a rapper that’s still rhyming with the same vigor and visceral precision like when he first entered.

You mean “Locomotive” isn’t a lost track from the Illmatic sessions?

At the end of the track, Nas dedicates the song to “my trapped in the 90s n*ggas”.

That’s me.

That’s us.

It’s a homage to the old days.

It’s something I still hang onto, and something that Nas is still well aware of.

And he’s still making music that reminds us of those times.

It’s not too late to appreciate him for that, and everything else he’s done for two decades.

Illustration by Maddison Bond.

In advance of the June 12th release of Rush’s 20th studio album, Clockwork Angels, Sean Highkin is taking a decidedly unfair and imbalanced look back at the career of his favorite band. Here are Part I, Part II, and Part III  if you missed them.

In the previous installment of “Wheels Within Wheels,” I pointed to Rush’s adeptness at bending rock trends to fit their sound as the chief reason why their 1980s output worked so well. Following 1987’s Hold Your Fire, the synth-layered New Wave sound they cultivated for much of that decade fell out of favor, which was probably beneficial for Rush. While that album was solid, they had begun to back themselves into a corner with keyboard-dominated compositions, and for the first time in their career lost sight of their power-trio roots. These roots would return with a vengeance on 1993’s Counterparts, but the two albums they released prior, 1989’s Presto and 1991’s Roll the Bones, occupy the wide-open time period between the death of the ‘80s bombast they embraced and the dawn of the grunge movement that would reinvigorate them. Keeping up with musical trends is difficult when there aren’t many overt ones to speak of.

What they did with Presto was make an album very similar in spirit to Hold Your Fire, but with most of the keys chopped out. What little keyboard work remained tended towards electric piano. The band brought on producer Rupert Hine, best known at that point for his work with the Fixx and the Thompson Twins, and the result was the most lightweight, jazzy album they’ve ever made. It’s the only record in the Rush canon that could ever be called “forgotten,” since the band members themselves periodically downplay its very existence. “It didn’t live up to its own potential even, never mind our potential,” Neil Peart told journalist Martin Popoff in 2004. “They’re not songs that I would look back and say, ‘this is our best work,’” Geddy Lee added.

Naturally, I beg to differ. Despite the group’s own dismissal of Presto, and its status as the least musicianly album they’ve ever recorded, it’s a record that features some of their strongest pure songwriting. “The Pass” is one of Peart’s strongest lyrical achievements, possibly even at the very top of the heap, an unflinchingly honest attempt to tackle teen suicide backed by an appropriately soaring Alex Lifeson solo. Elsewhere, “Chain Lightning,” “Red Tide,” and the title track feature particularly strong vocal melodies. “Superconductor” is notable for being the only song in history to feature the line “A strong and simple beat that you can dance to” while boasting a main riff in 7/4 time.

It’s easy to see why the band and many fans view Roll the Bones as a superior evolution of Presto’s aesthetic. It’s a more complete, cohesive album, with a few of the band’s all-time best songs (“Bravado,” “Ghost of a Chance”). But while it achieves a greater conceptual unity than its predecessor, it also goes completely overboard on the slickness. Tracks like “The Big Wheel” and “Face Up” border on Adult Contemporary, a copy of a copy of the Joshua Tree-era U2 sound they only truly reach on “Bravado.”

And then we get to the only thing in their discography whose mere existence I’ve ever found myself apologizing for: Roll the Bones’ title track, with its cloying rap section that sounded dated and hopelessly out of touch in 1991 and hasn’t been done any favors by the passage of two full decades. For some reason, Rush kept it in their setlists until 2004, with a video of a skeleton taking on the rap and creating the greatest piece of unintentional comedy they’ve ever perpetrated (the other contenders: the “Time Stand Still” video I included in the previous post, and the baffling medley of “Xanadu” and “Superconductor” they performed on the Roll the Bones tour). Reportedly, Rush’s original plan for the “Roll the Bones” rap involved a guest appearance from LL Cool J, who still had a modicum of relevance at that point and was understandably less than enthused about the prospect of rapping lines like “Stop throwing stones/the night has a thousand saxophones/so get out there and rock, and roll the bones!”

The grungy Counterparts played much more to Rush’s strengths. It was the first time since Grace Under Pressure that a Rush album truly rocked. The intricate musical interplay that dominated the last stretch of records to which the phrase “power trio” could be applied was replaced by power chords—lots of power chords. Lifeson sounds truly in his element for the first time in years, audibly salivating at the opportunity to cut loose again after a decade buried behind a wall of synthesizers. But on Counterparts, his attack is more stripped-down. The menacing “Stick it Out” and “Between Sun and Moon” display some weapons-grade riffage, while album opener “Animate” and “Leave That Thing Alone” (a sleeper candidate for the title of best Rush instrumental) introduce to the Rush palette the concept of a groove.

But while Counterparts is, musically speaking, arguably the strongest of Rush’s post-1980s albums, there’s one massive caveat. It marked the first time Peart’s lyrics delved into personal territory and explored romantic relationships, and suffice it to say that he did not take to it well. The would-be tolerance anthem “Nobody’s Hero” actually features the line “I knew he was different in his sexuality/I went to his parties as a straight minority,” and “Speed of Love” and “Alien Shore” are equally cringeworthy. Only on “Cold Fire,” a he-said/she-said number with a killer hook, does he get the balance right. It’s a shame, too, because Counterparts wastes one of Lee’s better front-to-end vocal performances on easily the worst set of songs Peart has ever written.

Although Counterparts reinvigorated the band musically, Peart himself was compelled to take this self-rediscovery even further. After being referred by former Journey drummer Steve Smith at a Buddy Rich tribute event, Peart began studying with legendary drum teacher Freddie Gruber, who radically reinvented his entire approach. The Peart whose playing is heard on 1996’s Test for Echo is a much more precise drummer, obsessed with white space rather than filling up the sheet with fills, and the new philosophy resulted in the most compelling work in many years from the man who spawned several generations of hyperactive drummers.

Unfortunately, Test for Echo also represents Rush’s unrivaled songwriting nadir. It’s their only work that can legitimately be termed boring. “The Color of Right,” “Half the World,” and “Carve Away the Stone” betray their existence in yet another time of uncertainty in the rock landscape, the immediate post-grunge/pre-garage-rock-revival years. There’s nothing remarkable about most of these songs—I’ve listened to this album an ungodly number of times, and only the stellar “Driven” and the totally out-of-character ballad “Resist” leave much of an impression.

For years, it seemed as though this was how Rush would go out. Shortly after the completion of the Test for Echo tour, Peart’s 19-year-old daughter, Selena, was tragically killed in a car accident, and his wife, Jackie, died of cancer less than a year later. Understandably, Rush effectively ceased to exist at that point, and Peart hit the road on a motorcycle journey that eventually took him to South America. This soul-searching trek is chronicled beautifully in Peart’s profoundly affecting 2002 memoir, Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, the best of five such books he’s released (all of which are well worth reading for fans and non-fans alike). Even among Rush’s hardcore fans, Peart has always been somewhat of an enigma, never seeming as eager to do ritualistic media work as his bandmates. He’s garnered a reputation as a curmudgeon and a recluse, much of which seems undeserved. The amount of personal detail he presents in his books and in periodic blog entries on his official site is anything but closed-off—he just prefers to do it on his terms. It’s understandable that he would have wanted to escape everything related to his former life when his entire family was taken away from him, but it would have been a shame if this band had never released music again.

NEXT: Peart returns from his sabbatical to record Rush’s intensely personal Vapor Trails album, which kicks off an unlikely career renaissance that includes, for the first time in their career, some form of mainstream acceptance.

Illustration by Maddison Bond.

As the 1970s turned into the ‘80s and punk, disco, and New Wave replaced arena rock at the forefront of youth culture, the giants of prog rock died slow, predictable deaths, either commercially or artistically. Yes awkwardly attempted hair metal, striking gold with “Owner of a Lonely Heart” but acquitting themselves pretty pathetically otherwise. Phil Collins replaced Peter Gabriel as Genesis’ frontman and reinvented the band as a hit machine, but much of what made them interesting in the first place got lost in translation. Kansas and Jethro Tull lost all relevance seemingly overnight and never really recovered. King Crimson made several stellar albums during this period, but Robert Fripp was becoming better known for his groundbreaking work with Brian Eno than that of the outfit that gave him his name. Chances are, if it had long hair, used odd time signatures, and had an affinity for classical-style movements and suites, it wasn’t going to survive in the Me decade.

All of which makes Rush’s output during this period all the more remarkable. The single biggest reason Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart have remained artistically vital over four decades has been their unending ability to make contemporary musical trends sound like Rush, rather than the other way around. It’s a skill that had never been truly tested in the ‘70s, because the music they were making wasn’t completely passé. On Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures, they dialed back the song lengths and upped the count of radio-friendly songs, but those albums could still be reasonably classified as both “progressive rock” and “hard rock.” Beginning with 1982’s Signals, neither of those descriptors much applied. Keyboards became the main songwriting tool, and Lifeson’s role shifted drastically. Rush became functionally a New Wave act, with more in common with the Police and the Talking Heads than Yes and Zeppelin. The Moving Pictures track “Vital Signs” predicted their shift in direction, a construction of jittery synths and Stewart Copeland-esque hi-hat work.

That approach is all over the Signals tracks “New World Man” (their only ever Top 40 hit, despite being, like, their tenth most well-known song, if that) and “The Weapon.” Lee’s keyboard capabilities never approached his virtuosity as a bassist, but his early efforts to shift the songwriting process from guitars to synthesizers resulted in some of the band’s best work. The two best songs on Signals are “Subdivisions” and “Losing It,” which are built almost entirely around keyboards but couldn’t be more different beyond that. “Subdivisions” was the high-school-outcast anthem that was basically the most inevitable song ever for Rush to write. It’s also one of the few Rush songs it’s okay for cool-conscious people to admit they like, since its lyrical content is, essentially, Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs condensed into five minutes. “Losing It,” on the other hand, is the most unblinkingly gorgeous entry in the entire Rush canon. It’s a hushed, plaintive thing with almost no guitars—it’s utterly unlike anything else they’ve ever done, and it’s also among the most powerful.

Aside from Caress of Steel and Vapor Trails, Signals is the most polarizing album in Rush’s extensive catalogue. It’s a clear dividing line between “old Rush” and “new Rush.” As Rush have added another three decades onto their output, the albums that were once ostracized by diehard fans for their New Wave transgressions are now part of the pantheon. 1984’s Grace Under Pressure is even better than Signals. Keyboards are still prominent, but Lifeson’s guitar work is back at the forefront, and his approach is radically different. The flashy solos and monster riffs of old are gone, replaced by steely, monochromatic textural playing. Lifeson hated this role, but some of his most compelling work is the color he provides for “Between the Wheels” and “Kid Gloves.” Grace is colder and darker than Signals, but the songwriting was tighter than ever. “Red Sector A” is particularly impressive from both a musical and lyrical standpoint. Like everything else by this point, it’s a Peart composition, but its tackling of Lee’s parents’ harrowing concentration-camp experience brings out one of his best vocal performances ever.

Power Windows was considerably sunnier and glossier, but no less impressive. In many ways, it’s the album Rush had been building to ever since they began integrating keyboards. It’s the ideal synthesis of the trio’s instrumental chops and newfound ear for pop melodies. “Manhattan Project” and “Marathon” are as fine of vocal hooks as Lee has ever composed, and “Territories” is the peak of Lifeson’s textural work. At the time, Rolling Stone’s David Fricke called Power Windows “the missing link between Yes and the Sex Pistols,” but a better parallel is a more contemporary one. The album was released in 1985, one year after U2’s The Unforgettable Fire, and Lifeson in particular appeared to be taking the majority of his cues from that album’s blurred aesthetic.

And then there’s “Middletown Dreams,” the single greatest song Rush have ever released. Its depiction of mundane suburban life is somehow even sharper and more vivid than that of “Subdivisions.” It makes room for a killer guitar solo and a wicked synth bridge. It’s the band’s peak as tunesmiths, and boils down the most interesting, forward-thinking period of their musical development to one six-minute piece of note-perfect pop.

Things started to reach the point of diminishing returns on 1987’s Hold Your Fire. The songs were still there, for the most part—“Mission” is one of the band’s all-time high points, and “Time Stand Still” (featuring a guest vocal from Aimee Mann) and “Prime Mover” are highly effective pop-rock. But for the first time, the keyboards started to feel gratuitous rather than groundbreaking. Where Power Windows struck a balance between the flash and the substance, Hold Your Fire tracks like “Open Secrets” and especially “Tai Shan” were bludgeoned to death with syrupy synths. For the second time in their career, they had painted themselves into a corner and needed a radical makeover to get out of it.

The so-called “keyboard era” has come to be my favorite stage of Rush’s career. Beginning with Signals, they produced four albums (three spectacular, one merely pretty good) of smart, engaging New Wave that was current-sounding but not coattail-riding. The success with which they stepped outside of every preconceived notion of what they are supposed to represent made them a better band and, eventually, allowed them to return to their former sensibilities by approaching them a different way, rather than destroying them entirely.

NEXT: Rush return to their power-trio roots with decidedly mixed results, before a tragedy brings the band to a grinding halt.

Illustration by Mary Grace Ewald

by Charles Osborn 

Three Dollar Bill, Y’All$ remains one of my top 25 or so favorite albums ever released, and it’s by Limp Bizkit. The next several hundred words will be dedicated to the justification of this seemingly egregious blow to my musical credibility, and I encourage non-listeners of this album to play it through in its entirety once, as well as already-listeners to spin that shit back loudly.

I don’t remember how culturally relevant Limp Bizkit started out its career, which was essentially when they dropped this articles namesake album, but I do remember what happened when Significant Other came out. Their second album and, depending on who you ask, probably their most identifiable, Significant Other isn’t a terrible album to my ears, even after 100 listens and years of “Holy hell, I should know better than this by now.” It has a couple of great songs on it (“9 Teen 90 Nine,” “I’m Broke), a couple generic hits (“Nookie,” “Break Stuff”), some structurally confusing entries that would later become characteristic of the band during the most pronounced stretch of their decrescendo from the public eye (“Re-Arranged,” “Show Me What You Got”), and “N 2 Gether Now,” which transcends explanation and, frankly, sound. This was Limp Bizkit’s moment in the sun: According to Wikipedia.org, Significant Other topped the “Billboard 200,” “Top Canadian Albums,” and “Top Internet Albums” (“the big three”!), and if you ask a general person to yell out a Limp Bizkit lyric, he or she will almost certainly scoff, and might even disgustedly spit on you, but you’ll eventually get something like “Nookie!” or “Break shit!” Limp Bizkit, through everything they released in this century, brought this musically poisonous reputation upon themselves. I mean, holy shit is most of their music terrible or what?

For the purpose of this review, I ask the unreasonable favor that you disregard Limp Bizkit’s discography as you know it, and maintain an open mind.

Intro

This track is about 40 seconds of vaguely religious nonsense, so I’ll use this space to offer casually that Limp Bizkit’s lyrics shouldn’t be taken too seriously under any circumstances. Maybe this discredits every positive notion I could offer about the band, but as one of their foremost supporters, even I will admit that Fred Durst is mostly just a crazy person with his lyrics. We are talking about Nu-Metal/Rap-Rock here, let’s not try to find Brian Wilson parallels nor Bob Dylan-esque complexity-thru-simplicity. Fred Durst, like 50 Cent, grew up idolizing one of the more lyrically and stylistically gifted hip-hop artists of all time in Rakim (countless examples of homage litter Durst’s lyrics, including the opening line to “I’m Broke”). Where other musical pioneers inspired countless contemporary artists to “find their voice,” Rakim seems only to have inspired Fred Durst to jack Rakim’s voice without any of its immortal flow, cadence, tempo, tone, you name it. If it weren’t 2012 and you actually owned a thesaurus in physical form, the antonym of “Rakim’s charismatic albeit monotone voice” would be “Fred Durst’s emotionally erratic scream-rap.” Rakim’s “I came in the door / I said it before / I never let the mic magnetize me no more,” which just sounded right slithering its way out of Rakim’s mouth a decade previous, seemingly inspired Durst’s lazy rhyme schemes and infantile grasp even of the most rudimentary human emotions. But I mean, what are you going to do, right?

Having exposed that arguably fatal caveat to Limp Bizkit’s musical proficiency, let’s get into the meat and potatoes of this incredibly enjoyable album.

Pollution

This song is either the album’s second or third most popular offering, and it does quite the job of setting up the rest of the album. The first minute and twenty seconds or so of “Pollution” might as well be the segmented poster-child of remaining hour or so of music. If this album is a big ol’ bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms, “Pollution” is that first feeling of “wait a minute, something isn’t right.” Get used to that feeling, because LB doesn’t plan to let up. The guitar and bass sections go quite hard, and although most of his shouts are unintelligible, Durst’s vocals actually supplement this song perfectly. As is the case with basically all of Limp Bizkit’s songs, the last minute or two of the song dictates its “quality”, and “Pollution” sets that tone by concluding with a Durst tirade during which he curses himself out. Welcome!

Counterfeit

This one’s in the running for the coveted title of my favorite Limp Bizkit song ever, the first 45 seconds of the album’s second actual song consist of Durst weirdly whispering about how someone is a fake (hopefully not literally). The latter four minutes contain Durst rapping ambiguous lyrics that could just as easily appear scribbled on a high school bathroom stall, over a spectacular bass line, before finally devolving into yet another Durst tirade set from “automatic” to “burst.” It ends with Durst beat-boxing for nearly half a minute. Overall, I prefer this song to many other LB offerings because it is relatively consistent with its tempo, and because Durst’s vocals are again more of an asset than a detriment.

Stuck

Although the first couple songs could be construed as messages to a woman or women, this one makes itself clear. Durst raps over another excellent bass line, which eventually combines with one of the more killer guitar sections of LB’s career (it’s right about in the middle of the song). After that, Durst, who asserts that there “ain’t nothin’ like a dirty bitch,” starts literally to moan about how shitty his unnamed female antagonist is, asks her why she has to be like that, and repeats himself. Most of all, though, he allows the guitar, drums and bass to do their collective job of making him seem coherent. The song ends with another strange beat-boxing scenario, which couldn’t be described as enjoyable. What can you say, sometimes a dude’s just stuck, you know?

Nobody Loves Me

The album’s first entry that falls short of its set standard, “Nobody Loves Me” is still decent in parts. To take the title literally is to make me proud, because that means you took my prior advice! This crap means nothing! Several times during the album’s fifth track, Fred Durst wonders if maybe he should “go eat worms,” negating any goodwill he may have previously cultivated with the worm community, who would soon become his assumed target fanbase. Overall, as far as Three Dollar Bill, Y’All$ is concerned, I could do without this track.

Sour

This track allows guitarist Wes Borland sporadically to show off his sweeping technique, as well as it allows Durst to speak the name of the album, declaring his foe “as real as a three dollar bill.” Chorus lyrics include “There’s no one to blame but you / Who gets the blame? Me,” which resurface almost verbatim two albums later during “My Generation” (“Who gets the blame / You get the blame, and I get the blame”). As always, paying particular attention to the track’s concluding minute, you get a sense that the album may be on its way toward mellowing out (after all, the opening lyrics to Sour are “Mellow out!”). It is the first song that ends more gently than it begins, and it indicates a lull in the album’s middle.

Stalemate

Following the end of “Sour’s” lead, “Stalemate” opens with a wacky bass line and continues into a central segment of the song that juxtaposes this momentarily unique new style with Durst’s familiar violent screaming. I find this song unnerving as a fan of extremely hard music because I feel as though the band missed an opportunity in the former half of the song to really go hard. The latter half sounds borderline Arabian to these ears, and the lack of explosive elements within the song is briefly compensated with a unique stretch of music by Limp Bizkit’s standards. Unfortunately, the last two minutes or so sound like a jumbled mess, and the song is put out of its quite lengthy misery with a smattering of jam-band crap and sustained amplifier feedback. Appropriate!

Clunk

“Clunk” is the most generic Limp Bizkit song on the album both musically and lyrically, and with its background moans, KoRn-inspired detached guitar riffs, radiobabble mumbling, basic turntablism, and relative non-ending, paved the way for the sound that would define Significant Other.

Faith

A George Michael cover, this song found popularity among some circles for its commercially palatable verses and (sorry to overuse the word) generic screaming chorus. Staying relatively faithful, no pun intended, to its original incarnation, “Faith” gives Durst the opportunity to enunciate clearly one second and to scream bloody murder the next. After screaming “Get the fuck up!” to set off the songs final chapter, it culminates finally with the most Limp Bizkit 45 seconds of music ever recorded. According to Spotify, this is the album’s most-played song currently.

Stink Finger

I have read the lyrics to this song over an over, and I’m still not sure what they mean. I know that I absolutely love the line: “Love thy neighbor? / Yeah right!” and that Durst has a stinky, stinky finger, but I can’t seem to nail the specifics. I suppose it says something about my taste in music that I can easily translate Ghostface Killah’s “Shakey Dog” into normal human English, yet I can’t understand what this asshole is saying about pissing on gates. Either way, this one and its successor, “Indigo Flow”, are each very lyrically confusing.

Indigo Flow

“Indigo Flow” seems like a shout-out song, which isn’t alien to Limp Bizkit’s discography. By this point in the album, I usually find myself sick of Limp Bizkit’s experimental garbage and wanting them to return to their hard rock style from the album’s genesis. This, I’d say more than anything, proves where LB went wrong throughout their career: they should have just stuck to the hard stuff and avoided nu-rapping. Although both “Stink Finger” and “Indigo Flow” hold up better than “Nobody Loves Me,” their placement within the album’s tracklist voids them of most of their worth, to me.

Leech

This one starts off with a driving guitar section and bass line, transfers to a frantic drum section spread out behind Fred Durst’s temporary-rapping-turned-refreshing-screams. The last 30 seconds of “Leech” feature Durst’s iconic (in my mind) scream, as well  as one of the heavier stretches of music on the entire album. My biggest complaint about “Leech” is that it is too short, which is the same complaint I have about Nas’s Illmatic, so do with that information what you will.

Everything

Sixteen and a half minutes of jamming. Whatever, bro.

Is Three Dollar Bill, Y’All$ a Limp Bizkit album? Yes. Does its title contain a rogue dollar sign? Debatable. The most important take-away from this album is that a band who would ultimately live long enough to see itself become a villain did not actually start out that way. Limp Bizkit’s legacy has already been crafted, and the band’s very name will probably remain synonymous with terrible music for years. But in 1997, when I was eight years old, this soon-to-sell-out group from northern Florida released an album whose quality I believe has been crushed beneath the weight of its successors’ lack thereof.

“Illustration” by Connor Huchton

by Jordan White 

There are two iterations of Bon Iver: there’s the Bon Iver of “For Emma, Forever Ago:” minimal, mostly acoustic yet gut-wrenching , and the Bon Iver of “Bon Iver, Bon Iver:” bombastic and near-orchestral in  nature. Both of these iterations took the stage in Tulsa on Saturday night, and both were equally mesmerizing.

Before I go any further, however, a few words must be said about the opening band, a three-piece sister group from Watford, England named The Staves.

We all have moments in life filled with such pure, raw beauty that they are forever ingrained in our memories. One of those moments, for me, was seeing the northern lights. The lights I saw weren’t the ones so often seen in magazines, waves of green or blue or purple flowing like a river in the stars, but rather wisps of pale white light streaking through the night sky. Some of the wisps looked like the pattern of a heart monitor, at first running flat but then popping up periodically. Others looked like scribbles written on the blue and black canvas of the sky, while another set of wisps moved up and down, as if they were visualizations of radio waves. And while they were all stunning individually, the most captivating sight was all of the wisps swirling into a milky white nexus. I couldn’t tell where one wisp ended and where another began.

Such were the voices of the Staves.  Each of them had an individually gorgeous voice, but the true beauty of their music was the moments when the three voices became one. It wasn’t just a simple three part harmony. Their voices flowed together so naturally that, like the northern lights I saw so many summers ago, I couldn’t tell where one voice ended and another began. One voice would enter while another would fade, then all three entered simultaneously before two could suddenly cut off, leaving just the one to finish the song. At the beginning of their set, they claimed to be a mere pallet cleanser before Bon Iver. But when their all-too brief set ended, and the crowd gave them a standing ovation, it was clear that they were, and will be, much more.

Which brings me to the main act: Bon Iver. I say act because Bon Iver’s portion of the show was not just a concert, it was a performance. Everything about the show had a touch of the theatrical: the instrument changes during or immediately after a song were like costume changes in a play, while the musical transitions were akin to scene changes. The lights and projections on stage would change with every song or even with a shift in tempo, always befitting the mood of the current song. And at the center of it all, in the roles of both director and star, was Justin Vernon, the front man of Bon Iver.

Very rarely did Vernon introduce the songs. He let the music introduce itself, the end of one song morphing into the beginning of the other. Sometimes, the transition was expected, such as “Perth” flowing directly into “Minnesota, WI,” just as it does in the album. But other transitions were less expected, and because of that, more enjoyable. As “Holocene” ended, it broke down into a cacophony of instruments, with what appeared to be little direction or pattern. The audience was left to guess what this seemingly unorganized clash of sounds could possibly lead into, only to be surprised when everything blended together to form the beginning of “Blood Bank.”

Vernon’s complete mastery of his most powerful instrument, his voice, was on full display during an intimate and gripping performance of “re:Stacks,” as he effortlessly shifted from his baritone-bass to his haunting falsetto.  “Creature Fear” perfectly incorporated Bon Iver’s new sound with the old. The opening riff, instead of being played on the guitar, was played by the trombone, while more horns, as well as a saxophone, joined in on the chorus. The continuous rise and fall of “Towers” enveloped the audience in a musical roller coaster.

It was “Skinny Love,” however, that made the evening truly special. As he did with “Creature Fear” and to a lesser extent “Beach Baby,” Vernon again blended new instruments into an old song, only this time, that instrument was the audience. Normally, I’m against the audience singing along, even when prompted by the band. But when the “my, my, my…” part of the song came around, it just felt right to sing, a feeling the entire crowd shared. There was no prompt by Vernon, yet he knew it would happen all the same. The rest of the song belonged to Bon Iver, but for those brief moments, we were as much a part of the song as Vernon and his guitar.

There’s an undeniable power in music. It has the ability to bring together those who would otherwise never meet. It can lift us up and move us in ways no other medium can.  Bon Iver’s performance, from the opening riff of “Perth” to the closing notes of “For Emma,” was an exercise in the beauty and power of music.

Illustration by Maddison Bond.

In advance of the June 12th release of Rush’s 20th studio album, Clockwork Angels, Sean Highkin is taking a decidedly unfair and imbalanced look back at the career of his favorite band. Here’s Part I if you missed it.

If Rush weren’t the antithesis of conventional rock cool, 2112 would be treated as one of the all-time great punk-rock career moves. 1975’s Caress of Steel tanked, and Mercury threatened to drop the band unless they started writing more commercial material. Neil Peart responded by writing another side-long suite, this one about an authoritarian future world in which music was banned. It was a fairly unsubtle jab, both thematically and sonically, at the label—and it ended up striking a chord with the public in a way that no previous Rush album had. More importantly, its success earned the trio a lifetime pass from any future label interference. Never before or since has such a blatant defying of record-company authority worked out so well—it’s just never likely to get the credit, because of Rush’s lack of critical correctness.

It wasn’t without reason that 2112 hit a nerve while Caress stiffed. The latter record’s extended pieces, “The Necromancer” and “The Fountain of Lamneth,” often felt like collections of shorter songs slapped together under one title without much rhyme or reason. 2112’s 20-minute title track, on the other hand, completely and utterly justifies its length. The playing is focused and unified. Geddy Lee finally found a niche for his high-pitched wail that didn’t blatantly rip off Robert Plant. The “Overture” and “Temples of Syrinx” sections of the suite are the modern-day live staples, but the moment when everything truly coalesced for Rush was the transition from “Discovery” to “Presentation.” The idea of Alex Lifeson building a movement literally around the tuning of a guitar would be a nightmare scenario on Fly by Night or Caress of Steel, but he does it here with authority. His interplay with Lee and the buildup to “Presentation” serve as a plot device, but they may as well represent the band’s own simultaneous discovery of identity.

2112’s narrative is iconic as rock opera, but it also brought on a burden of guilt-by-association that Rush have never quite been able to escape. Ayn Rand was explicitly credited in the album’s liner notes as providing inspiration for the epic suite, something lazy rock writers never fail to bring up dismissively even to this day. The trio were decried as fascists (especially hilarious given that Lee is the son of Holocaust survivors), and have unwittingly served as libertarian icons for the last three-plus decades. The continued association is defensible only under the one circumstance Peart will admit to today: that the group found Rand’s brand of individualism applicable to their own struggle with their label’s demands. Their decision to risk going down in flames rather than writing another Rush-sounding album is one that Rand would likely applaud, but that’s more or less the extent of their affiliation with her politics.

2112 endures as perhaps the landmark Rush album not only because of the middle finger it gave to the record industry, but also because it displays Rush’s mastery of the concept suite, an art so many (including Rush themselves) have failed to do credibly. 2112 was the second Rush album I got as a preteen, which happened to be during the one summer I convinced myself I had any kind of talent for screenwriting. I spent several months attempting to adapt 2112 into a screenplay, which proved problematic because I didn’t realize that the songs on the album’s second side were completely unrelated to the epic title track. How was a 12-year-old to know that “A Passage to Bangkok” was actually just about traveling through the Middle East sampling different varieties of weed? Or that “The Twilight Zone” was simply an homage to the TV show? With the exception of the clunky “Lessons” (mercifully the only time Lifeson has attempted to write lyrics for Rush), side two is pretty great, and far more commercial that people give it credit for. The album can be looked to today as a starting point for the fully-formed version of Rush. There would be no more playing spot-the-influence with Zeppelin, Sabbath, or Yes on their record. From this point forward, the only band they sound like is Rush.

The prog-rock version of Rush hit its apex over the next two years, with 1977’s A Farewell to Kings and 1978’s Hemispheres. The lyrical themes were as lofty as ever (Greek mythology, union politics, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, space travel), but musically, they were expanding faster than they could keep up with. Hemispheres’ nine-minute instrumental “La Villa Strangiato” is the only argument anyone needs for the trio’s technical supremacy. It’s a literal clinic of harmonics and intricate, interconnected soloing that fully earns its subtitle “An Exercise in Self-Indulgence.” “La Villa” is, in a nutshell, why Rush are so polarizing. It’s hard for kids wired a certain way like me and, once upon a time, Kirk Hammett, not to be blown away. But those inclined to believe that instrumental flash is antithetical to musical soul or personality have a ready-made talking point.

Elsewhere on Kings and Hemispheres, Rush further honed and perfected every aspect of their identity. “The Trees” and “Closer to the Heart” got actual radio airplay and were unprecedented in the Rush canon for their genuine tunefulness, even if the former feels trite and forced today. Kings’ “Cygnus X-1” and Hemispheres’ 18-minute title track are the group’s crowning narrative achievements, both in storytelling and musical cohesion. “Xanadu” is a strong contender for best Rush song of all time, an 11-minute fever dream with a riff that spawned Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and Peart’s best drumming ever. The version found on 1981’s Exit…Stage Left is my favorite 13 minutes in the history of recorded sound, mostly because I have a thing for double-neck basses.

As awe-inspiring as Kings and Hemispheres were at their best, however, it was becoming clear that Rush were not long for prog rock in the conventional sense. They were beginning to find extended concept suites limiting, and the few that still prevailed on 1980’s Permanent Waves and 1981’s Moving Pictures were considerably shorter and more melodic. Of these, “Natural Science” is some of the band’s very finest work, and “The Camera Eye” foreshadowed their coming foray into keyboards.

Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures aren’t my favorite Rush albums, but I’d be hard-pressed not to call them their best. There has never been a more effective, filler-free synthesis of everything Rush does well than what can be found on these two albums. “Tom Sawyer” is Rush’s “Stairway to Heaven”—you can call it overrated because it’s the song you’re most likely to hear on a classic-rock station, but it’s really not. It’s the closest thing young drummers have to “Smoke on the Water,” something of a rite of passage. I never quite mastered it in high school. It’s a relentless, pulsating thing with a menacing earworm of a synth riff and a masterful repurposing of Mark Twain’s titular character into something not too different from 2112’s protagonist.

The rest of these two albums are largely responsible for what classic-rock relevance Rush does have. Waves’ “The Spirit of Radio” and “Freewill” tested the limits of the mainstream’s willingness to embrace odd time signatures. “YYZ” is their defining instrumental, “Limelight” is Lifeson’s pinnacle as a riff writer, and “Red Barchetta” is as strong a lyric as Peart’s ever penned. There’s a reason Rush performed Moving Pictures in its entirety on 2010’s Time Machine tour—it’s the one album that even the band’s detractors cannot deny, and the cap to one of the most quietly brilliant stretches of albums a rock band has ever hammered out.

NEXT: Rush greets the 1980s with open arms, embracing New Wave and synthesizers.

Illustration by Maddison Bond.

Near the end of his Memorial Day performance at Eugene, Oregon’s Hult Center, Jack White did one of the weirdest, most out-of-character things I’ve ever seen him do. During the final verse of a crushing rendition of the White Stripes’ immortal “Seven Nation Army,” he cut off every instrument save for the drums and sang over the crowd’s chant of the song’s iconic bass line. In nearly a decade since the release of Elephant, that riff from “Seven Nation Army” has been repurposed throughout Europe as a popular soccer chant. That’s far from what White likely had in mind for it, considering that the album was released at the height of his militantly lo-fi rhetoric. To see him even acknowledge that his most enduring song has become “We Will Rock You,” let alone encourage it, was a little bizarre and unnerving. However, there’s a reason that “Seven Nation Army” has achieved that level of ubiquity. The song thrills in every context.

White’s current tour, on the back of his recent solo debut Blunderbuss, is the final touch to his ascent to modern-rock elder statesman. The White Stripes and Raconteurs songs that littered his two-hour set are Classic Rock now. He treated them like “Pride (In the Name of Love),” relishing the extra level of recognition. He opened with “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” and was visibly giddy when the audience sang more of “Hotel Yorba” than he did. After years of rejection of basically every conventional frontman trope in the name of authenticity, he finally feels comfortable embracing them.

The Blunderbuss material sounds enough like White’s other bands that it fits seamlessly into a set with those songs. It’s an unmistakably Jack White record on the surface—over the course of a 15-year career, he’s honed his blend of blues, folk, country, and rock into a mixture that will sound like his work no matter who else is involved. But it’s also a deceptively complex set of material, full of the kind of instrumental interplay he couldn’t get away with in his other, more limiting projects. “Sixteen Saltines” and “Freedom at 21” would have fit on any White Stripes or Raconteurs album, but the prog-tinged “Missing Pieces” and the ballads “Hypocritical Kiss” and “Take Me With You When You Go” are very much the work of Jack White the auteur. His five-piece backing band, the Buzzards (the all-male of his two touring bands—he sometimes performs with an all-female group called the Peacocks) was tailor-made for the new stuff but also stretched out his older material. The show’s highlight was an epic, reverb-drenched version of the Stripes’ “I’m Slowly Turning Into You,” a showcase for former Mars Volta keyboardist Ikey Owens.

White’s live performances with his previous bands were always deliberately segregated. Raconteurs shows featured no White Stripes songs, and the Dead Weather’s sets had no overlap from either of those two. His relenting on this point on his first solo outing can be taken as an admission on his part that his projects will always be interconnected. Comparisons between them are still futile: it goes without saying that his new show lacks the primal power of the one White Stripes show I was lucky enough to see in 2003. But this is, far and away, the best group of musicians he’s ever played with. I never thought middle-aged Jack White would be this fun.

Illustration by Maddison Bond

by Michael Levin

Last week I assigned every Western Conference NBA team a band that (I feel) best matches their talents, auras, and sensibilities. And as not to leave my Eastern Conference friends hanging, I’ve got 15 more teams/bands mash-ups for you below. Part Two!

Unsheathe your hipster swords and follow me after the jump.

Boston Celtics = Aerosmith

Listen, I like Aerosmith. I think their prime is a lot closer to the Stones than most people give them credit for. But they’ve been on a reunion tour for like 65 years and their skin has passed “shriveled” by more than a few go-rounds. I doubt there’s a more Kevin Garnettish leading man than Steven Tyler — they even hit the same octaves. But while you can make the groupies younger (Brandon Bass, Avery Bradley), the whole thing still feels pretty perverted. They’re also from Boston, which is conveniently unintentional.

Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo dueting “I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing” with Stiemsmsmsmsma on air guitar.

Brooklyn Nets = Coldplay

Is there a more genetically-modified-feeling band than Coldplay? Maybe, but I didn’t think of it while writing this so this is what you get. Presumably backed by a Russian tyrant, Coldplay appeals to a minor subset of people, yet in a mind-controlling Prokhorovian way, everyone knows at least 4 Coldplay songs by heart. Especially The Scientist, which replays non-stop in your head during a breakup.

Fun fact: “Yellow” actually describes in great detail the Gerald Wallace trade. Look it up.

New York Knicks = The Jackson 5

The style of play comparison probably fits better with the D’Antoni Knicks, but the personnel still breathes TJ5 even under Woody. The mass ensemble of talent, though occasionally brilliant, that didn’t ever really work. Jackie Jackson = Baron Davis. Tito Jackson = Carmelo Anthony. Jermaine Jackson = J.R. Smith. Marlon Jackson = Tyson Chandler. Randy Jackson = Amar’e Stoudemire. Michael Jackson = Jeremy Lin.

Wouldn’t it be better if the Knicks all had afros?

Philadelphia 76ers = Relient K

Is it weird that I’m comparing my Sixers to a Christian rock band? Undoubtedly. But it also fits. Though the Sixers are great in transition when pushing the tempo (“Sadie Hawkins Dance”), they’re completely unwatchable when they slow it down (“Let It All Out”). The frantic texting of Doug Collins also reads slightly non-secular, plus the team does engage in a few halfcourt prayer circles in many post-games.

I can also acknowledge that they suck, but I still like them. Oh and Lou Williams rapping to “Manic Monday” would do the trick.

Toronto Raptors = Jeff Buckley’s band

While I suppose the Raptors haven’t died, they have lost an astonishing number of great players for nothing in return. Vince Carter. Tracy McGrady. Chris Bosh. Damon Stoudamire! I’m crying just thinking about it. Plus the Canadian thing matches and you really can’t ignore the roots.

I’m gonna be really sad when DeMar DeRozan goes to the Clippers while singing “Hallelujah” in mid-air.

Chicago Bulls = Jethro Tull

I have an affinity for bands in which the name sounds like a person’s name but isn’t. The Bulls managed to be the best team in the league despite the fact that everybody matches up well with them. Maybe it’s because nobody’s afraid of Luol Deng and Carlos Boozer. Or maybe it’s because Joakim Noah is wicked on the flute. But they’re awesome, and seriously, if any coach is going to have a flute player out there, it’s gonna be Thibs.

“HEY AQUALUNG” – Kyle Korver.

Cleveland Cavaliers = The Decemberists

There’s something really sad about listening to the characteristic whiny drawl of The Decemberists. A melancholy. The music pushes things but even in the fun songs, it’s depressing in a totally satisfying way. Like in a way that you want to be depressed just to feel it hurt. Watching Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson is like that. The outright Clevelandness of two crazy talented young kids is impressive, but LeBron James towers over them. Pangs in the heart means we’re alive.

If you have 9 minutes, listen to “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” and imagine the LBJ metaphors. It’s beautiful.

Milwaukee Bucks = Modest Mouse

There’s only one excuse for combining Monta Ellis with Brandon Jennings. Insanity. And it could be just crazy enough to work. The helter-skelter, non-musical music of Modest Mouse matches the randomness that defines the Bucks. Signing Drew Gooden to a 78 year, $500 billion contract, for one. I heard somewhere that the Modest Mouse frontman tried committing suicide on stage. Sounds about right.

Carlos Delfino screaming “Float On” in his car on the way to the game every night.

Indiana Pacers = Pink Floyd

“By the way… which one’s Pink?” This couldn’t apply more to Indiana’s hazy style of play. The band may not suffer from the same underratedness that surrounds the team, but there’s still some snubbage that goes on when Best Bands Ever gets tossed around. Pink Floyd was also notoriously terrific at getting to the line.

Fun fact: “The Wall” is actually Tyler Hansbrough.

Detroit Pistons = Sum 41

There’s something about owing Tayshaun Prince and Charlie Villanueva almost $40 million that makes me want to rage. Sum 41 has the same effect. To think of the Pistons makes me thing of middle school successes. Same with the band. A ton of hits, a ton of facepalms, and somehow, still going strong. We’ll always have Greg Monroe/Fat Lip. Nickname idea.

A band consisting of Austin Daye and Jonas Jerebko would definitely be smooth jazz, wouldn’t it?

Washington Wizards = Phish

Phish would absolutely endorse a team with Nick Young, Jordan Crawford, Andray Blatche, and Javale McGee. Unfortunately for the world (but not the Wizards), two of them are playing elsewhere. That doesn’t make the franchise less Phishy, even though John Wall and company are trying to push away from the carefree genrelessness that defines them. Gilbert Arenas! Rashard Lewis, even!

“Can’t this wait til I’m old? Can I live while I’m young?” – The Wizards, forever.

Atlanta Hawks = Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

Nothing has encompassed the post-Mookie Blaylock Atlanta Hawks more than mediocrity. But you have to admire their staying power. Thus, my assignment of BRUUUCE to them. Other, Bossier fans will disagree, but The Boss (not Lou Williams) invented Dave Matthews Band disease. The utter sameness that is their overwhelming mediocrity feels eternal. Just doing that is impressive. For both of them.

Zaza Pachulia balling out to “Born in the USA”.

Charlotte Bobcats = Nickelback

We feel bad for the Bobcats. I do. You do. They don’t deserve this. They try their best and do their work and try to remain mostly quiet, but everybody just poops on them. All day long, someone is pooping on the Bobcats. It’s a sad, sad life to live. So you decide — whatever, I’m gonna give them a shot. Maybe they’ll surprise me. Maybe there’s something to hang onto. So you watch. And then your eyes bleed and your ears pus and then you didn’t win the Anthony Davis Lottery and all the Unibrow Puns that you came up with are worthless and then you hate the Bobcats for even making you hate them.

That’s Nickelback.

Miami Heat = Bob Dylan

Bring on the hate. The Heat are as much of a traditional basketball team as Bob Dylan is a band, titles be damned. Misunderstood initially, the Heat coming together to form a superteam could not do better justice to “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. Miami’s become an idea, a symbol of defiance against the old guard of Michael Jordan and those proponents of “winning one by yourself”. They are the poisoned berries in the hands of Katniss and Peeta in front of the Capitol. They are every genre, blended up and spit out in a weirdly awesome, traditionally frightening megacomputer of lyrics and fast breaks.

The Miami Heat see you more than you do. They are going to change the world.

Orlando Magic = The Killers

All the potential the world, just the wrong generation. If Dwight Howard’s Magic played in any time before Michael won his first ring, they’d be a powerhouse. A dominant big with a plethora of shooters on the outside and a decent coach. That’s a dynasty in the 60′s. Not anymore. Same goes for the rockers from Vegas. We live in an age where there’s no dominant band. Hipsters are in full force. They heard of them before you. Then they’re not cool anymore. The Killers would have thrived in a Beatles/Doors/Who area popularity-wise (the style obviously would be less electric) but not today. They’ve got a bunch of hits, but they can’t take over a generation as their predecessors did. And that’s kind of sad.

“Stan’s Town” fits, if only Dwight would let it. If only.

–

Murder me in the comments, please.

Illustration by Leif Seifert

by Thom Powell

In the moment, things seem to make sense. Pogs? They were pretty rad at the time. H.R. Pufnstuf? Quality, wholesome entertainment for America’s children. Ten years from now, we may look back at the rise of brostep and wonder what we were thinking, but for now, Skrillex continues to make people rage all across this nation’s college campuses. The here and now often blinds us to how ridiculous trends can be. However, while the trends and aesthetics of a particular era often mask their true nature, some things are just lame from the outset. It may have sold over one million copies upon its release in 1997,  but I can’t imagine a world where Master P’s infamous posse cut “Make ‘Em Say Uhh” was taken seriously at any point in time.

In the spirit of fairness, I wasn’t really old enough to hear the song upon its release, so I don’t have the proper context for that period of rap music. Still, some things just can’t be rationalized, regardless of consolations. “Make ‘Em Say Uhh” is bad. Really, really bad. When I listen to it, I often wonder what each rapper involved thought of the final product. Were they pleased? Relieved? Anxious? How many high-fives were exchanged? I’ve run these scenarios through my head a number of times and I just can’t picture anyone involved listening to the final product and thinking, “Yup. Nailed it. This is exactly what we were going for.”

It’s hard to pick a starting point with an unmitigated disaster of a track like this, so I’ll forgo musical analysis for a bit. Let’s take a look at its music video first. Make some popcorn, get comfortable, and we’ll meet back in five minutes.

Yikes. Where to start with this one? The tank? Yeah, let’s start with the “platinum” tank. What is it doing there? Or better yet, why is it a thing at all? If Master P was willing to shell out “millions” to make a solid “platinum” and “gold” tank, couldn’t he have at least gotten one that didn’t look like a prop from a Sci-Fi channel original movie? The crazy thing about the tank — aside from, you know, everything else about it — is that it’s referenced in the actual song. I guess Master P just assumed everybody would watch the music video, because making the tank a recurring theme in the verses (it’s referenced in four of the song’s five) is kind of a head-scratcher. Maybe he meant for it to be emblematic of the excess and avarice running rampant in the rap game at the time, because by the end of the video the tank has fired at and hit both of the basketball court’s backboards and caused a full-on stampede, as the spectators try to escape the tank’s Travis Bickle-esque violent outburst. It’s either a subtle commentary on the gilded age of rap music, or it’s just dumb. My money’s on the latter.

Outside of his career as a rapper, Master P was a pretty good basketball player, which makes the actual basketball on display in the video a bit confusing. The guy played semi-pro basketball in the now defunct Continental Basketball Association, and measures an impressive 6’3″. Why, then, are he and everyone else playing on what is clearly an eight-and-a-half foot rim? I mean, sure, I’ve played games on rims that high. It’s fun to be able to dunk, and it lets me forget about my vertical leap, which is more reminiscent of Bill Laimbeer than Michael Jordan. Here’s the thing, though: I DON’T FILM MY EXPLOITS. Do you know why, Master P? Because it’s embarrassing. If you were Lil Wayne-sized you’d have an excuse, but you’re nine inches taller than the average American man! If you’re going to show us some cool basketball highlights, at least give us the real thing! This slap in the face is rendered even more insulting by a Shaquille O’Neal cameo, who reacts to the on-court action like Dikembe Mutombo at the dunk contest. What a sham. And don’t even get me started on the freaking No Limit Gorilla, mainly because Shutdown Fullback already covered that particular angle in detail.

OK, that was a fun distraction, but let’s get to the actual meat of this failure stew. It’s time to discuss the music. Master P’s verse is pretty militaristic, which is hardly surprising considering the ridiculous tank that the song is built around. He bellows about “calling in strikes,” refers to himself as both a “colonel” and  ”commander in chief,” and egregiously mispronounces the word “dossier,” which is fine, I guess. It was a nice effort, and to be fair to Master P, it’s one of those words you read a lot more than you hear. I’m nothing if not evenhanded. He closes by making a generic reference to the streets being a place where “anything goes,” which is about as close to a justification of the tank as the guy is willing to offer. P’s verse is the song’s shortest and probably its least eventful, so now is as good a time as any to talk about this song’s hook. It seriously might be the worst chorus in rap history — worse than Soulja Boy’s “Yahhh,” (apologies, Sean Highkin) and possibly even worse than The Black Eye Peas’ “My Humps.” Was there no one in place to tell Master P that cacophonous moaning doesn’t qualify as a chorus? And what’s making ‘em say “uhh?” The sweet dunks on the kiddie hoop or the impossibly cheap looking tank? The most obvious answer is the song itself, but that seems a bit too meta for Percy Miller.

The next two verses aren’t particularly notable. They’re by Fiend and Silkk the Shocker, respectively (the only proper response to those two names is “who?”) and both offer reasonably competent, if boring, contributions. Fiend gives off sort of a low-rent Petey Pablo vibe. He’s a little shlubbier, and lacks Petey’s resplendent Canadian tuxedo or memorable chorus gimmick. Silkk’s verse sort of goes off the rails about halfway through, but that’s mostly overshadowed by the two verses still to come.

Mia X’s verse is a ray of sunlight in a song otherwise darkened by ironic detachment and a paucity of talent. I honestly can’t even be sarcastic about this verse. The “unladylike diva” goes so hard on this track, to the point that I even like her reference to the video’s stupid tank. Her flow is solid, she doesn’t go off the rails trying to speed rap, and the lyrics are reasonably clever. Mia’s presence is absolutely necessary to keep “Make ‘Em Say Uhh” on the interesting end of the bad song spectrum. If you’ve seen Tommy Wiseau’s epic disasterpiecce “The Room,” there’s a point about halfway through the movie where he finally stops inundating his audience with scarring, unwatchable sex scenes. The presence of these scenes is vital — they’re just one component of what makes it arguably the best bad film ever made — but at a certain point, they need to stop in order to keep the audience from leaving, so they can enjoy the benignly terrible climax and denouement of the movie. Mia X offers a similar respite for listeners. Without her competence, we would grow increasingly disillusioned with Master P’s tank-driven nonsense, which would be a shame, because that would mean missing out on one of the most unintentionally hilarious verses in rap history.

Let me preface this next paragraph by saying that I have nothing against Mystikal. I’m not entirely fond of him as a person (google his legal troubles if you want to know why), but as a musician, he’s released some pretty solid hip-hop. For the most part. Mystikal closes out “Make ‘Em Say Uhh,” and he chooses to do so by setting fire to the entire song and snorting its ashes. The guy has never really been restrained as a rapper, but here he sounds like James Brown doing a karaoke version of something out of Twista’s catalogue before giving up and just yelling nonsense words. Calling Mystikal unintelligible here is like saying Two And A Half Men can sometimes be unsubtle. I can’t make out 80 percent of what he’s saying, and what is discernible is total nonsense. By the end, Mystikal has slowed down considerably, appears to be out of breath, and is babbling about being “true soldiers” before completely losing steam and letting out an exhausted “nah nah, nah nah,” which proves to be the perfect cherry on top of… well, whatever this is. By traditional standards, his verse isn’t “good,” but I can think of few appearances in hip-hop that delight me quite like this one.

Unlike Brutus in Julius Caeser, I come not to bury “Make ‘Em Say Uhh,” but to recommend it. Liking things ironically can get a bit tiresome, but “Uhh” is the rare bad song that is both entirely listenable and raucously entertaining. Its replay value is surprisingly high and the unintentional comedy on display — especially when supplemented with the video — puts artists like Lil B to shame. Master P’s attempt at a posse cut shouldn’t be considered “good” in any era, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun, notable, or important.