DAVE (FX)

It's weird to consider Lil Dicky a rapper even though that is where his origins as a public figure begin, rapping for five to six minutes at a time over other rappers' instrumentals. He was very technically capable, occasionally funny and oddly interesting. I appreciated it for what it was but didn't think much of it.

Then things took off. A video went viral. He moved to LA. He signed a deal. He was managed by Scooter Braun. At this point the music had shifted into comedy sketches in song form and it was all much less enjoyable. Somehow a dude that made rap music for fun pivoted to a full time career making songs that parodied that very genre. These were songs that made it to radio and curated playlists, feats close to impossible for any new artists. It seemed insulting to anyone taking this seriously. National conversations about cultural appropriation and racial injustice as he played naive about his own success in interviews didn't help with optics, but that didn't stop his success. His fame grew. His music was successful and now he has a TV show. 

DAVE centers around Lil Dicky as a rapper whose career moves forward as outrageously quickly as it did in real life. It's also the least interesting part of the show. DAVE follows several characters – his girlfriend, his engineer, his hypeman and his manager – who make up quite the ensemble. Each characters are given emotional cruxes and sometimes even entire episodes dedicated to backstories. Those stories are funny and sweet and charming and technically all are tangential to the Dicky storyline. The show is much better than it has any right to be. And while there's several points to be made here about how and why this random white man got his own television show, the people involved really pulled it off.

There's so few half hour comedies on currently. Almost none of them reference any modern culture in any way. The fact that there haven't already been ten shows about the rap industry is an abomination. Almost none of those shows star people in their 20s. So I do appreciate this show's existence.

The finale puts on display all the pros and cons to the existence of someone like Lil Dicky. At one point Gator says, "Do you know how many people would kill for a record deal and you're about to waste it on some jokes?" It does a pretty decent job establishing what the criticism is. But the episode closes with him rapping for several minutes. Sure it's doing the same thing he did over those Drake instrumentals, but he's not that guy anymore. That's not what his music sounds like. That's not why he's famous. If that's supposed to be the closing argument to the why Lil Dicky debate, it's not an effective one.

Map to Confidential Comedy

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December 2016 Albums

T.I. Us or Else: Letter to the SystemI'm not sure what I want from T.I. at this point. In theory, this album is a good thing. A rapper of T.I.'s stature and career making a point to craft an entire album to protest systemic racism and police brutality seems like it isn't a bad idea. This album is not it. Maybe T.I. is better off making the music he used to make and just making a charitable donation or something, creating an all-black Atlanta based credit union.

Justine Skye 8 Ounces
I still don't understand who Justine Skye is. She's signed to a major, has had official music released, but does not ring a bell for whatever reason. That's technically the curse of the music business. You can make the right moves and still be susceptible to a label that's confused or a musical climate that's not quite flexible. There's not even that many young, black female pop/R&B singers on the scene at the moment (Tinashe and Sevyn are the only ones I can think of), but Skye is just sort of there. She's friends with the Jenners, makes her way around the trendy NY scene but has no hit. This EP is entirely produced by The-Dream and Tricky Stewart probably for the purpose of getting that hit, but that's probably not going to happen. The EP is good though, and some of it is great, easily Tricky and Terius' best work in years – somewhere between the Eletrik Red and Mariah albums but nowhere near as good as either. It's nice to see them start to get their groove back together.

Yo Gotti White Friday (CM9)
I understand Yo Gotti's history as an independent musician in theory, but I'm not actually familiar with much of it. Given how long he's been around, it's great to see the recent success he's seen. His albums with Epic seem to be a little too 2010s major label formulaic but he finds a way to breathe excitement into at least a portion of it. "What Happened" a dedication to his manager that just passed is great.

J. Cole For Your Eyez Only
It doesn't make sense that J. Cole is as successful as he is. Not because I don't like him, but because his music shouldn't be popular. The way it sounds with its weak snares and low quality sample reconstruction like an album you'd find in the Tower records dollar bin in 1996 and its content, erections in math class and all, should not be appealing to a national audience. People for whatever reason seem to be attached to him. This album isn't that bad. There's multiple songs from the point of view of someone who thinks he'll die soon and needs to impart wisdom to his family before that happens, but it's hard to tell if that's autobiographical or entirely fictional.

Ab-Soul Do What Thou Wilt.
I don't know what the hell this shit is.

Press Play: A Retrospective

Today marks the 10th anniversary of Diddy's fourth solo album Press Play. This is not the album that determines his musical legacy. Outside of debuting at number one, it didn't really make that much of a splash culturally in 2006 compared to his others. It was an album I definitely found myself connecting with. It was weird. It sort of didn't make sense. It probably wasn't great, but it was good! It was definitely interesting and deserves a look back.

In the fall of 2006, I had just turned 15 and was a sophomore in high school. The kids I went to school with would all freely admit to listening to hip-hop but none of them outside literally one or two people whom I wouldn't befriend until much later actively paid attention to anything going on within the genre. As a result, the albums that I grew attached to at the time – Hell Hath No Fury, King, Doctor's Advocate, Blue Carpet Treatment, Like Father, Like Son, and obviously Press Play – were all ignored by my peers. That wasn't a bad thing. I nerded out in my own way. Press Play though wasn't exactly acknowledged by the culture, maybe because the hits weren't hits or because it was too experimental. What I'm trying to get at is even at the time it felt a little cult classic-y. That sentiment was never confirmed to me until I joined Twitter years later.

By 2006 the early 2000s Bad Boy roster had more or less dissolved. Press Play was a reintroduction for Diddy. The weird thing is the more I listen to it, the more I feel like there's nothing I could really fix. At least not at that time. This was before Lil Wayne got hot, so his verse didn't even make the album (but did stream on Diddy's MySpace page). But look at the lineup: Havoc, Just Blaze, Sean C & LV, Kanye West, Timbaland, Will.i.am, Rich Harrison. The man was trying to make a classic. I think the first misstep was the first two singles. "Come To Me" was pretty ehh. "Tell Me" was better but didn't really connect. We were just transitioning from that kind of sound working at all in the club. In retrospect, the features didn't jump off the page at the time but man: Big Boi, Ciara, Shawnna, Twista, Nas, Brandy, Mary J. Blige, Keyshia Cole! There was something there. There was magic there. The timing and the output just didn't quite match.

The purely rap songs are admirable, but I don't want to hear Puff rap words written by Pharoahe Monch and Nas. You have your uptempo section featuring some of Danja's first solo production credits. Then you have the truly experimental section, which was hit and miss both then and now. I think then part of the critique was that music did not allow for this due to general conservatism and maybe even some slight homophobia and masculine issues. If there's one clear miss, it's "Special Feeling." Will.i.am was on a roll but he also religiously underproduces and this one feels like it's at 40% of what it could have been.

The highlight in my opinion is the "Through the Pain (She Told Me)" - "Thought You Said" - "Last Night" arc. All produced by Diddy and Mario Winans, a team that is so under appreciated. Production-wise, melodically, the transitions between them, the gall to have Diddy sing on "Last Night," which peaked at #8 on the Hot 100. They were incredible. Like literal genius. That should have been in the album and in 2016 could be. People front like 808s invented singing when "Last Night" came three years prior.

The sad thing is that Diddy's later albums seem to hit right before they're meant to. Was this as good or at least as progressive as Last Train To Paris? Probably not. But if it came later it would have been a different album, an arguably better album and a much more appreciated work of art.

Book Club: Before The Fall

Noah Hawley is most famous at this point for creating FX's TV show Fargo and while I enjoy the show and loved the first season a lot, there's nothing about the show that got me extra excited for its head writer's latest novel. But since it was on sale on Kindle, I thought why not.

Before The Fall explores the pasts and present of a private plane crash's passengers and survivors. It's told mostly from the point of view of the one adult survivor except when it explains life occurrences and backstories for the other passengers on the plane. We, as the reader, along with the survivors and the general public in the story don't know how or why the plane crashed, and I liked that. I thought it was a story of these seven passengers, their pasts, their flaws, what made them unique, what led them to this flight, how they knew each other (not in a Lost coincidence way, just how they'd met, etc.). It does a fine job of doing that. They are interesting enough characters, and you obviously feel for the child who survived and lost his family. I couldn't help but roll my eyes at some of the descriptions of the women characters' thoughts and behaviors, but what are you gonna do?

About 70% of the way through, you see the storylines converging, the FBI investigation, the Bill O'Reilly-type news host getting more and more screen-time (the book equivalent?). And then in the final pages you find what caused the crash. The reason is so dumb, so insensible that while you're given 300-something pages of this world that was constructed, you kind of regret reading it in the first place. To only explain the flight attendant and the co-pilot's chapters at the very end and then to show that the crash was caused by a SPOILER crazy co-pilot mad that a woman dissed him SPOILER is one of the dumber things I've read. Whether that's a comment on how random and ridiculous these events can sometimes be or on how crazy men can be doesn't matter because the book just ends with it. If it continued, I imagine that the same Bill O'Reilly-type would (after retracting his terrorism assumptions) sympathize for the still-drunk co-pilot who was sad that the woman he used to date didn't want to see him anymore.

Top 25: Bink

Young Guru was a guest on the Juan Epstein podcast last month and as he was going through the history of the Dynasty and Blueprint and how Kanye West and Just Blaze got their starts, Cipha Sounds asked why Bink is never brought up in that discussion. Guru admitted that he should be part of that discussion and then danced around why that isn't the case. There were a couple theories. Bink chose not to sign to the same management that grabbed up Kanye and Just right after The Blueprint. Based on twitter scuffles from a few years back, Bink and Just had some issues. Regardless, Bink wasn't on any Jay-Z album after The Blueprint and as a result his career went in an entirely different direction.

Today Bink showed up on Juan Epstein. It unfortunately is a pretty short interview but he addresses this issue directly. According to him, he didn't get anymore placements after 2001 because he didn't sign with the same management team. But he says he didn't sign because he felt like he and Just Blaze had too similar a sound, and that is where his real problem lies. He feels that the Just Blaze sound is really just the Bink sound, specifically that you don't get "U Don't Know" without "1-900-Hustler." And if the narrative tells that Rocafella's sound was architected by Kanye and Just only, you can see why he would be bitter. I actually don't agree that they're that similar. On the surface, sure. But I think Just's stuff is generally much more grandiose and their drum patterns are distinct. And it's probably not fair for him to assume that Just ripped him off specifically, although Kanye's stuff sounded nothing like Bink's. It's also very possible that this is only his side of the story, and he was not offered any work because how difficult he was being, both with Just and otherwise.

His sound throughout his career has been pretty consistent. He leans towards the uptempo, organs and horn stab "1-900-Hustler" type beats, but there's ones that he's done that are smoother than any Just or Kanye soul beat. His drums are definitely his signature. He has maybe the most crisp drums by any rap producer ever.

He is an essential part of Rocafella's history based on his contributions to the Dynasty and Blueprint alone. His songs on The Blueprint might be the best on the album. He deserves his props as a producer generally but also, especially given the above story, for his longevity.  He started with Teddy Riley in the 90s, worked with The Lost Boyz, was signed to Stevie J and later partnered on production with Missy Elliott all before the Rocafella stuff happened. The placements after that are with pretty random major label mid-level artists until about 2010 when he finds his way into both Kanye West and Dr. Dre's camps. I'd like to hear him with so many artists today – imagine Vince Stapes over a Bink beat – because the music is still top notch. Here are Bink's 25 best beats.

Listen on Spotify.

Bink Top 25:

1. Jay-Z, Beanie Sigel, Memphis Bleek & Freeway - 1-900-Hustler
2. Jay-Z - All I Need^
3. Jay-Z - The Ruler's Back^
4. Jay-Z - Blueprint (Momma Loves Me)^
5. Jay-Z, Beanie Sigel, Memphis Bleek & Amil - You, Me, Him And Her
6. Freeway - When They Remember
7. Pusha T - I Am Forgiven^
8. Kanye West - Devil In A New Dress (feat. Rick Ross)
9. Rick Ross - We Shinin'
10. GZA - Animal Planet
11. Young Gunz - Future Of The Roc
12. Method Man & Redman - Four Minutes To Lock Down (feat. Raekwon & Ghostface Killah)
13. Amerie - Paint Me Over^
14. Beanie Sigel - Raw & Uncut (feat. Jay-Z)
15. Tamia - Can't Go For That
16. Blackstreet - Don't Leave Me
17. P. Diddy & The Bad Boy Family - The Last Song
18. Freeway - Victim of the Ghetto
19. Currensy - What It Look Like (feat. Wale)
20. John Legend – Who Do We Think We Are (feat. Rick Ross)
21. Cassidy - Damn I Miss The Game
22. Memphis Bleek - The One (feat. Rihanna)
23. Skillz - (for Real) He Don't Own Me
24. Mr. Cheeks - I Apologize
25. Dr. Dre - It's All On Me (feat. Justus & BJ The Chicago Kid)^

^Not on Spotify

Previous Top 25 Lists:
Cool & Dre
Hi-Tek

Drake – Views

We're officially eight years into Drake as a thing. That's pretty amazing to think about. Views is Drake's fourth album, fifth if you count So Far Gone, seventh if you count If You're Reading This It's Too Late and What A Time To Be Alive. With those first four projects (up until NWTS), everything seemed to go as planned. By Take Care, he was a legit superstar and with NWTS he didn't stumble. The Drake train kept on going and I was mostly there for the ride. I can't say the same for IYRTITL. It was way too long. It had a bunch of missteps and that doesn't even include the gun talk. Culturally though, nothing seemed to change. When Meek spoke up about the ghostwriting, the world took Drake's side. (We don't have to acknowledge WATTBA.)

Views is the first time the general consensus for a Drake album is as mixed as it is. It's hard for me to reconcile if Drake has regressed or if my taste has dramatically changed. It's probably both, but I listen to So Far Gone and sometimes it's hard for me to take any of those lines seriously. Maybe this is what Drake was all along? Or at least, you know, partially.

It's possible that Views is as long and sprawling of an album as it is because of the RIAA streaming rules and sales equivalents. The album's long but songs are also long. Vocals end and then the track doesn't end for another 18 seconds. This seems very much on purpose especially if streaming services pay out more if you listen to 4+ minutes. But jesus man, it's like he wasn't even trying with this one. Or this is the result when he writes rhymes by himself again. There's no Quentin Miller. There's no Hush. Maybe there should have been?

I find it very annoying how aware he is of his memeability. He's also aware of his demographic and their listening tendencies. Views is an incredible passive listen – while you're reading an article or studying for midterms. It's a pretty not-so-good active listen. And while I love "Find No Ways" and the dancehall tracks, this is not an album that someone who implies he's more significant than successful conventional rappers like Kendrick and Jay should be able to drop. This is a very pivotal point in Drake's career because the sales are still in his favor, but does he off and decide to become Flo-Rida or does he take his next chance seriously?

Film School: Art of Organized Noize & Iversion

I can't say that I've seen countless documentaries, but with streaming and digital rentals I've gotten the chance to watch more than I typically would otherwise. I still can't quite put my finger on what makes a great documentary, but I can definitely tell when the subject of a documentary is more interesting than the quality of the documentary. The two docs I saw recently, The Art of Organized Noize and Iverson, covered people I wasn't quite old enough to follow properly but whose stories and careers are practically legend. 

The Art of Organized Noize

My experience with OutKast started when I was eleven with Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, and while I still discovered the singles from the previous three albums on my own at a younger age, Organized Noize were not on my radar. I didn't know who they were or that they were responsible for those OutKast albums, but unfortunately they weren't largely celebrated by the media that covered and documented that era as they probably should have been. 

It seemed like they were pretty closely involved with the making of this documentary. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad the story was told. I'm glad it's out and accessible. If they can get a resurgence from it, that's wonderful. I still wish it was directed by someone else. The right people are interviewed and the general story is told. It would have been cool there was more video footage. I'm sure there were tons of photos from the time. There was no focus on Aquemini or Stankonia. What I liked about Michael Rappaport's Tribe doc was that it told a story while presenting a narrative of the present day's tour. The Organized Noize doc had Rico, Sleepy and Ray tell the story from memory, in what looked like only one or two sittings. The music nerd in me wishes there was a bit more detail to it all.

Iverson

My dad never watched basketball or baseball, only football. The NBA wasn't something I even acknowledged until the 6th grade when I went to a school of basketball fans. That was 2002-2003, so I already missed the Lakers - Sixers finals. And I didn't really watch much basketball then anyway. I knew of Iverson from different pop culture references, Sportscenter mentions and NBA Live 2003, which is unfortunate because realizing an athlete's greatness in retrospect is never the same as watching it happen. There was a lot I learned about his life from this doc. I didn't know about the high school arrest or that the Sixers almost traded him the summer before they went to the finals. I feel like the Reebok deal was a bit too overlooked. Those were a huge deal at the time. And I wish there was something about the stories of the crazy money he spent, buying clothes when he reached a city and leaving them at the hotel. Overall, I enjoyed it. 

Book Club: Ready Player One

The basic premise of Ernest Cline's Ready Player One is that of a great modern sci-fi story. In a post not quite apocalyptic but somehow affected by climate change world, the most popular pastime is a virtual reality video game accessible to all people. The game's creator, billionaire James Halliday, dies and leaves his fortune hidden somewhere within the game. Whoever finds the treasure gets the money. As an elevator pitch, it's tremendously effective. It makes all the sense in the world that Steven Spielberg is directing the film adaptation. Typically this type of treatment happens with worthwhile stories. Ready Player One stops being one worth reading after the tenth page.

There's plenty to be frustrated about in the novel. The dialogue, the character interactions, the lack of character development, the unimaginative story arc, the insensitivity to race. Let's start with the 80s references. Before Halliday passes, he publishes an almanac of all his interests, potentially with clues to the location of the keys that lead to the treasure. What is supposed to be a collection of personal interests is actually a summary of anything and everything culturally relevant during the 1980s. Here's what Cline gets completely wrong about how pop culture works. While it's not uncommon for a person to have interests across several mediums, it's close to impossible for someone to profess a love for an array of video games as accessible as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong and as obscure as text-based adventure games, coupled with obsessions with Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club and then a craze for the band Rush. There are people that admit to liking everything, but someone, let alone a video game designer egotistical enough to publish a book of all the shit he likes, would never like everything. All the name drops of 80s phenomenon are cheap pulls for nostalgia for, one would assume, 40+ year olds looking for young adult science fiction? If anything, it makes the film production that much more difficult and expensive, given all the clearances.

The obsession with the hunt and as a result the almanac results in the modern world becoming entirely obsessed specifically with 80s movies, music and TV. Again, that's not how pop culture works. There's a point in which Wade, the protagonist, bemoans the modern era corny sitcom that's constantly on TV and then chooses to binge Family Ties, a real television show. But how can you expect the writer to understand any of this when an actual sentence in this book describing Halliday's favorite directors goes, "Spielberg, Lucas, Tarantino...and, of course, Kevin Smith." Cline also wrote the movie Fanboys. Do with that information what you will.

There are three keys that lead to three gates, the last of which guards the treasure. It's a pretty standard storytelling structure. Whenever the players are stuck solving answers to clues that lead to the next key, however, there's no callback to something previously established or reference to lore established within the universe. Every single time, Wade simply remembers some video game that had never been mentioned previously or some other random trivia from the almanac and that's it, he solves the riddle. Every time.

If you're trying to do a Hunger Games and put together a story that doesn't really make that much sense but has characters you can root for simply based on the fact that they're trying to win a contest and beat a villain – a corporation that wants to monetize the (currently free) video game, then fine I get it. It gets the job done. I don't totally fault you for ignoring some of the more interesting possible themes given the premises: the future of technology and virtual reality, consequences of lack of human contact, love in a virtual world, racism in virtual reality, class issues in the real world. Why bother with those topics when the dialogue reads like it was written by a child, or someone that never attended a school, or spoke to a member of the opposite sex as a teenager, or participated in any sort of competition? Why even touch on how pop culture permeates in a world in which so many choose to exist in a virtual setting when a scene describes Wade downloading a how-to-dance tutorial for his avatar so the avatar can appear to be moving to the music correctly and this is viewed by others as something that is cool to do. Fuck this book.

Kanye West - The Life of Pablo

We're far enough in Kanye West's discography at this point that the comparisons and the rankings conversations become more complex. And while they're all great and necessary and impactful in their own way, the conversation is important because Kanye is one of the few artists today and probably the only rapper to literally disregard everything that he had done before, revamp and find a way to push music and the culture forward with each new album. We're also two albums into a time period where music may not be 100% his sole focus. There's the clothing lines, the ambitions to run established clothing empires, Donda, attempts to fund Donda. It took over a year to get this album from the release of the first single. Part of that was probably figuring out a direction, but you don't have a year's worth (2 songs, but still) of false starts without some distractions.

And yet this album sounds nothing like "Only One" or "All Day," to the point where you have to imagine it may have mostly been created in the last month or so. We essentially saw the album be finalized from the sidelines based on Kanye's tweets. And now that the album is out, it's a weird thing to think about. The album is good and there are songs that are great, but it's also much more disjoint and almost random than any other Kanye album. Personally I think an album being "cohesive" is totally overrated, but "Ultralight Beam" into a rap about bleached asshole into a solo song by Fake Future?

In the past, it was safe to assume every decision on every Kanye album was intentional and vetted by a committee. With Yeezus, Rick Rubin said that many songs were recorded in the final week before deadline, but in retrospect that album seems much more focused than it did on the initial listen. So I've learned to trust Kanye, and again, the product is solid. But in its current form – it was literally in flux until the final hour – I can't tell if this is the way it is by chance or because of the deadline or entirely randomly. Or maybe it still is entirely intentional and Kanye has the ability to see the bigger picture at all parts of the process. Even the title. To go from Swish to Waves to The Life of Pablo. Does he see the album as symbolically similar to Picasso's works as a whole, to a specific Picasso piece? Does he just really like Pablo Picasso? Is he even talking about Picasso? Every Kanye album is very representative of how Kanye felt at that moment of time, but this album is representative of this literal two week span.

I love "Ultralight Beam." I love "FML" and "Fade." "Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1" is fire right up until the verse. You've got to appreciate "I Love Kanye." I can't be the only one confused by the presence of Desiigner. "Wolves" is still not that interesting. "30 Hours" and "No More Parties in LA" sound great but feel weird here even as bonus tracks. Every Ye verse being about sex and sex with women that may or may not be his wife in language that is ridiculous and so totally misogynist is weird and strange but so Kanye. Everything he does is honest and honestly flawed.

Some quick thoughts on Star Wars: The Force Awakens

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS:

As soon as the credits rolled, I couldn’t help but think, “Huh. So that...was it?” I’ll watch it again next week, but there was a lot going through my head during and after seeing it so here are some quick thoughts. 

First, what I liked. Finn and Rey are great characters, played by fine actors. I loved their introduction, their dynamic and how they were generally used. I realize now we got a lot more out of them than we ever did out of Luke, Leia or Han but obviously these characters mirror qualities in those three. I didn’t like how fan service-y the first trailer was, but I ended up totally liking how involved Han and Chewie were (but that’s probably because of what happens to Han). The visuals were fine. I like that there were jokes, but it was maybe a bit too much for my liking. I could change my mind about that later. Miles from Lost! Lupita Nyong’o as Maz Kanata was great. I loved that character and her line about people’s eyes. Han dying was an interesting twist. I kind of figured Ren was his son (Kylo/Solo).

I enjoyed most of the movie, but I didn’t really like how the whole last third of the movie was handled. Yes, the movie was an exact rehash of Episode IV. Yes, it was the easiest of the three to do. And there’s story left to conquer with the next two and the one-offs also. But I wanted a real movie not just a jumpoff point.

That final lightsaber fight didn’t seem like a final battle to me. I checked the time around that point thinking there’s got to be another 45 minutes left, right? Even if Ren is mid-training, shouldn’t he whoop both of their asses? If you handed me a sword right now and asked me to fight, I would be killed immediately. And for the Death Star/battle station/whatever to just blow up that easily felt really cheap. They probably cut a lot at the end, but it still felt rushed.

Ren taking his mask off twice was weird because Driver has such a baby face and to hear his voice without the mask and voice effect reminded me of Rick Moranis as Darth Helmet. I almost laughed at that scene where Ren and Rey are trying to out-force each other. People would have clowned Lucas for doing the same thing. 

It was weird seeing a talented actor as Oscar Isaac work in such a limited role. 

Another Death Star? It’s bigger and destroys more planets at a time but planets that we as viewers have no connection to whatsoever?

If it takes my iPhone at least an hour to charge, it should have taken like six weeks for that battle station to charge regardless of how powerful the sun was. 

Don’t like Snoke portrayed as this large figure. I get that it’s a hologram, but that’ll ruin things when we see him in person and he’ll obviously be smaller.

Do no intergalactic contractors build handrails onto their elevated walkways???

When they showed the AT-ATs on the desert planet, I couldn't help but think, "Man, climate change has really done a number on Hoth."

If you’re going to redo the desert planet, forest planet, ice planet trope, how you gonna end on the ice planet?

R2D2 jumps alive then and there...because?

Captain Phasma gotta be fired.

That final scene. I feel like it would be more of a twist if Rey wasn’t Luke’s daughter but that scene was strange. To literally end the movie with a helicopter shot of Rey holding out the lightsaber like five feet away from Luke. And he doesn’t grab it or move closer or anything? Just continues to stand there. Why was he standing there? He doesn’t have a house or a cave or a Playstation or anything. There was literally nothing else on that island. We’re supposed to believe he’s been standing there for some number of years? Though, this does raise interesting questions about the interactions of this whole family and when and where Ben turning, Rey’s abandonment, Han and Leia’s split all fit in.

It’s easy to clown Lucas’s prequels but it’s way easier to write a sequel to 4,5 and 6 than it would have been to write prequels. At least the prequels had some new elements to them.

Theories: 

Like I said before, you can do a lot with Han/Leia/Ren/Luke/Rey as one big family how the disconnect occurs. The arc of the three movies seems like it will be Ren going from bad guy to good guy, but can you really just redo Vader’s storyline? Obviously lots of story to cover, but it’ll interesting to see how Rey’s flashbacks(/future visions???) turn out. There’s lots of history to cover too. I’m sure Luke trained other Jedi. Where did the First Order originate? Why does the Rebellion have so few ships? What hair product does Poe Dameron use? I didn’t really like 

TV Recap: Master of None

The reaction to Aziz Ansari's new show Master of None has been so overwhelmingly positive, it's easy to forget that no one expected the show to be what it is. Aziz and his co-creator Alan Yang came from Parks and Rec, a lovable, single cam mockumentary. Mike Schur, one of Master's producers, worked on Parks and also Brooklyn Nine Nine, which has the same format. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Netflix's only other half-hour comedy isn't quite that but has a similar aesthetic feel to both of those. It was safe to assume that Aziz would follow suit with his show.

The other aspect was how ubiquitous he had become as a comic. His last special, while taped at Madison Square Garden, wasn't his best to put it politely. Would the show be more of that mediocrity? But the show is a significant marker in his career. Aziz has had four hour-long specials in six years, all before he turned 32. He starred on an NBC sitcom for seven years. He wrote and starred in his own major movie. He is literally one of the most successful comics out, but he's never been considered the guy. This was a chance for him to quiet naysaysers.

The show is good. It is shot beautifully. It makes New York look so warm and welcoming in a way that no big city could ever be. I love that episodes revolve around these candid conversations, with shots of people just walking and talking. The music fits in really well. Then, of course, there are the special episodes: "Parents," "Old People," "Indians on TV." My parents are immigrants from India. I understand the emotional distance that exists within an Indian family. I'm sure that episode — and the fact that it was so early in the series — hit home for many. What separates this show from a Louie or Girls is that it views these topics in an optimistic manner. And there is a conscious decision to focus on that topic and not just Dev's relation to that topic. It's fun for me to see people of color on screen. It's fun for me to see Indian people on screen. It's cool to see an interracial romantic relationship played out on screen where one of people isn't white or black.

But this show isn't the end all be all of the minorities on TV problem. It definitely isn't the blueprint to fixing the problem. Dev has an Asian friend Brian, but Brian is really only used in the episode "Parents". Eric, the white friend, is in almost every other episode. All of Dev's romantic interests are white. The one that's not is an Asian girl that was only on the date for the free food. Outside of Aziz's mom, there are no Indian women in the show at all. It's difficult to see how this kind of thing was overlooked in the writer's room. I get that it's his show and it's semi-autobiographical, but these things do matter. There's little things too. His name is Dev Shah, which is a name that's easy for white people to say, but it would also make him Gujarati which means his family wouldn't speak Tamil. Maybe this isn't the show to establish the nuances of Indian culture to an American audience, but you don't have to brush those things to the side either, even if the show is less about the Indian American experience and more about a single dude that hangs out with friends and likes tacos.

I do appreciate the depths of the show. I've been so jaded by 30 Rock style pacing, it almost made me uncomfortable to hear the (noticeably long) pauses in conversations. Normal people don't talk like that, right? But it is funny. And it is enjoyable. Also, I need to get into acting if commercial actors really get paid enough to live in an apartment that nice.

Top 25: Hi-Tek

There are soul beats, generally attributed to Just Blaze, Kanye West and the like in which songs from the 70s are chopped, looped and at times sped up, and then there are beats that touch your soul. That trigger a frequency in your brain and the rest of your body to feel a sensation so pure you wonder why anyone would spend the rest of his life listening to anything different. For most of my formative years, Hi-Tek helped me experience the latter feeling. Tek was a magician with a drum machine, melding vocal samples, bass lines and drums in a way that few in rap had done before. And while a Just Blaze or a Bink could make something hard and turn around and make something smooth, few producers could generate a beat with a palpable sense of melancholy like Hi-Tek. Take Snoop Dogg's "I Believe In You." It's a sad beat, but it's a happy beat. You have the hi-hat and rimshot combo for most of the drum loop paired with a guitar part that implies sorrow or mourning, but then those shakers and that oh-so-beautiful clap come in at the third bar to make everything feel better again.

Not a lot of producers experienced celebratory underground status and major commercial success like Hi-Tek. He grew up in Cincinnati — and you can probably make a Midwest Dilla connection in terms of the soul stuff but they do have pretty established differences* — but he's mostly known for his work with Rawkus Records in New York. He produced five songs on Mos Def and Talib Kweli's Blackstar album and he has assorted credits throughout the Soundbombing series, but he's easily most famous for his and Kweli's Reflection Eternal album (the first one, anyway) and its lead single "The Blast."

*If anything, you can probably make the Pete Rock comparison but they all obviously come from the same lineage.

In 2002, he received a call from Dr. Dre asking permission to use the beat for what would become "Hollywood" for Truth Hurts' debut. That sparked his relationship with Aftermath where he would contribute to albums by 50 Cent, G-Unit, Lloyd Banks, Young Buck, The Game (twice), Snoop Dogg (twice) and D12, albums that would go on to sell 11 million, 5.5 million, 4 million, 5 hundred thousand, 5 million, 2.3 million, 1 million, 1 million and 2 million copies, respectively, though none of his songs were ever singles. In 2009 when three or four T.I. references for what was then Detox leaked, one of them, "Coming Back", was done by Hi-Tek and I stand by the fact that that song and the rest of that batch were better than anything on Compton.

He also released three solo albums that featured him rapping* even though he was never really known for that and a bunch of his friends that were much more famous than him. They were kind of like DJ Khaled albums but not as good and he actually contributed something to them. Hi-Teknology 2 is one of those middle of the road albums that doesn't really exist anymore but for nostalgic reasons means a lot to a certain type of person on the Internet. I'm one of those people, but to be fair 2006 was a hell of a year for that kind of fan. While I still wait for that unreleased Dion album, here are Hi-Tek's 25 best beats.

*Apparently all written by Smoke DZA.

Listen on Spotify.

Hi-Tek Top 25:

1. Reflection Eternal - The Blast
2. Bishop Lamont - Friends*^
3. Snoop Dogg – I Believe In You (feat. Latoiya Williams)
4. The Game – Runnin' (feat. Tony Yayo)
5. Dr. Dre – Coming Back (feat. T.I.) [T.I. reference]*^
6. 50 Cent – Ryder Music
7. Hi-Tek - Come Get It (Tekstrumentals)
8. The Game - Ol' English (feat. Dion)
9. Hi-Tek - Music for Life (feat. J. Dilla, Nas, Common, Busta Rhymes & Marsha Ambrosius)
10. Reflection Eternal – Love Language
11. Reflection Eternal – Good Mourning
12. Styles P – Testify (feat. Talib Kweli)^
13. Hi-Tek – Step Ya Game Up (Remix) [feat. Little Brother & Dion]
14. Cormega – Take These Jewels
15. Hi-Tek – The Sun God (feat. Common & Vinia Mojica)
16. Styles P – Let's Go (feat. Ray J)
17. The Game - Letter To The King (feat. Nas)
18. Reflection Eternal – Back Again (feat. RES)
19. Hi-Tek – Josephine (feat. Ghostface Killah, The Willie Cottrell Band & Pretty Ugly)
20. Hi-Tek – Know Me (feat. Jonell)
21. Hi-Tek – Baby We Can Do It (feat. Czar-Nok)
22. Black Star – Respiration
23. Common – 1-9-9-9 (feat. Sadat X & Talib Kweli)
24. G-Unit – G-Unit
25. Tha Eastsidaz – Eastside Ridaz (feat. Snoop Dogg, LaToiya Williams, Nate Dogg & Soopafly)

* Not released officially
^ Not on Spotify


Previous Top 25 Lists:
Cool & Dre

TV Recap: Red Oaks

Amazon has an interesting collection of original video programming. They have all the money in the world but continue to fund shows that USA or TNT would air. Which in itself is not fair because most of the TV watching public loves absolute garbage TV. But as a brand name, even as a second tier, they have never come even close to the level of excitement Netflix's shows can provide. I'm not even sure how many people realize Prime shipping also happens to come with all these streamable options. There is hope for Amazon though. The Man in the High Castle pilot was really great and the full show debuts next month. And they did pay Woody Allen a lot of money, so I'm not sure he can weasel out of that agreement.

Red Oaks, like Betas, is an enjoyable show, a notch or two above that USA level. That almost sounds like a harsh critique, but, again, I liked it. In fact I watched every episode in an afternoon. The shows follows David, a rising college junior home for the summer working as a tennis instructor at a country club set in the 80s. Richard Kind plays his father. Paul Reiser plays the owner of the country club. Like Betas, it's maybe technically a comedy, but it's not a show that's focused on a jokes. It simply follows this small group of people for different days throughout the summer.

What drives the show forward are the different scenarios of boy has girlfriend A but realizes he's interested in girl B. But the show seems to be more ambitious than that. It just never actually does. In the first episode, David's dad has a heart attack and admits to David that he should have married someone else and that his wife might be a lesbian. There are some marriage counseling scenes, but it's not fully explored. So why mention it at all? Then there's the career dilemma. David's dad wants him to be an accountant but that's something he'd rather not do. Again, touched on but not much else beyond that.

At its heart, it's a bunch of kids shirking responsibilities figuring themselves out. But also, it's a bunch of white kids working at a country club. Shout out to the Indian comic from Guy Code that got a two second cameo delivering flowers.

Top 25: Cool & Dre

Cool & Dre are an interesting case study. The duo were never superstar producers. They had two major hits in 2004 and 2005 with "New York" and "Hate It or Love It" and a small handful of top 40 hits after that with Juvenile, Christina Milian and The Game and Lil Wayne. But they've managed to not only stay working but to do so in a way that still actually matters. They never ended up doing beats for random dudes on Koch.

Way more often than not, the music – or at the very least, their contribution – is so great. I can count on one hand songs they did that I'm not necessarily celebrating ("Lights Get Low", anything that has involved Nas...). They use samples freely. They do entirely original music. Rap. R&B. They can write hooks. Dre can sing hooks. They've done soul beats. They even had their 80s glam rock period with synths and brite pianos ("100 Million", "The Crack House", "Make The World Go Round", "World Tour"). There is a richness and texture to their music, a completeness that never feels like too much. It can be radio ready but remains true to an aesthetic.

I'd say that the only left for them to accomplish would be to bring in a new artist or produce an entire album, but they've tried to do both of those things. They produced that entire Christina Milian album when she was dating Dre, and you can totally forget about that one. The first single was a fake "Hate It or Love It" and the second single was a fake "Stay Fly." And randomly enough, they produced the entire Queen Latifah comeback album in 2009 and I don't know what the fuck that one was. It would have been cool if things worked out with Don Trip, but let's blame that one on Interscope.

In 2015, no artist is coming to them for a single, but it's amazing the relationships they've maintained over the years. They've worked steadily with Rick Ross, Lil Wayne,  The Game, DJ Khaled and Fat Joe. The Runners, Danja, shit even J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League aren't doing anything like that. The amazing thing about this list and their discography in general is how much those five artists overlap among it. It was really a great time to record in Miami from 2005 to 2009. I'd love to see Young Thug or Vince Staples over a Cool & Dre beat. Meek, Kendrick, Drake, maybe even Jay-Z. For now, let's celebrate their legacy as it stands. This is, this is, this is...

Listen on Spotify (except "Holla At Me" because Koch is garbage and the Jay Rock song which for whatever reason is no longer streamable)

Cool & Dre Top 25:

1. Brown Paper Bag (DJ Khaled)
2. Hate It Or Love It (The Game)
3. New York (Ja Rule)
4. Rodeo (Juvenile)
5. 100 Million (Birdman)
6. Holla At Me (DJ Khaled)
7. Take Me Home (Terror Squad)
8. Let's Just Do It (Joe)
9. All My Life (Jay Rock)
10. Blow (Rick Ross)
11. Prove Something (Fat Joe)
12. Da Da Da (Lil Wayne)
13. Confessions (8Ball & MJG)
14. Loyalty (Fat Joe)
15. Forgot About Me (Scarface)
16. Valley of Death (Fat Joe)
17. On Fire (Lil Wayne)
18. Born In The Ghetto (Fat Joe)
19. Big Dreams (The Game)
20. Ashamed (Rick Ross)
21. The Crack House (Fat Joe)
22. Good Girls Go Bad (The Game)
23. So Special (Lil Wayne)
24. Let It Show (Tyga)
25. All That (The Game)

Why did Drake and Future come together for WATTBA?

Now that Drake and Future's collaborative album What A Time To Be Alive is out, the first question worth asking is why did these two come together at all? Drake and Future are easily rap's biggest names at the moment and while they technically have a history together, the music they've made hasn't necessarily left more collabs to be desired. When Drake jumped on "Tony Montana," that was one of the first times Drake chose to hop on a song by a lesser known artist nationally whose song was very successful regionally as a way to boost his own image. That song was even that big of a hit, and it's still the most successful song they've had together. Part of that is the technicality that "Bitches Love Me" was a Lil Wayne song, but the other tries – "Never Satisfied", "Shit (Remix)", "We In This Bitch 1.5" – all came and went.
Drake was the only feature on Future's DS2 and that's likely how the idea for this album came about. Future had been on a unbelievable run in 2015, so of course Drake, who continues to delay his own album Views From The 6, decides to hop on that wave. And for Future, the quick success at radio for "Where Ya At" because of the sheer presence of Drake and the potential to expand his fanbase are the likely catalysts for a project like this. So in that sense, WATTBA had a purpose – to keep both their name's hot – even if only Drake needed that to happen. And as a result the album feels like a very clock-in-clock-out job.
It's evident that Future and Metro had most of these songs in the stash before Drake came into town. Four of the nine joint songs showcase Future on both the first verse and the entire hook while Drake only contributes one verse at the end of each. The songs that sound more like equal parts Drake and Future almost feel out of place on the album. "Change Locations," produced by Drake co-hort Noel, is downtempo and elicits 40's old low pass filter. They trade places on the hook, but it becomes a Drake song on an album that doesn't need one.
Were this a solo Future project, it would continue his solid streak of solo tapes but would probably fit in somewhere between Monster and Beast Mode on the tail end of the rankings. "Diamonds Dancing" is the obvious highlight. I don't know how many other songs could make you want to cry and throw money in a strip club at the same time. If anything, Drake's involvement was a detriment to both the album and his own star power. Drake can have a positive impact on other artists' songs, clearly, but he can also really drop the ball and it's fair to say he does not fit on songs like these and we probably shouldn't let him get away with him singing hooks like "Live from the Gutter" and "I'm the Plug."

Tinashe – Party Favors (feat. Young Thug)

I really like how Tinashe has handled her short career. She's picked the right singles. She does the public thing as well as she can. Her album was great. Once you know the album though, it's hard to get as much out her bedroom songs. They're a little too unstructured, not as polished. That's what "Party Favors" feels like to me. It is, by all means, the right decision for her. She's probably got a Max Martin song ready to go. This is a re-introduction that doesn't alienate the fanbase. It also re-establishes her strong hip-hop connection, something that Rihanna – her only real competition in terms of the superstardom she strives for – no longer identifies with. I appreciate what the song's trying to do. Putting Young Thug on there is a nice, smart touch. The song just doesn't do it for me.

TV Recap: Narcos

Netflix has more than 20 original series and at this point it's probably fair to say only one or two have really been worth watching. Even House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, their two flagship shows, fizzled out with their most recent seasons and aren't talking points at all anymore. Two years into their binge watching experiment, it's hard to come up with any positive arguments for that manner of delivering shows. Very few people are actually watching an entire season all the way through. It makes shows hard to discuss. It amplifies the feeling of emptiness and loss and confusion as to what to watch next when the season is done.

At most Narcos is a good show. Really it's an okay show. You've got to appreciate that it's filmed entirely in Columbia and that most of the dialogue is in Spanish. While it means I have to actually watch the screen to know what's happening, it does provide a layer of authenticity to the show that it probably deserves. It's also narrated. One, by a white man who can't even pronounce Bogota properly. And two, in a way that provides no deeper look into what the characters are thinking. The narration is essentially a Wikipedia entry that bridges the real life events the show portrays. That's the other thing. This could have been a fully, fleshed out show. Instead it's a glorified documentary re-enactment. Sure it's an interesting story and concept. The success of Breaking Bad showed we're all in on giant drug operations. But Narcos isn't that. Part of me wants to see how the government deals with the narcos and how Escobar deals with the enemy cartel but I also don't really care.

I'm not familiar with Escobar's actual story. Though I think I'd rather scan Wikipedia than sit through multiple seasons of the show.

Film School: Crash Test, Dear White People, Best In Show

Crash Test
Crash Test is a live show at UCB hosted by Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel that usually features your typical UCB names and a bunch of people that also appear in Children's Hospital and the like. Huebel and Scheer took that show, put it on a bus that drove around Los Angeles and taped it for this special that's available for $3.99 on Vimeo On Demand. If you get a chance to check it out, it's pretty funny. If you watch the trailer and read the names on the poster, that's exactly what you're getting. There isn't some game changing twist or special appearance aside from maybe how some of these actors make their entrances. Scheer and Huebel host the show with the audience all on the bus, playing off each other and things they see on the street. They parody Star Maps tours. They give an earpiece to one of the audience members and make him do weird things on Hollywood Boulevard. Tom Lennon and Ben Garant show up as security guards at the Paramount lot. Natasha Legerro does five minutes of stand up. There's nothing cynical to note about any of this. It's fun and enjoyable. Toward the end, Earl Sweatshirt performs a song from the first album, so chances are this was recorded a while ago. The credits show there's another one coming in the near future.

Dear White People
It's hard to watch a trailer for a movie called "Dear White People" done in the way it was for this movie and not think the entire movie isn't literally just a laundry list of dos and don'ts for white people. I've been on a pretty anti-white people stance for some time now, but making that a movie didn't interest me as a moviegoer. It turns out that idea is buried here in what is still a movie with a story and characters (...obviously). The movie part is okay. It probably focuses on too many characters. On one hand doing that establishes how there's no single black identity, but the stories get convoluted and uninteresting, the dialogue at times a little too self-congratulatory. The culmination of the movie, and likely the entire purpose of this movie's existence, shows a fraternity throwing a blackface party with all its white members. During the credits, actual photos of real life events that resemble this one, are shown. The movie, itself, probably isn't that great but the realization that this still is a huge problem even for people aware of the racial climate we're in is a worthwhile one.

Best In Show
I literally knew nothing about this movie and watched it randomly on Labor Day. Best In Show was directed by Christopher Guest and written by Guest and Eugene Levy. It's a mockumentary style movie about a Westminster-style dog show. The movie starts off pretty slow and considering it came out in 2000, it felt very dated, especially 20 or so years after one of Guest's best Spinal Tap. I almost stopped paying attention to it. Once we get to the actual show, I was cracking up. Literally everything the announcer, played by Fred Willard, says is hysterical. There are all sorts of one liners that I could not stop laughing at. When I went to Chicago earlier this year, I went to the Second City theater and they have pictures of all the alumni that went on to do bigger things. Most of the cast of this movie is part of the Second City family. It's just really hard for me to not be bothered by the fact that literally the entire cast is white. And the movie came out in 2000?