Special Review #1 — Wett
Goldens Bridge, NY — Not on label (Wett self-released)
https://wettband.bandcamp.com/music
Last night I was visited by an otherwordly inspiration, an entity of sorts, who came to me in my dreams and assigned me a mission. Calling itself Male Nancy Pelosi, this mysterious figure told me that, should I accept the calling, I would be investigating three obscure ancient songs, in a mission to decipher the enigmatic glyphs and aphorisms etched upon them, and shine new light over these relics of a time long gone and just recently found in an excavation site in the old jewish hamlet of Goldens Bridge, NY, an old trade route connected to the famously bewitched city of Salem and itself a settlement shrouded in occult and mystery. As an insatiable archeologist of ancient culture, I immediately accepted this ponderous undertaking, and thus began the first of hopefully many special reviews.
Ready for a Change (feat. MC Superjew), from Dreams (2003):
The first artifact analyzed here features a certain MC Superjew. I wonder, what sort of kabbalistic reference is present here? Is the figure of the Super Jew an allusion to the myth of the Golem of Prague, or maybe even an Old Testament hero such as Samson or David? Or is the idea of change a nod to 17th century philosopher Baruch de Spinoza’s modifications upon the one God Substance, “Deus sive Natura”? What sort of hebrew mysticism inhabits these forbidden scriptures? It was with such questions in mind that I pressed play and gazed upon the hyeroglyphs handed to me by the apparition.
Truly, this is a mystery of the highest order that I’m dealing with here. I gotta say this is not as bad as I was expecting. I mean, I’m not saying it’s good by any means, as a whole, but some of its parts are kinda neat. The intro features this spooky guitar noodling (that kinda sounds like a rhodes at first) and some Westside Gunn-esque “ayo-yo-yo”s in the back which are not too bad. The beat itself consists of pretty much the most basic drum machine pattern you can imagine and some cool synths that remind me a lot of the Super Metroid soundtrack :gloob: it doesn’t really change a lot throughout the track except for this little guitar solo at the final chorus that highkey owns tbh.
The rapping itself, though, is what truly sets this track apart. Superjew has this aloof, almost bored-sounding delivery, but I gotta say his flow is pretty on point: he is fairly slick and agile, rarely falls off beat, is able to work many entirely different cadences within few bars and even be a little unpredictable at times. You can just tell this dude listens to rap on an at least semi-regular basis. The writing, as expected, is silly and parodical but not really bad; at first it’s mostly about, guess what, going to college, getting shitfaced, pulling babes etc, until it kinda shifts into this generic braggadoccio with some pretty funny lines — mostly because they’re nonsensical and silly, but in all honesty there are some pretty OK ones in there. The rhyming itself is kinda basic but not entirely bad, and is relatively daring here and there, though it does gives in to the temptation of dumb easy rhimes at some points. Finally, I must admit that the chorus caught me by surprise: it has this somewhat grungy, angsty melody that constrasts nicely with the bored, affected delivery on the verses. All in all I gotta say I’ve seen some deadass “joke rap” tracks made by “professional comedy rappers” that are worse than this.
My favorite thing about it: MC Superjew’s flow and some of the jokes.
My least favorite thing about it: The beat, which has some cool timbres here and there but is overall just shitty and boring.
Final verdict: היפ הופ אתה לא מפסיק
Top Tax Bracket (feat. Brett), from God Through Wett (2003):
Lol I was gonna go back to the mystic archeologist persona for the beginning of this part but honestly I can’t be fucked. Overall this is simply worse than Ready for a Change in pretty much all aspects: I don’t like the beat, mostly because of the guitar strumming and the orchestral hits here and there (the drums are better though), and this Brett dude raps in an extremely annoying way: his frat bro voice is obnoxious, his flow is all over the place (even though this whole thing looks like it should be very easy to fit into a cadence at least in theory) and he has this very irritating intonation that sounds like he’s making fun of rap as a whole and not taking this seriously in the slightest — which is probably the case, let’s be honest, but it just sounds shitty and annoying.
Although, and now comes the plot twist, I must say that the lyrics on this one are kinda good. As one could imagine it’s mostly humorous, the technique isn’t really anything to write home about and its main storyline is divided in three acts: in the first, the protagonist reflects upon the material wealth he has acquired through hard labor; in the second, he reminisces about his sad childhood and how it drove him to be a person who puts in maximum effort in everything and thus became rich; finally, it is revealed, in a truly Dickensian, maybe even Machadian way, that the protagonist is actually already dead and gazing at the living from the afterlife. All his effort, all his hard-earned money and riches were for nothing, for he burned it all on futile luxuries such as cognac and silk smoking jackets, and now he is forced to watch as it all goes down the drain (at least that’s what I got from it). All in all it’s by far the best part of this thing.
My favorite thing about it: The story.
My least favorite thing about it: Pretty much everything else, especially Brett’s obnoxious, annoying way of rapping.
Final verdict: Fuck you Brett.
Unsolved Mystery Rhymes, from The Good, the Bad, and the Wett: Rare & Unreleased Tracks 2000–2004 (2020):
A-hem as I approached the third and final challenge posed to me by Male Nancy Pelosi, the apparition heeded me a warning. As a true final test of my archaeology skills, I would have to decipher this ponderous enigma on my own, with no assistance whatsoever:
Oh, what a truly gargantuan task presents itself before me! What a true test of mettle I shall face! What eldritch challenges will I have to overcome in order to prove my valor to Male Nancy Pelosi! Lol in all honesty this wasn’t that hard to get, even through my decidedly subpar abilities at following along to a song in english without the lyrics to help me. The beat here, as expected, is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard, but it does have somewhat of an extremely goofy but almost endearing charm to it (and the parts with the guitar solo are ok I guess). Similarly, my old nemesis Brett is back, and his rapping is as bad as ever, but he seems to have now given up on it, and is instead doing a sort of “spooky”, tongue-in-cheek attempt at a spoken word thing, which also sounds bad but is somewhat less cringy I guess? The recording seems to be worse too, it does that popping thing whenever Brett raps something with a plosive sound (“P”, “B”, etc), and uh I forgot what I was gonna say. It’s somewhat amusing when he does the half growl thing though.
As far as I can tell the story is about some kind of mystery, a murder or something, with many characters that I couldn’t really keep track of. There are some fairly clever lines here and there, and Brett’s wordplay game seems to have stepped up a bit somehow. In all honesty I don’t really know what else to say and I don’t want to listen to it again to try and think of something, so I’ll leave it at that. PEAC EOUT.
My favorite thing about it: Idk, when Brett growls and there’s a guitar I guess? Also the story and lyrics are somewhat amusing, even if not good by any measure.
My least favorite thing about it: Everything else, most of all the doo doo ass beat.
Final verdict: 💩👍
