RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Monday, April 3

[HH3os] The My Beautiful Dark Down Don, Man Fantasy trio

(1st round match-up 11 of 27)

There is no intro to this one, because I am uninspired to write an intro. Mass produced crap polished to appear hot will leave you feeling that way – flat and uninspired.

Rick Ross – Teflon Don
(released July 20, 2010; #38 on 2010 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)
I am not too keen on the Rick Ross, because of the common reasons of ya know, stealing your name from actual drug trafficking criminal overlord, who is still alive and dislikes you using his name. Also Rick Ross has that fucked up full torso tat style of someone who all of a sudden decided to get tattoos over their whole body, in four months, instead of slowly accumulating them in the traditional underclass way. But this unleashes the unnecessary potential of a stupid gentrification of the internet hip hop tournament of threesomes turning into long conversation on the gentrification of tattooing, involving white women with too many colors in their tattoos, and shitty bikers being squeezed out of the very market they created by shitty pretend bikers. I am still firmly of the belief that the realest tattooists should be drug addicts, either current or former, of some sort.
Nonetheless, listening to Rick Ross is like accidentally getting one of those 20-packs of Blaxploitation DVDs – it’s all kinda crap, none of the classics are to be found, but if you really squint your eyes (i.e. get lifted), man, it’s not that bad! That’s Rick Ross at his finest – not that bad (if you don’t listen too hard). TWO STARS!

Das Racist – Sit Down, Man
(released September 14, 2010; #23 on 2010 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)
Das Racist is comedy rap, so once you hear the comedy schtick, there’s not much to go back to. They are both very clearly (in their lyrics) non-whites, but they have a neo-liberalism feel to them of lack of stabbitty history. Then again, from consulting the internet, they met at a tiny liberal arts college, which even being non-stabbitty personal history full of high trauma non-white can feel like being the Elephant Man (movie freak, not reggae artist). And I can enjoy this mixtape (which appears to be before they ever released an actual album of corporate sales tag style), but I can’t do it enthusiastically. It sounds like the type of thing somebody would write important sanctimonious thinkpieces about and also exactly like what I’d expect Pitchfork to hype up. I tried to remove consciousness of such post-release attention from my brain (and also heart) while listening, but it was impossible to separate completely. Too easy to imagine 52-year-old “artist” white guys who have lived off inherited wealth their entire life but have parlayed that into important positions on various local arts boards of directors babbling to you for a painfully long fifteen minutes about how important Das Racist are when they hear that you freestyle a lot. TWO STARS!

Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
(released November 19, 2010; #1 on 2010 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)
This might be the most convoluted and drawn out Penthouse Forum letter ever committed to popular cultural record. This album had flashes of things that allow me to justify Kanye West’s continued existence in my pilfered iTunes library, but then it had twice as much which was too painfully obvious a Kanye the Fool moment. I will say TWO STARS just to be polite, and also make a fake tie with the other two releases that are part of this tired trio.
(Oh wow, just noticed during formatting that this was THE BEST ALBUM OF 2010 according to Pitchfork. That is cause enough to suspend the metrics involved behind this entire dumbass project, but because I am a self-loathing masochist, I shall continue on.)


THE WINNER: Wow, all three got two stars. What separates one from the other? Well the Kanye release felt like it went about 4 lifetimes in purgatory too long to really enjoy, so that makes it lesser. And the Das Racist one, when you listened to it the second time through, all the funny lines weren’t as funny because you already heard them. And even though Rick Ross is corny, if I had to pick one of these three I’d be most likely to listen to again, were this not a stupid project where I will have to listen to one of them again, it would be Rick Ross. So fuck it, Rick Ross wins. Who cares though? God this is stupid.

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