Reviews by scribeben

Relatively talented asshole. Both come across here.

Typical 2000s hip hop production but with some unique bells and whistles. Strong hooks and smart lyrics made this an enjoyable listen. But imagine knowing him and listening to 12 minutes of shoutouts for your nar but it never comes!

This made little to no impression on me. I guess it wasn’t terrible.

There’s some interesting stuff going on in some of these tracks but overall I still really don’t feel these guys.

Derivative and mostly uninspired. Like Guided By Voices if they weren’t cool.

Smart, elegant contemporary pop. Check out there features on Charli XCX and 070 Shake tracks.

Delightfully funky and fun with more variation than I had expected. It’s like a love letter to the history of Black music preceding it and a preview of what was to come.

Some of this is okay, but it’s mostly because of the features. Crosby’s voice doesn’t really hold up on its own. There was some promise at the beginning of the Cowboy song, but the stuff about the Indian girl was rather cringe.

Some of the songs (mostly Mould-penned) have cool elements, anticipating both 90s indie rock and more commercial “alternative” styles, but a lot of the tracks are so sonically indistinct that they barely register to my ears as music.

Chill, interesting blend of elements.

Decently cool synth pop but a bit too bubbly for my taste.

The gentle delicacy of her voice with what I detect to be influences from James Taylor, Joan Baez, and even Stevie Nicks make this more enjoyable than I would usually find this type of country music.

I liked Ray of Light but this is not it. The whole album feels embarrassingly disingenuous like that scene from The Matrix where Trinity tells Neo she loves him and that’s why he can’t be dead, complete with the obnoxious whisper voice.

A second Common record and still no Tupac. I feel like this thing is messing with me now. This one is chill outside of the homophobia but didn’t keep my attention like the other one and this one’s too long.

I have many thoughts about this one that I’m still trying to sort through. In many ways I feel like it explains something crucial to the current zeitgeist. Young people who followed Kanye to this point in his career and then watched his psychological deterioration must be powerfully conflicted. The beats are wildly creative and inventive. The lyrics while narcissistically self-aggrandizing and misogynistic are no more so than much gangster rap that preceded it and there are glimmers of genuine social commentary though he seems to draw unfortunate conclusions from them (and continued to do so). I feel like there’s a close alternate universe where he took a philosophy course or just read the right book and became a cultural force for good.

Yes these are some of the most overplayed songs of all time and they’re glorified cock rock, but they’re undeniably masterfully written and represent the logical culmination of 80s heavy metal. Still, I prefer Chinese Democracy. Fight me.

Ah the early 90s

This lost didn’t need a Motörhead live album but it certainly does rock hard.

The tracks are well composed but it’s hard not to cringe at another white dude making a fortune of unheralded Black musicians.

This is the best of the three. The original, pure, unadulterated idea.