on the other hand, amplified the message of Attention: Deficit, that in the current economic landscape, even a successful bet on a heavily A&R'd "blockbuster" is hardly worth alienating your core fanbase. If anything, it just proves that his gift and curse is that he simply cares too much- not just about craft, but unfortunately, about his perception, and he can't stop acting like his public evaluation isn't ongoing. It's tough to say where he goes next, but the path two similar rappers have taken in 2010 provides us with hindsight: Curren$y is someone who's also had a strange career path and is prone to rapping about video games, basketball, shoes, and weed, and Pilot Talk may have not done boffo at the box office, but it was a triumph in large part because it felt comfortable in its own skin. I'd love to say that More About Nothing is a triumphant comeback, Wale reinvigorated after licking his wounds, but it's not. It's funny that he's never employed the "hand" speech from "Seinfeld" since so much of More focuses on how one can reconcile their careers, friendships, and love lives with man's pervasive competitive nature. When he stops fretting about SoundScan and lets his guard down, More About Nothing hits a stride, in large part because Wale focuses on relationships, as good a topic as any for someone so prone to internal dialogue and self-doubt. over Sam Sparro's "Black and Gold" but more often than not, it's a stark contrast to hear such a gifted collaborator working on his own. "Resented by the game like I'm Pete Rose in this bitch," he spits and from there, you get to hear him call out his distributor, label, and those who didn't see "his vision." He comforts himself with weed ("The Breeze", "The Cloud"), pills, random sex, and repping D.C. Rap fans can be forgiving of commercial disappointment (have you seen Big Boi's sales?), but the problem with Attention: Deficit was that Wale didn't even achieve it on his own terms, and it's disheartening to hear him shift the blame. The latter defines intro "The Problem" here Wale's not bitter so much as racked with a confusion that unfortunately borders on denial. The tone is considerably more deflated here, and the centerpiece fittingly isn't about Kramer or Jerry, but rather, rapped from the perspective of Tiger Woods, a flashpoint where the two dominant themes of this tape meet up: struggling with fidelity and very public humiliation. Wale sounded like someone who simply loved to rap, whatever the topic, and he served as a unifier, finding room for Lil Wayne, Clipse, Bun B, and the Roots, acts upon which battle lines are often drawn in hip-hop. ![]() But more pointedly, while The Mixtape About Nothing wasn't afraid to get a little weighty, what shone through was the exuberant tone. For better or worse, More About Nothing is a very different tape from its predecessor: For one thing, the Seinfeld quotes act more like interstitial skits than a load-bearing conceptual framework.
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