February 2007 Archives
Get Buck
You juggle a million things and the blog just falls by the wayside. But as I tell my team, that ain’t no excuse, so I’m back at it with the automatic… Gotta love Young Buck. Yeah, he’s outta his damn mind – seriously, the man’s a loose cannon (“the Glock stays on me and the knife’s for backup, I’m comin’ to the VIBE Awards, dare ya ta act up”) – but in a way that makes him a great rapper, both to watch and listen to, if not to hang out with. He’s a rock star in the best sense, which is exactly why the video for “Get Buck” sells the single so much better than the single itself. It’s one thing to hear Buck deliver simple lines about being tougher than everyone else he can possibly think of over a sparse beat. It’s another thing to see him lock down Nashville and literally stomp all over town. I like Buck (tho didn’t love Buck the World – shouts to Sha for coming through with the preview goods), and because I have some wild faith that one of these days he’ll come through with a true classic (Straight Outta Cashville was great, but it was no __[fill in to your taste]__), I hope this record wins, the album sells, and he gets another shot. Then again, with Fif’s whole music making approach making me nervous these days, I ain’t even confident that the third Buck album will make me, well, wanna get buck. One of those time-will-tell things, I figure…
Time – and just a short bit of it, too – will also tell if Craig Brewer’s new film, Black Snake Moan, is able to put bodies in seats and critical acclaim back in his ear. Moan, the Memphis-based director’s first project since the impressive, and Academy Award winning, Hustle and Flow, is a challenging film, both in terms of storytelling and payoff.
Full disclosure: as a Memphian, I’m a Brewer supporter. I’ve interviewed him multiple times, been in touch with him for several years now, know folks who know him well, the whole deal. And yet, I can’t say I like this film. Monday night I attended the movie’s NYC premiere and checked it out for the second time (I’d seen it last fall at a press screening). The stars were all there – Sam Jackson, Christina Ricci, David Banner, producers John Singelton and Stephanie Allain, Brewer himself (no JT, tho) – but the flick, well, it fell/falls a bit flat. Not nearly as funny or as campy as the trailer suggests, this is a movie about a nymphomaniac who gets chained to a radiator by a farmer hoping to break her of her sex craze. Read that description again. Does that even begin to make sense? Unsurprisingly the movie struggles to turn such a ridiculous conceit into a story – one with character growth, conflict, resolution, and all that. Brewer’s too arty to be a B-movie director. He believes in his shots, he believes in his actors, and he believes in his stories, so he lingers over all of ’em, which can be tedious when he’s chasing the wrong tail. Hustle and Flow told a story we all knew but had never seen. Moan tells a story that we would have never known or seen if Brewer hadn’t dreamed it up. And Star Wars it ain’t.
There are some cool things about this movie, tho. The individual performances, excluding JT’s, are all amazing (something Brewer clearly has a knack for). And the subversion of American ideas of race and sexuality, and where those ideas intersect, is also worth noting with a fucking asterisk – the big black man is trying to cure the white woman of her raging lust, not thrust his upon her, and he attempts to do this by physically chaining, i.e. enslaving, her to his chasteness (wrap your mind around that). 
Fnally, there’s the scenery and the music. Like with Hustle, no one is shooting this part of America and these aspects of American culture (rap and now the blues – shouts to Scott Bomar and his Making Easy Money suits!) with this much heart. All of that said, I feel the same way about Brewer as I do about Buck – I hope he wins and I can’t wait to check out the third studio project. There’s a lack of great art out there attempting to flow in these veins – and because my heart is tied up in all of it for all sorts of reasons, I have to keep the faith.
Back to the Basics
No great new music this week, so I'll just throw this out cause my man put me onto it awhile back and it bumps:
Mack Maine F/ Lil' Wayne & Dizzy -- "Ride With the Mack"
Only Killa Cam Can
Shouts to FenRock - the lil' homie is on his grind. Respect that.
Bang, Bang
Today's a Don King day, as in hype, hype, hype, pay me, pay me, pay me! 50 vs. Cam is the show of the century! They're both nuts! (Say what you will about his music, but 50's about as focused on his grind as any rapper yet. And Cam, well, he's damn near running a cottage industry on being focused on himself.) The Diplomats are NY's people's champs! 50 is NY's biggest seller! It's a Clash of the Titans! Heavyweights! Retarded taunts on-air! It's great! It's a three ring circus! It's everything rap needs right now!
And then, it's... lame. 50's so-called dis track and accompanying video ("Funeral Music") ain't even a killer. What up, Mr. Jackson? Did you really lose your edge, or is it just so much easier to knock off pretend contenders - anyone reading this with half a brain coulda shut down Ja and Game - than a fully realized rap star like Mr. Giles? I mean, I have a love hate relationship with Cam - love him on this:
Hate him on this:
But I gotta say this, the man unapologetically does him at every turn. And even when it's ridiculous, you gotta respect it.
But Fif ain't come with it. "Funeral Music" ain't "The Takeover," to say the least. As my man, FenRock, put it - once again Fif's ramblings at the end of the record are better than the record itself. At least he gives props to Jones. (How could you not?) I can only hope Cam will come correct and that Fif's just sitting on some real heat to throw out there in response. But... well, I ain't even gonna waste the words.
Back 2 the Basics:
Get familiar:
Slick Pulla, featuring Big Kuntry and Young Dro, "Drop Top, Porsche it Out"
'07 Theme:
Big Kuntry feat. B.G., "Fuck Being Famous"
Holla at me.
White Power
Running wild late on this, so lemme just jump into it: I know it won't be the first time, but go ahead and tell Joe Biden to pull the plug. Now. He needs to hear it in his head like a damn Vanilla Ice record until the day he drops out, if for no other reason, cause it’ll save all of us the misery of watching yet another out of touch white politician try to make his complete lack of understanding of the actual country he’s supposed to be running sound like it’s an okay thing. I mean, really?
Back 2 the Basics: Slopes of Snow edition
Sundance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Unless you’re into fighting your way into the club – even ballers were having trouble at the door – and freezing your balls off. I will say this, tho, Grace Is Gone deserved the Audience Award and the $4 mil Weinstein deal. Look for it in theaters this year. It’s profound and it’s life. Impressive all around.
Weapons, starring Nick Cannon and Paul Dano, is a train wreck but will probably garner some attention cause folks love to get all worked up about kids and guns. That said, lemme say this, just ’cause a few folks under 25 have sex, get high and get got don’t think it’s a socially significant statement. Often, such plot twists are just a cheap ploy to get folks talking about something that otherwise ain’t worth wasting the breath. And if someone can please tell me what city they’re actually supposed to be in, I’d be appreciative – Screw music, “whoady,” and mountains, wtf?!?!?
The good folks over at 5WPR treated us well, so shouts to them. Their lodge was retarded, the food was unfortunate, and the house parties (starring Nick Cannon, Patron and plenty of Budweiser Select) were fun – two out of three ain’t bad. Gotta give it up to our hosts as well – Club Lespri. We stayed in the Deer Lake Village development, which was about as winter wonderland as you could want.
Nothing beats sitting in an outdoor hot tub in the freezing cold. Except, maybe steak at Club Lespri’s Cellar Prime Steak – much thanks to the dude at the desk for the recommendation and the wait-staff for keeping the drinks and the jokes flowing. 'Course at some point, you gotta expect nothing less. Vegas is gonna be nuts.
