Qwel has some classic ish.. elsewhere. I'm a big fan of his delivery and intonations, but his attempts at conscientiousness here fall flat — ginger kids rap the n-word thinking they found the way to do it clever. They never have.
"I can't find God cause I can't live with myself,"
A lot of y'all ain't never fed the homeless. Take a walk, throw this on.
My favorite rappers keep flanderizing themselves. I'm glad he's having fun.
Dedicating any amount of space to myself is acrid to me but given recent events I find it necessary; I will keep it brief. Please do not remove my reviews from their context to circulate on other platforms whilst misrepresenting my goals. I have never used this platform as a means to make myself a Fantano; these idiosyncratic scrawlings are my own attempt at making sense. I'm glad so many of you can take things worth taking from them; the average netizen, with no clue of who I am and what ... read more
I accuse GOD of felonious deism, GOD accuses me of.. being GOD,
It has been a miserably cold winter; wind stinging face, snow buries knee, furrows every brow. Cabin-feverous in chapel perilous, my psychosis throws me roses, Quixote on a luddite jihad against asylums that make you insane. Plows burrowed us out but they built the roads.
It was 70 degrees this week, it will snow tonight. The ides of Spring are in full bloom —& I am terrified. Ted K never even used the internet, that ... read more
I don't want to be a figment of an imagination so white. But y'all like them crazy Latinas, right?
Perlman charges the poets of the world as guilty in the devastated countrysides and charred bodies. They are akin to those mythic 'pure scientists,' those who discovered the structure of the atom yet somehow bear no blame for its split. "; Nationalists used the poetry to split and fuse human populations, to mobilize genocidal armies, to perpetrate new holocausts." It ... read more
Winter is a poor time for poems. I suppose the snow doesn't know; innocent. Chiding cold, the season keeps inside us insolent young vagrants. To vandalize what must be defaced, you must have space. Worst blizzard since '78.
Sadistik feels all vandalized, inside for the season. Cabin fever rhymes made whilst pacing in place. I have to resist the urge, when reviewing, to just quote lyrics. What else am I to add? He said it all; more words soon, the coddiwomole continues.
For the hardcore heads; diehard fans of the two will get a lot out of this, I'm sure, but the energy the duo once embodied has drained.
Can can Qwel Qwel rock rock?? Well, well, um, um..
Typical cats do immaculate Jazz rap courtesy fin de siècle Chicago. Three emcees share the spotlight, split the atom; Denizen Kane, poet-turned-rapper, takes ennui and wrests out sincerity. Nostalgia is the lowest form of conversation, he believes in closure. Two tongues, one horse, no name, no admission. Qwazaar is the quintessential rapper man through the cyclical cynical, spits bars with gravel-voice against the typical suicidal ... read more
loftily I do abstain had him sounding like Ferreira for a minute there. That's the most compliment I know.
Denzel et al. help usher in the ultra-sanification of what was once one of rap's rawest scenes. Starved for ideas, we loot the past, defang it in the process. Memphis rap house party at 8.
I'll admit, I've long since splintered with the circle-A anarchist orthodoxy. I have no liebe for lebensreform, am too luddite for the Landians, too immaterial for the bespectacled & skeptical for the spiritual. Sole and I probably disagree on God now — maybe not Then, "I am the God, and the Earth"—, on plots, on how, on alot. Still, sole speaks to me.
Televangel's beats focus on atmosphere. Sick smoggy glum choking out the air in waves, I imbibed ... read more
Dope soul stylings melded with his usual obscure writing style, but I miss the twinge of self-awareness that is here missing.
To Be in Love is nasty. Fickle. The rest of the EP is alright; Sadistik has a penchant for bringing odd names from across underground rap together. RIP Chino XL.
An honest attempt at sanity in somber times. None ever comes. None ever could. The koala clings to his stump.
Karriem grounds Liv.e's ever inventive & eclectic craft with hip-hop–influenced instrumentals. Liv.e portrays a firmly rooted confidence impervious to outsider perversions, shaken only by self-doubts and inability to connect with some. How frustrating; how relatable.
"I think I'm different, but I'm not / I'm just a victim of my time"
Sideshow grapples with Capital and the lack of ethical consumption therein. We live in the belly of the beast and every meal you can scrounge up is the gnawed remains of a humanity. Digging through the rot, dissolute desecrations in the name of survival, you're unsure if the spoils of war even reflect you anymore. These arms are boiled and yet I grab.
Tigray Funk is lethargic, druggy, ... read more
Lungs and Cise being Lungs and Cise over the archetypal LoneSword production. Glitch-infused drumless beats that occasionally drone, here infused with Sam Kinison bits to spruce the mood. That dude hated rap.
Weirdly vapor-y at first, but the sound is abandoned for less interesting recycled abstract tropes. Mbaruk has one hell of a delivery.
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Recent Review Comments
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@TheNevermeant Every reason a person goes to therapy today is related to the system. Obviously. Nothing exists outside it. There isn't anything else to go to therapy for."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@TheNevermeant I am not. Psychology's origins are in asylums, straitjackets, the carceral state. To this day it exists to criminalize and pathologize difference. This is not a matter of simplification, but of history, and my point has already been made by the bulk of the post-modernists."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@TheNevermeant They don't, though. Psychology has always been a weapon against the fight for radical change. People are not capable of fighting when they're not drowning in misery. They get complacent. Therapy can help people cope — that's bad. I am against the industry built around coping. The same bastards who did this to you are the ones telling you to cope with it.
There is no healing here. We are still in the machine. There is only getting used to it — and that, I find abhorrent."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@TheNevermeant No, I have an issue against every system of therapy. For precisely the reasons I described; it is the process by which individuals are made to assume responsibility for systemic failures. Training the Koala who's tree has been chopped down to carry on, despite."
On Serengeti - KENNYV
"Dyknow what I mean?"
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@Mmmvbnn2 When did I attack the listeners?"
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@Mmmvbnn2 You'll notice I used the term therapy-rap in my review, rather than therapeutic. Because, again, my issue isn't that it's peaceful or whatever, but that it's a regurgitation of the stupid uselessness of therapy as an industry. Its grand arc is one of *surrender.* Of *acclimating to the world* instead of *changing it*"
On Vince Staples - Cry Baby
"@dj_digo I may have had a phase"
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@handsomenapkin There are exactly two sentences pertaining to audience perception and both are tied back to the content of the album."
On Vince Staples - Cry Baby
"@DallasDaMusical I dont think it sounds very good"
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@ALLcaps000 He hated the socialists of his day, and he was right to. They were resentful crypto-christians and he saw everything wrong with them. As did Marx."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@ALLcaps000 A communist."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@JohnCena1337 By therapeutic I don't mean soothing, calming per se; I mean reminiscent of therapy."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@JohnCena1337 Then I think the question answers itself. Obviously I would like an album that makes me feel good. But at that point you've abstracted the term therapeutic far beyond anything resembling my critique, which regards the mindsets and language pushed by the actual therapy industry and their application here, in this album."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@JohnCena1337 What does the quality of being therapeutic mean to you? To me that is a description of the lyrical content of the album — to which my answer is a resounding NO."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@ALLcaps000 I am not a nihilist. There's a war going on outside and the lines have already been drawn — through you. Recognition of "the self" — whatever that means — as the battleground. The only way you can attain inner peace in these conditions is through submission."
On Navy Blue - Sir Render
"@Mmmvbnn2 My point is not that it's *wrong* to say that the album is therapeutic, quite the opposite. It *is* therapeutic and that is *bad.* His music now is bland and pacifying, the album's message is a disgusting response to the status quo and being "at peace with yourself" is acrid to me."
On JAY-Z - The Black Album
"@Bot10Exists I did."
On Serengeti & Polyphonic - Dont Give Up
"@hazyvizions Always funny what people cling to. This was one of my least favorites."
On RicofromJupiter's review of R.A.P. Ferreira - Purple Moonlight Pages
"@RicofromJupiter T.A.Z. by Hakim Bey 👁"
On JPEGMAFIA - EXPERIMENTAL RAP
"@usur_disc350 When did I say Future's misogyny can't be criticized? What I said was that his art is worthwhile and it isn't pointless. Peggy's is pointless. He has no substance, he only whines and reduces women to punchlines. He makes them platitudes out of earnest."
On JPEGMAFIA - EXPERIMENTAL RAP
"@CutieZenUwU I'm not going to argue with a Polish teenager about what is and isn't racist. Your total lack of respect for trap is self-evident and you're willfully disengaging with the point to screed about the genre. You're a vulture."
On JPEGMAFIA - EXPERIMENTAL RAP
"@CutieZenUwU "Any trap artist for that matter" is a racist caricature. Any circle in which I am notorious is comprised entirely of losers.
Art can and does handle misogyny in ways that are interesting and revealing. Future is a misogynist as an expression and an extension of his own pain. All of these rap personas are characters, inseparable from their bodies of work. Future's art is worthwhile. This is drivel. There is no point to the misogyny, no statement, no expression. The whole thing was recorded — seemingly — so he could hear his own voice."
On J. Cole - The Fall-Off
"@DivineAura Hip-Hop was built out of the exact opposite, a sibling to funk evolving out of jazz and vocalese. It started with scatting. The gritty realism was a byproduct of labels and their making the genre more marketable. You can talk about real issues, personal experience, expression, etc, without being a realist. Most rappers do. J. Cole does not."
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