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?

The Carmichael Show

It's not ambitious for a trendy, young stand up comedian to get a show deal with a network and develop it into a multi-camera sitcom. It's downright cocky. Even if the reasoning is that it's nostalgic or it's what we grew up on, not only has it not worked if you pretend CBS doesn't exist for a second, it's not how we've experienced comedy on television during the last ten years. Especially not on NBC, home of The Office, 30 Rock, Community and Parks & Recreation. Jerrod Carmichael is an incredibly likable comic. There's not too much of his material out there. He's never done a late night spot or anything on Comedy Central. His debut hour that premiered on HBO last year was shot at the Comedy Store, directed by Spike Lee and was this tremendous combination of standard joke telling and awkward spontaneity. It seemed promising that he was doing a show, but you also understand how these things end up.

The Carmichael Show's first season was six episodes aired two at a time over three weeks. It initially seemed like a lot all at once, but it didn't end up being a bad thing. The show is about Jerrod, who lives with his girlfriend Maxine, his parents (David Alan Grier and Loretta Devine), his brother (Lil Rel) and his brother's ex-wife. Each episode revolves around a discussion between Jerrod and Maxine and his traditional, Southern parents. What separates this show from shows that tried to be multi-cam sitcoms (Mulaney) and multi-cam shows that don't even try (Les Moonves' filmography) is how real and heartwarming it feels. Not in an every-episode-gets-resolved-with-a-lesson way but in a manner in which the dialogue and reactions seem in the moment and uncontrived. His parents can be foolish and ridiculous but they're also parents. Their reactions to healthy diets and transgender people feel genuine and honestly funny. Grier and Devine do such a great job. Jerrod probably has some room to grow as an actor, but that works because his character is the one that's figuring things out.

You have your moments that seem a bit easy and multi-cam-y but I actually laugh at the show. It feels good to watch. It might be too much to say they tackle serious issues within it, but that's very much part of the show. How we talk about certain issues – Obama, protest, gay marriage – how a black family discusses these issues, how this family in particular resolves these issues.
Who knows where network TV goes in the next five years. Four episodes into a six-episode first season, it's hard to not root for Jerrod and company.

Travis Scott – Rodeo

Let's, for a second, set aside all the rumors and accusations surrounding Travis Scott. About him stealing music from studios in Houston or his a little too quick rise to prominence. After two mixtapes, packed with literally the biggest names in music, and now this debut album, it's fair to say Travis Scott has literally zero value as a rapper. He can just barely put words together and there's a slight chance they technically rhyme. Nine out of ten times his rhymes make no sense. Take the hook on "Skyfall." It's like madlibs with material from (Atlanta) rappers that actually matter. The track lists on his projects read like vision boards for 15-year-old hypebeasts – "Drugs, You Should Try It," "Pornography". His entire shtick is nearly impossible to grasp.
But there is an evident aspect to his music both from a distance and even to Scott's detractors that is audibly appealing. His music has some of the biggest, cleanest, crispest basslines and 808s in rap history. It's hard to not enjoy. He works with the biggest producers in Atlanta, but they're stuff doesn't sound like this on their own. He also has quite the ear for melody. Again, the words don't make any sense but it's hard to get a tune like "Mamacita" out of your head. This is also where his music differs from all the artists critics complain that he rips off. Scott's style is entirely mechanical. When you lay his vocals over bass that's already destroying subwoofers, it's just going to work. But that's not what makes Future Future. That's not what makes Young Thug Young Thug. When Future's voice curls into a whimper on "Now," you can feel the pain in his voice. It literally takes a couple bars for you to connect with him on an emotional level. That doesn't even come close to happening with Scott. Scott's music barely scrapes the top level of the hip-hop fan's pyramid of intrinsic values.
The weird thing about Rodeo that even if those are the only type of songs you expect, it's a very underwhelming listen. The songs, again, make no sense together, alone, in whatever combination. His rolodex is impressive especially considering he has copied every guest on this album's steez to a tee. The beats are lackluster. The guest verses are equally unimpressive. If anything, maybe not so much given this album but his entire career, he has quite the ability to A&R. From placing WondaGurl beats on a Jay-Z album to bringing together Quan, Migos, Longway and Thug to literally having Justin Bieber and Young Thug on a song together. He'll probably never grasp what he's doing wrong musically, but his ideas look good on paper. It doesn't help that he doesn't seem to be a good person, but it might be the best idea for him to quit trying to be an artist at all. He doesn't make beats. He's not a strong writer. He's kind of funny looking. He may, however, be the right last minute ingredient for many a rapper's albums today.

The Weeknd – Beauty Behind The Madness

There aren't too many big pop albums anymore but when there are they tend to make sense. Taylor Swift, Katy Perry. Even with the more confusing versions of this – Ed Sheeren, Lana Del Rey – you can still wrap your head around why they work. The Weeknd reaching this stratosphere does not make sense. The Weeknd crawled out of a hole in Toronto in 2011 singing about drugs and sex and sex and loneliness and more drugs. It wasn't so much the subject matter as it was the sound, the music, the voice that was so appealing. When I would get high and listen to sad R&B in my college apartment, House of Balloons was in that regular rotation.
Even if there was an aspect of those Trilogy tapes that could appeal to (at least a portion of) the masses, it wasn't music that screamed pop star. It definitely screamed Internet idol and teen girl worshipee but definitely not pop star. Which is why the transition is a little puzzling.
"Earned It" was a cool change of pace for an artist like the Weeknd who not only sticks to the same family of sonic production elements but also tends to recycle the same melodies and vocal stylings. It showed his abilities carrying a lower register, singing over live strings and a down tempo. It was so out of his typical comfort zone that he was forced to not do your typical Weeknd song. The song put him on the radar but he followed it with two Trilogy-esque singles – low synths, pitched up Thursday effects, lyrics about (what else?) sex. "Can't Feel My Face" brought Weeknd out into the open again where fans of "Earned It" stayed waiting. It's an obvious summer hit – Michael Jackson riffs, the perfect bassline.
It's fair to say, in the aftermath of the four singles that prefaced Beauty Behind the Madness, that pop stardom is a technicality. Not anyone can become one, but doing the big song(s) automatically puts you in that conversation, regardless of the type of artist you are. Beauty opens up the sonic color palette Weeknd typically uses, but it's the essentially the same songs he's always written. It doesn't seem totally fair to say with the two Max Martin songs and the 80s power ballad outro, but you generally know what you're getting with The Weeknd.
The hook to "Shameless" asks "Who is going to fuck you like me?" "Often" brags about how regularly that's done. "The Hills" specifies what time of day it's going to happen. If there's anything that seem out of place even in an album that attempts to be the year's biggest, it's the appearances by Ed Sheeran and Lana Del Rey. Just stop. In this case, the beauty behind the madness is not so different from what we've been used to.

Dr. Dre – Compton

I know more about what happened with Aftermath between 2006-2009 than probably any other human that wasn't employed by them. It makes no sense, in retrospect, why that was. My formative years as a hip-hop listener 2002-2005 were dominated by the G-Unit/Shady/Aftermath conglomerate. As a fan and at that point admitted producer groupie, I paid attention to a lot of different producer-led movements. By 2005/2006 though, Star Trak didn't really amount to anything, and Tim's group didn't pop off until Nelly and Justin's albums. So yeah, I paid attention to what was going with Aftermath.
There was the Aftermathmusic.net fansite/also sort of official site?, DubCNN, HipHopDX, Wikipedia, whatever. There was a point in the summer of 2007 where the Detox Wikipedia page was updated almost everyday. I know this because at the time I had no friends. I remember when Eminem said "We gon' make him do it" on the Encore title track. I remember when Dre said "Look out for Detox" on The Documentary. I remember all the changes that the artist roster went through. Game went to Geffen. Eve never dropped, even after "Tambourine." Stat Quo's single never popped and he got shelved. Busta's album was what it was. Bishop Lamont leaked "Grow Up" and was never heard of after that. Raekwon was rumored to have signed.  Marsha Ambrosius did some hooks but left without anyone realizing it. There was a dude named G.A.G.E., who had a cool song I heard on YouTube song. Joell Ortiz was there for like five minutes. Slim the Mobster was always this mysterious figure. They didn't really push him until 2010 but things got weird and he disappeared.
I remember the producers. Mike Elizondo, who did 50, Em and Game's biggest hits, left to do Maroon 5's second album. But there were still Mark Batson, Dawaun Parker, Focus..., sort of Mr. Porter and technically DJ Khalil even though things didn't really work out like that for him until 2009 when he did singles for Clipse, Slaughterhouse and Eminem. I even remember when Focus... said he wanted his album to be as big as The Chronic even though it was a free download on some random website.
I wrote a cover story on the myth and status of Detox for the A&E section of The Monarch, my high school paper Spring 2009. At the time, it was supposed to happen after Relapse and Before I Self Destruct. 50 used to throw around the phrase "three-headed monster" then. But those albums were what they were and that plan fizzled. But there was a plan in motion. Dre had presented Video of the Year at the VMAs. He signed a deal with a liquor company. He hopped on Kardinal Offishall and the Clipse's "Set It Off." And then his son died of an overdose. I think he has lots of kids, and this wasn't one with his wife. Not that one kid is more important than the other, but you get it.
Then Beats launched. Dre, Jimmy Iovine and Lebron all appeared at a Red Sox game to promote a new color way. Just the week before, there were rumors of a Dr. Dre and Jay-Z song called "Under Pressure." Splash leaked it three months later, and well, that shit was terrible.
But there were the good leaks! The T.I. references - "Coming Back" (Hi-Tek's best beat?), "Topless" and "Shit Popped Off." And they were really great. Literally, nothing to complain about. From what I understand, even as some of those songs went to commercials or a T.I. mixtape, different version were worked on well over time. A year or two later, there were other leaks. A song called "Syllables" with 50, Em and Jay and some more songs, but no one really remembers those.
Then there was a moment in 2012 when it was really supposed to happen. Nottz, Jake One and Bink were involved. This is before the official singles were released. But it seemed like someone pushed the button on "Kush" too early. And then there was "I Need A Doctor"...
Kendrick came along. He did Coachella. Slim the Mobster vanished. At that point I stopped caring. Even if it dropped, it would not have mattered. But it's actually here now.
And it's weird. It's good, probably not that great. But it's weird. In many senses. From what I understand, at least half of this album existed previously. Maybe the verses were re-written but the music was there. "Talking To My Diary" was in a Beats commercial four years ago. After all that I just covered, the names involved with Compton make no sense. Focus... left Aftermath in 2009. I understand everyone came back to work on different iterations of this project, but his name is on more than half of these songs, with mixing credits. Stat Quo and Slim The Mobster only have writing credits on one song each. Marsha's back on a bunch of songs. There's lots of King Mez, Justus and Anderson .Paak. It's not really a reunion album. It's just sort of an album that the people who were around in the past year made.
I strongly feel that the album came out when it did because Straight Outta Compton the movie's release date was the only realistic deadline Dre could have ever given himself for this project. Calling it a soundtrack is a bit of a cop out. The way music works today it would have never been as significant culturally than it would have been if it dropped ten years ago.
The songs for the most part are very busy. So much is going on. Too much. It's unnecessary. Why is there a "For the Love of Money" sample? And what's with all the Eazy references? And the line in that Em verse? There's a weird murder skit that doesn't make any sense in the context of the rest of the album. And the drowning skit?
The credits make no sense. Too much is made of what Dre actually does in studio, but even with his name as lead writing credit on every song, he has production credits on less than half of the album. The Game joint goes though, and "Animals" is very dope.
It's out, so he's off the hook now. That's the point of this album. It will never do what the other two albums did. He doesn't need them too. He just needed this album not to be terrible. Even if it was, it wouldn't have mattered. It's hard to say this album could have been better because this album is probably the best it could have been. I probably wanted something different, but there's no point trying to speculate anymore.

Film School: Straight Outta Compton

Straight Outta Compton was way better than it had any business being, but it's hard to leave this movie not having wanted a more focused, darker political film. When I say that the movie is good, I mean that it's well directed with a real budget and talented actors, even Cube's son. Ultimately though the movie was made by, or perhaps even strong armed into the final version by, the people it was based on. Cube, Dre and Eazy's widow Tomica are the movie's executive producers. While those main three are the most significant characters in the story, there's a lot more that went on than what was going to be depicted by these three.

It's the N.W.A. movie, but the group is only the focus of the first third of it. I get that there's more to the story when you get into the solo careers, but it's still the N.W.A. movie. We go pretty quickly from the five loosely knowing each other to "Boyz N Da Hood" to national tour. Compton touches on the members dealings with police (and the subsequent but wholly inaccurate inspiration for "Fuck The Police"), groupies and the FBI letter, but it doesn't focus on what made the group so significant both within hip-hop and in music generally, even without the context of violence in LA. There's a reason that 15 years after the fact twelve-year-old me could bump "Straight Outta Compton" and enjoy it like just came out and feel the aggression within it. That didn't happen when I tried to listen to Public Enemy or KRS or Rakim. The group was bigger than the controversy and the label drama. A great script would have tried to portray this.

My biggest outright issue with the movie is how all the dialogue involved saying the name of the person being addressed. "Come over here, Eazy." "Did you hear this, Dre?" I talk to people all the time. I hardly say their names unless I'm trying to get their attention. My second biggest complain is the amount of daps given in this movie. Write a dope line - daps. Threaten boyfriends of groupies with heavy artillery - daps. Reunite with a former enemy - daps. You'd think the screenwriters ran out of ideas and thought, "Let's have them give daps so we don't have to come up with more words for them to say."

The weirdest twist in this movie is how much it focused on Dre. I've seen pretty much all the interviews done by members of N.W.A., Death Row, Aftermath, what have you. Dre did press but was never really that vocal. As pivotal as he was to the group, he definitely wasn't a frontman. It seemed like more time was spent on his character than Eazy or Cube's. The movie literally ends with him saying he's leaving Suge and then announcing that his label will be called Aftermath. Like, the credits roll right after this. Wtf? This is like when the Lifetime Saved by the Bell movie was actually about Screech. How did we get here? He clearly had his own people punch up the script, but I didn't realize they had to power to do all this.

The movie is probably only 70% accurate -- why is 2Pac recording "Hail Mary" when Dre brings him "California Love"? The way "G Thang" and "Deep Cover" were recorded? Suge wasn't even that scary! A teenager could still walk away from it knowing most of the basic facts. There's just too much to cover even in a 2.5 hour movie. Had it been tighter and darker it would have been a different movie entirely. I guess I'll just hold out for the remake.