Everybody on My Dick Like They Supposed to Be

I can't imagine how exciting it must be for an artist to move from one genre to a completely different one. I mean, imagine discovering and finding a way to move from one sound that you're familiar with to a completely new territory, an unknown one that could bring so many exciting possibilities. Recently, we've been seeing a lot of artists make transitions from hip-hop or RnB to Rock and Punk music, and even vice-versa, with artists such as Travis Miller, a.k.a. Lil Ugly Mane. But, before that, around 8 years earlier, we saw an already established artist move into a completely different direction all by himself. Interpol's very own Paul Banks, sometime before the release of Interpol's "comeback" album "El Pintor", decided to explore this completely unknown territory from what he knew, yes, Hip-Hop.

I really do believe the man poured everything he could into the project, he probably tried really hard to fit into the Hip-Hop world, but, sadly, it didn't work... at all. "Everybody On My Dick Like They Supposed To Be" is Paul Banks's most embarrassing piece of music ever made by Paul Banks. I really don't know where to begin... this album truly is bad in almost every aspect. Maybe we can begin with the title of the mixtape, which alone, already gives a bad impression of what the project is going to be, I really don't picture Paul saying something like that, ever, it just comes off as someone who doesn't know at all what he's doing, and just does what some other artists in the genre would probably say in their music.

Now, the title of the album is bad, but, that doesn't pardon its biggest mistake, the content of the record. Before anything, no, Paul Banks doesn't rap on this album, he doesn't spit bars or anything, his only vocal appearances are on the "Demo Excerpt" tracks, which work mostly as... interludes? To the record, and let me tell you, these super-short bits are the best part of the entire project. This is an instrumental hip-hop album, it's just 35 minutes in length, but, it feels like an absolute eternity. Every single one of the beats is boring, and not even the sporadic features from different rappers can save any of the tracks. Every beat is generic, each one of them seem like what would pop on Youtube if you search for "free beats to rap over". As Pitchfork pointed out in their review, everything Paul does, even the sampling, has been done, at least one million times before.

It's not just that, but each song is connected to the next one, a la "Since I Left You", but of course, done terribly. In many ways, I think Paul took inspiration from that project to make this one, but the issue is, in "Since I Left You", every song has at least something that connects perfectly to the previous track, and hearing the whole thing gives you the idea of going through a big and fun journey, here, well, it just makes no sense. At times there'll be a part of the beat of the previous track playing in the back, but that gets drowned by the beat that's playing now, and it doesn't sound good at all.

Now, I saw a lot of people on the youtube upload of the mixtape, claiming how much they enjoyed it and blah blah blah, but, I truly believe that all of these people claim it's good because, 1, they like Paul Banks, and 2, because this is the first time they hear Instrumental Hip-Hop. I really think this thing is at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to quality in general, there's just nothing likable or even remotely interesting about this project, I truly just can't see anyone ever enjoying this thing at all.

To end this... yeah, thank god Paul stuck to Post-Punk Revival. Not to say he could've improved a lot if continued with Hip-Hop, but, sometimes people just aren't built for some genres. Maybe this was his first approximation to the sound, but, in the end, the issue with this thing is that it seems way too uninspired to just be improved from one mixtape to the next one. I respect Paul, and I respect the attempt at something completely different, but, sometimes, you should just stick to your guns.