CD Review: Kanye West's "Yeesus"

By Andres "Pop Rocks" Santos

Kanye West's sixth solo album "Yeezus" finds West as confused and angry as ever. It's a complicated album from a "tortured artist." It's his 2005 public rant against George Bush times ten. West rails against women, racism, and class inequality all while still being as crude and as nasty as ever.  The sonic template and palette is as experimental and electronic as 2008's "808s & Heartbreak." Borrowing heavily from new wave, no wave and industrial rock, it's as if West locked himself in a room with nothing to listen to but Suicide's debut album and emerged inspired by their edgy and stark weird drum machine and bass heavy music.
The album finds West in a dark mood, he's pissed off but at who? Himself? Corporate America? The high fashion community? The list is long. The music is abrasive, riddled with hard beats and textures. It's anti-pop from the impresario of hip pop. The music and subject matter is darker than his last solo album 2010's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy."  Written and produced with Daft Punk and Rick Rubin, the album veers away from the uplifting soul samples and grandiose opulent production of previous records. The album palette is stark black and white with more than fifty shades of gray. Kanye has graduated from his signature maximalist approach to music to the aesthete's equivalent of fine taste: the Zen of minimalism, cue West calling on Rick Rubin to do his signature production "reducing." Gone are the soul samples, in their place are razor sharp industrial beats and sounds with Kanye's new and raw primal scream approach to rapping.
The album opens with the acid house of "On Sight." It is two and a half minutes of industrial synths co-written and co-produced by Daft Punk with West announcing his new approach to rap.  "Black Skinhead" follows building off an industrial drum sound reminiscent of Marilyn Manson's "Beautiful People." It makes sense he heavily borrows from that other agent provocateur's signature song on an album where he is questioning even his most ardent fans to dislike him, a theme Manson has toyed with in his work.
 "Blood on the Leaves" finds West sampling Nina Simone's version of Billie Holliday's "Strange Fruit". Instead of harnessing the songs powerful anti-racist message he raps a crude rhyme about a man juggling two women, apparently nothing is sacred to Kanye. President Obama's assessment of Mr. West as a jackass following his 2009 Taylor Swift PR debacle was more astute and on point then Obama intended.
Kanye West has positioned himself as hip hop's answer to David Bowie. He's able to try on new sounds and run them through his filter, to be both fashionable and anti-fashion, be both an insider but speak from an outsider's perspective. The man deals in contradictions and revels in contrasts and the dichotomy they create. He's a walking contradiction and his music reflects it. Like David Bowie before him he's also able to mine current fashions and trends in music like Chicago's drill music and try them on for size. Eager to find the new sound and direction in hip hop and rap he's embraced the emerging hip hop trends of trap and drill with their gritty street cacophonous drum sounds even featuring emerging Chicago artists like the 17-year-old Chief Keef and King L on the album.
Eager to re-invent himself this is West being a "serious artist," which may be his most self-indulgent pose yet. He's aiming for credibility yet his rap verses still reflect a crude lyrical sensibility. He's eager to be taken seriously by rap and hip hop fans and critics. "Yeezus" is his most "rap" album whereas other albums were hip hop for the masses, "Yeezus" is far from the crowd-pleasing "Gold Digger." Deejays will be hard pressed to find a song fit for communal enjoyment off this album. It's darker, more introspective, Kanye has always been tongue in cheek and been a confessional rapper with a sense of humor yet his humor has become darker, more biting.
Created by a slew of top writers & producers and armed with a bevy of both obscure and familiar samples there are far too many cooks in the kitchen. "Yeezus" is largely a transitional album like PJ Harvey's "Is This Desire?" or U2's "Pop" before it. West is baiting audiences like Radiohead and Nirvana before him, eager to toy with perceptions and his image. Taking the anti-commercial, anti-mainstream, anti-Top 40 ethos of Nirvana's "In Utero" and Radiohead's "Kid A" he's created an album even his most ardent fans would be hard pressed to love, in ploy to shed the fat of his mainstream audience all while being involved with and dating the woman who represents everything he rails against on "Yeezus": materialism, commercialism, consumerism, style with no substance, looks as if he's found his own pretty hate machine. Kanye sure does like to contradict himself. Pull a chair and listen to West's public therapy session which veers from self-aggrandizement to self-loathing, Kanye is locked and loaded into The Matrix (i.e. the Zeitgeist) and taking passengers on the downward spiral. Like Suicide before him this is self-immolation at its finest.

CD Review: Empire of The Sun's "Ice On The Dune"

by Andres "Pop Rocks" Santos 

Australian synth-pop duo Empire of the Sun is back with its self-produced sophomore album "Ice on the Dune." The duo returns with its sense of melody intact creating a shimmering aural spectacle. It has been five years since the duo released its 2008 debut, "Walking on a Dream." The time spent touring the world and the long gestation period has helped the duo avoid the much feared frequently occurring dreaded sophomore album curse. The electro-pop duo return with an energetic follow-up album in the same vein as its brilliant super-catchy debut.

 The duo avoids the sophomore album curse by not attempting to completely reinvent themselves and veer into a different direction and sound. It sticks to the winning formula and charm of its debut with effervescent melodies and thumping four-on-the-floor beats. It also helps both vocalist Luke Steele and instrumentalist Nick Littlemore are music industry veterans. Armed with an absurd back story for the album and its futuristic glam rock-indebted look, the duo is not wasting time re-entering the pop realm riding high on a chariot of fire.

Opening song "Lux" introduces us to the otherworldly back story of the new album by way of a Star Wars-lite instrumental. Buoyant first single "Alive" transports you to an all-night Ibiza rave. It is dazzling beach island glamour over a glam rock stomp that is a meld of Euro-pop and New Wave. You can smell the sweat, sea salt and feel the kick of aural MDMA coming off the dance floor on this number. A perfect song to blast out of radios this summer. Some songs just make you happy to be "alive," pun intended.

Empire of the Sun takes its cues from sci-fi, the current Sgt. Pepper of indie rock: Fleetwood Mac's "Tango in the Night," Electric Light Orchestra and the Xanadu soundtrack. Singer Luke Steele can channel both Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra's blue-eyed soul falsetto and the cool dead-pan vocal delivery of Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant, sometimes all within the same song.

Title track "Ice on the Dune" reinvents Fleetwood Mac's "Everywhere" as a club thumper, it is equal parts majesty and kitsch. This is the best Fleetwood Mac song Christine McVie did not write. "Ice on the Dune" offers life-affirming audible euphoria. It is a color saturated Rothko painting that reveals more upon repeated listening just as a Rothko offers more upon repeated viewing.

"Celebrate" is a banger in the vein of great Daft Punk singles. The bombastic song is an immediate rush of ecstasy. A song befitting its title. "I'll Be Around" is the romantic and lush soundtrack to a pink California beach sunset. It is a breezy ballad in the vein of great Pet Shop Boys songs like "Being Boring" and "Suburbia." The song is a dreamy Technicolor Pierre et Gilles photograph come to life.

 "Concert Pitch" is bright sunny pop from a duo of sci-fi obsessed weirdoes over club-ready Max Martin/Dr. Luke beats straight out of a Katy Perry album but in Empire of the Sun's hands they don't sound cheesy or over-produced. "Concert Pitch" sounds like what Fleetwood Mac's post-Rumours albums "Mirage" and "Tango in The Night" would sound like if they were made in 2020 instead of thirty years ago. "Awakening" takes the best bits of electro-pop as created by Goldfrapp and the French House of Daft Punk douses them in acid colors and places them under a neon glow.

"Ice on the Dune" is a fitting album for the summer of 2013. The album offers a slice of globetrotting fun, immediacy, accessibility and is the upbeat electronic dance music album everyone was expecting from Daft Punk this summer instead of the nerdgasm-inducing sequel to the "Phantom of the Paradise" soundtrack we got.

CD Review: Kenny Chesney's "Life on a Rock"

To hear Kenny Chesney tell it, "Life on a Rock" is a placeholder between the sort of albums that made him one of the biggest country stars of the first decade of the 2000s, albums filled with churning Americana rock and lilting country-beach-bum anthems. Chesney is a superstar, the idea goes, and therefore can do what he wants.

Except when he can't, of course. This album's single, the lumpy and cheerful "Pirate Flag," sounds like it could have belonged to any Chesney album of the last few years and is one of two songs on this album on which he has no writing credit.

An example of the man holding the famously chill Chesney down, right? A forced return to his pigeonhole?

Maybe a helpful assist, actually. "Pirate Flag" has a pulse, unlike much of the rest of this album, much of which was written by Chesney, who is partial to long walks on the beach, acoustic ballads, nonlinear storytelling and lines that don't always rhyme. The results are mostly dismal, making for the sort of album that reinforces faith in big, lumbering institutions that understand starmaking.

Partnering with professional songwriters helps a bit, like on the tense and whimsical "Must Be Something I Missed": "I wake up in the morning just making a fist/I don't call it living, I just exist."

But left to his own devices, Chesney veers uncomfortably maudlin on "Happy on the Hey Now (A Song for Kristi)"; dabbles in roots reggae on "Spread the Love," featuring the Wailers and Elan; and actually titles a song "Marley," name-checking several Bob Marley songs over steel drums.

The bar Chesney reminisces about on "When I See This Bar" sounds far less interesting than the one in Toby Keith's "I Love This Bar." And "Lindy" is an accidentally condescending song about a seemingly homeless person — "No one knows his last name/ But I believe he's the salt of the earth/Just look past his dirty shirt." Worse still, it's not even the best country song about a seemingly homeless person; it's tougher to swallow than even Craig Morgan's awkward and unsettling "Almost Home."

CD Review: Phoenix's "Bankrupt!"

"Alone, alone, alone," croons Thomas Mars at a choice moment on the new Phoenix album, "Bankrupt!," repeating the refrain thrice more before shifting gears. The song he's singing is "SOS in Bel Air," and the wry premise behind its title - distress signals emitting from privileged enclaves - could easily be applied to the album. For a band that has exploited the whims of style as briskly as Phoenix, this rings of self-conflicted social critique, though it's neither critical nor conflicted enough.

Phoenix, originally from Versailles, France, released its first album in 2000, but it was only with "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix" (Glassnote), in 2009, that the band found traction with a mainstream audience. If the first few Phoenix albums sounded like the work of a rock band coolly hijacking elements of dance music, "Wolfgang" suggested a dance-music producer's sleek idea of a rock band.

In no time Phoenix found itself on late-night television and on ever-bigger stages. Headlining at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif., a couple of weeks ago, the band trotted out R. Kelly to perform "Ignition (1901 Remix)," a mashup of hit songs from both camps. (Phoenix is about to go back on tour, and will play a sold-out show at the Apollo Theater on May 13.)

Because of all this - and because "Bankrupt!" includes a tune called "Bourgeois" and an abundance of lyrical disaffection elsewhere - some early commentators have labeled it Phoenix's "post-success" album. Maybe that’s an accurate judgment; maybe it submits to an intentional fallacy.

What Mars tells us himself is willfully inconclusive. "Tell me that you want me," he sings on "Trying to Be Cool," the album's most appealing mentholated-disco tune, though his plea seems to come with air quotation marks. The title track contains a dull instrumental preamble followed by a typical word salad: "Spray pesticide," and "Self-entitled portrait," and "Forever is for everyone else." The segue from a song called "Drakkar Noir" to one called "Chloroform" feels like a dig at predatory masculinity.

More intriguingly, there's "Entertainment," the album's lead single and opening track, in which Mars seems to offer himself up for consumption while synthesizers trawl an East Asian scale, tracing a garish pop exoticism that the song's video makes explicit. "What I once refused to be/Is everything they long together," he sings in the chorus, adding, "I'd rather be alone."

Later, in "Oblique City," which closes the album, he lands on that word again: "Am I gonna do this alone?/They're 50,000 versus one." And ambivalence or no, what comes shortly thereafter is an invitation, or a challenge: "Come on, come out and get me."

Lil Wayne's "I Am Not a Human Being II"

MELANIE J. SIMS

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Lil Wayne, "I Am Not a Human Being II" (Cash Money/Young Money/Universal Republic)

Lil Wayne's "I Am Not a Human Being II" album opens with a familiar sound - someone's flicking a lighter. It's Weezy's sonic signature, a long-running nod to the weed, women, booze and bravado that has shaped so many of his musical releases, including his latest.

Now on his 10th album, singles like "No Worries" and the Mike WiLL Made It-produced "(Expletives) Love Me" suggest that Wayne's priorities haven't changed. Luckily for fans, he covers familiar territory with fresh, tweet-worthy punchlines. But if you're looking for storytelling, look elsewhere. Wayne's expertise is in lyrical zingers.

He unleashes a dazzling array on the 2 Chainz-assisted "Rich as (Expletive)," which features a standout, swaggering beat from producer T-Minus. "AK on my night stand, right next to that Bible/But I swear with these 50 shots, I'll shoot it out with 5-0/Pockets gettin' too fat, no Weight Watchers, no lipo," Wayne raps.

His performance on the song may very well convince on-the-fence fans that the YMCMB captain still has passion for his craft. He's entertaining on "Trippy," one of two tracks produced by Juicy J and Crazy Mike. "I got high, and fell asleep loaded/I woke up and got high again/OK, I'm reloaded," Wayne raps, making no apologies for his recreational activities.

He's a sinister presence over the equally sinister beat of the production duo's "Trigger Finger," and seems to laugh about his 2010 eight-month jail stint on "Gunwalk" featuring Gudda Gudda.

The songs are reminders of a more focused Wayne - a version of the rapper that seems to be absent from tracks like "Curtains," where he phones in lines like "I'm getting cake like I'm Jewish/my (expletive) Drake, he Jewish." He rages through the heavy metal-influenced "Hello," but crossing genres doesn't change the same tired content. And while the hook on "God Bless Amerika" promises a more thoughtful Wayne, his verses don't measure up - a disappointment considering his still-revered status as the best rapper in the game.

Overall, Wayne meets expectations for Wayne these days - not saying much (of substance), but giving listeners plenty to talk about.

POP ROCKS' TAKE ON TEGAN AND SARA'S "HEARTTHROB"

Tegan & Sara's seventh album Heartthrob opens with "Closer" a hook-laden pop song for the lovelorn and it's go time from there. The hooks never cease. It's a pop album for people who shamelessly love pop music. There's no ironic wink, it's unabashedly pop. Yes it may be quirky here and there because it's coming from indie rock darlings Tegan & Sara but it is full throttle pop. It's meant for mass consumption, appreciation and communal enjoyment. This isn't a let me listen on my headphones album this is let's dance pop tuneage. Featuring production by Greg Kurstin of the bird and the bee, the Canadian twin sister duo explore new territory. It's everything you want in a record and for a band, a step forward. After working with pop artists and dance artists the time spent away from the insular world of indie has helped in their evolution. Writing for Carly Rae Jepsen and contributing vocals to songs by Tiesto, Morgan Page and David Guetta has contributed to their overall sonic template. The lyrics are relatable even if they veer towards the cliche as if they were ripped out of a teenage diary.

On opening song and first single "Closer" the song comes on like a rush of euphoria. The sheer bliss of pop makes adrenaline and endorphins rush through your veins and wonder what life was like before you heard the song like the start of a new relationship or meeting a new friend. The girls have dialed down the guitars and have turned the keyboards and drum machines to eleven and it makes up for an adventurous ride through their neuroses and relationships.

 "Drove Me Wild" is a burst of teenage hormones featuring drum programming and a chorus which wouldn't sound out of place on a Katy Perry or Kelly Clarkson album. Never ones to shy away or veer away from sounding tender and vulnerable the duo wear their hearts on their sleeves on album cuts "Love They Say" and "Now I'm All Messed Up" with lyrics and hooks ripped out of the Go-Go's and Bangles playbook at turns bittersweet or anthemic.

"How Come You Don't Want Me" production is molded from great 80's prom songs like Alphaville's "Forever Young" and When In Rome's "The Promise." It's a roller rink anthem about unrequited love and the end of a relationship.

The album is an irresistible batch of ten new songs from the Canadian twin sister duo. It is Tegan and Sara at their best and most sublime, lush and forward thinking. The album bleeds pop. The album is the duo's stab at tearjerkers, ballads and crushed out anthems. The songwriting is solid and expands on the melodicism, harmonies and ear worm quality previous hits like "Walking With a Ghost" and "Back In Your Head" displayed. "Heartthrob" is a breakthrough and watershed moment for the duo. They've made the leap from Big Star to Cheap Trick size choruses without sacrificing what sets them apart from the pack.

Pop Rocks Reviews A$AP Rocky's "LONG.LIVE. A$AP."

A$AP Rocky unleashes a tempest of swagger, flamboyance, bravado and confidence on debut album "LONG.LIVE. A$AP." Alternating between spitfire and languid delivery the album teems with aestheticism, dark, brooding posturing and the commonplace boasting required in hip hop. It's a study in gender politics, masculinity, class and race.
A$AP Rocky, real name Rakim Meyers, has arrived and is ready to take his place as the crown prince of hip hop, a role he was born to play. Named after hip hop legend Rakim of Eric B. & Rakim, he had no choice but to live up to the name and pay his debt to Rakim in full. Rocky makes like a young Basquiat capturing the zeitgeist by mining the past with a forward thinking aesthetic. He's the new wunderkind on the block embraced by the hip hop and fashion elite.
Poised for mainstream success like 50 Cent and Eminem before him he has mainstream crossover appeal and raw charisma. His music provides a much needed kick in the ass to hip hop and the mainstream much like when Dr. Dre unleashed his West Coast-tinged vision of the world on debut album "The Chronic." The album provided a platform for a new honest and raw voice that was both dangerous and intriguing that spoke of street culture and lived up to Chuck D's vision of rap being the CNN for the black community.
The production is a carefully orchestrated affair, a tastemaker eschewing current New York/ East Coast hip hop trends to create a new aesthetic all his own. Rocky has looked towards the south namely the Southern hip hop scene popularized by Mike Jones and Three 6 Mafia. He borrows heavily from Mike Jones' brand of Houston cough syrup-laced hip hop to create a debut album that is a tapestry weaved with threads from across the United States of hip hop.
The dark and menacing "F**ckin' Problems," the second single off the album is the most immediate song on the album and the most playful, in-your-face and dangerous. It's just the kind of song teenagers and rabble rousers like to embrace and play loudly to make their cars go boom with its dirty gritty beat.  His attitude is uncompromising and electric like a young Ice Cube pissed off, angry yet cool. It’s a take-no-prisoners misogynistic homage to his love of the ladies. It features fellow up-and-comer Kendrick Lamar, 2Chainz and Drake over a hook that is both rude and irreverent.
"Wild for the Night" collaboration with Skrillex that shouldn't work but does. A party anthem in the grand tradition of hip hop celebrations of hedonism and debauchery is unapologetically decadent. His staccato delivery rides Skrillex's manic production effortlessly with nods to Tupac, the patron saint of every of young hip hop aficionado.
"Fashion Killa" features a laundry list of preeminent fashion designers including but not limited to Alexander Wang, Ann Demeulemeester, Helmut Lang, Rick Owens, and Raf Simons. It's a breakdown/ tutorial for the uninitiated in the church of cult fashion over a sexy beat and ambient soundscape. This song, as it should be, will be embraced by the fashion community for years to come.
Deluxe edition bonus track "I Come Apart" is a collaboration featuring Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine which pairs the British chanteuse with Rocky to great results. His brutish swagger juxtaposed with her witchy soul vocals is a neo-noir hip hop symphony about love, loneliness and need in the vein of the Roots' collaboration with Erykah Badu "You Got Me," Eminem and Rihanna's collaboration on "Love The Way You Lie" and 50 Cent's "21 Questions." Like LL Cool J before him Rocky just needs love. He lets down his guard and lays bare his vulnerability, probably the most masculine thing he could do more so than bragging about the notches on his belt.

Teeming with street smarts and fashion nods it is a stylish set of songs that are both captivating and "trill," to use Rocky's parlance.  An impressive debut from the crown prince of hip hop that builds on the template set on his mixtape. The male counterpart to Azealia Banks, the female MC who has garned as much press and hype anticipating her debut has lived up to the hype, in this case believe the hype! A strong debut ready to join the annals of hip hop alongside "Ready to Die," "The Chronic" and "Get Rich Or Die Tryin.'"

The Young Rapscallions Online Interview

Due to online video publishing delays, The Young Rapscallions video interview will be available Friday, January 11, 2013 @ 1:00 p.m. Central time. Thank you for your patience.