What a buncha bullshit
Internets,
LCD rap is falling apart, and it’s leading to culture wars on the rap Internets similar to the ones that took place back in the mid ‘00s, when people who know from rap music made perfectly reasonable arguments against ringtone rap, garbage southern rap, hipster rap and what have you, except in this case it’s proponents of bad rap music who are the ones doing the trolling.
This past Sunday, Drake and Future dropped a surprise album/mixtape or whatever called What a Time to Be Alive. Based on what little I’ve read about it, i.e. maybe an article and a half about the response to it, plus a few kids’ TL’s I skimmed on Twitter (nullus), it seems like it must suck balls, but people want it to not suck balls because their livelihoods and emotions are depending on it.
Drake and Future, I hear, already had done a song or two together, if not like 40 of them (rappers are always collaborating), and none of those songs were particularly well regarded. So it didn’t really make sense for the two of them to do an entire album together, except maybe for marketing purposes. It may have been felt that each of them could benefit from association with the other one, and in fact the TI’s may have put this together.
Drake isn’t considered authentically black, any charity work he’s done with girls with disgusting tank-asses notwithstanding. I don’t know anything at all about Future other than that he’s on that song in which Rawse raps about using Molly to pull a Bill Cosby, and I don’t know if I ever heard his part of the song, so it’s quite possible that I’ve never heard Future. I also have no idea what he looks like. But I think he’s regarded as a legit brother from the streets. He’s on a non-consensual lovemaking anthem, anyway.
There was a Future album released this summer that’s been largely overshadowed by Fetty Wap, which is all they play on the radio — that and Drake. I definitely have heard Fetty Wap. They play a black radio station, here in the STL, over the intercom in the warehouse where I work, and it’s played “My Way” seemingly every 20 minutes or so since I started there a few months ago. I doubt this album will get Future on the radio as often, but he’ll still make upwards of $0.59 every time a Drake fan buys it on iTunes.
Similarly, there was a Migos album that came out this summer, and I’m not sure what happened with that. To think, if it had been released this past fall, it might have done J. Cole numbers, rather than Little Brother numbers. They were all anyone seemed to want to talk about on Twitter, though part of that was because white people needed something to concern themselves with in the weeks in between the Mike Brown shooting and the Ferguson riots. Black kids who aren’t as with it went along with it because it seemed like it was the proverbial new ska and they figured they’d better fall in line. It was Odd Future all over again. Because few people actually liked their music, it was only a matter of time before some other BS came along and people forgot — or pretended to forget — they existed in the first place.
I read on Twitter earlier today (I have to write these things on Thursday), on my lunch break, that Migos are claiming to have left Lyor Cohen’s 300 Entertainment, but then Cohen himself said that they haven’t left 300, that they’re still under contract with him. They must be mistaken! 300 Entertainment might be like slavery: Migos couldn’t leave if they wanted to.
I can only imagine how draconian those contracts are. I mean, look at all the people signed to 300: Migos, who are constantly in and out of jail, thanks in part to Noisey; Fetty Wap, who might not be able to read a contract, if he knows how to read (between the two of us we’ve got two working eyes, my left and his right); and Young Thug, who was once famously signed to Atlantic Records for a ham sandwich.
It was announced the other day that Young Thug’s album has been pushed back indefinitely, and his entire tour has been canceled. There probably wasn’t sufficient interest in either copping his album or seeing him live. He’s got a new mixtape out this week, and earlier this year there was that album they were calling a mixtape, probably because it didn’t sell any better than that Migos album, and they were still hoping he’d be a replacement Lil Wayne.
Kanye West, the standard bearer for music that’s only suitable for guys who own multiple pairs of tennis shoes, has been in a state of career free fall for years now, with no end in sight. His new album was supposed to be out a year ago. In an interview in Vanity Fair, he says it might be another year before it comes out, but who knows. The other day, he premiered a new song at a fashion show, and no one seemed to give a shit. He’s attempted that a few times now.
Most articles about Kanye these days read like obits. There’s an article in Pitchfork about the enduring influence of the godawful 808s & Heartbreak, without which there may not have been a Future, Fetty Wap, Young Thug, et al. And maybe a week before, there was some rambling, tone deaf LiveJournal entry in Complex about how the author became close personal friends with Kanye, back when Kanye was popping, and then went on to work for a magazine that frequently reports on Kanye.
This week, Complex ran an article that attempted to portray the widespread disinterest and/or disappointment in What a Time to Be Alive as a matter of people who still listen to the Black Star album on the reg (if there’s anyone other than myself) not willing to accept that that’s not appropriate music to listen to at the club, which they still go to, or at a barbecue, where you’re not allowed to listen to Morris Day and the Time anymore, apparently.
Essentially, the garbage Complex has been promoting for the past 10 years now is beginning to lose its appeal, and the most they can think to do is lash out at whoever they feel symbolizes real hip-hop. The examples they came up with aren’t very current because that’s how long it’s been since this was a relevant conversation.
The article was supposedly written in response to Lupe Fiasco and Talib Kweli fans on Twitter shit-talking the Drake-and-Future album. I’m never on Twitter anymore, so I wouldn’t know, but I wonder if that really was the case. I was on Twitter during Jay Z’s Tidal b-sides concert, and all I saw was a buncha dumbasses having imagined, one-sided arguments with people who don’t think that Jay Z is the greatest rapper of all time (lol), who weren’t actually on Twitter, as far as I could tell.
In the article, there’s cheap shots at both Lupe and Kweli, something about how no one wants to listen to Lupe deep cuts and Talib Kweli rapping off beat at a barbecue. They both responded by throwing bitchfits on Twitter, and this led to many a think piece, multi-tweet diatribe and what have you. In an official response from Complex, which includes a brief primer on rappers vs. journalists, I was declared the Bill O’Reilly of hip-hop, which was probably meant to be taken as an insult. I might print it off and frame it.
Take it easy on yourself,
Bol
Originally published at tinyletter.com.
