Eminem is finally ready to release a new album next month. It's called Relapse, and it's his first since 2004. The first single, "We Made You," and its accompanying music video premiered last week.
I like it, which surprises me. I don't think I'd ever liked an Eminem song before. I've listened to only one of his CDs all the way through (it was The Marshall Mathers LP), and I know him more from his radio hits, which were unavoidable when I was in middle school.
As I recall, his singles were characterized by two alternating styles -- manic, vulgar, celebrity-spoofing comedy ("My Name Is," "The Real Slim Shady," "Without Me") and confessional, moody, self-righteous introspection ("The Way I Am," "Cleanin' Out My Closet," "Sing for the Moment"). Neither appealed to me -- Eminem could rap with awesome agility and yet do nothing for me. It was a problem of voice (I still regard his as among the most unpleasant in all music) and personality (especially in his prickly, sullen, self-serious mode).
"We Made You" is not much different from the first group of songs I mentioned, and I wonder if I'm not more sympathetic now simply because Eminem is no longer as ubiquitous as he once was. I don't remember how I felt about "The Real Slim Shady" the first time I heard it, but I remember how I felt about it the 500th time.
Now, after four or five years, I'm actually sort of pleased to run into Eminem again. He's probably a little old to be clowning around as he does here, but he's in good form on the microphone, and it's fun to see him hamming it up in the video, disguised as Tony Romo, Elvis, and Spock. I don't watch enough TV to understand all the jokes (MTV has a helpful guide to the pop-culture references), and most of the jokes I do understand aren't particularly funny, but they're kind of charming for their sheer puerility. The majority of the parodies in the video are entirely inexplicable (why Rain Man?), which makes me like them more. Most of all, the "Lord help us, he's back in his pink Alf shirt!" line won me over.
I imagine the next single will be a dirge about Proof's death or Eminem's most recent divorce from Kim, and any desire I may have to listen to his forthcoming album will vanish. But for now, the exuberant, lowbrow silliness of "We Made You" represents, to me, the closest he's ever come to being likable.
Three weeks ago, San Francisco rapper San Quinn released his most recent album, From a Boy to a Man. Not so long ago, I happened to be listening to his second CD, Live N Direct, which he recorded in 1994. It begins with a radio interview.
"What's your objective in this rap game?" the DJ asks. San Quinn replies that he hopes to make enough money "to bring a lot of my people up out of this shit." He was, I think, 17 at the time.
Live N Direct is not an especially good album. The rapping is competent, but it offers no unique personality or style. The songs all seem to share the same beat -- as did nearly every cut from the West Coast at the time. I recall the opening interview only because I remember wondering, when I had heard the question but not yet the answer, whether there was any possible response but the one I knew he'd give.
Since then, San Quinn has released five more solo LPs, each a more deluxe version of Live N Direct. His style has, it seems, changed according not to personal inclination but to popular taste -- traveling from the impassive thuggery of Mobb Music to the keyed-up bounce of hyphy before settling now on a mixture of fairly anonymous club-oriented ditties and hard-nosed swagger, with a sprinkling of sentimental and somber moments.
San Quinn has never achieved major commercial success, but he has, apparently, found a loyal regional following. I consider him one of the better living rappers. From track to track, his vocals don't vary much, but he has, over the years, perfected his particular delivery -- hoarse, emphatic, not very rapid. Having forged an unusually prolific career, he casts himself now as a battle-scarred veteran of the hip-hop industry, and his sturdy rhymes, which generally avoid flamboyant wordplay, suit the persona. I can't recall ever hearing him sing.
The trouble, I suppose, is that I like to listen to hip-hop mostly while alone in my bedroom. It's the highest test I know for an album. Mediocre stuff can survive in the car; in social settings, it can even thrive. But very little music makes it out of this room intact. Even the better hip-hop CDs include too much junk, too much filler. Too often, the rapping exists only to add another layer of noise; upon close listening, it's painfully idiotic. San Quinn's is slightly less idiotic than most, but his albums, too, accommodate a great deal of derivative trash. Typically, he doesn't even seem to be having fun with it.
It must, then, be lucrative. So I remember what he said 14 years ago, at the start of Live N Direct.
I continue to listen to San Quinn because, every once in a while, he makes a song that I truly like. On his previous album, The Rock: Pressure Makes Diamonds, it was "Look What I've Done for Them." On his new CD, it's the prelude, "Boy To A Man." These tracks are similar: Both are about making music and about San Quinn's battle for success in the rap business. That I do not care for much of the music to which he owes his success does not hinder my appreciation for these narratives. They are better than their ostensible subject, which, in fact, opens up to reveal not just a career but a life. Here, San Quinn occupies a lyrical register inaccessible to most emcees. It is, I think, called seriousness.
After the opener, I don't actually like anything here. This has happened only once before, with Jay-Z's Kingdom Come, whose introduction I still occasionally find myself listening to; I would not listen to the rest again if you paid me. From a Boy to a Man is not as bad as that, but it is insipid in varying degrees. "Wind It Up," with its grating whistles and bells and its deliberate banality, is probably the worst, but the tacky luxury of "Upside Down" and "Ready to Go" is nearly as bad. Other tracks -- "Double Dose of Gangsta" (such song titles still exist!) and "We All Gone Eat" -- are tolerable, but they are also forgettable. "Reinforced Steel" and "My Brother" are too earnest for me to accept.
Fortunately, I've come to think that, in hip-hop, one for 19 is not so terrible. "It ain't the money, I swear," Quinn insists in the album's opening minutes. During that precise moment, it may have been true.
It is a commonplace among hip-hop fans that Ice Cube is not the rapper he used to be. This sounds as though it must be accurate. How could the tepid, family-friendly star of Are We There Yet? and Are We Done Yet? even for a moment channel the foul-mouthed gangsta of Straight Outta Compton and AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted? Furthermore, Cube's nearly forty, and hip-hop is generally regarded as a young man's sport. Rap veterans die and are lionized, or they fade into total obscurity; the few who stick around become easy targets of derision. To most listeners, American Gangster is no Reasonable Doubt, and Ego Trippin' is no Doggystyle. Ice Cube, whose public image has shifted more perhaps than that of any of his peers, has borne more criticism of this kind than nearly anyone. He has, they say, gone soft. He's an actor now.
The truth is little more complicated. There is nothing cutting-edge about Ice Cube's music today, but his ability to rap hasn't deteriorated in the slightest. Of all the over-35 emcees who remain relevant in the mainstream today (mainly, Jay-Z, Nas, Snoop Dogg), Ice Cube is the one who has consistently avoided embarrassing himself on the mic. Jay-Z recorded The Black Album and Kingdom Come in a frail whisper; Nas succumbed to breathy, unmusical self-righteousness on Untitled; Snoop wasted years under No Limit's spell of unwaveringly banal, gaudy vileness. Ice Cube has released dull albums -- neither War and Peace session was satisfying -- but he's always had the same strong voice (remarkable for its unfaltering impression of candor, which makes you believe him no matter what he says) and focused, sturdy delivery. "My style never changed in 22 summers," he asserts on his latest effort, Raw Footage. His vocal style, at least, has not, and that's a good thing.
Raw Footage is comparable to Ice Cube's 2006 effort, Laugh Now, Cry Later. It's tough, swaggering West Coast entertainment, and if it's not particularly inspired, it is entirely competent. The insistent, sinewy beats (courtesy of largely unknown producers) complement Cube's hard-nosed delivery, and though I love any of its songs, none of them are especially bad. The rapper emerges unscathed from the album's most blatantly commercial track, the new-school opener "I Got My Locs On" (featuring Young Jeezy), and then kicks things into high gear with "It Takes a Nation" and "Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It." "Why Me?" slows the tempo, and for the rest of Raw Footage, Ice Cube alternates between belligerent intensity ("Jack N the Box") and a mellower, reflective mode ("Stand Tall"). Yet his lyrical approach never changes too much; whether he's praising himself or criticizing others, his tone is bellicose. But his writing is intelligent, too, and his rhymes never seem labored (except when he attempts, ill-advisedly, to rhyme lava with saliva).
The only failed performances here come from guest artists: The prolific actor Keith David (of Clockers and Barbership) provides occasional narration in his distinctive, gravelly bass, and the effect is a silliness that makes the listener smirk; R&B crooner Musiq Soulchild seems a lesser Nate Dogg; and mysterious contributor Doughboy (is his moniker an homage to Cube's Boyz n the Hood role?) spits like a YouTube amateur. Raw Footage is not seriously damaged by these additions, however, and both WC and the Game are adequate in their appearances. (Rumor has it that these two will join Ice Cube as the new Westside Connection.)
Still, if you're looking for more than just passable entertainment, we have to return to that same knock on Ice Cube that I deemed unfair at the start of this review: He's getting older. The critics are wrong if they believe that, because he's 39, he can't rap; Ice Cube flows as well now as he ever did. But the man himself has become less interesting in a way: He has matured. And like many mature folks, he's found much he doesn't like about our society. Of course, Ice Cube has always been angry, but this anger is different from the outrageous, defiant, heedless fury of his youth. This anger takes shape in thoughtful, reasonable criticisms of people and institutions that deserve his assaults. He rebukes our government ("A lunatic is in the White House"), the poor role models of the sports world (Michael Vick, Pacman Jones), and contemporary rappers, whose small-minded materialism he abhors. He prides himself on creating more thoughtful music: "The shit I say might get you through the day / or change your whole life in a major way. / The shit they say might catch you a case." At the same time, he bombards those who make blanket condemnations of gangsta rap (usually without having listened to much of it) and blame its practitioners for leading America astray. Ice Cube urges young people to respect themselves intellectually, spiritually, and morally. He wants change. He values his relationship with God and discourages meaningless violence. He calls himself a "pitbull," but the targets of his attacks seem carefully and sensibly chosen.
This probably sounds good, but it's actually a little dull. Ice Cube's presence on the microphone remains fearsome enough that he doesn't come across as whiny, but he has become too levelheaded, perhaps, to provide the real thrill that can come from rap music. He's not capable of "Black Korea" or "No Vaseline" anymore. I suppose we can make do with Raw Footage.
The working title of Nas's latest CD, Untitled, was Nigger, which tells you all you need to know about this petulant, muddleheaded, self-important, insipid album: The poet has moved over for the "truth-teller." Here, Nas fancies himself a 1970s-style revolutionary, and he's angry at the government, Fox News, his record label, suburbia, Southerners, 50 Cent, political correctness, white people, and black people. He's undertaken to address America's various ills with the measured intelligence and articulacy of a stoned undergrad in a Che Guevara T-shirt.
"Find a room to lock yourself in and close the door," Nas advises. "It's some heavy concepts that we gotta explore." I'm not sure why we need to explore them; in any case, none of the songs on Untitled represents an exploration of anything but the rapper's ego and confused ambitions. Nas has a great many opinions, but most are incoherent, and the rest are bromides: "Too many rappers, athletes, and actors / But not enough niggas in NASA" sits among other painful banalities. Here is a relentlessly serious album that is impossible to take seriously. (To be fair, the oddity "Fried Chicken" may be satirical, but I can't be sure, because, if it is satirical, I don't know what the point of the satire is.)
We've seen Nas in his awful KRS-One mode before, especially in recent years, but, on Street's Disciple and Hip Hop Is Dead, he periodically got off his high horse and delivered something worthwhile. Here, his political grandiosity and nonsensical social commentary make way only for clubbier self-aggrandizement and materialistic celebration: "Make the World Go Round" and "Hero" seem to belong on Nastradamus, and you'll get an idea of how bad Untitled is when I say that they're actually two of the album's better tracks. You'll get an idea of how bad Nas himself is when I say that, on "Make the World Go Round," the Game's guest appearance is the highlight. On this album, even Nas's once fluid flow, now heavy-footed and asthmatic, is mediocre. There's not one song here that I like. Nas still can write rhymes, but he does nothing appealing with this ability.
Musically, Untitledmakes for dull listening. It seems that the shrill chorus on "America" was sung deliberately to annoy. "Testify" has a laid-back, bluesy charm, but "Breathe," "Project Roach," and "We're Not Alone" (by stic.man, who leads the producers with three contributions) have such dreary, anemic production that they could only appear on a Nas album.
What really bothers me, however, is not Nas's beat selection, which has always been lousy. What drives me crazy is that Nas has, apparently, decided to cast himself as some sort of elder statesman of hip-hop -- an enlightener, whose maturity and wisdom have necessitated that he move beyond mere rapping into higher realms. The horrible thing is that this actually works; people think that, as far as hip-hop goes, this is an important project.
"This is a sprawling, furious, deeply ambivalent theme album about institutional racism, the failures of black leadership and the pathologies and promise of early-21st-century African-American life," raves Rolling Stone. "It is also the closest hip-hop has come to a semiotics seminar -- an album-length meditation on the meanings, ambiguities and historical ironies of the n word. In short, it is the most intensely political record since the heyday of Public Enemy and Ice Cube, with Nas sounding as virtuosic as he did on his 1994 debut, Illmatic." Of course, it's for good reason that real semioticists don't set their seminars to music. (Here's what the scholar Nas actually has to say about the n-word: "They got Nigeria and Niger, two different countries. / Somehow Niger turned to nigger, and shit got ugly." Indeed, shit has gotten ugly.) Nas is now praised for his analytical intelligence, of which he has none, but, all along, he's possessed a deeper, better intelligence -- an intelligence of the kind that people who laud "intensely political" music never really grasp. When, in earlier years, he exercised his extraordinary gift for description to write about the housing project where he grew up, the result was not less important than his political diatribes; it was more important, because, within Queensbridge, he saw his whole life -- and, in his life, mine and yours. It is strange but true that a humdrum day in the life of a teenage boy twenty years ago can be crucial in some way that the major issues of today are not. Why is someone of Nas's talent wasting words on Bill O'Reilly? Why has the lyricist turned to essayist, while working in a genre that doesn't support essays anyhow? If he wanted to, could he write another "Memory Lane" or "Doo Rags"?
During my July absence, Nas released a new album, Untitled. While I work on a review, here is my assessment of his previous album, Hip Hop Is Dead, which I wrote in December of 2006 and will give you some background on the artist if you are interested:
Nas
is the most talented rapper alive. He is also the most frustrating rapper
alive. His new album, Hip Hop Is Dead, displays both sides of
the artist.
The
LP's name makes one wonder: Does Nas really mean it, or did he merely
want a controversial title that would grab attention and, as a result,
sell copies? I've listened to the album several times now, and it remains
unclear. I don't think Nas himself knows. On the first single, we hear
it sung: "Hip-hop has died this morning." Yet, when Nas says
that "if hip-hop should die, we die together," he suggests
that it hasn't yet happened; otherwise, he'd be in the morgue. And then
there's the assertion on the album's last track: "It will never
die." Obviously, Nas is a man of contradictory feelings, just as an artist should be. But Nas fails to meld his conflicting ideas
into something cohesive. He fails to carry them to their logical conclusions,
which, all together, would form what is called a point of view.
When a thought sparks in Nas's brain, it often remains just a spark.
If
hip-hop is dead, then what killed it? Nas complains that "everybody
sounds the same," that the craft has been "commercialized,"
and that rap "forgot where it started." Here, he's little
better than Common, whose "I Used to Love H.E.R." attributed
a holy purity to the trivial showboating on street corners and at block
parties that defined hip-hop's early days. That it has progressed beyond
that and now continues to evolve in ways both bad and good is not a
sign of death; it's a sign of life. Nas's perfunctory explanations fall
short. Of course, as long as at least one capable rapper lives, hip-hop
won't die. Since Nas is a capable rapper, he'll have no one to blame
but himself should the art expire: It will mean that he has squandered
his gift. Of course, hip-hop will experience highs and lows; if it is
indeed currently in a rut, then Nas ought to rejuvenate it by cutting
out the morbidity and making a great album. But on Hip Hop Is Dead,
he sounds like a spoiled sports star who blames his team's losses on
the other players instead of stepping up his own game. This tone, however,
does not endure for the length of the CD; Nas is, by turns, vindictive,
defiant, sulky, dismissive, and mournful.
The
fundamental confusion regarding what the album is actually trying to
say dominates the listening experience. Unfortunately, a lot of great
stuff is thereby overshadowed. Nas's knack for evocative lyrics shows
up as frequently here as on any of his other releases. He has an ability
to paint a scene with only a few lines, give it tangible, earthy detail,
and then allow its implications to carry him upward into a poetic ether.
Regularly, writers know what they want to say, but they lack the skills
to say it. Nas has the skills, but he lacks the good sense to give serious
consideration to the overriding meaning of his work.
A
strange absence of general good sense sometimes seems the only explanation
for Nas's career. He showed admirable bravery in his decision to leave
behind the style that he perfected on Illmatic, even as he must
have known that critics favored above all else the kind of advanced
frivolity that he had mastered by his late teens. Yet, as he appeared
headed for artistic endeavors of greater seriousness and ambition, he
made some bizarre choices. Any casual listener could have told Nasir
Jones that his Mafioso persona, Nas Escobar, didn't fit him, but the
rapper himself couldn't figure that out. Any casual listener can tell
that DJ Premiere is a better producer than Salaam Remi, but Nas apparently
can't. Any casual listener would wonder why one would declare hip-hop
dead and then continue to record hip-hop music, but the lyrical genius
stands immune to such concerns. Stillmatic
remains his best album because his animosity for Jay-Z, his outrage
at having his sense of entitlement challenged, gave him a single point
of focus and a clear purpose for which to exercise his lyrical faculties:
to destroy his opponent. By contrast, he sounds lost on his new album,
straying onto paths where he doesn't belong. For example, "Who
Killed It?", which draws inspiration from noir-era detective movies,
has Nas impersonating Edward G. Robinson for the entire length of the
track; it's a mildly impressive bit of vocal work that would probably
amuse at a party for thirty seconds, but as a song, the gimmick wears
thin.
It's
nice to hear a shout-out to Spice 1 on "Where Are They Now,"
another concept track, but most of the "forgotten legends"
mentioned here are not worth the two minutes and forty-four seconds
Nas gives them -- sorry, Black Sheep. Kelis almost manages to ruin "Not
Going Back" on the intro alone (she has to be heard to be believed),
but she handles the chorus competently, and the piano is sufficiently
dramatic to match Nas's verses. With "Still Dreaming," Nas
ill-advisedly allows Kayne West to take the mic; featuring Kanye's production
as well, it sounds like the kind of mood music one would try to tune
out at a bar. "Blunt Ashes" reveals that, at thirty-three,
Nas still hasn't outgrown the notion that marijuana provokes profound
ruminations. "Let There Be Light" has nice moments but contains
an excess of overwrought singing by Tre Wiliams.
On
"Hustlers," Nas is joined by The Game, hip-hop's greatest
name-dropper and parasite. While in 2001 Nas called someone else "a
fan, a phony, a fake, a pussy, a Stan," the description best fits
his new friend who named his latest album after a producer who refused
to contribute to it. The Game was doubtless thrilled finally to work
again with Dr. Dre here, but why Nas, who should be able to select any
guest performer (was AZ busy?), chose to work with the "Compton
OG" is unclear. Nas's duet with Snoop Dogg looked to be more exciting,
but "Play On Playa" belongs to the Shiny Suit Era. "Money
Over Bullshit," "You Can't Kill Me," "Carry On Tradition,"
"Hold Down the Block," and "Can't Forget About You"
are all thoroughly OK or even pretty good, but they also are unspectacular:
You won't find a "One Mic" or "Nas Is Like" here.
He saves some of his best rhymes for the a cappella finale, "Hope,"
on which he reminisces about the coldest winter he can recall and
going to see the breakdancing movie Wild Style with his brother,
yet there is a fire in his delivery that prevents it from coming anywhere
near the sentimentality of pure nostalgia. On the other hand, I'm not
crazy about the self-righteous spoken rant that follows his excellent
rap. The first two verses of the title track are just as excellent,
but Nas is inexplicably backed by the same guitar riff by Iron Butterfly
that was used on 2004's "Thief's Theme." Once again, the question
of common sense arises.
The
best track, as it turns out, is the track that fans most anticipated:
Nas's duet with former rival Jay-Z. Using a suitably epic, orchestral
sample ("Marcia Religiosa"), "Black Republican"
begins with a verse by Jigga, who doesn't waste his long desired chance
to rap alongside his hero. His performance here tops everything on
Kingdom Come; his words have a deeply felt urgency that doesn't
appear anywhere on his own album. Still, despite their poignancy, there
lurks something comical in the description of his falling-out with "a
friend [he] called best," while that friend seems utterly detached
from that drama and stands alone "on the roof of [his] building."
Nevertheless, both emcees are in peak form, and this song, at least,
will last.
When I heard the Three 6 Mafia's latest single, "Lolli Lolli (Pop That Body)," I overreacted. The situation is, as it turns out, not so dire: The song's anonymous banality is atypical of their new album, Last 2 Walk, which, though not the group's best work, is a hard-hitting, engrossing CD.
It now seems rather silly that I was so sure they'd fail. They'd never seriously failed in the past. DJ Paul and Juicy J have been two of the best producers in hip-hop since 1995 (or, to some Tennesseans, earlier), and I don't know why they shouldn't remain so: Their consistency has been unmatched, and, if you discount the aforementioned atrocity, which, after all, is only one song, they've shown no signs of decline. Last 2 Walk provides fans with more of the Mafia's classic sound: heavy, ominous crunk, simultaneously keyed-up and trancelike. Complete with the usual advertisements for the group's side projects, Last 2 Walk plays as a Three 6 Mafia album should; it's not the last-ditch sellout effort I expected. Even "My Own Way," the group's collaboration with Good Charlotte, which I assumed would abandon the group's hardcore aesthetic, has a powerful, desolate anger; it is, in fact, one of Last 2 Walk's triumphs. "Lolli Lolli (Pop that Body)" is conveniently tacked on to the end, after the "Outro," where it cannot interrupt the aggressive, no-bullshit swagger of the rest of the album; it seems to have been placed here precisely to make it easy for fans to skip it.
The only major issue is the group's dwindling size, which even Juicy J and DJ Paul felt obliged to address in the album's title: The 2 is not merely AIM-speak. The group's two founders, who also are its two most crucial members, remain, but the rest have jumped ship, and, though the Three 6 Mafia can function without the extra emcees, it cannot run at full speed. The departures of Lord Infamous, Koopsta Knicca, and Crunchy Black have been especially deleterious. Juicy J and DJ Paul are proficient enough on the microphone: Their guttural voices and the unforgiving, bellicose tenor of their words lend their simple rhymes and chants a gripping ferocity. But, as they aren't multidimensional emcees, they need help to sustain a whole album. Last 2 Walk's guest appearances do not quite do the job: Project Pat is always a welcome visitor, but Pimp C's two posthumous appearances, one with Bun B and one without, are far too brief. "I'd Rather," a misfire of the sort that appears once on every Three 6 album, when puerile sexual humor collides with eerie, austere music, seems designed to highlight Gangsta Boo, whose disappearance never to me seemed remotely problematic till now.
It's clear that DJ Paul and Juicy J will continue to create excellent music; the trouble is that they no longer have enough friends to share it with. I wonder what Lord Infamous is doing these days.
A couple weeks ago, I was planning to write a piece about emo music, which I've always mocked ruthlessly, for the newspaper column.
I asked my friend Abe, who has listened to a great deal of the genre, to recommend a few defining bands, albums, and songs. He provided several good suggestions that I mentioned in the piece. Abe also brought up a song called "Teenage Dirtbag" by Wheatus. I didn't recognize the name. When we watched the video on YouTube, it sounded vaguely familiar, but I probably had never before listened to the song in its entirety. Now that I had, I didn't think it was very good, and I decided not to bring it up in the newspaper piece: Though it occupies the same lyrical milieu that emo does, it has the polished, measured sound of pop in place of emo's keyed-up agitation, and the singer's androgynous vocals, which Abe unfavorably compared to Roland Gift's, are more eccentric than anything I've heard in emo, where nearly all the singers sound roughly the same. I did, however, think "Teenage Dirtbag" was catchy, and I found myself listening to it a few more times when I got home.
You can take a look at the music video below. Note the one guy inexplicably jamming out with a banana and an apple at about 35 seconds into the show and again at 1:19.
The video seems to feature clips of the movie Loser, which I, like everyone else, have not seen, but I believe that much or all of the footage showing Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari was shot specifically for the music video, because the video takes place at a high school, while the movie (I somehow recall from trailers I saw years ago) takes place at a college. Loser was, according to the IMDb, released in 2000, which I suppose places the song in the same year.
In the video, Biggs, who represents the singer, is a geeky, awkward student. As is typical of such characters, he is pushed around by 28-year-old male models posing as high school jocks. He wears a ridiculous hat, much like Holden Caulfield did in The Catcher in the Rye, and this suits him, I suppose, because, if I had to describe the quintessential narrator of an emo song (and, lyrically, this is an emo song), I would describe him as a lovelorn, humorless, scummy Holden Caulfield. Biggs is in love with Mena Suvari, the girlfriend of one of the jocks, but she doesn't notice him. In the video's culmination, Suvari finally approaches Biggs with an invitation and a confession, which, in a creepy, effective touch, we hear in the male singer's nasal falsetto, matching Suvari's lip movements:
I've got tickets to Iron Maiden, baby.
Come with me Friday; don't say maybe.
I'm just a teenage dirtbag, baby,
Like you.
One year removed from my teens, I am not too old to appreciate the seductive appeal of such a speech, poorly written as it is. (Except to rhyme with the next two lines, Suvari has no reason to call Biggs "baby" in the first significant sentence she has ever addressed to him.) The "like you" is not accusatory but rather an endorsement of his social defects and invitation to a natural, mutually accepting rapport, rooted in an honesty that we're led to believe does not exist in her relationship with her jock boyfriend. I turned 13 in 2000. If I had heard "Teenage Dirtbag" at that time, I would have liked it and pretended not to.
Such songs and music videos are based around an idea of camaraderie among adolescent misfits. I do not refer to anything like a teenage group therapy session. In the video for "Teenage Dirtbag," the young weirdos, huddled together like a pack of rats, jump with glee as the singer belts out the celebratory chorus: "I'm just a teenage dirtbag, baby!" The intention is to make this clique look even cooler than the "cool" clique. The video reminds me of another, that of 2001's summer anthem "Fat Lip" by Sum 41 (its lyrics, too, cite Iron Maiden), in which we see the proudest, happiest collection of young freaks in the world, and the song reminds me of a hundred others half heard. For the teenager harboring feelings of uselessness and alienation, these songs promise an endless summer of unusual friendships, of noctural suburban mischief, of romances with blue-haired girls, of passing out in the cool grass of strange backyards after house parties, of taking everything as it comes and loving it. When I look at the kids smoking cigarettes outside the mall at night,
the ones who wear the same hoodies from October through March and the
same T-shirts from April through September, I see the attitude at work. I don't think they listen to Sum 41 anymore (does anyone?); I think they listen to emo music. I do not know how many of my peers have quoted the following, an atrocious line from
"Grenade Jumper" by Fall Out Boy: "My heart ticks in beat with these
kids that I grew up with, living like life's going out of style." I knew the line long before I'd heard the song.
There is, it's true, another side of emo music that has nothing to do with the attitude I've described. Many emo bands operate in a permanently devastated mode, writing apocalyptic breakup songs for teenagers who acquire girlfriends solely that they too might, with luck on their side, someday undergo such heartrending splits. Even these bands seem to believe there is a sublime magic inside any girl odd enough to have dated them, but for them the magic is forever lost. More often, however, bands intersperse, amidst their heartache, songs of the other kind: portraits of suburban friendships and romances, charged with the electricity of youthful abandon. I am thinking of stuff like "The Vast Spoils of America" by Saves the Day, "I Woke Up in a Car" by Something Corporate, "Swiss Army Romance" by Dashboard Confessional, and "Soco Amaretto Lime" by Brand New.
The attitude is evoked even by the teen classic "Baba O'Riley" by the Who. I don't know if the song intends to do it -- its lyrics, like those of most rock songs from the '70s, are impossibly vague. The term "wasteland" is not regularly used to describe a desired fantasy, yet a "wasteland" is precisely what many adolescents seek: a place for them to get wasted together and enjoy wasting their lives, which seem like a waste anyway. I imagine there is much good-fellowship "out here in the fields." The song's setting has a faintly mystical flavor; in fact, it is, in a way, less a wasteland than it is a wonderland. It is the same grungy wonderland that today's bands offer, the one that puts me in mind of Peter Pan's Lost Boys -- the orphans
who, cut out from normal society even more profoundly than the
disaffected adolescents, lived their own endless summer. The teenage outcasts, who would be orphans if they could, have created their own Neverland. By getting lost, they have, ostensibly, found themselves.
The Lost Boys, I've realized, creep up on my imagination frequently enough that one must conclude that I myself was once a lost boy. Yet I never was a teenage dirtbag. I did not have the opportunity to become one. Had I gone to high school, someone would have sent me the invitation, I'm sure. It is now expected of every young person to become an unwashed malcontent for a period; the ones who do not embrace an "alternative mindset" at least for a moment are the real losers today. And why shouldn't they embrace it? Anyone would rather be alienated among friends than be alienated on his own. All you have to say is: Yes, I'm a teenage dirtbag. Like you.
What would I have said? I cannot know. I hope I would have declined. I am describing a situation in which life, bad as it is, has made its most palatable offer, and we must shake our heads: No, we refuse.
If I had been in that spot, I know I would have recognized that the endless summer was only a fantasy, but then most young people do; they choose to believe in it anyway. And they go on believing it: A fourteen-year-old dirtbag likely will still be a dirtbag at twenty-two, haunting the suburbs with the hope of finding a really good party, like the ones they used to have. The good life begins to look like a kind of death. Sometimes he sings, and he can sing only about high school friends and high school girlfriends and the harmony he imagines they once inhabited. What else can a lyricist write about when, elsewhere, his most important memories are of Iron Maiden concerts?
Clearly he has missed something profound. Teenage alienation is easy to joke about, but it is not useless as long as one does not try to enjoy it or make a style of it; it is a necessary part of becoming someone who hasn't lived a billion lifetimes already, but one must experience it in solitude, or it is wasted. Musicians are obliged to pretend that we find transcendence in communal experiences, or else people would not go to their live performances. But, as far as I can tell, everything really important that ever happens to anyone happens to him when he's alone, physically or spiritually. Songs like "Teenage Dirtbag" are best listened to among friends.
We've waited since 2005 for the follow-up to Lil Wayne's Tha Carter II, one of the more exciting hip-hop LPs of recent years, and it has finally arrived: Tha Carter III was released today. You've probably already heard the most popular of its singles, "Lollipop," a spacy, space-age hit; it's crude and dumb, and Wayne's performance on it is negligible, but the overall effect is addictive. It was a good choice for a single, but it's unrepresentative of the Tha Carter III as a whole, in which Wayne is spectacular but the cumulative effect isn't quite the knockout I hoped it would be.
Lil Wayne has always seemed a natural emcee. What other 14-year-old could have given such an assured performance on Get It How U Live! in 1997? And over the course of his albums and plentiful mixtapes, he's grown progressively more comfortable on the mic, and he has now, on Tha Carter III, reached a point where it appears that rapping has become effortless for him. Where other emcees are tethered to a preconceived flow, Wayne is free to improvise, free to do anything that strikes his fancy. His flow changes constantly: He'll switch from the fiery rasp of "3 Peat" to the singsong whisper of "Got Money" to the somber murmur of "Tie My Hands" to the terse march of "Shoot Me Down" to the muscular howl of "You Ain't Got Nuthin." On the rapturous "Let the Beat Build," he transitions seamlessly from speaking to rapping, and he finishes with a rapid-fire delivery unheard elsewhere on this album. In the middle of "Got Money," he out of nowhere sings a few bars of Rihanna's "Umbrella." He takes chances. Some of them don't work: His vocal style on "La La" is overbearingly comedic, and his alien flow on the bizarre misfire "Phone Home" is impressive but too strange to be much fun. But the result of all this experimentation is a performance nearly unmatched in its variety. Wayne was imaginative on Tha Carter II, but he has arrived at another level here.
Wayne's flow isn't the only thing that's changed in the two and a half years since Tha Carter II. He has, in the interim, become the most ubiquitous guest artist in hip-hop, popping up in a staggering number of singers' and rappers' songs and music videos and dropping the occasional gem amidst his many phoned-in verses. He has, in other words, become a superstar. If he were not one, he would not waste six minutes and forty-two seconds of our time with a meandering spoken rant during the Tha Carter III's final track, "Don't Get It." It is pure claptrap; it is impossible to see how anyone might imagine that it's anything else. I urge you to skip it.
Wayne's stardom and ubiquity have caused him to get on more than a few people's nerves. There is little to fault in his vocals, but many have found fault with his lyrics. Wayne is, I think, very funny and a vastly entertaining wordsmith, but sometimes his lyrics are excessively jokey. At times, he relies on corny punchlines and vaguely clever but ultimately meaningless wordplay in the same way that Kanye West, who, as an emcee, is not funny or entertaining, does. I've heard Wayne's jokes fall flat. But I've heard ones that succeed, too. On The Carter III, this couplet makes me laugh: "I handle mine. I dismantle mine. / I tote a toolbox. Bitch, it's hammertime!" And when Wayne reminisces about the days of "way back," he brings up "the wave pool at Blue Bayou, and I waved, fool, as I blew by you." He makes it work.
Moreover, he dramatically outshines all the guest rappers on the album -- including Busta Rhymes, Fabolous, and Juelz Santana -- with the exception of Jay-Z, who nearly matches Wayne on "Mr. Carter," one of Tha Carter III's triumphs. (Following this and "Black Republican," I've decided that Jay-Z, who's tiresome over the course of an entire album, is far better as a guest artist.) Among the singers called in for guest appearances, Robin Thicke fares best; his second collaboration with Wayne, "Tie My Hands," isn't as stunning as their first, "Shooter," but it's a fine song. Kanye West's smooth "Comfortable," featuring Babyface, and the whimsical "Mrs. Officer" with Bobby Valentino also are adequate, but album's greatest highlights are the aforementioned "Let the Beat Build" and the wonderfully creative "Dr. Carter." I'll still be listening to these two songs a year from now.
So why is Tha Carter III underwhelming? Maybe hype is the culprit. I may have expected too much. But there really is no reason for tracks such as the kitschy rock remake "Playing With Fire," the uncomfortably weird "Phone Home," or the headache "A Milli." Their inclusion is inexplicable because Wayne had so many songs to choose from, including obviously better ones such as "I'm Me," "Gossip," "Kush," and "Dying," all of which were leaked to increase anticipation for Tha Carter III but did not appear on the final product. Would these have satisfied me? Maybe not. Even in Wayne's better tracks, there are large pockets of mediocrity and even of downright badness (the "fuck me good" interlude in "3 Peat," for example) that a talent of his caliber shouldn't produce.
On the other hand, "Dr. Carter," gloriously produced by Swizz Beatz, has a few questionable lines, but they don't seem to matter at all. Despite its inventiveness, the track is distinctly retrograde in its assessment of "sucka MCs." A novelty song in a sense, it is, to my knowledge, the best track of this kind. In the song, Wayne, now an M.D., listens to his nurse describe the maladies (lack of originality, poor confidence, etc.) of three ailing rappers, whom Wayne then attempts to resuscitate. He tries to tell them how he became a healthy, robust emcee. Having insisted for years that he does not write his lyrics, apparently storing some mentally and making up others on the spot, Wayne has a great throwaway line in "Dr. Carter," when he gives up on the idea of writing a prescription: "I'm a doctor; they don't understand my writing." Wayne, who has often expressed exasperation with his audience, hopes we'll get the joke. But, if Wayne really wants to be the Best Rapper Alive, he shouldn't concern himself with what his listeners do or do not understand. He should start writing again. If he could temper his improvisatory flair and comic spark with the quality control of one who writes thoughtfully and revises with care, he would doubtless be the best emcee of his time.
The last line of "Dr. Carter" is a good one, too: "Hip-hop, I saved your life." It could have been true.
