Filed under: 2008 Albums, Audio, Pop Music | Tags: 808s, Auto-Tune, Heartbreak, Hip-Hop, Kanye West, R&B
Kanye West – 808s & Heartbreak
While most of the buzz in the music industry today is focused on the long-awaited, oft-delayed release of Axl Rose & Friends’ Chinese Democracy, this day also marks the release of one of 2008′s most exciting, and intriguing releases, 808s & Heartbreak.
Producer/Rapper Kanye West has spent this past decade not only climbing the Hip-Hop mountain, but he has rapidly ascended to the top of the pop music world. West has chosen to take a risk by conceiving an album that is almost the polar opposite of what his fan base would expect or want from him. There are no flashy, or comical raps. There is no large star studded list of guests spots. No backpacker shout-outs or viable club bangers. He has decided to heavily feature and utilize one of the most vilified and notorious studio devices in recent memory, Auto-Tune. With all that said, what is probably the most significant change is that 808s & Heartbreak is an album based upon mood and expression, as opposed to the energy and glitziness of West’s prior catalog.
The overarching narrative of 808s & Heartbreak has Kanye lamenting over lost love. Mr. West never really clearly divulges whose fault it was, or who is to blame. The songs all send contradicting messages in that respect. Love is absurd, yet at the same time it makes total sense. The uncertainty that Kanye expresses in 808s & Heartbreak in a way reflects the complex nature of love. There is a certain futility that comes with turning love into a blame game. You can feel West coming to this realization as you listen throughout the album’s 52 minute running time.
The album’s lead single “Love Lockdown” contains an initially sparse arrangement. Kanye’s Auto-Tune affected voice is accompanied by an 808 kick and light piano chords, while he reflects on his own uncertainty and comes to term with his misgivings. The verse is interrupted by an explosive chorus of galloping tribal drums as he pleads her to “keep your love locked down”.
In “Heartless”, West takes a less conciliatory position and unleashes a reserved, yet scathing rant as he declares “You run and tell your friends that you’re leavin’ me/They say that they don’t see what you see in me/You wait a couple months/Then you gon’ see/You’ll never find nobody better than me”.
Another standout track, the Boards of Canada-esque “Street Lights” sounds like a song that could have been the B-Side to “Flashing Lights”. Here, West immerses himself in his loneliness as his voice is drowned out by the shoegaze-tinged background vocals.
While not gifted with much of a vocal range, Kanye’s singing possesses an endearing quality throughout the album similar to vocalists such as The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne. Surprisingly, the Auto-Tune’s effects does not impose a feeling of artificiality or inauthenticity. In spite of the the digitally altered nature of Kanye’s words, it is still very much West’s true voice that is put on display for all to hear.
Despite his problematic review, AllMusic’s Andy Kellman correctly points out that the album owes much sonically to post-punk albums such as New Order’s Movement or even Depeche Mode’s body of electronic pop. No, 808s & Heartbreak does not sound like an “80s” album, but the use of icy synths, and 808 drum samples provides—to great effect—the songs with melancholy post-punk atmospherics. Many of the tracks have a sense of space between the instruments, which creates a contrast of black and white and results in an introspective and personal undercurrent throughout the twelve tracks.
With all that said 808s & Heartbreak is not without its shortcomings. There are moments when West overindulges in the melodramatic as he recites hammy lines such as “When I grab your neck/I touch your soul”. “See You In My Nightmares” sees Kanye succumbing to Lil Wayne syndrome by putting Weezy on the track not because he is a particularly good fit for the song, but because it’s 2008 and he’s Lil Wayne. The closing track “Pinocchio Story” is a live cut from a recent concert in Singapore, whose audio quality is as poor as the unintelligible content of the song.
In the end, Mr. West may have delivered if not his best work to date, definitely his most rewarding, accomplished and expressive. While Axl may have given the whole country free Dr. Pepper for the next few months, West has delivered to listeners an imperfect, yet touching reflection on love, loss and longing.
-Miguel “theuglylover” Abad
Filed under: cunts from alaska, Dipset, give me a break, Love, Note-Worthy Characters, Truth is Strange, Uncategorized | Tags: Sarah Palin
A friend of mine (Mr. X) had a crush on this girl for a very long time. He pursued her with reckless abandon: scoring drugs for her, giving her rides around the city etc. However, as is often the case when you bend over backwards for an apple of your cornea, she told him that she wasn’t interested.
When the murk and mist of the situation had dispersed, Mr. X had fortunately accepted that it just wasn’t meant to be. Despite experiencing what must have been some degree of relief, his tranquility soon went rancid and turned to anger once he realized how superfluous the investments he had made were. After a few bitter tirades we concluded that he now despised this girl for the ass that she made out of him. Through it all however, one question remained: “would you still have sex with her?” He thought about it for about five seconds, nodded and said “yeah..to teach her a lesson.”
Don’t get me wrong, I really do not have the credentials to do any sort of analysis on human sexuality but this wire-thin line that separates love and hate is sort of mind-blowing. Take this recent quote from Juelz Santana regarding Sarah Palin:
“I wanna smash her just to wreck the whole McCain thing… It’d look like she was cheating and that’d be all crazy for the White House.”
I have a sincere appreciation for this quote because I thought the exact same thing. The scenario is perfect, Harlem Born rapper fucks naive, Bible-thumping, decently attractive republican. Face it, you cannot thumb through your wank-rolodex and tell me that there’s a scenario more ideal when your looking for that overpowering carnivore sex. The cliche of screwing the mild mannered librarian has gone putrid; use some ethics here, overpowering a meek librarian is very un-PC. Pretty soon the “Palin” will become a stripper caricature: the right-wing moralist will rip her blouse off and produce an apple out of her bra and reward magnanimous tippers with bites from it.
Anyway…thank you Juelz for saying what so many of us have thought.
Filed under: Fine Dining | Tags: blueberry, burger, charlie kaufman, harold and kumar, pasadena, pecan, pie, pie 'n burger, synecdoche
While watching Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman’s latest exercise in perplexing people into admiring his work, I realized how underrated simplicity has become in this day and age. Kaufman is regularly showered with accolades, mostly from moviegoers who love to worship things they don’t understand, while the writers of Harold and Kumar, one of the most enjoyable film franchises in recent memory, are written off as inconsequential, pedestrian peddlers of a lower form of art. Although Synecdoche is the type of movie you would be wise to name-check at a dinner party with bourgeois acquaintances you envy, you would much rather spend a Friday evening alone with your favorite ethnic stoners. You would rather just enjoy a movie than have to think about why you should be enjoying it. You would prefer to watch Neil Patrick Harris tripping balls, gawk at the dozens of models attending the bottomless party, and watch Jamie Kennedy urinate in the woods – all the essential, bread-and-butter elements of simple film entertainment delivered in a well-crafted, unpretentious package. You would be in denial if you claimed to feel like watching Synecdoche more often than taking that weed-fueled trip back to White Castle, but you keep quiet at the risk of sounding like some uncivilized dimwit who can only appreciate the basest of films. Pasadena’s Pie ‘n Burger is the Harold and Kumar of dining. Although you might tell your “cultured” friends that your favorite restaurant is some place that serves the freshest abalone and most expensive caviar in town, your heart really belongs to a place like Pie ‘n Burger. The old-fashioned diner, which is about 90% counter and looks straight out of Twin Peaks, trades in the simple pleasures of biting into a juicy ground beef patty and ingesting more whipped topping than Maria Ozawa’s forehead can hold. The walls are wood-paneled like the office of a car salesman in the ‘70s, and the decor looks practically untouched for decades. The vintage, teal Hamilton Beach milkshake mixer, which has miraculously avoided becoming a casualty of technological progress and its own lifespan as an appliance, still converts ice cream into smooth, creamy delights, and the faucets in the bathroom are operated by knee. There’s nothing to appease any stuck-up clientele who consider visual stimulation and fine Italian furniture as much vital part of a meal as the total on the check. Pie ‘n Burger serves up exactly what its name explicitly states – mouthwatering cheeseburgers and incredible homemade pies – and serves them well. The burgers follow the classic “stand burger” template made famous by In ‘n Out, minus the tomato – lettuce, optional grilled or raw onions, slice of American, and a load of thousand island. However, the meat is what separates this one half of the diner’s namesake from lesser hamburgers; the flavorful patty is juicy on the inside and crispy around the edges, picking up all sorts of harmoniously oily flavors from the griddle. The pie is unbeatable, as is the variety. The list of choices, which includes the scrumptious blueberry and transcendent pecan, that the waitresses run through would probably take even a CalTech student a month to memorize. Even Harold and Kumar couldn’t have done simplicity any better than Pie ‘n Burger. Unless perhaps it was renamed Tits ‘n Weed.
Pie ‘n Burger
913 E California Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91106
www.pienburger.com
Right now, life is a demoralizing, gridlocked pile of shit. The recession has sunk its teeth into the economy and the blood has leaked onto everybody’s once pearly-white sheets. Ten minutes of inquiring into the available jobs portion of Craigslist and you’re sure to stray over to Casual Encounters to reclaim your drive to continue living. I’d say rock-bottom is close but this appears to be a free-fall into an abyss.
Young Jeezy’s The Recession may just cheer you up. The record nips around the theme of the current economic downturn and lingers surprisingly close to this theme. Of course Jeezy does Jeezy; The Recession is less about clipping coupons as it is about saying “fuck you” to the elephants whose shit started this mess and juxtaposes his lusting after luxury whips as incentive to ascend this hump.
As idealistic as Young’s lofty expectations might be, Jeezy may as well be 50 feet tall, the way his trademark “HAHAAAAA” validates lines like “I’m Angelina Jolie, I need that Brad Pitt-stole.” Of course in a vacuum that pun barely makes sense. However, that’s the significance of Jeezy; his supernatural confidence spilled out over the synth-tinged production make even the most juvenile wordplay sound profound. Jeezy’s fire shall hopefully leak into your ears and into your sense of well being.
The Recession doesn’t stray all that far from The Motivation or The Inspiration but that’s exactly what the world needs, arrogantly tough rappers who are aware of what the F is going on but are going to charge through the climate like a rhino. The formula works and never have materialistic pipe-dreams been so practical.
Filed under: fast food, mcdonalds | Tags: chicken, fast food, mcdonalds, mediocrity
The origins of Southern cuisine can traced directly from the African slaves’ unique use of spices, seasonings and cooking techniques. In contrast to the subtleties of traditional European cuisine, Southern food is fueled by the promise of bold and intense flavors that speak to the soul as much as the taste buds.
The influence of the South on American food is immeasurable. Mass produced and mass marketed foods in America are made to provide rich and satisfying flavors. While they don’t necessarily meet the body’s nutritional demands, they satisfy the desire and urge to savor.
Unfortunately, McDonald’s ‘Southern Style Chicken Sandwiches’ defecates all over the tradition and history of Southern cuisine. And honestly, it fails to meet even the bare minimum requirements of a satisfactory fast food concoction.
Mmmmmmmmmmmediocre
The sandwich comes in two unsatisfying forms. The breakfast version is comprised of a deep fried chicken breast patty sandwiched between a McDonald’s breakfast biscuit. The lunch and dinner version has a plain bun with pickles in place of the biscuit.
The chicken patty itself is not quite a mess but it would be better described as mediocre. Any lover of southern flavors would assume that the patty would hit the eater with a deliciously seasoned and crisp batter mixing in harmony with the juicy tenderness of the chicken. Wrong. This patty’s seasoning is almost non-existent, providing a sad flavorlessness, while the batter provides no crispy payoff. The chicken itself is too moist, which was on the verge of being overly watery.
The slightly less terrible breakfast version is clearly the more palatable of the two sandwiches. The biscuits distract the taster for a moment, allowing the taster to purge the blandness of the patty from one’s short-term memory. Eaters of the lunch/dinner sandwich are not as lucky. The plain bun does nothing to compliment or mask the mediocrity of the chicken forcing the taster to experience the totality of patty’s unsatisfying essence.
It is soul food with no soul.
On second thought, it barely qualifies as food.
Stick with the $1 double cheeseburger.
Filed under: Adventures in Chinktown, Fine Dining | Tags: alhambra, banh mi che cali, barely adequate, cheap food, lowered expectations, pho, valley blvd, vietnamese
When I’m on the verge of collapsing from starvation with only a lonely Lincoln inhabiting my wallet, I often find myself steering my Ford Focus towards Valley Blvd. in Alhambra, a neon-lit, AZN-centric street where restaurants serving generous portions (of both food and MSG) abound. Driving into this neighborhood means throwing in the towel for the evening, submitting yourself to the inevitable food coma you’ll fall into after devouring an entire plate of hearty food that was obviously meant to be shared. Quantity is most certainly valued over quality in this part of town, a place where no credible gourmet chef would dare trying to sell miniscule (but delectable) dishes at astronomical prices. No, “savoring” is a word absent from the vocabulary of Alhambra’s dining patrons, eschewing the concept of eating to enjoy in favor of stuffing yourself to your stomach’s capacity and beyond.
One of Valley Blvd.’s latest phenomena is Banh Mi Che Cali, the latest in a string of Pho eateries that have inhabited the space across the street from Alhambra stalwarts Noodle World and Jazz Cat Cafe. One would have assumed by now, after at least two Pho restaurants have come and gone, that this building is cursed for any noodle peddlers, but the owners of Banh Mi Che Cali opened their business with a fool-proof, economy-proof, curse-proof plan – offer decent eats at jawdroppingly low prices. If any one restauraunt could exemplify the “quantity over quality” ideology of Valley Blvd., Banh Mi Che Cali, with its buy-one-get-one-free tapioca milk tea and giant bowls of Pho going for $4.75 each, must be it. Whenever I take a look at the menu, in which entrees very rarely exceed five dollars, my standards for quality of food, quality of service, quality of human decency shown towards me by the workers, become considerably lower. I find myself asking for a glass of water, or a napkin, or my food, or a to-go box, or the check at least twice each time I come here, but for a $2.25 footlong beef teriyaki sandwich, I’m more than willing to tolerate atrocious service. Pho is one of those dishes that are hard to mess up or even distinguish between the good and the better; I only know of decent pho and terrible pho. So long as it’s edible, you could pass off pho from any place as the greatest pho in the world, and I’d believe you. My favorite part of each meal at Banh Mi Che Cali is the arrival of the check, when any lack of impressiveness in the actual food is compensated for by the total that barely reaches double digits.
The only problem with this place is that I always take the mentality I have towards the food away with me after I’m done eating. I go home with a resolve to only take on things for which I have extremely low expectations in an effort to be more satisfied in my life. I would buy generic brand pharmaceuticals that are half the price of their name brand equivalents and not mind so much when my crotch is still itching a month later. I would dance with the ugliest girl in the club and not be disappointed that I only managed a quarter of an erection. Clearly, eating regularly at Banh Mi Che Cali would not be good for your sexual health, but on those rare occasions in which you’re dying of hunger and would be willing to literally consume a horse, it may very well be the cheapest, most economical solution.
Banh Mi Che Cali
647 W Valley Blvd
Alhambra, CA 91803
No doubt, Redman is my favorite rapper of all time. Generally, I tend to think that “selling-out” is a notion concocted by people who don’t know what it means to starve. However, Reggie “Redman” Noble deserves credit for consistently, and for lack of three superior words, kept it real.
Forget song-writing. Red’s rhyme schemes are jumbles of non-sequitor and literally blunted collages of cloudy thoughts. Funk Doc has never polished his music. Even as time went on, he’s never reached out to r&b singers for a catchy hook. If anything, r&b and pop artists have sought out Redman perhaps to add a bit of filth to their hook/chorus/hook/chorus prisons (think Dru Hill, Christina Aguilera, etc).
One also must look at Noble’s acting choices. The guy would much rather be in a slacker comedy that makes your serotonin explode than pretend that he’s a real actor. Honestly, I’ve seen How High about six times and Crash once.
As you probably know, Redman’s appearance on Cribs was classic. His abode closely resembles my apartment.
Being that he’s so inspired by funk music, it’s important to look at the word “funk” and really explicate what it means. Redman certainly has built a career on keeping it grimy, slimy and funky.
If you want to get into Redman, let me suggest Muddy Waters, his third album. It’s a great place to start.
Filed under: Uncategorized
It’s Halloween season and if you’re like me, you have lots of free time and not a lot of dough…what a downer. Anyway peep Instructables for everything from Halloween masks to french toast. My personal
favorite is this Iron Man helmet.
Filed under: Audio | Tags: apocalypse, backdraft, my bloody valentine, noise, santa monica, shoegaze, t.i.
Yeah, you’ve heard this a million times, but I can truly attest that seeing My Bloody Valentine is like nothing else on this earth. The Valentine experience isn’t simply a rock concert; it’s half show, half thrill ride. After procuring tickets for both nights of their two-night stand in Santa Monica (probably the last city in the world I would associate with the band), I was ready to punish my eardrums for wanting to listen to T.I.’s “Whatever You Like” so often.
Waiting in the pit for the band to take the stage was akin to standing in line to get on a Six Flags ride that had just opened, except the sweaty teenagers would be replaced with old-timers revisiting their drug-addled pasts, pseudo-sophisticates who look like they felt obligated to attend in order to retain their reputation as “cultured,” and well, more sweaty teenagers. The anticipation, even fear, of watching MBV live escalated as we crept closer to the front of the line, positioned at 10:30 P.M. Most of us, mere toddlers when Loveless was released, didn’t know what to expect, whether we would lose our lunch at the intensity of the sound. We picked up the free earplugs they handed out at the door, a precautionary measure taken just in case the volume frightened us. 
Once the band finally arrived, a decade or so too late according to most of us, many of the attendees stuffed their ear canals full of the neon foam, holding onto the sonic handrail built into the MBV ride (probably for liability reasons). As soon as the band started up, all fears were allayed by the warm, comfortable pillow of sound they put forth. Yes, they were certainly loud but not unbearable. They play loudly enough to make listening as visceral as possible, not to test the paying audience’s patience and willingness to learn sign language.
The notorious white noise section of set closer “You Made Me Realize” is as close to painful as they come. Lasting for more than 10 minutes before the band comes back in with the chorus to finish the song, this exercise in noise-making feels and sounds like the end of the world. It’s like having buildings collapse all around you, like having a dozen airplanes take off in front of you, like being taken into the Backdraft ride at Universal Studios with Bilinda Butcher, who in her forties looks like the most desirable English you never had. I’ll admit it; I may have lost some hearing after watching them on two consecutive nights. (They played identical sets, but I wouldn’t complain about eating filet mignon two nights in a row.) But a sacrifice must be made when you worship at the altar of noise with Archbishop Kevin Shields.
Filed under: Fine Dining, San Francisco | Tags: El Farlito, San Francisco, taqueria
The same way an attractive female sauntering through your mind can make a day of school/work incredibly difficult to focus on, El Farolito, in the true aorta of SF’s Mission District, can leave one as hot and bothered as any fox
.
Often, joints that are open late have you ambushed, and you either starve or eat burgers that taste like they were cooked with a Bic Lighter (i.e. Sparky’s–diss blog soon to come!) El Farolito on the other hand is downright God-like. Along with La Corneta, El Farolito is the best Mexican food in San Francisco. Aside from the inebriated Marin-born hipsters who essentially fuck while in line, El Farolito is untouchable; the quesadillas suizas murder the competition. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Farlito as a restaurant period, but if you happen to be full of beer, mark my verbals, there is no better food on this Earth.
The Yelp review is overall positive but there are several people who diss the place for being dirty and rip its low health-inspection score. In short, go fuck yourselves. I noticed a few grammar mistakes in their reviews anyway, so they must be stupid, right?
UNDEFEATED
