Straight Bangin'

The Illustrated Drake

2012-01-09T01:04:00.000-05:00

Once, while desperately trying to do anything other than study for a law-school exam, I created a pictorial guide for Rick Ross's verse on Kanye's "Devil in a New Dress." Rozay, so extravagant and grandiose, was hard to believe, and committing his words to images helped to reinforce just how opulent and absurd he is.

Today, I am reprising this project to again animate a rap absurdity. Below, find an illustration of Drake's fighting words on Rawse's new track, "Stay Schemin'." Common is the target of his pillow-fight bars. It speaks for itself, I hope. You can listen along thanks to the embedded YouTube video. Drake comes in at the 1:48 mark.

(Click on the images to enlarge.)

It bothers me when the gods/Get to actin' like the broads

Guess every team doesn't come complete with n***as like ours

That's why I see no need to compete with n***as like y'all/I just ask that when you see me/You speak up, n***a/That's all/Don't be duckin' like you never wanted nothin'

It's feeling like rap changed/it was a time it was rugged/Back whenever n***a reached, it was for the weapon

Nowadays, n***as reach just to sell their record

Spaghetti bolognese in the Polo Lounge/Me and my G from DC/That's how I roll around

Might look light/But we heavy, though

You think Drake would pull some shit like that?/You never know

Million-dollar meetings in the Polo Lounge/Me and my man, Oliver North/That's how I roll around

Shorty wanna tell me secrets 'bout a rap n***a/I tell that bitch it's more attractive when you hold it down

Kobe 'bout to lose a hundred-fifty M's/Kobe my n***a/I hate it had to be him/Bitch you wasn't with me shootin' in a gym

(Ruh--bitch you wasn't with me shootin' in a gym!)

Tell Lucien I said "Fuck it"/I'm tearin' holes in my budget/Bag her like we in Publix/And take her ass out in public

Ordered her the filet/Told 'em, 'Butterfly, she'll love it'/She used to soda and nuggets/She really just started thuggin'

I'm just hittin' my pinacle/You and pussy--identical

You like the fuckin' finish line/We can't wait to run into you

But let me get my mind off that/Young, rich motherfucker/Gettin' mine off rap (wit' my n***as)

Loose Thoughts on 20 Albums from 2011

2011-12-28T03:51:00.000-05:00

N.B: We have arrived at the end of my music-year retrospectives. See here for best and worst songs. Below is Part One of the Albums list. Part Two runs Friday.

Should someone ever perform the community service of writing a definitive obituary for hip-hop's critical standards, that author would be smart to identify some moment around 2005 as the time of death. To the extent that critical standards were ever alive and well, they surely passed away around the time when Kelefa Sanneh was intellectualizing bullshit for The New York Times and Tom Breihan was arguing that Pitbull was better than Nas. By the middle of last century, the rap-critic intelligentsia was exploring its deepest fetishes for all manner of bad music. That meant riding for Mike Jones and beseeching that everyone give Gucci Mane a chance.

This critical filter through which many of those writers listened to music did not permit better hip-hop to pass. Writers would not rest while insisting upon Wayne's verbal dexterity, but they would dismiss rappers like Black Thought as boring. Young Jeezy was a street poet but Sean Price was off the radar. Despite music criticism's long tradition of embracing slept-on fare--sometimes for its own sake, to be sure--many new-age rap taste makers professed apathy toward anything that wasn't of the moment's latest, downward craze.

Writers with those attitudes founded Pitchfork, edit GQ, enjoy validation at the Times, and have passed through Entertainment Weekly. They escape the burden of their culpability for diminishing hip-hop. (Some, like Breihan, now cover professional wrestling because, well, it's probably as cute as venerating French Montana.) In turn, many media outlets have assimilated this group's predilections and now celebrate hip-hop using inherited, skewed ideals. Oddly enough, those appetites currently overlap with the most mainstream sounds possible. So it is that Watch the Throne and Take Care are staples of the year-end roundups.

Now that the beasts sleep inside, consuming hip-hop within context while avoiding misleading conversation is difficult. That's why God made message boards and Twitter. (Peace to some of the gods and the earths.) All the same, an enjoyable year in rap music--one devoid of the great but overrun by the good--was best enjoyed in the wilderness.What follows is some wandering in from the cold.

Twelve Albums I Wanted to Like More

- G-Side, The One...Cohesive
I ride for G-Side. Their lyrics are unconventionally honest quite often, and they relentlessly seek out new sounds that will work for them. Cohesive was the price paid for that kind of artistic latitude. Fairly uncoordinated, the album was a hunt on wax, an excursion out into the woods to unearth hidden secrets. Select moments--the swelling synthesizers on "Y U Mad," the strange mood from "Pictures"--are successes, but too much of the album's production was slightly off.

- Freeway, The Statik-Free EP
The beats were too drab, and whether consciously cultivated or unfortunately unattended, the production made the record a throwaway.

- Statik Selektah, Population Control
Making a forgettable mixtape with Sean P, Freddie Gibbs, Big K.R.I.T., Styles P, Strong Arm Steady, and Chuuwee is likely more difficult than corralling all of them in the first place. Somehow, Statik Selektah pulled off this most difficult task. To be fair, though, one of the few hip-hop feats even harder is creating a truly great collaboration record. That alchemy has eluded many talents since the dawn of time. Look no further than rap movie soundtracks: one could fill in the Mariana Trench with the many LPs whose impressive compilation of stars misled a listening public longing to hear the promise of those manifold talents made manifest on the ultimate record. Instead, rappers usually phone in their verses, lose their way outside of a comfort zone, or create a nonce song that is thematically aligned with the project but horrid as a result.

- Cocaine 80s, The Pursuit
Every town has a radio station that plays Rod Stewart, the Police, the Eagles, Elton John, and Journey. Amid "Young Turks," "Every Breath You Take," "Hotel California," "Rocket Man," and "Faithfully," "Tears in Heaven" might get mixed in. Maybe even a random Stevie Wonder song. The Cocaine 80s EP, despite some promising songs, would have a home.

- J. Cole, Cole World: The Sideline Story
Some of this record's faults were not its own. The rapping is good. However the production diverged so markedly from the most promising mixtape tracks which had augured for Cole's success that it was hard to not resent these choices. To wit: how can anyone listen to "The Autograph" and ever want to listen to Cole World again?

See? That song on repeat fifteen times is a better album than Cole World. Get on ~~our~~ your old level, Jermaine.

- The Go! Team, Rolling Blackouts
An exceedingly pleasant record, each song inoffensive, melodic, and full. However, Go! Team has made two other albums about which the same can be said, and both were better. As a result, Rolling Blackouts may have unwittingly drawn a chalk outline around the band, but in permanent marker.

- Stalley, Lincoln Way Nights
As a matter of principle, I don't believe in dedicating songs to Pimp C, so that's points off. (Write him an open letter using an awkward boxing simile, and then get a tattoo of him on your back if you truly see an artistic void.) But more importantly, it was just a boring album from a capable MC without a quotable or hint of personality.

- Shabazz Palaces, Black Up
Very different, but not in a way that encouraged repeated listens. So many friends vouched for this record, but it never worked out.

- Skyzoo, The Great Debater
For a particular set of rappers, one need only hear three or four songs in a given year but no more. They are professional MCs with polished skills, only they cannot go beyond a fairly narrow niche. Skyzoo is the avatar of this rapping class, a Kyle Korver who can do but a few things particularly well. In Sky's case, that's ride a beat and string together phrases easily. He pumps out records that might as well be widgets, fungible and nondescript.

- Co$$, Before I Awoke
Co$$ is the West Coast bureau chief of Skyzoo's operation. Rather than nineteen tracks, Before I Awoke could have been a sublime four-song EP #damnedwithfaintpraise

- Saigon, Greatest Story Never Told
Among the more grating television experiences are the instances when the sound feed lags ever so slightly behind the motion on screen. Characters talk and the sound tracks the motion of their mouths closely enough that the audience knows what the actors are saying when they deliver lines, but the subtle delay is a gnawing discomfort. Greatest Story Never Told is just like that. The elements seem to fit together: Saigon's tough-man bars, Just Blaze's loud production. Only, the entire presentation seems off half a tick. The rhymes are not as impressive, the beats not as moving. The record is exactly as it should be, but a lingering malfunction prevents it from being truly enjoyable.

- The Game, Purp & Patron Tapes
On January 27, Game released a 29-track mixtape, Purp & Patron. Its best seven or eight songs are 75% of a memorable album. On February 2, Game released Purp & Patron: The Hangover, another 15 songs, largely superfluous. Its best two or three songs are the other 25% needed for an album that would stand alongside anything else as Game's best post-Documentary work. (Forget not that any inquiry into Game's "best" rapping is a highly subjective exercise in ranking name-drops and thug posturing.) To assemble that album requires cutting away more than thirty bad songs, a task that is just miserable. Demanding so much effort from a listener is an imposition, and the hubris behind it would be galling were it not hilarious. After all, this is Game, an unembarrassed rap marionette who would be adorable as a character on Sesame Street.

Three Gobs for Whom I Don't Care

- Lil Wayne, Tha Carter IV
The rhyming was lazy and outright stupid at times. Wayne's voice has forever been like catnip. The production, a putative strength, was uneven. The best song, "6'7'," came out so long before the record that by the time Carter IV dropped, its standout track was fun to remember and then put away. Its second-best song, the interlude with Tech N9ne and Andre, tellingly doesn't even feature Lil' Wayne. Its third-best song, "She Will," carried some of the album's dumbest rapping. Its fourth-best song, "John," was a tinny, cheap remake of a middling Rick Ross song. "How to Love" is on this disaster. And the nicest thing anyone had to say about Carter IV was that it carried some veiled shots at Jay-Z (fired by the Kitten Whisperer), and Jadakiss quickly disclaimed any knowledge of them, likely because he was embarrassed to be on the album in the first place.

Had Wayne, an awful rock musician, just remade Spinal Tap songs and called this album "Shit Sandwich," it would have been better. What a wonderful hero for hip-hop.

- Drake, Take Care
In my worst songs of the year post, I covered everything I dislike about Drake. When you set aside the most petty reasons for scorn, and divorce yourself from the endless humor he invites (no easy task), what remains are legitimate music criticisms. His rapping is often facile, his struggle is not sympathetic nor terribly interesting, and his music is mediocre, the bad and good intermingled. Those reasons, alone, should be enough. But then...it's also so much fun to hate. Not wholly undeserved, either.

- Wale, Ambition
Not only is his Maybach Music Group persona cheap, ignorant, and derivative; not only is his Maybach Music Group production garish and uninviting; not only has he destroyed the promise made by The Mixtape about Nothing, but also he now traffics in the most banal hip-hop cliches possible. What a boring waste.

Five Curious Records

- Clams Casino, Instrumental Mixtape
It is fitting that Clams Casino provided the signature sounds for A$AP Rocky. An album like Rocky's that is devoted to the codeine lifestyle deserves a soundtrack to that woozy period when the cold medicine begins to really kick in. Casino can do that as well as anyone, something he demonstrated most notably while making music for Lil' B. Many of those beats are on this tape, and it is a tribute to their emotional heft and body-shot drums that they are better when stripped of the Based God's rapping. Though not its sole theme, 2011 saw the gauzy music of yearning everywhere, signaling that Casino's time is nigh, if not already upon us.

- Nujabes, Spiritual State
When I first got to the internet, a random Japanese rap record driven by jazz-piano riffs found its way onto my computer. That was Modal Soul by Nujabes, and it remains some of the smoothest, most ambient music I know. Spiritual State, six years later, extends that legacy. It is a record of refined, pristine jazz music placed over elemental break beats, and it is perfect for almost every day.

- Safety Words, The Ghostface Pixels Mixtape
Nerds--squad up! Imagine Wu-Tang clan verses grafted onto hip-hop beats constructed using a drum machine and the music from 8-bit Nintendo games. Cool right? OK, now stop quoting Star Wars (I do that), put down the George R.R. Martin (I read that), take a cold shower, and peep this joint. It's a lot of fun. And Safety Words is from St. Louis, so you know, I care a little extra.

- Dela, Translation Lost
Like Nujabes, Dela is symbolic of internet music life. Floating in the ether, Dela drops spacey, jazzed-out albums periodically and probably wouldn't find an audience without the new means of music consumption. Nothing is touching the incredible Atmosphere Airlines series, but Translation Lost was a worthwhile follow up, albeit without the usual array of Native Tongue sympathizers and imitators.

- Gummy Soul, Fela Soul
Chopped up Fela Kuti songs paired with classic De La Soul verses. What else must be said?

Forty Dollars Short of Amazing

2011-12-27T15:01:00.003-05:00

When Chris Paul was untraded back from the Lakers to the Hornets, the procession of horribles was so obvious that cataloging them was almost a delight. Los Angeles suffered a compromised foundation, the untraded Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom. Houston's careful planning was exposed and burned to the ground. Boston alienated its future by marginalizing Rajon Rondo and lost out on David West. New Orleans was left with a toxic asset and even less of the limited leverage it enjoyed at the outset. Further, the Hornets were not likely to receive more for Paul than Lamar Odom, Luis Scola, and Kevin Martin.

Ultimately the Hornets sent Paul to Lob City, where he is now mayor, and New Orleans received Eric Gordon, Al-Farouq Aminu, Chris Kaman, and a coveted draft pick in return. However ugly the Paul trade saga may have been, watching the NBA-sanctioned Hornets was worse.

Game time in Phoenix, and the U.S. Airways Center is 60% full. The Suns event staff ushers the crowd through the customary, empty pre-game ceremonies. The in-arena MC for the evening is Cedric Ceballos, and this invites conflicted thinking: is it horribly sad that Ceballos is left to fill this role, or should everyone feel optimistic that the NBA is an engine of job growth? Better that he has something to do, right? Really, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Over the course of the evening, the Suns will help America get back to work by trotting out not just Ceballos, but also Kayte Christensen, a "social sideline reporter," and no fewer than three different blonde women who preside over trivia games and giveaways. (Jokes aside, these are the faces of the lockout's true losers, and they were largely without representation during the NBA labor strife.)

Staying true to their community, the Suns' dance team features women named Sumer, Brittni, Geminise, and Jordan, among others. How terribly Phoenix. Betting against them having tattoos and fake hair would be like burning money. These girls enjoy center-court status as the Hornets and Suns are introduced. New Orleans trots out Eric Gordon and four of Chris Paul's Pips: Marco Belinelli, Emeka Okafor, Carl Landry, and Trevor Ariza. (Chris Kaman, earning $12.9m this year, does not start. Enjoy working at your job.) After dispensing with this formality, the lights go out, a jumbotron introduction video forged in the fires of excessive editing comes on, and the Suns are revealed. Emerging in pairs from assorted gates--look how much the players love the fans!--these desert conquerors descend onto the court for another exciting season of hoarding cap room for 2012. (Phoenix will have more than $29m to spend next off-season.) The smartest pairing is Josh Childress and Hakim Warrick. The crowd can only point, gawk, and make fun of their contracts once.

The first quarter is as ugly as one might expect when two ill-prepared teams of meager ability play for the first time. Grant Hill collapses in a heap on three different occasions, Carl Landry fires an air ball, Jared Dudley looks disoriented. The Hornets soon bring in Greivis Vasquez, a point guard who couldn't beat out Jeremy Pargo for minutes in Memphis, and literally everything he does is awkward. Everything. Errant and ill-advised passes. "Drives" to the basket that are labored exercises in grinding on another man. Hectic dribbling with no discernible purpose. Nothing, though, is a greater indictment of the New Orleans offense than the quarter coming to a close with Eric Gordon taking only two shots. He may be an efficient scorer, but on a team with such a stunted attack, Gordon should shoot often enough to embarrass John Salmons.

The game wore on this way. There was never a rhythm, nor any spells when cleaner play hinted that each team would eventually look professional. Instead, the Suns and Hornets animated the NBA's worst problems. In a league of stars, none were to be found. Gordon, despite his shooting touch, balance, and basketball aplomb, is the ultimate sidekick. He is not assertive, partially because he cannot be. Gordon does not drive to the basket reliably; he struggles to control the game when forced to dribble. A shaky handle leaves him as an excellent jump shooter. There is no shame in that fate, but neither is their glory. Steve Nash, meanwhile, plays as his worst self on this diminished Suns team, dribbling too often and recklessly racing toward vanishing real estate. Nash had twelve assists against New Orleans, but he never created a sense of control, and much of his production owed to his protracted periods with the basketball. Less maestro than ER doctor, Nash spent the game scurrying around to no end. Something less than the stuff of NBA mythology.

Not every team will have a transcendent star, of course, and the Hornets and Suns might be forgiven as teams in the midst of churn. Worse was the depressing nature of the entire affair. By the end of the first quarter, the arena was 90% full, a late-arriving crowd that surely needed just a few more minutes for those final fluorescent vodka shooters. (Phoenix!) The PA announcer worked hard to keep the audience engaged, leading cheers of "De-fense," kicking it over to Cedric, and supervising the endless barrage of gimmicks. Fire exploded out of the baskets, t-shirts whistled into the crowd, and those tasteful dancers gyrated with elegance. Yet all of these elements comprised an elaborate citadel built to guard a gaping void. On the court, Robin Lopez and Marcin Gortat mechanically finished at the rim while Trevor Ariza vacillated between encouraging veteran and disappointing never-was, but the season's first game condemned both teams before either had played its remaining sixty-five. No good will grow out of this garden.

Sad air suffocated the night. Al-Farouq Aminu was a whirling mess in eleven minutes, hardly playing on a team going nowhere after factoring prominently in the trade that ground the league to a halt. Chris Kaman was an infamous grotesque. Shannon Brown looked heavy yet adrift. Everywhere, NBA basketball was in its ugliest iteration, from incompetent isolations to woeful free-throw shooting and vacant defenses. The enduring image was a common, deflating one: Josh Childress missing an open corner three after 24 seconds of writhing in the name of nothing. It is a symbol of basketball at its worst, and it was the most fitting reminder of why it can sometimes be so difficult to love this game.

The 91 Best Songs of 2011

2011-12-21T23:39:00.000-05:00

I've already told you about all the songs I hated, laughed about, and puzzled over. Now consider the tracks I liked this year.

91) Gale Boetticher, "Major Tom" (Cover)

RIP, Gale. You were always going to be the guy who answers the door.

90) Willie the Kid ft. Jon Connor, "One Time"

Dave Bing should pass a law mandating that all Detroit-area rappers must prove themselves over this Black Milk banger. The beat is one that I can't ever turn off or skip. Soulful and spacious, it is a perfect litmus test.

89) Saigon ft. Faith Evans, "Clap"

Ever since I heard him reduce hip-hop's stupidity to memorably pithy bars on Talib Kweli's "Slap N***as," Saigon has done scared-straight better than anyone. His voice is clear and firm, lending his bars understated authority, and Giddy can take on a matter-of-fact demeanor that shames any listener who was thinking otherwise. Given that it took Saigon more than half a decade to drop a major-label release, the mid-aughts feel and structure are fitting.

88) Black Milk, "Brain"

If an instrument can make a big sound, Black Milk wants it in his music. If it can make a big sound alongside other bombastic elements, Black Milk wants it in his music. And if it can do these things on top of drums that will never stop coming for you, Black Milk will find a way to make it sound like hip-hop. He does not engage in the ostentatious musicianship of the Roots, and he does not get the same kind of credit as Kanye when Mr. West plays his shit with a string orchestra, but Black Milk does as much for hip-hop arrangement as anyone. Dude is brilliant.

87) The Go! Team, "Apollo Throwdown"
I can't tell if anyone else still likes the Go! Team. I never hear or read about them, this year's album came and went briskly, and they haven't played a show near me in ages. Rolling Blackouts was more curiosity than record. The music was largely derivative and the rotating roster of vocalists was not a feature with enduring appeal. "Apollo" captured the band at its best, though--an energetic medley with a schoolyard feel.

86) Miguel ft. Pusha T, "Sure Thing"

The interplay between Miguel, all loving, and Pusha, all menace, created a tension that kept this song fresh, no matter how often it came on the radio.

85) Sean Price, "Ruben Blades"

Should we say it now or hold off? How about now, only so that everyone knows what's what: I would feel flattered if Sean Price ever were to slap my kufi off. Only when he dies will we know what "gully" means because he lives it every second of every day. That's what this track is about: 70 seconds of unadulterated gully. Beating the shit out of you, telling you that you can't rap, making fun of your sneaker collection, smoking drugs. Sean Price...does...not...give...a...fuck. As I have explained at least once before, it is freeing and the absolute best.

84) Azealia Banks, "212"

I used to think that I was the most profane person anyone could meet. Oops.

The first hundred seconds of this song are great. Banks flows better than most rappers you've heard of, and she demonstrates a playfulness that makes her a human, not just an internet sensation.

83) Amy Winehouse ft. Nas, "Like Smoke"
Don't tell Jay or Kels, but these two would have made a proper Best of Both Worlds album. Nas picks production that actually works for him about once every five or six songs, so credit goes to Winehouse and her team for finding yet another vintage-sounding beat that simultaneously showed off her rare talents and his.

82) Del tha Funkee Homosapien, "The Things"

The internets don't know this song. They should. Del does Del things on it, and his scratchy, discordant voice is intact and awesome.

81) RZA ft. Rev. Burke, "Robbery"

It takes five-and-a-half minutes, but after "I'm So Appalled" makes it through that dreary, angered march of super friends, the RZA blows up the track with his shout-rapping. Amid other pissed off people, it doesn't sound out of place, however RZA shows up like a raving lunatic from off the street, not another inconvenienced member of Kanye's refined society.

RZA was well served by that guest spot. It was a useful reminder of what he can accomplish when not doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-ing. Specifically, RZA retains command over an exciting, rambunctious microphone presence and an endlessly discursive rhyming style that is unique and amusing. He puts it to good use on "Robbery," a simple but effective song.

80) Pusha T, "Don't Fuck with Me"

Angering the Caribbean League is a bad look, and not just because of its association with the Click Clack Clan. (R.I.P.) Rather, Pusha T is quietly ferocious at almost all times. When he spits battle bars--no matter how empty the threats may be, nor how senseless the beef--it is cutting all the same:

Rappers on their sophomores
Actin’ like they boss lords
Fame such a funny thing for sure
When n***as start believing all them encores
I’m just the one to send you off--bonjour
See yourself as I pull up in that mirror tint
Skins vs. blouses, you mirror Prince

Given the relative whisper with which he was gunning for dudes, his presence was even more sinister, and the song even more intense.

79) Random Axe, "Random Call"

In the nicest way possible, "Random Call" served as an everyman-rapper's anthem. For years, Guilty Simpson has strung together serviceable if unspectacular verses, just as Sean P has put out the best druggin'-and-thuggin' rhymes possible. On "Random Call," each got to enjoy a moment of recognition, assuredly doing what they each do best over one of Black Milk's finest-blended beats of the year.

78) Co$$ ft. Blu, "Through the Flames"

I've never been to Los Angeles. What I know of the city comes from hip-hop music, Boyz n the Hood, Training Day, The Hills, and Laker games. In my mind, it's an unyielding traffic jam with movie stars, Pau Gasol, gangsters wearing one-button flannel with their khakis, and dudes like Co$$ and Blu sitting on a couch somewhere smoking drugs. This song provides a score for the scene.

Co$$ is underrated and overlooked. Blending an unassuming demeanor with an active voice that recalls the Pharcyde, he churns out head-nod track after head-nod track. Most of his music has the same sanded-down feel of "Flames." Such an accessible and smooth style suffers the misfortune of being easily forgotten, but when made well, these types of tracks connect to an emotional state that they accordingly call forth in perpetuity. "Flames" successfully does just that and suggests a relaxed afternoon with the sun shining through a curtain into a hazy living room.

77) Cocaine 80s ft. Common, "Summer Madness"

Somewhere along the way, No I.D. decided that he was going to own the lite-FM genre this year. In service of that agenda, he made Common an album that is as confusing as it is good, and he put out a random EP with his Cocaine 80s friends that should have come with a mullet and tube socks. That said, the track's breezy vibe is great, and the updated take on a Kool & the Gang favorite is appreciated.

76) David Dallas ft. Freddie Gibbs, "Caught in a Daze"

The mere fact that some New Zealand rapper--New Zealand--got Freddie Gibbs to lace his debut single with one of the most deftly spit verses of the year merits inclusion on any retrospective list. Dallas is a pedestrian MC who had the good sense to choose a sedated beat with just enough character as a showpiece. The winding piano chords were a great touch.

Now, about Gibbs: he is the best rapper working today, and the analysis need not be complicated. His presence is commanding, his flow is impeccable, his rhymes are precise. The man makes music that a rap fan wants to hear. Gibbs is very much a gangster on the microphone, but he is not so froward that he eschews adapting to a beat. He is no chameleon, of course, but however he has to vary his cadence, Gibbs finds the best way to not just ride the beat but control it. He put that talent on full display during the second verse of "Daze," and it only reaffirmed everything I wrote about him last year.

75) DJ Kay Slay ft. Busta Rhymes, Raekwon, Papoose, Sheek Louch, and Styles P), "Let the Dogs Loose"

So much to make fun of: 1) They called it "Let the Dogs Loose" because it relies on the same "Shaft" sample that Jay-Z used for "Reservoir Dogs," and two of the original members from that lineup rap on this song; 2) Papoose is alive, apparently, and accounted for here (I still kind of like how awkward he is); 3) Busta Rhymes delivers another globalization lecture and name checks Uzbekistan, probably because it's a weird place far away that he's heard of; 4) Kay Slay still puts out mixtapes; 5) Kay Slay yells, "Rhyme or Die!"; 6) "Credit and debit" is "rhymed" against "weapons in seconds." That's enough for now.

For all those failures and more, it's a dumb song. And yet, it's dumb in an entirely pleasing way that keeps this proudly New York posse cut entertaining. It's also hard to ruin a Shaft bass line.

74) The Game, "R.I.P. Story"

73) The Game, "Children's Story"

Christmas came early this year when the Game released two mixtapes in January. He had a quiet 2010, and the world suffered as a result. After all, Earth, to say nothing of hip-hop, is a better place when Game is pumping out the self-conscious, earnest psycho-drama music that he has elevated to an art form. The arrival of two bloated, misguided, quietly crazy tapes heralded that 2011 would surpass its predecessor.

"R.I.P Story" and "Children's Story" are the living proof. On the former, Games walks us through a nice bedtime story about getting away with murder, and he sets it to a cheery, pared down soundscape that would be a fitting accompaniment for a children's book on tape. There's even a Puffy cameo and--what else?--a mention of his inflammatory past with 50 Cent. On the latter, Games conjures his best cockney accent to turn in an unconvincing Slick Rick impression. Whatever Game lacks as an impersonator he compensates for as a lunatic person, though. "Children's Story" is the heartwarming tale of...getting away with murder. Only in this one, Snoop Dogg helps him get home and there are conspicuous references to Biz Markie and Slick Rick.

So yes, he made two upbeat songs that delve into the rich details of getting away with fictional murders. The definition of madness is to do the same thing over and over but to expect a different result, and it would seem as though Game falls into this trap. But that may be Game's true genius: who is the crazy one if the audience keeps listening with expectations that anything will ever change? Game forces each of us--or me, at least--to look inward and confront whether we, not him, are the people headed down the wrong path. As we do so, he'll provide rap music with solid fundamentals and never ending fodder for psychoanalysis. The Game is a singular artiste.

72) Talib Kweli, "I'm on One"

You know, the other song with this title. Probably not a club staple wherever it is that you go to get drunk and sweaty. This one has a "C'Mon, Son" from Ed Lover on the intro and Khrysis on the boards with the heat. Were it performed in St. Louis, it would surely have Murphy Lee since the background vocal loop is the same quasi-shouting from Big Tuck's "Not a Stain on Me." (St. Louis is still rocking that shit on repeat.) Kweli is direct, standing at attention and delivering efficient, crisp rhymes. Over the beat's rigid shouts and pumping bass, the entire affect is somewhat bellicose, and that's a good look for Talib as a departure from the norm.

71) Freddie Gibbs, "My Dawgz"

Changing up a rhyme scheme within a verse is not a new rapping technique. Gibbs does it often. His transitions within a verse are what set him apart. Be it extending an image, tip-toeing over a break in the beat, changing up his tempo, or whatever else is required, dude always finds a way to maintain his rhythm. The first verse on "Dawgz" was a helpful illustration.

70) Masta Killa, "Loyalty Is Royalty"

9th Wonder suffered an unfortunate fate. Little Brother crafted one of the best albums of the 2000s, and that debut turned out to be the group's apex. The Listening was great, and it generated a dedicated following (*raises hand*). However, it was far too elemental and normal for music critics, many of whom were already fast out of the gates as they raced toward what has become an ongoing obsession with bad rap music. (Never forget who has wasted your time insisting that Houston is the movement, T.I. is the best, and Nicki is brilliant.) Without critical backing, and without a commercial environment interested in Little Brother, the group steadily dwindled. 9th branched out along the way, producing for Jay-Z and many others, but opinions of him from all quarters turned sour. 9th was derided as formulaic, simple and boring for using the same drum schemes on too many beats, and for his abiding faith in soul music.

Some of the criticism was fair. Many 9th Wonder songs sound the same, in kind if not always specifics. Many are straightforward and basic, inoffensive but unremarkable. The high preponderance of similarities across his catalog facilitates dismissing all of it; wading through all those samples may not be worth the effort if the best are ultimately reminiscent of the worst. There is some merit to that thinking, but it too steeply discounts 9th Wonder's talent. Further, it neglects that during his washed out phase, the man has become a reliable producer working steadily.

We might say something similar about Masta Killa, a Wu founder who never broke out and has always been an afterthought. That cool, calculated delivery is a chilling asset on Wu-Tang favorites, but it's also laconic to the point that it fails to encourage much fealty. The man raps well, though, and he linked up with 9th to create a track that is both redemptive and instructive. Both of these guys can make good music.

69) 9th Wonder ft. Raekwon and Big Remo, "No Pretending"
And now I will make my 9th Wonder point a second time.

68) Consequence ft. Q-Tip, Large Professor, and Havoc, "Fake I.D."

Q-Tip, Large Pro, and Havoc? Pardon this New Yorker while he changes his pants.

...

And we're back! There isn't much to this song, but it is playful and exceedingly easy to keep in a rotation.

67) Big K.R.I.T. ft. Curren$y and Killa Kyleon, "Moon & Stars" (Remix)

I like K.R.I.T., but I don't love him. He doesn't move me the way he does others. I wish he did. I envy the rap fans who commune with Big K.R.I.T. because I recognize that his wit, his flow, and his ear for music is each great. Instead, I have to work a little harder to sit with his music and make sure I soak it up in a fashion that happens more naturally with some other rappers. "Moon & Stars" didn't take much extra effort. It is as smooth a track as one could want, and that is no coincidence. Both K.R.I.T. and Curren$y have made that feeling a hallmark.

66) Elzhi, "Verbal Intercourse"

Few rappers spit such weighty bars with Elzhi's ease. He is not polished, but then, he is unconcerned with the cosmetics. The dude just wants to get on something that bumps and tell you the truth. El's rhyming is honest, intuitive, smart, and thorough. Fittingly, "Verbal Intercourse" is not an ultimate triumph but instead another entry in one of rap's deepest catalogs. Elzhi at his most prosaic is a star, and that's high praise.

65) Madlib ft. Supreme Team, "Interview Number 4080"

Can anyone find a rap song that ever suffered from a jazzy horn loop?

64) Pusha T ft. 50 Cent and Pharrell, "Raid"

Pusha will never assimilate. No matter how many songs he records, how much money he makes, nor how far removed from the streets he gets, he always will have that burner mixed in with his socks. Clipse albums have suffered from this uncompromising grasp on the past, and Pusha may always be just the best of the dope boys. "Raid" sounds like change, but it presents a tautological quandary: does that solitary ragtime piano carry a lingering melancholy that infects Pusha, or does Pusha's stern facade make that piano seem lonely? Those elements appear inextricable.

63) Frank Ocean, "Thinking about You"

This song incepted my mind, the parasitic idea so deeply embedded in my psyche that ultimately it flourished. And I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.

On the surface, "Thinking about You" is languorous and maybe even an imposition. The muted Moog synthesizer wafts from chord to chord, and the song appears to go nowhere. It's up to Frank Ocean's syrupy voice to save the track. He dances along the music, sweeping his way across a sluggish accompaniment and instilling more life. He softly lands on the notes with grace. Were Ocean playing basketball and not singing, he would be the balletic Kobe Bryant pivoting on the base line. Ocean's performance gives an audience much to consider. A first inconvenienced listen becomes a second, just to verify that the initial impression was the right one. A second becomes a third, becomes a fourth, becomes a fifth, each time justified because there is one last thing to catch. All the while, "Thinking about You" grows entrancing, and by the ninth or tenth listen, it has claimed space in your memory.

62) Meyhem Lauren ft. Action Bronson, "Typhoon Rap"

Perhaps the most hip-hop song of the year: a break beat, some limited DJ filler, a chorus that picks up only so that it can give way to bludgeoning verses, and rhymes that make you smile. Oh, and Action Bronson, your favorite food blogger's favorite rapper.

61) Bronze Nazareth ft. Masta Killa and Inspectah Deck, "The Road"

Speaking of the Wu-Tang Clan, no one--no one--has made better-sounding Wu-Tang music over the last few years than Bronze Nazareth. Nazareth consistently creates the off-kilter feel of first-wave Wu-Tang solo records. He chops up samples and runs them into each other before carving an instrumental flourish into the side and summoning the drums. He is not the RZA, but he also is not some cheap substitute. Rather, Nazareth is a worthy successor to the Wu-Tang legacy, and his new works simultaneously extend the style while celebrating the foundation. That Masta Killa and Deck sound at home over this beat is the ultimate validation.

By the way: Bronze Nazareth is from Michigan. Of course. No state has produced more of the best music since 2000. Look it up.

60) Random Axe ft. Roc Marciano, "Chewbacca"

The cascading synth notes laid across such punchy drums made this a hypnotic instrumental when Black Milk first introduced it. To his credit, he preserved its character while allowing Sean Price to rap like he were on a corner and enlisting Roc Marciano to drag it even farther through the streets. Subtly, then, this track was a wonderful stylistic blend. And as though Random Axe were seeking extra credit, the track cuts out with a Wu-Tang homage.

59) Madlib ft. O-Solo, "I'm a Monsta"

I didn't know O-Solo before Madlib delivered him. His voice is booming, so much so that he manages to stand up to an overwhelming Madlib production. The beat sounds like the soundtrack from the life of a pinball.

58) RZA ft. Kosha Dillz and Kool G Rap, "Operator"

With apologies to Drake, Jim Jones, and anyone still rapping about kosher lawyers, "Operator" is the most Jewish song of the year. How Jewish? "Operator" has yarmulkes, Jewish street money, falafel, vitamins from Israel, and, of course, Kosha Dillz. He is not likely to become a rich and famous rapper, but there is no question that he can enjoy a novelty career on the bar-mitzvah circuit if he wants that.

"Operator" also has Kool G Rap dumping bodies in dumpsters and selling hard white. L'Chaim!

57) Foreign Exchange ft. Amber and Paris Strother, "All the Kisses"

Solid R&B. Nothing more, nothing less.

56) Blu ft. Donnel Smokes, Definite, and Double O, "Down to Earth"

Blu is enigmatic. Were it not for the internet, no one would know he exists. Even with the internet's assistance, he is inscrutable. His music appears randomly, and the appellation schemes for his mixtapes are confusing. No one has much bad to write about him, and yet few are ever excited by his music. Whenever he makes a song that more of the internet might hear, he acquits himself well but it leads nowhere. Meanwhile, he makes tape after tape of well-wrought sample-driven hip-hop. That might be some of his problem. A lot of the music blends together, and while a technically gifted MC with a soothing voice, he does not spit verses that you'd automatically quote to other people. Blu is dope, but in a way that fails to resonate.

55) Timbo King, "Tombstone"

What's that? You like this song because it is severe and grand, sort of like a blaring soundtrack from a 70s movie? Yeah, well no shit. You're now rocking with Bronze Nazareth.

In a bygone era, Timbo King would have crafted a signature song worthy of cult worship, if not something better. Timbo delivers a forceful assertion of self using bars that are wacky and feverish. Over the course of the record, he spits memes, he pauses to cough as an artistic element, he creates sideways punch lines. He uses a tradition-rich shorthand to punctuate his rhymes. Timbo does it all, and this should be a street record that people remember. Only they won't. They don't. This style of music, loud heathen rap, doesn't command that sort of reverence any longer. It's a shame.

54) Yinka Diz, "Wind in My Caesar"

Yinka Diz is another MC worthy of more shine. Diz has a crisp voice and an insightful train of thought. He does not concern himself with marketing or perpetuating an image. Instead, he relays back to a listener what he's seen and thought. The simplicity of his approach is appreciated.

53) Meek Mill ft. Mel Love, "Middle of da Summer"

Sure, he openly campaigns for it, but that doesn't make this any less true: this is a quintessential summertime song.

52) Raekwon ft. Black Thought, "Masters of Our Fate"

Black Thought steps away from his normal milieu and takes a bath in this viscous struggle-bar music. The song has a desperate spirit, and no matter how exaggerated the emotion, it works.

51) Money Making Jam Boys, "We Not Playing"

It's strange that four notes from "Starfish and Coffee" can remain so potent. Yet ever since Nice & Smooth's "No Delayin'," this piano snippet has been premium hip-hop real estate. The loop derives most of its appeal from the sense of expectation that it conveys: the notes open up onto a void. Rather than continuing as a melody rises, the music resets, and the cycle begins again. Such evergreen possibility gives MCs a license to flow on, and the Money Making Jam Boys fill the space ably with ego-rich declarations that honor the beat's heritage ("Synthetic Substitution" drums for good measure) and the tradition of the posse cut. Whatever people normally don't like about Roots weed men Truck North and Dice Raw seem insignificant as the group calls the meeting to order up in its tree house.

50) Statik Selektah ft. Big K.R.I.T. and Freddie Gibbs, "Play the Game"

Statik Selektah was the hardest-working dude in rap this year. Every ten minutes, he had a new song or mixtape out. Pump the breaks, dun, and let us digest it all. Fuck.

More struggle bars, but delivered by two of hip-hop's finest. K.R.I.T.'s delivery was perfect, the last verse in particular. He alternated between his southern drawl and slightly clipped syllables, there, alone, helping to advance a story of striving.

49) Bronze Nazareth ft. RZA, "Fresh from the Morgue"

You know what's hilarious? In all these Bronze Nazareth YouTubes, the dudes (you know it's dudes) who upload the songs set them to kung-fu clips. How meta.

This song is great. It is wildly incoherent and downright hallucinatory. "Fresh from the Morgue" is so crazy that no one on the internet could manage to properly transcribe all the lyrics. Here are some of them (I think):

- "We chop trees never yellin' 'Timber!'"

- "Triple-beam coffin lifter"

- "Molotovs tossed/detonate/engulf my blogs"

- "Sicilians and gold Brazilians/Over my lap like pavilions"

Those are Bronze Nazareth. RZA came correct in response, including a line of the year. See if you can catch it:

"The inflictions to past descriptions known by known adjectives"

"Crumble MCs/Keep a pocket of crumbled cheese/Not of tuna fish/But I been in the can with bumble bees"

"For listener's pleasure/ballistic rap mystic"

48) M83, "Steve McQueen"

EMI doesn't understand the internets, so there is no easily found studio version of this song. The live versions only do it partial justice; they fail to capture the swelling emotion that makes the track so enlivening. I have nothing to say about the lyrical content. Frankly, it's worthless, because the soaring instrumentation is what made this so good.

47) G-Side, "Cinematic"

G-Side's continued transformation has been less of an evolution than a series of experiments. After Huntsville International, the Cohesive album was a step backward. Though it had its moments, that record was anything but what its title suggested, and G-Side sounded like it was uncertain of what to do next. So back to the laboratory it went, and when the group again emerged on Island, it had put its experiential wisdom to good use. "Cinematic" captures G-Side's latest iteration as a group that seeks novel ways to tell everyday hip-hop stories. Dispensing with traditional rap styles, be they southern or otherwise, these dudes have instead concocted a stew with all manner of ingredients. It allows them to seamlessly weave together the sound of a live band and a choral backing that turns from rich to sparse and back again.

46) Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross ft. Karen O, "Immigrant Song"

Maybe this is cheating a little. You can do much worse than remaking a Led Zeppelin favorite. However, if the original was triumphant and aggressive, the new version is sinister and deliberate. This update sees you getting enveloped by evil, so it opts against inciting conflict. Instead, it encourages fear and surrender to the inevitable. That's fucking bad-ass.

And now, a programming note: you're halfway through. Congratulations. I believe the second half is shorter than the first. You know, because my taste is so good that any song's mere inclusion on the list is definitive proof of its merit.

45) Freeway ft. Mac Miller, "P.A."

Hey, Statik Selektah. What a shock.

Freeway is the ultimate style-over-substance MC. Whatever he's saying is always obscured by how he's saying it. He can't help it--that voice. Free's sing-song delivery still commands attention, so much so that the aesthetics of his music are more important than they would be for less of a peacock. How a Freeway track makes you feel is the dispositive inquiry, and "P.A." acquits itself nicely. The somewhat shrill sample mirror's Freeway's high-pitched vocals, the track's tempo keeps things moving, and Mac Miller holds his own amid so much energy.

44) Styles P ft. Busta Rhymes and Rick Ross, "Harsh"

Can someone explain to me what happened to Busta Rhymes? How did we go from Leaders of the New School and Long Island living to acceptance as a shadowy rap mafia don? From hard-rapping goofball on The Coming to an international playboy with Rothschild money and A-rab money riding camels in the Middle East? From Native Tongue friend to Young Money mercenary? I will die still perplexed but what we've witnessed.

Anyway...Styles P stays underrated. He strings together great images, he makes references that hold a listener's attention, and he can really work a beat. This sparse set up suits him. It also suits Rozay, who burps gravy all over the place and smothers the track in a way that manages to not kill it but make it heavier. Not sure if you have to be a New Yorker to ride for this track, but it probably helps. "Harsh" was made for a midnight mixtape show.

43) Black Star, "You Already Knew"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Flaco kind of kills this, no? It sounds like he was seeing red while he spit.

42) Jay Rock ft. Kendrick Lamar, "Hood Gon' Love It"

*sigh* Jay Rock is exceedingly adequate. Give him a paint-by-number rhyme book and he can follow the key while generally staying within the lines. He can't create his own pictures, though. If it's been done before and from Los Angeles, he knows what to do. Otherwise, nope. Kendrick Lamar, meanwhile, has vision. He has talent. He can rhyme with creativity. Setting them against each other in juxtaposition is almost like an elaborate practical joke at Jay Rock's expense. Hopefully he got paid well.

Hard to hate on Jay too much, though, because the gorgeous J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League beat is distracting. When these dudes find a sample they like, no one is better right now.

41) Eddie B ft. Sean Price and Maffew Ragazino, "Don't Try It"
As I was saying.

P!

40) Jermiside ft. Don Will and Spec Boogie, "The Cookout"

Not sure what happened to the Loosie Crew, but these dudes have always been able to rap. It's no different on this track. There is a segment of hip-hop fans who find songs like this boring. Not quite boom-bap filler, it is a close relative, your basic beats and rhymes. The production does its job but little more, and the rapping is about word play and jokes for the sake of the craft. That is not hard to find, but it is not inherently bad music because it sounds commonplace. Rather, "The Cookout" is an example of when ordinary is an ideal.

39) Wiz Khalifa and Curren$y, "Flowers"

I am told that the "rapper" Big Sean also appears on this song. I consider that apocryphal because: 1) I heard a version without his verse (or any "do it"); and 2) I don't acknowledge his existence (the best way to get an annoying kid to stop). Wiz doesn't do much for me, either, though he is Rakim to Big Sean's Bishop (not in a Juice way). Khalifa is a more thoughtful and artistic rapper, but his music has a hollow feel that predominates. That may be a cultivated affection meant to match the Smoke-or-Die lifestyle Wiz perpetuates, but regardless of its provenance, that vibe leaves him uninteresting. Many technically able MCs are just not compelling, and Khalifa is among them. Poor Wiz.

Curren$y, though, is the dude. I was late to appreciate his music, partially because sometime around 2009, I was tired of having to hear a new rapper's new mixtape every day. But then I stopped reading the music-breaking blogs that treat every artist equally and hype up bullshit because ~~Asher Roth's~~ ~~Curt@!ns's~~ ~~Nickelus's~~ someone's people asked nicely enough. Freed of that duty, I could spend more time with what I actually wanted to hear, and ultimately I found my way to Spitta. For as nimble as his rhyming can be (and it certainly is here), and for as unique as his voice can be, he has an incredible ear for music. He picks fantastic material for himself. That is not a talent for which rappers receive much credit, but it makes a huge difference.

38) A$AP Rocky, "Bass"

The enduring message of every A$AP Rocky song appears to be that he wishes he had grown up in Houston. How else to reconcile that LiveLoveA$AP is essentially a playlist for getting throwed? A$AP never goes all the way, though. He is not the next in line after Mike Jones, Paul Wall, Slim Thug, and all them. Nor is he 100% DJ Screw. Rather, his sound is more like artificial Houston, or maybe even tofu Houston (Houst'n?) The heavy bass and those chopped-and-screwed moments are everywhere, just like the drawn-out string notes. Yet they are diluted by other influences, and the sum of those parts resembles many other things but is never a true copy. "Bass" is an argument for synthetics, an easily digested simulacrum that gives outsiders a taste of the Gulf but withholds the real thing. Given how underwhelming most Houston rap music is, that's plenty filling.

37) Shabazz Palaces, "Swerve...The Reaping of All That Is Worthwhile (Noir Not Withstanding)"

First of all, shorten the cot'dam title.

More substantively, this is a sneaky track that pulls itself together suddenly. Butterfly's rapping remains steady and he has retained a presence that carries an air of dignity. If I understood what he is rapping about, I would probably like him even more.

36) Murs, "International"

Again, can anyone find a rap song that ever suffered from a jazzy horn loop?

Murs is wonderfully accessible. It might strike some as odd to laud him for this trait when discussing a song about the travels common folk don't experience, but that is also why now is most appropriate. Even when the realities of a celebrity lifestyle invade his music, Murs remains like the rest of us. He raps without pretense, he perpetuates no fiction, and he describes his subjects with references and values that are appealing and familiar. Murs is the proverbial guy you'd like to grab a beer with. He is as likable a rapper as you'll find. And his shit knocks.

35) Raekwon ft. Nas, "Rich and Black"

Lyrically, this track is all about celebration and opulence. Musically, this track is all about the end of days. Combined, the satisfied rhymes and the dire aesthetic create a song that is urgent and definitive. When arguing, an animated and assertive person can overwhelm the more reasonable party. "Rich and Black" has that feel, as though it seeks to overwhelm before anyone has an opportunity to say something.

34) Jay-Z and Kanye West, "New Day"

And while we're on the topic of rich and black, that should merit consideration for the title of the next album these two put out together. It's what they're into now. That they should be as into beats like this. Jay and Kanye are much more fun--and much more tolerable--over a richer sound like this than they are over jagged beats like those from "N***as in Paris" and other Watch the Throne joints. Perhaps that is heresy among those who have celebrated the reaching style of WTT, but activity and accomplishment are not to be confused.

33) Common, "Lovin' I Lost"

This is the No I.D. everyone wanted to hear when Common said he was working with his original shepherd on The Dreamer/The Believer. Shepherd is the best word, too, because Common is perpetually in need of direction. From No I.D., to the Soulquarians, to Kanye, to the Neptunes, to No I.D., Common has been searching. (A psychologist can delve into why, and what it says that Common's dad closes every album from a career spent seeking guidance.) He is supremely talented--insightful and pithy with a strong presence and biting one-liners. Yet his talent has brought him little peace; Common always seems in conflict. The New York Times called him "neutered" recently, and that speaks to the usual perception that he is wounded and somehow impaired. In that spirit, "Lovin' I Lost" is one of the best kinds of Common: reflective, honest, articulate.

32) Smoke DZA ft. Big K.R.I.T. and Bun B, "On the Corner"

Big K.R.I.T. produced this. It's dope.

31) Cocaine 80s, "To Tell You the Truth"

Out of nowhere, No I.D. put together this one-off pop EP that is melodic, beautiful at times, boring at others, and pretty different. It defied easy categorization. "Truth" is the best track from it, a loaded love ballad that is made by James Fauntleroy's singing.

30) Frank Ocean, "Strawberry Swing"

Like everyone else, I fux with Frank Ocean. Endorsing him is like endorsing Adele. "Strawberry Swing" stood out on a generally strong record because of the thin guitar picking that opens the track and runs through it. That element enhances a putatively wistful song. Curiously, the rolling drums are triumphant, so the track's design is far from obvious. Depending on the listener's mood, it can be a sad song about a conclusion or an encouraging song about moving forward. That dichotomy may be a fitting proxy for Ocean, whose solo work has been easy to latch onto but not as readily classified.

29) Mobb Deep, "More Like Us"

My esteem for this song may be inflated by its cinematic sample (car chase in a big American car from the 70s!) and the fact that Prodigy and Hav are (mostly) rhyming again. (No small feat for Prodigy, sadly.) Does this sound reminiscent of halcyon era M-o-b-b? No. Will anything they make ever again? No. Will anyone ever pull that off? Hard to touch The Infamous. "More Like Us" succeeds on its own, though, largely due to the production.

28) Kendrick Lamar ft. RZA, "Ronald Reagan Era"

Kendrick Lamar gives us a lot to work with. Lyrically, his words and methods are engaging; there is usually something more to listen for. Thematically, he takes on engaging topics. And stylistically, he presents a range of music and sounds.

P.S. It was a good year for the RZA. And he is an actor now.

27) Wu-Tang Clan ft. Ghostface Killah, Sean Price, and Trife, "Laced Cheeba"

Coming on in medias res, Ghostface holds himself out as an almost mythic superhero who is banging geishas, wearing shark-skin Clarks, pushing so much dope that he sits on piles of it, running the prison yard, and so forth. You know. It's very Ghostface of him. In the annals of Tony Starks history, this verse is unlikely to register with the greatest, but he has set the bar so high that a sense of what he should be doing is probably unfair. Ghost does what he must in order to deliver on the promise of a dark track with Sean Price.

P does P, and he probably has the best track-come-on of the year. (If not the best, then at least my favorite.) It is characteristically gully and audacious. He says things that no normal person should, and that leaves a lot to vicariously enjoy. P: "Yo/Everybody get paid/Everybody get laid/All these bitches dirty/Everbody got AIDS." From there, it's more Sean Mandela, breaking heaters off your face and smoking laced cheeba.

Poor Trife has to bring the track home, and his arms are too short to box with the gods who precede him. Some of it is not his fault: he can't change that his higher-pitched voice lacks the weathered sound of Ghost's or the bass in P's. Nor can he help that with Ghost as his benefactor, he will never measure up or stand alone.

The whole thing sounds like it takes place in a damp dungeon somewhere in the Chinese countryside, and that only makes it better. Ghost and P should make an album together called Bodying the God.

26) Freddie Gibbs, "Lord Giveth, Lord Taketh Away"

In the early 90s, MC Ren might have rapped over a creeping beat like this one. He would have done well with it. Not as well as Gangsta Gibbs, of course. This thing is just hard as fuck, grimy and dangerous. What else is there to say? Listen.

25) Curren$y, "This Is the Life"

Beautiful production. That piano is hypnotic, and Spitta sounds perfect over it. Curren$y's music is dominated by how it sounds, pushing what it's saying to the periphery. That is not meant to marginalize his rapping skills or contradict my interest in the words of others. Rather, Curren$y makes so much good-sounding product because of his impeccable ear for beats and his silky voice. A mood sets in almost immediately, and that is Curren$y's most potent power. He is a deft rapper, too, but he's largely concerned with getting high. That his sound is fresh after so many tracks speaks to his wordplay and the strong ambiance he creates.

24) The Weeknd, "Wicked Games"

...when all you want to do is lose yourself in drugs and sex with someone who's not your girlfriend!

...because sometimes we all need a little self-immolation!

...hate yourself to this!

...once you're ready to strip down to your underwear and cry alone in a dark room!

...if I were a woman, at least I could blame it on my dad!

...Drake told me it was going to be just like this!

...please don't use the credit card I share with my wife!

But seriously, this song is brutally honest in a creepy way and totally mesmerizing.

23) Freddie Gibbs, "It's All Cognac"

I told you a long time ago. [/Alex Sosa voice]

22) Stalley, "See the Milq in My Chevy"

This was the first Stalley song I ever heard. Sadly, it's his best, so it was all downhill from there. Whatever. "Milq in My Chevy" has a memorable lower register--is it a tuba?--that reverberates in your brain for days. One of the year's "This Shit Knocks" all-stars.

21) Freddie Gibbs, "Thuggin'"

"Might move away one day, but I'm always gon' belong to the streets" should be printed on Freddie Gibbs's business cards. Though, he would never be one to carry them.

"Thuggin'" has a sleepy feel evocative of an early morning. The ringing in the background might as well be an alarm that won't stop. Gibbs takes a few bars to shake out the cobwebs and wipe his eyes. Then he hops in the ride and cruises around for three minutes. At the end of the trip, he quietly gets out, closes the car door firmly, walks inside, and everything goes black. There is something enervating about this song. Gibbs's intensity, precision, and pace are dizzying, to the point that "Thuggin'" leaves a listener drained. What a wonderful song.

20) Uncle Murda ft. French Montana, Jadakiss, Styles P, Cam'ron, and Vado, "Warning" (Remix)

This track's inclusion is dedicated to @sexyresults, who at any given moment is scouring DatPiff for a new Uncle Murda tape

Don't you want to punch someone? Or maybe buy something you can't afford, get drunk, and make outrageous claims in a public place? This song is great. It is over the top, Uncle Murda is intrinsically hilarious, and Cam'ron manages to remember what it was like when he earned all that internet worship. They even let him bat clean up. Also, isn't cute that Jada and Styles trade bars like a married couple? It's as close to cuddly as the Lox can come.

French Montana is a horrendous rapper, and yet the song perseveres. Seriously though, he sucks. Make him go away. Or get Bol to bring back the Hunt and Kill series.

19) Kanye West, "Mama's Boyfriend" (Unmastered Version)

This version has become something of a white whale on YouTube, and the link above is neither what I have in mind nor on my computer. Sorry. It's the closest we can come.

He doesn't like this truth, but it is immutable: Kanye West sounds best over soul beats. Particularly his own (though this is not one of them). Kanye can writhe with discomfort in the face of this reality, and the war he's waged while attempting to claim other musical territory has produced Graduation, which was dope, and My Dark Twisted Fantasy, his second-best album. Let not these exploits distract from Kanye's core competency, though. The rapper who once boasted that others wanted to "rap and make soul beats just like" him should not run from that destiny.

Kanye began his career as a talented jester, someone who could use self-deprecating humor and biting sarcasm to compensate for anxiety. He also was carried forward by the confidence in his product: he had refined rap's soul sound. That was evident on College Dropout, on the I'm Good mixtape, on one-off tracks "Would You Like to Ride" and "So Soulful," and most famously, on all his collaborations with Jay-Z. Ye was "killin' the game very bad."

As he's grown artistically, Kanye has strayed. Beginning with Late Registration and continuing now, through Watch the Throne, Ye has found catharsis and greater fulfillment as his music has morphed from the elemental hip-hop of his ascent to the larger pop vision of his reign.

But no matter how precise his instrumentation, and no matter how catchy his synthesizers, Kanye remains best at what he did first. He isn't a talented singer. His autotune experiments have generally been his worst music. The innovative fare normally sounds ever so charged, as though control over the medium is tenuous. And his rhyming, though more sophisticated, remains frayed at the edges. For instance, he has a bad habit of shoving too many syllables into a couplet and he can't always deliver lines cleanly. These flaws stand out more noticeably as the aspirations grow grander. Some of that owes to the redrawn lines within which he operates, and some of that owes to the innocence, humor, and good-nature Kanye has sacrificed in the name of stardom.

"Mama's Boyfriend" was arresting because it sounded like the bygone Kanye revived and improved. His sense of humor was easier and the pretense of the music was abandoned. Yet he had not surrendered the topical and narrative complexity learned on his travels beyond the traditional hip-hop form. Best of all, he had reverted to that soul-beat modality over which he always sounds best. Soul music is a comfort zone for Kanye. He leaves himself a greater margin for error, and the music better accommodates the traces of clunky rapping that he'll never shed. And those are all attributes of a song he didn't even intend to make, which only further argues for a return, even if not permanent, to what will always be his home.

It would be nice to have an old friend back more often.

18) My Morning Jacket, "Circuital"

There are two rock bands whose music I listen to contemporaneously: Pearl Jam and My Morning Jacket. (Everything else is retrospective. I only heard Tommy from beginning to end for the first time a few months ago. I listened to my first Arcade Fire album last year. Make whatever jokes you must.) Pearl Jam is the greatest American rock band of all time, and I've made no secret of what they mean to me. My Morning Jacket will never be as good, but they are better than anything else I know. I don't have a great vocabulary for music writing, and mine is particularly limited with regard to rock acts, but anything good that a person can say about rock music applies to MMJ. They are expert musicians, Jim James's voice is distinctive, and their music feels great. "Circuital" puts a lot of the band's best on display.

17) DJ Khaled ft. Lil' Wayne, Drake, and Rick Ross, "I'm on One"

This is the one you've heard. It was catchy, even with the retarded guy screaming at the beginning.

*takes shower*

16) Pete Rock & Smif-N-Wessun ft. Sean Price and Styles P, "That's Hard"

It's hard to go wrong with a "Seed of Love" sample, a Pete Rock beat, a guest spot from Styles P, or a guest spot from Sean Price. If you combine all of those elements, you're something like 90% of the way to a dope rap track. Still, something, or someone, has to account for that last 10%. Sticking with the track's theme, it's hard to go wrong with Smif-N-Wessun, particularly when the task is so limited. Hold those built-in advantages against this track if you must, but you'll probably better enjoy just genuflecting and appreciating all of the good.

15) Gangrene ft. Roc Marciano, "Sewer Gravy"

A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-Alchemist. That's all.

14) The Roots ft. P.O.R.N. and Truck North, "Kool On"

For a band as accomplished and curious as the Roots, they haven't done funk or blues all that often over the course of almost twenty years. "Kool On" argues for more of that union. Well mixed, with that vocal wail and bluesy guitar riff starring alongside the rappers, the track steams along at a brisk pace without hurrying. P.O.R.N. and Black Thought sound especially comfortable in these new environs, and the track comes to a startling end because it sounds like it could, and should, continue on in perpetuity.

13) M83, "OK Pal"

This is an exciting song. Optimistic and big, it feels freeing. It also vaguely calls to mind 80s progressive pop and rock, largely due to the repeated shouts and the squirrely synthesizers that pop up to fill what little empty space is permitted.

12) Yelawolf ft. T.I. and Slaughterhouse, "Hard White (Up in the Club" (Remix)

Let me be clear: I didn't miss T.I. I was never his biggest fan, and I felt particularly alienated after he came to St. Louis during his farewell tour and cursed out the crowd for two hours. Since his release from jail, the loose tracks and guest verses have been mixed. This, though, was a perfect comeback for him. He got to play with his flow. He got to move from island to island as the the music streamed by and collect himself, emphasizing the negative space with Jigga-like presence. Something about T.I. has always felt like a projection, a ruse. On "Hard White," the charade was perfectly apt. And Slaughterhouse, forever better as an idea than on record, came in a single serving that satiated whatever appetite remains for the experiment.

11) Blu, "The Clean Hand"

Blu + Peter Rock = straight dope. Pretty sure Pete Rock made this for something/someone else, and I know I have heard it before, but I can't place it. Anyone who can help gets a prize. This sort of basic, well-executed hip-hop will always hit my ears in a special way. Could listen to this forever.

10) Action Bronson, "Larry Csonka"

After Freddie Gibbs, Action Bronson is my favorite technician. He is not as versatile or as commanding as Gibbs, but he has his strengths beyond an astounding verbal dexterity. For one, his verses are dense and rich with references and jokes that only register on repeat listens. Or sometimes in the shower, on the way to work, in the middle of a meeting. You know. And for another, he can't help but keep the lights on. While many hear Ghostface's rhyming style in Bronson, the two MCs are probably linked even more closely by the energy both exude. Like Ghost, Bronson's presence is never understated because his personality will not allow it. Bronson is not as colorful as Starks, but he has undeniable charisma and enough eccentricity to rightly command a devoted following. "Larry Csonka" shows it all off.

9) Curren$y ft. Freddie Gibbs, "Scottie Pippen"

Things a rapper can do to curry my favor: a) invoke Scottie Pippen; b) get Freddie Gibbs to rap on your song; c) pick beats as well as Curren$y. Q.E.D.

8) Money Making Jam Boys, "Tear It Down"

Yet another track that just sounds the way hip-hop should. Admittedly, there are some corny lines on this track, but it deserves some latitude because it is a brooding, engaging posse cut that hits way more than it misses.

7) Freddie Gibbs ft. Smoke DZA and Chace Infinite, "Keep It Warm for Ya"

Oh, hey, Statik Selektah.

More vintage Gibbs, so much so that he compensates for a middling Smoke DZA and a worthless Chace Infinite. Freddie is aided by a smooth, soulful soundscape that is pristine enough to be under glass. The beat has an aching to it that heightens the sexuality of the lyrics but also feels out of place given the way Gibbs raps about women. Whether that contrast was deliberate or not, it helps to bring the track further to life.

6) Killer Mike, "That's Life 2"

The hardest track of the year, without question. A song that all but retires the concept of "real talk" and holds everyone who should be held accountable so close to the fire that they surely incurred some burns. Killer Mike spits venom, crippling verses that cut to the core of what's on his always-political mind. Clowning political rappers became a sport long ago, and there are many who embarrassed themselves, facilitating the dismissals. Further, rap's power as a social medium, and a medium for change, is invariably overstated by those who want to believe it. Yet "That's Life 2" rises above the cynicism by refusing to compromise and sparing no targets, even if it would be easy or excusable. Probably the most overlooked record of 2011 given the fodder for meaningful discussions that it provides.

5) 9th Prince & Midaz, "Thundercats"

Second hardest track of the year? The drums on this record would make Black Milk proud, and the pyroclastic flows are appropriate for anything from RZA's younger brother. (Imagine if it were GZA's.) It's not entirely clear whether this track is better for the eve of a death match, a football game, a job interview, a marathon, or a bar exam, but it would surely suit any of them.

4) Bronze Nazareth, "King of Queens"

Sample of the year. Tell Ivan.

3) Meek Mill ft. Rick Ross, "I'ma Boss"

Did anyone else hear this song? It wasn't on the radio very much and I heard no other rapper use it for a freestyle.

For those who missed it, Meek Mill raps with the intensity and urgency of someone running on a hamster wheel that keeps the Earth spinning. The production accommodates him by sounding as though the world is ending and that looking back as you sprint away from the destruction will do you in. It is a monster track. I couldn't help but love it. Nor could I avoid mimicking Meek Mill's exaggerated fake yelling when grocery shopping: "Thank god all these yogurts I got/All this lettuce I've been getting/All this popcorn I popped."

One lingering question, though: Why "I'ma" instead of "I'm a"? The former turns "boss" into an action word: "I will boss later when I get dressed"; "I am bossing as we speak"; "I didn't get enough crab meat at lunch so I bossed." Is that deliberate? Has boss become a verb with specific meaning? Does it owe to Meek Mill's Maybach Music Group affiliation? Perhaps Rick Rozay has insisted upon it in recognition of all that he's done for the word "boss." It that context, "I'ma boss" might mean "I will do what Rick Ross does." Is there clarity on this? Just a thought.

2) Nas, Nasty

"Sit back and roll a mean Swisher/For my G's/Tell these clowns make room for the king, n***a." King indeed. Nas raps so well on "Nasty" that to explain it with a common hip-hop vernacular would be inadequate, and to describe its technical merit would obscure the forest with an endless series of trees. "Nasty" is the difference between Blake Griffin and Timofey Mozgov dunking, one so appreciably better than everything else in the same category that casting it in those very terms is almost an insult.

If you're still alive after watching that, let's just agree that Nas is a beast.

1) The Dream, "Body Work/Fuck Your Brains Out"

Rarely does a song so effortlessly make clear that you're in the presence of greatness, but "Body Work" accomplishes that most difficult task.

To start, the Dream is a truly gifted songwriter. Beyond composition basics, he exercises a flair for alternative phrasing that expresses his ideas from thirty degrees to the left, sixty-four to the right, and so forth. On "Body Work," he articulates a sensual, conflicted vision that is derived from common themes. Yet the details he conveys and leaves out, like the scenes he arranges, are captivating because we may know what will happen, but we have never before watched from this particular vantage point. In other words, the Dream is not unique for being a lothario; he is unique for being this lothario.

Dream also is distinguished for assembling a sweeping musical landscape that is, by movement, post-industrial concrete and steel, then gauzy R&B, and then guitar-driven funk of the sort that commonly dresses in purple. Lining up these styles is one thing. Uniting them is another, but he pulls it off, and the result is dazzling. "Body Work" is viscerally exciting for being so different, so creative, and so good.

The Worst Songs of 2011

2011-12-19T19:30:00.000-05:00

Just as the NBA playoffs often skew memories of a given basketball year--the proving grounds offering a definitive judgment--so, too, can memorable albums improve an otherwise unremarkable music landscape. For instance, 2003 may not have been an especially good year for music, but The Listening, The Black Album, Speakerboxxx, Pete Rock's Lost & Found, Philadelphia Freeway, Get Rich or Die Tryin', and Champion Sound all dropped during those twelve months. That is a year that still means something, and it takes on an epochal feel as time moves forward.

Singles fail to make the same impact. They are regular-season basketball, spawning specific memories and informing a general sense but rarely writing a lasting story. Individual songs are more fun, though. Compiling a list of dope tracks accommodates whimsy in a way that the serious business of cataloging albums does not. Song lists more fully capture the range of emotion that informs favorite music; the more rigid ordering of records does not. (Particularly because album lists always appear to be a statement of identity as much as a proper accounting for the finest full-length recordings.) Really, recalling a great song is not much different from fondly remembering that one night when Terry Cummings hit for 52.

Over this past year, I wrote about music far less often than I used to, and far less often than I would have liked. I didn't stop listening, though. Forever a hater, I certainly did not stop finding reasons to judge. If anything, I am only now arriving at a period of life that better explains the disposition I've carried for years.

Below is one man's somewhat elaborate attempt at catching up. I begin with the songs that I either hated or found otherwise notable. None of these made the best-of cut. The best come tomorrow. Top albums later on.

Enjoy. Leave comments. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. There really isn't much on the line.

9 Songs That Deserved to Be Better

- DJ JS-1 ft. KRS-One and Rahzel, "Boom Slap"

To be fair, this was a trap from the outset. It's a wonderful, throwback sort of a beat for a song explicitly about schmaltzy hip-hop nostalgia. KRS-One is an obvious choice for the ceremony. His banalities are hardly excused, though. At this point, the KRS track on which he takes stock, chastises, and seeks the ideal should be retired.

- Big Sean ft. Dwele, "Celebrity"

The musical arrangement, with that pleasant Dwele backing and the soft melody, are great. Now we just need a rapper to spit over it.

- MF Doom & Ghostface Killah, "Victory Laps"

No Starks-Doom collaboration has yet found the right chemistry. "Angels" was the soundtrack from a dream set-up gone awry, a blind date during which neither of the two ever felt comfortable. "Chinatown Wars" sounded like a mashup created by some mixtape DJ. The principals never needed to be in the same room. "The Mask" has come the closest, perhaps because the beat is somewhat jolly without hurrying along. It was commodious enough to accommodate two outsized personalities and never somber so as to rob Dennis and Daniel of their cheek. But even "The Mask" failed to draw out either MC's best; the song has a workmanlike character and lacks passion.

"Victory Laps" is another failure to launch, though it gets close. Doom sounds energized, and his characteristic command of assonance is on display. If not his wittiest rhymes, the bars Doom spits resemble the form he found when his career crested after releasing MM...Food. Really, and it hurts my heart to say this, the problem is Ghost. He doesn't sound into it, and the piano-driven beat doesn't catch his voice well.

I hope they keep trying, but I understand if they don't.

- Ron C, "Starchild"

Ron C spins his wheels without getting very far, and he gives an off-kilter beat room to breathe at confusing intervals. Alchemist put together a curious sound that a better rapper could likely turn into something memorable.

- Drake ft. Rick Ross, "Lord Knows"

Obliterating Drake is fashionable. I diss him freely on Twitter, so I have not come here to lecture anyone. Frankly, I find the lectures tiresome and somewhat specious. I agree that insulting his manhood by mocking his divergence from hip-hop's contorted archetypes for masculinity is neither fair nor coherent. I also agree that he has tried to be his own man and create his own style. Where I part ways with the Drake defender is at the idea that Drake's efforts to be Drake have intrinsic merit that enhance his music. Most of the glowing Drake reviews that anoint Take Care as an album of the year make a special point to highlight the courage behind Drake's honesty and the sneaky wit buried beneath his punch lines. Drake has succeeded in convincing the hip-hop intelligentsia that how he got here is more important than what he's doing.

Only, it isn't. Drake has a weak voice and a penchant for commonplace images. His singing, a staple on every song, wears thin quickly. He is smart enough to rhyme with complexity, but he often just opts for low-hanging fruit. In his music, he raps about his ambivalence as he loses himself amid hundred-dollar bottles, gold chains, groupies, and celebrity. How dreadful! Poor boy. Somehow, this has convinced critics that he is relatable, and they praise Drake for it. The Drake critics salute for this struggle remains a rapper inclined to run over to your girlfriend and tell her he would never speak to her so rudely. He is a man forever fascinated by the specter of finding love at a strip club, and he vacillates--sometimes within the same verse--between sensitive normal guy and the trillest deity among the thugs. Sure, Drake exposes his intermittent emotional frailty, and that can be seductive. Drake can seem normal, and he probably is. But so are rappers like Murs and Phonte, and they aren't inclined to punish us with boring tripe like "Marvin's Room" and "Headlines," nor establish an identity so readily dislikable.

That, then, is why people call Drake a herb and bust on him so willingly: now ubiquitous, Drake is not all that appealing and his music is not especially good. What else are we to do? "Lord Knows" captures all of these Drake problems. He can't really stand up to the beat, he walks through his litany of contradictions, and his rapping is adequate. To me, and to many, that's where the song, and Drake, should end. OK, and next... Only the culture surrounding him, and hip-hop, has taken this pedestrian fellow and elevated him. I'd rather that someone who could truly work with this production--maybe Jay-Z should have insisted on this for something as grandiose as Watch the Throne--reward Just Blaze with a sterling effort.

P.S. Rick Ross gets an unfair advantage. The beat drops out, making his verse more dramatic. Still, he wins this track, his fictional persona as relaxed and domineering as ever. He is a wonderful invention.

- Jay-Z and Kanye West ft. Frank Ocean, "No Church in the Wild"

An appropriately underwhelming track that opened a bitterly disappointing album. The brooding nature of the winding bass line is great. Frank Ocean provides an auspicious atmosphere. Jay comes on and effects a terse delivery that suggests mystery, a deep breath before the plunge. And then Kanye fucks it up by autotuning and sneering. The sneering wouldn't be so discouraging were it delivered cleanly. However Kanye has always struggled to spit syllables discretely, and there is a creeping clumsiness that disrupts the track. Acting as though you're the king of the world is exposed as a charade when you fail to walk the walk. Which, in this case, would have been talking the talk with precision.

- Pusha T and Tyler, the Creator, "Trouble on My Mind"

You know what? Tyler's verse on this song doesn't work. His voice is too low and his cultivated creepiness rings hollow. He disrupts the rhythm that Pusha and a great beat establish. No OFWGKTA fetish can change that. Sorry.

Pusha's opening bars on this shit are "Track-Come-on-of-the-Year"-quality, too.

- CyHi da Prynce ft. Big Sean, "Woopty Doo"

Oh, come on--who left the children unsupervised in the studio? Look at this mess! There is Cheeto dust on the boards, I see a bottle of Pepsi spilled in the corner. And--wh--are you kidding me? SERIOUSLY?! Fuck. Look at my speakers. They're destroyed. I can't believe someone left these two in here with all the good equipment. You know they can't possible use it or respect it. Ohhhhhh--and they recorded over the "Woopty Doo" instrumental. That was going to be dope. Now it's ruined.

- Raekwon ft. Ghostface Killah and Rick Ross, "Molasses"

Hurts My Heart, Pt. 2: Ghost kind of took an L this year. He doesn't have to win all the time, and after some of his recent misfires, maybe a little time away is a good thing. But still, never fun to hear something new from Ghost and come away let down.

Given the streaks Rae and Rozay have been on over the last few years, coupled with Ghostface being one of the three or four best rappers ever, you'd expect more than a forgettable remake of "Shadowboxin'." If anyone ever actually did wonder "Would Rick Ross sound good as a member of the Wu-Tang Clan," the answer is a resounding "no."

10 Songs That Might Be Described as Goofy

- The Game ft. Lil' Wayne, "Red Nation"

It figures that these two dudes, each of whom can be reckless in the name of musical experimentation, would turn a slowed-down Zombie Nation track into some kind of gang rebellion anthem set in Skynet-controlled Los Angeles.*

*Don't let Wayne see this. He might try to record a rock concept album about the idea.

- Lonely Island ft. Michael Bolton, "Jack Sparrow"

Goofy in a good way, mostly because I like the Pirates movies and experience no shame for it, all the while understanding that they're not good.

- Soulkast ft. Ghostface Killah, "World Wild"

Why yes, this is ecstatic French disco hip-hop.

- A$AP Rocky ft. A$AP Ferg, "Kissin' Pink"

Please pardon me, but I need to have a conversation with A$AP Ferg:

Ferg, what was going through our head when you recorded this song? You come on the track sounding like Hair Bear from the Hair Bear Bunch, so there's that. Then, you say you want to "chop and screw a girl." I get it. You'll take your time, and you'll both be so far gone off that lean that it will be like zombie fornication or something. But has that line worked for you before?

- Mobb Deep, "Conquer"

Once upon a time, Canibus and LL Cool J took turns killing each other. History probably does not venerate their feud since Canibus devolved into a trivia answer and LL Cool J became an actor with limited range. Theirs is a music feud harder to preserve for adoration than Eazy-E against Dr. Dre. Measuring the ether levels on a per-song basis, though, the Canibus-LL beef stacks up against any. Plus, it never ended in a celebrated armistice, unlike, to name just a few, the Black Republicans, the embarrassing-movie assimilation enjoyed by both Ice Cube and Common, or however we describe the awkward detente reached by 50 and the Game. Frozen in time, though perhaps obscured, "2nd Round Knockout" and "The Ripper Strikes Back" represent a particular moment.

So imagine my surprise this fall when I heard P and Hav disinter the beat over which Canibus was murdered. It is impossible to move beyond that fact, just as it would be hard to watch a movie at the Ford Theater.

- Drake, "Practice"

What was I just telling you people? Cf. discussion of "Lord Knows." Yeah, this guy should be on my radio every four minutes.

- Freeway, "For the Paper"

Among the simpler rules in my household: if a Bond movie is on television, it gets recorded. Thus I settled in to watch Diamonds are Forever recently. Past the halfway point, as Bond is preparing to unravel a Blofeld scheme, he visits the Whyte House, a fictional casino in Las Vegas. This is a critical plot point for reasons that, had I never seen this movie before, I now would never be able to recount. Instead, I would conclude my recap by explaining, "Next, Bond goes to a casino in Las Vegas and eventually he saves the world. I got distracted by the Freeway beat playing at the Whyte House." Huh?

Listen to Freeway's "For the Paper" (he's on Team Early, FYI):

And now listen to the Whyte House theme from Diamonds are Forever:

Freeway's people and I share movie taste.

- Phonte ft. Zo!, "Return of the Mack"

My friends and I once embarrassed ourselves and the subsequently offending DJ by relentlessly requesting the Mark Morrison original at a club in St. Louis. We were the last ones on the dance floor. Then we did this again at a wedding. We were the last ones on the dance floor. It's nice to know that if he ran in our circles, Phonte would be there with us.

- The Game, "Born in the Trap"

Is it strange that Game is on this list twice? Absolutely not. His actions over the course of his career belie any protestations to the contrary. When he retires, dies, or suffers from whatever happened to Cam'ron, the opening paragraph of the career obituary must include how resolutely the Game attempted to play himself. Track after track and album after album, no matter how often the Game was derided for name-dropping and facile nostalgia, he retrenched and pushed forward. It happened again this year because, well, the Game put out more music. On this latest addition to the catalog, Game talks about your favorite rappers and throws in a Toni Kukoc reference because, well... (*remembers that he mentioned Terry Cummings above*).

- Lil' Wayne ft. Rick Ross, "John"

This was the first of two "I'm Not a Star" remakes which Wayne and Rozay released this year. I have no fucking idea why. The original was an apt opening for Teflon Don. The first cover, "John," was almost insulting because it was presented as something new and then played ad nauseum without any mention that it had been originally released a year earlier. The third entry in the "I'm Not a Star" trilogy, "9 Piece," was straight bad. It proved that if you distill "I'm Not a Star" down to its essence, you're left with "I'm smoking dope/I'm on my cellphone/I'm selling dope/Straight off the iPhone." This whole farce was just bad science, and I can't imagine it will survive peer review.

5 Remixes of Note

- Nas, "Book of Rhymes" (Urban Noize Remix)

I had never known about Francis and the Lights before I heard this song. I am pretty sure that my life would be no different today were I still ignorant of such bland pop music. That said, "How Could You" imbued "Book of Rhymes" with a sweet character that would sound good in a Cameron Crowe movie. Hard to believe someone got that out of a track originally made by Alchemist. Also, "How Could You" is great music to keep on while memorizing rules of evidence for a bar exam. Pro tip?

- Madlib ft. Cappadonna, "Black Boy" (Remix)

Sorry, but no link. The internets don't know this song. Pity, because Madlib rejuvenates a track that's now almost fifteen years old, so much so that I thought it was new upon first listen.

- The Clipse ft. Pete Rock, "Wamp Wamp" (Remix)

I actually managed to write about this back in February.

- Curren$y, "Rain Delay"/Styles P, "Rainy Dayz" (Remix) Freestyle

Just because we should #neverforget--both the unreal original, which remains a hip-hop litmus test for any rapper who claims to be of consequence, and the smooth, soulful remix. A remix that deserves a spot in any conversation about the best reinventions of all time.

- Freddie Gibbs, "Talkin' Greasy

And on the subject of reinvention, let's not allow the year to end without acknowledging that no rapper was ever better suited to rip an Allen Iverson beat than Gangsta Gibbs.

Dip Set Song of the Year

- Lonely Island, "We're Back"

The Heatmakerz would be impressed by this production. If only Ruger Rell had spit a guest verse.

3 Reminders That Madlib Pwns

- Madlib ft. Jay Dee, "Louder"

A nostalgia pick for sure, and a simple song, but it brims with creative energy. Further, there is just something reassuring about remembering Jaylib.

- Madlib, "Cold on the Blvd"

This instrumental came from the project with Freddie Gibbs, but its mood, style, and tempo all suggest Madvillain. Make it so.

- Black Star, "Fix Up"

Neither Mos nor Talib is what he once was, but they sounded recharged together over a crackling Madlib beat.

5 Worst Songs of the Year

- Dev, "In the Dark"

The horn riff on which this entire song is premised is torturous. It sounds like Dev hired the Mos Eisley band for a techno track. Why did that strike her as a good idea? Why did it strike Kanye West as a good idea? And then, why did this putrid, grating dog-whistle of a song attract an audience? It is not even catchy. I understand that sometimes, even bad music takes on life because it has elements that are inescapable. This, though, is the opposite: unapproachable. You cannot get near this thing because of that awful horn, which also resembles generic clarinet-driven pop a girl I once dated brought back with her from Albania. It sounds like something Marco from Tropoja would like. Is that the game you want to play?

- Chris Brown ft. Busta Rhymes and Lil' Wayne, "Look at Me Now"

Let's cut our losses right now and agree that indeed, it is just so cool when Busta Rhymes does that fast-rhyming thing. But please be fair and acknowledge that we all already knew he could do it, and that he's done it on far better songs, like "Iz They Wildin' Wit Us." If we can stipulate to that, there's no reason to ever again listen to the awful, looping pops, drips, and whistles of "Look at Me Now."

Also, before anyone else does so, let me say it: no, I do not like high-pitched, nasal horn music. Likely a terrible foible, but that's just how it goes.

- Kelly Rowland, "Motivation"

Meandering. Singing that comes dangerously close to whining. Few points of entry where a listener could find something redeeming or engaging. No wonder it was in heavy rotation.

- Bad Meets Evil, "Lighters"

Honestly? Fuck you with this. I shouldn't have to say anything else.

- All songs, commercials, jingles, t-shirts, hats, backpacks, stickers, Facebook pages, promotions, award shows, cities, housing development, book clubs, synagogues, energy drinks, energy strips, condom rappers, movies, magazine features, websites, talk shows that have anything to do with Pitbull

In our lowest-common-denominator society, Pitbull is the musician we deserve. How terrible.

Previously on Survivor

2011-11-02T20:35:00.003-04:00

Life felt desperate to the Upolu tribe last Wednesday on Survivor. Upolu had just endured another wrenching, disorienting visit to tribal council, this time having lost a big lead when it couldn't use a massive slingshot to fire coconuts at oversized wooden masks accurately enough. At the subsequent reckoning, the usual melodrama engulfed its members. Jeff Probst, as only he can, asked questions that purposely tore at the seams holding the blue tribe together, and the governing inner circle did its best to advance an agenda and manipulate the vote. Some of the answers were honest and, accordingly, disarming. Others were so clumsy that the contrived attempts at projecting control were hilarious. (Sitting at tribal council noticeably holding back a grin has earned its place in a diagnostic manual for stupidity.) Crying for no good reason and deploying ever more of his evangelical malapropisms, Brandon was characteristically unstable and chilling.

When a few pounds of flesh had been extracted, Upolu discarded Mikayla, the physically capable lingerie-football player whose clipped sentences, taciturn demeanor, and awesome rack had alientated, respectively, me, a majority of her tribe, and Brandon (who suspected she was the Whore of Babylon after arousing his lust). Edna, a frail and bland gal who perpetuates the archetype of the submissive Asian woman, survived for at least another week. But Edna received a sizable plurality of votes, and Upolu was left to stumble around in the dark as it sought an explanation for its voting rift and a strategy to beat an opposing Savaii tribe that was suddenly stronger and more cohesive. As you might expect, in this darkest of hours, Upolu turned to God.

Convening his weary, disspirited tribe on the camp beach the next morning, "Coach" Ben Wade, Upolu's putative leader, stipulated that Upolu would search for an immunity idol hidden around camp. (Yes, only one person may use such a totem to stave off elimination, but that was of no consequence. Inexplicably, a misguided subculture that posits it can be a tool of group power has developed around the idol.) Coach believed that running through the jungle with a common goal would reignite tribal loyalty and boost morale. Before embarking on the journey--one that, we should note, was a fool's errand since Coach already had the idol hidden in his possession--Coach barked that everyone had to huddle up. There, with his tribemates grasping each other arm over arm, Coach began to pray, carrying the group with him. Coach did not rely on scripture or something traditional. His prayer was far more literal and immediate, the sort that athletes often invoke. "God," said Coach, "help us find this immunity idol. We do it in your name and we will give you all the glory should we succeed, but don't leave us hanging. Whatever you're doing, put that aside, focus on Survivor, and help us find the immunity idol."

It was a solemn moment for Coach, and it went on for a while. A repetitive prayer, Coach asked God again and again to intervene on Upolu's behalf as it searched for something he considered so critical, the idol. Coach was completely serious, and not at all embarrassed, neither for being dishonest, for being so vulgar, nor for being didactic. If at any moment Coach had been hesitant to draft God's good will into the service of something actually so silly, or if he ever were uncertain about how his tribemates would feel, we never saw it.

Therein lied a subtle masterstroke that demonstrated the sustained brilliance behind Survivor. Unquestionably, the series has remained compelling because its central premise draws from the inexhaustible well of social competition. But so did Joe Millionaire and any number of competition-driven reality shows that came and went after spending their initial capital. Survivor has become a historic television brand because it is exceptionally well crafted--well crafted enough to consistently inject religious zealotry and an attendant humor into staid primetime culture without offending anyone. No small feat.

Conspicuous piety rests comfortably and reliably on Survivor's periphery, never central to the show but always within view. Commonly, a contestant will act like Coach and pray aloud for good fortune, or kiss a cross that dangles around his or her neck. Almost always propitiating God, Lord Jesus, or Christ, a contestant beseeches the divine for intervention in a small matter--victory in a race to ignite fire, haste in a dash to assemble a puzzle and unfurl a flag, good luck when chores around camp are assigned. Over the years, God has uncovered hidden idols and delivered rewards. God's gaze has helped contestants craft strategy based on whom else has seemed like "a Christian" or, presumably better, "a good Christian." Bonds have been forged between "prayer warriors." Deception, selfishness, cruelty, delusion--all wiped away thanks to God's unyielding interest in Survivor outcomes.

The non-religious viewer can't help but scoff, if not laugh. I know because I am one. I have tuned into Survivor on a weekly basis for the better part of a decade, and still, in Season 23, I remain quick to text my sister or email my friends with a joke when one of our folks starts explaining that the Christians will get to eat the conconuts or visit the natural water slide. Infusing something so prosaic and ultimately meaningless with hefty religious ideology is absurd to the point of hilarity. And producer Mark Burnett knows it, because Survivor is, if nothing else, sublimely edited. With cameras rolling at all hours for six weeks, Survivor's producers have no shortage of content to whittle down into the narratives that carry a season and confessionals that make the audience care about the contestants. Yet, without fail, the show lingers on religious moments, winking at viewers by granting greater latitude as the juxtaposition between the import of religion and the insignificance of the Survivor context is amplified. Survivor understands how a viewer like me watches the program, and it encourages my incredulity.

Survivor goes on to eat its cake, too, not settling to merely have it. Viewers like me regard Coach's religiosity as obscene--it is neither merited by the stakes nor welcomed on an inoffensive network reality hour. Other viewers, religious viewers, surely look on approvingly. I don't have hard evidence, but two things: First, America is a Christian nation, so there's that. Second, Survivor is famously responsive to its audience. The producers tinker with the format from season to season when fans howl about flaws. Host Jeff Probst, who deserves a spot on reality television's Mount Rushmore, is as accessible a public figure as there could be, with the blog posts, behind-the-scenes videos, and twitter responses to prove it. And after eleven years, the show remains a staple of the primtime lineup for the most-watched network on television. Survivor would not continue to enjoy its rarefied position in the cultural landscape were it alienating its audience year after year with contestants who, in some cases, are best defined by their public devoutness. The obvious displays of piety are received well by enough people to keep them coming.

The show pulls off this dichotomy--wry joke facilitator and earnest opiate peddler--because it has cultivated a culture of respect for the contestants. While Probst needles the aspiring survivors each week and then extends the laughter on season-ending reunion shows by dwelling on eccentricities, he also intuits where the line demarcating disrespectful falls, and he never crosses it. Probst's humanity sets the tone for the universe that orbits Survivor. Periodically taking detours to lead thoughtful racial dialogue or to compassionately wonder about a contestant's emotional frailty, he signals that the show gladly accepts its participants for whom they are, even if he reserves the right to have some fun. In turn, contestants fly their colors and the audience appreciates that nothing untoward is taking place.

Lesser network programs probably cannot dare swim in such murky waters. A perennial favorite, The Amazing Race, is the reality analog of a crime procedural, going through the motions of its competition. On Amazing Race, stories are basic and there is little digression into anything meaningful or risky. Many other network reality shows do not even attempted to incorporate daring subjects, opting instead for the low-hanging fruit of basic questions like what, exactly, people will do for money. That is how Survivor started, in a sense, but the similarities often end there, just as it is not fair to say that Janet Malcolm and Andrew Ross Sorkin are the same because they are both reporters. And to be certain, Survivor is not Frontline in a bathing suit. However, Survivor manages to hint at the serious and provide a platform for further thought without alienating its audience or debasing its contestants. That distinguishes Survivor from many of its supposed peers, and it is a fitting reminder of why the show should rightly be regarded as innovative and unrivaled.

Leave My Dad Alone

2011-08-10T16:09:00.001-04:00

Most stories about the NBA lockout and its competing parties have portrayed Commissioner David Stern as lugubrious, dishonest, cruel, all three, or something similar. A lot of good reporting has built this case. Beloved truth teller Nate Silver famously scrutinized league revenues while arguing that the NBA has exaggerated the supposed plight of floundering owners. That same week, Deadspin published an expose about the New Jersey Nets' accounting practices. And with meticulous rigor that should be a model for all journalists on any beat, the SB Nation team has captured every twist and turn. (If you scroll down, that link has all of the coverage from stalwarts like Tom Ziller and Andrew Sharp.)

Common to these reports and a majority of the coverage is the sense of disappointment: that basketball may go on a prolonged hiatus; that sports is again marred by legal wrangling; that NBA teams and their agents are being dishonest. Stern, as a representative for the owners and a face of the league, gets chided most severely. Memories of Stern's negotiating victories and solemn invocation about his pugnacious demeanor seem to drive the consternation. All those years of acerbic wit and Corleone-like calm leave Stern as the bully finally vulnerable. Each episode in the saga fuels the enmity. Bruce Arthur of the National Post, commenting on the NBA's bad-faith-negotiation NLRB filing, earned traction last week with his latest Stern scolding:

Now, the king seems old, all of a sudden; he seems hardened and grumpy, flat-eyed and mean. But perhaps that just has to do with his mission, which is a grim one. On Tuesday, one day after their first meeting in the month since the lockout was launched — one day — the league launched both a suit in federal court and a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board accusing the union of bargaining in bad faith, which presumably means Derek Fisher spiked the coffee with ecstasy tablets or something.

...

And to do that requires some ruthlessness, and a smattering of intellectual dishonesty — really, David, comparing NBA salaries to NFL salaries, apples to apples? — and it’s a shame, really. Stern tends to do what he believes is right, whether the rest of us agree, and now he is caught between the owners and the game, and he’s chosen a side. As one person who knows him puts it, “You don’t think he knows he’s 68, and this is his last deal? You think he doesn’t know he’s putting a blowtorch to his legacy if they lose a season?” It looks like it’s killing him. It probably is.

Arthur, like many commentators, is getting the story wrong, though. To be fair, every party involved is off the mark right now. NBA basketball does not suffer because of David Stern's ego or hard heart. Nor will the lockout drag on (no Ruff Ryders) solely because Stern and the owners avail themselves of common mechanisms, through the courts and the press, meant to facilitate agreement. The real problem is that everyone--players, owners, commissioners, writers--is neglecting the root problem.

The war going on outside is between different classes of owners, regardless of whether they realize it or even care. NBA economics are broken because a plurality of owners can afford to overpay for talent, and all the rest have to pay prices they can't afford in the aftermath.

Teams have spent years throwing too much money at everyone who is not a true franchise player. The result: almost everyone not named LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Derrick Rose, or Dwight Howard earns more than he's worth. (Almost--there are, of course, players justly compensated.) In a league with a salary cap complicated by byzantine exceptions that reward the wealthy, well-managed teams can survive, but only the rich have a true margin for error. San Antonio can game the system while New York wanders into one salary morass after another. Dallas or Los Angeles can pay too much for a player and either point to an already skewed market rate when seeking exoneration or embrace the role of an alpha market player unembarrassed to shift the salary scale upward. That's how positive our cash flows are. But Sacramento goes broke, New Orleans requires a bailout, Houston is forced to play sabermetric basketball, and Golden State must be sold.

NBA players should be hammering home this point in every possible format: in the press, on television, on Twitter, and on their sneakers while playing pickup hoops. Owner vs. Owner should be the wedge issue that the National Basketball Players Association drives into the heart of the labor stalemate. In lieu of narratives about billionaires versus millionaires or an iron-fisted commissioner seeking to break a union, the lockout story should be about revenue sharing, safe-harbor provisions for bad contracts, and finding a system that demands responsible ownership. Only, the players and the NBPA cannot fully advance this story; the players would lose too much money.

While the NBA's labor market has made operating costs unsustainable for most teams, it has enriched the players. A system in which owners with regular returns pay too much and drag every other team along has revised the compensation upward, leaving it at an artificially high level for second-tier stars all the way down to the most marginal of the rotation players. Spencer Hawes can poke Stern with as many sticks as he wants, but it would be far more courageous were he to tweet about how the contract he'll want when he becomes a free agent should be more reasonable than what today's market would otherwise deliver. Correcting what hurts the NBA is not in the players' collective best interest.

Collective bargaining is another culprit. NBA teams are competing businesses that happen to work together to set terms for the industry (how many minutes per quarter, standard player contracts, etc.) Normally, this would be illegal collusion, but collectively bargaining with the players union insulates the NBA and its labor process from antitrust scrutiny. An agreement that arises from good-faith, non-coercive bargaining in which everyone affected had a say is kosher. Collective bargaining is a great venue out of which a multi-employer bargaining unit like thirty aligned NBA teams can reach an accord with its workforce. Since conflicts between management and labor are such common concerns, the collective bargaining process makes sense. It is not a naturally great venue for settling differences among owners, though, and the adversarial nature of management versus labor can push intra-management issues into the background.

For all these reasons, then, most of the loud, angry criticism of Stern has seemed ill-considered. A nuanced problem like the NBA lockout has a solution that lies at the nexus of owner accountability, revenue parity, and players acting against their own interests. That's tricky stuff. There is neither an obvious villain nor any use for the simple, binary language employed in too much reporting. Further, a collective bargaining agreement can codify many portions of an ultimate answer, but it will not provide a panacea. Those seeking to cast Stern as this story's primary antagonist would be wise to badger away about revenue sharing; that is something that should be a part of the lockout conversation everyday. However, turning the NBA lockout into the David Stern psychodrama is silly, and it likely works against the latent fan interest at the heart of so much coverage.

Misguided Stern portrayals also too readily dispense with a critical point: the commissioner works for the owners. Fans, and apparently many writers, tend to view Stern as a steward of basketball. He is the sport's protector and advocate, equally accountable to a panoply of constituencies. This vision of Stern is partially correct. Stern has served as a basketball ambassador, and common sense dictates that what's good for the sport and its fans is ultimately good for its owners. However, amorphous basketball good will is fairly attenuated from the operating margins of most NBA teams, and when the business of basketball is in a crisis, Stern's primary constituency is the ownership group that keeps him employed.

Right now, NBA owners have given Stern a mandate to change a dysfunctional system, and to usher in that change through the document that drives so much of the NBA's business, the collective bargaining agreement. Amid the ongoing upheaval, Stern could inject many outstanding issues into the conversation, even if they are not in the owners' best interests. So far, he has seemed loath to even acknowledge them, and that surly disposition is what many people find galling. But the lockout process seems likely to drag on for a while, and the finished product may reflect the sensible compromise for which fans and writers are pining. You wouldn't know this from the reporting, though. Media coverage seems to regard a hard-line negotiation strategy--like that which Stern has pursued--as dishonest and unfair, never mind the realities of billion-dollar negotiations. And never mind that Stern and the owners are just as entitled to use all of the leverage they can find. It would almost be negligent not to do so.

Perhaps the hysterical reactions to fairly mundane posturing should be laid at the feet of President Obama, himself a basketball fan. Obama, after all, has taught the country that negotiation is about starting where the other side wants and then giving up even more. Just another way in which the media has been taken in, I suppose.

On Another Note

2011-07-30T09:43:00.005-04:00

N.B: The months of blog hiatus brought with them many pent-up thoughts about a range of topics. Rather than trying to force some context onto the site so that I can work off a foundation of ideas, I am just going in, particularly because I need to get back into a rhythm as a writer. So be warned.

The wasteful debt-ceiling wrangling wears on, and both media and politicians perpetuate the canard that this fight is worthy of the resources it has consumed. No one believes that as a long-term strategy, outpacing revenue with spending is a good idea. However, sustained stimulus spending in its many forms might be a necessary step backward in the short term to facilitate two steps forward later on. That is debatable, but it's a credible discussion. The notion that the debt-ceiling can only be raised if it is accompanied by deep spending cuts so that jobs can be created again is just nonsense.

The real fight should be, and should have been, over job creation. Politicians are generally cynical and motivated by the self-interest tied to reelection, so while I am frustrated that the primary problem has been relegated to the heath, I understand why. Similarly, national television media fight for advertising dollars; informing the public is no longer a true priority. "Breaking news" has become synonymous with perpetuating hysteria, all with the intention of getting people to watch a few more ads. So again, I understand why the media coverage of this fight has been so far off from what actually matters.

Acknowledging the sorry state of affairs in this country does not excuse neglecting true ailments, though, and that is why the deficit-reduction farce is consuming and dispiriting. With a stagnant economy characterized by growing inequities between the top wage earners and everyone else, by a mythical "rebound" that has carried corporations and oligarchs to profit but left everyone else behind, by unemployment that is demoralizing, the real fight should be over how America manufactures new jobs. Apple now sits on $72b in cash after another record quarter, and across the board, large corporations are again making money. However, they are not spending it in meaningful quantities on new jobs and new industries. And after winning a presidential election by promising that he would lead steps toward expanding a green economy that would transform the national energy portfolio, Barack Obama has perpetuated the status quo.

So the real source of all the recriminations and doomsday news coverage should be this simple question: why isn't the corporate sector spending its money on job growth? And people who care about America even pretending to fight off its steady decline should be wondering why no one is hammering home this point. Rather than invoking misleading sham economics to argue about an all but compulsory budgeting measure, politicians should be engaged in an effort to create new jobs. Reform the tax code to provide incentives for spending in growth industries. Manipulate Fed policy to push money through banks to businesses that might actually use credit. And apply some pressure in every way to the large companies that find it more profitable and prudent to buy back stock, deposit cash, and make internal improvements that do not yield new jobs, new products, or new ideas.

Taxes, forever the boogieman cited as the reason businesses can't lead growth, are as low as they have been in 61 years. However, the economy is also as bad as it has been in about as long. Raising the debt ceiling while cutting the social safety net that helped make the United States a superpower is not going to foster new industries or restore lost jobs.

What a Weird Place: A Love Letter

2011-07-29T17:36:00.002-04:00

The first meal that I ever ate in St. Louis was a parking-lot-pimpin' special at a Sonic on Kingshighway. I gleefully pulled up at this Sonic. After years of seeing tantalizing ads on New York television, I finally was in a market where I could do something about it. All that time quietly longing for the decked-out hotdogs, the alluring neon beverages, and the kinds of indulgent, fattening foods that were impressive even by fast-food standards was going to come to a close. Anyone who has eaten at Sonic likely knows that this story ends in disappointment and self-loathing.

I nestled my car next to one of those drive-thru order stations, I spoke to a pleasant-enough-sounding woman through the metal grate, I chose a meal saturated with bright colors and cheese sauce, and then I waited in my car. It was August, the humidity was out of control, and the sun made everything seem washed out. I hardly noticed, though, because I had picked up my lease at the dealer that day, and with the air conditioner cranked up, I sat in a fast-food parking lot and excitedly picked my way through my new owner's manual. Delirious from the excitement of having my own car and getting to eat at Sonic on the same day, it barely registered when the Sonic attendant rapped on my window while carrying a bag with grease stains on the bottom.

At that moment, a montage of Sonic ads played in my mind. There was some writing in red and yellow, lots of beautiful, unhealthy food exploding out of itself--tater tots in the chili in the burritos!--and a camera panning across all of it, conferring a sense of glamor. My dream came crashing down when I opened the bag and found a lukewarm hamburger in metal foil and french fries covered in a yellow glaze with a consistency that resembled melted plastic. The burger bun was mildly stale and had a sweet aftertaste that was disorienting. Then it hit me: I was sitting in a random parking lot, eating disgusting food, and seeking refuge from the heat inside a new car. I had really arrived in America. Can't say I wasn't excited.

Most of my early days in St. Louis resembled my first. I approached everything with enthusiasm that was not always earnest. For as much as I truly wanted to learn my way around and become familiar with the rhythms of my new home, I also was quick to draw comparisons to life in New York, juxtapositions which I knew I could exploit for the condescension value. I said "Missouruh" a lot. I kept eating fast food because I was lazy, I couldn't believe how abundant it was, and I thought I was doing something funny and novel. (This was never so. Joke on me.) I bemoaned that most buildings seemed compelled to post warnings that you couldn't tote your concealed weapon on the premises.

To be fair, I had little context for anything during my initial weeks. I moved to St. Louis for law school, and I arrived a few weeks before I would meet my classmates. For ten days of sustained 100-degree weather, I would venture out into the sprawl of my new, mid-sized city, return home with self-assemble furniture, and periodically call my family to tell them about oddities at a strip mall or the scale of the Target on Hampton. I was alone, and I had not yet arrived at an access point from which I could enter St. Louis life in a defined way. Left to fashion my own experience, it contained the usual mixture of sarcasm and honest inquiry. (I have built entire vacations using this epoxy to hold it all together.)

St. Louis left me wanting for a while. Nothing was open past 10, there was so much church that people parked at 45-degree angles on Sundays, and there was no street life. A select few stretches of two and three blocks scattered throughout the city will boast pedestrian traffic at times, but St. Louis is overwhelmingly a driving city with sad, lonely sidewalks. A driving enthusiast, I loved the time in my car. Don't get it twisted. But driving out of necessity begins to feel like any other life chore after a while, and in a place that has overlooked pockets of culture, walking around should not feel as alien as it does.

St. Louis also has a douchey streak: many men in striped shirts with dragons embroidered over them; hordes of women with fake hair, breasts, nails, and tans; aspirational nightclubs that charge token covers of two and three dollars just to say that there is one. In Clayton, the first town over, there are entire stretches where fifty-thousand-dollar millionaires congregate on weekend nights in class rings or dresses that they probably can't pull off anymore to talk about their duck-hunting clubs and their Cardinals. (I see you, Napoli. We all do.) To an outsider, particularly one from a city like New York, St. Louis can seem small, and even tacky.

The presumptions that rendered me an ugly, judgmental alien for most of my first year in law school were gradually challenged, and sometimes vitiated, as time wore on. Less intent on finding what made St. Louis different, I started seeking out what made St. Louis better.

Sitting almost 300 miles south of Chicago but not close enough to Arkansas to be southern, and lying far enough west for the East Coast to feel distant but not close enough to mountains for the city to take on any kind of rugged frontier character, St. Louis is an unassuming gem that defies easy categorization. It has a public park that rivals Central Park in scope, resources, and amenities. It has one of the most pleasant art museums you will find. The old Italian neighborhood can be as timeless and quaint as any Little Italy. The barbecue sauce doesn't rival Kansas City's, and the dry-rub ribs can't top those is Memphis, but the St. Louis barbecue culture is dedicated, serious, and tasty. Between Washington University and St. Louis University, the city churns out an intellectual class that has become a provincial but engaging local community. Rent is cheap, beer is cheap (and local), the movie theaters are clean and huge, and parking is generally easy.

When I started to learn about the city on these terms--its own terms--St. Louis was transformed into a wonderful place to live. More importantly, attending law school in St. Louis was converted from a New Yorker's cultural tourism into an American's assimilation.

St. Louis is much more like most of the United States than New York is. No surprise there. However, the ways in which St. Louis resembles elsewhere were important lessons for me to learn. When you spend too much time in New York without sustained, countervailing experiences, you begin to view Manhattan's wealth, Brooklyn's cool, and everything else as living ideals that are both precious and misunderstood. A New Yorker can easily buy into the notion that it's normal, and even desirable, to pay $2,300 a month for a studio apartment. Perversely, doing so just to claim that you live in the West Village becomes a badge of honor. Look what I can do. Similarly, a New Yorker can forget that a diner isn't always around the corner and open, that fashion need not be a statement made every time you step out on the street.

Cities like St. Louis can feel silly and second-rate; the people in St. Louis, and the rest of the country, can seem distant and different. As I demonstrated when I moved to St. Louis, this remove can metastasize into a cancerous worldview, one that treats most different things as inferior, and one that regards most other people with latent pity because they just don't get it. Beyond its kind people, cultural attractions, and good food, then, St. Louis gave a rich education that had nothing to do with law school. I felt worldly in a new way for having lived there, and it was the sort of reforming experience that deserves a place alongside the discussions of Paris and London which many people in Manhattan consider the only worthwhile forays into "foreign" culture.

It's not all lollipops and learning out in Missouri, of course. If you are white and middle class or richer, you play by a few rules which are forever controlling, even when not clearly articulated. And this, of course, assumes there are times when the rules aren't expressly stated. That's not often. It's likely that the first thing you will learn is that you should never go north of Delmar. People practically fell over themselves to warn me. What's north of Delmar? Well, duh--black people. And not just black people, but poor black people, the worst kind. You also learn that you shouldn't shop at the black Schnuck's. Why? Well, duh--you know.

However, St. Louis is not afflicted by modern day Jim Crow racism. Instead, the city's prevailing culture merely accepts the deep link between poverty and race, and it allows for a conversational shorthand that accommodates unspoken meaning. The stock answer for why you don't shop at the Schnuck's at Lindell Crossing is that it's "ghetto" or "shady." That's why you don't go to the Walgreen's across the street, either. And as everyone knows, those poor black people drive recklessly, break the law, and act all nuts, so seriously, never go north of Delmar. To be safe, don't even look in that direction.

I, of course, enjoy toeing the line. In this case literally, and so it was that my love affair with St. Louis dovetailed with my patronage of the gas-station convenience stores along Delmar. I was particularly fond of the Mobil station at Kingshighway and Delmar. I went in there the first time for a simple reason: my dangerous addiction to Lipton PureLeaf Iced Tea. Hard to find but always available at the Mobil, that tea drew me in. I went back weeks on end because it turned out to be so much more.

Not merely a collection of well-stocked freezer cases and endless rows of junk food, the Mobil station was a place of sumptuous dining (catfish nuggets, steak dinners, loaded baked potatoes), computer repair, internet connectivity (Wi-Fi hotspot!), cheap cigarettes, phone unlocking, retail fashions, cell phones, sexual stimulants, and wigs. It was a place where businesspeople in a rush waited on line behind drug addicts in a deep lean and no rush. It was a place that had a new concession nearly every week, a steady stream of disgruntled people in and around it, and ever thicker glass separating the sales floor from the staff. Naturally, I referred to it as Hamsterdam, especially when I was stopped and interrogated after the owner saw me taking pictures.

The Kingshighway Mobil also illustrated just how deep the social divisions run in St. Louis. Perched across the street from the northern boundary of what's considered safe, the Mobil was either a destination on the other side of the sociocultural Maginot Line which defiant types could cross to make symbolic gestures, or it was a weigh station at the border where under-served people could stop on their way into the part of town that reflects someone actually giving a shit. In this regard, it was very St. Louis, and I think it remains a fixture in my memory precisely because it easily allows me to veer off in any number of directions. That, in itself, is an odd but fitting tribute to St. Louis, a city that offers much more than your average New Yorker expects.

Feels good to be home. But also feels bad.

Celtics Go Hard in the Paint

2011-06-10T11:38:00.001-04:00

Late pass? This is fantastic.

What It's All About

2011-05-20T08:00:00.001-04:00

N.B: I graduate from law school today, and I was selected to serve as the student speaker. I am posting the text of my speech because I think it is important for people to consider the role of lawyers and what it means to become one.

Whatever my graduation says about me, it indisputably says a great deal about my parents, two loving, courageous, brilliant people whom I respect more than I could ever express. I have pursued my goals with zeal because to waste all that my parents have given to and done for me would insult their hard work and commitment to their children. I also wanted to succeed at school because I owed it to my sister, a witty, strong, and indispensable best friend who always believes in me. I am as fortunate as I am happy today.

Commencement Address

Despite what the publishing industry would have you believe, there is, in fact, no manual for law school. I know because I came to St. Louis with a basic problem: I hadn’t the faintest clue about what I was supposed to be doing while here. Something about reading a lot.

I received no shortage of suggestions. One friend told me to remember that the first year, they would scare me to death, the second year, they would work me to death, and the third year, they would bore me to death. I wasn’t quite sure who the “they” in that sentence was, but I got the point. Another friend sent me one of those vaunted guidebooks, Getting to Maybe. I read the first five pages and got to bored. Still more: treat law school like a job; use the IRAC system; take bar classes; take what you like; never take tax!

All of this conflicting guidance worried me. Like any proper law-school-bound neurotic, I needed a plan. On the eve of school, salvation arrived via email: a link to a Slate column by Dahlia Lithwick entitled "Letter to a Young Law Student." After months of boogiemen, warnings wrapped in jokes, and heavy declarations running the gamut from “all lawyers hate law school” to "you’ll meet your wife there," Lithwick, herself a lawyer, granted me license to stop worrying. Cloaked in sarcasm and disdain for the legal industrial complex of big law firms, her message was clear: make law school what you want it to be.

In Lithwick’s essay, grades didn’t matter and everyone got a job in the end. Nothing better captured the subversion she endorsed. Reflecting upon it now, that was easy for her to say. She wrote her column in 2002, and she had graduated from Stanford ten years earlier. Her experience surely reinforced the veracity of her own thinking.

Perhaps Lithwick would counsel us differently had she enrolled in law school amid historic financial upheaval and later marched from her graduation into the uncertain economic conditions that greet our class. Cynics might insist upon this revision, but to the contrary, more than ever, we should stop to appreciate Lithwick’s rousing insight. And I do not propose that lightly, so as to marginalize the jobless, for I was among them until this time last week, and I long envisioned that I would deliver this speech without an answer for the question of what I would do in the fall.

We should return to Lithwick’s letter because it hints at what made this experience rewarding, even if not always easy. Offering an antidote for law school’s prosaic rhythm, Lithwick advised that rather than replicate scenes from Paper Chase or succumb to the hysterical culture of competitive legal learning, students stop to question. She encouraged students to cultivate friendships, to ignore a hidebound industry and investigate the world. Like the many here who have studied abroad, completed internships, played intramural sports, volunteered, run student organizations, or even just gone to bar nights, I tried to heed this recommendation. In general terms, this is the engaged, larger life that a lawyer can lead, and no time has ever demanded this from us as today does.

The United States is a country in which seemingly no one understands what judges do; a country where reform in response to documented financial misfeasance cannot defeat entrenched special interests; a country where disenfranchising voters is as common as election day. This state of affairs is endemic of an unaccountability culture that imperils our way of life, and attempting to understand the severity of these threats can breed hopelessness.

As lawyers, we can complicitly extend the status quo rather than challenge it. It needs us, after all. If we work hard, keep our heads down, and earn our small slices, we can insulate ourselves from what it is that these challenges--political, social, cultural--represent, and the role that the law plays in them.

That shouldn’t be good enough for anyone here, though. Enriched by coursework and experiential learning, by conversations with each other, and by years spent in a city with complicated demographics, our class has seen the ways in which each of us can make a difference, however incremental. I am not inclined toward cloying optimism, and I am not inviting you to join me in the streets. I won’t be there. Instead, we all must apply the analytical skills, circumspect reasoning, and ethics that we take from law school to our everyday adult lives and lead by example. Lead as lawyers who remember that we are people, and as people who believe in the broad, valuable application of our legal training.

The graduating class is a bright, energetic group. I have seen it, and I am confident that we can carry this burden, even if only in small ways that ultimately add up. I find this heartening because the mechanics of legal education foolishly distract from its admirable goals. To wit: I don’t anticipate that our respective futures will include many instances when we feverishly type for three hours while consulting an outline containing a universe of issues related to a four-page set of facts that we read in five minutes.

However, we can connect seemingly disparate ideas at work. We can strip arguments down to their core, even if only to prove that Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David really are appropriate authorities on everything. Please remind my mother of this. We can look forward to a lifetime of understanding why convictions were upheld and stocks were bought back. Our legal education has gone far beyond briefs and contracts. It changed my own thinking, worldview, and personality for the better. I hope that everyone graduating today has enjoyed something similar, and that we all fight a good fight steeled by what truly mattered during this experience.

The Zach Randolph Family Band

2011-05-18T12:00:00.007-04:00

Over at the GQ NBA Playoffs blog, David Roth put together an oral history of Zach Randolph. I was asked to contribute some thoughts about Z-Bo from his tenure with the Knicks. You can read the entire post here, and you should, because some fantastic writers chipped in with other perspectives about Zach.

David did his usual best, wrangling many verbose writers and distilling the submissions into a potent collaborative effort. For those so inclined, I am also passing along my raw submissions, two epistles on Zach which I sent in as the post came together. I have made them one essay.

On Zach Randolph and the Knicks:

Unavoidably, watching NBA basketball can feel like measuring height with funhouse mirrors. Winning and losing distort perceptions so severely that divining an accurate portrait of a player often requires the light of day only available on the other side of the ride.

Zach Randolph has looked tall in the playoffs this year. Following a regular season during which his characteristic production helped to lead a winning team, Randolph's stature has grown as the Grizzlies have beaten the Spurs and assumed, largely without intention, the persona of plucky upstart, a rare and cherished NBA archetype. The impact of such favorable lighting and illusory effects will only become greater if Memphis beats Oklahoma City in a series that already suggests we will miss it dearly once over. It turns out that thrusting your shoulders into a defender’s chest, leaning back from twenty feet, and flipping up shots that require special knowledge of physics can look great. Those mirrors can be slimming, even.

Not long ago, Randolph appeared much shorter, of course.

To make a splash during his first month as New York Knicks president, Isiah Thomas brought Stephon Marbury home from the desert. The Knicks acquired not only Stephon, a talented malcontent with a huge contract whose previous teams all had improved once he left, but also Anfernee Hardaway, a name that greatly exceeded its actual value. The price paid to Phoenix for this championship nucleus was steep, naturally: Antonio McDyess, Charlie Ward, Howard Eisley, two first round draft picks, and two Europeans.

The Stephon trade was archetypal Zeke--mortgage the future for a high-priced, overvalued present composed of retreads, questions, and strife. Marbury’s tenure in New York went according to that plan, and disastrous personnel decisions became a New York signature. Eddy Curry, Maurice Taylor, Steve Francis, Jerome James, Jalen Rose, Jamal Crawford, and Jared Jeffries followed. Never forget, New York. With the ever-approving reinforcement of basketball slumlord and rich man’s son James Dolan, Isiah’s inept basketball choices were matched by the depravity of the franchise’s culture, one that countenanced a slash-and-burn approach to everything and always assigned blame for the consequences to someone else.

Zach Randolph joined the Knicks during these dark days, and he symbolized another elaborate mistake that perpetuated the misery. Recall that the Knicks acquired Randolph on draft night in the summer of 2007. By then, Zach had punched teammates, toted guns, and been accused of intimidating witnesses and sexually assaulting strippers. Z-Bo’s regular-season Knick debut came that fall, a month after a jury had awarded Anucha Browne Sanders more than $11 million as compensation for Thomas’s sexual harassment and the Knicks’ organizational hostility. The previous year, the Knicks had fought the Nuggets en masse after Isiah had told the team to do so. Foolish, incompetent, gallingly expensive losers, the Knicks were loathsome. Acquiring Randolph for Francis, two players with outrageous contracts, reinforced the common wisdom that Thomas mistook activity for accomplishment while tilting toward a windmill no one else saw. New York had devolved into a pathetic farce steadily, and Randolph’s arrival was another episode in a historically indecent series.

With Z-Bo on the team, the Knicks started 1-9 and lost a November road game to the Celtics by 45. That same month, Stephon Marbury took a two-day leave of absence from the team after reportedly exchanging punches with Thomas on a team charter flight. Into this toxic culture, the Knicks had inserted a player known for his indifferent defense, high-volume shooting, and confounding personal life, one further marred (and also made hilarious) by skipping a 2007 Trail Blazer game so that he could spend time at a strip club while on bereavement leave. The Randolph Knicks would go on to lose 59 games in a wash out of embarrassment, injury, and ugly basketball.

Amid this haze of dysfunction and losing, Randolph was odious, a reluctant passer and defensive liability. Jump shots early in a possession were infuriating, and his floor-bound post game usually inspired curiosity, disdain, or both. Z-Bo’s disorienting defense was a fitting complement. He played little of it, and just as some of his offensive decisions were met by blank stares of disbelief, so could his defensive apathy and lapses inspire incredulity. He wasn’t the only offender, but as the most recent addition to the marquee, Randolph was an easy target at which Knick fans could direct their seething enmity for Isiah.

So unfortunate was his tenure in New York that Randolph’s physique, alone, summed up that bitter era. Randolph has never been a chiseled physical specimen. He does not have an average athlete’s muscle definition, and at times, he has been out of shape and overweight. While playing for the Knicks, Zach was a ready physical symbol of the team’s faulty culture and absent professionalism. Fair or not, it was convenient to regard Zach’s body with contempt, to see it as proof that the Knicks simply did not care. And playing alongside Eddy Curry, so dense and massive that “black hole” is not merely a pejorative basketball metaphor, did not help. A weak bloated front line suited the weak, bloated roster.

Things have changed in Memphis. Winning has made Randolph’s unique offensive style appealing due to its limitations. No longer some overpaid, stumpy jump shooter, Randolph is a post-game J.J. Barea, plucky and successful in spite of his physical limitations. With a coach and teammates who won’t accept only playing on one side of the floor, Randolph is a more willing defender who has found ways to use his size without relying on leaping or blocking shots. No longer a reflexively derided doughboy, Randolph’s body instead gives his salvation story a sense of youthful innocence, while also making his success even more captivating.

Knicks fans should look on with muted satisfaction. It’s the right thing to do. Randolph may have contributed to the Knick malaise that sunk the franchise for a decade, however he was neither its root cause nor its primary accelerant. As is often the case on a losing team, he was both a reason and a victim. Randolph deserves esteem for rehabilitating his image and career. He is perhaps the most persuasive argument for never abandoning hope: If Z-Bo can get it together like this, so might the Knicks one day. And everyone would be well served to remember Randolph as an object lesson about the way we watch the NBA.

The Strong Move Quiet

2011-05-12T11:16:00.001-04:00

At the end of the day, most of Odd Future's music is not inviting. Rappers like Tyler are gifted lyrically, and the themes are momentarily gripping for their audacity, but the overall aesthetic of too many OFWGKTA tracks is harsh and discordant. The Frank Ocean record is a noteworthy exception, however obvious, and it portends more interesting, thoughtful music that is accessible. I actually like listening to Frank Ocean. I can't say the same of a record like Goblin. I was happy to have listened a few times, but now that I've scratched that itch, I look forward to spending time with the great volume of music that doesn't leave me disappointed by the production and overall sonic experience. I will not delve into a lengthy exploration of Odd Future's appeal, or pick up the complicated racial subjects that have surrounded their rise. That has been done many places. I will add, briefly, that the fascination with a group of teenagers among internets twenty- and thirty-somethings suggests that a sizable portion of OFWGKTA's appeal owes to a yearning among an older set of fans who grew up with hip-hop to stem the senses of alienation and aging out. If you own that new new, or at least proclaim to do so, it might make you feel like you're still in the vanguard, and that you do, in fact, get it.

Vices vary in hip-hop, and maintaining a grip on youth is one more form of the escapism that rap has always offered. Most music can transport a person in that regard. Were this not so, the well-worn notion of the petulant, overwhelmed teenager retreating from an unaccommodating world into his room to blare that loud, angry rock music would not exist. For me, at this point, and perhaps always, an enduring hip-hop indulgence is unaccountable hyper-masculinity. Rap music is still a place where you can smack a woman, beat a man, drink recklessly, slang drugs, fuck as you want, and indulge every other most basic impulse. Rage and greed find a constructive outlet in these fictions. No one--no one--stitches together these images like Sean Price.

Describe him as you will: street, hood, tough, gully, real. Sean P creates the most visceral music experience available, and he does this by flaunting the fantasy power of hip-hop. A Sean P verse is almost always grim, angry, aggressive, and explicit. With specificity and a detailed sense of the quotidian mechanics that go into all the bad things rappers like to rhyme about, Price offers his fans a safe space for danger. I have no actual desire to be a domestic abuser, to sell drugs, to lose myself to daily exercises in violences. The specifics are unappealing, frankly. Enjoying access to a place where I can let my guard down and dispense with the decorum and civility that inhibit thoughtless instinct is seductive, though. Sean Price takes me there. I would wager that despite the kernels of lived experience which inform his music, P knows full well that this is the dream world which his audience craves. And, I would guess that he also understands that he is so popular with a certain set of fans like me precisely because so many of us know better than to ever do what he says.

And Back Again

2011-05-08T16:01:00.003-04:00

My road trip ended yesterday in the place where it began, St. Louis. The final day was uneventful--lots of trees and cows from Oklahoma to Missouri. Below is a compilation of the updates filed from the road.

- Day One

- Day Two

- Days Three and Four

- Day Five

- Day Six

- Days Seven and Eight

- Day Nine

- Days Ten and Eleven

- Day Twelve

Now, let's talk about some NBA...

Stars Shine Bright

2011-05-07T01:25:00.021-04:00

The Big Texan Steak Ranch is nothing if not enthusiastic about itself. Beginning around Santa Rosa, NM, the Big Texan promises that free steak lies a mere three hours due east, in Amarillo, TX. It makes this promise over and over again on countless billboards as the miles wind down. Free steak is only two hours away! Free steak in 90 miles! Free steak in 45 miles! The billboards all feature a fire-seared steak, a cartoonish cowboy, and the old-timey western motif of yellow and brown with a saloon-door font. As an emissary from the great state of Everything Is Bigger, the Big Texan proudly perpetuates all of the stereotypes. Few businesses would be as willingly and unwaveringly hokey.

First opened in 1960, the Big Texan is a north Texas institution, a big, gaudy fish happily swimming in a small pond along I-40. The restaurant, also a motel and opry, is most famous for its Texas King challenge: if you can eat a shrimp cocktail, salad, set of dinner rolls, and seventy-two-ounce steak in an hour, you can dine for free. (See--free steak!) If not, you can pay $72 and tell your friends about the most outlandish expensive meal you ever ate. Kitschy and over the top, the Big Texan has cultivated cult status, and word-of-mouth incredulity spreads the small-time legend in the few ways that the relentless marketing campaign does not. I, for example, had planned my road trip with the Big Texan in mind after a friend told me about her time there.

The Big Texan delivered on the expectations created by those billboards. Upon pulling into the parking lot, my friend and I found a motel with pastel facades fashioned to look like an old-west town, a paper-mache cow the size of three cars, and the Big Texan, which resembles a cheesy museum of western culture crammed into a massive barn. The front porch had a stage-coach love seat, goofy signs, and a door bearing a handle that is a twisted piece of wood. The door handle was emblematic of the entire experience: deliberately planned, of a certain western theme, and a little nonsensical all the same.

After entering, it isn't immediately clear where the eating happens. To the left is a souvenir shop underneath a sign that declares you're entering the "trading post," a cherished southwest euphemism for general store. The trading post has bumper stickers, jerky, toys, knick-knacks, and vaguely offensive American-Indian exploitations. To the right is the fudge counter, and it is like every other fudge counter you've ever seen, replete with stale-looking loaves of fudge, prices per pound that are more than you'd want to pay, and a strong smell of burnt sugar. Why this "steak ranch" feels compelled to peddle fudge is unexplained, other than the fact that the Big Texan's primary theme is extracting money from customers in every way possible. To see this common element in the experience, a person need only look straight ahead when entering. There are slot machines, coin-operated video games, one of those worthless contraptions that crushes perfectly good coins into embossed sheets of trinket metal, and a terminal at which dollar bills can be converted into the quarters necessary for all that waste.

Eventually, hungry and intrigued guests can locate the main dining room down a corridor on the right. As you approach the hostess, be sure to tether your horse to the hitching post--Big Texan restaurant policy. The signs say so. Once you've dismounted, the hostess will show you to one, or two, or perhaps twenty of the 800 seats in the facility, depending upon your party size. At your table, you'll find a place mat that catalogues the many ways you might be up-sold--collectible cups, cowboy boots, old-west paraphernalia--and a tub of individual butter packets. At the Big Texan, you are encouraged to indulge yourself, surrendering to financial and nutritional profligacy.

Settled in amid saloon-style wooden panels and a pantheon of dead and stuffed animals, the important work begins. Your first decision is whether to remain a simple guest or to ascend into Big Texan folklore by gorging yourself on five pounds of food in an hour. Choosing Option Two will either cost you $72 or earn you renown among Big Texan staff, Big Texan regulars, and the other piqued travelers who research just what they'll find at exit 75 in Amarillo. Before deciding, please remember that Option Two also brings with it a seat at an elevated table in the dining room and an appearance on the webcam that streams Texas King events. My friend and I decided that our wallets and our stomachs could not suffer the calculated risk, so we chose a tamer adventure.

Nothing too tame, though. For $12.95, I ordered a lunch special: an 8-ounce strip steak seasoned with an array of spices and cooked until only the faintest trace of pink remained (which is how I like it since I have been known to suffer psychosomatic food-related episodes); a sweet dinner roll that I could have overwhelmed with butter drawn from the butter tub; and a choice of two sides, which I turned into mashed potatoes and cowboy beans. In other words, I had an entire dinner at 1:30 in the afternoon for the price of a sandwich at some of the lunch spots that cater to businesspeople in New York. My buddy had the prime rib, the roll, beefsteak tomatoes with onions, and macaroni and cheese.

While dining, we politely declined overtures from the roving cowboy bard who sashayed across the dining-room floor with a guitar over his shoulder. For $5, guests could hear a personalized song from the range and lose themselves a little more in the Big Texan's theater; the roving guitar man was dressed in overalls and a cowboy hat, after all. We also struck up conversation with our waitress, who would intermittently share Big Texan history with us in between runs to the kitchen to bring out more sweet tea. When she wasn't doing those things, she was trying to get us to buy desert, buy fudge, buy souvenirs, buy whatever. She just wanted us to spend more, because the Big Texan will do almost anything within reason for a predetermined price.

Lunch eventually ended with a whimper, not a bang. Seeing that we were disinclined toward any add-ons, our waitress allowed the conversation and attention to peter out. My friend and I finished our meals, took some final glances around the room, and then walked past the frontier-town shooting game, the over-sized rocking chair, and the cigar-store Indian statue to wash up in the restroom. Bathrooms appear to be lost from Texas history because the facilities at the Big Texan were standard. No signs with bad puns, no sculptures, no jokes. The sinks even were lined by motion-sensor paper-towel machines and the soap dispensers that dole out foam, not merely liquid. If anything, the past that the Big Texan ferociously fights to maintain ends at the bathroom door, turning that threshold into a space-time wrinkle.

Satisfied but not blown away by the Big Texan, my traveling companion and I got back onto the highway and drove to Oklahoma City. After so much anticipation and a mild case of synthetic-culture shock during the early portions of lunch, the Big Texan receded into memory fairly quickly. It was replaced by Thor, which is a dumb movie that nonetheless establishes the character and dispenses with the exposition fairly well. At day's end, excitement about a smartly fashioned Avengers movie had made the Big Texan seem pretty small.

See My Papers

2011-05-06T01:15:00.004-04:00

One day sometime after my sister had moved to California, I jokingly asked if she had seen any pickup trucks rolling around with Mexican day laborers loaded into the back. I am not sure what answer I expected, but the question was only partially sincere. I had watched enough television and movies to think that the proliferation of this phenomenon was overstated for dramatic purposes. Moreover, the Mexicans who live in New York are hidden in plain sight, integrated into the city’s rhythm. Many of them work specific kinds of jobs, so to that extent they are easily stereotyped, but they, like so many other groups, are firmly woven into New York’s cultural pastiche. This does not mean that New York isn’t segregated, because it is, and this does not mean that New York is without racial problems, because it isn’t. What I mean is that for various reasons, the general niche that Mexicans have carved out in New York does not fall under everyday scrutiny. Accordingly, I spent so little of my time in New York specifically thinking about Mexicans that I wasn’t sure if what I asked my sister sounded racist, or at least lazy.

California is different, a place where Mexican immigration is a prominent part of the narrative. For some Californians--perhaps many--the state’s diversity registers in the same way that New York’s does with me. But for outsiders, immigration is a headline of the story, and I don’t believe this to be the case for New York. Certainly not for New York’s Hispanic population.

My sister responded with a knowing chuckle. Yes, she had seen trucks with Mexican immigrants in the back riding to work. In fact, she witnessed this scene most mornings as she passed by the Home Depot. Her chuckle meant many things: she recognized all of the white, liberal guilt and apprehension buried in my question; she recognized that I am so inculcated by media that this is what I think to ask; and she recognized that the answer was, in some ways, an unfortunate affirmation of an outsider’s presumptions. My sister doesn’t dwell on this topic, though, because it is commonplace, just as the taquerias across San Francisco, the nuanced Mexican socioculture, and living inertly alongside this growing population have become. For my sister, my Mexican question was innocuous because her life in San Francisco is like the one I led in New York--there is nothing extraordinary to observe.

To my surprise, that is what Arizona felt like for much of my time this week, and the seamless Mexican cultural assimilation has only been more apparent in New Mexico. In Arizona, there were no billboards about immigration problems. Nor were there loud public figures deriding Mexicans. From what I could tell, it was standard for Spanish and English to mingle, for American and Mexican culture to mingle in commercial settings, and most importantly, for the people to mingle in public spaces. Perhaps everyone goes home to places where they can let out the rage and ugliness. This seems likely, just as it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that I missed a meaningful portion of the Arizona experience since I was merely passing through. I understand that, and I expect that my attitude would be very different, if not opposite, had I spent a week in, say, Tucson, and not just one day. To be fair, someone visiting New York would not appreciate the complicated social layers of neighborhood demographics after only a day.

Still, I was surprised that the ethnic tension which simmers over steady heat in national media was not hotter and more volatile. I found it counterintuitive: national media tend to simplify stories, losing some of the local intensity as the information travels up the news chain. On the other hand, national stories also tend to sensationalize as they simplify, so perhaps immigration, ripe for fear- and hate-mongering, falls into this latter category and not the former.

All of this makes me sound like some simpleton rube, or maybe a condescending elitist who expected to enjoy a craven kind of cultural tourism while traveling. Come out to the West and enjoy a safari into the heart of racial tension! Gasp as the oppression and ignorance take place right before your eyes. But do not worry--you’ll stay out of harm’s way. I get it. However, I live in a place now, St. Louis, where the first hour leaving or the final hour coming along I-55 consists of billboard after billboard advocating against abortion and for Jesus. St. Louis is a market where groups, often with children, picket outside of the local Planned Parenthood every day. In my home city, folks ride around in cars with angry, aggressive political messages about guns and taxes on their numerous bumper stickers. To the east, in south and central Illinois, roads are lined with other blatant, easily observed signs of political animus. Yet there aren’t national news stories about abortion, or soy battles, or the other fires that burn. My own experience made me believe that something so heavily reported and depicted as deeply acrimonious would all but burn me as I approached the flames.

My only encounter with anything that came close to approximating what I expected happened this morning. That was the only time when immigration wariness was palpable. Driving north from Las Cruces, NM, which is about as close as you can get to Mexico without being in it, my friend and I slowed down as we hit a highway bottleneck. Every car was steered toward a Border Patrol checkpoint. Greeting us were serious men in green uniforms who seemed to enjoy walking their drug-sniffing dogs along the car queue a little too much. When it was our turn for a window-roll-down interrogation, I answered confidently: Yes, we are Americans; No, we hadn’t been in Mexico; Yes, I just finished law school and was on a road trip with a friend; No, we had not recently met, but were friends from college.

My answers were insufficient. I am not sure if the luggage in the trunk made our car an easy target, if we were merely unfortunate, or if my friend, who inherited dark skin from an Indian mother and South-African father, triggered some misguided, inexcusable bias. Regardless, we were asked to pull over and get out of the car. (Did they think my friend was here to avenge Osama?) A Border Patrol officer asked if we had weapons (strong “no” on that one) and told us to stand alongside the road with our hands visible. That last instruction was eerie, even if expected. The officer proceeded to ask us a series of questions that were facially harmless but delivered with a deadpan tone that hinted at the expectation of an indicting slip up. The officer asked where we had been and why. He wanted to know where we had stayed, perhaps hoping to catch us without a detail necessary to sell the story.

At one point, the officer asked us, explicitly, “Are you guys smoking a lot of dope? Traveling with large amounts of cash?” I almost started laughing, then lecturing, and then raising my voice. The questions were insulting, and my suspicions about racism were growing stronger by the second, not because of the questions but because our answers did little to assuage the patrol people. Among other things, I wanted to ask the officer if he thought we’d answer affirmatively if we had, in fact, been getting high all morning and set out with stacks of hundreds taped underneath the dashboard. Prudently, I refrained.

While my friend and I were questioned, a dog leaped into my front seat and starting sniffing around. I was doing, and had done, nothing illegal, so I was unconcerned about the investigation. Secretly, I hoped the dog would find a granola bar containing chocolate, eat it, and get sick. You see, I hate dogs. They are loud and unruly, they shed fur everywhere, they defecate on the sidewalk without paying taxes, and you cannot reason with them. I am scared of them, they bite me, and the entire dog thing has always eluded me. The only thing about which I feel as strongly is protecting my car as I see fit, a task that Sisyphus, himself, might not undertake. So imagine my horror as I had to glance on, powerless, while a dog slobbered on the seats and shed his black fur.

Almost as unnerving was the feeling of alienation. In our own country, having done nothing wrong, my friend and I were subjected to the kind of impersonal, unexplained, disconcerting police activity that makes people mistrustful of the country’s legal enforcement mechanisms. Two students, one a lawyer and another earning a Ph.D., were pulled out of a car for no reason and intimidated for intimidation’s sake. Perhaps it speaks to blind justice and the equality of the law’s tactics. It also speaks to the culture of fear that police people perpetuate for reasons that aren’t always so clear. That, more than anything, is what I felt this morning.

Unsurprisingly, the investigation ended in a cold trail. Those bathing suits and souvenir t-shirts hid no contraband. It turned out that the college buddies who told the police exactly what they had been doing were not, in fact, putting one over. We headed out silently into the unyielding New Mexico desert. In Arizona we had found natural beauty and unexpected landscapes that were arresting at times. In New Mexico, we found sand. To wash off the lingering morning filth, my friend and I stopped in Truth or Consequences, NM, where we spent some time at a natural hot spring before continuing on to Albuquerque, which is beautiful and livable in ways for which it does not receive credit.

One final, unrelated note: never go to Red Rock State Park. As gorgeous as the rocks are, you can see them from the road, and the park, itself, is like a horror movie. You show up and no one is there. You speak to the rangers, and they are terse and oddly sterile. You then set out to see mountains but are instead greeted with terrifying warnings:

- There are rattlesnakes on the loose.

- Mountain Lions don’t want to eat you, but they might.

- Scorpions and poisonous spiders live here and are entitled to do so. You owe it to them to behave.

- Never leave the paths, lest you disturb a killing machine, giving it an excuse to kill you and the parks service a means to avoid liability.

- There is poison ivy everywhere.

- Enjoy!

It was awful. I spent forty-five minutes counting my steps, staring down at the dirt, flinching every time I heard any noise, rarely seeing anything red or rocky, and generally hoping that I wouldn’t die. Just go to Sedona instead.

Second Chances

2011-05-04T17:37:00.000-04:00

I was on a plane a few years ago when I read a New Yorker profile of Arizona's Maricopa County and its sheriff, Joe Arpaio. Until that plane ride, I primarily knew that Mexican immigration had steadily transformed the demographics in the southwest United States. I otherwise had taken little time to think about it, aside from occasionally marveling when I would hear or read that by such-and-such date, white people would be a minority in places like Texas and California. (Frankly, that struck me as cool, and maybe even a bizarre form of comeuppance.) I suppose that such a unique and observable phenomenon failed to inspire anything more than passing thoughts because whatever was happening felt far away. I only had been to San Francisco once, Boulder for a weekend, Eugene for a football game, and Seattle for work assignments. That was the entirety of my western life. With the shifting population far away, I easily could ignore the xenophobia and prejudice it engendered. However, by the time I had landed, my attitude of Arizona was changed.

The New Yorker piece depicted Arpaio as an audacious, unapologetic zealot who fomented anti-Mexican sentiment to grow his power. Stopping just short of state-sanctioned hate crimes, Arpaio did everything he could to protect us, the whites of Arizona, and implicitly, America, from the awful, rising threat of them, the Mexicans. The story observed that as dismaying as Arpaio's actions was his popularity among the white people he served in Arizona. Already affording little attention to the ins and outs of life in Arizona, I internalized the Arpaio profile as an indictment of the place that gives us John McCain and Jon Kyl, so it seemed reasonable. I figured that in this large country of ours, regional differences are perpetual, plenty of bad things fester, and I shrugged that I'd likely not spend much time in Maricopa County. Arizona was filed away as a strange, aggressive place rife with an emblematic racial tension that seemed almost comical at times. Then the immigration bill happened, the Giffords shooting happened, and things got no better for me and Arizona.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself joyfully shooting down a natural water slide in a state park just outside of Sedona yesterday. To travel from Flagstaff to Tucson, the latest stop on my trip, my friend and I took a route that bisected Arizona and included stops at Slide Rock State Park, Sedona, Red Rock State Park, and, finally, Tucson. We opted out of Phoenix, and that seemed fine as we used the ten-lane highway to get through a place that appears to be a massive insult directed at city planners. Here is what I learned about Phoenix as I drove through it: every national brand maintains a presence there, the city has about a dozen buildings with more than ten stories, there are sections of sloping asphalt that resemble the Los Angeles River, and you have to drive everywhere. Las Vegas might be dopey, but it's fun and purposely opulent. Phoenix just seems dopey, a drain on resources built inefficiently in the desert. Someone disabuse me if this is the wrong impression.

The rest of the Arizona I saw yesterday was something nicer. At Slide Rock, the air was 75 degrees, the water 52, but we were undeterred. Outdoor swimming, after all, is a luxury enjoyed only in warm weather, and we weren't going to waste such abundant sunshine. Sliding down the rocks was invigorating and disorienting. The water was so cold that my body was tense all over, and there were moments when I was worried that I might forget how to breath. Ever the neurotic, I also was concerned that perhaps I'd slam my foot into something jagged and unforgiving. Yet these thoughts never controlled how I felt because every few seconds, any discomfort or anxiety was obscured by the exhilaration of shooting along a small river and painlessly gliding over the rocks.

When the water slide ended, I fell into a small pool, ten feet deep and clear, of sparkling water. In my normal life, I spend down time thinking about the most efficient ways to walk from my couch to the sink if I also want to pick up something from the ground, replace a book on a shelf, and grab three items to wash. Other times, I calculate weekly budgets so that I can safely sneak off to the movies, or I think ahead about how I'll fold my laundry. I also will meticulously pick through the upcoming DVR schedule, read an Economist while trying to track how many concepts I'll need to wiki, or work through all of the steps required to register for a bar exam. In that pool of water, cold but happy, my mind was blank. I just stared at the rocks and the water while feeling fortunate to be so free. I was truly on vacation.

Sedona and the Red Rocks were beautiful, but the pictures do the talking. So enjoy a few. Tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo, and we'll be in New Mexico, the American state with the highest per-capita concentration of Hispanics. I suspect it will be an experience that further calls forth some thoughts on Arizona, Sheriff Joe, and immigration. We'll see.

Also help yourself to the real desert, the one that goes on for miles and is composed of little more than sand and junior-varsity vegetation.

A Photo Tour of the American Southwest

2011-05-03T00:38:00.034-04:00

(N.B: I recommend clicking on the photos to enlarge them, particularly the photos of nature.)

The weekend in Las Vegas came and went. Though time in Las Vegas is unlike time elsewhere, the Vegas excursion was fairly typical. One special moment: while playing poker at Caesar's Palace, I had the misfortune of sitting next to someone who looked like John Travolta in Swordfish and talked like Val Kilmer, only stupider and more tone deaf. I didn't sit down to play until 12:30 in the morning on Saturday, and the room was fairly quiet. My table was especially tame. Players went about their business solemnly, and there was no conversation. Occasionally, someone would nod at an opponent after a good hand, and sporadic chuckles filled the awkward silences that followed the dealer's jokes. To his credit, Silvio was working hard.

Val Kilmer was the exception. He was chattering incessantly and inanely, but largely to himself. In a span of ninety minutes, I turned $100 into $167. Kilmer, meanwhile, spilled a vodka tonic on his lap and unbuttoned his shirt to inspect if his pants were wet. Don't even begin to argue with or work to comprehend his methodology. The man was not of this world. He then nervously talked about how expensive his shirt was, as though that would make us forget that he'd spilled on himself and then conducted the world's worst fact-finding mission to uncover the truth about his pants and wetness.

Time wore on, and he jibber jabbered, no longer concerned with his clothes. On hand after hand, he'd provide running commentary of his own decisions before conducting post-hand interviews with himself. When he won--which was fairly often since he was playing against zombies and had a chip stack six times the size of anyone else's--he would wink at the dealer and toss him a tip while saying to no one in particular, "That's why you work at it. And man if I didn't have that gut shot." I was seated immediately to his right, so he couldn't see my eyes rolling. When he lost, Kilmer would revisit his missteps for ten and fifteen minutes, sometimes allowing the post-hand analysis to extend for three and four new hands at a time. "If only you'd bet like you were supposed to, dear, then I wouldn't have stayed in for the river."

The best part was when he started going around the table guessing where everyone was from. It was as futile as you might expect, and nothing Kilmer did indicated that he was especially gifted at this kind of guessing game. When he arrived at a silent Asian woman, he said to her, "You must be from Asia. I can just tell. Is it China?" The woman nodded, likely hoping he would move on. She was wrong. "I knew it! Let me guess--Beijing City!" The woman stared at Kilmer and did nothing else. He stared back, mouth agape, waiting for her to validate his suspicion. She never did, perhaps because she couldn't recover from the fact that he thought that big city in China is called "Beijing City."

So that was Vegas. I made my peace with it, said my goodbyes, swapped out one friend for another, and started the return trip home. The excitement was far from over, though.

My return trip runs through the southwest and takes me to exciting destinations, known and otherwise. To celebrate such exciting terrain, I thought a photo essay at the outset might be more useful than my usual long-form musing. Photos seem most appropriate because on Sunday and Monday, I visited two well-known monuments commemorating the power of the Colorado River, one created, the other demanded.

To the photos and narration we go...

The first stop on the long way home was Hoover Dam (no "the" before the name, as I learned), and to get there, we passed through suburban Las Vegas. Las Vegas is not really a city, of course. It is an amusement park with planned communities and synthetic neighborhoods built around it. Vegas has suburbs, though, and they are as American as it gets. I thought that I knew about car culture when I lived in Ann Arbor, but then I moved to St. Louis. In Ann Arbor I walked places--to the corner store, to the other side of town, to restaurants in commercial districts. In St. Louis, I walk nowhere, and I assumed that I had received a necessary education in automobile life. But then I saw the Vegas suburbs and felt like a dropout. Outside of Vegas, the concrete is new and bright, so very much so that the strip malls and pavement seem like a cartoon. The car wash above fit in nicely.

I knew nothing about the dam other than what I had seen in a National Lampoon movie: Clark Griswold once got lost there. I also knew it had something to do with the Colorado River. Signs that the dam was close sprang up around Boulder City, NV, where power lines are the dominant landscape feature.

Boulder City looks like anywhere in the southwest--mountains lingering in the distance, trees looking lonely, power lines ignoring it all.

The town gets pretty as Lake Mead--the largest man-made lake and reservoir in America--approaches on the left. Even better, a breeze picks up, and suddenly, what is otherwise an easily dismissed outpost of stereotypical living gets transformed into something vaguely European. Boulder City can feel a little like an Alps town set against a lake, particularly because the lake comes into view as the road descends.

Here we have a Western Area Power Administration electricity field in its natural habitat, directly across the HINO from a visitor intake center that introduces people to Hoover Dam.

The blue on the horizon in this shot is more of Lake Mead. That big concrete structure holding back all that water--trillions of gallons!--is Hoover Dam. This photo was taken on the Pat Tillman Bridge that now spans the canyon in which the dam is located. Until six months ago, the only way to drive from Nevada to Arizona while visiting Hoover Dam was to drive on top of the dam, itself, and that created traffic that unintentionally honored Boston before the Big Dig.

More Hoover Dam. I am not the sort of person who visits landmarks and walks away with serious reverence for human ingenuity, but the dam is among the few truly awe-inspiring things I've ever seen. A massive banner that said something like "Engineers FTW!" would be entirely appropriate were that sentiment not self-evident.

Please notice the access road above the dam that abruptly ends in the right side of this photo. The Tillman Bridge flies high above the Colorado River, and the elevation, the inherent precarious nature of dams, and a mind fueled by action movies all made me a little nervous the entire time. Seeing a road end without any warning, rhyme, or reason only enhanced the tingle of danger that was unavoidable.

But don't tell this girl. She and her adult supervisors thought it was a good idea for her to sit on top of a wall that separates bridge foot traffic from the westward-bound cars that fly by at sixty-five miles per hour on the two-lane highway that the bridge supports. Did I mention that tremors run through the walkway as the cars rumble along? To be fair to this woman and her entourage, it was totally worth it. As you can see from my own photos, the extra two feet of perspective she achieved by sitting above certain death was warranted. How else would you see Hoover Dam from that bridge?

That poor girl and her foolish supervisors were only a few of the colorful folks one finds at Hoover Dam. Witness Exhibit B above, and Exhibit C below...

Yes, those are the Aqua Teens bearing arms. Naturally, I gave the dude a shout out for his shirt. I wanted to talk in a Master Shake voice, but the tour was starting.

You didn't even know that we had a Bureau of Reclamation, did you?

Here's the deal: the Colorado River is pretty much unfuckwithable. It provides water (and now electricity) to Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, California, and Utah. It is so powerful that it created the Grand Canyon over the course of six million years (science!) and regularly flooded towns, destroying farms, roads, buildings, and infrastructure. As mentioned before, the Colorado River demanded a solution, and Hoover Dam is what this country came up with. Hoover Dam makes the Colorado River more predictable and allows for regular distribution of water and electricity. I promise I wasn't paid to write this. I merely learned these lessons on my tour of Hoover Dam and feel that the river gets short shrift outside of the states it directly affects.

Side note: the rhetoric at Hoover Dam takes relativism to a whole new level. For instance, Lake Mead's volume was put into some kind of a context by telling visitors that it holds enough water to cover Pennsylvania in one foot of water. Hoover Dam? It has enough concrete to erect a four-foot-wide sidewalk around the Equator, and it weighs as much as eighteen Empire State Buildings. You know, because everyone has a good sense of what this all means.

Anyway...

Here is where the next James Bond movie will be filmed.

In this shot, James rams a henchman's head against one of those blue centrifuge arms while some hot woman never to be heard from again gets in trouble and causes James to make a tough choice.

That computer is left over from the Dharma Initiative.

At the end of a Hoover Dam tour, participants can retire to a modest museum to learn more about Hoover Dam history. Some of it is fascinating. Boulder City, NV was established to support all the workers required to build the dam. Special machinery was invented to bore holes into the canyon walls. The dam was completed in five years, two ahead of schedule. The concrete poured for the dam would have taken 100 years to cool had a one-inch metal pipe not been inserted into the middle of each section. Instead, those pipes formed a plumbing system through which cooling water passed.

Other parts of the museum are straight up propaganda, and it's hilarious. But hey, America loves its own mythology.

Once you finish a Hoover Dam experience, you either go to Nevada or Arizona. We chose the latter, because Arizona is on the way to St. Louis.

Heading east into Arizona, the desert opens up. Mountains still frame all views, but they are farther recessed from the road. The extra space is ably filled by shrubs and sad grass. As in southern Utah, there are miles upon miles without traces of life, human or otherwise. However, not far away from Kingman, AZ, something curious and, frankly, unnerving starts to happen: Trailers pop up. Without roads, stores, subdivisions, apparent sources of water, badges of government, or anything else that connotes municipal life, the trailers start. They run for a while, sometimes sparsely, sometimes densely. It looks as though people decided to park in someone else's lawn.

The phenomenon is unnerving for a number of reasons. First, land ownership expressed through the built environment is something I take for granted. Thanks to buildings, fences, signs, posts, lawns, parking lots, and so many other constructed elements, I almost always know who owns what land. And absent that specific knowledge, I still can tell that someone owns what I am looking at, even if I can't identify the person or entity. In Arizona's desert trailer parks, the demarcated order of ownership is not nearly as easy. This arouses anxiety, however slight, because the absence of ownership hints at lawlessness. After all, who would enforce the rights connected to a building, or a patch of land, or that broken down truck? It's hard to tell. Similarly difficult to discern is who, exactly, is in charge. There are no schools, city halls, municipal names, hospitals, police stations, or anything else in this part of America. These communities feel permanently temporary, like extended camping trips that happen to also serve as vacations from order.

Another reason it felt creepy was that life in this part of the country seemed unlikely to resemble anything I have known or seen. "Seemed" because I, of course, only drove past it. However, in Kansas and Colorado, the small towns I saw were different but recognizable. In Utah, I saw nothing, and that, too, was something. But these RV Bedouins were doing something completely alien.

This trading post in Golden Valley, AZ provided some answers, but only a few. A woman in the store said that on a typical Sunday, she and her husband, a documentary filmmaker, would commandeer an abandoned building four miles away and show his nature videos. "It's a ghost town. Really. No one is there very much and the buildings just sit around. Sometimes old people like to dress up in western-themed clothes. You should just go in and sit down. No one will care, and the admission is free." We declined and moved on, still perplexed. What do these folks do for jobs, for schools?

Sunday night ended in a motel a few hundred feet from the southern rim of the Grand Canyon, but along the way, we passed through Seligman, AZ, the self-professed historic home of U.S. Route 66. We stopped at the Roadkill Cafe for dinner. I believe it's a chain, but we were fooled. While dining, I received three phone calls about Osama bin Laden. I asked the waitress to switch the television from Sunday Night Baseball to a news network, and the other diners heard my request. A few people joked that finally, terrorism was over and we could get back to fighting Russia. (That might have been me.) Someone else said we should unfurl a "Mission Accomplished" banner. And a few more people seemed excited. But then everyone went back to eating.

Yesterday, Monday, was spent at the Grand Canyon. My buddy and I hiked down into the canyon before driving along a scenic route that offered multiple vantage points. Hoover Dam affirmed man's power, but the Grand Canyon affirmed nature's, and nature is winning. After all, Hoover Dam only exists because it has to. The Grand Canyon is so staggering that it defies description. It even defies photography. Not even a panoramic lens coupled with expert narration that brings the Grand Canyon to life could adequately capture what it is like to behold something so massive and majestic. My buddy and I, normally capable of lengthy conversations about anything, spent most of the day silent as we attempted to fully appreciate and comprehend what we were seeing. A visit to the Grand Canyon could take weeks if a person so chose. We spent a night and a day.

On the way out, we stopped at Desert View point. This portion of the canyon lies in the east and hosts something famously and descriptively called the Watchtower. A five-story stone building that is round and offers views of the expansive desert that lies to the north and east of the primary canyon gorge, the Watchtower is a great stop, but a little removed from the rest of canyon life. The Watchtower also tries to pay homage to American Indians by peddling real and fake Indian goods downstairs and relying on an American Indian decoration motif. Sadly, like many of the white man's efforts to acknowledge American Indian culture, the Watchtower felt kitschy and silly. Kitschy because of the omnipresent commercialism, and silly because I couldn't resist thinking, "It's nice that the National Parks Service has honored American Indians by giving them one goofy, remote building in the middle of nowhere."

From the Grand Canyon, we drove to Flagstaff, AZ and ate dinner at Granny's Closet. I had the chicken parmigiana and the salad bar add-on. Love those baby corns, bad blue cheese, and entry-level pasta. We watched the Hawks win and Dirk Nowitzki elbow Ron Artest.

A Vignette from Vegas

2011-05-02T14:06:00.005-04:00

He freed the slaves.

Emancipation Proclamation.

Most taxi rides to In-N-Out Burger begin less consequentially. My friends and I assembled in Las Vegas on Friday, and after the initial euphoria of reuniting in a city where we felt unleashed had worn off, we realized we were hungry. In-N-Out made the most sense to us because: a) it only exists in exotic western locations to which none of us enjoys regular access; and b) there are few occasions that seem to better excuse a meal driven by fatty meat, melted cheese, and fries buried beneath Thousand Island dressing than forty-eight frantic hours in Las Vegas. I volunteered to go pick up an order since my unyielding need for control made me scared that someone else wouldn’t order correctly. Also, I think it’s fun to see the swollen crowds at In-N-Out, among the most integrated and egalitarian settings in America.

When the ongoing domestic hamburger revolution took off last decade, I took it to heart. (Insert heart-disease joke.) I was living in New York, and places like BLT Burger, Stand Burger, Pop Burger, and all the rest had opened up a new kind of night out. (Particularly Pop Burger, where pornography and a nightclub literally lurk behind the counter.) I could meet people for a sensibly priced dinner that simultaneously felt filling, offered alcohol, catered to hazy notions of masculinity expressed through food, and retained cultural cache. I had grown up indifferent toward hamburgers. I liked the good ones I ate, but I never found any personal identity in them. Unlike “burger guys,” or “barbecue guys,” or “rib guys,” or other kinds of guys, I never developed an attachment to food that would define my lifestyle or connect me to an archetype. I was more of a generalist. I loved ordering junky pasta at diners, but I just as often wanted egg whites. I mythologized the endless food at Olive Garden, but I also did anything I could to eat at a Cheesecake Factory. The bottom line was that when I was in the mood for a cheeseburger, I would order one, yet I had developed no ritual. For this reason, I welcomed the hamburger renaissance--it afforded me an opportunity to learn more about a staple that had never received any special attention.

What I didn’t realize until later on was that as mid-tier burger restaurants propagated in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, the fast-food hamburger also grew irrepressible. I missed out on the events preceding the tipping point, but one day, the fast-food hamburger had hit the big time. People who had spent time in California would rave about this place called In-N-Out. They would tell me about secret menus, about cups with hidden religious messages, and, most critically, about the unbeatable burgers. Four down! Seventeen down! In-N-Out sounded like a cult shrouded in mystery, the scientology of American food. Soon after I had accepted In-N-Out’s unverified primacy--much in the same way I assume a Rolls Royce is exquisite, despite never having been inside one--someone else told me that really, the Five Guys cheeseburger experience was what it was about. Five Guys, too, had become a fixture in mainstream burger culture.

Subsequently, after my sister moved to California, after I moved to St. Louis, and after I traveled in the U.S. some more, I finally ate at these new legends of the hamburger industry, and I wasn’t disappointed. Beyond the food, I liked that I had found new information and a new binary group in which I was a member, not just some unfortunate faux hamburger connoisseur unfortunately insulated by blissful ignorance. BLT Burger is fun, but…. I had become one of those people, and that likely gave me a sense of ownership over the In-N-Out run.

It will be hard for my next In-N-Out trip to match this one’s entertainment value or resonance. Two friends and I exchanged quizzical looks as we heard the cab ride’s soundtrack. Spoken in a slow, clear cadence and comprised of simplified ideas like “freed the slaves,” the statements coming out of the speakers sounded oddly remedial. I asked the natural question: “Hi Sir, what are we listening to? Is this a citizenship-test book on tape?” It was, and the Ethiopian driver quickly turned it down and apologized. “No, Sir, you can leave that on. We want to hear it. Let’s see if we even deserve to be here.” Our cab man was delighted to have found companions with whom he could practice.

We drove down Las Vegas Boulevard trying to summon in which war Dwight Eisenhower had been a critical general. Next, we reeled off as many American-Indian tribes as we could name. Choctaw, Iroquois, Navajo, Cherokee, Sioux, and so forth. We sat at a stop light in front of the Excalibur, a medieval-themed hotel, and shouted out to the driver that the American Revolution was stirred by taxation without representation. I fully appreciated the irony of our ride, and it made the trip even more fun. After all, in Las Vegas, style always trumps substance, you’re faking it while not actually making it, the entire enterprise traffics in stereotypes because they’re just easier, and primal urges run unabated, evidenced no better than by the city’s sex industry, where moms will come to your hotel room, take their clothes off, dance, beg for tips, and then cheerfully bid you adieu so that they can go back to “real life.” In the city that might best exemplify everything gone awry in this American experiment, we were sitting at a red light with an optimistic immigrant hoping to join our messy fray. First, he had to memorize information that we insist is our foundation, no matter how cracked.

What did Martin Luther King Do?

Fought for Civil Rights.

Who signs bills so that they can become laws?

The President.

What happened on September 11, 2001?

Terrorists attacked America and flew planes into the World Trade Center.

The civics lessons went on for a while. Our cab driver was getting everything right, and I called out from the back, “You are going to have no problem. Honestly, we should swap you for someone who doesn’t know this information. I guarantee that many Americans couldn’t get all of these.” I meant it. What do you think most people would say when asked which right is the most important? The citizenship test says voting. Remember that the next time only half of adults turn out.

Something that could have devolved into an obnoxious, insulting iteration of ugly Americanism remained respectful amid the rising joviality. Our cab driver wanted to hear what we had to say, and so the four of us called out answers, cracked on America, and rode through the desert until we got to In-N-Out. There, the citizenship test loomed as Mexicans, Asians, Africans, Caribbeans, Indians, and Europeans waited in line with the many kinds of Americans who were dying for hamburgers and French fries. The scene was remarkable, if not moving.

On the way back, once our driver had acquitted himself well and my friends and I had shown that we, too, retain a firm grip on our own citizenship, the jokes grew more frequent and louder.

Which President sold arms in one country to support an illegal coup attempt in another country?

Reagan.

Which constitutional law scholar became President and then willingly violated prisoner rights?

Obama.

Which President referred to his wife as “Mom,” ate jellybeans, and gassed free-speech protestors in Berkeley when he was governor of California?

Reagan, again.

Who will be the next American president?

Trump.

We've Arrived at the There

2011-04-30T22:21:00.004-04:00

We are broadcasting live from Las Vegas, where the expected array of oddities and excess is delivering on all expectations. So much has been written about Las Vegas in the last decade-plus as it emerged as a de facto inevitability for a certain set of Americans that there is little left for me to share about the city that hasn’t already been reported.

Getting here was as anthropological as it gets. The morning on Day Five of this trip started late and found its early shape at the Main Street Cafe in Hurricane, UT. My buddy and I were referring to it as “Mom and Pop”--“Do you think Mom and Pop have wi-fi?”--because it was little more than someone’s personal kitchen and patio. All the same, according to UrbanSpoon, it was the highest-rated, most beloved restaurant in Hurricane. Mom and Pop beat out a few little-known Mexican chains, a number of national restaurants we were shocked to find in a relatively sleepy place, and some joint best captured by a local’s pithy review: “For food that’s overpriced and service that’s incredibly slow, it’s really pretty good.”

Set inside a small A-Frame with open seating and a kitchen that only barely bridged the gap between commercial and residential, Mom and Pop was what most people would call “charming.” The patio was lovely. The breakfast menu at Mom and Pop was generally sensible--waffles, eggs, yogurt parfait. All went well until the food arrived, but then, the day took an unfortunate turn. Mom and Pop, despite its storybook visuals and a host of factors that middle-class liberals champion when touting favorite out-of-the-way discoveries, is an enabler of America’s inexorable decline. The food comes slathered in mayonnaise.

Mayonnaise is disgusting. It is, essentially, a temperamental fat paste that doesn’t like the heat. Mayonnaise is either unnervingly viscous or sometimes a dissociated mess of nauseating liquid and the fatty, white epoxy from whence it came. It usually overwhelms the items with which it gets paired, be they eggs, potatoes, coleslaw’s elements, or anything else. Surely, human error exacerbates mayonnaise’s devastation, but the same can be said of uranium, and for good reason, we don’t put that in or on everything. With mayonnaise, America runs wild. It is a staple of childhood, an easy way to add flavor and cohesion to sandwiches. Those ham-and-cheeses are gateway drugs; they promote the theory that mayonnaise, salty and sticky and creamy, can beneficially lend itself to almost any dish. That’s why there is the insidious theory circulating to an alarming extent that mayonnaise can be served on a hamburger. America has allowed its love affair with mayo to grow toxic.

Never more poisonous was this mayo fascination than on Friday morning, when Mom and Pop ruined a perfectly good and reasonably healthful egg-white breakfast sandwich by tainting the combination of the eggs, the cheese, the turkey sausage, and the homemade multigrain bread. The naturally complementary flavors of the sandwich were subsumed into a sickening taste that approximated rot. The mayonnaise ruined everything, infecting the spongy texture of the eggs and the cheese’s gooey goodness with too much cream, the sausage’s savory flavor with the awkward tang of too much sodium and an unwelcomed sweet aftertaste. No amount of napkins and scraping could salvage the sandwich. This is why we’re fat.

A spoiled breakfast could not stop Day Five, though. Leaving Hurricane, we drove southwest, following a diagonal from the Zion region to Vegas. Along the way, we passed St. George, UT, a ballyhooed regional destination. Radio signals in the area were broadcasted from St. George and the mileage signs since we entered Utah touted St. George. The city--we assumed it counted as a city--was purported to have it all: lawyers and doctors, access to the Virgin River, a rodeo, outlet shopping, and more. St. George was so famous and so important that motels in other towns along the way carried a broad catalogue of brochures and pamphlets that further venerated what appeared to be a southwest hotspot.

St. George appeared on the horizon suddenly. The path from Hurricane to Las Vegas descends from short mountains and smaller foothills into the desert, so much of what’s coming is visible around bends and at the bottom of slopes. Finally, this oasis in a wilderness of sleepy hamlets and trucker stops was shimmering in the desert sun, resplendent along the highway. El Dorado would not have looked as beautiful.

The sign for Red Robin flew past us on the right. Naturally, I was jazzed up. Another, for Olive Garden, was next. There was no stopping them; the signs kept whizzing by. TGIFriday’s. Red Lobster. Cracker Barrel. McDonald’s. Burger King. Wendy’s. Taco Bell. This was the American destination of our dreams! Our enthusiasm was palpable, but the national food brands didn’t enjoy exclusive access to it. On the left, we saw signs of St. George’s imposing, impressive retail titans rising to eye level and beckoning us to pull over. Nike wanted us. Polo, too. Gap. Timberland. The outlets were amassed over a ridge, tucked into the side of the road like a pot of gold uncovered. St. George was such a shopping bonanza that the outlet mall even had an Old Navy store, and that, of course, seemed like an oxymoron. Isn’t Old Navy already something of a Gap outlet? Can an outlet outlet itself?

As quickly as it started, it ended. Intent on getting to Las Vegas in time to enjoy a Friday afternoon at the pool, we didn’t stop in St. George, and after a few exits, it was gone as suddenly as it appeared.

St. George receded into memory somewhat uncomfortably. As it grew smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror, its attendant stature was strikingly sad. Billed throughout Utah as a premium destination, and held out as a putative civic anchor for the region, St. George was nothing more than a few square miles of national chains and housing clusters. St. George’s modest reach was so circumscribed that the desert’s endless rows of shrubs--these small, green bushes that clearly aspire to something more but will never grow beyond such humble means--were always creating a natural border. And even then, the border was only literal, because St. George ultimately fit in well among the small-time scenery with ideas of something greater. Like the morning’s mayonnaise, St. George became an odd symbol of what America thinks, expects, and asks of itself.

After Utah came Arizona, but only briefly. Too bad. The northwest corner of Arizona was twenty minutes of red stone and rock structures that count as mountains for New Yorkers from the Midwest. Working around the curves in those canyons, arriving upon one vista after another with stone walls that encourage claustrophobia but blue skies and widening view corridors that suggest opportunity, was as thrilling as navigating through the snow-capped Rockies. But Arizona’s arresting scenery was quickly replaced by the American desert of Nevada, a searing stretch of green and tan dotted only by power lines. If southern Utah felt like another planet, Nevada felt like an alternate universe, a version of the present that might have been conjured on Lost or some disaster show intent on the unique titillation of low-level fear mixed with excited curiosity.

Little thrives in the desert, but casinos have a reliable place in the ecosystem. Passing by miles of dry terrain, actual tumbleweeds(!), and those omnipresent power lines, we saw as many casinos as there were exits. Ranging from slot machines serving as an ancillary gas-station service to, well, Las Vegas, the casinos of the Nevada desert are manifold. Needing a break, and eager to gamble, we stopped at one, the Virgin River Casino, in Mesquite, NV, that roadside billboards had advertised since Wednesday.

Virgin River was exactly what I assumed: dingy, kitschy, and awesome. Old people motored along in wheelchairs with oxygen-tank jet packs while women too old and too tired for their outfits brought bad drinks to the gamblers. The casino advertised its loose slots (unembarrassed, as you might expect), and it touted a sports book that had a strong resemblance to the sunken living room of a 1970s ranch house. At the blackjack tables, dealers wore nametags that listed their respective nations of origin, a practice which struck me as some kind of useless xenophobia veiled in a contrived attempt at community. Maybe I would have thought differently had I stopping on the side of the road in a region of the country unafflicted by immigration paranoia.

My buddy and I played blackjack for about a half hour. The table was using just two decks--probably no need for more on a Friday afternoon in late April at a small-time outfit--and to thwart any attempt at card counting, players had to keep their cards face down and could only touch the cards with one hand. As most know, normal casino blackjack allows players to see their hands, the hands of the other players, and the dealer, while also allowing players to legally handle the cards as they please. Adjusting to conventions which only reinforced that Virgin River was playing casino proved difficult as the condescension rose and the intoxication of gambling carried us toward levity. By the time we decided to make our final push to Vegas, I had won $45, and that seemed fitting.

You Don't Even Like Ford Mustangs

2011-04-28T22:17:00.021-04:00

For Day Three of my trip, the goal was simple but challenging: make it from Colby, KS to Hurricane, UT, with a stop in Denver to pick up a buddy. At nearly 900 miles, my itinerary was likely too ambitious, but I had three secret weapons that complemented each other: a deep reservoir of naturally occurring energy, an unusual excitement about scenes that other people find unremarkable, and an inexhaustible quotient for time spent in the car. With these assets, I couldn't lose.

Winning looked, well, weird. So enthused by my time in Kansas, I entered Colorado looking for more of the quiet, remote, usual America that compels me to excitedly scream out, "Today is the best one ever!" to no one in particular as I motor across the country. I wasn't disappointed. If Kansas had introduced me to fake highways and glorious expanses of nothing, eastern Colorado combined these elements with the impressions of a lawless, wild west that naive New Yorkers like me romanticize.

My first few hours in Colorado were full of rain, cows, and projection. The High Plains are gorgeous swaths of grass over which cows majestically roam as though humans were the animals. Irrigation systems, specialty barns, and massive farm machines I can't even describe keep cows well-fed and handsome. More muscular than your average cow, the Colorado cows were thoroughbreds, and that, of course, made them tantalizing for slaughter. I had never known Colorado as a cattle state. Really, I hadn't known Colorado as anything. What is the state's character in the mind of an outsider? It has some mountains and some skiing, but without seeing them live, those are characteristics that tell a boring story.

The cows, though, made Colorado something different. Suddenly, across endless emerald fields, Coloradans were cultivating their character. Not only leisure-time ski bums, Coloradans were taking great pride in raising, selling, and killing exquisite beneficiaries of agricultural science. You could see it everywhere along U.S. Route 36, another of these HINOs where you see no one, can buy nothing, and forever pray that you don't break down or get got. No one would ever know. But Route 36, unlike 24 in Kansas, had craftsmen who were so proud of their work that seemingly every dirt road originated under a handmade banner advertising a ranch. The signs were artistic. The land tidy and organized. Everywhere, the lines were clean and the seams hidden. All I could see for miles was a kind of understated virtuosity: these Coloradans could raise cattle.

Naturally, I ran with the narrative. These weren't just farmers trying to pay mortgages and educate their children. These were frontiersmen who were working the land in a fashion that vaguely recalled my own silly notions of self-determination, Protestant work ethic, noble cowboying, and even manifest destiny. With no one on the road and no one in sight across any horizon I could find, I sped along with palpable joy that I had found yet another pocket of American life that was incredibly different and normally so inscrutable that I could make of it whatever I chose.

Also, the landscape encouraged this kind of soaring self-indulgence. I stopped on the side of the road to snap this picture as I said aloud, again to myself, "This, truly, is the endless Kingdom of Heaven." Sorry. I got carried away.

But in my defense, it's hard to drive along and see these kinds of scenes without immediately writing an attendant story:

My enthused sightseeing, without actual sights, never subsided over my fourteen road hours. (This is where I tell my parents, who read this site, that I shared the driving. Worry not.) Driving through the Rockies was thrilling, even if mitigated by a low-level contempt for the opulence reflected in the condos and specialty groceries that line I-70. On the other side of the Rockies, my esteem for the ordinary only grew. Steadily descending from the mountains, my friend and I found ourselves in the greater Grand Junction, CO region, an area that probably should count as the American steppe.

Once you cross the Rocky Mountains, the United States starts to resemble pictures in The Economist. Verdant plateaus that only make it a few thousand feet off the ground look like the Chinese foothills that accommodate industrious peasant farmers. Fields of yellow grass littered with shrubs suggest central Asia. And the beginnings of desert summon notions of famous tundra elsewhere, while also inviting questions about how, exactly, Americans decided that always-on air conditioning and diverted rivers were good ideas. The near western side of the Rockies is slept on as a field of curiosity.

Then we got to Utah and shit got strange. If you drive into Utah on I-70, you enter space that feels like science fiction brought to life. Nothing makes sense, there is no discernable explanation for anything, and you're 110 miles away from even hoping for answers. This is what we saw for a few hours:

This is the Utah that has nothing to do with Salt Lake City and Mormons. It is like a different planet. Southern Utah has few people. A sea of small mounds and oddly shaped mountains make all places look boxed in and a little fake, like movie sets. Not only are there no gas stations and no restaurants, but all of the highway exits--"all" being something like five of them--sound almost smug as they say, over and over, "No services." There aren't even roads. ROADS! Along the HINOs of Kansas and Colorado, there were dirt paths running off in various directions which suggested that out of sight, life continued. Utah makes no guarantees.

Much of Utah feels like this--like Tatooine, but with less sand and fewer space people. Utah might even have three moons. That wouldn't surprise me. It also is beautiful, though, and after a long day and night of driving, Day Four was all about Zion National Park, an indescribably beautiful collection of canyons. Here are pictures:

Fear not: this post also includes some, uh, different stuff. To wit: This Springdale, UT petting zoo is set up as a miniature old west village, and inside, they sell a collection of goods that I like to call "exploitative":

The store's proprietor recommended that I check out a local sports bar to watch the NBA playoffs. When I asked her where she liked to go, she said, "Do you have a four-wheel drive with a high clearance? Because if not, you can't go where I go." Also, the people in Hurricane, UT are getting ready for an event that the television ads bill as "like cowboys on steroids with guns."

Tomorrow, off to Las Vegas.

The Morning I Shot Saddam Hussein

2011-04-27T00:00:00.000-04:00

(N.B: You will most enjoy this post if you click on the images to enlarge them. Start with the one above.)

The best way to get across Kansas when traveling from Clay Center to Colby is to drive along a stretch of road called U.S. Route 24. It is considered a highway, but that really isn't fair, neither to Route 24 nor to actual highways. I-95 and I-80, with their endless trucks, sometimes 10 lanes, and a steady, sterile procession of McDonald's and warnings about the next rest area--those are highways.

Route 24 is something else. There are no entrance and exit ramps, for example, so you might not even know when and where to get on. I was told that it was three lights down, across from the Wendy's, and "past the third green house--if you see them through the passenger-side window, you're on it."

I had arrived in Clay Center from the south and had stopped at the liquor store that greets visitors and lets them know they have once again found civilization. The liquor store was typical of rural Kansas: only liquor and alcohol (by license--you can't even sell bottled water); simple wooden frame with windows illuminated by beer-company signs; television in some elevated corner, tuned to a news channel (never MSNBC); kind, tender, older white person behind the counter, doling out wisdom and conversation as though liquor stores double as guidance offices for those of us well beyond high school. A consummate fan of the rest stop, on that drive, alone, I had stopped at three different liquor stores assuming that each was really a sundries shop where I could get Yoo-Hoo!, water, and either Munchos or Combos. Instead, I usually found disappointment and someone with a cane. One of the people even had an oxygen tank.

The woman in Clay Center was named Barbara, and she's the one who told me about Route 24. I'd like to see I-70 enjoy such quaint confusion as to how one uses it. Anyway, Barbara also suggested that if I was "going any kind of a distance," I fill up on gas. "Not a whole lot on that road." She wasn't kidding.

A real highway is the center of an expansive asphalt universe. It is consistently paved, it has a shoulder or two, its ascending and descending ramps are legion, and every few miles, a gas station and national food brand are waiting to serve you along some access road with a reasonable speed limit. Route 24 enjoys none of these amenities. It is, instead, one of those HINOs--a highway in name only.

I grew up in New York, where driving was not a consideration. When I left Manhattan, I primarily relied on I-95, and when I got to any place that wasn't New York, the contrast between I-95 and everything else relegated the everything else to the "road" category. Since living in New York, I have lived in Ann Arbor, where I didn't have a car and primarily walked to and from football games, and St Louis. In St. Louis, I drive everywhere, but I only think of the actual highways--64, 44, 70, 55, etc.--as highways. The city's appellation scheme accommodates this formalistic but effective thinking. To wit: the 40-mile-per-hour street with traffic lights breaking up the extended driving stretches is considered a parkway, not a highway. Everything stays well organized.

A HINO like Route 24--and like the road I used to get from Kansas City to Junction City the previous evening--throws the system into flux. It is tantamount to a Main Street with little on it and an intermittently high speed limit. Intermittently because Route 24 actually is Main Street at times. Every so often, warning signs--literally--appear along the horizon, heralding that a reduced speed limit is imminent. And then the bottom drops out. You have to slow down from 65, to 55, to 45, to 30. Sometimes the speed limit can go as low as 20, and you need to make your change in about a minute. The reason for what can functionally be a screeching halt? Take a gander:

That photo is from a small town somewhere around Alton, KS. It is representative of the drive from Clay Center to Colby. Not pictured? What else--the liquor store where the kind, tender, older white man was watching CNN. This is how it goes along Route 24. Sometimes there are three or even five blocks of developed land, though many are often dilapidated and surrounded by trucks in similar condition. Then it's back to what people who grew up on the East Coast expect of Kansas: expansive stretches of farm land dotted with cows, fences, cinematic brush, and homemade signs about abortion, Christ, and ranches.

For the first 90 miles, I saw two gas stations, one of which hadn't been operational for years. I saw a single Sonic, a single Dairy Queen, and they were across the street from each other in one particularly lucky community. There were no signs for anything, and nothing but Route 24 was paved. In the distance on either side, there was more of the same. It felt remote, and pondering various hypotheticals--what if you were to run out of gas along here at night?--began to feel uneasy. Route 24 is not a highway.

But that was fine by me, because along the way, I got to lose myself in the scenery. While hurtling past a lake, I envisioned what life is like in the houses looking down from the adjacent hill. At a field full of abandoned trucks, I stopped dead in the middle of the road to enjoy an extended viewing. I caught a glimpse of a functioning wind farm and even had a David Brooks moment, championing America's self-aggrandizing mythology because I had beheld the power of our capitalist engine at work in such a simple and unexpected location. I quickly stopped and felt embarrassed by my willing condescension, and recognizing it was a relief, because I could instead appreciate that there are many different ways to work and live in this country. For all of my cynicism and sarcastic humor, I do genuinely enjoy opportunities to witness, partially experience, and better understand life in places where I have never been.

Route 24 also was a wonderful companion to the day's first movement. The morning had begun in Junction City, KS. My itinerary was simple: stop at the bank, stop at the U.S. Cavalry Museum, and get to Colby. Things went awry.

On my way to the bank, I rolled through downtown Junction City, a town of 22,000 people with a built environment that suggests little has changed in fifty years. Little but the pockets of modernity housed in strip-mall developments. Modernity like this:

Yes, that is a hair salon with a sexually suggestive logo and a large sign in the door forbidding children. Your eyes don't deceive you. Even better, it sits across the street from the Junction City town square, a monument that doubles as a Vietnam War memorial. Witness:

It was a perfect way to frame the day, the kind that illustrated why this road trip appealed to me and reinforced that I would, indeed, experience American scenes that I love. It's the same part of me that will do damn near anything to attend a state fair. So I set off toward the bank with renewed enthusiasm following my pleasant surprise. I was cruising down Main Street in Anytown, USA with the windows down, the Big K.R.I.T. bumping, and my law-school earplugs flapping in the breeze.

About that last part: law school exams are miserable, ill-conceived, and counterproductive. After thirteen weeks of class, hundreds of pages of reading, and no grades along the way, a typical law-school course culminates in a three- or four-hour exam. The set up is simple: you walk in, sit down, pull out an outline you've compiled from your notes, and then wade through a dense fact pattern designed to both demand recall of a broad spectrum of course topics and shame you after you walk out and realize you forgot an issue that was purposely obscure. The tests are shaming because these exams are often the sole determinant of your grade--if you get an 82 on the test, you get an 82 in the course, regardless of whether you were a genius in the class; likewise for the kids who get 93s after saying and reading nothing for months. Forgetting something can sometimes mean forfeiting an entire semester's worth of work. Never mind that practicing law will hardly, if ever, demand that you hurriedly read a purposely contrived set of facts in five minutes and then throw up onto your computer screen everything you can summon in four hours.

To assist students trying to survive this process, my law school provided us with earplugs at every exam. That way, we could be alone in our rushed, resentful thinking and insulated from coughing, from the kid whose computer makes noises, and from people shuffling in and out of the room.

I always liked the earplugs: the plugs, themselves, are white with marbleized pastel streaks embedded in the foam, and each plug is a termination point for a plastic lanyard that is made exclusively for law-school earplugs or cheap toys you can buy in gumball machines. Wearing the plugs looks goofy, so naturally, I loved doing it. Just as I loved wearing them for no reason after an exam.

So excited was I to finish school that I forgot to take off my plugs, instead tucking them into my sweatshirt and letting the plastic hang around the back of my neck as though I were wearing a necklace. I didn't realize this until Kansas City, a full four hours from St. Louis. By that point, I decided that these plugs would be a totem for my trip, so they endure as an everyday fashion accessory.

God wants it this way, and I know that because as I drove to the bank, I passed by an indoor shooting range. Initially, I thought nothing of it beyond realizing that I don't commonly see them. And then, while yanking on my earplugs in a fashion that is becoming regrettably reflexive, I realized that I should, for the first time in my life, fire a gun.

I walked into the range a little frightened. Guns make me uncomfortable. I had no experience with them, and as a result, the power they produce was, and remains, alien and scary. Still, I was intrigued, particularly because shooting a gun is portrayed and spoken about as a cathartic, unique experience. So I went forward with it. I explained to the clerk behind the counter that I was a novice looking to understand what was up with these "guns" that everyone's been talking about, and also hoping to get a little gullier. She suggested that I use a 9mm glock, which instantly satisfied my hip-hop impulses. I then had to pick a target, and I went with Saddam Hussein because that seemed like the most absurd choice, even more so than the zombie Nazi.

My shooting was OK, but I hated every minute of it. Even while only practicing my grip with an unloaded weapon, I felt morally conflicted and physically uncomfortable. Grasping the cold, heavy metal of the gun was perverse theater: clutching it dearly indicated that I yearned for its power, pulling the trigger gave me agency over a tool of violence, and yet I wanted nothing more than to throw it away. After fifteen rounds and some encouragement from the range instructor, I had experienced enough. The loud pop of the gun's small explosion amplified the terror inherent to activating such a powerful weapon, and far from cleansing or empowering, firing a handgun made me feel small. I shot at my target as I had been told, lining up the sights in front of my eye and holding my form without anticipating the release or dramatically accounting for the recoil. Yet really, I tried my best to keep my arm extended in front of my face because I wanted to hide.

At my breaking point, I put the gun down on the table. I then unloaded the magazine, returned my rented glock, washed the residual lead off my hands (I eat with them sometimes), and walked out, clutching the proof of a life experience for which I am thankful. Particularly because I will never do it again.

Route 24, small, quiet, and wonderfully different, was the best road possible, by any name.

Let's Cripilate

2011-04-26T09:50:00.005-04:00

During my first year of college, I took a lot of naps. Time was not fixed to a schedule in the way you might pin up streamers across a wall. Instead, it was a blob, an easily reconfigured mess of a resource resembling those beanbag chairs of which college kids are so fond. I did whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted because time was under my control. The nap was the weapon through which I wielded such incalculable power. I would use it as necessary to catch up on sleep, which, really, was just time I'd allocated to other pursuits. One night, I drank an entire case of soda and then "went to bed" at 11 AM. Why? Because. I was eighteen, and a lifelong nocturnal streak was no longer inhibited by parents and high school.

My first year of law school, I reprised the napping. My schedule was more fixed than it had been in college, but still, graduate education accommodates sleeping during daylight hours. Law-school naps can be dangerous emotional endeavors, though. No one mentions this when you enroll, but law school is an elaborate, protracted experiment in guilt tolerance. There is always something else to read, and you sleep uneasily knowing that even when you're not working, someone else, someone against whom you'll be graded, is. So when you nap, you kind of sleep your feelings. It's healthier than eating them, I suppose, but sometimes napping can feel less like slumber than stupor.

My napping days, advised or otherwise, are over, though. I finished law school yesterday. The reality has not yet sunk in because I find myself greeting downtime with a guarded fear that I have forgotten something. I hope that by the time I return from a two-week road trip, this has subsided. In the interim, I will be consuming americana, regional culinary delicacies, and a healthy amount of playoff basketball. I also will be writing more regularly, again.

My first contribution is a piece I helped my friend and idol Tom Ziller put together. See it here.

Now, I need to go visit a George Custer museum so that I might reconnect with the seventeen-year-old Joey who wrote a short hagiography about Custer for an American history class. The same class that ended with a substitute teacher crying about Judy Garland and giving me a 97 for another term paper about Allen Iverson, bad shooting, and the decline in NBA scoring. We were assigned a simple project: write about anything historical and based in America. The comments accompanying the grade: "I have no idea what most of this means, but I've heard of Michael Jordan, and I can tell that you are excited about this topic."

That's where lawyers come from!

Delicious

2011-04-24T18:34:00.002-04:00

It Came from...Wait, Where Is This Girl From?

2011-04-13T23:43:00.001-04:00

I believe the word is unfuckwithable.

To Be Anymore Than All I Am Would Be a Lie

2011-04-11T16:34:00.010-04:00

FreeDarko went out of business this morning. A collection of writers who have contributed to the site over the years shared closing thoughts. Mine are there, forever memorialized alongside august company. As a sometime contributor from FD's second life, I do not and cannot claim true ownership over the site. Really, I just felt fortunate to find people living there who shared my interests and approach to them. FreeDarko going dark marks the passage of time in a particular way, though, and watching Beth Shoals shutter up that storefront leaves me feeling that much lonelier on the block. (And I recognize that SB keeps unpredictable hours and runs out of inventory too often.)

FreeDarko built its first audience around the same time that Straight Bangin' was born, and I befriended Nathaniel after we recognized a mutual admiration. FreeDarko was among the wave of important blogs that cropped up between roughly 2003 and 2005. These sites did not merely reflect that blogging was gaining credibility as an alternative to traditional media. They also demonstrated that through the internets, better writing from more sources would give many people long under served by traditional media their respective voices. If you can remember this far back, recall the time when the cringe-inducing columns of Rick Reilly were almost solely what passed as irreverent and alternative. Before FreeDarko and blogs of that generation, sports conversation was unfortunately that limited.

Blogging changed everything for me. When I wasn't reading FD, I was reading Byron Crawford, and the O.G. Different Kitchen, and Sexy Results, and Passion of the Weiss before Jeff was actually a real person with a sterling reputation. I was feverishly leaving comments and working on my actual work later in the day, if at all. I would wake up, read what Hussain and Daily Kos had posted, and feel good on the subway because there was finally a conversation taking place that accounted for what I felt. I was inspired to write because I finally had role models, and it was titillating to join them in a guerrilla medium that felt like a secret society.

Blogging is now as commonplace as corporate websites, and it really is not remarkable when bloggers emerge as authorities, let alone alternatives to the newspaper. Since the middle of the last decade, I have found even more voices that are critical parts of my information stream, my entertainment universe, and, when most lucky, my group of friends. But still, things done changed. As natural consequences of blogging's ascendancy, the space is less intimate, the names less familiar, and the product less reliable. There are new writers who are wonderful and admirable, but there also are plenty who are terrible. There are bloggers who read FreeDarko, who came up on Jay Smooth, and now offer weak derivatives that a larger audience and its diminished standards celebrates all the same. Some of them even write for media leviathans like ESPN, the ultimate proof that whatever blogging once was has been lost, by definition.

FreeDarko passing into its fossilized state will preserve the past but accelerate the steady surrender of the future. It isn't all bad, of course; as noted, there are some great writers working today. FD's retirement does animate the ongoing gentrification of the online neighborhood that FD helped to make desirable, though. Shoals will be heard elsewhere. Hopefully, the rest of the team will be, as well. I'll be here refusing to sell, even if it holds up the Nets' new arena. And on my stroll home, seeing the lights forever turned off at FD, at Start Snitching, and at all the rest, I will be left feeling like Red in Shawshank Redemption. I guess I just miss my friends.

Nate Dogg Was Made for March Madness

2011-03-23T00:10:00.001-04:00

Last week, Nate Dogg passed away. His death came a day before the NCAA Tournament, and with basketball on the brain, I took to Twitter to remember Nate, consider his catalog, and simulate a basketball fantasy in which his songs were treated like college basketball teams. I thought that an isolated hour last Wednesday would be the entirety of my formal Nate Dogg reminiscence. However, I have had a Nate Dogg playlist pumping through my speakers all week, and I am a gifted procrastinator. Why apply to jobs when you can make PowerPoint slides?

Above, you will find a video from Jay Smooth that nicely captures most of my feelings about Nate. I can only imagine everyone's shock that Jay has once again found such a sincere, thoughtful, amusing way to express what sound like pitch-perfect ideas. Below, you will find an actual Nate Dogg Tournament Bracket which I have created. This is what it looks like:

Click to enlarge

You can download the PPT here should you like to: a) fill one out by hand, or b) fill it out in PowerPoint and then send it back to me. If you choose Option B, I will compile responses and post results. The email address is straight.bangin (at) gmail (dot) com. I also have posted YouTube videos of all the play-in matchups. The tournament field, broken out by seeds, looks like this:

1) Warren G, "Regulate"
1) Tha Dogg Pound, "Let’s Play House"
1) Snoop Dogg, "Ain’t No Fun"
1) Pharoahe Monch and Mos Def, "Oh No"

2) Dr. Dre, "The Next Episode"
2) Dr. Dre, "Xxplosive"
2) Freeway, "All My Life"
2) Westside Connection, "Gangsta Nation"

3) Fabolous, "Can't Deny It"
3) Snoop Dogg, "Lay Low"
3) Ghostface Killah, "Ooh Wee"
3) Snoop Dogg, "Bitch Please"

4) Snoop Dogg, "Gz Up, Hoes Down"
4) Obie Trice, "The Set Up"
4) 2Pac + Outlawz, "Teardrops and Closed Caskets"
4) Tha Dogg Pound, "I Don't Like to Dream about Getting Paid"

5) 50 Cent, "21 Questions"
5) Eminem, "Til I Collapse"
5) The Game, "Special"
5) Jadakiss, "Kiss Is Spittin'"

6) Ludacris, "Area Codes"
6) Mobb Deep and 50 Cent, "Have a Party"
6) Shyne, "Behind the Walls"
6) 2Pac, "How Long Will They Mourn Me"

7) The Game,"Too Much"
7) Ludacris, "Child of the Night"
7) Warren G, "Game Don't Wait"
7) Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z, "Lollipop"

8) Snoop Dogg and Redman, "From Long Beach 2 Brick City"
8) Warren G, "Nobody Does It Better"
8) The Game, "Where I'm From"
8) Jadakiss, "Time's Up"

9) Snoop Dogg, "O.G."
9) Snoop Dogg, "Crazy"
9) Tha Dogg Pound, "A Doggz Day Afternoon"
9) LBC Crew, "Feels Good 2 B DPG"

10) Redman, "Merry Jane"
10) Memphis Bleek, "Need Me in Your Life"
10) 2Pac, "Thugs Get Lonely Too"
10) 50 Cent, "Girl Come Over"

11) Mobb Deep, "Dump"

There is a loose S-curve which the committee compiled. The committee has one member, he is unscientific, and he is primarily invested in having fun. To wit, why are there 41 songs in this tournament? It just seemed right. So enjoy, and participate if you'd like.

To the opening games...

8) Snoop Dogg and Redman, "From Long Beach 2 Brick City"
vs.
9) LBC Crew, "Feels Good 2 B DPG"

By seeding, I would take the slight upset. However, LBC Crew might be undervalued because the album from which this track comes is a from-the-vaults exercise in nostalgia. It's working.

6) 2Pac, "How Long Will They Mourn Me"
vs.
11) Mobb Deep, "Dump"

Is there a word for when a song title perfectly describes it? "Dump" would qualify. Nate deserved better.

7) The Game, "Too Much"
vs.
10) 50 Cent, "Girl Come Over"

Game's tempo and sneaky track overwhelms the plodding 50 song, especially be creating points off of turnovers and running.

8) Jadakiss, "Time’s Up"
vs.
9) Snoop Dogg, "O.G."

Close game. Nate wins it for Jada down the stretch by playing more of an all-court game, not only hitting a clutch three and making his free throws, but poking the ball away from Snoop as he made his way into the lane for a potential game-tying runner.

7) Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z, "Lollipop"
vs.
10) Redman, "Merry Jane"

Upset! Succumbing to alumni pressure and the creeping suspicion that inexplicably he could be replaced by Bruce Pearl, Coach Brick City allows Reggie to come back after a Brandon Davies-like suspension for an honor-code violation involving...drugs. Duh.

8) Warren G, "Nobody Does It Better"
vs.
9) Tha Dogg Pound, "A Doggz Day Afternoon"

Watch out for this Eight Seed. "Nobody" has four senior starters, three players 6'9" or taller, and Nate's feature role, which is reminiscent of his work on "Regulate." Very dangerous mid-major that might be seeded too low.

7) Ludacris, "Child of the Night"
vs.
10) 2Pac, "Thugs Get Lonely Too"

8) The Game, "Where I'm From"
vs.
9) Snoop Dogg, "Crazy"

7) Warren G, "Game Don’t Wait"
vs.
10) Memphis Bleek, "Need Me in Your Life"

The tournament committee, reassessing Bleek's body of work, relegated him to the Nate Dogg NIT and let Warren G move on as a matter of principle.

Show Some Respect

2011-03-10T00:13:00.003-05:00

Peep a mixtape:

AZ ft. M.O.P., "Sit 'Em Back Slow"

DMX, "Get at Me Dog"

Ghostface Killah ft. Masta Killa and Method Man, "Killa Lipstick"

Ruff Ryders, "Ryde or Die"

Gravediggaz, "Death Trap"

Nas, "Nastradamus"

Notorious B.I.G., "Going Back to Cali"

That, right there, is a who's who of New York hip-hop music. It also is a towering testament to EPMD. Jay-Z could be on the list, too, because like everyone else, he looked to EPMD for inspiration. They all did. And while it's no secret that "Jane," "Get the Bozack," "Please Listen to My Demo," "Head Banger," "It's My Thing," "Let the Funk Flow," and "You Gots to Chill" echoed in later hip-hop, EPMD's obvious influence on mid- and late-90s hip-hop seems to be easily overlooked, even as the progeny continue to enjoy privileged status. Just sayin'...

An Obvious Answer to This Question

2011-03-09T01:49:00.002-05:00

Who's the man? Check 3:20:

Good for Jon Stewart, Bad for America

2011-03-04T10:55:00.004-05:00

To the extent that I can, I have been taking a break from the news recently. When teacher pay is assailed as a leading example of the excess that has cratered America's economy, and when unions--of which I can be skeptical--are under assault from the party that wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, it's time to step away. There is only so much crazy, so much dismay, and so much powerlessness that I can handle. Moreover, even when I accept that in our democracy, there will be decisions about which I can do nothing, I have a hard time reconciling my frustration with what people accept as reporting and commentary.

Thankfully, Jon Stewart's career has become an ongoing mission to fight back against the infection that is steadily killing the United States. This was much needed, even if it will ultimately change nothing.

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It Stays Great to Be...

2011-03-01T02:50:00.005-05:00

I can only imagine that Spartan fans are complaining that Matt Trannon deserved his own category.

Go Blue!

Music for a Monday: Action Bronson Is My Dude

2011-02-28T00:24:00.003-05:00

I had never heard of Action Bronson before last week, when a friend sent me his EP, The Program. Apparently he was on Nah Right a few weeks ago. You can download his EP here. I gotta give it up to dude.

Silvio Doesn't Like Your Fur Coat

2011-02-26T20:05:00.013-05:00

At some point along the way, the premise of every Bill Simmons basketball column became as tedious as his jokes, his puerile sensibilities, and his enormous self-regard: Bill must save us from our own shortcomings. When he first wrote for ESPN almost a decade ago, he was far less taken with himself and still amenable to the notion that he did not have everything figured out. Best of all, he wrote with a perspective as an outsider, and that made his ideas about basketball fresh and his vantage point shared by millions. Simmons was a passionate basketball fan who appeared guided by the overriding desire to speak with, and for, other everyday fans.

Over time, that has changed, to everyone's detriment, and to the point that he is all but insufferable. Simmons now writes with the tone of a self-important celebrity. The writer who proudly insisted that remaining on the periphery enabled his unique product now loves to let his audience know when he speaks with NBA insiders. The proverbial Guys Who Know Things. Or even Daryl Morey, whom most of us know as the general manager of the Rockets but whom Simmons counts as a his "friend Daryl." In a gross way, it is fitting, because more than anything else, he is obsessed with celebrities. A worship of the rich and famous has become as much a hallmark of his work as his insistence on being one of a dozen remaining NBA fans used to be. Both obnoxious, the former perhaps explains why he reveres Jimmy Kimmel and wastes time interviewing people like Seth Meyers. Who cares that neither is funny; they're on television! It also helps to explain why he'd proudly cite glorified gossip columnist and kindred spirit Andrew Ross Sorkin as a muse. [/drool]

He now walks among his heroes. Simmons is undeniably a celebrity, a powerful man in media supported by one of its greatest leviathans, ESPN. His work has suffered as he has become that which he has always most coveted, however. (Regarding this transformation as unintentionally Greek would elevate Simmons and confer upon him undue gravity, but obtaining success at the expense of the very things for which he has been rewarded is a classical theme.) His basketball writing, once spirited and gorgeously obsessive, is instead pedantic and bloated these days. He now combines professed basketball omniscience, pomposity, and his bully pulpit--regardless of actual authority--to peddle well-worn ideas. He buries his ever more scarce insights under an avalanche of bad jokes, not-that-clever cultural references, and basketball thinking that is bandied about day and night on the internets by a fairly loud chorus of writers. It's as though while writing his Book of Basketball--no doubt the process that has come to represent his personal Rubicon--Simmons convinced himself of his own preeminence.

This week's trade column tells the sad Simmons story. Over 7,000 words, he manages to effectively repackage the narratives, ideas, and arguments that any NBA fan could access throughout Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday as the NBA trade deadline came and went. Only, he does it while handing out grades, referring to Morey as his friend in an attempt to provide context for how disappointed he is that Houston acquired Hasheem Thabeet, and effecting the usual Simmons tone as the man whose burden is to set records straight. To be fair, Simmons is a victim of circumstance to some degree. Twitter, blogging, and other social media have made so much more information so much more readily available that a person so inclined can now find for himself nearly any basketball content he wants. Further, while it would be very Bill Simmons of Bill Simmons to decide he would grade not only NBA trades, but also NBA fans and their reaction to NBA trades, perhaps the column's conceit was an ESPN editor's idea. Lord knows, they grade everything else, on a seemingly daily basis.

All the same, to be so tone deaf, whether on his own volition or while working to appease a boss, is the saddest irony that inheres to what Bill Simmons has become. (And I use the word "irony" intentionally, with its sixth definition in mind. Simmons, ever the wordsmith, made a big to do about how wrongly everyone uses that word in modern language. You may recall the column--it was the one in which he described free-throw shooting as "porous." He really sees things that the rest of us don't!) A man who forever insisted on "getting it" when others didn't--general managers, athletes, fans, owners, porn stars, reality television contestants--now misses the mark regularly. Obsequious when in the bright lights of Hollywood or, even better, the company of his own shadow, Simmons used the trade synopsis to congratulate himself and scold more than a few of us while sharing ideas that anyone who follows Tom Ziller, Adrian Wojnarowski, and a handful of others on Twitter had either offered or assimilated long before the trade grades.

A Knicks fan, I found the Carmelo section notably obnoxious and all too perfect. Simmons gave the Carmelo trade an A-minus, which I disagree with but can understand within the circumscribed parameters which Simmons erected around his first three paragraphs. He also acknowledged the Knick fan angst which attends any decision that James Dolan and Isiah Thomas make in tandem. The section concluded, though, with an F-minus-minus handed out to "People Who Don't Realize That Carmelo Is a Legitimate Superstar." Bill's reasons?

1) "Advanced metrics" people (don't tell Nate Silver) got too bogged down in statistical analysis of what Carmelo can't do and underestimated what he can, which is score as well as anyone and rebound well for his position.

2) Carmelo is 26 years old, which I assume Simmons thinks is proof that Carmelo will get better, but which could be flipped around to note that Anthony has advanced past the first round of the playoffs only once in what is already seven attempts.

3) Carmelo and Amare Stoudemire are two of the ten players who started in the All-Star Game. You know, the starting lineup which fans elect and to which they added all-but-retired Yao Ming this year? That must be definitive proof that Carmelo is a star, right?

4) Other players respect Carmelo, and that means something. This is starting to seem like a Peter King column.

5) Carmelo could be "ignited" by the glitz and scale of New York.

6) You can't win a title with Amare and Carmelo, but you can with those two and one of Chris Paul, Deron Williams, or Dwight Howard. This is the reason that put me over the edge. Meant as a Q.E.D of sorts--"Thank you, and please drive through" is the way Simmons ends this argument that he's decided he's won--it presupposes that the Knicks will bide time until next season or the summer of 2012 and then strike. It completely neglects that by the summer of 2012, the Knicks will be paying Anthony and Stoudemire $40m; that already, New York would barely be able to afford another max-deal player; that the next collective bargaining agreement will almost certainly implement a lower cap figure, and may very well also contain more stringent cap rules and a more restrictive player-movement system; and that earlier in the Anthony section, alone--to say nothing of the rest of the column--Simmons acknowledges how radically the coming, more owner friendly CBA influenced this year's trades.

A person simply cannot assess the Anthony deal, or any other, in a context void of CBA consideration. It seems foolish, ill-informed, and even dishonest in the name of advancing an argument. Knick fans upset about Carmelo are upset because even if the players traded were worth Anthony, tethering the Knicks to him may not have been. Under the next CBA, the Knicks likely will not be able to afford a third star were the star to make what he could now. Obviously, a market correction is coming, and someone like Paul will command fewer dollars. But to assume that the next cap will accommodate Amare's contract, Anthony's contract, a third star's contract, and then nine more NBA salaries is something of a leap, unless one assumes that rank-and-file players are prepared to earn 80 and 90 percent less than they do now.

For someone like Simmons, who gleefully advances conspiracy theories and burns through column inches on pet theories that he concocts on the phone with his friends, to omit that kind of CBA logic while insisting on his perspective as the authoritative one was the latest episode in his steady decline. Really, that's what this entire post is about. As astounding as the arrogance that permeates his writing is the soaking, underwhelming content. That's the problem with celebrity culture in America: we anoint heroes, ask little of them, and continue to celebrate them even when they've no longer earned it. No one knows that better than Bill Simmons.

A Few Words about Something Real

2011-02-24T23:29:00.005-05:00

The other night, David Rawth tweeted something which caught my eye:

Typically, I ride for Jon Stewart, whom I find to be a truth teller in an industry which has very little invested in that sort of thing. Roth's words struck me, as a result, and the impact was even stronger because I know Roth's politics and very much admire how smartly and eloquently he can explain them. When I watched The Daily Show early Wednesday, I finally understood what prompted Roth's tweet. I shot him an email in response, and I thought I would share that:

I saw a tweet of yours from last night that was critical of Jon Stewart's treatment of the Wisconsin Dems and the protesters. I didn't fully grasp the context, but when I sat down to watch last night's episode and Monday's, I came away very disappointed in one of his rhetorical bits. He lampooned the broadcasters who were comparing the Wisconsin protests to Egypt, and that made sense to me. However, he next lampooned a dude on CNBC who compared Wisconsin to September 11th. Obviously, no one has died in Wisconsin, so the most basic comparison of the two events makes the CNBC assertion laughable. It trivializes death. But that is a very myopic view of 9/11, and while I can't say so definitively, I suspect that the CNBC person meant 9/11 as a shorthand for the country's response to terrorism, not as the literal destruction of the World Trade Center. In that broader regard, I find the comparison apt.

9/11 initiated an administrative, cultural, and social restructuring that convinced Americans to sacrifice liberty, fundamental rights, and even the concept of dissent in service of security. It profoundly altered the collective consciousness of the nation. We have arrived at another restructuring. Using the public apparatus of government to dismantle unions, claw back portions of the social safety net, and hold municipal workers accountable for crimes to the economy that they didn't commit is a terrible precedent that will be replicated elsewhere. Worse, it represents another completely galling, cynical, insidious, and dangerous triumph of the wealthy and powerful over the poor and helpless. Only in this country would a response to widespread economic depression caused by Wall Street manifest itself in the functional equivalent of legislative pogroms against Main Street.

Following the news this last month or so has been particularly difficult. As a result, I am somewhat less informed than I normally am. Some days, it's just too hard. However, I don't stop feeling--feeling dismay, sorrow, and skepticism. Sometimes it comes pouring out.

A Quiet Reminder of Why I Love Rap Music

2011-02-23T00:03:00.006-05:00

Years ago, I wrote a post asserting what seemed like an overlooked hip-hop reality: Pete Rock makes the best remixes. The dude might as well have invented them.

I returned to the sentiment on Sunday as I closed out my weekend first by cursing Chris Bosh for missing that three, and then by playing a collection of rap samples and original material for a friend. All week, we had been trading YouTube clips over email trying to stump each other. He had chosen some great source material, and I had to clap back. We got lost in the weeds while untangling old Artifacts and De La Soul records. Suddenly, it was late and our All-Star Game party had to be wound down. To finish off the evening, I threw on "You're No Good" by the Harvey Averne Dozen:

The song knocks on its own accord. I don't want to sell it short. But I also can't profess to being the world's largest Harvey Averne fan. Rather, the bass that carries the song from 0:09 to 0:19 has rattled around in my head for years thanks to Peter Rock, who took it, threw it underneath some of those horns he plays with so well, and decorated House of Pain's "Jump Around" with a second aesthetic that has preserved the track. I usually want to kill myself when I hear "Jump Around"; I don't even have the standard MP3 on my computer. I especially hate watching the kids in Madison, WI dance to it. But I will never stop riding for Peter's version. That Averne bass is like formaldehyde, keeping fresh something otherwise long gone. Listen:

The "Jump Around" remix tells an important story about rap music, about why the genre endures.

Trading samples all week--and obsessively hunting them down ever since I learned about high-speed internets in college--made hip-hop's derivative nature inescapable again. So much of the best rap music is created from the works of others. It's practically genetic: the seminal record of the genre, "Rapper's Delight," is just a Chic loop. We've moved on since then, and just as rhyming has become more complex, so has beat making. The most basic samples, those that are unembarrassed to serve as royalty checks, don't amaze people anymore. That's why no one ever felt that Will Smith was making great music when he was repackaging Patrice Rushen, no matter how catchy. Instead, the best producers, many of whose names are canonical, taught hip-hop fans to appreciate real sampling. And not just real sampling, but real music making. Far from straight rip offs, the great sample-driven beats showcase innate musical talent, intricate craftsmanship, and singular creativity. Forever and ever, through trends and cycles. It never stops. Long a venue for new expression, rebellion, and irreverence, rap could never ask for a better ambassador than the expertly made sample, no matter how initially confusing that might seem to the uninitiated. Thankfully, there is no shortage of them.

Rock's "Jump Around" is a prime example, with the original rapping set to new drums, new bass, new horns, and new atmospherics. It's like stripping a car down to its chassis and then throwing on a new body, wheels, interior, and paint job (ice cream or otherwise). Really, it's the meta rap song, not only demonstrating the genre's power to repackage other music, like Averne's, but also itself. That's what a remix is, after all, and no one has ever made them as consistently well as Peter. Just ask the Clipse and Slim Thug, who got the Pete Rock treatment this week:

I prefer this "Wamp Wamp." Just more Pete Rock doing what he does best.

And I Always Find Something Wrong

2011-02-22T01:14:00.001-05:00

Just feels right to play this as you read.

Carmelo Anthony is finally a Knick! Renaldo Balkman is finally a Knick again! (If you keep track of these kinds of things, Isiah Thomas has acquired Balkman twice, now.) These trades usually take on some closing flourishes as paperwork gets sent to the league office, so I am not yet fully clear on what just happened. From what I can tell, this is the trade:

Denver gets Raymond Felton, Wilson Chandler, Danny G, Timofey Mozgov, every remaining Knick draft pick until the Rapture which Isiah Thomas or Donnie Walsh hadn't already traded away, a bundle of cash, a year's supply of knishes, luxury tax relief.

New York gets Anthony, Balkman, Chauncey Billups, Shelden Williams, Anthony Carter, Corey Brewer, Isiah Thomas's growing influence, the chance to big three itself in 2012.

Minnesota gets Anthony Randolph, Eddy Curry and his roving cloud of Cheeto dust.

Donnie Walsh gets marginalized even more.

The inescapable paradox of New York's basketball culture is in full bloom. Despite proudly insisting on being the most erudite fans in the world, New Yorkers are perhaps more susceptible to spectacle than any others. Everyone's arrival heralds revolution, from (Carmelo) Anthony to Xavier (McDaniel). Always. Want more proof? Don't forget Spike Lee on Dan Dickau. That was one of the many big nights in New York. Restoring the roar to Madison Square Garden is never all that difficult, really. Keeping it there is the problem.

Carmelo and Amare are the latest to be tasked with trying. For the rest of this season, New York has the most exciting front court combination in the league, and it has created only the second pair of top-six scorers. (You'll never believe this, but Miami has the other.) This much is given, but of course, the trade means more than those bromides. The Carmelo trade already stretches out toward the future. The plan, which seemingly everyone now discusses at a volume that has steadily grown from whispers to everything but shouting, is clear: Team Toast. Chris Paul may have delivered the most consequential wedding toast of all time this summer when he suggested that he, Carmelo, and Amare might assemble in New York to challenge Miami and any other Big Three iterations. That, it seems, is where New York is headed. And even if 2012 comes around, Chauncey Billups's contract goes away, and Paul doesn't land in Manhattan, Deron Williams might. Maybe even Dwight Howard. Who knows? The New York tabloids have eighteen months to figure it out.

Those anticipating an ascendant New York that can contend for a title assume that not only will Team Toast fully assemble, but also that it will travel an easier path to the NBA Finals, and that it will be ready. By 2012 or 2013, the Celtics are likely to be too old, Tim Duncan over, the Magic disappeared, and the Lakers disbanded. Miami will still be Miami, Chicago may be even more improved, and Oklahoma City may have finally acquired another capable big man. Details aside, the League's upper echelon should have more room. Melo, Amare, and a point guard to be named later plan to seize upon it and a Larry O'Brien trophy. I am skeptical, though. Paul, Howard, and Melo, or Paul, Howard, and Amare certainly could. But these two forwards and a point guard leader? The collected history of basketball suggests that it may not work unless Michael Jordan is involved. Defense and rebounding stay critical, after all.

Really, the trade is no sure thing. Set aside championship aspirations and just consider today. This season may have been forfeited. A revitalized Knick outfit that was limited but an early reclamation project has been stripped of all but two true assets. Now, the Knicks have just one center, Ronny Turiaf, and he's undersized; an aging point guard who can't stay in front of people any more and dribbles too much; two scoring forwards who are not reliable defenders or rebounders; and a collection of spare parts. For all the deserved praise Landry Fields earns, he would be most effective coming off the bench as a swing man, not starting as a shooting guard. One thing we can say definitively: Chauncey Billups has found a new, adoring audience for his pull-up threes. Mike D'Antoni's valentine showed up a week later.

We also don't know if Stoudemire and Anthony can play together, and whether they can do it for D'Antoni. Building a fort, staying up with flashlights under the covers, and pledging to be besties is pretty easy at weddings and All-Star Games. But what about when each players wants to hold the ball, dribble into traffic, and take more shots than anyone else? What about when each looks around for someone else to rebound and defend in the paint but can't find anyone? Chandler's roll in the offense suggests that Anthony's style should fit well, but Chandler never was a star, and he never expected to be one. Anthony, who just held his own team hostage for five months, may not be as amenable to sharing. Carmelo and Amare might surprise us. Perhaps each will seize upon this opportunity that they helped to engineer by committing to being different players and curing deficiencies. Or perhaps they won't.

A team built around the future also has picked the worst time for it. The bounty Denver extracted from New York and Anthony's growing anxiety about a trade both indicated that the protagonist of this saga and his starstruck admirers fear a radically realigned NBA. Anthony could have waited to sign with New York this summer instead of forcing a trade, but his free agency might have been impeded by a new collective bargaining agreement that severely diminished his earning power. Similarly, New York could have held out for the free-agency scenario, however a new CBA might have derailed its pursuit of Anthony and its Team Toast designs. Trading for Anthony now ensured that New York could at least pretend to have sustained its momentum while securing another All-Star. But no one seems to know what the NBA will look like next year and beyond. The Anthony trade all but admits that New York is chasing after shadows in the distance that may not materialize as expected when the Brickers happen upon them.

More than anything, hurtling toward such an uncertain end is what casts the Anthony trade in the same negative light that has shone on the Knicks for years. After working with discipline and purpose to change Knick culture, cultivate opportunity, and repair horrific salary-cap damage, New York reverted to the bad habits which got it in trouble for so long. Only a little more than half a season into sobriety, in effect, the Knicks fell off the wagon, rather than trusting that staying clean and doing right would deliver even better days. New York has made a splash, and it may have set an initial foot on championship terra firma, no matter how circumscribed. Beyond doubt, though, is that New York has taken a huge risk, sacrificed short-term financial flexibility, discarded a big number of basketball assets, and once again placed celebrity glamor before sporting substance. The Knicks may get lucky and find that the organization's addiction to big names and cheap news coverage is finally met by championship basketball. It also might find itself mired in an uncomfortable, untenable morass of its own making yet again. Only time will tell, of course. Here's hoping that we all get to toast the former sometime soon.