If you still need convincing, here’s the MP3. It took me until the sixtieth or seventieth listen to really get it, but boy, when I got there, there was no turning back. I also developed a bit of an obsession with pimp hats and bright red waistcoated jumpsuits, but I’m sure we can all agree those are two things that Australia definitely needs more of.

Definitely.

[via @dandebuf]

/Luke

Which is perhaps more background information than you actually need to appreciate the below music video.

I… I’m… not sure exactly how I feel about that.

/Luke

A Milli’ by Lil’ Wayne a.k.a. Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr. a.k.a. Snuggles

Lil’ Wayne has here produced a dense and multi-layered text with an excess of subtle references and well-placed metaphors. I attempt to unpack certain of A Milli’s lyrical complexities after the break.

[Vol. 1, an analysis of Prince's self-descriptive 'My Name is Prince' can be found here]

Young Money, Ya Dig
(Dig what?)
A millionaire, I’m a young money millionaire
(Lil’ Wayne has a million dollars in freshly minted bills)
Tougher than Nigerian hair
(Oooh, and that’s like concrete!)
My criteria compared to your career this isn’t fair
(Nor are they two variables that can be sensibly compared)
I’m a venereal disease like a menstrual bleed
(I… always thought that was normal. Perhaps not if it happened to Lil’ Wayne)
Through the pencil and leak on the sheet of the tablet
In my mind ’cause I don’t write shit, ’cause I ain’t got time
(Lil’ Wayne is too busy to actually work on his rhymes. I presume he’s otherwise occupied with “ho-ing”. And suchlike.)
’cause my seconds, minutes, hours go to the all mighty dollar
(After further clarification, it appears Lil’ Wayne is busy pursuing a career in accountancy)
And the all mighty power of that ch, ch, ch, ch chopper
(Lil’ Wayne has diligently saved his money up and now has a helicopter. Well done, Lil’ Wayne.)
Sister, brother, son, daughter, father mothafuck a coppa
(Lil’ Wayne is related to several members of the police force. He appears to be ambivalent about this fact)
Got the Maserati dancin’ on the bridge pussy poppin’
(There is no possible way you can make this sentence make sense)
Tell the coppers hahahaha you can’t catch ‘em, you can’t stop ‘em
(This section could really deal with a few more proper nouns)
I go by them goon rules if you can’t beat ‘em then you pop ‘em
(And would it kill him to include the occasional definite article. This is an interpretative nightmare.)
You can’t man ‘em then you mop ‘em,
(See Spot Man. Man Spot, Man)
You can’t stand ‘em then you drop ‘em,
(I say Mr. Wayne, you throw simply the loveliest garden parti-AIEEEE!)
You pop ‘em ’cause we pop ‘em like Orville Redenbacher!
(Turns out Lil’ Wayne was actually talking about popcorn. And here I was thinking he was going to kill a man)
Motherfucker I’m ill
(Lil’ Wayne pleads for medical assistance)

A million here, a million there
(Money! This appears to be a recurring theme)
Sicilian bitch with long hair
(Lil’ Wayne is friends with women from all nations)
With coke in the derriere
(Especially if they have smuggled drugs into the country via their rectums)
Like smoking the thinnest air
(Well I guess it’s better than cigarettes)
I open the Lamborghini hopin’ them crackers see me
(Oooh, that’s me! I’m a cracker!)
Like look at that bastard Weezy
He’s a beast, he’s a dog, he’s a motherfucking problem
(I’d never say such hurtful things about you Lil’ Wayne)
OK, you’re a goon but what’s a goon to a goblin?
(I’ve got the best deals anywhere!… On further consideration, Lil Wayne probably doesn’t play WoW and therefore doesn’t understand that reference)
Nothing, nothing — you ain’t scarin’ nothing
(I was just trying to be friendly)
On some faggot bullshit call him Denise Rodman
(Oh yes, Dennis Rodman definitely needed to be further feminised)
Call me what you want bitch, call me on my sidekick
(I shall call you Trapezius Westerbury, Lord of the Dragons)
Never answer when it’s private, damn I hate a shy bitch
(As my mother always said, never say “hate”, it’s rude. Say “intensely dislike” instead. “I intensely dislike a shy bitch”)
Don’t you hate a shy bitch?
(Um… yes?)
Yeah I ate a shy bitch
(Mmmm, cannibalism)
She ain’t shy no more, she changed her name to my bitch
(Ahhhh, cunnilingus. I get it now)
Hahahaha, yeah, nigga that’s my bitch
(Don’t let Lil’ Wayne perform oral sex on you)
So when she ask for the money, when you through don’t be surprised bitch
It ain’t trickin’ if you got it
(Lil’ Wayne expresses his solidarity with the feminist movement)
But you like a bitch with no ass, you ain’t go shit
(Hahaha. So true! If there’s no ass then where does the shit come from! Oh Lil’ Wayne you are such a wit)
Motherfucker I’m ill, not sick
(Oh, ok. Don’t worry, put the stretcher away boys)
And I’m OK but my watch sick, yeah my drop sick, yeah my glock sick and my knot thick
(Lil’ Wayne’s goods may all be faulty, but gosh darn if he can’t tie the shit out of a length of rope)
I’m it!
(Tag!)
Motherfucker I’m Ill!
(Yes, you most certainly are)

There is another stanza, wherein he badmouths many of his hip-hop contemporaries before claiming to have made our bowels “loose”, but I’m sure we get the idea. In summary: Mr. Wayne is rich beyond compare, yet suffers from an undiagnosed malaise that he treats with bitches. We can only assume his penis could beat me in an arm-wrestling match.

Sigh.

/Luke

Now, I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded gentleman and one that, at the age of 23, is in no way out of touch with the youth of today, but this is just… just. Jesus.

Sorry, let’s start that again. It’s all a little overwhelming, truth be told. So, have you heard of emotronic? As a genre it is exactly what it sounds like: the screaming and intensity of emo circa 2004 rendered against the blandly sexualised backdrop of the worst ‘electro’-nic music. Yep, emo. Again. I must say, the persistence of emo has surprised me. I really thought we were done with all that four years ago. I always found myself mentally castigating people for being out of touch any time someone made a joke about emos in my presence. Surely Chris Brown was a more viable target these days? Although evidently not as viable a target as Rhianna! Am I right? Am I right?…. Too soon? But now here we are in 2009 and emo actually seems to be experiencing somewhat of a cultural renaissance. Perhaps one not entirely on par with mid-14th century Italy, but either way these abominable fucknuts appear determined to co-opt once more the brains and buying power of our teens.

Won’t someone please think of the children.

Emotronic. I’d heard the word before but thought it must have been a joke. I mean, surely not… How to describe it… Imagine, if you will, that the tepid, oozing effluvium of fluoro-electro’s final, stuttering orgasm had dripped on to the prostrate, decaying corpse of pop-rock music, and that some scion of pure, unadulterated evil masquerading as a record label boss had seen this happy marriage of death and semen, stuck his hand in, smeared it around a bit and gone ‘I get it now. I know what dance music needs. More screaming’. That, perhaps, begins to approximate this sin against recorded music.

Meet BrokeNCYDE. They’re from New Mexico. The band has four members: Se7en (he does the screams and ‘gangster raps’. No, seriously.), Mik L (he does the autotune vocals. No, seriously), Phat J (he does the synths. I guess that’s OK. Although the name of itself should strip him of future voting rights), and Antz (he does the fog machine and lights. Rock on Antz. You’ll get there one day). And you better believe they’re white, suburban and drive around in SUVs. Apparently the name BrokeNCYDE comes from the idea of being broken inside. Deep. But don’t take my sneering superiority at face value. Have a look yourself. Might I recommend at least holding out until ‘Se7en’ starts yelling in the girl’s faces? Presumably in an effort to woo them.

I think the LA Times has perhaps the best one sentence demolition I’ve seen in quite a while:

“The ‘Albucrazy’-based band has done for MySpace emo what some think Soulja Boy did for hip-hop: turn their career into a kind of macro-performance art that exists so far beyond the tropes of irony and sincerity that to ask ‘are they kidding?’ is like trying to peel an onion to get to a perceived central core that, in the end, does not exist and renders all attempts to reassemble the pieces futile.”

They have a record coming out in June called ‘I’m Not a Fan, But the Kids Like It’.

Pretty much.

/Luke

And no, sadly I’m not referring to the British crimefighter. Seriously, fuck Alan Moore and Judge Dredd. Danger mouse is the only true British superhero. Also, he can fit in your mouth. You know. Just in case.*

I’m actually referring to the DJ/producer, who forms one half of Gnarls Barkley. Why am I so interested in this guy all of a sudden? Well…

“EMI has told Danger Mouse that his latest CD won’t see the light of day due to “legal issues,” so he’s responding by releasing the disc as a blank CD-R in a jewel case with art and liner notes. Fans can just download the music off a P2P site and burn it to the CD-R.”

According to Dangermouse, the jewel case will come with a pantload of associated artwork, liner notes and other shindigs, but it’ll basically be a blank cd. Now I, personally, think this is fucking awesome. I won’t buy it, I probably won’t listen to the album too closely (though I’ll be playing it on-air, I’m sure), but I applaud such a brazenly surreal move.

The only way he could impress me more would be to wear an eyepatch. Oh, and live in a postbox. Oh, and fight crime. Pretty much be less a DJ and more an actual mouse. Who can speak 34 languages. And… who am I kidding. It’ll never happen. This is the worst Christmas ever. FUCK.

/Paul

(Link via Boing Boing)

*I hope you know, because I don’t.

Ever wondered what Swine Flu would sound like if it were transcribed into music?

Yeah, I know. Me neither. But Stephan Zielinski has done so, seemingly unwilling to respect my unwillingness to be not oblivious about this thing and also the stuff*. Basically, Zielinski wrote code to translate the gene for swine flu into a piece of haunting ambient music.

He used an algorithm complex enough to make your eyes bleed, and since genes are expressed (apparently) as a surface protein antibodies can sense, “it’s considered as a string of amino acids. Each beat corresponds to one amino acid, and the piece is in 3/4 time, so each six measures would correspond to five turns around the alpha structure”. Here’s the raw code he came up with, in case you want to, I don’t know, put it up on your wall:

MKAILVVMLYTFATANADTLCIGYHANNSTDTVD
TVLEKNVTVTHSVNLLEDKHNGKLCKLRGVAPLHLGKCNIA
GWILGNPECESLSTASSWSYIVETSSSDNGTCYPGDFIDY
EELREQLSSVSSFERFEIFPKTSSWPNHDSNKGVTAACPHA
GAKSFYKNLIWLVKKGNSYPKLSKSYINDKGKEVLVLWGIH
HPSTSADQQSLYQNADAYVFVGSSRYSKKFKPEIAIRPKVR
DQEGRMNYYWTLVEPGDKITFEATGNLVVPRYAFAMERNAG
SGIIISDTPVHDCNTTCQTPKGAINTSLPFQNIHPITIGKCPK
YVKSTKLRLATGLRNVPSIQSRGLFGAIAGFIEGGWTG
MVDGWYGYHHQNEQGSGYAADLKSTQNAIDEITNKVNS
VIEKMNTQFTAVGKEFNHLEKRIENLNKKVDDGFLDIWTYNA
ELLVLLENERTLDYHDSNVKNLYEKVRSQLKNNAKEIGNG
CFEFYHKCDNTCMESVKNGTYDYPKYSEEAKLNREEID
GVKLESTRIYQILAIYSTVASSLVLVVSLGAISFWMCSNG
SLQCRICI

Part of me hopes that’s an anagram for something really, really horrific and conceptual, like a juice bar that flenses its customers whilst they wait. But part of me hopes this song isn’t somehow able to actually carry the swine flu and transmit it to people who listen. Which sounds far fetched, but it’s a scientifically proven fact that people who listen to Rhianna become vapid with 24 hours of exposure. Vapid, and really fucking boring.

/Paul

(Link via Boing Boing)

*This sentence has been shortlisted for the “Toshiba Stupidest Fucking Sentence Award” 2009. To vote, head across to the Toshiba website.

I wonder if Danger Mouse (the producer, not the mouse) had any idea what he was unleashing when he ditched The Beatles ‘The White Album’ and Jay-Z’s ‘The Black Album’ into a blender and moulded the results into the legally questionable ‘The Grey Album’, a mash-up record passed around the internet with the sort of reckless abandon that just screamed ‘Fuck You, Paul McCartney’. But suddenly, in spite of the lofty ideals underpinning ‘The Grey Album’, mash-up culture exploded and it appeared as if nothing was safe. Find an indie backing track, find a hip-hop vocal line that runs at a similar speed to said track and kerblammo! (yes, kerblammo) you have a first year university crowd mega-hit. ‘OMG Jason! Is this the Dandy Warhols being mashed-up with the Bomfunk MCs? How amazing! Quick, take me Jason, take me behind the refectory bins!’ (re-enactment)

Good thing I didn’t NEED to party in my first year of university. Because I had the power of books!

So. Anyway. A slight change of pace today here at The Somewhat Ambitious. We haven’t posted about music for a while, so I thought I’d share with you ‘Illinoize’ my current love/worrying obsession. A Montreal based hip-hop producer named Tor has taken the instrumentals/vocals from seven of the almost faultless Sufjan Stevens’ tracks and thrown them together with a variety of hip-hop acapellas from the likes of Aesop Rock, Outkast, Blackalicious and more (meaning MCs I’ve never heard of). The result is beautiful, unexpected and compelling, and pretty much everything I’ve ever wanted hip-hop to sound like. Although it is a little weird at one point hearing the soft horns of Sufjan’s ‘The Tallest Man’ being overlaid by a dude named ‘Grand Puba’ purporting to be the one that makes ‘ladies’ stink-box wet’. Charming. But best of all, it’s free. Which, in these financially parlous times, is surely a welcome pleasure. Just head over to the download page and find it in both tasty 320 and so-full-of-flavour-as-to-be-almost-inedible FLAC. And as a teaser, here’s my favourite track off the album:

Tor/Sufjan Stevens/Aesop Rock – Star of Wonder/None Shall Pass

In the oft-quoted words of Russell Howard ‘LOVE THIS LIKE I LOVE YOU!’

/Luke

P.S. Yes, those are Danger Mouse cupcakes. And no, I don’t have access to them.

I cannot work out for the life of me whether this video is more notable for illustrating:

1. The moment when hip-hop ate itself;

2. The moment when MTV ate itself; or

3. The moment when MTV ate hip-hop who was busy eating MTV and then they simply defecated each other out and began the whole process again. Kinda like Auryn, the amulet from the Never Ending Story that has two intertwined snakes eating each other’s tails as a symbol of eternity. This, on the other hand, is the symbol of a world where two potentially retarded gentlemen are eminently rewarded by one of the most significant forces in popular culture for their inability to speak in full sentences.

Thank God for the subtitles.

/Luke

Don’t you hate it when you’re watching the latest blockbuster film and you realise that you just can’t work out what’s going on? That despite the simple racial and sexual stereotypes, bland dialogue and minimal characters you just can’t make head nor tail of this disarmingly linear story? Why is the father trying to save the son? Why is that newlywed couple kissing? Why is Will Smith putting his own child in a film that essentially serves as a shameless two-hour advertisement for his own potential claim to ‘Father of the Year’ award (yes, fuck you ‘Pursuit of Happyness’, fuck you. You made me so incandescently angry, with your empty characters, shit dialogue and blatant pro-US propaganda. And you know what, your name makes fun of Chinese immigrants. What, are they the new black Will, are they? Yes, fuck you… Boy, didn’t realise that candle still burnt so strong…)?

But doesn’t it make you wish that you had your own personal DJ and MC set-up sitting alongside you, ready to elucidate every plot point via some dope beats and sick rhymez? Well fret no longer, you narratively challenged imbecile, because Mouthmaster Murf and DJ Mayhem (a.k.a. The Anomalies) are here as your very own gangsta Cliffs Notes. Their Predator Rap has been doing the rounds for close to a year now, but just last month they put out the second episode in the series, a 10-minute summary of the immensely complex Paul Verhoeven opus (the other Paul Verhoeven. You know, the film director) Robocop. So, you know, settle in. Grab a small packet of popcorn (there’s not much time) and watch these masterpieces in language that even Young Jeezy could understand. Respec’!

Although, truth be told, none of these comes anywhere near to supplanting the high-point of hip-hop’s summarisation of cinema, The Chuds’ ‘Weng Weng’ compilation track. Weng Weng of course being the late 2′9″ Filipino martial arts star. This is, quite seriously, one of the best things I have ever seen on the internet. He punches SO many balls.

/Luke

In a chonologically stupefying move, Paul and I have just finished doing Tuesday’s episode of The Somewhat Ambitious. WHA-? you say. Wha indeed. We have the hyper-caffeinated sound bites to prove it. My god it was tangential. But only suitable really, given that the theme this week was/will be, once again, shuffle. We just pick a track and then start jumping through our iTunes library and play the first 8 or 9 tracks that appear, in whatever order they appear. Of course, this is slightly qualified. I, for instance, chose not to include A Silver Mt. Zion’s beautiful, but glacially epic track ‘Could Have Moved Mountains’. Paul chose not to include the three separate extracts from the BBC’s radio play of ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ thrown up by his iPod. Possibly ill-advisedly, because Douglas Adams may well be funnier than us. He’s certainly more focussed. He wrote four chronologically linked and structurally sound novels. We can barely talk for four minutes without violating most laws of conceptual association and common decency. Don’t believe us? Here’s us discussing Bjork’s ‘Ambergris March’ while playing Bjork’s ‘Ambergris March’. Heh. Ambergris. Listen on Tuesday for more.

Here be the playlist, along with some mp3s and ramblings:

1. Yo La Tengo – Our Way To Fall [Paul - even when he has no choice in the matter he still ends up playing Yo La Tengo. I think he must have a lot of Yo La Tengo. If you say Yo La Tengo enough it stops having any meaning. Yo La Tengo. Yo La Tengo. Yooooo La Tengo. Yolatengo. Yo LA Tengo. And I'm done.]
2. Sebastien Tellier – Sexual Sportswear [Luke - creator of the beloved 'La Ritournelle' tries for a repeat performance with limited success]
3. Sergio Mendes – Pais Tropical [Paul - he listens to this while weekending at his villa with a small Portugese boy named Raoul]
4. Sufjan Stevens – Lo! How A Rose E’er Blooming [Paul - one of the tracks from Sufjan's five CD Christmas mega pack. Man, you must be really scraping the Merry Christmas barrel by the ass-end of the fifth CD. And up next, the little known Christmas jingle 'What's With All The Tinsel? No, Seriously, What's With It?]
5. Weird Tapes – Nikki [Luke - quirky, sample-heavy Hail Social side project. The entire 'Get Religion' EP is available for download here. Well worth it]
6. Jeff Buckley – So Real [Paul - Ah, Jeff, cheer up. Oh, that's right, you can't. Because you're dead. Remember kids, alcohol, depression and fast-flowing American rivers don't mix]
7. Mogwai – We’re No Here [Luke - This track tells you everything you need to know about depressing Glaswegian cityscapes]
8. The Beta Band – Assessment [Paul - John Cusack in High Fidelity liked it. Do you?]
9. Calvin Harris – Certified [Luke - This track tells you everything you need to know about depressing Glaswegian club scenes]
10. Bjork – Ambergris March [Paul - what do you think Bjork and Matthew Barney talk about over breakfast? Do they even eat breakfast? Perhaps they just sit there and feed each other pages from the Complete Oxford English Dictionary. Hmmm.]
11. Iron and Wine – Sodom, South Georgia [Luke - oh, this is so lovely it makes me want to curl up in his voice and go to sleep. Bringing Sodom back in to fashion. One of my favourite ever songs]
12. Fleet Foxes – Ragged Wood [Paul - pastoral folk rock from current indie darlings. No joke here.]
13. CSS – Left Behind (Midnight Juggernauts Remix) [Luke - Melbourne electro rock sensations remix Brazilian electro rock sensations]
14. Rick James – Ghetto Life [Paul - electro funk from the man once dubbed 'The Walking Sex Offence'. By me. This and this should tell you all you need to know.]
15. The Roots – 75 Bars (Black’s Reconstruction) [Luke - song by hip-hop doyens off their latest album 'Rising Down', notable largely for the fact that they drop the 'N-bomb' 39 times in 3 minutes and 16 seconds. Impressive.]
16. Bonde Do Role – Melo Do Tabaco [Luke - Brazilian baile funk number by now defunct group. You may remember them as the band who briefly had their song in a Bonds' underwear ad, until it was called to the attention of the good people at Bonds that, when translated, the lyrics in the ad roughly meant 'Bite you like a whore/Come and play with my pussy'. Natch.]

Tune in next week (after you tune in this week…) for duets and collaborations. Paul and I may sing ‘Ebony and Ivory’ live on air. But probably not.

/Luke