Ladies and Gentlemen, I Present to you the Face of Pure Evil

Take a good look at the man pictured to the left.  Don't let his flaxen locks distract you.  Instead, focus your attention on the beady dots of coal he calls his eyes.  But don't let your gaze linger too long, because verily I tell you that this is the face of all that is evil.  The name that this harbinger of the apocalypse goes by is (I kid you not) Mutt Lange, and it has come to my attention that he intends to destroy music as we know it.

The first sign that this man is not to be trusted is his name.  Mutt?  Really?  With a name like that you'd expect he'd be the dimwitted bouncer in a roadhouse saloon or a cartoon spokesman for bacon flavored dog treats (if the Beggin' Strips people steal my idea I'm suing them for everything they have).  The worst part of it is that he was born with a perfectly wonderful first name, Robert.  Anyone who decides that Mutt would be a better show business name than Robert should never be allowed near a recording studio.  And yet, somehow this disgusting wretch of a man has become one of the most successful record producers in all of popular music.

But Mutt didn't start destroying music right out of the gates.  No, early on in his career he produced some sporadically palatable albums by bands like the Cars and AC/DC (including their landmark album Back in Black).  The importance of the Cars' music speaks for itself.  As for AC/DC, somebody had to write rock and roll songs about balls.  And nobody has done it better than Angus Young and company.

But sometime in the early eighties something happened to Mutt.  Perhaps somebody ran over a beloved pet, or maybe a demon laid eggs in his brain.  Whatever it was, it dashed any hopes that Mutt might actually bring some good into the world.  From that point forward, Mutt's "talents" were put to use recording some of the worst abominations in music.

To give you just a taste of the damage that this man has done to the world of music, here is an incomplete list of some of his most ignoble accomplishments:

Mutt has produced an album by Foreigner, two albums by Bryan Adams, one by Nickelback (one of this blog's favorites), one by Michael Bolton, and no less than four albums by everyone's favorite seven-armed, transvestite, cocaine monster lovingly referred to as Def Leppard.  But Mutt isn't content to simply ruin rock and pop, he also has to pick on country as well.  He produced four albums by Shania Twain, who incidentally was his wife up until 2008 (if there's a more textbook definition of a match made in hell then I'm not aware of it).  Come on Mutt, hasn't country suffered enough?  Garth Brooks already dug its grave, did you really have to piss on it too?

And these are just the albums he's produced.  He's also had his filthy hands involved in the production of individual songs by such hemmorrhage-inducing artists as Huey Lewis and the News, Celine Dion, the Backstreet Boys, Billy Ray Cyrus, Britney Spears and the Jonas Brothers.  The mediocrity makes my head spin.

His most recent assault on good taste is a song he helped produce on the new Lady Gaga record called "You and I" (there's an umlaut in there, but God help me I can't bring myself to type it).  The song plods along like a morbidly obese man on his way to the buffet line.  It's also a bizarre ode to the state of Nebraska, which ought to be your first warning sign.  I don't count myself among Ms. Germanotta's legions of adoring fans, but even I have to say that Lady Gaga could do much better than Mutt.

Ok, I'm sorry...I've been holding this back throughout writing this, but I just can't do it anymore.  I was trying to avoid doing any awful dog puns on the name "Mutt," but I have to open the floodgates.  Beware, I'm letting all of them out at once...YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Mutt, it's an understatement to say that you've been a bad dog.  Each new album you make is like a new "accident" left on the rug, and it's time someone start rubbing your nose in it.  You're in the doghouse Mutt, and I'd prefer it if you'd stay in there forever.  Or better yet, maybe it's time we give you the Old Yeller treatment and take you out behind the shed and put you out of your misery.  You've been rubbing your ass on the carpet of popular music for too long Mutt.  It's readily apparent that old dogs produce shitty albums, so it's time we sent you packing with your tail between your legs.

Whew...that felt good.

Odd Future: A Rant

Let me begin by saying that I honestly really wanted to like Odd Future.  They seemed right up my alley, a couple of young, fresh faced kids from the hip-hop underground with a growing reputation ready to destroy preconceived notions about hip-hop.  I was completely ready for a latter-day Wu Tang Clan with more smarts.  Yet, while the critical apparatus seems ready to crown them the next big thing, I'm left not just wondering what the fuss is about, but honestly angry that I even gave them as much credit as I did.

Like a lot of people, I was first introduced to the hip-hop collective Odd Future (short for "Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All") a few months ago when the hype they had been generating for some time online reached critical mass and they began getting mainstream media attention.  Specifically, I saw this performance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon:


It's not difficult to see why I was drawn in by these guys.  Tyler the Creator and Hodgy Beats are basically running a clinic on intensity here.  Plus, from a strictly visual standpoint, they look like no one else in hip-hop.  There are no designer clothes or pretentious sunglasses (yeah, I'm looking at you Kanye), no gold chains or diamond jewelry, none of the stereotypical bling of rap.  Instead, you get what look like a couple of punk kids (and they are surprisingly young) scaring the daylights out of everybody in the studio.  Needless to say, I was excited.  I immediately found several of their mixtapes and began listening to them, excited to hear what I was sure would be some of the best hip-hop I'd listened to in a long time.  I was instantly disappointed.  What I heard was messy, poorly produced and completely lacking the intensity that had initially excited me about them in their live performances.  What's more, the lyrics were completely unforgivable in every way imaginable.  Not only were the lyrics shockingly misogynistic and homophobic, they weren't even well-written.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I wasn't ready to give up on Odd Future yet, I was still desperate to validate my initial excitement.  I chalked up the lackluster recordings to a lack of careful production and decided I needed to give them a second chance.  I also decided that I would reserve judgement until the release of the hotly anticipated album Goblin by Tyler the Creator (the de facto leader of the group) which I told myself would definitely be more on point and would live up to the promise of their live show.  I was also convinced that I was just missing something, that obviously there was more going on here and I just wasn't listening carefully enough.

Well, after giving a thorough listen (following along with lyrics) to as much of Goblin as I could handle, I have the following to say about all of the press that Tyler and Odd Future have been getting:  horseshit.

Honestly, never has an album made me as mad for as many reasons as this one has.  To begin with, it's incredibly disappointing musically.  Every bit of hype I had been reading about Odd Future praised Tyler as the true mind of the operation, a brilliant producer and a gifted lyricist.  Well, I'm not buying any of it.  First, in terms of depth and complexity his lyrics are a complete failure.  Please, do not let anyone tell you that Tyler is a talented MC, he's just not.  To pretend that he is destroys a music that I honestly believe can be incredibly powerful.  If you want to hear a better hip-hop lyricist than Tyler the Creator, there are plenty of options I'd be happy to tell you about if you are interested in hearing about them.  Secondly, in terms of production, I'm thoroughly convinced there is nothing special about what Tyler does on this album or any other I've heard from the Odd Future collective.  I'll grant that his productions are something of a departure from most of hip-hop, and the horror movie ominousness is at least somewhat interesting on its surface.  But that is basically the end of the story when it comes to the beats on Odd Future albums.  To my ears, Tyler is a one-trick pony when it comes to his production skills.  Everything is dark, ominous tones.  All brooding and no direction.

But now it's time to acknowledge the elephant in the room.  Because the most heinous aspect of Goblin or any of Odd Future's output is not the quality of the songs, it's the lyrical subject matter.  Let me first say that I'm no friend of the PMRC and in no way am I advocating for censorship.  It should also be noted that I have never bought the argument that violent lyrics cause people to commit violent crimes.  So no, I am not afraid that teenagers will go out and try to imitate what they hear Tyler the Creator rap about in his songs, and I'll be the first to say that anybody who says otherwise is full of shit.  Furthermore, I'm no prude, and I can more than handle any amount of profanity you could possibly throw at me and could probably dish it out better than most.  So Odd Future's reputation for shocking and disturbing subject matter didn't scare me because I assumed that there would be a point to it all.  But there isn't.  And I can only put up with a rapper casually dropping the word "faggot" so many times before I begin to feel like it's only a cheap joke used simply for shock value.  Worse, the almost incessant number of songs about rape and violence against women without any seeming moral commentary goes beyond what you could reasonably call story telling.  Tyler and the gang don't even seem to have the decency to allow the opposite sex to be called "women," preferring instead to use any number of epithets, of which "bitch" is among the tamest.

I waffled quite a bit about whether I should even write this post, because a small part of me was afraid that I'd be accused of not seeing the bigger picture or over analyzing things.  I've tried to look past my reservations and see some value in this music, but I'm convinced there isn't and I'd be lying to myself if I tried to pretend otherwise.  What's more, I am disgusted by the seeming unwillingness on the part of music critics to actually be critical.  It's downright unconscionable for the people at Pitchfork and elsewhere to act morally indifferent to Odd Future by writing about how the music is "controversial" or "divisive" instead of what it really is: misogynistic, hateful and downright pathological.  Scant few people within the critical community it seems are willing to try and derail the hype machine surrounding this group.  One notable exception has been a recent blog post by Sara of the band Tegan and Sara which criticizes the homophobia and misogyny of Tyler's music.  The post is poignant and essential reading.  Predictably, when Pitchfork linked to the blog post, they did perfunctorily and without any sense that perhaps it was time to step back and take note of what Sara was saying.

I chalk this lack of criticism among the music press up to cowardice.  Perhaps the critics are afraid to get steamrolled by a seemingly overwhelming following that Odd Future has garnered in a short period of time.  Maybe they think criticizing the lyrical content will make them look like prudes who can't take a joke.  Whatever the reason, the complete unwillingness for the critical apparatus to hold Odd Future up to scrutiny is astounding coming from an industry whose entire purpose for existence is to provide subjective commentary about music.  Any attempt at objectivity here is completely misguided and pointless.  At some point, somebody has to have the intestinal fortitude to stand up and call these artists out.  The fact that almost nobody in the power circles of music criticism is willing to do this is shameful.  It's time for the critical community to acknowledge that at best this music is the product of a couple of immature dumbasses, and at worst it is the product of sociopaths with no regard for human decency.

I want to make one other thing absolutely clear about Odd Future.  The notion that there is something deeper going on in this music than the surface level misogyny and homophobia, or that Tyler is making some kind of meta-criticism of society is a towering pile of bullshit.  And the idea that these songs are not meant to be taken literally because they are simply a depiction of what is going on around us is a cop-out of the highest order.  Those things could perhaps be said about some of the controversial artists in hip-hop history (NWA, Ice-T and Public Enemy being some of the prime examples) but at some point an artist has to show a glimmer of understanding what exactly they are doing with their lyrics.  The best rappers (including some of those in "gangster rap") can do this quite well.  Odd Future, however, have not proven themselves capable of this kind of deeper understanding.  When they rap about rape and violence, they do so with absolutely no tact or purpose.  They are shock for the sake of shock, with no real redeeming value.

I'm sure some people might say that I'm being overly harsh, or that I just don't understand.  Perhaps, though I doubt I'm being harsh enough.  And I'm also sure that my ranting and raving will do nothing to curb the hype surrounding Odd Future and would only cause derision and mockery from the members of the group if they were to read it.  But, I'm not going to sit idly by and watch it all unfold without any commentary.  I'll leave you with a little gem from Tyler the Creator's song "Yonkers" which pretty well sums up how he would feel about someone like myself:

They say success is the best revenge
So I beat DeShay up with the stack of magazines I'm in
Oh, not again!  Another critic writing report
I'm stabbing any blogging faggot hipster with a Pitchfork

How lovely.

Rant: Kanye West's messiah complex is not good for hip-hop

The hip-hop community has an obsession with crowning new royalty. It seems that every time a new buzzworthy artist crops up, the discussion inevitably turns to whether or not he or she is the next great hope. When people aren't arguing about whether or not hip-hop is dead, they are debating who can save it. Hip-hop's de facto savior du jour for the past six or seven years has undeniably been Kanye West. The producer turned rap superstar has enjoyed near universal acclaim since his debut album College Dropout in 2004. His sales are among the highest in the industry and every new release is a major event. Seemingly the only person more impressed by Kanye West than the fans and critics is Kanye West.

And therein lies the problem. West's ego is an entity unto itself. By now it has consumed the rest of his personality to the point that the only thing remaining is a comically absurd real-life Tracy Jordan. The listening public seem more than happy to look past his rampant materialism, his inflated sense of self and his public temper tantrums when he doesn't get the recognition he feels he deserves from award shows. They are willing to look past all of that because Kanye West, as he is not afraid to keep telling us, is a "great artist." Well, I hate to be the turd in the punchbowl folks, but when it comes to rapping, he isn't even very good.

Is he a gifted producer? Absolutely. Is he at least a tiny step above most top forty rappers when it comes to lyrics? Perhaps, but only just barely. At the end of the day, for me West is 90% hype and only 10% substance. His last 3 or 4 records in particular are filled with graceless goofy lyrics that, while they make a pretense to depth or profundity, are ultimately uninspired. What's most irritating about Kanye West's fame is that it completely overshadows the truly talented artists in hip-hop. It's a tragedy, and one in which I think fans and critics are complicit. By passing him off as the great creative mind in modern hip-hop, the hive mind is telling the unwitting public that they need look no further than Kanye West when looking for the best and brightest in hip-hop. But I've seen what a truly gifted MC can do. I've heard verses from artists with a fraction of West's album sales that are powerful, that make you weep, that astound you with their honesty. I've also heard verses where it's clear that the MCs aren't taking themselves too seriously. These artists are self-aware and are willing to look at themselves and hip-hop with a critical eye, to be self-deprecating. And that's something that Kanye West is simply not capable of.

I've heard it speculated that West's larger-than-life persona is all part of the show, that his ballooning ego is some kind of meta-critical performance art. While this is an interesting theory, I just do not buy it. If Kanye West is to hip-hop what Stephen Colbert is to punditry, then I think he would have to be much funnier than he is. Sure, his antics can be amusing from time to time, but I see him in the same light as Charlie Sheen. You cannot help but laugh a little bit at the absurdity of it all, but it seems more like schadenfreude than anything.

It should be said that Kanye West is far from being the first hip-hop artist to have a large ego. And I want to make it clear that I'm not saying that ego and braggadocio don't have their rightful place at the hip-hop table, they do. In fact you can trace this kind of attitude back to hip-hop's earliest days when teenagers in the Bronx were battling each other (on the mic as well as on the turntables or the dance floor). But the difference here is that Kanye West isn't some young kid trying to carve out a name for himself in a ghetto where every brown face is just another statistic. He's a multi-millionaire who is known worldwide, and if he isn't self-aware enough to laugh at himself every once and awhile, then the whole thing falls apart.

Okay, so if Kanye West is not worthy of the hip-hop crown, then who is? Well, that's a question that I'm afraid to say I do not have an answer for. The problem I see is that if hip-hop needs a savior (and I'm not completely convinced it does), then that artist must be able to combine talent with a willingness to be self-aware while still being popular enough to reach a wide audience. I don't see anyone on the scene right now who can do all of that. The closest I can think of is someone I wrote about recently, Lupe Fiasco. Yet, while he's definitely more talented than Kanye and certainly popular, he still suffers from an inability to let his ego take a backstage to talent. He's ultimately Kanye in new clothes. Artists like Mos Def and Talib Kweli who have the ability to write truly gut-wrenching lyrics do not enjoy nearly the amount of popularity that Kanye West does. And artists willing to take the piss out of hip-hop and themselves like Busdriver don't even come close.

What it all comes down to is that the listening public has to start being better fans. I think Kanye's biggest problem is that he's decided that he is the only person who can "save" hip-hop and nobody wants to tell him otherwise. If fans and critics aren't willing or able to see through the cloud of hype surrounding Kanye West, then he will only continue to think that he's God's gift to music. At the end of the day, if hip-hop needs to be saved from anything, it's Kanye West.