Eight songs here, which should play in random order. I don’t know where the title came from. I found it on a list of c-adjectives and liked how it looked. Anyway. The list:
-The Weeknd – Life of the Party – Trilogy
-Pulp – Party Hard – This Is Hardcore
-blur – Death of a Party – blur
-STS – We Threw A Party – GOLD RUSH
-Regina Spektor – The Party – What We Saw From The Cheap Seats
-Prince Paul – War Party feat. Horror City – A Prince Among Thieves
-OutKast – movin cool (the afterparty) – big boi and andre present…
-Method Man – Party Crasher – Tical 2000: Judgement Day

One thing that gets lost when people try to legitimize rap by going on a crusade about how it’s poetry is that rap is so much more than rhyming. It’s the way you enunciate the words to the beat (flow), it’s the way those words sound (voice), it’s the way those words are put together (skills), and something indefinable, like charisma or coolness. It’s ad-libs and asides and hooks and everything. “Rap is poetry” doesn’t work because it files off everything that makes rap different from poetry.

Method Man’s “Party Crasher” is one of my favorite joints on Tical 2000. It paints an incredibly vivid picture of one night at the club, from the pushy douchebag doorman to the dudes looking for someone to jack to enjoying the night. There are so many moments in here that can’t be talked about like they were poetry but totally make the song. Mef talking about choking while smoking, “million dollar broke niggas” being an incredible turn of phrase, that “you know what this is” aside just before dude gets done dirty in the bathroom, and — my favorite part — “Niggas! yeah, gon’ turn the party out!”

“War Party” is something else. It’s like the ultimate Goon Theme Song. This is what the nameless dudes in movies and music videos who mean mug at the camera listen to to get hype. Some of my favorite rap songs are joints where a bunch of dudes just get in and get out, and this song is a good example. I’m also a sucker for a song with an outro composed entirely of threats, pimp.

–I’m not sure who wrote this, but I really dig this retrospective of Earthtone III and their place in the music industry. They’re incredible, first, and they’re Big Boi, Dre, and Mr. DJ, second. OutKast. I feel like a lot of people don’t realize that Dre and Big produce, too, because it so rarely ever seems to come up. With good reason, I think — Organized Noize deserves more acclaim than they get, which is a lot — but it’s still sorta weird. This piece does a great job of placing them in context.

–Maddie Collier wrote a pretty interesting essay about rap and cunnilingus. Not safe for work, obviously, but more for language than pictures. I don’t think I’d have had as much trouble as she did finding rappers who are all about putting some south in their mouth, but maybe that’s selection bias. I notice it more when rappers say they don’t than when they say they will. One seems normal, I guess, and the other is weird. There’s a G Rap line she quotes that struck me as weird even when I was heavy into KGR. Like — son, you’re down for killing how many people? But you’re the chicken of the sea? Yuck. Either way — fascinating essay. There are all these nooks & crannies of rap that go underexplored or are approached in asinine and blatantly untrue ways, so I really get into seeing stuff like this. It means I’m one step closer to reading someone’s groundbreaking piece on white girls and rap.

–I wrote about Mike Allred & Peter Milligan’s run on X-Force and how good it is. Wrote about Air Force 1s, too.

-I wrote about this Miley Cyrus twerk video and linked the Grantland piece on my tumblr, too:

This is real fascinating to me, even once you take her getting it out of the equation. I’m from Georgia, right? Ying Yang Twins’s “Whistle While You Twurk” hit when I was in 10th grade. The last two songs I really remember popping off super hard and killing the radio before I left for Spain was Luda’s “What’s Your Fantasy” and Ying Yang’s “Whistle While You Twurk.” Luda was the new hotness, but Ying Yang were on some whole other thing. They shouted out a strip club in my hometown, and flipping Whistle While You Work for a song about strip clubs was an amazing choice. This song, and twerking by extension, reminds me of a very specific time and place in a very visceral way. It’s a time machine.

And now, in 2013, we’ve got ex-Disney stars twerking on camera. Life is crazy. It sorta puts me in mind of when Dave Chappelle told everybody what skeet means and then everyone ran that into the ground.

I saw Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers this weekend, featuring James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Gucci Mane. It was terrible, but terrible in a way that I thought was interesting. Not interesting enough to be happy about paying train fare and movie ticket prices for it, but interesting like “I’m glad I saw that so that now I don’t have to watch it ever again.” A few notes:

-Is this what spring break was like? I missed out on that experience, but if it’s just a bunch of goofy looking white dudes pouring beer on topless white chicks and their token black girlfriend in a pantomime of peeing… I’m good, bro. Surely there is a better way to get into some debauchery.

-Selena Gomez looks like somebody’s little sister. It’s really distracting. She’s the babyface di tutti babyface.

-James Franco: utterly ridiculous, but I forgot he was Franco for a while, so maybe it was good? He was equal parts excruciating and perfect.

–Spring Breakers is tedious, but tedious in an almost exciting way. It feels like it’s three hours long, and I was definitely checking my watch at the end. But I liked some of what I saw. I would see something awesome — the girls in prison, posed around the room like dolls — and then I would have to wait thirty minutes of troll-looking twins and excruciating voiceovers before the next cool thing.

-The shot composition was great. There were a gang of shots that I thought were really, really fascinating. You could probably pull a lot of visual inspiration from this flick.

-The editing was awful. It felt like the movie was an overlong music video set during one hellish Spring Break moment of bouncing boobs, bikini-covered butts, dudes with guns, and alcohol. There’s no sense of place, not at all. There’s no geography. It’s all one place at one time.

-The party’s over once the black dudes arrive, and I’m pretty sure every single black lady in the movie is either naked, silent, a stripper, or all of the above. Gucci Mane is blank. There’s some interesting subtext going on, but the text is like… I made a joke about this movie being Set It Off for white people to friends ages ago. It kind of is? It is coded very, very white in terms of POV, even down to the worst thing that could happen being black dudes treating you exactly like white dudes treated you about thirty seconds before that scene.

-The most concise review I can think of: Spring Breakers is like Vice Magazine putting on a production of Belly entirely in the form of tumblr posts.

Open thread. What’re you reading/watching/hearing/enjoying?

Eight songs here, which should play in random order. The list:
-D’Angelo – How Does It feel – Voodoo
-Big Boi – She Hates Me feat. Kid CuDi – Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors
-Kitty – Smiledog.jpg – haha im sorry
-Iggy Azalea – Down South – Trap Gold
-J Cole – Lights Please – Cole World: The Sideline Story
-Fabolous – Louis Vuitton feat. J Cole – Soul Tape 2
-Jean Grae – Supa Love Acoustic – Dust Ruffle
-The Weeknd – High for This – Trilogy

Iggy Azalea sounds like she’s always one “Yeah~ho!” away from being Gangsta Boo. I think I like her voice over her production (generally Diplo, for the tape I linked), but it’s hard to not hear Chyna White or Diamond or Trina (especially Trina, “Down South” could easily be a Trina joint like “Look Back At Me”, which is as NSFW as it is incredible) when she raps. I got the same problem with A$AP Rocky, but Iggy’s nice enough that I haven’t given up. It’s this weird dissonance, I guess, where I hear one thing and instead of listening to that, I’m remembering something else.

I was talking out loud on Twitter the other day about white girl rappers. It’s real interesting to me, because a few have come up (or come to my attention — same thing) over the past few years. There’s a couple different types of white girl rappers, I feel like. There’s the Kreayshawn/Iggy Azalea route where you rep your whiteness as hard as you can, like a badge of honor or the point of a knife. Hence Kreayshawn repping White Girl Mob as hard as she can, and Iggy rapping about hanging out with “white bitches” and “black bitches” in a very black flow. There’s an “I double dog dare you to say something” in there.

Kitty, fka Kitty Pryde, is the other type. I described it as “Tee hee I’m white” on Twitter, I think, and it’s this self-aware awkwardness where she knows what you’re thinking but don’t really care. “You say, ‘This little white girl is ruinin’ hip hop’/I say, ‘Damn right!’ And take a lick of the Ring Pop,” right? There’s a tease in there. I like Kitty a lot, in part because she’s pretty good at being pretty funny.

White girls in rap is a real interesting subject for me. It’s different than white dudes, but I’m having a hard time finding people talking about why and how. There’s this whole cultural quagmire there, where we’re checking off several boxes and what results is… whatever this is. I’m really interested in the repping part of things, because being white is presumably as awesome as being black is, but racists screwed that up for white people in a big way. Fine lines, right?

“She Hates Me” is my favorite song on that Big Boi album. I love that version of Jean Greasy’s Supa Love.

–I like Tom Spurgeon’s thoughts on working for free. Personally, my “Should I work for free” flowchart goes “Are we related? Did I give you my phone number? Are we friends? Do I like you?” and if the answer to all of those is “no,” then you’re coughing up the cash. If the answer to any of those is “yes,” then I’ll think about how much effort it would take me, what you would get out of it, and how much more money you have than I do before I make a decision. Easy-peasy. (If I don’t like you, the answer’s always “no,” tho. Even if you’re willing to pay double.)

–This joke Sam Humphries found is absolutely savage.

–Chris Randle wrote about issues with the people who use Kickstarter and the culture of Kickstarter itself. It’s good.

-A reader named CC emailed me out of the blue the other day to talk about my review of Moto Hagio’s Heart of Thomas on ComicsAlliance. She said she took issue with it (!) and wrote a paper that in part addresses it (!!) and wanted to give me a headsup (!!!). I really wanted to know what she meant, and she was kind enough to email me back and give me an autopsy. It was really enlightening, and she picked up on my subconscious uncomfortableness with shoujo, which showed up in how I approached writing about the book. Looking at what I wrote and she said, my takeaway is that I made the mistake of approaching the book as an outsider, a looky-loo, instead of digging into what it meant to me, which I do with basically everything else. So I ended up unintentionally giving the book short shrift, something I was consciously trying to avoid. Life is weird. She’s posted the first part of her paper here, with the second to follow soon. I’m looking forward to it. You can find more of her writing here. She’s really smart, and I’m not just saying that because she caught me half-stepping.

–Sean Witzke invited me to take the place of Tucker Stone on the Travis Bickle on the Riviera podcast. I couldn’t make it, but Dr Racism should did. They talked about Out of the Past, Female Prisoner Scorpion 701, The Long Goodbye, and Stray Dog. Pretty good way to kill 90 minutes.

–I wrote about Garth Ennis’s approach to heroism in recent works.

–I watch a lot of Rocky & Bullwinkle. It’s all on Netflix, so you should, too.

NBA 2k13 is, as ever, game of the year.

I watched Children Who Chase Lost Voices this weekend. I liked it. It’s in a Ghibli mode, which is actually pretty distracting. I’m reading Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa right now, and the movie feels incredibly inferior to that. I’m doing a terrible job of why I liked it, huh? I think I liked the overt Miyazakian elements, the fantasy and communing with nature and being friends/family stuff, but the movie ended up being about a boring dude with a boring problem and a boring dead wife. I would’ve liked it more if Asuna was the focus of the end of the movie, instead of just a prop so that some guy can get over his grief. But… it’s still worth watching? The designs are really nice and the animation is pretty. “Watch this! Parts of it suck!” Sorry. Trailer:

Open thread. What’re you reading/watching/hearing/enjoying?

Here’s a new thing. Let’s do it:

monday mixtape alpha from brothers on 8tracks Radio.

Eight songs here, which should play in random order. The list:
-Kendrick Lamar – Poetic Justice feat. Drake – good kid, m.A.A.d city
-D’Angelo – Devil’s Pie – Voodoo
-Blur – Pressure on Julian – Modern Life Is Rubbish
-Gucci Mane – Walking Lick feat. Waka Flocka Flame – Trap Back
-Cool Breeze – We Get It Crunk feat. Kurupt – East Point’s Greatest Hit
-Kilo Kish – creepwave – k+
-Notorious BIG – Niggas Bleed – Life After Death
-Curren$y – Jet Life feat. Big KRIT, Wiz Khalifa – The Stoned Immaculate

It’s hard to explain my rationale with regards to picking these songs. They’re all tracks that made some sort of an impression over the past seven days — technically ten, if you include my trip to Emerald City Comicon, where I had this idea. Some songs I played repeatedly, like “Jet Life” and “We Get It Crunk.” Others just leapt out at me as being particularly apropos, or significant, or something.

I’m still figuring out what this is, and what it’s going to be next week and the week after and so on. This is a weird mix. It’s not meant to flow in a certain order, and it’s stripped almost entirely of context, but hopefully you still dig it. Different songs next week. Maybe talking about those songs, too? I dunno. We’ll get there.

–Michael Peterson wrote a really good essay on the Beauty & The Beast Unit from Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid 4. If you don’t know the B&B Corps, picture a small group of beautiful women being forced into action on the front lines of war as a special operations group. They’re cyborgs, they’re completely under someone else’s control, and they’re victims. Michael does a great job pointing out why their story is so sad and interesting. I’m a big fan of that game and that group in particular. Even if you aren’t familiar, give it a read. Read Project Ballad, a webcomic he writes and Kevin Czap draws, too. Chapter one is wrapping up, so now’s probably a good time to start binging. They’ve got 80-some free pages up there.

–I like this thing, too, by someone I know on Twitter. I just realized I don’t know her real name, but her twitter name is Twerksten Lapid, and that’s pretty cool. It’s about… everything? Nothing? It’s sorta high and low, here and there. I really like the part about suddenly becoming one with the world and marveling at nature and whoops there’s a coyote, poopin’. I also dig “This morning, I am disguised by a pretty dress and a blazer.” It’s a great turn of phrase, very evocative.

–This one’s NSFW for nudity, but you should still sneak and read it. This one’s another friend of mine, and she’s writing about a lot of things, too. The lure of objectification, body image… it’s pretty bracingly honest, and it’s about something where there aren’t really right answers (or any answers?), so much as the ways we figure out to survive. I dig this piece a lot. I read it on my phone in Seattle and it stuck with me. Maybe it’ll do the same to you.

–I like the look of this Freakestate Kickstarter by Gerald Forton and Drew Ford. Sounds like it’s right up my alley.

–Ann Nocenti speaks to Louise Simonson, moderated by Josie Campbell. This is a good interview. I love Nocenti and Simonson, and seeing them rap about the old days is neat.

–I wrote a piece on Spider-Man for The Atlantic. I’m playing it off like it’s not a big deal, but it’s kind of a big deal for me?

–I wrote about Mark Andrew Smith’s shady behavior on the Sullivan’s Sluggers kickstarter.

–I wrote about Yuuki Kodama’s Blood Lad and Kitty Pryde, a combo sure to bore ComicsAlliance readers to death.

–I wrote about Jimmie Robinson’s Five Weapons, a pretty good start to an adventure tale.

Y’all see Justified last week? Hooo-wheee. That was an episode.

Open thread. What’re you reading/watching/hearing/enjoying? I thought about doing a Justified discussion thread and I still might maybe, but I think having a weekly open thread would be fun, if y’all are into it.