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Monday, March 29, 2010

Joke Rap.

I read this article in the Village Voice the other day. I thought it was interesting and worth sharing. I like joke rap. I think Das Racist are funny. And almost every hip hop artist I enjoy injects some sense of humor into their music. I'm conflicted about it, though, and have a hard time putting why into words.

I just rewrote a thesis statement fifteen times. I dunno. Read the article. Check out the artists mentioned. Notice the crowds they seem to draw. It's very safe for everyone to enjoy, joke-rap. Safe for hipsters. Safe for kids in the Midwest. Safe for journalists. You can discuss its artistic merits all day, and never have to discuss how it made you feel. I feel like it can be a weird double-standard, for the jokey-rappers. Blah blah blah.

Here's the article:

http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-03-24/music/take-donald-glover-aziz-ansari-and-das-racist-s-joke-rap-seriously/

Donald Glover has been a viral-video phenomenon, a New York improv-comedy staple, an award-winning writer for 30 Rock, and, most recently, an actor on NBC's recently renewed Community. Funny guy. But he's really just a rapper.

Performing under the moniker Childish Gambino—chosen after he ran his name through a Wu-Tang Clan name generator during his freshman year at NYU—the 26-year-old is arriving at a time when hip-hop and comedy are intersecting in strange ways. Just don't call it a joke. "I guess that's just my brain," Glover says from his Los Angeles apartment while tweaking his recent Comedy Central stand-up special. "I never go into an album thinking, 'This needs to be a little funnier.' I only look at scripts or jokes that way. There's no winking at the culture of hip-hop. I'm dead serious."

The Atlanta-born Glover, though funny in his songs, isn't making what has come to be known, somewhat derisively, as Joke Rap—the knowing but goofy appropriation of the genre's style and attitude, sometimes without context, delivered as parody or novelty. That's the terrain of Andy Samberg's trio the Lonely Island, alongside Flight of the Conchords and—with his forthcoming, Dave Sitek–produced RAAAAAAAANDY mixtape—Aziz Ansari, who has proven himself a rap allegiant, detailing his bizarre personal encounters with Kanye West in his recent stand-up special, Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening. The mixtape's first leak, "AAAAAAAANGRY," finds him literally hollering at Drake, Kid Cudi, DOOM, Clipse, and basically every other relevant rapper: "Beats by Dr. Dre Headphones—what about some Verses by Dr. Dre Verses?"

Glover makes a far more confessional, "girl-crazy" brand of rap on his fascinating, promising pair of mixtapes, I Am Just a Rapper and I Am Just A Rapper 2 (available for free download at childishgambino.com). "These raps are not my sketches/I'm a sick boy, nigga/When I cough, I hope you catch it," he chirps on Rapper 2's "The Real." Like nearly every track on the tapes, it's performed over a popular indie-rock song—in this case, Sleigh Bells' "Infinity Guitars." Grizzly Bear, Yeasayer, Animal Collective, and Vampire Weekend also get the Childish treatment, though his next album, Culdesac, will feature all original productions.

Glover, warm and enthusiastic over the phone, repeatedly cites Kanye as an inspiration—and it ain't hard to tell. West's halting cadences, obsession with high-end fashion (APC, Comme des Garçons, and Band of Outsiders—for whom Glover just modeled—all get Rapper shout-outs), and near-shrieking emotionalism abound. On "What the F*** Are You?" Glover raps over the Knife's "Colouring of Pigeons," unleashing a furious identity screed: "Yeah, I'm self-conscious, go ahead laugh it up/'Cause I dig deep and pull something out to back it up/They told my ass to blacken up/'What the fuck are you?/You don't even say shit/Quit writing gay shit.' " His wit makes him a compelling rapper, but it's the vulnerability that wins out: Glover describes his first Childish Gambino project, The Younger I Get, as "way too close to my heart" and "my emo album." He says no one will ever hear it again.

Not every accused joke rapper is as emotionally splayed. Queens duo Das Racist were singed with the Joke Rap brand when their "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" became a flashpoint last June; since then, the group's Himanshu Suri, while acknowledging the importance of their breakout, shudders at being called shtick.

"We're not making anything that we felt would be consciously described as 'parody' or 'novelty,' " says the 24-year-old. "We didn't think we were making fun of anything except what we felt were antiquated modes of thinking about rap. Irony is something we embrace—we don't think of it as a non-valid way of looking at the world. It's an appropriate lens. Especially when intertwined with race."

Das Racist's other songs are funny, too, but more complex. They also feature more actual rapping than "Taco Bell." The group's often hilarious, sometimes dark new mixtape, Shut Up, Dude, is a deeply self-conscious batch of word-association jumbles, references to other artists' lyrics, and half-hearted hooks. They don't so much rap as approximate rap's best and worst tics. The chorus of "You Oughta Know," a remix of an obscure, Billy Joel–sampling Cam'Ron song, is essentially "Ooo lalala aaaah nananana." It sounds like what people who don't know the words to rap songs do when trying to rap along. On "Hugo Chavez," the pair rap, "A million here, a million there/Tougher than Ethiopian warfare/Mohair coat's from the goat's back/Cocaine Blunts, we smoke that/Kodak moments/Eating doughnuts/Listening to coke rap/Listening to joke rap/Listening to Donuts/Listening to grown-ups/Listening to Camu/Listening to Cam, too/Watching Shampoo/Washing my hair with shampoo." To recap, in those few bars are references to a Lil Wayne lyric, a rap blog, a rap microtrend, a rap micro-microtrend, an album by the late J. Dilla, the late rapper Camu Tao, Cam'Ron, and a Warren Beatty film. Oh, and eating doughnuts. Well-played, Das Racist.

Suri, along with his partner, Victor Vazquez, hopes Shut Up, Dude will untangle some preconceptions, though the emergence of "Taco Bell" is still telling. For rap, repetition was a popular drink, and it still is. Which explains how the Lonely Island's farcical collaboration with T-Pain, "I'm on a Boat," received a Grammy nomination earlier this year—in the Best Rap/Sung Collaboration category. On the red carpet before the February ceremony, T-Pain was perplexed: "It's more amazing that a lot of my stuff don't get nominated for Grammys, then a mockery of the art is nominated," he noted. "It's weird."

Not too weird. What's so wrong with being funny? Biz Markie and the Beastie Boys were making joke rap before it became a dirty phrase. Nineties films like Chris Rock and Nelson George's CB4 and Rusty Cundieff's Fear of a Black Hat worked in a similar vein: smart but over-the-top parody, deftly written from inside the culture. No one made better satire than De La Soul, one of the most celebrated rap acts ever. Rap is encouraged to be funny: The best stuff is often littered with, ahem, "punch lines," and the biggest stars—from Slick Rick to Biggie Smalls to Lil Wayne—are championed for inspiring guffaws. And though Glover and Suri are both quick to distance themselves from the Lonely Island, there's a kinship there: What made the group's 2009 full-length Incredibad so interesting was not Samberg and Co.'s lyrics—sort of funny, I guess—but how slavishly accurate the production was. "I'm on a Boat" worked well as T-Pain homage, and "Dick in a Box" as Color Me Badd–style loverman r&b. But there was also the Black Sheep nod on "Punch You in the Jeans" and the West Coast pastiche "Santana DVX" (co-starring E-40). There's even a remarkable thematic similarity between Das Racist's "Fake Patois" and Incredibad's "Ras Trent." As instrumentals, these songs poked knowingly, operating in ways beyond "Weird Al" Yankovic's chintzy Casio-and-accordion reproductions of Coolio and T.I. songs.

Ten or 15 years ago, rap became both pervasive and ripe for lampooning—now, the jokes just work better as actual songs. The real comedy comes from outsiders and oddballs. South Africa's zef clowns Die Antwoord. Hollywood club slut Mickey Avalon. Joaquin Phoenix. They're the real jokes. For the polymath Glover, rap is just a natural progression. "Comedians are obsessed with rock stars, and rock stars are obsessed with comedians—it's always been that way. Eddie Murphy. Blues Brothers. They made music, too. And rock stars want to be comedians. Jay-Z raps about Delirious all the time. They're in love with each other. There's nothing weird about it."

Still, it's not hard to see why there's reason to be defensive. "I read all the time, 'Oh, this nigga think he Lil Wayne.' Nobody's saying that about 'Weird Al' Yankovic. Nobody listens to 'White and Nerdy' and thinks, 'This guy thinks he's Chamillionaire!' It's a joke. I don't want to be taken as a joke."

Friday, March 26, 2010

STAYS KILLIN' EVERYTHING

STAYS KILLIN' IT 1

Some shit just stays cool. And some cool shit just pops up. Here's just a short list. The 'Stonefish' album cover is something I designed a couple years ago and didn't even know Fameless Records put it out (thanks for telling me, Input). I haven't heard it yet, but am going to check it out asap. My boy Adrift is the MC on the album and he kills, so it's probably good. And our folks at Boundless put out the new Raekwon mixtape. Check it out. Have a good weekend.

SIXGUNS

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Thursday, March 18, 2010

This Made Me So Happy.

Sentence found this video on YouTube.

All I will say is that trying to make it as a musician can be a long, lonely road. And stuff like this makes it all worthwhile.

And if the kids that made this video are reading this right now, holler at us. Because we love you.

Check it out --

Matchbooks



Holler.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Video for Matchbooks.

We are finally getting this up on YouTube, but here is the video we did for our song "Matchbooks," off of our EP we called "Smash Smash Bang."

It was directed by our good friend Tim Young. All the shit thrown at us came courtesy of our closest friends and family, the way it should be.

And a quick reminder -- you can get both the song and the EP for free at music.metermaidsnyc.com

Hope you dig.



Holler.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

JIM MCMAHON

As the de facto visual director of Metermaids, I feel I have the responsibility of sharing pieces of inspiring and beautiful art. This gem really spoke to me. Enjoy.

Sixguns

Monday, March 1, 2010

Funky Souls.

So I'm sure people have noticed that I stopped my little blog project. I realized that it was becoming a way for me to whine. Ha. Everything moves in cycles, and I don't feel the need to document every up and down. In my head I also always believe that things move quickly, and there would be new and exciting changes every day leading up to the release of this project.

I forgot that we, as Metermaids, tend to take a while to do anything. In this particular case, that's a good thing. There is no reason to rush a project that is so important to us.

What I will share, as it has become official, is that the legendary Rob Swift will be handling all of the cuts on the EP. Which, if you are hip hop heads like we are, is infuckingcredible. Seriously yo. We have been getting his work back to us in the last couple days, and the man is just so good at what he does. So excited for people to eventually hear this shit.

Watch the man handle some business:



Word em up. I will try and update this as much as possible. Also, I noticed that Sentence not only made the blog look much better but posted an awesome video about gangs. So there you go.

Also, me and the lady went up to Providence on a whim to catch the record release party for our friend B. Dolan's new album "Fallen House Sunken City." It was insane. Like, amazing night insane. Got a hug from Sage, copped the album, talked to B. about what it's like to get birthday cake in your ear.

This is the song he closed the night with (with a marching band, no less):



I think his album drops tomorrow. Do yourself a favor and cop it.

Holler.