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:

Drake - Fancy

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Would it be petty to start conjugating his doing verbs for him?

Drake
Fancy
Ass Kissing
#99 (LoMid)
Nov 18, 2010
MusicRemedy

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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.

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.
 

Walk

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