A new house...ruby glass, pocket doors, only two previous owners.

singles

"Successful"
Drake, feat. Lil' Wayne and Trey Songz

Pillow played this track for me a few weeks ago. I downloaded it and proceeded to study it (in all of its heavy hotness) on my iPod, on the train and the street. Drake, as most of y'all been knowing, is Jimmy, wheelchair-bound Degrassi heartthrob, one of a team of wholesome and compelling Canadian daytime television teens (cult-status beloved Stateside). He rhymed occasionally on the show. But, for many this year, it came as a surprise that he was recording an album under Lil' Wayne's aegis, clurrrb "canoodling" with Rihanna, generally being a rapstar. His summer single "Best I Ever Had" was big, especially with Young World, but I was unconvinced. I found it irritating and puerile. This guy, "Successful," on the other hand, has soul and weight (an aforementioned "heavy hotness"), lyrical punch--"My girl love me but fuck it my heart beat slow." The first bars are dungeon-ous, casting one into hazy depths, a backward, basement church. Trey's refrain is apathetic to the max, slow and careless, a supposition, an expression of vague desire for a vague property. Half Memphian, half Great Northern Jew (bestill my heart), Drake's stories are lingually street (I mean, spoken in the manner of most hip hop), but the meat of them and his point of view are pretty privileged, at ease. He is not a "striver" or even a pretend "striver." He doesn't want to fail; he wants recognition, "success," but he needs for nothing. He has swagger, but he has indecision also, a kind of waffle-y quality that is more the rakish, gambling-indebted "profligate son" of Anthony Trollope novels than gangsta'. He was never in a gang (outside of the Screen Actors Guild), and he's not going to pretend such (certainly not when Wayne is around). Kanye is similarly middle class, but he's such an inaccessible asshole. Drake is relatable, and that second verse has a chilled morosity that I find quite moving (Kanye is NEVER moving, never more than a shallow hipster, who crafts fine beats and hooks). Drake seems like a sort we've been seeing and will see more of, a post-hip hop hip hop artist. Of course, that last verse laid down by Weezy ("best rapper alive," born of the Deep South and Birdman and "hot blocks," traditionally [?] hip hop), after a brilliant pause, like a hidden track for the MP3 generation, is miles ahead of Drake's, full of pleasure and mannerisms and wordart (not -play). Maybe this track is a fluke for our young man, buoyed up by his betters? I hope not....I think not.

addendum: I was being over-tough on Kanye. For rhetoric? For T. Swift? One day soon, his antics might become sympathetic...only the most insecure sort of person postures so. He has a habit of cutting off his nose to spite his face, sort of eroding his substantial catalogue with a whole mess of braggadocio...pretty human, pretty sweet, really.

Best Thing Going (For Tuesday)

Pillow and I have been discussing acrylic and gel wraps, generally upping the seriousness of our nails. Perhaps we should purchase an issue of Below Zero.

No More Dramas (Addendum)

Yesterday's come-down was inevitable, but brief. In fact, I've found that there's a quite easy answer to the problem of "what to do at 24 in order to be a happy grown-up"--look good. As warm and wholesome and earthy as the Zizney Reunion (see below) was, we are left with an overwhelming urge to simplify, to focus on the surfaces of things, people (us), our bodies. Drinking more water (and less booze), sleeping proper amounts, eating vitamins, brushing our hair, working out, applying masques and eye serums and sunscreen, wearing lipstick and (gasp) heels and perfume. These are the keys to our future happiness. The rest (work and school and SUCCESS) will follow suit. I'm sure of it. Yup.

So it's only fitting that I'm ready to deal with Lady GaGa, who I've been holding at arms length for months now. Pillow nodded to The Fame last year. And, though she always leads me to the finest pops (Hello Blackout!), I couldn't get into GaGa. She put me in mind of all of the bottle-serviced douchebags I used to know. And then I saw her in interviews. Such an idiot, putting on a weak, Anglo-y accent and spouting stuff about Bohemianism and New York and the Scene and drugs and garrets in not-so-proper or clever English.

I've recently become enamored of a few of the tracks. They sound quite good. They stick. But ain't she a mess? The record is all pure, unadulterated vapidity (except for the dead-on "Like It Rough"). If she was winkingly posing as the gnarliest coked-out party girl in NYC, binging in the face of the Recession and the "Death of Downtown," then she would be a total genius. Instead, she's putting on this pseudo-intellectual show (like any defensive, self-conscious loser from Sacred Heart would) and saying she's from the future? What? Lady GaGa's pitch is like one of those poster-boards scrawled with confused, tinny adjectives that gay fay-shun show producers place backstage to motivate the models, to instruct them in the seasonal inspiration/angle they're meant to describe by, you know, walking.

So, I'll take the songs, exactly the soundtrack I need for my new drive toward brainlessness and sheen, and ignore the hype. I've embedded a non-music video YouTube of "Paparazzi" that S-P-E-L-L-S out the silliness and incoherence of her lyrics and one of "Like It Rough," my fave. Enjoi. And take care of yourself.