Kid Cudi – “Man On The Moon: The End Of The Day” Review

Are there such things as hip-hop-stoner-hippies? Because this album is just for them.  With that said, Kid Cudi’s debut album is all about being very deep, out there, spacey, and hypnotic.  For the most part, it seems to work. However, like most music deeming to be spacey and hypnotic, much of it just doesn’t make sense.

Kid Cudi is an artist that wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Kanye West.  He was initially a film school drop-out that moved to Brooklyn to pursue music, where he made a mixtape which caught the attention of Mr. West himself.  Kanye then brought him in to sing guest vocals on “Welcome To Heartbreak” as well as helping him write lyrics and melodies for the songs “Heartless” and “Paranoid”, all of which appeared on West’s album 808′s and Heartbreaks.  Though I was personally a big fan of the 808′s album, while listening to this new Cudi album, it’s obvious where the influence came from.  Also, even with Kanye’s album being very experimental and a great effort, Man On The Moon seems to be what Kanye should have done and what he actually meant to do.   Meaning, this is very similar to 808′s, yet fortunately lacking a vocoder.

Musically, this album is absolutely amazing.  It nearly perfectly symbolizes the new direction hip-hop seems to be taking with all the dance influence.  However, lyrically, I feel this album tries a bit too hard.  More times than not, when Kid tries to say something deep and powerful, it comes off as…stupid.  There are two perfect examples of this, one of them being the intro track titled “In My Dreams,” and the other being in the song “Enter Galactic.”  When the intro track starts, the music brings you back to the first time you saw 2001: A Space Odyssey, but when the lyrics come in, it seems very half-assed.  It sounds like he smoked far too much pot and freelanced over the string section, saying to himself “yo this is gonna really make people think.”  It’s not making me think, it’s making me skip to the next track.

The next example would be “Enter Galactic.”  During the bridge/breakdown of the song, he beings a poetic, spoken-word-esque type of rant.  This is where he says the words, “If you can’t do what you imagine, then what is imagination to you?”  I’ll be honest.  At first, I thought that was pretty cool.  That is…until I went back and listened to it again.  Though it sounds cool, it doesn’t fucking mean anything.  It’s a dead sentence bound to blow the minds of people who’s minds are already depleted by pot and LSD.  When I hear lyrics like this, it just bothers me.  I’ve honestly had conversations with legitimately psychologically-damaged homeless people who have come up with phrases that make more sense than that.

And I also need to comment on the role that Common plays on this album.  He has these moments at the beginning or end of certain songs where he seems to be telling a story.  You would initially think that whatever story he is telling about the “main character” would be something that relates to the lyrics or the overall theme of the album, but it doesn’t.  It tries to tell the story about the upcoming of Kid Cudi, as he refers to him as “the man on the moon,” but it continues throughout the album as if to set up a backstory to certain tracks.  This seems to be an added-on attempt to be more poetic, but comes off very fumbled.

But don’t get me wrong, I actually highly enjoy this album.  Tracks like “Soundtrack To My Life” and “Simple As” are fantastic tracks, not to mention the amazing singles “Day ‘n’ Nite” and ” Make Her Say.”  ”Simple As” is a highlight simply because it starts off making you believe the song is in a 3/4 time signature, until the main beat drops in at 4/4 while still holding the 3/4 pattern behind it.  This has never been done in hip-hop before (as far as I know).  This album is begging to be heard, and it deserves every listener.  I think its experimental and will certainly lead to a new sub-genre of hip-hop that needs to be discovered.  Though this album will be regarded as one of the top front-runners of that genre, I don’t feel this album is nearly close to a perfected version of it.  I do think, however, that because of this album, better things are on the way.   Though there is much to complain about on my part, I’m giving this album a 4 out of 5.  ****

Muse – “The Resistance” Review

Muse is possibly one of the most hyped-about bands this past decade, blowing up overseas with the album Showbiz, while waiting until the release of Absolution to explode in the states.  Songs like “Time Is Running Out” and “Hysteria” dominated U.S. charts only to be continued in 2006 with “Supermassive Black Hole.”  It’s obvious to say, though I’m sure other elitist music-snobs (much like myself) will disagree, Muse is one of the most original bands to hit radio in what seems to be a very long time.

Personally, Showbiz is by far my favorite album from this group.  I consider myself a fan,  but not enough of one to listen to them on a frequent basis.  The song “Muscle Museum” from Showbiz, however, is constantly found in my playlists.  Their new album is coming out soon, and I know a ton of you are really excited.  I have been privileged enough to take a good listen to it this early in the game.  Don’t worry, I’m not the type to say “well they’ll never be as good as Showbiz” or “I just like their old stuff better, the stuff that was out when no one knew who they were.”  Fuck that noise.  People like that bother me, unless the music of a certain band was clearly better years before their fame smacked them in the temple with a cricket bat (Atreyu, System of a Down, Green Day)…  Just kidding (no, I’m not).  Seriously though, when people say things like “Nine Inch Nails will never be as good as they were when The Fragile was out” or saying that the only good Dillinger Escape Plan was Calculating Infinity and everything else sucked, it’s pointless.  The reason Nine Inch Nails will never be the same as they were during the days of The Fragile is because Trent Reznor was a completely drug-addicted maniac on the verge of suicide.  And he’ll never be as angry as he was during the days of The Downward Spiral either, so quit expecting another one!  Bands evolve, and as they do, their music changes.  When bands grow and their music stays the same, it ends up being a horrific train-wreck downfall that brings tears to your eyes as you are forced to watch it, torturing yourself as you hope for something different (by the way, thanks 311, now I don’t even care about your new album).

With that being said, it was obvious listening to Showbiz that this band was meant for a bigger sound.  It was an absolutely massive album.  Guitars blazed alongside monstrous vocals with some of the catchiest bass lines I may have ever heard backing it up.  As the band continued to write and put out hit albums, their sound seemed to get larger and larger.  This album has some of their largest songs by far, ending with a huge three-part symphony orchestrated by Matthew Bellamy himself.  The rest of the album, surprisingly, seems more stripped of effects and computer-generated keyboards than previous albums, yet still having just enough to satisfy the fans that loved it.  This can be said for much of the album.  While each song builds up into what seems to be an imminent explosion of rock and keys, Bellamy seems to hold back at the last minute as if to tease you each time.

My opinion: this album is good, and there are songs on here that will blast onto radio, but outside of it’s near-perfect production, I find it to be somewhat bland for Muse.  The songs are good, but only good.  The ending symphony is pretty sweet, but I don’t feel its something I’m going to run to my friends saying “holy shit, you gotta check this out.”  They are more the quality of, “hey man, did you check out that new Muse album? What did you think of the symphony?”  While you both will agree that its good, the conversation will most likely stop there.  It’s not something to go much into detail about.  Allegedly, the three-part ending took Bellamy quite some years to complete…ouch.  Though it’s bland for Muse, it’s still better than a lot of shit that has come out lately.  I give it a score of 4 out of 5.

Jay-Z – “The Blueprint 3″ Review

Here is an artist known for his lyrics and being able to write quickly and efficiently, while still holding onto a concept worth-while.  Jay-Z is one of the biggest rappers in the industry right now, as he certainly is and will always be a legend, but it seems about time for him to retire for real this time.  If not, then he probably needs to take a good 5 years to find something meaningful to write about.

“I shouldn’t be so popular.”  This is a quote from the second track of this album, which pretty much sums up Jay’s career post-Black Album.  Jay-Z use to be one of the more prolific lyricists in the game; it seems now that he is more concerned with talking about how awesome he is rather than something meaningful.  Simple rhymes about how much of a badass you are, or about how much money you have, is more suited for gangster rap, not for hip hop.  Not only that, but lyrics like this of his new album are overly mediocre, proving that Jay-Z is well past his prime.  The beats here are amazing, but lyrically it leaves no lasting impression or commentarial impact.  The hooks are top-notch, but the verses don’t match.  Every song seems to be the same.  The only songs where Jay-Z seems to actually talk a little about something, yet still going on non-sequitur rants about what a famous person he is, are the tracks “Empire State Of Mind,” “D.O.A.” and “A Star Is Born.”  The track that stands out lyrically is “D.O.A. (Death Of Auto-Tune)” because it’s ABOUT FUCKING TIME THAT A RAPPER TALKED ABOUT HOW STUPID AUTO TUNE IS IN HIP HOP.  He comically singles “hey, hey, hey, goodbye” hoping that with this track rappers will take the hint that auto-tune is on the verge of completely ruining the genre. But even with that, the song could be and should be much better than it is.

The track “Venus vs. Mars” is just creepy.  Jay-Z rhymes about sex and skeeting on a shawty, which, though I would normally find funny, sounds like a sex predator masturbating outside a child’s window.  The song “Hate” features Kanye West and is one of the few times I have found Kanye to be an absolute disappointment.  The song quickly becomes redundant and you begin to resent Outkast for making famous the pronunciation of the word “air” as “ayir.”  This song really takes that pronunciation to a completely different level, and the reason I “hate” the song “Hate” is not because I’m a hater that’s jealous of your fame, it’s because it sounds fucking stupid.  The single “Run This Town” I have already reviewed (which you can read here), and I found it to be frustrating because I could never figure out what the fucking concept was.  The song has no point, other than to prove that Kanye is outwardly more creative.

I’m trying hard to enjoy the album, but the only thing I’m able to enjoy is the amount of amazing beats and hooks.  And though the music industry as a whole would completely disagree with me, a good beat and hook does not make a good hip-hop song.  It’s good business, but its not good art.  And thus describes the entire album.  It’s a good business decision, a sex-symbol for radio, but to people who are particular about their hip-hop and appreciate good lyrics, I feel they will find this album to be completely uninspiring. Jay-Z has become the U2 of rap.  Meaning, he can continue to make mediocre music until he dies, and he will always go platinum, simply because his name is so gigantic that it now well precedes his actual talent.    I’m giving this mediocre album a very mediocre score of 3 out of 5.