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Dear Summer Douglas Passion tries in vain to decipher the season's mysterious dearth of anthems. I can’t leave writing columns on Hip-Hop alone; the game needs me. And it’s been a while. Last time you heard from Cool Ass Passion, he was hunkered down at Rothko, infiltrating the scenester movement to deliver the war report on Diplo and Spankrock. Yes, things were going swimmingly – every night I was showing my tits on lastnightsparty.com and blowing lines with wealthy Jewish teens from Miami in majestic Bowery lofts carved from once-seedy flophouses. That is, until Nigo from Bathing Ape bit me on the calf with his jeweled perma-fronts for stepping on his chartreuse kicks and Promise forgot my name at the door of Cut. Admission: the preceding was all horseshit, the fractured remnants of a failed attempt to scribe like my mans Fabulous Julien (F.J., squalie at me when you get back from Dubai, I’ve got more scoops than Fatman). Sure, you might catch the kid milling around Knitting Factory in a brooding Yeungling haze during this Saturday’s Kano show, but that’s just because son can spitbox. Don’t get it twisted; I’m in the hood ‘cause I’m hood, you’re in the hood ‘cause you’re broke. So here we are, in the dog days of August, and the Summer is officially banger-free. We can all agree that sweating through the back of your T-shirt while waiting for a zombie-filled Z Train is made significantly more acceptable when you get to hear “Lean Back” or “O.P.P.” fifty times a day. Where's Luda? Where's Snoop? Where's Jada? “Welcome to Jam Rock”? Uh, that's reggae. Yayo's "Seductive"? The beat, maybe. What about one of those hyperactive Missy songs? Nah, those are just excuses to make “creative” videos littered with brazen product placement -- once you notice the Jeep Grand Cherokee behind the dance line in her newest jammy, you’ll giggle like a schoolgirl during the entire sequence. Even when Missy’s not discussing her genitalia, her tracks are the aural equivalent of having silverfish running windsprints under your skin. And Douglas likes Missy. Against every thinking man’s inclination in my throbbing gourd, I also like Lil Kim. She’s got moxie. But her latest single, “Shut Up, Bitch”, is hog swill. A paranoid screed aimed at the media, over-zealous fans and assorted folks content to watch her and not TV, the train-wreck combines an endless repetition of the grating title and an affected Southern drawl. The obvious punchline to insert would be one recommending that she follow her own advice. So what’s good? Jay-Z’s verse on Young Jeezy’s “Go Crazy Remix”, for one. It’s more of that regurgitated hustler cum rapper cum executive shit that he’s spun for the duration of his career, but we don’t care. He’s the best breathing, even when lazy and predictable. We’re not happy about it, but that’s how it is. The other great thing about the song is Fat Joe’s golden opportunity to get on the same track as the object of his envy and the subject of numerous thinly-veiled lyrical darts. We have no idea how the recording went down in this ProTools-packed environment, but we like to imagine Fat Joe’s reaction to learning that he’ll finally straddle a track alongside Jay. With sweat beads sprouting along his bulbous shaved dome, the Fat Gangsta realizes that, with one sterling verse, he can muster support for his flagging King of New York campaign and forever lay claim to besting his nemesis. What does he do? Everything and nothing. It’s rarely a good policy. Joe begins with a weird quasi-hook that teeters perilously close to incoherence. Then he goes into a southern T.I.-esque delivery. Then an approximation of Young Jeezy’s “then whaaat” flow. Finally, he yells “Crack” and it echoes. It was like watching a slam dunk contestant attempt a blindfolded, 360 degree, through-the-legs windmill only to clang the ball heartily off the backboard before tumbling to the hardwood in a twisted heap. Poor Joe, a blubbery pile of wasted opportunity, peers upward to see Hov effortlessly gliding in from the foul line without breaking a sweat. Young! So we don’t have a good candidate for the proverbial summer banger. Just for the record, we'll say it's Hov-less remix of Slim Thug's "I Ain't Heard of That" with Bun B. By the way, where’s Joe Buddens and his ominously-entitled The Growth LP? Does he exist? Did he ever? Did the growth metasticize and envelope him? On the topic of Jersey Dudes, who decided that Time Warner cable should be represented in their new local commercials by some droopy, unshaven Jersey Dude? We know he’s supposed to be the Jersey Dude who’s down to share a Coors Light and help construct your new Weber grill, but he’s also the kind of dim-bulb that you smile and nod to while thinking “This Jersey Dude is a idiot and probably voted for Bush.” Shit, his salient arguments in favor of opting for digital cable instead of DirecTV are based on watching football while it rains. But what’s most amazing about Jersey Dude is that each successive angle displays a new unattractive feature: slumped shoulders, rat-like salt and pepper stubble, beady eyes. He's the human incarnation of the dialogue from a Kanye West interview. Read more articles in Arts » |
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