Would it be petty to start conjugating his doing verbs for him?
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My first time hearing this song, I thought I was in for an interesting, down-tempo bridge at the 2:45 mark... but the song never returns to its starting point. Like Hitchcock's Vertigo (or Mulholand Dr, or Full Metal Jacket), “Fancy” shifts gears at it's half-way point and never looks back. The music shifts to more ambient beats and synths that would sound at home on the Richard D. James Album.
Halfway through, this song gets pretty good.
It's a relief, too, because the first half is almost unbearably annoying. I know hip hop's origins lie in loops (and later, samples), but the synth loop sounds like a kid's failed attempt with My First Sampler™-- it's unpleasant rhythmically, timbrally, and harmonically, and it never... fucking... stops.
Halfway through, this song gets pretty good. It's a relief, too, because the first half is almost unbearably annoying. I know hip hop's origins lie in loops (and later, samples), but the synth loop sounds like a kid's failed attempt with My First Sampler™-- it's unpleasant rhythmically, timbrally, and harmonically, and it never... fucking... stops.
Combine that with the chorus that goes on about four times as long as it should: the endless repetition of “Oh, you fancy, huh?” is the least catchy refrain to cross my path in a while, and though there's a brief reprieve when it changes, it's not enough, because they're going to repeat the whole thing over again.
While the Ass Kissing category was for anyone getting sycophantic for any group, every example so far has been guys sucking up to womankind... but “Fancy” is actually the most respectful and complimentary of the bunch: it's all about successful women with brains as well as beauty, the women who don't need you to buy drinks for them, drive nicer cars than the boys, and college graduates with good jobs that might be able to loan a little money to their loser boyfriends. Ironically, the huh of the “Oh, you Fancy, huh?” sounds arrogant and dismissive to me.
I can't say I really dislike this song... I just think it starts badly. It opens with a refrain that bugs me and lousy music, but I think the second half is pretty decent and the song as a whole seems to genuinely respect women. A mixed bag, I guess. Since it splits in the middle, with separate call-outs to Los Angeles and New York girls at the half way point, I wonder if this isn't some exquisite corpse project between east and west coast artists... but I don't see myself spending a lot of time figuring out who, and with what allegiances, worked on which verse.
Last, the “she was fine, like a ticket on the dash” is the silliest pun I've hit so far. I'm not sure if I hate it or love it.
Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:
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