Oh fuck my ears. Sometimes I don't know if I can finish my project within my lifespan if I have to keep on taking the punishment of listening to hip-hop. I had been listening to the first track on this album ("Bamboo Banga") for what felt like seven minutes when I checked the run time to realize the song was only five minutes long, and I was less than half way through. After listening to the background singer say, "C'mon..." for the fiftieth time the song finally ended. I threw down my earbuds and was thisclose to vowing never to listen to hip-hop again. It's not that "Bamboo Banga" was all that terrible especially in context with the genre. I'm just so fucking mad at how huge this style of music is when it has been nothing but nearly thirty years of annoying clichés.
Maybe I should just take some time to cool off. I really can't let one shitty hip-hop song completely derail me from my multi-year project when there was so much on The List I was actually looking forward to hearing someday.
...
OK, I'm back and I'm gonna try to get through the rest of this album without quitting. So let us load up the next track and... OW, HOLY SHIT... That actually physically hurt. I need to turn the volume WAY down on this one. The second track starts with loud bamboo drumming accompanied by an incessantly squeaking dog toy. It is quite piercing. It's not as clichéd as most hip-hop music, which I guess is a point in its favor. But Cheezits, what a mess.
So tracks 2 and 3 actually feature drums traditionally played in south Asia, such as an urumee. The drum tracks on these two songs aren't too bad and without the overproduced electronica effects I might not have minded. I guess the idea is to create some kinda of hip-hop fusion with traditional music. The thing is crossing a traditional style with a vomit of synth completely washes out the spirit. Why have a drummer playing an urumee when you could just recreate the effect on a computer and wind up with only a slightly shittier song?
Oh, I just heard M.I.A. say, "My name is Mia and blah blah blah..." So she didn't say, "Yo, check it, this is M.I.A..." or some other bullshit, but still she name-checked herself. Another cliche checked off.
I was nearly put to sleep by "20 Dollar" when I was brought back by M.I.A. quoting Pixies' song "Where Is My Mind?" Maybe I wouldn't have noticed had I not just listened to Surfer Rosa. Even still it's pretty cheap to lift the refrain from a good song and drop it into a terrible song 3 times.
The album does raise an important question... Where was I in '92? Probably in third grade. The song "Paper Planes" almost has a funny hook. The chorus is sung by kids saying, "All I wanna do is..." followed by four gun shots, then the kids saying, "And a..." followed by a cash register noise and a chicken clucking, or something. Like I said it would be funny if it weren't repeated 20 times.
Anyhoo... hip-hop, whatever. 1 star.
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