Gank City

I Can't Feel My Face



Get at me Juelz.

One thing's for sure, his balls are not sweaty

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I make no mistake, Jay is/was that dude and The Blueprint is/was that album, but all I could think about when listening to it yesterday was this: "I can predict the future like Cleo the psychic" ("The Ruler's Back"); "B. Mac, we runnin' this rap shit/ Freeway we run this rap shit/ O and Sparks we runnin' this rap shit/ Chris and Neef [extra lol] we runnin' this rap shit."

Yeah, about that...

And a Mozzarella Stick



> "Lazy Sunday" > "Dick in a Box" > Deer bands

Disguised in this rap so the Feds back up

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Rap dudes correct me if I'm wrong, but does Pusha T, he of the grimiest verses of my middle school years, not come just as hard on the "Grindin'" remix as he does on "Grindin'" the single? "Play looka here, I'm great in the kitchen like morning cookwear/ Uncle Jemima, with my braids wrapped/ and 3 minute recepies for cooking flapjack." Ayo.

Dunno what it says about the Neptunes, but everyone on both "Grindin'" remixes, one involving Sean Paul the other involving Baby Williams aka You Know Who's Daddy, sound like coke-push know it alls, convincing, effortless, the whole nine. If we still did science experiments in college, mine would undoubtedly be about who couldn't sound hard as fuck rapping over this beat. This would include, but not be limited to: every white person in the whole state of Missouri, the Duke basketball starting 5, Eleanor Freidberger (something tells me she would bring that raw), Fat Joe (the ultimate litmus test), Jeff Garcia, a random sampling of house pets, American Apparel employees, Morrissey, anyone named Ryan and ma boy.

I don't know people who look like this

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WinterKids
"Tape It"
Memoirs




There are about four kagillion reasons to hate WinterKids: Their name's WinterKids spelled WinterKids, no band member is older than 20, but in every single press photo they are all dressed in three-piece suits and real people that age don't own three-peice suits, their website is conspicuously professionally over-done for a band with two legally released singles, in the video for this song the singer wears the collar up on his dress shirt and I'm pretty sure he is completely serious, and— maybe worst of all on a personal level— their guitarist looks shamelessly like a 14 year old Albert Hammond, Jr. The list, clearly, could go on, but I'm sparing the both of us. They're pretty much the antithesis of dudes like Tokyo Police Club, a band roughly the same age that wears t-shirts and jeans and track jackets and sounds like 19 year olds making music— albeit pretty awesome music— and makes serious songs without actually taking themselves seriously. I don't want to sound like I'm loving this song in spite of myself, because it's easily my favorite song of the past 12 days, but the people behind this thing aren't even remotely likeable.

Hackzines are doing the typical track review surgical dissection of these lyrics, trying to attach serious meaning to a song that tries to play romantic about missing television shows that you watch with your girl or something (hence "Tape It"). And it's very earnest, and I guess their job, to try to make it seem that every song that tries to be about something actually is about something, but this song— and I've listened to it more times than I'd care to know— is, despite WinterKids' intentions, about nothing. Chorus: "In the middle of the night she said 'leave it out', leave it/ In the middle of the night she said 'we're just friends.'" But I'm a pretty huge proponent of the idea that lyrics are icing on the cake and not the cake itself (note: I'm one of those mythical beings not named Marc Hogan that actually likes I'm From Barcelona), so this song failing miserably at what it tries to be doesn't bother me at all.

What it actually is, is a great pop song with an indestructable chorus— the work of a young band with the wits to know how to properly window-dress a song without suffocating what's actually inside. There's the xylophone wistfully plinking its way around the background, the whirling "Mr. Brightside" synths that build-up to something much better and drop out when that much better happens, the maracas keeping the rhythm moving during the chorus, etc., but where over-ambition could occur it never does. WinterKids smartly let their brilliant three-minute guitar-pop song be a brilliant three-minute guitar-pop song— maybe a little bit more, definitely nothing less. There is one verse repeated twice, one bridge, layers of hooks and that's fucking it. Which leaves this: Simple yet well-timed chord changes in lockstep with simple, tight drumming and a melody on the chorus that would sound golden if I narrated myself making a sandwich. I would know, I've tried it.

In all, WinterKids are not great, but "Tape It" is undeniably so. It's the sound of a band that aligned its proverbial planets for a glorious three minutes— the spectacular pop song Shout Out Louds would've made if they were around when they were 20.

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