Chris Brown - Look at Me Now

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Chris Brown tries to show skill, quits after three lines, hands it over to Busta Rhymes.

Chris Brown
Look at Me Now
Bragging
#11 (High)
Feb 10, 2011
None Listed
Diplo

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After plenty of connection and hardware issues, I fire this thing up to...

Damnit! Chris Brown?  Thanks for nothing.

“I say, Miffy. Thadeus' trousers are
of last year's fashion. We shan't be
inviting him to the party.”

Everything that comes from this guy makes me like him less than the last time I dealt with him. Of course, he's not doing himself any favors by opening with “I don't see how you can hate from outside of the club. You can't even get in.” Add a laugh that successfully mixes a thirteen-year-old bully with a hyena and we've established the most smugly infuriating personality this side of Princess from the Powerpuff Girls. I know boasts are traditional in hip hop, but why does it sound like Chris Brown's boasts are mocking the nerdy pledges not cool enough to join his frat?

I suppose we have to give Brown the tiniest bit of credit, because I usually complain about the laziness of his tracks along with his toxic persona. This song, while still excruciatingly awful, is light years from Chris Brown's safe bet, manufactured plastic. Instead of cookie-cutter dance music, the sounds here come from early 60's science fiction worthy of Mystery Science Theater 3000; when the song started, I was immediately transported to a laboratory where a scientist in horn-rimmed glasses was using tape driven computers to combat giant, undersea creatures.

She accidentally fall
trip on my dick
Oops, I said
on my dick
I ain't really mean
to say on my dick
but since we talkin
bout my dick
all you haters
say hi to it.

Similarly, Brown's lazy, pop star singing (autotuned to death) has been replaced with rapping, which also comes off as lazy... until he double-times it. While that does hint at a little ambition (he's trying to do something that requires a skill! Duck!), he can barely pull it off, and after two lines, just ends up repeating the words “on my dick” because he simply can't go that fast. On his dick? On his dick.

Did Jason Mewes write this? Was Silent Bob dancing behind him in the studio for effect?

And then he just gives up and literally says “I'm done,” and lets Busta Rhymes come in and show him how make that trick work. Yup, that's right: this is the audio equivalent of watching a kid fall off his skateboard, followed an older kid taking his board and upstaging him in front of his friends.

I can't say things get measurably better after Brown decides his own song is too much for him.  Sure, Busta Rhymes has a handle on how to do a Brag track without sounding like a moron, thug, or child, but he's bookended by a useless Chris Brown and (here we go again) Lil Wayne, who doesn't seem to have a lot of love for bitches or faggots... which, again, doesn't offend me: I'm not too PC or blushing at someone being inappropriate, I just don't have time for grown men with the collective mental age of a junior high kid.

A junior high kid failing everything but Phys Ed.

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Lil Wayne - 6 Foot, 7 Foot

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Lil Wayne is silent, like so much of the pasta he admires

Lil Wayne
6 Foot, 7 Foot
Bragging
#11 (High)
Dec 30, 2010
Dwayne Carter
Peter Panky, Jr.
Shrondrae Crawford
Bangladesh

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Okay, that's just annoying.

Musically, this is just an endless repetition of two Harry Belafonte loops, thin and drained of all low end, just sort of chirping away. The Belafonte bedrock is assisted by low and large kick/sub/notes, and a single “ssh” sound and hand clap... set that up and just keep it going for four minutes.

Now marry that with a really monotonous freestyle from Lil Wayne... no chorus, no refrain, no nuthin-- it's just his unchanging, mid-paced flow until Cory Gunz shows up at the end. Somewhere after two minutes of Lil Wayne, he starts to sound like Chris Tucker in The Fifth Element to me (he's kinda squeaky), but I'm just beat until I'm numb by Wayne's nonstop barrage of syllables: at first, it seems like the sampled loop (“six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch!”) would serve as a refrain, but after a little bit, Wayne just raps over that, too... and to what end? The guy just keeps blasting away over his own song's chorus to pontificate the aural qualities of lasagna.

Paper tracer, tell that paper, look I'm right behind ya
Bitch, real G's move in silence like lasagna
People say I'm borderline crazy sorta kinda
Woman of my dreams, I don't sleep so I can't find her
You n***a's are gelatin, peanuts to an elephant
I got through that sentence like a subject and a predicate

Wait, what?

Dude, think about what you're going to say before you say it. There are an amazing number of things that fail to make sense in that verse, even without the silent lasagna.

No matter how many ways I approach that, I can't find a way to make it less weird.  At its most clever (and this might be a stretch), he's insinuating that the"g" in lasagna is silent (it isn't-- that's like saying the "z"s in pizza are silent)... and that's the best possible interpretation.  Outside of that, I guess it might mean that noodles don't make noise.

When Cory Gunz takes his verse, he starts with a weird, almost flutey monotone that threatens to be more annoying than Lil Wayne, but not only does he ditch that tone after a few seconds, he also doubletimes some of his lines, giving the song some much needed varaiation in the vocal rhythm... the best flourish coming when, in the middle of rapid-fire lyrics, he says “pause” instead of pausing. It's almost like he was going so fast through the script, he read the stage directions aloud.

For as annoying as this song is, I've got to admit: it's different... so my annoyance is tempered by a grudging respect for anyone who thought this was a good idea (I never would have thought of that) and actually turned the annoying fucking thing into a hit.

How the hell did that happen? Can Lil Wayne make this sort of thing work with sheer force of will?

Walk

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Rick Ross - Aston Martin Music

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Slightly less cool than 007's car.  Can we rename it "Toyota Corolla Music?"

Rick Ross
Aston Martin Music
Bragging
#33 (HiMid)
Dec 16, 2010
Rick Ross
Drake
Chrisette Michelle
JUSTICE League

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The top of the charts are looking like a parking lot right now, so, sorry... no High spot this week: tracks 8-14 are all songs I've already reviewed. Just as well, since it's taken me a long time to try and write about “Aston Martin Music,” and I'm not sure why. Either it's basically a dial-tone that just refuses to make any marks on my brain, or I've got a teflon coating for this kind of thing.

Shame, because the branding in the title works for me; I was looking forward to this song. I get why, like Scarface and the Corleones, Bond lives large in hip hop culture: he's unbeatable in a gunfight, irresistible to women, and lives the high life (tailored clothes, the finest food an drink, and a slick car). Even if most of the movies are lousy (out of over 20 movies, there's about a 1-5 quality ratio), the character himself is always an ideal: James Bond is SuperGangsta.

This song is desperately lacking in its Bondness: not smooth, fancy, or dangerous. The music doesn't evoke an Aston Martin... this is Honda Accord music. Honestly, if you stripped all the vocal parts away, it's a track Kenny G would have no trouble soloing over. Designed to be medium-tempo and non dynamic, it's one real flourish is a hard stop (“Ballin!”) that sounds so awkward it makes me feel bad for complaining about the lack of changes: if that's what you're doing for variety, we can probably do without. They sweep down some filters on the beats for the chorus... but I doubt that would throw Kenny G's game.

I kept listening to the song trying to focus on the lyrics, but the whole thing is... just... so... boring. I get that the verses are all Bond: guns, girls (who take orders from you, no less: she calls you “boss” while you “listen to the yeah yeah yeahs”), convertibles, and lots of money, but Rick Ross never seems to complete a thought. The verses switch from one idea to the next without any connective tissue, as if Ross is as bored as I am, tuning out after a line and a half and starting over. The chorus is just a constant repetition of the song title in robotic monotone: no melody or rhythm at all.

There's no way to work up any real hatred for a song so bland you can barely remember it as soon as it's done playing, but I have to give this one a Run because it's a lousy song without any redeeming qualities (at least Wiz Khalifa and Blake Shleton were so bad they were funny). Does “Aston Martin Music” have an excellent video? I must be missing something, because I have no idea why this song is popular.

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Lil Wayne - Right Above It

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Cue up your training montage

Lil Wayne
Right Above It
Bragging
#32 (HiMid)
Dec 9, 2010
Dwayne Carter, Jr.
Aubrey D. Graham
Daniel Johnson
Andrew Canton
Kane Beatz

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Wow... that's really heroic. If Rocky was going to train to a hip hop tune, this song would score the montage. The synth horns that open the song could probably make the argument all by themselves: they're pretty obviously coming out of someone's Korg Triton (Lil Wayne, I have two words for you: Miroslav Orchestra. I know you have the hard drive space), but they're endearingly cheesy. This song would probably sound amazing with real horns... but no use crying over spilled samples.

Though the horns are the first thing I noticed, the beats are the best thing about this song. Some work went into the programming on this one. The kick skitters around on the bottom of the track, and there's a lot of complexity in the hats and cymbals, all kept in check by a steady handclap. Somebody was having a lot of fun with the drums when they put this one together.

I thought it was odd that the vocals were so low in the mix-- the music sort of overwhelms the voices in most of the song. I can still make out the lyrics, but the music is way up front... odd for this type of music, but it sort of makes sense when I try to write about the lyrics and keep coming up dry. The music is punched up because the words are kinda boring.

Putting up music this epic to back a brag track begs for some audacity, but the bravado in this just seems commonplace (“I've been fly so long I fell asleep on the fucking plane”). There's money, crews, cars, and girls (“Don't like my women single, I like my chicks in twos”), but no more than anyone else's bragging...  maybe even a little less. Writing this dull makes me wonder why the song needs to exist at all, since it shares space with “Monster.”

Lackluster, but not awful... and it could be worse. The numbers got shuffled this week because #33 was being consumed by, you guessed it, Glee. That puts things in perspective.

Walk

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Kanye West & Jay Z - Monster

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Nicki Minaj is one for three, but this is the one

Kanye West
Jay-Z
Monster
Bragging
#99 (Low)
Dec 9, 2010
Kanye West
Shawn Carter
William Roberts
Onika Maraj
Justin Vernon
Kanye West

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I never laid out the rule that a week would be reviewed top-down, so this week I'll start with the Low position, simply because it's the song that's having the most impact on the blog. Exactly like changing to a Stay, Walk, Run strategy, Kanye's “Monster” made me recursively add featured and guest stars into my listings for one reason: Nicki Minaj.

There's been a bit of recurrence in the featured slot before, but Nicki made me reconsider the whole system because, though she hasn't been the main name of any song I've reviewed so far, she keeps popping up and always gets some mention. She was autotuned and blank in the awful “Check It Out,” so much so that you'd never really notice it was her; she was my least favorite part of “Bottom's Up,” but I detected some interesting turns in her voice, changing characters from her normal tone to a dainty little girl to a growling beast.

The neat little turns I noticed in “Bottoms Up” live large in “Monster;” three MCs each get a verse, and they get some time to do what they do (the song runs longer than six minutes), but Nicki Minaj is the real monster of the track, a force of nature and a goddamned rockstar. Her verse starts slow, but she's already playing with character in the song; she employs Rastafarian accent at her convenience, sometimes for a line, sometimes just to hit a word. She writes her verse with smaller crescendos, ramping up with the music, digging in and raising intensity as the builds, and switching to her little girl voice when the beat backs off a bit, and then dropping into her growl to cap off a line. Her part has lots of little arcs that follow the music, but eventually builds to a scream and roaring “I'm a motherfuckin Monster!” I didn't really dig her in the last two songs; I love her in this.

The first two verses pale in comparison. Rick Ross in the first verse is solid and serviceable... since this is a brag track and everyone's declaring their monstrousness, you know someone had to pull out and show us his dick (it was bound to happen), but “Have you ever had sex with a Pharaoh? I put the pussy in a sarcophagus. Now she's claiming that I bruised her esophagus” is sort of amazing: even if it makes absolutely no sense*, that dude just rhymed sarcophagus with esophagus. Jay-Z's verse is done in that style where the rapper just can't seem to keep up with the beat-- he never hits the one, always seems to be lagging, and you can hear him struggling for breath in the gaps; I've heard other rappers use this style, so maybe my palette just isn't developed enough to appreciate it, but I don't like it. Regardless, neither of these guys make as much with the music as the lady who follows them.

Musically, this one's pretty good-- I'm not sure how much we're all supposed to be praising Kanye these days (and again: I'm a hermit, and  outside of Garfunkel & Oates, I have no idea where Kanye West falls on the current cultural barometer), but the beats are well written and dramatic, rising and falling within the song to keep its length from flatlining the whole thing. Bon Iver opens the song with an octave-synthesized voice that could just as easily be introducing Dr. Funkenstein and closes with a coda that might have appeared on an early 80's Prince record; neither of these things occur within the body of the song, but “Monster” begins and ends with stylized vocal melodies, both of which are pretty cool.

I have to admit, I'm sort of on the fence with this one... there are parts of “Monster” so good they're outstanding, but it's only bits and pieces, and I'm not sure how often I'd listen to a six-and-a-half minute song simply because I like the third verse. It's compelling, though; this is as close to Stay as a song I'm not actually keeping can get.
 

Walk

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

* the sarcophagus part, I mean-- I'm not so dim as to misunderstand the bruised esophagus.  [back]

Will.i.am - Check It Out

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Will.i.am explores new levels of annoying

Will.i.am
Check It Out
Bragging
#66 (LoMid)
Dec 2, 2010
Onika Maraj
William Adams
Geoff Downes
Trevor Horn
Bruce Woolley
Will.i.am

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Before I listened to this song, I knew two things about Will.i.am: 1) he was in Black Eyed Peas, and is therefore at least partially responsible for the indescribably awful “My Humps” song, and 2) he was in the also indescribably awful X-Men spin-off movie. With “Check It Out,” the facts are hinting not so subtly at 3) Will.i.am sucks.

Further research would be required to prove point #3, but it's not research I'm willing to do. I feel this guy's already wasted enough of my time.

I remember a music teacher, back in the mid 80's, who responded to a kid's question “Will we learn any rap music?” by drawing one bar of music, three notes, on the blackboard and said “Play that for three minutes.” Sure, he was being an intolerant old bastard who had no respect for the new stuff (just like his parents had no respect for The Beatles), but he wasn't exactly wrong either: a lot of of early hip hop tracks were built from one loop and didn't offer much variation through the song.

As an Outkast fan that just bought Big Boi's new album, I'm well aware that hip hop's evolved quite a bit since then-- it's a shame no one told Will.i.am. “Check It Out” is based around a Buggles loop (did they have more than one song? This is the only one I've ever heard) that seems to have been scientifically selected for maximum annoyance: not only will you be listening to these three chords for the next 4:00, the punishingly squeaky “oh oh” will keep resurfacing to clap you in the eardrum.

A talented wordsmith could make a playground of this, no matter how repetitive and annoying the music was... but Will.i.am is not that man. The refrain, for example, is “Check it out, check it out, check it out, check it out,” and the verses have less rhythmic complexity than Joaquin Phoenix's bumbling hip-hop career relaunch (played for sad laughs). If Phoenix had been autotuned as much as Will.i.am is here, they'd fit well together on a split EP.

Step up in the party like my name was "that bitch"
all these haters mad because I'm so established
they know I`m a beast yeah I'm a fucking savage
haters you can kill yourself
In my space shuttle and I'm not coming down
I'm a stereo and she's just so monotone
sometimes it's just me and all my bottles all alone
I ain't coming back this time

Lyrically, the song is very simple. It says: Will.i.am and Nicki Minaj both have a lot of detractors, but fuck the haters, because Will & Nicki are awesome and so is this song. It doesn't take much to debunk this hypothesis; hell, I wasn't even a hater until I had to listen to this awful thing. The first verse alone (this week's second Nicki Minaj appearance- the song is actually co-credited between the two of them, but Will.i.am has the producer and main writer credits) comes off more like the paranoid ramblings of a tinfoil hat enthusiast than a real rapper firing up a Brag track.

Oh, we just had to kill it
we on the radio hotter than a skillet
we in the club making party people holler
money in the bank means we getting top dollar
I'm a big baller, you a little smaller
step up to my level you need to grow a little taller
I'm a shot caller, get up off my collar
you a chiuaua, I`m a rottweiler

The pre-chorus keeps insisting “I can't believe it, it's so amazing. I can't believe it, this beat is bangin,” almost as if the song keeps telling you how rockin the song is, we're going to give in and eventually agree. Unfortunately, the reason he can't believe the beat is bangin is because it just isn't. I'm glad it's not the House Beat of Creative Bankruptcy, but the beat is just a kick pattern (clocking in somewhere between bland and serviceable) and a neverending hand clap on the 2 and 4. What are we supposed to be checking out again?

And the writing... oh, the writing... “check out” the pains he takes to make Chihuahua rhyme with Rottweiler. Yup, you are a “rot-wallah.” I honestly haven't heard a rapper this bad in a long time: the lyrics are moronic, the rhymes are the worst kind of forced nonsense, the rhythm is like listening to a guy counting out the beat, and the melody has been autotuned up from nothing. The lyrics could easily have been “One and two and three and four and five and six and seven,” take a breath on the eighth beat, “One and two and three and four and five and six and seven,” and run it through autotune, and, alright-- track done.
 

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Wiz Khalifa - Black and Yellow

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Wiz Khalifa
Black and Yellow
Bragging
#51 (LoMid)
Oct 28, 2010
DJBooth

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As soon as I ask “where have all the rappers gone?” I find myself engulfed by them... so before I get into Wiz Khalifa, I'm going to ask: where have all the bands gone? I'm not just curious-- I'm praying I can evoke them the way I've evoked rappers. Here's hoping.

As for “Black and Yellow,” I'm discovering that my measure of these songs' worth fall into two very easy categories: separating the wheat from the chaff is as easy as determining “does this song have any personality?” That may just be my particular relationship with music, but I'm usually going to value a song that has the stamp of effort and humanity above a song that sounds perfectly engineered to end up on the charts regardless of who sings it.

And now we break from pop music to explore the dominant themes in the writings of George Orwell...

Just imagine the car...

Just kidding. (but not really)

There are so many hilarious mistakes in the brag track “Black and Yellow” that it sort of demands respect for being such an individual's song. From the weirdly Christmas carol opening to the main theme (apparently, his car is black and yellow: “the niggas' scared of it, but the ho's ain't”), there isn't actually anything good about this song, but it's so humorously, badly written that it's a hell of a lot more endearing than a lot of the bad songs I've heard so far. There's no way a pop producer or media guru made this song happen.

The goofy “Jingle Bells” chorus (which also opens the song) is part of it: where Waka Flocka Flame's song was dramatically epic, Wiz Khalifa's sounds like a Christmastime commercial for bargain kitchenware. This is music that invites Dick Van Dyke down the chimney... it's even funnier in a song that is mostly one guy bragging about how sexy and dangerous he is.

MCs and rappers, more than anyone else in music (except maybe the black metal guys... but I doubt they're going to be popping up here anytime soon), represent their image in words; Wiz Khalifa doesn't come across as a particularly bright guy. For one, even if his car impresses guys and attracts women, talking endlessly about his car does nothing but make him sound like a huge douche, and his delivery doesn't exactly make him sound clever.

My favorite part of this affair is that the ridiculous Christmas chorus is, verbatim “Yeah! Ah-ah, you know what it is. Black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow,” and... while I figure that we all get the point of the song... by the end he calls us all out: “You already know what it is. If you don't, you should by now.” The constant harping on what it is keeps bringing Grandpa Simpson into my head.

Moving on, lyrics like “not a lesbian, she a freak, though” remind me of the parallels between the current hip hop and R&B scene and 80's party rock hair metal-- these are dim guys who relate to the whole world through the prism of a giant ego. Big houses and shiny cars... now bring me the women. For this song, that isn't even symbolic; the car really is the whole point, and Khalifa thinks it makes women want him and men want to be him.

Embracing the fact that this is not the way a hip with the ladies, admired by the fellas, suave, cool guy talks (I have a really nice car! You should see it!), I'll take the funny-bad music over the bland-bad any day... but outside of a good laugh, I'm not needing to hear this one again.

Please tell me this guy's not a superstar.
 

Walk

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Genre: Bragging

The Brag track is simple: the artist wants you to know how great he/she is.  These songs crop up in more flamboyant hip hop and rock artists... you know, the big ego guys.