2011: The Year Daftpop Stopped Writing But Learned to Love Drake

sometimes, i'm shallower than rap.

Another year has come and gone. I did very little writing. I did almost no listening to non-major label artists. Most people don’t even think that stuff is music, and sure, sometimes I think my mind is gradually atrophying from exposure to so much unchallenging trash; on the other hand, it is my belief that the respective talents of The-Dream, Kanye, Beyonce, and Jay-z are some of the best in any musical genre, and therefore worthy of my attentions. Maybe 2012 will offer itself as a new start for my musical collection and I will finally buy a record player and get into obscure soul and R&B from decades past (this is my musical dream). Or maybe I’ll just keep pumping up the volume when Big Sean’s “Dance (A$$)” (seriously, have you heard this song? Drop everything and listen if you have not) comes on the radio and rapping along to the embarrassment of whoever is sitting in my passenger seat. Without further ado, here is a collection of my timely “bests and worsts” of hip hop, pop, and r&b in 2011.

Grossest sex jam of 2011 and definitely the grossest sex jam ever:
Chris Brown & Ludacris: “Wet the Bed.”
To quote my sister, “When I heard the song “Wet the Bed,” I almost pooped my pants.” Indeed, the extended metaphor of this song is so distasteful that one becomes bewildered enough to lose it. As though the song’s title and hook were not enough to drill home this mind-numbingly literal bedroom play-by-play, the beat consists of a synthesized DRIPPING SOUND, instead of, oh i dunno, an actual rhythmic instrument. Fuck you, Ludacris, and fuck you, Chris Brown, for thinking that a woman’s aroused state should ever be compared to pissing the sheets.

Sexiest Sex Jam of 2011:
Beyonce: “Dance For You”
Beyonce is too classy to make a sex jam in the “hey girl hey girl come back to my condo let me play yo booty like a congo” tradition of most contemporary sex jams. She is an artist of profound feeling and substance when it comes to the topic of love, and her album 4 was love’s showcase this year. “Dance For You,” on the deluxe edition of 4, is an epic, six-minute ode to her unending love, dedication and desire to one lucky individual (whom she decides to dance for). It was written by my man The-Dream (real name: Terius Nash), and like many of Nash’s weirdest and best songs, it does not follow any kind of traditional pop song structure. There are seven or eight distinct parts, which at times coalesce into a hook and other times not. A wailing, Purple Rain-era guitar underpins the end of the song, and then the album ends in a wash of sultry catharsis. This is obviously the best way to make an exit under any circumstances.

Best soundtrack to the next OWS protest:
Killer Mike: Pl3dge
Hey, you know how everyone thinks positive rappers are lame? But then those same people listen to politically-objectionable materialistic coke hustling rap because they prefer something “hard”? Well, H-town’s Killer Mike is political and yet not lame, hard and yet not rapping about counting his hundos. Pl3dge sounds pretty damn classic and could have come out any time between now and the past 15 years, but its raging pessimism regarding America’s economic plight is unmistakably of the now. Mike shatters illusions of what was once called “the American Dream” by applying X-Ray Marxist vision to the growing class and racial inequalities of our current ‘broke-as-shit’ capitalism. This is a particularly Richard Wright-esque insight on the track “That’s Life II”: “Mr. O’Reilly, Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Hannity, how could you sell white America your insanity?/ You tell ‘em that they’re different and manipulate their vanity/ when truthfully, financially their life is a calamity.” Like Wright, Killer Mike sees ruling class rhetoric dividing poor (white and black) people by creating racial resentment. He is not confident that “change” is going to happen any time soon. His solution?: “Burn this motherfucker down.” I don’t disagree.

Worst soundtrack for the next OWS protest:
Kanye & Jay-Z: Watch the Throne
Here Jay-Z is, again rapping about brands so expensive most of us have never heard of them. There Kanye is, lamenting, “What’s the last thing you expect to see at a black tie?/ A black guy.” Watch the Throne is undeniably a lot of fun, but it further entrenches both of these guys in what I have long seen as the inevitable existential inertia of famous rappers. Let me explain. The narrative of a rapper’s life is traditionally a rags-to-riches story. But when the struggle is over, and the rapper finds himself sitting pretty atop a pile of rap-gotten-gains like Audemars, Mongolian furs, and $150 million LiveNation contracts, what is there left to rap about? Besides watches that cost 300k, furs, and LiveNation contracts, I mean? Yeah, they don’t know either.

Worst Song Featuring a Talented Duo:
Rick Ross feat. Nicki Minaj: “You the Boss.”
Nicki Minaj was the great female hope of 2010, until her major label debut turned out to be a middling, money-grabbing…major label debut. But, the cynical downplay of Minaj’s freak image worked, and Pink Friday, the generally triflin’ collection of club hits and crossover R&B love songs, has officially gone platinum. “You the Boss,” from Ross’s forthcoming God Forgives, I Don’t album, is not only triflin, but also an undoing and betrayal of Minaj’s own bossness. Whereas back in the good old days, Minaj and Ross appeared on the Ye track “Monster” as equals, and Minaj’s verse obviously bested Ross and every other MC on it, this song features Minaj comely whispering, “I’ll do anything that you say/anything that you want/ cuz you da boss/ you you you da boss.” I know Rick Ross is the boss, and his name conveniently rhymes with boss, but this 2011 single absolutely offended me, and made me wonder where the fuck Minaj is taking her career. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but whatever happened to the MOTHERFUCKING MONSTER? This woman was born to be a star, not a background singer cooing about obeying another rapper’s whims!!!

Best Song Featuring a Talented Duo:
Drake feat. Rick Ross: “Lord Knows”
Ross, all drug-dealing braggadocio, husky vocals and heavy gold chains, is a strange bedfellow for the pretty-boy, emo-rapping, navel-gazing of young Drake. But as far as I’m concerned, Drake fucking turned his musical fortune around with the release of the sprawling, dextrous, thoughtful Take Care, the album on which the epic “Lord Knows” appears. Rick Ross should always be backed by such larger-than-life Just Blaze production, and Drake should always have this much feeling when regaling us with tales of his fame-induced malaise.

There was more to talk about this year, and I tried to write long-form reviews of Take Care, DJ Quik’s Book of David, and my other favorite releases from this year, but the words were not forthcoming. Here’s to 2012 and a renewed loquaciousness about music and culture.

Watch the Throne: Some Next Level Shit

a modest symbol announcing the coming of our lords

Recently, monolithic golden Greek crosses on black posters began popping up around town, announcing the forthcoming release of WATCH THE THRONE. And I awaited, with messianic fervor, the coming of August 8th, so I could hear two kings defend their rightful place at the altar of rap.

I’ve prevented myself from reading reviews so that my mind is not sullied by other critic’s opinions, though I know the world has been abuzz with love for the album. And I gotta say, this is the best shit Jay-Z has put out since… The Black Album? At it’s heart, though, Watch the Throne is a straight-up Kanye effort; each song has his musical tendrils curled all over it. WTT continues the adventuring spirit of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The dirty, dry-as-bone snare and clattering cymbals from Twisted Fantasy are again the dominant percussive sound, and the sneer of Ye’s recent rhymes has persevered well into 2011. Most notably, this album also offers a dizzying variety of samples and sounds that would only come natural to a voraciously omnivorous music consumer like Ye (I’m still stunned by the use of the hipster dupstep FLUX PAVILION sample, as well as the electronic percussion on “Why I Love You” — may as well have been jacked from M83′s “Kim & Jessie”). Last night, my buddy Andrew aptly pointed out that Kanye’s recent output proves he’s like the Borg: he assimilates indiscriminately.

Speaking from my podium as a Kanye scholar, this album provides something no others have previously done: it closes a loop dude started on his first album, providing coherence to a heretofore scattered body of work. He’s cultivated his own variety of mini-genres (the soul sample jam; the 60′s civil rights jangle; the chest thumping ode-to-ego; the inspirational hymn, etc), and my perception of his interests and career up to this point was that he was just going to keep expanding and conquering new genres every time he released a new album. But here he revisits his previous genres: “Lift Off” has the earnest autotune of 808s, and it’s uplifting (lit’rally) mood is something Kanye did best back on College Dropout. “Otis” is obvi the soul jam, and is possibly one of his best; “Murder to Excellence,” an absolute highlight of the album, features the afore mentioned 60s jangle, the bassy piano keys he so favored on Twisted Fantasy, and the chipmunked vocal sample he’s successfully employed all along.

Now for our elderrapsman of the album: Jay-Z goes DEEP on Throne. While Jigga’s done an album inspired by his autobiography and has also written a book, he has rarely been as emotionally forthcoming as he is here. Up to this point, he’s been a great self-mythologizer, reflecting on his rags-to-riches story from the perspective of an omniscient narrator. Kanye, on the other hand, rarely escapes the circuitous perils of navel-gazing, and this seems to have rubbed off on our man in a good way. We have him staring at himself in a mirror, noting that he’s his only enemy in “Welcome to the Jungle.” He also sits in his car, alone, feeling numb in “Why I Love You.” Furthermore, Jay seems to relish his rhymes in a way he rarely does. “Murder to Excellence” features a somewhat indulgent but also very enjoyable slithering alliteration of “s” sounds; Jay even imitates the “chsshh chsshh” of a cologne spray nozzle. On a music level tho, Jay-Z finally is succeeding at sounding cool with synths, something he has not done well on previous sans-Kanye attempts, such as on Blueprint 3′s embarrassingly horrible “Forever Young.”

One of the most satisfying things about this album is, obviously, the interaction between the two rappers. Like poets anxious about their influence, they freely quote their own and the other’s past work. Kanye says: “I’m from the murder capital, where we murder for capital.” Jay sings along with Kanye: “puh-puh-puh-paranoia.” They finish each other’s rhymes. They don’t compete: they meet as equal ballers in the game. From “Niggas in Paris”: “ain’t that just like LeBron James?/ ain’t that just like D. Wade?” They once were enemies, but now they play for the same bloated/egomaniacal team!

Notably, there are no guest appearances on this album from any of rap’s minor princes or would-be heirs. Thank goodness they left Drake to his naked lady sexts and Weezy to his purple haze. It would have been distracting to include these proteges and wannabes. Appropriately, our kings are buffeted by the ghosts of music’s best: a James Brown motif/sample breezes jazzily in and out between a few songs; Brown has four or five additional samples on this album; Nina Simone’s profound “Feeling Good” (“it’s a new day/ it’s a new dawn!”) provides the sentimental backdrop for “New Day,” Otis Redding stomps and grunts in “Otis.” Why play H.O.R.S.E. with the little guys when you can get your picture in the Hall of Fame?

Dudes could have totally phoned some shit in, because that’s what absolute monarchs are allowed to do. But they didn’t. This album isn’t perfect, but if I explained why it ain’t, then we’d all be here till 2012. (It has something to do with Kanye’s newly appalling sexual politics… some other time, though.) Watch the Throne is a completely edifying listening experience for long-time fans, and this is largely because Kanye is an evil genius/Borg-like musical being to whom our resistance is futile!

Daftpop’s Extreme Reverence 4 Beyonce’s 4

i got shipwrecked and made this vest out of crow feathers & ferrets

There is a beat-up old minivan parked on my block with possibly the best and also most jank-ass bumper sticker of all time. The bumper sticker was clearly created by an enthusiastic but graphic designedly-challenged individual. It reads quite simply, in black font on a white background: BEYONCE.

I can’t think of a more appropriate singer for whom this touching, homemade declaration of love would be made. Beyonce is one of our superstars. She maintains an aura of glamour and composure in an era when so many other women have been overexposed and exploited by the Internet, TMZ, and our own fucked up need to see them drunkenly stumble over their 5″ Louboutins. Girl’s most naked moment this year did not involve reality television, wardrobe malfunctions, or rehab: it was a backstage video taken by Jigga of her rehearsing, and flawlessly executing, the song “1+1″. A pure, old fashioned star, Beyonce allows us to see our dreams in the reflection of her gleaming American smile.

Sure, sure, she’s been trained from a young age by her Joe Jackson-like father to be a megastar. But Beyonce is that rare combination of manufactured performer and raw skill.

Nowhere has this been more evident than on 4, her recent and fourth (obvi) solo album. This album doesn’t give a fuck about sounding contemporary. The overall production flourishes are closer in style to latter-day Earth, Wind & Fire, or another adult contemporary group of “smoov” musicians than to any recent R&B. There’s a Slick Rick sample on “Party.” “Love On Top” is basically a Jackson 5 song. “1+1″ features a guitar solo eerily reminiscient of Purple Rain, cleary the result of producers The-Dream & Tricky Stewart’s Prince obsession. While at first I was shocked by the startlingly out-of-touch production choices, I have now decided that this was a bold move in the right direction. It’s not pandering to commercial interests, because it sounds so incredibly corny. It accurately reflects Beyonce’s recent musical influences, and therefore comes off as a labor of love. But, really, sorry for the red herring, the production is beside the point. The album’s sole purpose is to showcase the expressive, ostentatiously powerful VOICE OF BEYONCE, which it does with aplomb.

So far this album has received very positive reviews from the critics I read: pfork, Sasha Frere Jones, the guy for the NYT. All those critics are men, and I’m honestly surprised they like it as much as I do. 4, like many of B’s hit singles, is essentially for the ladies. It’s about the thrill of succumbing to soul-eating love (see: “1+1″, “End of Time”, “Rather Die Young”), something pretty much only women are excited about. It’s about making an effort even after your man has given up on you (See: “I Care”). It’s about working out your problems and communicating about them (“Start Over”, “I Miss You”). Very occasionally, on the few bangers on the album, it’s about sex (“Party”, “Countdown”). But always, it’s about monogamy, true love, marriage, life-long companionship. To co-opt a phrase: this is some grown-woman shit!

Do you understand how much I love Beyonce? Maybe. But the important thing is that Beyonce understands how much we love her. She delivers on everything we want from her: her voice cracks with emotion, she gives utterance to our pain, confusion, joy, she identifies our nameless if terribly mundane emotional problems with our boyfriends.

I know my subjective, first-person emotional relationship with this music has all the perspective of a 15-year-old’s obsession with, say, Kurt Cobain, or something. But my earliest, most primal instinct is to love music with my heart, and then think about it later. This only happens to me once in a great while these days; I am a grizzled old lady with a cynical ear. But something punched my soul awake on 4. This is music for people who find catharsis in belting along to songs that sound like your howling heart. Now go, be set free by Beyonce’s transcendent pipes.

Unforgiven: The Worst Samples by the Best Rappers

Haddaway: Inspiration to Rappers in the year 2011

Over the last decade, Kanye popularized pairing rap verses with old school soul samples; T.I. favors rapping over chugging fierce synths and horns; Lil Wayne’s most memorable verses have been sputtered over monstrously huge beats produced by Bangladesh.

But it has come to my attention recently that several hip hop artists have chosen some of the certifiably worst, most played-out and most mocked songs in history to rap over. The first is Nicki Minaj’s “Your Love,” which samples Annie Lennox’s “Love You No More.” Do you know this song? It’s the one that goes “dooby dooby do-do-do, waaah.”

Second offenders are Wayne and Eminem on the track “No Love.” This song features the 90s club hit “What is Love? (Baby, Don’t Hurt Me)” by a man apparently called Haddaway. The song is mostly about haters hatin’ and bitches hatin’ on Wayne and Eminem. The hook interweaves the rappers’ verses with the sample’s lyrics, creating gems like these: “Bitch you get (no love)…./I don’t need you (don’t hurt me)/You (don’t hurt me no more).”

I would like to think that in both of these instances, the rappers have decided to employ these soft 90s hits in order to radically retool our conceptions of the original songs; maybe it’s post-modern pastiche; or maybe it’s a clever homage to a much-maligned genre, like the yacht-rock stylings of Gayngs, or something.

But sadly, it is almost certainly bad taste that has guided these choices. Minaj’s first studio album is an incredible disappointment; artistically atrocious and lacking any of the fire or schizophrenia of her guest verses, the album comes off as her label’s attempts to downscale her freak image and remold her into a traditional top 40 r&b/hip hop star. The most frightening thing about “Your Love,” which was also her album’s first single, is it’s bleeding sincerity. It’s a love song, and Nicki’s eccentricity has been harnessed and tamed: she raps sentimental over the new age beat, noting “Shorty, imma only tell you this once, you da illest/and for that imma die hard like Bruce Willis.” Ordinarily, I would welcome a Bruce Willis reference from Minaj, but here, it just comes off as so tired and so one-dimensional. Whatever happened to the lady with the pink wig, thick ass who would give us whiplash?!?!? Whatever happened to the MOTHERFUCKIN MONSTER?!!??!

As for Wayne, dude is not known for his good taste. Which is fine and charming in its own right, but makes it frustrating to be a fan. His Drought mixtapes showcase an ear for hot tracks, even if said are sometimes obvious (BK & Jigga’s “Upgrade You,” for instance, and NaS’ “Black Republican” are two stand-out tracks remixed by Wayne on Drought 3). But then he had his electric guitar era. But now this??!? I exhaled in true resignation the first time I heard “No Love,” thinking I’d have no more love for Wayne. But then fortunately Bangladesh re-emerged from the ashes of “A Milli” and made the song “Six Foot, Seven Foot.“

There’s always hope for Wayne, as one of rap’s most notable personages. He’s been allowed to reinvent himself with mixed results, and we forgive him, because he’s eccentric, he’s an oddball, and that’s what we love about him. But I’m afraid the record industry has already derailed Nicki Minaj by robbing her of her many identities and replacing her with this startling new image. She’s plastic. She’s girly. She’s a doll whose arms are twisted and bound by the whims of (ironically) Wayne’s Young Money imprint on the Motown label.  Women in big money biznesses aren’t allowed agency to be weird or subversive. And Minaj will die hard just like Bruce Willis before she’s allowed to reinvent herself again.

Where I Been? + Magical Movie Moments of 2010

I’m back. Or I’m trying to be back. Nothing gets a pop culture enthusiast’s blood pumping like the end of a calendar year: ’tis time to ponder the most exciting creations of the last 12 months.

Lists: they’re fun! But ‘best of’ lists are boring. So for this post, I will focus on the most magical movie moments of 2010, in no particular order.

To define my term: magical moments can be both literal and figurative; in all cases, the magical moments mentioned below are about the experience good movies offer when they draw you into the film’s universe, and help keep you there.

Magical Moment #1: the opening sequence of Mother. The very first scene of Bong Joon-Ho’s Mother is as fantastical a movie scene I saw all year, and involved no special effects or mystery-inducing narrative manipulation. The titular mother is first seen wandering in a wind-tickled mountain valley. She has a tired and blank expression on her face, and she looks lost. She then appears to draw resolve from some well of mysterious existential strength; music is cued, and mother hesitantly rolls her shoulder into what becomes a dance. She sways arrhythmically and occasionally stares into the camera lens; it’s a thrilling, totally disorienting scene. It’s also an instance of making strange that Bakhtin would have approved of, as it draws you from your complacency on the other side of the screen and makes you wonder what the fuck kind of movie you signed up for.

Magical Moment #2: the colors in Toy Story 3. Had Baudelaire been alive to see Toy Story 3, he probably would have written a ponderous 20-page essay on the correspondence between color and emotion in this movie. He would have titled it (in French, of course) “The Ecstasy of Color Synesthesia in Pixar Animations.” The characters’ hopes and dreams correspond with the brightness or droopiness of the colors shown; the new playroom at the day care center (the location of the toys’ last hope to be loved again) is a radiating palette of pastels, while Woody’s first brush with the seedy underbelly of the toy world in the vending machine comes in pukish hues of shadowy browns and sulphuric glowing yellows.

Magical Moment #3: the otherworldly & wintry environs of HP7. This movie had less wistful magicks than films past, and more grim, gruesome, and violent happenings. But the aesthetic of the other HPs was preserved and even heightened in some of the sweeping landscape shots of England. We find the downgraded (and Ronless) duo of Hermione and Harry on a craggy rock surface that looks positively lunar, a place that compounds the real isolation of our two young heroes. Later, after a near-death situation in Harry’s hometown, he and Hermione aspirate to a pastoral English forest, where virgin snows sits undisturbed on tree tops and an iced over stream. The best “environ” though, by far, is Dumbledore’s final resting place, which doesn’t have any of the mossed-over Anglosaxon charm of HP’s world, but instead looks like a monolith of Mies Van Der Roohean or Kubrickian provenance.

Magical Movie Moment #4: hallucinated ghost in A Prophet.

The ghost in A Prophet is the only surreal element in this brutally real film. Our hero enters prison as a petty thief and leaves it as a hardened criminal. The cost for this transformation was the blood of an inmate he is ordered to kill by the head Corsican mafioso. He slashes him up with a razor blade, and the scene is as messy with geysers of aorta blood as it is emotionally jarring. The ghost of the murdered man then appears to our hero throughout the movie, not as a moralizing haunter like, say, the ghosts of Christmas past or whatever, but as a reminder of what exactly it took to get in with the circles our hero runs with.

Magical Movie Moment #5: The vintage fonts in Vincere

Okay, no lies, I didn’t make it all the way through this movie. It more or less assumed its audience was Italian or scholars of Mussolini, jumping around the chronology of Benito’s life with no exposition or attempts to hand-hold you, leaving only befuddlement in its wake. This is what watching that movie was like: “Wait, why is he in a hospital bed? Who is that woman? Is that the one he was having sex with in the last scene? Oh, it’s not? This is three years later, he has a new wife, and he’s been injured in WWI? Oh, how did I not get that?” But the careful visual composition of each scene–with its blips of fascist browns, ornate wallpapers, silky bed clothes–almost made me keep watching. The best part had to be the somewhat hokey scene transitions, which often involved headlines from Mussolini’s first newspaper, “Il Popolo d’Italia.” The look of fascism, ripped straight from Futurist Manifestos of the time, was clean, angular, and severe. The vintage-style fonts in this movie remind us all that severe art and severe politics once combined to make for a world where sleek trains all ran on time.

Thanks for reading!

love, daftpop

Quitting Smoking: David’s Metal Method

I am quitting smoking. My good friend David Lord Butler also recently quit. We decided to tell you how we are dealing, musically-speaking. What follows is one man’s tale of death and resurrection (through hellfire):

Quitting Smoking Metal Method

“It’s easy to quit smoking, I’ve done it hundreds of times.” — Mark Twain

So you’re quitting smoking? I can kinda tell. No offense.  Anyway, I’m quitting too. It’s not the first time but, as always, I hope it’s the last. Actually, sometimes I wonder if I DO hope it’s the last.  I mean, I’m so good at it now that it’s kind of a shame to just give that up. Talents are hard to come by. To give up a well-developed smoking talent AND a quitting-smoking talent all at once is a pretty sad loss. Like the loss of the last speaker of a language, or the ability to walk and take care of oneself as old age takes your earthly graces one by one. It’s horrible; a nightmare.

Which brings me to my next topic. When I quit smoking, and I assume that this is relatively universal, I am nightly visited by terrible visions of death and murder, insurmountable feelings of guilt, regret, and crushing sadness. In my dreams, I murder feral children, am stabbed repeatedly by close friends, relatives and ex-girlfriends, and perform or am witness to countless and unspeakable atrocities. Being awake however isn’t significantly more tolerable, but at least you can avoid the horrible creatures you call your loved ones by hiding in your room, screaming into your pillow, and cursing the names of their future children. With this much emotional stress crowding the crevices of your soul it is critical to cut it off there. Don’t watch sad movies or UHF again as you will find Weird Al to be too weird and too annoying. Don’t break out that break-up Bon Iver album, and don’t watch Inception, instead: smoke weed everyday (obviously) and do what every successful person does when trying to easily overcome difficult obstacles: sell your soul to Satan. Live in the sublime evil. Let the smoke from Hell’s eternal fires flow over your face and head bang as much as physically possible. Seriously, listen to metal.

At his most metal.

Now this might not work for everyone because most everyone hates this stuff with a pretty strong passion, but there is a lot of metal out there and to my ears, it is about as widely varied in character as not-metal (ok, no it’s not.) It’s sorta like an alternate universe (not really), or it tries to be, right? (yeah, I guess.)  Hitler’s Third Reich to Jesus’s Christian empire? (Sure.) Anyway, even if you really are too cool or too sensitive to ever listen to metal and enjoy it at all, you can always try to enjoy it “ironically,” or in a group setting, both of which seem to help matters significantly.

Now, you might say to me, “David, I love metal already, it’s already the only music I listen to and I smoke 3 packs of cigarettes a day. What should I do?” The answer is obvious, keep doing what you’re doing, maybe listen to more brutal metal? But really, if you are trying to quit smoking then it might be time to stow that studded leather jacket in one of those bio-hazard bags you collect and throw it in your closet with your old emo clothes, cause that gig’s up. That’s cool I guess, but depending on how long you’ve been a metal head, it’s probably harder than quitting smoking, so good luck. Wouldn’t wanna be ya.

For the rest of you. It’s time to throw your hair around and curse Christ.

If only she were wearing BLACK lip gloss.

So you probably aren’t looking forward to getting into metal, but there are a few classic albums that just might help. Also, even though this is “prescription metal”, in the spirit of metal itself, I’m gonna ask you to self-medicate. Feel it out. I tend to like to listen to extremely brutal death metal when I’m doing something else, like reading or walking, but when I am trying to rock out, I honestly prefer slightly less technical, more propulsive rhythmic metal: thrash, speed and early death, for example. Now, Anna’s article is covering ambient music and the reason I am writing this article is because I don’t like to “calm down” when I quit smoking because I find it to be unfeasible. When I am quitting smoking, I must let my energy, aggression, frustration and that categorically unquenchable feeling of desire for nicotine to escape through Dionysian ecstasy. But maybe your emotions work in peaks and valleys and in which case perhaps a cocktail of ambient music and metal might be exactly what you need. Exercise works well in tandem with metal but only do it if you enjoy it. Remember, you have to make sure that you stay happy so that you can be a half-way decent and productive person. It’s not worth quitting smoking if you lose all your friends.

Let’s get on with it.

Slayer: Slayer is the best metal band of all time. They are truly a multi-purpose band and metal heads and casual listeners can enjoy their music together. They are better than Metallica for the simple reason that they are vastly more brutal without losing much of that wonderful speed/thrash pop rhythmic sensibility and they are better than the best of the most brutal bands because of that very same sensibility. You can hum the riffs and head bang easily.

Show No Mercy (1983)

“Evil Has No Boundaries”

“AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.” — Tom Araya

But are there enough swords?

Vocalist Tom Araya’s high pitched metal wail at the beginning of Evil Has No Boundaries, the first song from Slayer’s first album says it all: “AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaahhhh.” While it is perhaps the case that this song could be improved by changing the name to “Evil Hath No Boundary,” there is really nothing else wrong with it. There is not one but two scorching guitar solo’s by the one-minute mark. The verse riff is simple, fast and repeated many, many times and is basically an excuse to have some notes playing to distract you as the band attempts to take your soul. While Chilean-American lead singer Tom Araya is clearly cool as hell, some people find his singing to be…bad. I’m usually pretty generous to him because he’s got a great wail (which I love), and his barking is very acceptable and often mixed pretty low. One thing that can help to get you into Slayer is to sing along with the lyrics sheet. If you do this, you won’t hear him as much and it’s impossible not to enjoy yelling phrases such as, “our axes are growing with power and fury.” The chorus is the least metal part of this song, but only because it’s the catchiest, and that really only indicates how fucking metal the rest of the song is. How many songs have a chorus where a group of apparently possessed pirates shout the call “Evil,” as another angry man responds with “Will take your soul” and other crazy shit and that part isn’t the most metal part of the song? All the other songs on this album are great and you should listen to them as well, but again, this is about you, you are quitting smoking. Enjoy the fury, but we gotta keep moving.

His kids said they'd never seen him happier.

Reign In Blood (1986)

“Rain In Blood”

This is the defining song of Slayer’s entire career, and is more or less the title track of their best selling album, Reign In Blood. The goofy play on words in the title of this song is rewarded immediately as it begins with the sound of a sudden shower of what we can presume to be blood (which for some reason is accompanied by lighting.) When Slayer plays this song live, they literally turn on showers above the front of the audience that rain “blood.”  While the rain sounds on “Rain In Blood” are really the only sonic crossover between Anna’s ambient new age article and my metal article, these sounds aren’t just rain sounds, they’re blood rain sounds, that’s different. Anyway, I chose to include this song not simply because it’s the best Slayer song, but also because it is an excellent song to head bang to, and head banging is a very important part of the Quitting Smoking Metal Method.

Head banging is like dancing, but it hurts and there is nothing sexual about in the least. If there is something sexual about it, either you’re doing it wrong or you are too sexy to head bang. Some people can’t or don’t want to head bang and that’s fine, but figure something else out to do. Play an air guitar extremely aggressively, run around and punch the air, or if you remember how to do that punk dance where you do that stupid kick thing like a bad kid ninja then do that (I guess), cause you gotta do something or you won’t get the desired effect.  Head banging is the best dance for metal and is an encounter with the sublime. It is disorienting, all consuming, painful and extremely unpleasant unless accompanied by the proper level of real, honest aggression. If you are quitting smoking, you have that aggression inside of you; it’s just a matter of letting it out.

Brokeneck Mountain?

If you are new to metal, keep listening to these two albums, before moving on.

Deicide

Legion (1992)

“Dead But Dreaming”

On one live version of this song, recorded for posterity on Deicide’s Satan Lives live album, lead vocalist Glen Benton introduces the song by scream-yelling “DEAD BUT DREAMING!!!,” immediately before the band begins the song. On this live album, every song is introduced in exactly this manner with exactly the same socially unacceptable level of intensity. This singular intensity is what characterizes every moment (except for the intro) of Deicide’s greatest, most brutal and most technical album – Legion.

Glen Benton doesn't want to go home, he says he's not tired.

While “Dead But Dreaming” isn’t the first song on Legion, and is not nearly as good as the first song, the first song features an unskippable ambient, backwards-Satan-speech-and-animal-sounds intro section which is very corny. But, if you haven’t heard what a goat sounds like recently and want that experience, check out “Satan Spawn/The Caco-Daemon.” It is the most brutal song on the album. What is so amazing about nearly all the songs on Legion is that they are of such an extreme level of ordered aggression, speed, and noise, that much like serialist classical music of the 1950′s or complex encryption algorithms, they appear to be born from chaos rather than order. If you have ever been taken under by a large ocean wave and the force of the water lurches your body at angles you didn’t know possible, eventually crashing the physical manifestation of your unimportant existence into the sandy ocean floor, you’ve experienced the physical, real-world equivalent to the sonic experience of listening to this album. While Slayer is music made for and by humans interested in the Occult, Deicide is music made for demon creatures of unknown appearance, shape and size, by demon creatures of unknown appearance, shape and size.

The vocals to “Dead But Dreaming,” as is true with all the vocals on Legion, are a wonderful multi-tracked combination of high and low screams, which gives every lead vocal line the feeling of being sung by a horde rather than by just one man. While you CAN try to let this music wash over you, as I tend to do now-a-days, it is endlessly rewarding to pay extremely close attention to every turn of phrase, every structural change, every rhythmic stop and so on and so forth. But, since this really isn’t about appreciating metal, it’s about surviving the process of quitting smoking, don’t worry too much about not picking everything up. Try to do something else while you listen to this music. Let it take your anger and stress away like the Ursula takes Ariel’s voice in The Little Mermaid.

Incantation in 1992. I know, I didn't know they were this beautiful either. John is the sporty one on the far left and Craig is the scary one behind him.

Incantation

Onward To Golgatha (1994)

“Deliverance of Horrific Prophecies”

This one might be hard to find at the record store but if you are adept enough at pirating you’ll be able to find it. I’d be tempted to say that Incantation are The Fall of metal, but the same could be said of every third metal band out there. Incantation has had a total of 38 members in it’s existence, and only one dude, John McEntee, who’s been there the whole time. This phenomenon is so common in metal that this statistic isn’t even the most ridiculous you can find. When grindcore progenitors Napalm Death released their first official album Scum in July of 1987, no original band members were maintained from the first to the second half of the album. Like most metal bands though, don’t even bother trying to figure out whether the album that Incantation released in 2006 was their best; it wasn’t. I’ve never heard it, and I know it wasn’t. Onward To Golgatha is the first album by Incantation and is just the right antidote to all the other insufferably fast metal I’ve suggested you listen to already. Deliverance of Horrific Prophecies is a majestically mean spirited song, with a slow, down-tuned, lip curled, slugging drudging pace which, despite being appropriately horrific, is crushed several times by the spinning of that speed riffing thread that most bands know how to do, but which Incantation does so well. I don’t know which Horrific Prophecies are being delivered by this song but I know clearly that they are very horrific.  Don’t worry about getting out the lyric sheet for this one as underground metal legend Craig Pillard’s vocals are of the incomprehensible cookie monster growl variety and are really better left undefined. This is music for the worst of human atrocities, not the confounding wonders of Hell. Use this slow beat to head bang as hard as you can and snarl and spit as much as you feel is sanitary.

Well, that’s only four songs but each one is on a great album so that’ll probably be enough, and I’ve certainly written enough. Good luck quitting smoking.

Love Emperor

spontaneous heart eruptions from water

The-Dream, aka Terius Nash, has dropped the third installment of what can now be viewed as a trilogy of albums chronicling the delicate art of sexual conquest. Various methods of acquiring and securing booty are employed on Love King in much the same ways they were on 2007′s Love Hate and last year’s Love vs Money; ladies of interest are wooed by the promise of sexual bliss, material wealth and the-Dream’s pure swag, and what follows–whether the expansion of the empire or the loss of a strategic partner–is expressed against a backdrop of lush, maximalist R&B grooves that recall every pop and R&B master from the last two decades.

But Love King starts off grander, with a trifecta of near-perfect pop songs, and ends up being even more theatrical and dramatic in scope than his previous efforts. For starters, the title track doesn’t settle on just one love prospect; instead, we’ve got our king lounging on his golden throne and surrounded by a harem of ladies of every imaginable provenance. While Dream lists his diverse conquests with deuteronomical precision, an organ stridently clanks up a crunk-ass scale and homies shout “oh,” (as they are wont to do on any track with this much libidinous confidence.) The epic scope of Dream’s love-game is further showcased on album thesis “Sex Intelligent,” where he explains “I make every n**** irrelevant/ I’m sex intelligent.” He then goes on to boast that his bangers reach bedrooms from “Japan to Pakistan and Beijing to Paris, France.”

Winning a lot means you have just that much more to lose, and Love King spends a lot of time bemoaning love lost, thwarted and eluded. On “Nikki,” a flame from Dream’s first album returns to haunt him and his current lover. Thin, tinkling synths appropriately recall Prince on a track that gets its name from the song “Darling Nikki.”  The album then seamlessly transitions into “Abyss,” a stand-out track that lyrically plunders the depths of petty, post-breakup cruelty (“Cry till you drown your face/ bitch, i could give a damn how harsh this may seem”). But this song is also the most notable example of The-Dream’s skills as a sonic architect: sharp flourishes of strings and keys flit on the upper register, while bass-heavy synths and a sludge of electric guitar pummel on in the lower depths. Then, ridiculously, “Abyss” ends with the sound of rain and thunder!

The songs weave in and out of bedrooms and relationships, and the Love King is seen in various states of triumph and vulnerability; it’s this wide emotional range and yet single-minded topical focus that places Nash in the same lineage as his heroes/forebears R Kelly and Prince. Like these musical freaks who conjured an entire ouevre from the tales of exploits, Nash uses R&B as practically a devotional genre in which each falsettoed moan, fuckable bass thump, and tender piano flourish is a crucial building block for the Temple of Desire.

And yet, even after three studio albums and writing several mega-hits for Beyonce, Justin Bieber and Rihanna, The-Dream isn’t a household name.  This has prompted some to wonder why Dream can’t achieve this kind of success with his own stuff. But this question is ultimately beside the point; The-Dream chooses to work within an aesthetically-specific form of sex jam. Why do we ask billboard hits of him when he has made us yet another seamless concept album about the minutiae of love and lust? The-Dream may never conquer the air-waves, but on Love King, he easily takes the crown as supreme earthly authority on all matters of the heart.

The-Dream has dropped the third installment of what can now be viewed as a trilogy of albums chronicling the delicate art of sexual conquest. Various methods of acquiring and securing booty are employed on Love King in much the same ways they were on 2007′sLove Hate and last year’s Love vs Money; ladies of interest are wooed by the promise of sexual bliss, material wealth and the-Dream’s pure swag, and what follows–whether the expansion of the empire or the loss of a strategic partner–is expressed against a backdrop of lush, maximalist R&B grooves that recall every pop and R&B master from the last two decades.

But Love King starts off grander, with a trifecta of near-perfect pop songs, and ends up being even more theatrical and dramatic in scope than his previous efforts. For starters, the titular track “Love King” doesn’t settle on just one love prospect; instead, we’ve got our king lounging on his golden throne and surrounded by a harem of ladies of every imaginable provenance. While Dream lists his diverse conquests with deuteronomical precision, an organ stridently clanks up a crunk-ass scale and Homies shout “oh,” (as they are wont to do on any track with this much libidinous confidence.) The epic scope of Dream’s love-game is further showcased on album thesis “Sex Intelligent,” where he explains “I make every n**** irrelevant/ I’m sex intelligent.” He then goes on to boast that his music now reaches bedrooms from “Japan to Pakistan and Beijing to Paris, France.”

Winning a lot means you have just that much more to lose, and “Love King” spends a lot of time bemoaning love lost, thwarted and eluded. On “Nikki,” a flame from Dream’s first album returns to haunt him and his current lover. Thin, tinkling synths appropriately recall Prince on a track that gets its name from the song “Darling Nikki.”  The album then seamlessly transitions into “Abyss,” a stand-out track that, in words at least, plunders the depths of petty, post-breakup cruelty (“Cry till you drown your face/ bitch, i could give a damn how harsh this may seem”). In deed, this song is the most notable example of The-Dream’s skills as a sonic architect: sharp flourishes of strings and keys flit on the upper register, while bass-heavy synths and a sludge of electric guitar pummel on in the lower depths. Then, ridiculously, “Abyss” ends with the sound of rain and thunder!!!

Daftpop Track Reviews

Jeezy feat. Clipse: “Illin“

Jeezy’s got a new mixtape out, for anyone who cares. I don’t, but I stumbled upon this track, and was taken aback by its sonic otherness. “Illin” features an insanely warbled, gnarly violin sample; it’s something from your nightmares, or maybe a zombie debutante ball in Baton Rouge, 1914. Jeezy’s husky, lumbering flow rarely conveys much of anything; the content of his rhymes is often self-aggrandizing bullshit, sometimes heart attacks, and one time about black presidents and blue Italian sports cars. But here, Jeezy is forced to hustle a little due to the presence of his guests, the every-day-they’re-hustlin’ rappers of Clipse. Jeezy + Clipse makes for a visceral clash of personalities; Jeezy’s verse is essentially about how effortless being him/being rich is, while Malice and Pusha sound anguished and paranoid, per usual. If only Clipse could learn a little something from the dumb self-assuredness of Jeezy, and Jeezy could maybe get a little writerly ambition from Clipse… then everyone would win.

Robyn: “Dancing On My Own“

Apart from being Swedish, looking sorta gay, and having hot shit producers, there is yet one other element that separates Robyn from the baser spectrum of pop. This is the vulnerable and self-aware emotional center of her lyrics. I suppose this center does not always hold, especially when you consider the embarrassing lyrical content and rapping affectations of “Konichiwa Bitches,” which would have benefited from some self-awareness. But in her best songs–”With Every Heartbeat,” “The Girl and The Robot,” and now “Dancing on My Own”–Robyn acknowledges, in uncomfortable detail, the desperation and various humiliations involved in being a lover scorned. She dances on her own in this ditty, whose narrative concerns going to the club in order to see her recent ex get busy with his new woman: “yeah, i know it’s stupid/but i just got to see it for myself.” She then gets shit faced and, after stumbling over some broken bottles in stilettos, the world starts spinning off its axis. By song end, it ain’t hard to imagine our song’s heroine falling flat on her lovely YET STILL REJECTED face. My suggestion is that Robyn get with also-frequently-embarrassedly-in-love/fellow Swede Jens Lekman, and then they can make sweet music together until they die.

M.I.A.: “XXXO”

What I learned from the Hirschberg v. M.I.A. media shitstorm was that Maya Arulpragasam performs her role as musician-provocateur with perfect canniness. She is an artist, not a politician or policy-maker, and artists are allowed to provoke us in ways mysterious, inconsistent, or even morally unsavory. If art was not ambiguous, well, then we wouldn’t call it ‘art.’ M.I.A always has a lot to say, even if it doesn’t cohere to a very orderly cultural analysis, and her new single, “XXXO,” clatters on in this same strain. The song contains a vague commentary on the identity-eroding properties of modern telecommunications; iPhones and twitter are name-dropped, while otherwise some whining ensues with the lines: “You want me be/ somebody who I’m really not.” Both the song title and the clutch of letters meant to represent a kiss are M.I.A.’s shorthand for the ways we are dehumanized by this technology; seduction and the possibility of love have been reduced to a mechanization, a screen touch, a tapping away on T9. Or so I’ve deduced. The song is a surprisingly conventional banger, and most of the lyrics are more suggestive than they are straight-up—but it keeps the listener guessing, and isn’t it better that way?

Let Me Tell You ‘Bout This Country Shit

k.r.i.t. has practically been on my blog

Now granted, I of all people am not an authority on country shit. Sometimes I get confused and think my time in Southern Indiana gave me some sort of cred, as after four years in the area my Great Lakes accent faded and I stopped talking out of my nose 100% of the time, downgrading to about 90%. I occasionally said “pin” when I meant “pen” and “flowrs” instead of “flow-ers.”

My real country friends are quick to remind me that even my Hoosier cred is sorta in doubt; the main stealer-of-my-IN-cred is a friend named after a Bible personage and has a big, red, Amish lookin-beard. He grew up in a town where it wasn’t unusual to see dungareed men out with horse and buggy, and where the kids hung out at the gas station on Friday night, as it was the happenin’ place to be. Indeed, I don’t know nuthin’ about one gas station towns.

Anyway, someone who can tell u bout country shit is Mississippi producer Big K.R.I.T. About a week ago, everyone in the hip hop blogosphere went bat shit for his new album. Since I am a little slower to these things, it is only since yesterday that I have been bat shit for it. K.R.I.T. WUZ HERE (<—download from that link!!!) is an album of sweaty cruisin, bass thumpin, dirrrrty southern-ass beats. It’s laid back and breezy, and maybe a lil’ dank. Which is to say, it sounds like a day in Mississippi probably feels.

Everyone keeps heralding K.R.I.T. as Pimp C (of UGK) reincarnate, and that’s fine and all, but to me he sorta sounds like T.I., sans the fury. The tune “Country Shit,” a stuttering, bouncy, and at times, str8-up heroic declaration of what they got down thurrr in the South. He begins by inviting the listener into his narrative and elucidating some properties of country shit: “Let me tell ya bout this supah fly/dirty dirty/third(???) cold/muddy waters…” (I apologize for the question marks–sometimes this shit is so country, I can’t understand what is being said.) This is followed by an imperative: “Shorty, pop that pussy! If you wanna.” I appreciate  the ladies have a choice in the matter. Seriously.

Big K.R.I.T. is one of many Southern rappers who has immortalized his geography & lifestyle in a deeptrackkk. Other wonderful songs within this genre that come to mind are Outkast’s “ATLiens,” from the 1996 album of the same name. Obvs, ATLiens was an appropriate title for the ATL resident weirdos. Many hallmarks of Southern life are noted within this song, including an archetypal Southern meal: “If you like fish n’ grits, n’ all dat pimp shit, everybody let me hear you say oh yeah-yer.” Oh yeah-yer.

Clipse, ever despairing, have a down-trodden song dedicated to their home state: “Virginia.” It begins:  “I’m from Virginia, where there ain’t shit to do but cook.” Later, it is noted that “there ain’t shit to do but look.” In addition to cooking and looking, drug dealing and murder also happen in this song.

Overall, I’d much rather learn about country shit from K.R.I.T. or OutKast than from Clipse, but I guess it just depends on how fucking morbid and misanthropic your worldview is.

Anyway, wanna hear these songs? Here is a jank-ass myspace playlist of them.

Several Songs Daftpop Enjoys Right Now: The Series, Part II

Young Jeezy: Only like Malcolm X if his motto was "buy any jeans necessary"

Well gee, it’s been a minute since I wrote on this blog. I’ve been sitting, thumbs a-twiddle, waiting for bloggerly inspiration to come for weeks now. Finally I realized that I of all people should know that blogs need not be the medium for deep thoughts (for instance, my last post was about Clash of the Titans).

In accordance with my lack of inspiration, and perhaps my recent lack of sophistication, I will discuss some notable songs of the moment… Ahem.

Welcome to Several Songs Daftpop Enjoys Right Now, The Series! (It needs a better title, but I’m working on it. Woman can only do so much in between work deadlines, smoke breaks and caring for needy dogs.)

1. Jeezy feat. Clipse: “Illin“

Jeezy’s got a new mixtape out, for anyone who cares. I don’t, but I stumbled upon this track, and was taken aback by its sonic otherness. “Illin” features an insanely warbled, gnarly violin sample; it’s something from your nightmares, or maybe a zombie debutante ball in Baton Rouge, 1914. Jeezy’s husky, lumbering flow rarely conveys much of anything; the content of his rhymes is often self-aggrandizing bullshit, sometimes heart attacks, and one time about black presidents and blue Italian sports cars. But here, Jeezy is forced to hustle a little due to the presence of his guests, the every-day-they’re-hustlin’ rappers of Clipse. Jeezy + Clipse makes for a visceral clash of personalities; Jeezy’s verse is essentially about how effortless being him/being rich is, while Malice and Pusha sound anguished and paranoid, per usual. If only Clipse could learn a little something from the dumb self-assuredness of Jeezy, and Jeezy could maybe get a little writerly ambition from Clipse… then everyone would win.

2. Freddie Gibbs: “Crushin’ Feelins“

To some, Freddie Gibbs is some 2009 hype; to others, he is the future of hip hop. To make a long story short: Gibbs is from Gary, but currently lives in LA. He is something of a classicist gangsta rapper. His beats aren’t all that dope, but he can double-time it like Twista and spins the most eloquent of street elegies. And oh yeah, he’s performing at P4k this summer. Weird!!! It can be hard to know where to start with 3.0 rappers like Gibbs–dude has no proper studio album or radio singles, just some mixtapes, all of which are epic in length–so where to begin? Start here, with “Crushin’ Feelins.” In less than four minutes of breathless, glorious raps over the fucking smoothest guitar ever, Gibbs tells you everywhere he’s lived, states his life goals, talks up his skills, and most importantly, explains everything you need to know about him: that he can “easily bring you defeat with [his] vernacular” and is “too deep in the streets to be beefin’ with other rappers.”

3. Drake: “Over“

I never thought I’d cop to liking a Drake song, but here I am. While I don’t relish the concept of “Over,” (which is yet another navel-gazing extravaganza and features several of his fucking imbecilic non sequitur couplets) the scuttle-shuttle of the beat that drops at 30 seconds is as beautiful a thang I’ve heard on the radio in a while.

4. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti: “Beverly Kills“

Pop bliss! “Beverly Kills” is a scatterbrained but marvelously melodic ditty recalling psychedelic Californian summers, like an acid trip at someone’s 60′s hippie party in L.A. Or something. Anyway, AP’sHG might be poster-children of lofi-ness, but a friend recently commented to me that there is something very deliberate in their aesthetic; lofi for them is not tossed off or motivated by a sort of punk recklessness: it’s a production choice , a wonderful mindfulness of what is being evoked by certain sounds. This song is yet another good example of this phenom; plus, it’s just good, silly fun.

5. M.I.A.: “XXXO“

I love M.I.A. so much that I get sort of befuddled when I have to talk about her. Ever a monitor of the postmodern condition, M.I.A. here comments on the identity-eroding properties of modern telecommunications. I am glad I received this warning from M.I.A.,  because I almost wrote this entire post in internet lingo and emoticons. JK! She sings in a lifeless monotone against a backdrop of menacing (if somewhat conventional) electropop. ”XXXO,” both the song title and the clutch of letters meant to represent a kiss, are M.I.A.’s shorthand for the ways in which we are dehumanized by technology. The lyrics aren’t very cohesive, but the whole is suggestive: “you want me be someone who I’m really not,” “cuz everytime we try to get close/there’s always something I’m  thinking about,” “if you like what you see/you can download and store.” Seduction and the possibility of love have been reduced to a mechanization, a screen touch, a tapping away on T9.

6. Robyn “Dancing On My Own“

Apart from being Swedish, looking sorta gay, and having hot shit producers, there is yet one other element that separates Robyn from the baser spectrum of pop. This is the vulnerable and self-aware emotional center of her lyrics. I suppose this center does not always hold, especially when you consider the embarrassing lyrical content and rapping affectations of “Konichiwa Bitches,” which would have benefited from some self-awareness. But in her best songs–”With Every Heartbeat,” “The Girl and The Robot,” and now “Dancing on My Own”–Robyn acknowledges, in uncomfortable detail, the desperation and various humiliations involved in being a lover scorned. She dances on her own in this ditty, whose narrative concerns going to the club in order to see her recent ex get busy with his new woman: “yeah, i know it’s stupid/but i just got to see it for myself.” She then gets shit faced and, after stumbling over some broken bottles in stilettos, the world starts spinning off its axis. By song end, it ain’t hard to imagine our song’s heroine falling flat on her lovely YET STILL REJECTED face. My suggestion is that Robyn get with also-frequently-embarrassedly-in-love/fellow Swede Jens Lekman, and then they can make sweet music together until they die.