Monday, July 20, 2015

The Black Eyed Peas are Deplorable.

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

I've never liked the Black Eyed Peas. Even in their backpacker indie-hop days, I thought they were severely lacking in substance. Now it's 2015, and they are essentially a nightmarish chimera of 99¢ ringtones, promotional QR codes on the back of Pepsi bottles and discarded KidzBop CDs, all overblanched to a Clear Channel approved level. The Black Eyed Peas have less artistic integrity than any collective of musicians on Earth by a wide margin. They are a dazzling veneer encompassing nothing. Like a glitter dusted cicada shell. Given their career path over the past decade, even the very idea of a 'return to their roots' is galling, unfathomable and an act of unbridled dilusion.

However, 'Yesterday' plumbs depths of revulsion I did not think I could feel about music. I've heard Limp Bizkit cover The Who. I've heard innumerable pie-eyed indie-folk bands fuck around with banjos in suspenders and bowler hats. I've heard Robin Thicke, 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' and James Fucking Blunt. But none of them have disgusted me as much as 'Yesterday'.

This is the worst song I have ever heard. Period.

In case you don't know, 'Yesterday' is BEP's love letter to old-school hip-hop... and by 'love letter to old-school hip-hop', I mean they flay the skin from the still living bodies of the genre's most treasured icons and dance around on their legacy in a macabre spectacle of masturbatory self-congratulation.

On 'Yesterday', The Black Eyed Peas wholesale rip off no less than a dozen genre-defining hip-hop tracks. ON ONE SONG. The sheer fucking temerity of this is astonishing. Even if they had been doing their half-assed version of Jurassic 5 for the past decade, they would still have nowhere near the cultural clout necessary to even broach ONE of these songs. In fact, no one has the credibility to do this. If Rakim, Jay-Z and the resurrected corpses of Guru and ODB tried to do this, it would still be unforgivable.

Who can have this little self-awareness? How can they not know that they are essentially anthropomorphic parade floats at this point? I mean, this is like Shawn Michaels using the Sharpshooter in Montreal. It's Mario Mendoza pointing to the fences a la Babe Ruth. It's Michael Bay giving a lecture on the French New Wave. You're so far removed from reality that it would almost be comical if it weren't so horrendous.

Keep in mind, when you hear these three stumble over the beat of 'Fight the Power' by Public Enemy, that this is the same group that did a web series for Snickers where they played 'hip-hop superheroes'. When they fail to do justice to 'The Choice is Yours' by Black Sheep or ODB's 'Shimmy Shimmy Ya', remember that they were the group that brought you Fergie. When they butcher the ever-loving fuck out of Pete Rock, KRS-One, De La, Digable Planets, LL, Das Efx, Tribe, N.W.A. and the Wu Tang Clan, realize that Fergie was their SECOND choice after Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls. As they posture lifelessly on cover after cover of seminal rap albums, remember that apl.de.ap may very well have more name recognition that everyone on 'Return of the 50 MCs' combined.

You've spent more than a decade bastardizing hip-hop and YOU want to take US back to yesterday? I'll take a fuckin' rain check, yo.
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Sunday, July 19, 2015

Freeweights - Everybody Wants My Name.


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New Retro Wave is probably the best music channel in YouTube, and y'all need to get up on it.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

'Jaggy Love', The Theme from 'Last Bronx'.


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I remember playing this on my PC years ago. I think I watched the anime cutscene set to an abridged version of this song about 100 times. 'Jaggy Love' is dope as fuck.