Album reviews

Hip hop is fairly dead to me. With the likes of Jay-Z and it's widespread commercialization and product-placement, it just doesn't have the same cultural push I needs, in my opinion. But two new releases are out coming from the bottom of the barrel so to speak that I must make note of.
Yes, I am the lowest common denominator and no I did not pay for them. But this is my blog so consider it free publicity and exposure y'all.

Um, K-Fed. You know that was coming. Has G Force lost his mind, how masochistic can you be? Well I spend over an hour a day stuffing mail sacks with copiers grinding in the background. I can stand any kind of diversion, and the mental notes just pile up like so much copy. So this album begins, of course with the sound of whiny children (?) asking Grampa Fed to tell em a story..about his famous ex-marriage I suppose and the tabloid frenzy etc. That and the actual vocal appearance of Britney Spears, heavily multitracked later, are the only mentions of "the wife". We are then thrown into narcissistic purgatory.

Here's the information I gathered from this bit of cultural TP:
He has the "West Coast thirst" for weed.
"Popozau" was intended only for his Brazilian fans. (!!)
Persecution complex (whining) check
Some life changing event happened to him in 1993. Unclear.
Clearly he is a "superstar" in his mind, the album has very few cameos by other singers, so, not a a lot of variety here.

And the usual, he's a whiny lame rapper, too many chorus repeats:
Who want's to dance with a Pimp????
OMG
and oh yeah, he don't give a fuck, I quote.

Now I digress, and wonder. Did Britney support this shlub's music because she loved him (or just that first month of boning) or did she think his foul mouthed music was good? Good for him, or her and her fans who are presumably the first people likely to buy this germ...I mean gem. The album plays out how he looks, greasy, petulant and snide.
The production is actually pretty good, they put an effort around this clown, but you know, little substance. And even more irritating, you have the bonus song after 6 minutes of silence on the last track. This was a brilliant move when Nirvana did this stunt on Nevermind (Something in the way...12 minutes of silence...Endless...Nameless....Secret Song)
I waited it through and got some bit called middle finger. Shouldn't have stuck around.

PART 2
FLAVOR FLAV-HOLLYWOOD

First of all the title and cover art are an afterthought, hastily slapped together, sloppy. This album is more of anthology of tracks assembled after he got out of Rikers Island in 2003. His status as a man of Hollywood is only thanks to his VH-1 output. None of the songs reflect this lifestyle. I was hoping for a cameo appearance by Deelishis or Krazy from Flavor of Love 2 but no dice. Sorry, lay-dees.

The album is pretty long and you have a lot of variety. There's depressing R & B about seniors dying, love heartaches, being locked up, and just being Flavalicious. He tries like the dickens to sing of course, and of course he' s way off key, not nearly bad enough to be cute, not grating enough to turn off completely. There's too many instrumental gaps and of course, chorus repeats. Very uneven production, some actual dips in sound levels and vocals that need bringing up in the mix.
As a bonus, you get an actual word for word remake of Cold Lampin' called Cold Limpin'.
I guess it's everybody's dream that he would do a whole album in this vein, but at least he tries a remake. It seems he's tried several directions over the years, anticipating getting picked up by a label. But these are hard times for record companies and it took all somebody could do to throw enough of his songs into the hamper and make a production, leave it up to a distributor to sell some units. I don't think it will do very well.
There is also the matter of a bit of negative press surrounding Flav and his post-show antics. The show ended happily enough, but him announcing another woman is pregnant with his kid and she wasn't even on the show? How much poon does one guy requite? Is it like phantom Vagin came in through the window of his mansion and none of them reality show bitches noticed it? The reumion show also blew chunks, not new tidbits there. DVD of the whole sordid mess coming out this month. But I feel the fever of the flavor of flavor might be waning before Christmas if he keeps putting out hastily patched together product.