The boys are stepping it up slightly for week two…

Grad school is hard, y’all. The sabbaticals I take from posting are merely because life has changed in some meaningful way for me and there is a period of adjustment to which I succumb. Beginning grad school, being laid off, dealing with unemployment on a weekly basis because of systematic issues with the program, continuing to look for a job and realign my career in the meantime, and maintaining a wonderfully blossoming relationship after the rough ending of the previous one; it all adds up to one thing: Drake sings too much.

I went from criticizing Wayne because of his whiny, gargling, Auto-Tuned voice being everywhere and then was introduced to his Halloween mixtape last year and was turned around. Not so much as to say that he is one of my top 10 or anything, but I definitely have more respect for him than I previously did. Think what you will. That being said, I kind of liked Drake, only I didn’t know who he was when I liked him. I mean, he didn’t say his name as often in his verses. I got my hands on a couple of compilation albums and he was featured a couple of times on a song and I liked his flow. Then I heard some more buzz from him on my frequently visited music sites so I was happy to hear that he was getting some airplay.

Then his single dropped.

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So, Vampire Weekend is a pretty popular band right now. In fact, their Contra is the highest profile release of the year thus far. And I’m really seriously debating picking it up.

But I’m torn. I’m all for good music and I enjoy trends as much as the next guy, it’s just that Vampire Weekend still seems like a ton of hype and I’m not really one to buy into hype.

Plus, I feel like I’ve heard their stuff before. And I sort of have.

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Through a convoluted series of events, I picked up Drake’s debut EP, So Far Gone, this week, and I’ve finally made my mind up about the guy.

Actually, they weren’t that convoluted, I guess. I’d seen an ad for The Shield complete-series box set, which both intrigued and irked me. I mentally committed to buying it despite owning all of the individual seasons. I went to The Sound Garden to trade in my individual seasons and got store credit. As I was shopping, I saw Chris Walla’s Field Manual with a “2 for $10″ sticker and I looked for something else to complete the deal. Eventually, I found So Far Gone, which has helped me form my opinion of Drake.

Basically, I’m not a fan.

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Sometimes I wish that record labels were more daring in how they handle business. Hip-hop is huge; hip-hop is a worldwide influence. Sodas and shoes have been remixed. I just wish that more albums would be remixed.

Really, Sprite was “remixed” a few years ago and Nike has fed a niche market with remixed versions of some of their most popular shoe models, allowing artists to put their individual stamp on shoes. I just wish that more music was remixed.

I can remember falling in love with remixes. I can still vividly recall rushing home from the record store with new singles that had a remix or two on them. Sometimes only the beat was changed but sometimes they had new lyrics too. I’m part of a generation of that’s used to the notion of a remix, so nothing is really held sacred.

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Being one of those people who enjoys rambling on about how they can remember back “before MTV started to suck,” I was a big fan of The State. I loved that show. It made its debut right around the time that my comic sensibilities gelled, so I really identified it as “my show.”

Naturally, I was stymied by the fact that it took so long to get to DVD. I was tempted to get the first season when I saw it pop up on iTunes, but after reading the reviews complaining about the music licensing issues, I decided against it.

When The State did finally make it to DVD, I snapped it up, and honestly, I was disappointed by the music changes. I’ve gotten through the whole thing yet, but based on what I’ve watched, sometimes the new music doesn’t sync up. Sometimes it doesn’t match the tone of the sketch. And sometimes you can tell what song they couldn’t use based on the replacement music. Basically, the lack of the original stuff usually took me out of sketch.

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Brenda, Larry, a firefly eating a marshmallow, The Death of Auto-Tune, MJ, McNair, Michael Bay’s racism, mannequins, time travel and Talib Kweli… I’ve had a lot going on lately.

Good evening, people. The above seemingly random mentionings are the amalgam of experiences I had over the last few weeks, in no particular order.

Between apartment hunting and questioning my (non)existing relationships, I met Brenda and Larry. At Cafe Laguardia in the Wicker Park area of Chicago, my brother and I, along with some of his friends, watched a woman with that “why did I come here with this fool” look on her face as she watched her man act up with the live band at the Cuban restaurant. We took note amongst ourselves her attitude, that she was either ready to leave or ready for her mate to calm his behavior down to a notch below “tomfoolery.”

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I can’t really focus this week, so I’m just going to give a smattering of thoughts on a variety of subjects.

Quixote

I’m really irked that when I ripped the newest Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, It’s Blitz!, to iTunes, it came up as “It’s Blitz! (Instrumentals)”, even though it weren’t instrumentals. I’ve spent the last few weeks searching for the bloody instrumentals to that very album, but to no avail.

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Back in the day I was a fan of Eminem. It’s true, I really was.

I remember watching the video for “My Name Is” with my best friend. We both approached it very analytically. We critiqued his flow and his rhymes. We gave him credit for his cleverness and unique perspective. And we were both cautious about a white guy with that much talent.

Clearly he was talented. But equally crystalline was that his video was in heavy rotation on MTV and its family of channels. He was getting a push like no other. Plus he was getting played on stations like WHFS, an “alternative” station that didn’t play rap, yet Em made the cut.

Anyway, The Slim Shady LP dropped shortly thereafter and we were slayed. It was an album that sounded unique. Em wasn’t trying to be hard or jiggy. He was trying to entertain. He had a sense of humor. And most importantly, he was sick on the mic.

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