Auto-Tunes & Heartbreak

Experimentation is dicey business within hip-hop. While the genre isn’t the one-note wasteland its detractors paint it as, rap albums that stray too far from the tried and true formulas more often miss than hit.

Six years after the fact, Common still hasn’t erased the hippie-channeled Electric Circus from the gray matter of most listeners.

Mos Def made his 1999 debut classic Black on Both Sides seem like a faint memory when he unleashed The New Danger in 2004; a mish-mash of elementary guitar licks and equally forgettable lyrics.

Even Andre 3000’s semi-brilliant The Love Below caused a stir because the more eccentric half of OutKast had benched his effortless delivery in favor of crooning.

Despite the resistance to anything too different in hip-hop, it’s vital for emcees to keep retooling and evolving as creative artists. Fail to do that and you either fall off the map or become a caricature of your former self (hi, Snoop Dogg!).

So maybe it shouldn’t come as any surprise to see, or rather hear, Kanye West wiping the drawing board clean and drawing up a new game plan on 808s and Heartbreaks.

After all, the producer-rapper invests almost as much energy in convincing the world of his complexities as he does creating music.

Unfortunately for Kanye followers, the self-professed Michael Jordan of the music industry’s new game plan is delivered to our eardrums via Auto-Tune.

The once rightfully mocked robotic voice distorter utilized strictly by atrocities like T-Pain has somehow become a hip-hop staple in the last two years.

Used sparingly by West not too long ago, he and the device are now as tough to pry apart as a parent dropping their kid off for the first day of kindergarten.

The Auto-Tune also makes any sort of fluid lyrical delivery an exercise in futility. But don’t worry, because Ye takes a page out of Andre 3000’s book here and scraps the rapping all together.

That in and of itself wouldn’t be such an issue if doing so hadn’t seemingly stripped the typically quotable Kanye of anything interesting to lament.

“Welcome to Heartbreak” is a potentially intriguing confession of self-loathing marred by cringe-worthy lyrics like, “My god said she’s getting married by the lake / But I couldn’t figure out who I’d wanna take / Bad enough that I showed up late / I had to leave before they even cut the cake.”

I’m sure Kanye meant well with tracks such as “Coldest Winter,” an ode to his mother, who died during surgery last year. But with precisely six paint-by-number lines spread over three verses, the content is too generic to generate anything poignant.

As with his catalog of solo classics, Kanye himself is at the helm of the production.

Unlike his first three albums, though, West opts to limit the crate-digging and sticks mostly to a sound best linked to electro pop.

The near-complete absence of rapping coupled with production that strays from hip-hop mores results in an album with lethargic, uninspired offerings.

Anyone who’s followed West’s career knows a workaholic lies beneath the childish façade. Let’s commend him for his attempt to nudge along his innovator status. But then let’s tell him he needs to head back to the drawing board.

**/*****

Opening with a Bang III

It seems only fitting we put our sights on something early from Kanye's catalog to take our mind off this autotone album he's got brewing right now...

Kanye West- "We Don't Care" from the album The College Dropout (2004)

Kanye never goes long without giving the paparazzi and his detractors fresh ammunition. When he's not working the boards or dropping clunky, but clever lines on the mic, he's having expensive cooked food flown across the globe, posting whiney, 20,000-word, all-cap manifestos on his blog, or smashing the ever-loving shit out of someone's camera in an airport. That said, the man is remains an innovator in hip-hop production and quite the showman, both on wax and on stage. Those things have given him some free reign w/r/t his extra-curricular antics.

Ye isn't the most talented emcee, but he delivers his rhymes in such an unabashed fashion you can't help to issue a free pass or even dig what he's offering. With three solo LPs and hundreds of guest verses under his belt, there's a lot of Kanye to choose from. But the track that doubles as a Kanye primer is this opener from his debut album.

It's not West's best song. It's not even my favorite Kanye track. But if I had to pick one song to illustrate what Kanye's all about, not just as a rapper, but as a producer, it's this one. You could listen to this one track and know what The College Dropout is all about. It doesn't take a genius to decode the album title's meaning, but Ye's three verses here elaborate on the ideology behind achieving material fulfillment without the benefit of college courses.

The pictures West paints could fill the inner-city blight template were the lyrics not so witty and draped over celebratory horn and handclap-heavy beat. With a bit of tweaking, lyrics like "You trying to cut our lights out like we don't live here / Look at what's handed us /Fathers abandon us /When we get the hammers go and call the ambulance / Sometimes I feel no one in this world understands us" could easily get dropped into a song where making listeners upbeat and optimistic is the last thing the artist wants. As it is, West taps everyone on the shoulder to remind them of these all-too-real situations, but at the same time, assure you they're taking it in stride.

And then there's the wordplay. Kanye borders on the ridiculous at times in this category, but he effortlessly makes it across the tightrope walk between clever wordplay and Lil Wayne "how many drugs is he under the influence of right now" wordplay. Again, lines such as "The drug game bulimic it's hard to get weight / Some niggas money is homo it's hard to get straight" brings forth serious situations with a grin without mocking them.

Ye isn't going to be part of many serious "best emcee" discussions as we press on, but the guy knows how to entertain. His mastery on the production side of things is his real bread and butter, but tracks like "We Don't Care" show he's capable of at least hanging in the big boys' neighborhood.

Opening with a Bang: The Return

“Shakey Dog” (Ghostface Killah): I’ve long since conceded that Ghost is the most entertaining storyteller in the game today. Even if you disagree, it’s tough to argue that his narratives aren’t as exhaustive as trying to reel off in succession all of his aliases.

“Shakey Dog,” the opener to Tony Starks’ critically acclaimed 2006 effort Fishscale is about as good an example of this as anything in GFK’s catalog. Ghostface packs what could pass as an entire plot for a movie in less than four minutes. Ghost, perhaps aware that even his most loyal listeners might not be prepared for content-packed track, advises everyone to “buckle up one time” before he delves into the first verse.

Actually, the term “verse” isn’t applicable here, since Ghost shows just how insane he is by not even letting a hook into the mix to let him catch a quick breather. No, instead the master of the hood yarn unpacks a tale of a drug deal gone sour and its subsequent chase, packing in more lyrics than a lot of alleged emcees fight on their entire LP.

But where Ghost really flourishes is with his attention to detail. Gangsta rap fixtures such as robberies, killings, and pursuit of women get redundant rolling off the tongues of the unimaginative rapper. Ghost takes what could easily serve as a paint-by-number scenario and creates vivid imagery with lines like, “This is the spot, yo son, your burner cocked? / These fuckin' maricons on the couch watchin' Sanford and Son / Passin' they rum, fried plantains and rice / Big round onions on a T-bone steak, my stomach growling, yo I want some!”

Stuff like this is why Ghost is able to remain relevant, even as an aging player in a young man’s game.

"I'm Sick of All These Motherf*ckin' White People in My Motherf*ckin Neighborhood!"

Neil LaBute has kept a low profile since unleashing the unintentionally hilarious Wicker Man into the world in 2006.

Lakeview Terrace marks his first appearance in the director’s chair since that debacle and though the results are better—how could they not be—LaBute still has a tall order in restoring the credibility he built up in the ‘90s.

Patrick Wilson (Hard Candy) and Kerry Washington (The Last King of Scotland) play an interracial couple who buy their first home in a posh Los Angeles suburb. Samuel L. Jackson is Abel Turner, their strict widower neighbor who objects to such a relationship.
Tensions rise as Abel, an LAPD officer, perpetrates a series of mind games against the couple.

The caveat with movies that have racial issues at their core is it invites lazy filmmaking.
Racial conflict is such a touchy subject that it’s easy to throw together a basic premise, include a racial element, and expect quality results to trickle down.

When filmmakers avoid this entrapment, you get films such as Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (which also featured Jackson) and Tony Kaye’s American History X. When they don’t, you get Lakeview Terrace.

David Loughery and Howard Korder, who can share equal blame in collaborating on the script, don’t bother to attach much depth to the characters or scenarios.

Despite lots of physical contact, Wilson and Washington’s chemistry is so unnatural that you start to ask, “Why are they together?”

Early confrontations between Wilson and Jackson make for unsettling moments, but as per the usual with uninspired movies, the promise of those scenes are never fully realized.

The issues examined in Do the Right Thing still divide audiences as much today as it did after the film’s 1989 release. Lee took the time to develop the neighborhood setting and its inhabitants into complex entities. Motives and actions aren’t cut and dry, which leads to a shocking conclusion without a clear antagonist.

The minds behind Lakeview Terrace don’t seem interested in such shades of grey. What little character development Jackson’s character gets feels tacked on, and even then, he at no point comes across as a sympathetic character.

It’s difficult to knock Jackson, who once again exhibits his ability to take shoddy material and deliver, at worst, an admirable performance. The energy he brings to most of his roles makes his resume scattered with clunkers forgivable. It’s that intensity that’s converted some of those flicks into cult classics (Snakes on a Plane, anyone?).

But no amount of that classic Samuel L. Jackson bravado can mask that Lakeview Terrace is a generic thriller posing as a relevant piece of social commentary.

** out of *****

Opening with a Bang

Our culture’s universal short attention span doesn’t leave much time for entertainers to get the spotlight on themselves. Lack of quality be damned in the music world, there’s a flood of people ready to take your spot if you don’t wow audiences quick enough.

That’s why a quality opening track on an album is of utmost importance. I don’t consider myself one of those people with ADD tendencies who aren’t going to check out an entire album if the first couple tracks don’t delight the eardrums. But a slam dunk of an opener helps set the tone for the album. If it’s a debut album, it can even set the tone for an artist’s career.

With that in mind, here's the first installment of Opening with a Bang, a series that will look and pick apart some of the most memorable album openers we've enshrined in our album and MP3 collections. Since we’re not stepping out of the hip-hop scene, let’s go with the criteria where “opener” refers to the first actual song on the album. Otherwise, we’d be talking about the best second tracks out there.



50 Cent: "What Up Gangsta" - 50 didn’t need much of an introduction by time his commercial debut Get Rich or Die Tryin’ hit the racks in February 2003. He’d burnt up the mixtape circuit for several years, carving a bit of a niche by verbally attacking several of his peers. Eminem included 50’s single “Wanksta” on the soundtrack for the 2002 8 Mile. And the lead single on Get Rich, “In da Club” had become the song of the young year.

But for those who were still late to the party, Get Rich’s opening song, “What Up Gangsta” shared the anatomy of what would become the blueprint for the majority of Mr. Jackson’s songs: gritty, unapologetic lyrics spread over a tough-as-nails beat. In a way, the song is everything that has prevented 50’s career from evolving. But without the five-plus years of retrospect, this opener remains something of a statement. 50’s trademark delivery of lines such as “They say I walk around like got an "S" on my chest / Naw, that's a semi-auto, and a vest on my chest / I try not to say nothing, the DA might want to play in court / But I'll hunt or duck a nigga down like it's sport” remove any ambiguity for novice listeners just what this New York native is all about.

Rehash Gang

Mixtapes have made studio rap albums filled with fresh, unheard content a nearly extinct concept. That isn't really news, considering the idea of a mixtape has generally been to promote an upcoming album by giving listeners a taste. This hopefully leaves listeners fiending enough for the finished product that they'll go plunk down the money for the actual album instead of stealing it online before regulating it to external harddrive hell without ever really listening to the damn thing.

On the surface, this isn't a bad practice. Mixtapes are typically raw affairs, laced with filler, truncated songs and in most cases, the mixtape "host" stamping his vocal watermark all over the place. But they serve their purpose by giving the listener an idea of what they can expect from the studio album.

The caveat with mixtapes and the albums they promote is when there's so much overlapping content that the album feels like a retread. Everyone's favorite drug-slanging, hip-hop brothers from Virginia, Clipse, and their proteges Ab-Liva and Sandman, collectively known as the Re-Up Gang, man these choppy waters on the foursome's first album proper Clipse Presents Re-Up Gang.


Anyone who's even vaguely familiar with the group is aware of their We Got It 4 Cheap series, a trio of mixtapes that could give the bulk of today's rap albums a run for their millis. Though the majority of these efforts featured the rappers rhyming over other artist's beats, the series nevertheless became online favorites. And why not? The group took some of the sickest beats of recent vintage and vastly improved on the original artist's often sub-par lyrics.

Re-Up Gang added the third installment of the series this past Super Bowl Sunday. Again, the majority of the production used for the mixtape had its origins outside of the Re-Up camp. The foursome's clever wordplay, lyrical dexterity and general bravado overrode this fact. The end result was an effort that felt more like a studio album than something fans were encouraged to download online.

All of this considered, it was welcome news to learn that not only would the third Clipse album be dropping into stores this fall, but Re-Up's first studio album would hit the shelves late in the summer to tide eager fans over. One listen to Clipse Presents Re-Up Gang, however, leaves you wondering why they even bothered with the release. The content isn't bad. On the contrary, it's quite strong. About as strong as it was when we heard the majority of it on We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 3.

Now, Clipse aren't strangers to recycling bits and pieces from mixtapes. Steady followers of the group probably recognized quite a few verses on Hell Hath No Fury from mixtapes prior to its release. But again, this is pretty common practice in the mixtape realm. Re-Up Gang makes liberal use of this understanding, though.

Of the 12 tracks on the album, only a handful seem to offer anything new in the way of lyrical content. It's not just a spare verse here and there; entire songs from the third volume of the We Got It 4 Cheap series appear on the album, under the guise of allegedly new tracks thanks to renaming and different production.

And maybe it's that new production that makes this case of excessive lyrical recycling unforgivable. The aptly dubbed Sleepwalkers bear the brunt of the production duties. If nothing else, their lethargic work makes the likes of Timbaland look better, as it provides evidence to the school of thought that slabbing a bunch of synths over a bassline isn't always a recipe for an instant hit.

Though Malice and Pusha T have shown an ability to sound impressive with virtually any beat they choose to rap over, Ab-Liva and Sandman seem to really shine when backed by uptempo production. The pair's rhymes sound clunky and out of place when backed by the musical stylings of the Sleepwalkers. "We Know," one of the album's lone musical bright spots reuses the foursome's vocals from "Dey Know Yayo," a track that originally used Shawty-Lo's horn-filled "Dey Know" as its musical backdrop. It's no coincidence that the Sleepwalkers' lone aggressive, quick-tempo contribution allows all four members of Re-Up Gang to thrive with their verses.

An ability to command attention even in spite of the occasionally weak beat has been one of Clipse's strengths since breaking into the game. Clipse Presents Re-Up Gang, though, raises some quality concerns about their third studio album, now that the duo and The Neptunes have opted to turn their marriage into something of an open relationship. Even after The Neptunes fell into a phase of churning out mostly uninspired material, their chemistry with Clipse never took a hit. If Clipse Presents Re-Up Gang is any indication, Clipse may want to consider once again making that relationship with The Neptunes a monogamous pairing.

Second Time's the Charm

No beat is safe in an age where, thanks to the Internet, the mixtape circuit is busier than ever. With new material cropping up daily, it's not uncommon to hear someone else stamping their lyrics over a familiar beat. Was there a rapper who didn't throw down a few bars over the inspired DJ Toomp-produced track "What You Know" on the mixtape scene in 2006? The results aren't always memorable, but then you've got those instances where a rapper can jack a hot beat and lyrically take it to a new level. Today, we examine one such recent example: Shawty Lo's "Dey Know."


Though Shawty only recently dropped his debut solo album, he's no newcomer to the game. Much to his apparent dismay, Shawty may forever be known as the founder of D4L. People will recall, whether they wish to or not, the trio's brush with fame thanks to the 2005 track "Laffy Taffy." While thumbing through a copy of XXL Magazine a few weeks back, I came across an interview with Shawty Lo in which he all but damned the group, namely because of the mocked reception "Laffy Taffy" received. He's quick to point out how he wasn't even part of the song, since he was incarcerated at the time. For all the mudslinging Shawty does about his musical roots, you'd figure his solo content would be of a higher quality. No dice.

Graced with a celebratory horn arrangement, Shawty's lead single "Dey Know" stumbles the moment he drops the first verse and never stops tripping over itself. Now, Shawty Lo and dudes of his cut are not really expected to be lyrically gifted. Their work lives and dies by the quality of the beat they're putting their crappy lyrics on. That said, Shawty comes off like a buffoon given all his recent boasting about how people are finally going to see what he's all about. He sounds over-matched by the bombastic production and at times, it's tough to decide if he's spitting lyrics or simply making odd noises. Shawty doesn't seem to think so, however, declaring at one point: "I don't need B I can rock it achapello." And that's not a typo; just Shawty manipulating words to make it fit the rhyme scheme.

While not even the most innovative beat to grace our ears in the young 2008, Balis Beats' production is quality enough to make some heads shake that it was wasted on a dude like Shawty Lo. And this is where the mixtape circuit plays an almost superhero-like role in saving the day and the beat by having a more competent emcee work with it. In this instance, we've got The Re-Up Gang.


The quartet, headlined by Clipse, dropped their third mixtape offering, We Got it for Cheap Vol. 3, on Super Bowl Sunday. As the name suggests, "Dey Known Yayo" lifts Ballis' beat and lets the VA boys do their thing with it.

Clipse has rightfully carved their niche in the coke rap genre. You'd think two LPs and a handful of mixtapes with little more than the brothers boasting of their narcotic conquests would get stale. The duo's clever wordplay and relaxed, but confident delivery prevent that the majority of the time, though. They don't veer from that formula on "Dey Know Yayo" and wind up doing the production justice.

Pusha-T alludes to his non-rap activities right off the bat, declaring: "Push a ton or you can call me Ziplock / Yellow with the blue make green when the coke drop." He caps off his verse with a subtle acknowledgment of Shawty Lo reassuring the listener that "Your price is low, but I bet my numba shawty lower."

Malice's verse is more straight-forward, but dripping with the self-assurance that commands attention. Referring to the emergence of The Re-Up Gang, Malice boasts, "Now look how I got it, some cars in the crib / I done signed on the dotted line, Re-Up is a partnership. The four of us and we come as the apocalypse / Hands down we the best, I'm a narcissist."

I don't think you'll find many arguing Shawty Lo can outdo any of the four Re-Up members in the mic, but the night and day difference between "Dey Know" and "Dey Know Yayo" is staggering. It's unfortunate the former is the one that's getting the airplay, while the latter will go mostly unnoticed. But such is the life of a mixtape-only track.