I give up. After suffering through a decade of irony-inspired everything, I finally made a conscious decision to move away from the ironic and towards the earnest. I mean, I want to wear a t-shirt because it looks good, not because it looks bad (am I right!?). The same goes for music. Which is why I find my mixed reaction to Alabama rap caricature Yelawolf so startling.
The guy clearly fills a hip hop niche pioneered by other white, edgier, dare I say hipster rappers (think Slug from Atmosphere, but with grits on the stove and a shotgun in the trunk). I mean, he’s got all the boxes checked — dude looks like a bartender at the scene-iest dive in your ‘hood. Yet he’s a skateboarding rapper from Birmingham who’s garnered critical acclaim from the biggest folks out there. Big Boi cited him as his favorite new rapper of 2009 and featured him on his latest project, Sir Lucious Leftfoot. His cartoonishly intense screen persona and raps would typically send me scrambling for the hills. But there’s a little bit of me that’s kind of…feeling it? Ironic or serious, dude’s got magnetism. Check him out for yourself and let us know what you think!
Refused Are Fucking Dead
Starting today, Pitchfork’s ONE WEEK ONLY series has begun showing Refused Are Fucking Dead, a Film about Sweden’s undisputed punk heros, Refused. Their 1998 album ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’ quickly became recognized as a seminal punk album and remains to this day, a heavily influential record.
The 2006 Documentary, directed by Refused own guitarist Kristofer Steen, chronicled the last year of the band and the internal creatvie struggles which lead to their ultimate dissolvement after a basement show that was shut down by the police. This simply one of the more beautiful and foreboding films about an incredible band that couldn’t quite seem to catch it’s own breath. Do yourself a favor and watch the film in its entirety.
Continue reading “Refused Are Fucking Dead…”