Sean Kingston - Letting Go

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And now, a four minute meditation on the duttiness of love

Sean Kingston
Letting Go (Dutty Love)
Club Anthem
#98 (Low)
Dec 23, 2010
Ester Dean
Tor Hermansen
Mikkel Eriksen
Sean Kingston
Onika Maraj
Stargate

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At the onset, I just don't get the refrain. What the hell does “Dutty dutty dutty dum dum” mean? “Dutty” is just not in my vocabulary. I'm not sure if the love is dutty or not, but I get the feeling that the chorus could be “do do do do do do da da” without any real impact on the song (losing the duttiness isn't going to change the meaning) and though I'm almost never a fan of do do dos, they aren't measurably worse than dutty dutty dutty.

Kingston has basically Caribbean'd me out of this song (so... “dutty” is “dirty,” then?), and I really can't make out any of the words; between the accent and the egregious use of autotune, I can't get much out of the verses but the rhythm. This is the worst autotune I've heard: there are digital jumps and skips in the middle of syllables. The words sound like they've been thrown into a blender.

While we're stuck with those annoying raver synths and autotune abuse, at least they're not using that stock house beat. I guess if the whole thing is a happy, sunny dance track, it's all about the rhythm anyway, so I've got to be thankful that at least the rhythm was done with some skill.

Also, I can't figure Nicki Minaj out-- she's obviously talented; her part in “Monster” was too good to be coincidence or blind luck. Usually when she pops up in a song, though, it's just not that interesting (leaning towards “annoying,”) and this is another tune where she doesn't really offer much.

Content-wise, I think the song is mostly about loosening up and having fun... I'm still having a tough time figuring out how that meshes with dutty (dirty?) love, but then again, if the refrain is “dutty dutty dutty dum dum,” maybe I shouldn't worry too much about it making sense.

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:

Trey Songz - Bottoms Up

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Not bad.  Nice to hear a club track not so interested in boonch boonch boonch

Trey Songz
Bottoms Up
Club Anthem
#11 (High)
Dec 2, 2010
Tremaine Neverson
Onika Maraj
Edrick Miles
Tony Scales
Daniel Johnson
Kane Beatz

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Had a busy weekend (just back from Portland), so I'm running a bit late in my writing, but I have been listening to this week's offerings and... yeesh. If last week had some pleasant surprises, this week is overcompensating. No worries, though, because while I agree with Brad Bird's mouthpiece Anton Ego that “the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so,” but I also agree with the statement in Ratatouille that precedes that phrase: negative criticism is fun to write and to read. I love to be pleasantly surprised by the good, but sometimes bad is its own reward.

Pause for snarky retort. I don't disagree. And moving on...

“Bottoms Up,” this week's opening salvo, really isn't bad at all; it's a Club Anthem, sure, but it's not built on the 4-on-the-floor pre-fab beat and has a lot of neat turns in the melody. There's even some counterpoint in there (hey! counterpoint!), and some fun call and response as well:

My vision's blurred (confirmed!)
My words slurred (confirmed!)

It's good to have people that will confirm this type of thing for you.

Since this is a song about drinking in the club, dancing, and appreciating the way the girl is shakin' in them jeans, it's probably not fair to condemn it for having lyrics that are a little on the dumb side. The words are a frame to hang a lot of cool melodies within the slow swagger of a drowsy, euphorically drunk track.

It's a little strange when MC Chris shows up at the end-- I knew he went by MC Pee Pants on Aquateen Hunger Force, but apparently he uses Nicki Minaj as a pseudonym as well. I'm only half kidding; she really sounds like MC Chris, and (like him) she's somewhat endearing but still kind of annoying. Her best attributes are when she steps outside her normal flow and either gets little-bird-dainty (“excuse me, I'm sorry, I'm really such a lady”) or gravelly mean (“double my dosage”), but I think she's the weakest link in this chain.

This song is definitely well done, and I'm all for Trey Songz unseating lesser artists on the charts, but, stepping back to the wider perspective, I just played shows with Absence of Light and Order of the Gash, and crammed my sweaty self into a sold out Kylesa show... this club track really isn't going to capture my attention. Remember: until I fired up this blog, I never listened to big pop acts. One of these radio hits has to be pretty special to get shoulder-to-shoulder with the music in my real life.

Walk

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