Since being elected last year, old Tone has made more than the occasional blunder. His policies and various mutterings have led to widespread condemnation from the Twitterati, with the old classic 'Don't blame me, I didn't vote for him' being rolled out with jolting regularity. Now we are hearing Joe Hockey booming 'The age of entitlement is over' and that 'Nothing is free'. Well, anyone who spent 5 minutes listening in their Year 8 Economics class knows this. What is scary is the manner in which Hockey and co plan to return our economy to surplus.



We endured the archaic treatment of human life in the morally catastrophic (and possibly illegal) 'turn back the boats' pillar. We laughed openly at the folly of re-introducing Dames and Dukes to Australian political figures. We sat in disbelief as Tony and co dismantled governmental integrity on scientific pursuits, as they cut funding to the CSIRO and joined the cave-dwellers who seem to think climate change is a left-wing construct designed to divert funding away from upper class tax cuts (mining tax, anyone?). We watched with horror as Tony bumbled his way around various foreign incidents, openly offending Indonesian politicians and reducing one of our generations worst human rights crises in Syria to a case of 'Goodies and Baddies'. We suffered ALL of this, but it was bearable, because, cruelly and harshly, it didn't directly impact upon us. We were morally outraged, suitably embarrassed and downright confused a lot of the time, but my backyard was as green as it ever has been.
 

So when Joe stands in front of a carefully selected group of Pinot Noir aficionado's and, with a red wine in hand, announces that the age of entitlement is over, alarm bells started ringing in my head. The UN can deal with Tony's human rights abuses. Other countries can shoulder the brunt of our climate-denying damage. This is the final nail in the coffin of a Government who has become little more than a parrot, chirping tried and tested party lines and introducing weak, vote-winning policies that sound more impressive than they ever will be in action.


The nut's and bolts. There is no budget crisis. Do not be afraid of deficit, as it is merely a term that is used to describe the current standing of budget balance. It is not a major economic performance indicator (like growth, inflation and unemployment). Most economists agree that in a recession, the way to stimulate stagnant economic growth is by spending more, thus sending a budget in to further deficit. Australia is a triple A credit rated country. Our public debt as a proportion of GDP is one of the lowest in the developed world. Without debt, economic growth, and therefore jobs growth and investment in essential infrastructure (think second Sydney airport, the widening of the M5, hospital upgrades, investment in better roads etc etc) would falter, and once that happens there IS a budget crisis. Surplus is a word used by Government's to sound impressive and appear effective, when in actual fact slipping in to deficit can be the essential part of economic policy. Australia so expertly navigated the GFC partly due to amassing debt through Rudd's stimulus packages. We became the envy of economies worldwide because of it. Being in deficit is NOT bad. That is key in moving forward.



Now, Hockey makes some valid points. In his key note speech, he identifies that Australian's are now burdened with an ageing population and a bloated welfare and health care bill that will be difficult to service. This much is extremely true. Difficult to service, however, only if he continues down the warpath to surplus, which we now know is a purely political move that has little, if any, economic bearing on our future. Unfortunately, whilst it still may be admirable for him to tread this path, he has decided that in order to achieve this goal, it is the those of us who are most disadvantaged that will have to fork up the money. The elderly, the sick, and the middle income earners are going to be slugged the hardest, with the pension age rising to 70, $6 GP visits (proposed), possible slashing of Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme privileges, a reduction in the amount of people who currently receive health care concession cards (which also incorporate public transport), and a reduction in the length of the Gonski reforms from 6 to 4 years. That's a lot to take in, so let's go through it one by one.



Increasing the pension age to 70. Depending on when you were born, currently the age is between 65 and 67. Why does this affect only the low to middle income earners? Well, superannuation can be relied upon by those who have enough of it from the age of 60, which means that they can retire 7 years earlier than those who haven't earned as much in their lifetime. There are multiple problems with this increase to 70, and it shows the inexplicable short-sightedness of our Government. Firstly, this will only affect those who are most needy. Joe Bloggs who has spent the last 20 years sitting in an air conditioned office barking orders at subordinates before taking long lunches and business flights will be comfortably retired at age 60, flying the world. Meanwhile, Joe Toggs, who has spent his life labouring as a roofer in 40 degree days, with fingers the size of sausages and a raft of health issues related to his profession, will have to soldier on TILL HE IS 70!! Can you imagine hiring a roofer, and some 69 year old grandfather rocks up at your place to re-tile it? Not only is this cruel and unfair, it is dangerous. In increasing the pension age, Tone may save a quick buck, but the economic impact could be far reaching. A 69 year old is going to be significantly less productive than a 29 year old. By forcing them to work for an extra 3 years, you are greatly endangering their health. Skin cancer, falls, serious injury like back problems and arthritis, the mental burden of physically putting their body through such pain every day. This results in more GP visits, more hospital visits, and ultimately a GREATER cost to the taxpayer than if he/she were receiving the pension. And I don't know if you worked this one out, but how many employers are keen to keep workers who are past 65 employed? If they fire them, or make them redundant, where does this person then go for work? Who is going to hire a 65 year old who has laboured his or her entire life? Is Tony going to provide incentives for businesses to employ older workers? Is he going to provide re-training facilities so these people can learn new skills and enter a different area of the work force? Or is the older worker going to be forced on to NewStart because they are now unemployable?



$6 GP visits. I don't know about you, but my dad hates the doctor. He will only go if he is dying, I kid you not. $6 may not seem like a lot of money, but for someone who is already hard up paying rent and food, or who has kids, and they have serious medical problems or are constantly bugged by medical niggles, this will add up. All of a sudden, that slight pain in your chest, or that dull ache in your leg takes a backseat because you need to pay rent, or electricity, or buy dinner. Fast forward 2 weeks and you're in emergency because your leg has turned a deep shade of purple and you can't walk on it. All of a sudden, a simple GP visit which would've cost the Government $50 now costs them thousands as you're stuck in hospital undergoing a raft of expensive tests and procedures. All this tax will do is raise $750 million over four years. That is nothing. Abbott spent $16 million on a Cadbury factory revamp.. This is just blatantly bad economic policy.

There's a reason why the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is costing the Government so much. Medications are stupidly expensive. I have first hand knowledge in this. With my health care concession card, I actually can afford to eat. Without it, I cannot. The three medications I take, if I were to pay full price for them, would run me around $120 a month, which is a whopping $1440 a year, which is the same amount a pack a week smoker would spend. For patients who require a large amount of medications to ensure their quality of life and their health, it isn't feasible for them to pay full price for medications. A box of sleeping tablets can run well over $60. A month's supply of anti-depressants is similar. Cutting funding to the PBS is cruel and unfair. We should be nourishing and helping the sick, not sticking our hands in their pockets.



Hockey and Abbott have finally sunk to the lowest rung on the ladder. Instead of dipping in to their ludicrous Paid Parental Scheme, which has no means test whatsoever and is a stark beacon of female-minded policy amongst a sea of misogynistic rhetoric, they've decided to take benefits away from the poor. Australia is a beautiful country that is blessed with a huge abundance of natural resources and a robust and diverse economy. A country must be judged upon how it treats its most needy. North Korea stomp them in to the dust. China exploit them to achieve their stratospheric levels of growth. Spain abandoned them. Meanwhile, countries with the most admirable and enviable living conditions also spend the most on welfare. Australia spends the 5th most in the world per capita on welfare, coming 2 places behind America. However, as a percentage of GDP, we drop to a staggering 22nd. There is a lot of money being generated by our economy, and comparatively, not a lot of it is going to welfare, to the neediest of our citizens. John Howard was crucified by his introduction of a GST, but it was effective. Rudd and Swann were criticised for their stimulus package, yet it steered us through a dangerous period. Hockey and Abbott have given a leg up to their business associates, for some reason the parroted line of everyone now needs to pull their weight only refers to those least able to. This budget will be the final nail in a coffin that has already begun it's descent, with Australia's moral integrity weighing it down. It's deplorable.

Album Review: Autopsy - Tourniquets, Hacksaws and Graves
8/10

The story of Autopsy isn't one mired in the usual sludge that gets slung around with 90s doom and death metal bands. Through their initial work with Death, and the pioneering noise produced on Severed Survival and Mental Funeral, Reifert and Cutler cemented themselves as outstanding citizens of this community. Of course their depravity of both lyric and sound betrays them somewhat, but their initial offering, Severed Survival, a whopping 25 years ago, stands out as a real watershed moment in the genre. It was a total annihilation of the listener. Track 4 was titled Gasping For Air, which is quite ironic, because at no point do Autopsy allow you even a moment where you could fantasise about a gasp of air. It's a muck filled melee.

However, there is a discernible trait the separates the good from the great in death metal. Walking past a local metal festival recently, (Soundwave in Sydney), I heard Trivium playing. Even at a distance of probably 200 metres, I could identify individual chords, I could hear the bass, I could isolate all the elements that were being pounded in to that overworked amplifier. Earlier, when I heard what I assume was Asking Alexandria, it sounded like a giant mess of noise that was aggressively boiling away. Autopsy have disgusted, they've denied basic human rights, one of their records is called Shitfun and one is called Macabre Eternal. But their sound is not just a wall of impenetrable noise. Whilst still remaining a highly technical band, they haven't ever devoted themselves to the art, the way Opeth or Cephalic Carnage have.

That is the triumph of the band, and the triumph of Tourniquets, Hacksaws and Graves. Opener Savagery is evocative, it's a visceral assault. As Drummer Reifert screams "The earth shatters" your walls really will quake, conjuring images of maggot-ridden corpses vibrating, shaken by the extreme bass and dual guitar mayhem. If you were wondering whether age mellows a man, the answer is written in dark red blood all over Savagery. Fuck. No. Don't expect Reifert and co to tire as the day wears either. A quick perusal of what's to come reveals King of Flesh Ripped, The Howling Dead, After The Cutting and the worrying Deep Crimson Dreaming.

Speaking on their last full length, Headless Ritual, Reifert explained, in about as much depth as we're likely to get out of the man, the bands process going in to recording. "Nah, we didn’t try to do anything different. It just came out. It was more that we thought, OK, the last record was pretty good, we’ve got to make this one better. We didn’t think of anything too deeply beyond that." This can attract the ire of the critical community, and it did somewhat, but the wonderful thing about the death metal community is they just plainly do not give a flying fuck what the rest of the music world thinks of them. As we sit in our Prius' and pump out Mumford & Sons, the fans are in pitch black rooms tearing shreds off each other, bashing their heads against walls and pulling their own teeth out for the fuck of it. Autopsy don't need to change anything, so they haven't. After The Cutting could've come off Severed Survival, all 4 minutes of it. When the boys break it down through the middle, it resembles a loose jam session, with Reifert booming words like 'death' and 'dying', before a huge riff returns with the speed of a heroin injection, and only snatches of lyrics are caught as his voice switches between sounding like it's rising from the deepest pits of hell to sounding as if he is descending from heaven, having just sprayed the blood of christ everywhere. Why change, when you're this ominous, this aggressive, this brutal, this bloody brilliant?

As mentioned earlier, these boys are pioneers. Reifert helped create what is widely regarded as the actual birth of death metal, Scream Bloody Gore (1987). Whilst bands used them as a cultural touchpoint during the explosion of death and doom metal in the late 80s and early 90s, they then spread their seeds in different directions, generally taking an approach they felt fit and working well within it. Autopsy are so well respected because they blend a multitude of influence together and create coherent, traceable music. Their punk roots are ever present, and tracks like After The Cutting and King Of Flesh Ripped utilise that ability to sound truly dangerous yet grounded in musical history familiar enough to almost nod along to. Then there is the atmospheric element they bring. All Shall Bleed, clocking in at 1:12, threatens the entire time to spill over in to a fanfaric murder ballad, but it's slow death march bleeds in to Deep Crimson Dreaming, which starts almost placidly, before Reifert groans with bloodied lungs. Then, a lovely little repose. It's these moments that define the Autopsy sound. Little touches, flourishes of normalcy in something so definitively dystopian, something that reeks of rotting corpses and the stench of old flesh stuck between teeth.

The drumming. Well, Cutler and Reifert are the beating hearts of the band, but Reifert is on a completely new level. He lists Keith Moon as a formative influence, and the zeal with which he attacks the skins is shocking. His perfect camber and ability to somehow personify death and destruction through his playing is actually slightly removed from The Who's erratic stick man. On Deep Crimson Dreaming he completely changes the arc of the song, repeatedly, by blending an off-kilter time pattern with a seemless switch to speed drumming. On Forever Hunger, the lifeblood of the track is housed within its percussion, his giant 808-sounding assault encompasses about 6 different kicks, and the bass he extracts is incredible. Death Metal is a highly technical pursuit, and this man is at the pinnacle of it.

If you were looking for a band who had begun to mellow with age, Tourniquets, Hacks and Graves spewed blood violently all over your ear drums. As the dust settles hours after your final encounter with the track Autopsy, the mangled remains of the dead still litter your thoughts and prayers. Autopsy helped create death metal, they moulded it to suit their depraved psycho-profile, they forced it in to ungodly positions and cut body parts off it with rusty, blunt instruments. Why in the name of the honourable Satan would they change?
8/10

Tripping off the beat kinda, dripping off the meat grinder
Heat niner, pimping, stripping, soft sweet minor
China was a neat signer, trouble with the script
Digits double dipped, bubble lipped, subtle lisp midget

When I was 14, I used to watch MTV and scribble down the names of songs I liked, then rush to my room and spend the next three days waiting for Limewire to download them. My musical education consisted of a steady diet of Placebo, Ja Rule, Jay-Z and Eminem. My mum stole my copy of The Eminem Show, in a scene straight out of the playbook, and hid it. I never found it again.

You could've broke it off and ended it and dip
And if you spoke soft we could've still preserved the friendship
Now you apologize, that's what they all say
You wasn't sorry when you sucked him off in the hallway

I have no idea how I came across Madvillain. I remember being teased incessantly because i used to scribe Jay-Z lyrics all over my textbooks at school, and as a tall, scrawny, pimply faced white boy going to a selective school in Western Sydney, I was certainly in a pretty exclusive minority with my penchant for gangster rap. Once I'd worn my copy of Blueprint 2 down to it's basal elements, I consulted the internet for advice. Mainstream hip hop was fine, it was all I knew, but surely there was a more potent form of music out there?

I may not know how I came across Madvillain, but I remember with startling clarity, considering my later love of alcohol, exactly how it made me feel to immerse myself in MF Doom and Madlib's crazy world. The very first thing I noticed, and I am again probably in the minority here, given Doom's trademark cadence and monotonal delivery, were the samples used by Madlib, snatches of old movies that punctuated the incessant drone of Doom's lyrical acrobatics.

I must've had an early bootlegged copy, because mine differed from the final tracklist. Both Powerball #5 and Peeyano Keys appeared on my burned CD, and I never heard Raid until many years later when I tracked down a hard copy of the official release. There was nothing quite as liberating as my initial encounter. DOOM's dexterity, which was maintained despite an apparent total lack of effort, was a revelation.

Poor guys, what a sight for old, sore four-eyes
Now hook me with two apple pies and a small fries
All rise, so far art as a Rupple
So raw break it down and make quadruple
It's crucial, you could see it in his pupil
And this time when he get it he'll waste it on somethin' useful

His delivery is nothing short of astounding. To cram "far" and "art" so closely together and enunciate each letter in such a way that carried his off-hand style but ensured they wouldn't be mis heard was staggering. Jay-Z was rapping about Clearports and Armidale Vodka, DOOM was rapping about sex through one of the craziest bowling metaphors you will ever hear, I guarantee that.

What a call, what a real butterball
Either I get a strike or strike out, gutterball
In hindsight, it relegates celebrated lyricists to the scrap heap. Even Eminem's best punchlines cannot match the depth and plethora of hidden meanings that DOOM was spitting on this record. When the needle drops on Figaro, he only needs the first line to dismiss competition,
The rest is empty with no brain but the clever nerd
The best emcee with no chain ya ever heard

Even RapGenius misses every angle of this line. Discounting, only for a second, the insane internal rhymes that he manages, Rest is empty / Best emcee, no brain / no chain, clever nerd / ever heard, check the message out. The rest is empty with no brain, implying all of his competition, if you can even call it that, are fakes, unable to match him intellectually. He calls himself the clever nerd, immediately discerning himself from the pack, before adding a double meaning to the second line. No chain could refer to both his aversion to jewellry, yet another feature that distinguishes him from his contemporaries, and his apparent lack of a stable or crew, as having no chain is commonly referred to as being untethered, a free agent, and with Roc-A-Fella, G-Unit, Murder Inc and a host of other stables around at the time, it is a third way to stand out from the pack. In two lines..

For fifteen year old Ben, I was entranced. My first ever encounter with Madlib was, past the initial awe at the sampling from Frankenstein movies and works by Sun Ra, only fully revealed its true importance to me in the years that passed afterwards. Whilst fads came and went, whilst my musical tastes swerved and swayed, this record remained in my little red Barina, and the amount of money I spent on blank CDs burning new copies as I played each to their death's amassed a small fortune. Amazingly, I never actually heard the beat for Accordion until I finally got myself a hard copy of the record. This slow, almost mournful utilisation of an instrument I'd only ever read about filled the room, and by the time DOOM drops in for a verse centred around his imperious ability and apparent unquenchable thirst for chemical enhancements, the song had become one of my favourites.

The past is once upon a time
Once upon a time is past
The past is yesterday today

Madlib was regarded as somewhat of a production legend around the traps. His creative mind drew him in wildly conflicting directions, with a dalliance in jazz during the early 2000s informing his subsequent production, and allowing that laid back aspect of the genre to seep through, forcing a hazed blur of music that was at once arresting and disarming in it's chill factor. A more perfect match could not be made. DOOM's lyrical marathons needed room to breath, and Madlib was the perfect purveyor. His utilisation of samples as widely read as Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, Rass Kass and Stevie Wonder showed an attention to detail and a wide appreciation of music that few producers exhibit. America's Most Blunted is such a contrast of message and noise, with almost harsh guitars destroying the high as DOOM extols the virtues of his drug of choice in a grumble, inflicted by the nature of the beat. The insistent nature of the keys on Money Folder again prompt DOOM in to a jog when he'd rather be walking, but he's so adept he melds his voice around the siren in the middle, before a lovely little jazz interlude breaks up the monotone.

Spliff made him swore he saw heaven he was seven
Yup, you know it, growin' up too fast
Showin' up to class with Moet in a flask
He ask the teacher if he leave will he pass

The shocking thing about Madvillainy is that DOOM isn't breaching new ground, and neither is Madlib. Kanye had been forcing sample based production in to the bright lights of mainstream radio play, and rappers have been bragging about skills on the mic and weed habits for decades. The way in which these topics is undertaken, with such brilliance, immediately shone a light on just what the underground can offer us surface dwellers. Being a critical success means nothing, but becoming a cult classic that was more important to a smoking session than weed itself became everything. In the years since, neither has scaled the heights they did on this piece of musical perfection. The rap landscape changed, finally. Intelligence was highly prized. Rappers didn't have to rely on aggression to promote themselves, and all of a sudden the back pack rappers came back in vogue, as people began to realise the true brilliance of Andre 3000, Common, and Chino XL.

The mixtape scene became awash with sample-based production. Lil Waynes Dedication 2 began to utilise spoken words, and Kanye continued to kick goals. The surprising thing was that both trends that were brought in to dynamic focus through Madvillainy were short lived. Kanye now makes unlistenable industrial rap, and sample based production has taken a backseat to molly-laced EDM. DOOM's intelligent monotone was never truly copied, and it's been left to the man himself along with a handful of others to maintain this form of attack. Of course, these things could be due to the fact that they were done so well on Madvillainy that any kind of copycat would seem weak in comparison. Still, this record, now ten years old, stands as a beacon of just how listenable underground rap can be if we sit up and take notice.

Album Review: Nathan East - East
8/10

There's something in the first 5 tracks of this record that niggles. It's familiar. It's like a mild case of deja vu, or when you see someone you know and you just can't place their face. Usually, these instances can be frustrating to the point of infuriating, especially if you have a short temper. Those of you not blessed with patience should have no fears, however, digesting East's album. Dealing within the most docile of Lounge and Jazz realms, East manages to soothe and entrance without crossing in to the elevator music category. It's a fine line to tread.

That persistent niggle of just where you have heard this before becomes starkly clear on track 6, entitled Daft Funk. You got it! You've heard Nathan East before, he provided the bass on Random Access Memories, most famously on Get Lucky, and this blend of Chic-era funk, Spanish solemn guitar and broken Jazz Fusion is the standout track, and the most dynamic example of just what East is trying to do on this record. There are so many elements combining to create this dancey funk number it's incredible he managed to corral enough musicians. In a world of pro-tools, fruity loops and Garage Band, anyone can add an entire brass section to a gospel record, but few can truly replicate the smooth beauty of a live jazz band on wax.

Now, you may still be sitting there with a tiny itch. This is just so listenable, it's like nothing I've heard before, yet it's got this familiarity, like seeing your cousin for the first time. They kind of look like me, but I don't know them. Fear not! You are not insane, and Nathan East (probably) isn't your immediate family. The truth is that he has been on EVERYTHING. I mean it. He is like a more subdued version of Nile Rodgers, or a less flashy version of Brian Eno. Daft Punk aside, he is Eric Clapton's go to bass player, he has done work for The Pointer Sisters, Lionel Richie, Eurythmics, Barry White, Joe Cocker and he even provided bass for Beyonce on B'Day! The list is quite endless. Session playing, which is a foreign entity for anyone not actively involved in the playing or researching of music, is an incredibly lucrative business. Artists and bands frequently require extra help, and by becoming a household name in the 70s and 80s, East has carved a rock solid name for himself. As part of Fourplay, the lovely smooth jazz quartet who birthed the insistent and slightly quirky Bali Run, he began to hone his song-writing style, a formal sticking point for session players, and this allowed him to branch out creatively.

East is immediately recognisable to Fourplay fans. Opener 101 Eastbound begins with a funked guitar riff before settling in to a lovely groove, carved with a broad bass line, darting touches of wood wind and dreamy vocals, used purely for instrumentation purposes. Sir Duke (Stevie Wonder) continues this theme, although the slightly fanfaric expression of brass adds a nice temper to the dextrous bass playing that acts as the lead, determinedly pointing the track in divergent directions, beginning with a muted scat section moving jovially in to a happy twist of noise that is both pleasant and exciting. SeveNate, Overjoyed and Madiba follow this theme, a nice Jazz Fusion come Jazz Lounge come Mahavishnu Orchestra that would comfortably sit on a nice High Tea playlist, the soundtrack to a lovely afternoon stroll in the park or even a nice relaxing way to drift off, to de-tune the mind and allow the soul a little breathing space just before our most vulnerable hours.

Don't, however, expect to remain asleep. East may be 58, he may present as a kindly jazz stalwart who favours a smooth glass of red wine over a bottle of Jack and a bar fight, but there are teeth on East. It's taken him a whopping 35 years to come this far, he's not going to announce his solo arrival with a record of pleasant offerings that could be taken straight from the Fourplay back catalogue. Speaking to Wayne Lockwood before the release, he said " I really wanted it to be full on, committed, jump in with both feet – and get really wet.” On Moondance, he achieves this, taking on Van Morrison's classic, and allowing good friend Michael McDonald to absolutely thrive as he playfully teases with his smouldering whisper before exploding in to a pure fit to spray life and experience all over it. The arrangement on I Can Let Go Now, with vocals from Sara Bareilles, is even more stunning, as she pours staggering amounts of heart and soul in to a beautiful piece that floors you, the way she evokes the moment of tension release, of finality, allows you to wonderfully envisage yourself in her words, whether it be suicide, the death of a partner, the carrying of any load heavier than we should have to bear. East is a master puppeteer.

He has to be. No less than 70 musicians are enlisted for this project, and when he says you only get one chance at a solo record so you better make it count, he isn't joking. This is the absolute grass roots level of what the pop world is attempting to do right now. As artists like Justin Timberlake, Daft Punk, Timbaland and Pharrell try desperately hard to recreate the magic of having a whole bunch of talented people just jamming, the sepia tinged days of the funked out 70s and 80s, East is just going straight to the source. The cultural waypoint of Can't Find My Way Home is blessed by the sultry fingers of Eric Clapton, and all of East's more jazz focused numbers capture that jam dynamic stunningly.

My first encounter with East was blind. I knew nothing about him, and I formed the opinion that he was a Southern Jazz musician who had cut his teeth on country. There is Americana plastered all over the record. His version of Yesterday, with son Noah, is such a lovely piece, yet sounds enticingly like a Louis Armstrong arrangement. Finally Home, the final track, screams "Disney". The way the strings rise and fall to create an atmospheric mood, the huge gospel noises at the end, the picked 'From sea to shining sea' is worthy of any Hollywood blockbuster score, the final scenes of Armageddon, or the blatant patriotism of Independence Day. America The Beautiful hammers this home. A giant piece of music that scales stratospheric heights, as East does what he does best, he goes ballistic on the bass, allowing the music to rise and fall with him, culminating in an enormous audience sing-a-long that belies the smokey jazz room nature of the track, propelling it to superhero status with a swift stroke of genius.

So often, a man who is accustomed to reading sheet music and getting stoned with solo artists whilst playing their hits could be admonished for wishing to step out from their lucrative arrangements and go it alone. Nathan East had to be coaxed out, he needed years of creative simmering before he was ready to boil over. East is the perfect materialisation of a gifted career that always led to this point. Whilst the sum of its parts may not equal some of the tracks he has graced in his long career, it stands as exactly what he wanted it to be. A whole bunch of people in a room making damn good music.
8/10

I took a day off yesterday and decided to do something I never, ever do. I lay on the couch for 3 hours. But I felt ok about it, you know why? I was watching Biggie Smalls, Notorious Big, AKA the greatest to have ever done it. Well, not really him, but some fat guy playing him, in the film Notorious. I have to admit this was pretty much a train wreck of a movie when it came to hip hop. It was mildly entertaining, but the way Pac is portrayed is ludicrious, the way Lil' Kim is marginalised and treated like a 2 bit hussler is laughable, and there are about 4.35 million things they could've done better. But this isn't a critique of the movie.

I want to finally settle this bullshit about who the best rapper of all time is. I want this shit done and dusted, sewn up; gold plated and sent to the engravers. Apart from Kenrdick Lamar, no new cats are coming for the throne. And Lamar has 1 classic behind him, and a bunch of hot guest spots. The rest of his output has been below GOAT standard. I will state right now I want to award the title to Eminem, and I want you to hear me out about it.



Let's attack the boring bits first. Let us define the term rapper. I'm not placating anyone when I distinguish between emcee and rapper, there is a a literal difference in the two terms. A rapper is who we deal with every day on the radio, someone who 90% of the hip-hop listening community would ask 'where the hell is that guy?' if he dropped off the map for more than a couple of years. An emcee is a whole different kettle of fish, reserved for another day. But a rapper, that is someone who blends all the qualities of an emcee (delivery, flow, lyricism, poetry, metaphors, similes, rhyming structures, all the technical jargon) and uses them in an entertaining fashion. A practical example would be Nas vs Rakim. Now Rakim started out as a rapper, so to speak, but he now focuses on the odd underground release which is absolute fire, but makes no blip on soundscan or whatever they use to measure sales nowadays. Nas on the other hand takes all the qualities that makes Rakim one of the GOATs, and lays it over the top of stylish production and cynical (read: intelligent) sounds that he KNOWS will shut Hot 97 down when he drops them. Summer On Smash, on his latest record, compared with Holy Are You from Rakims Seventh Seal record. Nas makes music with an eye on the registers. Rakim makes it with an eye on the Rap Genius forums.
 You can look at me all you want with those murderous eyes Aesop Rock stans but the fact is no girl is gonna twerk to Flashflood.

Eminem, therefore, is a rapper.So, let's define his competition. Individuals who purvey hip hop in an entertaining way in order to make more than a reasonable earning from it. I think these are self-explanatory. Jay-Z, Nas, Notorious BIG, 2Pac, Andre 3000, Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Lil Wayne, LL Cool J, E-40, Mos Def, Common, and Ice Cube.
Parameters are now required, and we can start knocking names off this list. I'm going to lay down some basic ground rules.
1. Sales. A successful rapper MUST sell well, or they are simply an emcee.

2. Technique. Not only does the GOAT have to possess a flawless lyrical step, they must have improved the genre in some way, brought something to the table that others haven't.They must be original, but be able to integrate influences in to their delivery. For example, Childish Gambino takes pieces of style from rappers like Drake and Lil Wayne, but doesn't cosign them. This impacts on his originality.

3. Lyrical content. GOATs must be diverse, they must be adaptable, they must show growth and retention throughout their career. It's no good going through 20 years of hip hop rapping about selling drugs on the corner every single day. They must show social awareness as well as consistency. Rick Ross rapping about dealing drugs when in truth he was a correctional officer. That is lack of consistency.

4. Flow. This is different to technique. Immortal Technique, for example, can shove so many syllables in to your ear you'll be extracting them with bits of brain after one of his records. But his flow is not adaptable, he can't slip in to a sultry west coast number and then in the blink of an eye throw hands over a boom bap Brooklyn classic, the way someone like Wayne or Jay-Z can. Notorious Big was the godfather of flow. He flipped his style so well that one minute he could be firing off dangerous internal rhymes on Gimme The Loot and the next almost crooning on Big Poppa.

5. Artistry. This is a no-brainer. An artist is someone who creates something in their chosen medium, big deal. But it is such an overused word. Would you call Paul Wall an artist, or Juicy J? Don't get me wrong, if it's 3:30am and my shoes are sticking to a dancefloor I can't even see because I accidentally drank my entire months salary (3 Vodka Red Bulls, for future reference), I want to hear 'We trippy maaaaaaaaaane' blaring as loud as fucking possible. But not when I am waking up the next morning with a beautiful girl who isn't my partner, and not when I am then calling my partner and explaining the weird red rash I now have around my special area, and not when I am being kicked out of her house (Beyonce, to the left, please). Artistry makes us feel something. If a rapper can make us feel more than one emotion, they've already proven themselve in the upper echelon.

6. X-Factor. Fuck it, I know you will hate me for this one, but it's a quality that some possess and others do not. It's their personality on the mic, their music videos, their presence in the game. Common, for example, is one hell of a talented rapper, and he ticks almost all the previous boxes. But he doesn't have that special something. His music just tends to blend in on itself after a while. Be is one of the all time great hip hop records, but every other Common record follows a similar line of questioning. X-Factor is essential.



For arguments sake, I am going to thin the list real quick here. There are only a couple of rappers who can adhere to these 6 statements, and they are Eminem, Nas, 2Pac, Andre 3000 and Jay-Z.
HOLD UP!!!! Where the FUCK is Biggie Smalls in that list!? SHIT! Ok, calm down. Biggie Smalls is one of the greatest to have ever graced a mic. He turned the corner in to an artform. Whilst the Rakim's and NWA's and Raekwon's and Big Daddy Kane's were turning their street knowledge in to straight cash via rap music, Smalls took it to a whole different level. He was the godfather of flow, and was scarier than a personal call from your doctor. The way he could simply breathe on a mic and send chills through your skin.

50-shot clip if a nigga want test
The rocket launcher, Biggie stomped ya
High as a motherfucking helicopter
That's why I pack a Nina,fuck a misdeameanor
Beating motherfuckers like Ike beat Tina

Shit. But. He only had the opportunity to record two albums before he was tragically taken from us. Now in terms of technique, of flow, he spat life in to the game. Every single crack dealer turned semi decent rapper has a debt owed to Biggie. The way he flipped Juicy from a Puff Daddy panty dropper to a statement of intent and of hope for those languishing on the sidewalk was nothing short of genius. However he never had the chance to develop, to learn, to grieve, to grow and to change. It's impossible to say now where would Biggie Smalls be in 2014. He might've gone the Jay-Z route,
They only know what the single is, and singled that out
To be the meaning of what he is about
But no dummy, that's the shit I'm sprinklin'
The album width to keep the registers ringin'
He may have taken the Rakim route,
I spit my verse with technique, 'til they knowing their ledge
First it's too deep, then I'm over their head
He too lyrical, and too subliminal

He may have dropped off the map completely. I doubt it, but it's possible. For that reason, we will never know.
So why is Pac in there then? Tupac predates Biggie by a good 4 years of game time, and this is essential. Not only that, the diversity of his music throws him straight in to the woods with guys like LL Cool J and Mos Def. He wasn't just rapping about selling crack, Pac was on a completely different level. He was on some Che Guevara shit. Even from the very beginning he was focused on writing what he saw as injustices in the world. 2Pacalypse Now is a bold statement of intent, from the aggressive and brash Trapped to the soulful lament of Brenda's Got A Baby. Pac ticks all the boxes. He evolved throughout his short career from a little man yelling and pulling on the big man's cuffs, to an absolute stomping giant, with tracks like Hail Mary and 2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted thrashing charts and slaying enemies.

I ain't a killer, but don't push me
Revenge is like the sweetest joy next to getting pussy
Picture paragraphs unloaded, wise words being quoted
Peeped the weakness in the rap game and sewed it

Nuff said. Still, again, the problem is longevity, and it is a sick game we're playing here. Pac was a major player for 5 short years. It takes some artists that amount of time between records! He runs the absolute closest to Eminem in terms of the GOAT. He was a street poet who's legacy was so air tight that there have been few, if any, imitators.



Jay-Z and Nas. There is a case for calling these two the 'two that lived', although there is little to suggest that an arms escalation the likes of East Coast vs West Coast was ever going to occur in this particular beef. Jay-Z was a student of the great Biggie Smalls, whilst Nas came up under the wing of Q-Tip and DJ Premier. Illmatic was the closest in execution to Pac as any mainstream that has come after it. A true dose of street poetry, Nas possessed a unique gift of grissled, hard-edged delivery of ghetto truths that not only struck hard, but fused a stunning brand of poetic movement to each track. Jay-Z's debut was similar. Both artists have had the time for their lights to burn over almost 2 decades in the game, and both stay at the utmost upper edge of it. Jay-Z, the absolute king of flow. He plied his trade under Biggie and became the master. He turns tracks like Hovi Baby in to works of art, songs that other rappers would cower from. Nas continues to throw darts straight at the heart and soul of the ghetto from whatever situation he finds himself. Daughters off of Life Is Good is the consummate father song. Both have had their ups and downs, and there are a couple of places they fall on. Nas never achieved the sales he so sought, getting stuck between ghetto master and hitmaker. I Am.. contained the misstep Hate Me Now, and Streets Disciple was a bloated double discer that again highlighted his confusion.

Jay-Z is a tough nut to crack. After becoming a ghetto superstar he somehow managed to keep a foot in both states: he remained a ghetto darling yet sold records through the roof. Inadvisable collaborations with Puffy on his second album relegated that to almost classic status, and his waltz through the 90s was gold plated. Lyrically, we can see where both Nas and Jay fall behind Eminem. On Renegade, Eminem comes and absolutely MURDERS Jay-Z.

See I'm a poet to some, a regular modern-day Shakespeare
Jesus Christ, the King of these Latter-Day Saints here
To shatter the picture in which of that as they paint me as
As a monger of hate, satanist, scatter-brained atheist

Jay's 2 verses were hard, but Em flew off the handle. He crammed more rhymes in to those bars than any man should or could. For pure, unadulterated technique and delivery, Eminem takes the cake.
The other rappers mentioned only need cursory glances. LL Cool J was revolutionary in the late 80s and early 90s but fell dangerously by the wayside with realeases like last years Authentic. Lil Wayne was so hot he gave himself third degree burns in the mid 00s, but drugs have sadly turned his scatter brain in to one that is scarcely recognisable as human (and not in a good way). Andre 3000 has the greatest ability, but he is rarer than Halley's comet. Everytime he drops a verse it is mind bogglingly good, but we never see any more than that. Common just hasn't sold enough and lacks the lyrical dexterity, Mos Def never managed to truly break through in to the mainstream, Snoop Dogg lacks the technical and lyrical depth, Busta Rhymes is too one dimensional, E-40, again, the commercial issue, and Ice Cube is a hardened OG but is not on the same level as Eminem.



So Eminem. It floored me 3 days ago that he is the Greatest of All Time. I was on one of my daily walks, listening to the latest Ace Hood mixtape (it's good, cop it), when the playlist skipped over to Eminem's Curtain Call: The Hits. Now I honestly just bought this CD cause I had $6 left on a gift card, I already had all the tracks. Fack came on, and I smiled quietly to myself.

I never seen no chick like this
This bitch can twist like a damncontortionist
Condom on my dick of course it is
This bitch don't know what abortion is

No-one can clown like Eminem, drugs or not.  Then The Way I Am brashly assaulted my ears. It's hard to describe the moment where you actually understand someone through their music, but I felt an intellectual connection. This wasn't just a rap song designed to sell records, this was a man, just like you, me and Joe Bloggs next to you, who has super human abilities and been thrust unceremoniously in to the harshest of spotlights.

'I'm so sick and tired of being admired that I wish that I would just die or get fired'
Can you imagine the amount of Cristal Paris Hilton spat on her Chiwawa when she heard that line? It's so far removed from what we think of these celebrities. But then Stan came on, and I, like just about everyone who has ever heard a hip hop song, know every single lyric. Yet I never sat with these lyrics, I never accessed them.



As an artist, I think the most difficult phase is transcending the urge to create for your audience rather than yourself. It's such a tough line to tread. Some, like Katy Perry or Britney Spears, must create for their audience. If they decide to make a song purely for themselves, to showcase their own technical ability, it won't work. They just aren't good enough at what they do. Eminem exists in a different bracket. He doesn't need the Shake That's and the Ass Like That's. He doesn't need to make Roar. On Stan, he steps outside of himself and does two things. Firstly, he enters the mind of one of his fans, a devoted follower. But rather than let the story end there and make a song that will appeal to that individual, he takes it a step further, he writes a story filled with drama and emotion yet so heartfelt that even after hearing it countless times in my life, I had to stop and sit down.

Dear Slim,I wrote you but you still ain't callin'
I left my cell, my pager and my home phone at the bottom
I sent two letters back in autumn, you must not've got em
There probably was a problem at the post office or something

How desperate Stan is, for recognition and love in his life. How trapped Eminem then becomes, if he responds to this man he will be saving a life yet will inevitably be sucked in to the destructive force that is Stan's personality. He is almost saved by his stardom in that he doesn't meet the man

I'm sorry I didn't see you at the show, I musta missed you
Don't think I did that shit intentionally just to diss you

Yet now Em has this man's death on his conscience..
I read an article where someone tried to defend Jay-Z's 2 verses on Renegade, saying that Em and Jay are two different rappers. Eminem, he claimed, was a straight up technical genius, but his metaphorical sense was non existent. He could turn a phrase on its ear, and his similes were top drawer, but with Eminem what you saw was what you got and that was a limiting factor. This is true, but I think it distinguishes them as individuals rather than limits Eminem. Jay-Z bases his style on double entendre's, internal metaphors and god-like flow. Eminem's flow is on par with Jay's (just look at the difference between something like Rap God and then My Name Is), he manages to throw hands with double entendre's and metaphors on MMLP2
(Hope it ain't, "Here we go, yo," cause my head already goes to worst case Scenario, though in the first place
But you confirmed my low end theory though
Should've known when I made it all the way to third base
And that was only the first date, could've made it to home plate
But you slid straight for the dome and dove face)
and his internal metaphors on MMLP2 are just insanity. Jay-Z wrote a book called Decoded and it went through his more complex lyrics from his entire career. Em could have one double in size for the first side of MMLP2 alone.



We have to look also at the trajectory that his career has taken and compare this with Tupac's major limitation. Pac was a god in the game, but the question has to be asked would he have survived as a free man in to his 40s? He died at the age of 25, and he'd already been shot brutally once before. He also had a number of legal issues pertaining mainly to assaults. We've seen what prison can do to careers. Shyne has been locked up for what feels like forever, DMX's career never regained momentum after his prison stints, and Ja Rule is literally starting from scratch as a performer since his incarceration.

Eminem provides the dirtiest hard luck story ever imagined. We love to hate, and it's so easy to hate the multi-millionare who had absolutely EVERYTHING going for him, only to fall in to a bigger hole than Lindsay Lohan, resulting in near death experiences more than once. Tupac was shot and killed, Eminem almost killed himself. Those two scenarios are worlds apart. But Em came back and recorded Relapse, which went double platinum despite lukewarm reviews, and then one of the all time great recovery records, fittingly entitled Recovery. Though slated by some, it was a literal representation of how a man can grow in to his own life and responsibilities, even if it takes serious time. When I was first discovering Eminem and hiding my copy of The Eminem Show from my parents (mum found it and promptly snapped it in half), I would never once have envisaged an artist so contrite that he could write

I'm just so fucking depressed I just can't seem to get out this slump
If I could just get over this hump
But I need something to pull me out this dump

For one of the hardest emcee's to lay that down on wax, he must've been at his rock bottom, finally. Yet he comes back with MMLP2, the most technically breath-taking hip hop record in the mainstream realm of all time. This is why Eminem beats Pac. We can't make judgements based on what-ifs. Pac, had he survived, would have changed the hip hop landscape forever. A whole generation of young rappers never got the chance to see him live, to sit down and chat with him, to just exist in his presence and drink in his aura. Pac would've been the Greatest of All Time. But Eminem is, because he is everything Pac was (if you'd like political try White America, We As Americans, and Mosh on for size) and more. Technically, for pure ability on the mic, Em shades it. For pure fun, Pac had those California Love vibes, but Eminem is more satirical, much more comedic when turning a phrase. Em is 41 years old and he just released the best record of his career. That is a comeback worthy of Websters.

First and foremost, there is no budget crisis. ABC Factcheck cleared that up for us. Joe Hockey effectively doubled the debt predictions from the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook to the Mid Year Economic And Fiscal Outlook, which came out in December. I won't go in to detail, but Hockey changed economic assumptions that effectively resulted in a 'doubling' of projected debt levels. These involved less than favourable growth predictions, leading to a reduction in tax receipts. Hockey also took a dimmer view on the mining boom, changing parameters around it's expectant softening, leading to a further reduction in growth in the economy. Essentially, the PEFO, which is widely regarded as the more accurate document, states that, with Labor's previous economic measures and spending, we would return to surplus in 2023. That's 6 years after the Coalition's new benchmark. However, it is far from the all sweeping statement that our debt was spiralling out of control, and would grow at an unsustainable rate. In fact, that isn't true at all.

Now is debt bad? No, not at all. The Government can borrow money at around 5% interest. This is an extremely generous loan, and considering the myriad of places it can inject that money in to, the benefits are more than just fiscal in nature. Generally, for a country to have low debt can be considered an economic marker for stagnant growth. Whilst it may feel preferable and more comfortable to not be in debt, the fact is Australia's levels of debt are miniscule when compared with the rest of the OECD nations. In terms of as a proportion of our GDP (Gross Domestic Product), we have the third lowest level. The third.. Our debt levels are incredibly low, and even with Labor's spending measures over the past few years, we are in an extremely enviable economic position.

So, is it the right time to make changes? Yes and no. The economy could quite comfortably continue on its merry way in the current state of affairs. Our revenue levels are perfectly good, our economic growth is sitting close enough to 3%, which is generally regarded as an excellent number, and our unemployment figures, whilst slightly high, are hovering and not getting any higher. Predictions of 6.25% are greatly inflated, and a ceiling of around 5.8% seems much more likely. Joe has placed his cards on the table, and the first place he has seen a red flag is the mining boom. He sees a fall of 4% in investment in buysiness investment, and 5.5% by 2015. Overall this is seen as an area that will shrink our economy, although by no means the recession that would truly warrant these cuts.

Economically, the budget is extremely hit and miss. On the one hand, Hockey has been extremely prudent in ensuring that the axe fell swiftly, yet he is allowing the carcass to bleed out. The change in pension age will not negatively impact on the economy in the foreseeable future, except for what will most likely be a slight reduction in consumer spending in the very short term. The changes to tertiary education are not due to come in until 2016, and thus will have little to no impact upon the economy until that point. The giant cuts to health will play out over a 4 year period, and the Debt Levy, the controversial 2% tax increase on those earning over $180,000 will only last three years, so by the time the other measures begin to effect the economy, the rich will begin to flood the market with money again, propping up growth.

The reduction in company tax, whilst admittedly unfortunately timed, is an excellent idea. It will make Australia a more attractive place to do business, and the thinking is that by reducing this tax it free's up money for corporations to invest and expand their enterprise in our country, and may even entice others to cross the oceans and settle here. It's exactly the kind of microeconomic reform required to promote this country as a safe and financially favourable place to do business, especially with our relatively low interest rates. This will have a very positive impact upon our economic growth.

I will now address the economic downfalls, and then the social ones. Firstly, for a Government who bleated imperiously that unemployment would fall under them, and that they would create thousands of new jobs, this budget is hardly inspiring. Investment is kept to a worrying minimum, with the $11.6bn in infrastructure made available the only real area where job growth has been addressed. This is unlikely to impact at all on the overall unemployment figure. Furthermore, 16,500 public sector jobs will be cut in the next 3 years. This poses its own problem. How does the Government propose to fund all the redundancy payments they will need to make? This article blatantly shows that Abbott seems to believe most will leave their jobs of their own free will, with a shortfall of half a billion dollars occurring. This is a hole that will have to be filled somehow, as it seems unlikely that every single one of those 16,500 will leave willingly without payment.

Now, the main argument I hear in favour of the cuts to welfare, the medicare co payment and the tax on motorists is that these people have been living off the system too long, expecting something for nothing, and if we continue to support them our economy will shrink to the size of a bodybuilders testicle as our welfare bill grows exponentially. Umm.. No. Not quite. In fact, the doom and gloom Commission of Audit, which would have us all living in tents and eating gruel, actually provides figures that show that yes, government expenditure will grow at a rate of 3.7% per year above the level of inflation, but that spending on the Disability Support Pension will only grow 2.8%, Newstart 1.1% and family tax benefit B, a huge blow, will actually FALL, even without any budget cut backs. Information here. So essentially, Joe is taking money from the neediest, and the neediest are not even going to be a significant burden on the economy moving forward. Paid parental leave, 14% per year, and hospitals, 11.7% per year, are the two biggest costs to the government. Rather than addressing this, a scare campaign has been drummed up to lay the blame for our debt on the sick and the unemployed, two groups who have little to no say over their situation. Paid Parental Leave? Ha. Let's increase it! Makes perfect fiscal sense!

We've already discussed why the measures may not have an impact on economic growth, but lets look at why they probably will. Firstly, the Family Tax Benefit B Threshold will be capped, and stay at home mums will essentially lose over $4000 a year if their partner earns more than $100k. Now you may say that's fair enough, but consider this. Effectively a stay at home mum earns zero, so the family income is now $50k a year. They may have 2 or 3 children, who need food, clothes, school supplies, books etc. All of a sudden, 4 grand is taken immediately from leisure and entertainment. No more weekly movies. No more Easter Show. No more trips in to the city for dinner. That's money being taken OUT of the economy, and not being reinvested by the Government. Unemployment benefits not paid to those under 30 for the first six months of their tenure. That's a tiny saving for the Government with a huge economic cost. All of a sudden they can't go out on a Friday night and spend their money at the local pub. They can't go and spend their money on a rock concert. All of this shrinks the economy. The cuts in Public Sector jobs creates uncertainty and a loss of consumer confidence, as does the increase in fuel excise, and the abhorent $7 medicare co payment. These funds that are being saved are not being reinvested in the economy. Understand that now. $11.9bn in infrastructure is a drop in the ocean, and in line with the meekest of financial committments. The $20bn medical research fund is just a fund. It will be spent in the future, but not now. These savings are almost solely going towards repaying our loan sharks, who are charging us an incredibly generous interest rate, and honestly could care less whether we pay them back tomorrow or next decade. Don't sit there and say 'well I don't want my tax dollars funding a $16bn interest repayment every year', because all this cutting and taxing is effectively doing is just that. When we return to surplus, what happens then? The Government can not indiscriminantly tax forever. Money will eventually need to be spent, and we will fall back in to debt. That is the natural cycle and it is perfectly acceptable and preferable.

Oh dear. Now we come to the social aspect. I will be brief but blunt.

Scenario 1. You're a stay at home mum, already slugged 4 grand from the tax benefit b reduction. Both your kids contract the flu, so you jet down to the local GP for a check up. $14. The GP thinks something more sinister might be at play, so he orders a chest X-Ray and blood tests. $28. You need to go back to the GP to get the results. $14. In the space of 5 days you've just spent $56 on medical costs. That is some serious coin. Forget 2 middy's of beer, that's half a weekly shop out the door. All of a sudden you're shuffling credit cards and falling further in to debt.

Scenario 2. You're 23 years old, you've just finished your apprenticeship at a tiny landscaping firm, and they can't afford to keep you on at your increased wages. So you are let go. But no-one is hiring. You go down your local McDonalds but they won't hire a 23 year old when they can hire a 15 year old for a portion of your wage bill. So you front up to Centrelink cause quite frankly, earning 12 bucks an hour for 4 years your savings account isn't healthy. Sorry mate, we can't pay you for another 6 months. But here is a phone and a list of companies, start cold calling. No-one is hiring, because everyone is scared the economy is about to contract cause Hockey slashed and burned it. Honestly, what the hell do you do in that situation? You can't afford rent cause you have no money, I mean no money. You need to eat, to sleep, to find shelter.. This is a very real possibility!

Scenario 3. You've just graduated high school, and you're dream is to do an economics degree at UNSW. You're in luck! Your ATAR is well above the range required and you are accepted. But hang on.. Due to the high demand of this course you are now required to pay over $100k for your course, provided you don't fail anything (a bit IF for me). So you decide you can't afford that and look for a job. But no-one is hiring someone with no experience, so you go to Centrelink. Ha.

Don't even get started on the lazy, careless cuts to foreign aid. This amounts to the harshest litmus test of a Government's social committment. Giving to those who don't ask, but who desperately need. Nope. Sorry guys, but Joe wants to get one up on Swann and return to surplus 6 years earlier, with no real economic benefit other than a piece of paper from the bank saying we own our economy until the next recession hits, which it inevitably will because we have shrunk our economy of our own accord. So no foreign aid for you. But hey, good luck with that whole lack of underground plumbing and no access to clean water thing. I hope you guys pull through.

It's absolutely sick. There is a small but determined group of individuals out there who believe that the majority of people recieving unemployment benefits and the disability support pension are somehow cheating the system, taking their money from their pockets and sitting on the ass watching re-runs of Friends all day. Well here's a newsflash that might burst your comfy bubble (that I wholly understand you worked your ass off to get, but that's not the point). Getting on Newstart is stupidly hard, and involves weeks of forms and interviews. Staying on it is even harder. You have to front up to an employment agency most days, and cold call companies. The first interview you get, you're obligated to attend and if you succeed, obligated to take the job. So you could be stacking shelves in Coles at $17 an hour. You could be mopping up vomit. It is not a glamorous lifestyle. People don't ride around in expensive cars, smoking and drinking away your tax dollars. People fucking need this money, they need it to buy food, water, electricity, and to pay for shelter. The Disability Support Pension is set up to help those who CAN NOT WORK. There will always be a small number of people who rort any system. That's life. Accept it and move on, don't take money out of the pockets of the needy.

Now, another criticism that has been levelled at us budget dissonants has been that we provide no solutions, only criticisms. Well, if you desperately want to get back to surplus quicker than 2023, here are my solutions.

Keep the debt levy, but increase it to 3%. This is a tiny portion of the income of those earning over $180k, and it will not effect their way of life in the slightest. It will increase our tax receipts, increase money coming in to the government, and decrease inflationary pressures and any pressure on economic growth, because it is unlikely that because I took an extra 3c from Joe Millionaire in Rose Bay he will forego his morning coffee.

Re-instate the mining tax. I am aware that the mining boom is slowly winding up, but that is part of the economic cycle. China's growth is still higher than the state of California, and they still demand our resources and will continue to do so. It is a relatively inelastic demand that we can exploit. Furthermore, mining magnates are making their trillions out of the country's natural resources. Our natural resources. Ensure that they earn enough to provide them with adequate return on their huge capital outlay, and then the rest should be filtered back through to us.

Re-instate the Carbon Tax. Julia Gillard's lie seems pretty tame in comparison now doesn't it? The Carbon Tax was actually handled well by them (unlike the mining tax) and has the dual benefits of reducing emissions as well as increasing tax receipts for the Government. The world economy is already heading down this path, so it is unlikely to provide a barrier for international investment. It appears the Government's opposition to it is purely ideological.

CUT SOME MONEY FROM THE BLOODY DEFENSE BUDGET!!! Why oh why does this go up every year? Honestly, do we need new fighter jets? Who in the world is going to attack or invade us? We are a gigantic country that would be impossible to overthrow. Our only real threat is from terrorism, and let's face it, 27 fighter jets are unlikely to help if someone decides to detonate a bomb on a Sydney train. Defense budgets are so overblown and bloated it is ridiculous.

Axe this stupid paid parental leave scheme. Yes, it is a lovely idea, and the only socially admirable thing the Government has managed to come up with, but it is fiscally irresponsible to take money from the poor and channel it in to money for the rich.

Increase the GST. Ok so there is a theory doing the rounds that Hockey knew this wouldn't get through the Senate, he knew the states would cry foul, and it would soften the blow when he announced an increase in the GST. That would be political stupidity. Increasing the GST makes total sense if you want to raise revenue. It will reduce inflationary pressure, and serves as the most fair tax because it is an indirect way of taxing according to income. If you're earning $18k a year and you buy a coffee, the extra few cents are not going to kill you. But if you buy a Grand Piano, the tax revenue will be huge, and the person buying it will be able to afford it. It's not particularly pleasant, but it is effective.

God. If you stuck with me through all of that you are a trooper. In short, the Government made some good calls, but a torrent of bad ones. If you voted for Tony and co on the back of their No Surprises catch cry then you are an idiot anyway. Sorry, but politicians lying is as common as herpes in a brothel. Gillard's lies look like tiny mistatements of facts when compared to these big daddy's. Either way, the budget makes little financial and social sense, and I guess our worst fears have been confirmed. Hopefully people remember this when, in year 3 of their term, they produce a budget that appeases all sides in order to soften sentiment going in to the election. I seriously doubt it though.

Rating: 8/10

'Coldplay man'. My first reaction to Ghost Stories had my mind evoking the inflection that veterans use when they talk about Vietnam. 'Coldplay man. They've seen some things. Done some things. I wouldn't recommend it'. It's an odd reaction to have to a band who can, for all intents and purposes, be described as the modern day U2, and are quite comfortably the biggest band in the world right now. Every generation has one. They are unlikely to be the best band, although Led Zeppelin proved that duality was possible, and The Beatles were transcendence in the flesh. Coldplay are not quite as emotive as Robert Plant in his prime, they're not as stratospheric as Van Halen could be, they aren't anywhere near as volatile as Nirvana were, and they cannot touch Depeche Mode for adulterated hatred and self-loathing. Yet they sit comfortably atop the world of pop and rock music, dusting off the One Directions by rooting their sound firmly in musical ability, whilst dodging the obscurity that Radiohead have sought out by ensuring each of their albums sonically tops the last. Coldplay are the biggest band in the world right now.

Ghost Stories answers the perennial question that pop bands sit down with everytime they decide to break out the guitars and the synths again and look at their next charting single. The first encounter, Magic, entered the fray like the shy guy at a party, who gradually emerges in to the most charismatic attendee. He doesn't hop up on stage, drunk and shirtless, and sing a pitch perfect rendition of Don't Stop Believing, which is a character Coldplay have been all to happy to adopt in the past. Rather he sidles up to each independent social group, offering a wise word here and a rehearsed laugh there, building a reputation. Forget for a second the drum machine beat, the xylophonic (yes I know they called their last album Mylo Xyloto) touches and the silky smooth production, just focus on Chris Martin, because for the next 9 songs he will be an anchor that not only roots you to the spot, but has enough give to let your imagination soar, if only briefly.

Now, the 'conscious uncoupling'. I think the spin doctors must've sat down with a dictionary and a thesaurus and, over caviar and henessy, come up with the most absurd yet neutral phrase possible to describe the break up of Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow. A mild media circus ensued, including much derision, yet Ghost Stories makes it plainly clear that this was no uncoupling. Martin was dragged, kicking and screaming, away from his love, his light and his world. Juxtapose this record with the rainbow perma-blaze that was Mylo Xyloto and you'd be concerned for the mans mental health. And that's just in a sonic sense. Never before have we been let in to Martins world so fully. He stands before us, completely naked, a man who has been stripped of his dignity and soul, and he lays it on the line. That final piece to camera at the end of Magic, 'Do you still believe in magic? Well yes I do' is a lovely parting shot, and the next single, A Sky Full Of Stars, continues the myth that he is able to flood himself with positivity despite his circumstance. Viewed in isolation there is hope, yet the despair dangerously outweighs it.

I've been here before with Coldplay. Everyone has that band that, for some reason or another, stands as a beacon, marking prominent life events. Sometimes there are entire records you can't even  listen to anymore, and Viva La Vida is one, which is a crime because it is such a beautiful piece of music. Oddly, though, emotion has never been rammed down our throats. Songs like The Hardest Part hid a dark underbelly within a crafted pop package. Politik could've been a call to arms for those of us skating through life, barely existing on the frgines, yet that pounding drum instead gave it a hypnotic quality that was the anti-thesis of its message. Ghost Stories throws all of that, not only out the window, but it sets it on fire first, and then heads downstairs to crush the ashes. This could comfortably be a Chris Martin solo record, as Buckland becomes increasingly redundant and I am sure Will Champion spent more time with Pro Tools open on his computer than he did sitting behind a drum kit. Each song is slicker than a 1950s hair do, with studio magic replacing the organic instrumental direction of the records closest sonic cousin, Parachutes. Opener Always In My Head is a mournful croon that Buckland, almost sheepishly, props up with a slack lead and Champion ballasts with an overworked high hat. Ink follows a similar path, this time, and I am loathe to say it, but it almost sounds like they opened Garage Band and used the intuitive drum function to create something. Their percussion has always been on the hip hop side of pop, but on Mylo Xyloto and Viva La Vida it was hidden behind the most outrageous histrionics of synth and power piano that it played little more than a supporting role. Now that Martin has stripped back the sound, the meat and potatoes come to the fore, and they aren't seasoned.

I guess you could criticise here and lament that the band has lost 'the band', essentially. On Parachutes they were naive and enamoured with their instruments, and a 4 piece made perfect sense. Ghost Stories makes me wonder if Buckland and Berryman spent most of the recording process next door, ordering latte's for Champion and Martin. Never mind. The true star is Chris Martin and his absolutely shattered heart, which lays in sharp shards all over the record, piercing you with pain and misery. Sound dramatic? Here's a few track names. Always In My Head, True Love, Another's Arms. Other's have criticised the simplicity of his words, yet I find this almost unbelievable. If you'd like someone to spit a dictionary at you, go download a Fleet Foxes album (I love them btw, no diss!). The starkness of the words, layed over the top of the most fruity loops of music, provides an honesty and disarming beauty that will endear Ghost Stories to anyone who has a heart, a soul, and a love. 'My body moves/Goes where I will/But though I try/My heart stays still'. 'I call it magic when I'm with you'. 'When I'm rolling with the punches and hope is gone/ Leave a light on'. Seriously, have you never been in love before? Far out.

When he finally does snap out of his melancholic haze, not until track 8, A Sky Full Of Stars, the result is staggering. Yes, it's cynical. It's a HUGE piano riff, but let's not forget these guys played and dominated the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. You couldn't have anyone else, and it's with thanks that you finally see him breach the surface and charge towards the sky. 'Such a heavenly view'. Simplicity is beauty. You don't go up to your lover and quote Shakespeare. Well, maybe you do, but that's not the kind of relationship I am too keen on. You tell them you love them. You tell them they are a sky full of stars. When they leave, you email them and let them know that the world means nothing because they are in anothers arms.

I approached Ghost Stories stupidly. I was in an incredibly vulnerable situation, as I was with Viva La Vida, and I turned it on and didn't turn it off for three days. I don't know that I will ever turn it back on again when I remove myself from the current circumstance. There is SO MUCH WRONG with this record. It is anemic, it is over produced, it just sounds like Chris Martin in front of a keyboard singing in to the microphone. But now the true essence of a genius front man becomes entirely clear. Not once did he try to hit the charts on Ghost Stories. But it will be slathered all over them for months to come. 15 year old girls will once again swoon over his beautiful falsetto, his angsty lyrics, his love that shines as clear as day for a woman he no longer has. Ghost Stories is brilliant.

 9/10

Ah cinematography.. It's difficult to call it a lost art, because with the introduction of 3D filming techniques and Ultra High Definition resolutions, movie makers must be more conscious than ever of exactly how their movie looks when it is projected on to the big screen. Let's just say the art has evolved to such a stage that when the old classics are utilised they stick out like a fingernail in the pumpkin soup. Movies like Her, Black Swan, Drive and Gravity have ensured that when done correctly, cinematography can propel a movie to heights that it's script and actors are unable to permeate. Just look at Hugo, one of the sinfully worst movies to make it big, yet with such a breath taking utilisation of 3D technology you'd swear on your mothers grave it was one of the greatest scripted pieces ever produced.

When I saw the previews for The Grand Budapest Hotel, I was instantly drawn in. I assumed, wrongly, that it was destined for the boutique theatres, and that even an all star cast (most of whom are sidelined by minor roles) wouldn't save it from itself. It looked like a piece of obscurity, a quaint indulgence that traded on whimsy rather than solidity of concept, acting and script. The very first problem is the fact that Eastern Europe is a prominent feature. This part of the world seems to polarise opinion, whether as a by-product of the Cold War or just a a general opinion on its apparent impassiveness. Sure, it doesn't hold the beauty and history of a place like London, Paris, Beijing, or Rome. Yet to me it has always been utterly stunning; a vast, desolate slab of earth interspersed with concrete jungles built to a precise function and without love or even pride of craft.



Ok bloody hell, don't let's get too bogged down in that yet. The movie is written and directed by the delightful Wes Anderson, who also weaved magic on The Darjeeling Limited, a similarly toned movie that found Owen Wilson gnashing his acting teeth in a pleasurable way (if that is possible). It is inspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig, and it is here that the old chestnut rears its head. The movie is a story within a story, allowing it the indulgence of two narrators. F. Murray Abraham, who looks absolutely nothing like his supposed younger self, provides us with a historical recount of his time at the Grand Budapest Hotel, as told to both Jude Law as The Author (a role loosely based on Stefan Zweig, the inspiration), and his older, yet still deceased, presentation, Tom Wilkinson. Confused?

It's an odd way to start the movie. We are taken to a decidedly Soviet looking town square, where a young unidentified girl places a key chain on the bust of The Author and sits down to read his story. Then we are catapulted to Wilkinson, as the older version, speaking to camera with a child shooting him with a toy gun. With no characterisation or plot development, we are immediately thrown to Jude Law, as the Young Author, where he encounters F. Murray Abraham, who owns the Grand Budapest Hotel. Bloody hell. It's infinitely more understandable on screen. Both Abraham and Law offer brief insights in to their current status, which is odd, as neither character is truly explored, especially The Author. His piece to camera at the beginning as Wilkinson is more instructive in retrospect. He claims to be merely a vessel through which the story flows, and the true beauty lies within the actions, feelings and thoughts of the major players, not in the words he uses to describe them. It's a nice little work around so you aren't mired in some exorbitant plot piece that allows the writer to somehow shoe horn a second narrator in.



From here, once Abraham (who is brilliant by the way) and Law strike up an almost immediate friendship, the true story can begin. Set in the early 1930s, we follow the events that gravitate around Monsieur Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes) and Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori, who is meant to resemble a young Abraham but unless he had extensive surgery in his middle age this is not possible). The true light is Gustave, who prances around the screen with the contradictory habits one would usually encounter when you meet your bank manager at a pub on a friday night. He is at first presented as a sturdy character, a disciplinarian who instills confidence in his staff through an unflappable calmness and the ability to organise even the most outrageous requests of his guests. Yet it becomes clear that his success is based mostly around his ability in the bedroom. Despite being an excellent concierge, he is at times clumsy, and can lose focus quickly. When he and Zero are shaken on the train by some form of Nazi stand-over group, he attempts initially to maintain composure and quote some insightful piece of wisdom he'd plucked out of thin air. Halfway through he says 'Fuck it' and takes a swig of his drink, breaking the facade.He could immediately be tarred as pompous yet his demeanour is so disarming and 'every-man' that you relate to him without even realising it. He isn't a boss, he is a friend and confidante. A fascinating character.

Zero (the younger version) is much more straight laced. A lobby boy, he is taken under Gustave's wing to be taught the ways of the world and the hotel if there is time. He displays little youthful exuberance, and we learn later that his past is dark and filled with terrible events. He is much more reserved than Gustave, yet this plays perfectly up against his more potent co-star, providing the dry, or the earth, a grounding in reality when the movie can so quickly descend in to unbelievable realms.


Essentially, one of Gustave's lovers, Madame D, dies under suspicious circumstances, and leaves him an incredibly valuable painting and, it turns out, her entire estate (although this isn't discovered until later). Naturally, her family are incensed, and this triggers a most obscene chain of events that range from the purely hilarious to the downright rude and horrific. I liken it at times to Hot Fuzz, with Simon Pegg. Just when you think you're watching a lovely little comedy on a Sunday afternoon someone's head gets splattered. Standover man Willem Dafoe provides the gruesome, by chopping off Jeff Goldblum's fingers in a door and consigning a cat to a bloody and quite visual death when he throws it out the window. He also contributes to a severed head turning up in a laundry basket. Wes Anderson wants to ensure we recognise what happened by presenting us with the actual head, open mouth and terrified eyes. Lovely.

Through many capers, Gustave triumphs in the end and becomes exceedingly wealthy. Zero recounts how when Gustave passed, he inherited all of his estate, which included the hotel. A nice little package is wrapped up, and the explanation of why Zero retains the hotel despite it's financial failings is explained, somewhat shakily, by his devotion to his one true love, Agatha, who passed very young.



Ok so that's the plot out of the way. If you read the review looking for a plot then just wikipedia it. Or go to the actual movie. Support our multi-millionaire movie makers. The movie is actually a total triumph. As all triumphs, though, it is hard fought and requires constant vigilance. There is no one single stand out. Firstly, the cinematography. Anderson utilises a number of techniques that, whilst basic in nature, pack a visual punch. His pastel isn't particularly diverse, but when he does use colour it is starkly apparent due to the barren nature of his backdrop. The actual hotel looks like an oasis in the middle of an ice field, it's dull reds and passive yellows never clash with their surroundings yet remain striking. He uses wide shots to enhance the enormity of situations, such as when Gustave and Zero are attempting to locate Serge and are awaiting a cable car in some desolate piece of back country. They are outlined against a white sky and a white backdrop, the difficulty of their task enhanced and yet their dialogue is such that you almost feel you could be up there with them, enjoying a laugh. I adore the way he uses still camera's, allowing everything to pivot around the lens rather than attempting 'action shots' so to speak. The chase on ski's is hilarious, because it is clearly a mimmick of the early 30s movies and the way they depicted movement and drama through the use of models and smaller scale examples of larger happenings. There is just enough pan to show that what we are watching isn't real, but not so much that it looks farcical. And then there are the close ups of Zero and Gustave in pursuit, with a green screen behind them. It's wonderfully dated in a world of CGI mayhem. He also allows characters to be the focal point, and resists the urge to constantly change their surroundings or to move with them. A scene where Zero approached the prison in which Gustave is held, we see a wide shot of him knocking on a comically huge door, waiting it for open, only to have a regular entrance you don't even notice open next to it. Rather than immediately zoom in on his reaction or the reaction of the porter, the camera stays doggedly still as Zero moves. It's the little things, but by carrying it throughout the whole movie it creates a wonderful atmosphere of space and light.



Anderson called in some close mates on this one. Fiennes, Adrien Brody, who is one of the most stunning men in the entire world even with horrible facial hair, Willem Dafoe, who is scarier than a personal call from your doctor, Jeff Goldblum, F. Murray Abraham, Jude Law, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson. It's just another technique, we get that. The trailer goes for ten minutes because they need shots of every superstar in it, even if their parts are miniscule. It may be a tad cynical yet an unintended consequence is that it causes the movie to absolutely ooze with skill and quality. Bill Murray and Owen Wilson are little more than extra's, yet their presence is luminous, and they are instantly watchable. Jeff Goldblum tones himself down just enough to be believable, and Adrien Brody is menacing. Willem Dafoe looks like he just walked out of Lock Stock, or Football Factory, and his work as standover man brings a jolting presence to the film. On the one hand we are presented with Gustave, a very likeable, whimsical, gay character who draws light from those around him and is instantly relatable. Then we have Zero, who's naiivety is endearing and his willingness and underacting (yeah I said it) only serve to focus harsher on the talented Fiennes. On the other hand is Dafoe, killing people and reminding us all that we are in 1930s Hungary and a war is about to begin. Brilliantly done.



The Grand Budapest Hotel is a story, as well, and a damned good one. It's impossible to tell where the next plot jump will lead. Gustave is incarcerated, and you believe he will be turned to dust inside. Yet he wins the respect and trust of his fellow inmates and manages to escape with them. Then he finds Serge and you assume everything will be explained, but then Serge dies at the hands of Jopling, and a hilarious chase ensues. Eventually, something I certainly didn't see coming, Gustave inherits Madame D's entire estate and becomes filthy rich! But rather than become something he isn't, he retains his same character, and it turns out he was never playing a part at all, he was always true to himself, which is a message that isn't fully rammed home but is quite clear.

This is a brilliant movie. It has everything, and when I went in and sat down, if you'd looked at me sideways I would've ripped your nose straight from your face and choked you with it. Because I was in a bad, bad mood. Yet I was thoroughly entertained, and even managed to speak to a few strangers when we left and thank my mum for the stupidly expensive Gold Class seats. Here's a tip, don't go to the Gold Class in George Street. The seats are shithouse and uncomfortable, and the man kept trying to bring me wine that I didn't order. Actually, maybe it isn't that bad then.

8/10

The title is dumb. I don't care from what angle you view it. Firstly, it sounds absolutely nothing like Yeezus. His industrial strength noise is only once even remotely touched on, the final track (unless you stumped up for the Deluxe Edition) entitled Interlude, a dark brooding piece of instrumental music that you probably attribute to the next artist in your playlist. Secondly, Lily Allen does not once portray the ego that has propelled Mr West to the heightest stratospheric levels of human existence (even if it is only in his own mind). More on that later. Thirdly, it isn't controversial enough to create any kind of media buzz. Lily Allen recording new music was enough to have the press in her back pocket. The title just served to cause a lot of headaches as journalists smacked themselves in the head in exasperation.

You see, Lily Allen may come off as slightly hard-nosed, incredibly sarcastic at times, and even unlikeable, what with her constant flitting between music and mummy-hood, fashion and acting, and this blatant push and pull between making music people will connect with and respect her for and making music that the masses will actually buy. Her record label problems may contribute somewhat to that, but Allen is in fact one of the most genuine characters in pop music right now. Actually, Sheezus makes much more sense than Yeezus ever did. We need Lily Allen. Desperately. We needed this record, and it was only until it came out that we understood just how badly she was missed. In a pop world gone ballistic, with Lana Del Rey at one end pouting in couture video clips and Miley Cyrus at the other flashing her labia all over the place, it's difficult not to get caught up in the whirlwind of craziness. Beyonce is in the most potent power couple in the history of music, Katy Perry can't sing to save her life, and Lorde is about two Samsung advertisements away from losing all credibility. Lily Allen is you and me. She is the middle class of the UK, despite her upbringing, 'So I went to posh school / Why would I deny it? / Silver spoon at the ready / So don't even try it'. Somehow it makes you relate to her more.

As always, it takes a couple of listens to get your head back around her personality. Opener Sheezus is either a deeply intricate swipe at her competition, an acknowledgement of their skill and prowess, or a complete dismissal of them on her way to 'Give me the crown bitch, I wanna be Sheezus'. She even descends in to a sort of Lil Wayne vacuum with her period references. You feel a touch apprehensive when the title of the next track flashes on your ipod. L8 CMMR. But DAMMIT she can write an earwig. She abhorrently utilises auto-tune, the beat sounds like a fysher-pykel creation and you can smell the bubblegum in the air, but when that chorus drops and her voice enters its pleasure mode you fall instantly under her spell. It's so difficult not to love these moments of pure pop brilliance. Insincerely Yours utilises a repetitive bridge that bleeds in to her double tracked chorus, tempered by her dead pan 'I'm just here to make money money'. Then on URL Badman some sort of mutant dubstep growls in the background as she stares straight down the camera and declares in her sweetest voice 'I'm a URL b-a-d-m-a-n and you're dead to me, I'm a broadband champion'. It's decadent, it's sugary, it's better than anything Britney has managed in years.

Unfortunately for her detractors, Allen has built Sheezus in to a sort of rubber castle. By fusing a few nuanced helpings of sarcasm with her more sweeping statements, she has done what Eminem did in 8 mile. She calls herself out before everyone else can, and the maddening thing is you can't really tell if she is being serious or not. Insincerely Yours is genius. She takes aim at celebrity DJs who care more about appearance than substance, and she throws subliminal hands at Beyonce, 'I don't wanna know about your perfect life / Your perfect wife and it makes me sick'. She uses Cara Delevingne as a poster girl for English socialites and tears her down with ease, 'Let's be clear I'm here, to make money money'. I mean.. How do you even start to jump on her for that? You could call her a child born in to privilege (she is the daughter of Keith Allen), but she already shuts that argument down on Silver Spoon. You could say she is wasting the music world's time with her comeback and that she her finger well off the pulse of the current pop landscape, but she already addressed that on Sheezus by claiming she is something wholly different to the rest of the princesses. You could say that she has spent the last few years indulging her every whimsy whilst everyone else who hasn't been born in to money has been working their ass of, yet her candour in Life For Me unhinges any kind of animosity you feel towards her, 'No energy left in me, the baby might have taken it all / Cause I've hit the wall'. How many mums are out there nodding their heads to this?

And no-one wants to be tarred and feathered as a URL Badman..

This is why Sheezus is so vitally important to music. No-one seems to be prepared to tell it how it is, mostly because no-one other than Allen seems to be truly living the way we are. All of our pop idols are spending their time doing insane world tours, vacationing in exotic locations, getting in fights in elevators at glamourous events. Meanwhile, Allen has been taking care of her two kids, dealing with the truly horrible stillbirth she experienced (including a stay in a psychiatric hospital), and being a loving wife. She's tried acting, tried her own show, tried designing, and whilst it is clear she has a talent for all of her pursuits, you felt her heart was never really in it. When she addresses the direction her life has taken on Life For Me, her statement of 'It's a bit early for a midlife crisis' is apt, but slightly misguided. I am sure most 30+ girls suddenly find themselves one day sat on the sofa, watching TV in the arms of their husband watching their beautiful kids when a cocaine memory crops up, or a boozy night out that ended in declarations of never-ending friendship rears its head. Her plea, 'Tell me I'm normal for feeling like this' feels completely redundant when viewed in the context of her album.

The elephant in the room at the annual music critic retreat is that Allen is an artist in a world where art can be demeaned and debased until it is stamped out completely. The heart-wrenching Take My Place, about that horrific incident in her past, can almost make you cry in frustration. A song like this needs a mournful tone, built around minor chords and deep receding strings. Instead she takes to it with her usual gusto, crafting a pop tune out of thin air. The final words sit uncomfortably, "How can life be so unfair? / I can't breathe, in fact I'm choking on the air / It's all over, I can see it in your eyes / Hold my hand, don't ever leave my side". That is not someone out of touch with reality, living a lavish lifestyle and unable to truly relate to the everyday struggle. That's a woman pouring her heart out, and it's as disarming as Sun Kil Moon's Benji, or Johnny Cash's staggering version of Hurt, or Scarface's verse on This Can't Be Life by Jay-Z. The fact that it almost sounds like a call to arms is the only misstep on the album, because it is not a call to arms at all. It is the desperate cries of someone who can't see any way out of the pain she is currently feeling.

Pop music is an odd thing. It exists entirely in its own bubble. It's so difficult to break in without slipping out the other side, yet if you are born inside it, it's almost impossible to fight your way out. Allen's bubble coexists with it, yet is entirely separate. Everything she touches is instantly listenable. Her previous work has always been honest and candid, even when she has been chasing the charts. Sheezus is no exception to the rule she has created for herself. It's 2014 and we needed another dose of Lily. We probably won't need another for a few years yet, but the way Miley and Bieber are going (and I class Justin amongst the pop princesses even if Lily doesn't), I might be knocking on her door in early 2015 with a microphone and Greg Kurstin held against his will.

 Rating: 8/10

Nas released an album entitled Life Is Good. If it was a veiled assault on the lovely Kelis, it was quite thin, although throughout the record we saw the man unfold in a way he never has before, through introspective rhymes that echoed a deep sense of maturity and a content that confirmed the title. Kelis, on the other hand, has decided to discard with any form of sap, and written a record that, if only in title, is a hommage to her true love, that being food.


Interesting. Even more interesting is the first track, Breakfast. It could almost be a personal letter to her former husband, "I wanna say thank you (thank you) / You've been more than just a man / You've really been a friend" yet she mires the rest of the song firstly in what we assume is past tense, "So much of who we are / Is from who taught us how to love" and then blatantly in the present, "Maybe we'll make it til breakfast". Not until Hooch does Nas make another appearance, and it is cursory at best. Rather than being a love-lorn piece of break up rhetoric, Food is instead a piece that stands starkly in the collection of Kelis records, yet one that still invokes her artistic direction, one that she has painfully forged in an industry and environment that can schew up and spit out less savvy entities. Don't forget this is the girl who once screamed 'I hate you so much right now' on a thousand break up mixtapes in the late 90s. She may only be 34, which is still extremely young in the music world, but Food is as grown up as an evening spent listening to Birth Of The Cool and sipping aged scotch. And a hell of a lot more fun.

That she has never truly incurred on her artistic leanings immediately endears Kelis as a true survivor of the art-pop world. From a girl who cut her teeth on the freshest of Neptunes cuts, and one who was catapulted in to super stardom with hit singles and lavish video clips, you could immediately forgive her for chasing the penny down the piegon hole for the rest of her career. The thing that seems to distinguish these strong R&B personalities is their shrewdness when it comes to sound and direction. Whilst Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Taylor Swift and Mariah Carey all mine a sound until it's depleted and implodes, artists like Beyonce, Kelis, Solange and Janelle Monae evolve. Food is an evolution. 2010's Flesh Tone wasn't, it was littered with Guetta's and god knows what other CD spinners, and yet despite this it was still excellent. It felt organic, and her voice shone over the top of production that threatened to dawrf her. On Food, again we see Kelis' personality taking over and dominating a record. She doesn't need to force it though, like a Madonna or even Nicki Minaj, who both impose themselves upon music. Kelis sways lazily in the wind of a song, and if she doesn't like the direction it's taking she growls, making adjustments until she gets her way.

On Jerk Ribs, her initial falsetto is sweet, it seduces, but almost loses face to the giant helping of horns, until she adds a tiny speck of power in that voice to propel herself above the rise. She pulls off a similar trick on Hooch, although in reverse. That bassline is intense, and the New Zealand dub that smacks over the top of it via more brass creates a cluttered environment that isn't conducive at all to a strong vocal performance. So instead she moans, forcefully enough to be heard, but not enough to sound out of step. Purists might balk at her vocal abilities on Food. You may say she can sing better than this, and I do not know if it is her hitting those ridiculous notes on Cobbler (I suspect not but I am ok with being proved wrong), but this is a true afrobeat, soul record, and even though she sounds aloof at times, on Runnin' she sounds positively sedated, and on closer Dreamer she is lost completely in reverb at times, her vocals ensure that this isn't just background music.

Food is an introspective release, but it almost feels like she has carefully hand picked what we are allowed to see and not see. Runnin' sees her hastily pursued by her past, one that she is loathe to forget yet keeps trying to. "How can I forget you?" is almost a plea, a refuge and yet something she feels must be left behind. This is continued on Rumble, when she laments allowing the past back in, "But like a lapse in my memory / I wanna yell, "baby, don't go"", and is torn at the decision to stick or move. There are nice moments too. On Bless The Telephone she focuses on just what a freaking amazing piece of technology it is, and the weight that can be lifted just from hearing someones voice, even if you cannot be with them physically. All of these characters she speaks of are either imagined or part of her life in some undisclosed way, and despite the at times autobiographical nature of her musings, she keeps the true identity close to her chest. On Forever Be she could be talking about a lover or a friend, and the message of 'my heart is blind' cuts like a knife with an average listener. We've all been there Kelis. Funnily enough, she follows that with Floyd, which is like an online dating profile, and it feels slightly out of place. It's almost too confessional, too blatant to be mixed in with the mystery of the rest of the record.

There's no shortage of female pop vocalists right now. There's also no shortage of men in white shirts and black ties sitting in high rise offices in Manhatten planning their next assault on the charts vicariously through a 25 year old white girl with either breasts or a lack of self control. That's Tier 1 of the industry. On Tier 2 sit those who have earned respect throughout their careers through hard work, perserverance and an ability to turn music from a souless production in to an art form. When Flesh Tones came out in 2010, it was with foreboding that we all approached it. Kelis had success in the pop world, but this felt like a double down on the EDM culture that had emerged. Instead, she flipped it in to a natural process. Food is about as stylistically far away from that as a Cauliflower is from a McDonalds. It's coloured by beautiful sweeping brass gestures, bass-lines that possess the intelligence of Stephen Hawking as they adapt and mould around these sounds, and the odd slash of electric guitar for a bit of texture. Piano's that sound like they've been programmed by Just Blaze or Hit-Boy, yet are clearly live instrumentation. On Biscuits n' Gravy it took me 3 minutes to reproduce the piano loop on my own software at home. It had that sensibility that hip hop music utilises, that simplicity of theme that gives the listener a focal point to sit with and then expand on, yet the fact that it was clearly played live turned it in to an entirely new piece of music. Food touches on the roots of R&B without ever feeling dated, and Kelis allows herself the opportunity to size each song up before diving in. Rather than trying to sound like Erykah Badu, she moulds her husk and growl with falsetto's and sweet harmonising.

I walked away from this record for three weeks and came back, only to be floored by it. It hit me like a train. This is lovely music. Put on Friday Fish Fry the next time you are in the kitchen with your family cooking up some preposterously messy meal and you may just descend in to a food fight, the vibes are so potent. On Pound Cake, just before Drake came in, the voiceover said 'Only real music's gonna last. All that other bullshit is here today, gone tomorrow'. Food will sustain you for years to come, and in ten years pop it back in. It won't date, beauty never does.

Rating: 6/10

My general sweep of social media yielded a small nugget of truth that saddened me more than the gradual descent of Sydney weather in to it's wintry depths. '50 Cent's Animal Ambition only expected to move 35k first week'. For those not in the know, 35k means he will ship 35,000 physical copies of his new record, because that is what the distributor is ordering. This is low. And I mean Insane Clown Posse low. It's the equivalent of the CEO of Commonwealth Bank taking a job at a local Subway cutting up capsicum. 50 moved 1.1 million copies of The Massacre in it's first week in 2005, and even Future's bland Honest moved 53k in its first week this year. The industry is not kind to those missing a hit song, even if they are royalty.

Every review you read about Animal Ambition will lament the fact that 50 Cent still refuses to step out from behind his hulk-like persona and deal us a nice dose of Curtis. Even the record he named after himself refused to shed any lyrical light on the man, with tracks like I'll Still Kill, Ayo Technology and My Gun Go Off just peddling the same shoot, kill, rob, steal, fuck, that's what's real philosophy that Get Rich or Die Tryin' perfectly encapsulated. Follow Curtis on Twitter, or just peruse the popular hip hop sites and you are constantly given examples of his wit and character. Don't believe me? Check this website out. He feels the need to weigh in on every pop culture occurance, from Solange and Jay Z to Justin Beiber, and even when he embarrasses himself, he still turns it in to hilarity.

Animal Ambition could, theoretically, be his most courageous release. From a man who had his career sculpted by two of Hip Hop's greatest success crafters, Eminem and Dr. Dre, we recieve something that completely lacks the In Da Club, Candy Shop or I Get Money moment. Without a designated club banger to precede the release, hype was confined to the determined underground. Hold On, the first single, is a true Brooklyn classic, the kind of thing that Acura's would have turned up till speakers bled on Flatbush in the late 1990s. Frank Dukes laces it with a halting boom bap finished with almost delicate guitar touches, as 50 get's his grime on, 'We came from nothing, now they sayin we straight. You got that? Hold up, Hold on'. His adlibs are menacing, 'We got bail money, whatever, y'all gotta chill'. It sets the soul alight, but if it came on at Le Bain at 2am the twerker's would retire to the bar for refreshments. And unfortunately, an MTV cosign puts numbers on the board. Just ask Kanye, who's only record not to go platinum is the one that mainstream media has shirked from.

Animal Ambition is produced entirely by names you don't hear at the start of every club beat, including legends like Ty Fyffe and Jake One, and lesser known agents like Ky Miller and Shamtrax. Everytime I Come Around, produced by Steve Alien who is basically just a twitter presence to the rest of the world, sounds like it was made on Fruity Loops by a drunk 14 year old. Yet it suits, because 50 brings the menace. There's no Mike Will Made It, there's just a solitary Dre beat, and Pharrell must've been busy with his next boundary cross-over. It gives the whole project a mixtape feel, and it's heritage can be traced back to 50's earliest Eminem-baiting tapes. The closest we get to the minimalist fare that is littering hip hop compilations in 2014 is the gutter Irregular Heartbeat, featuring a scintilating verse from former nemesis Jadakiss. 'Fuck who you with, we'll dump a clip / We by the school yard waiting for you to get your kid'. It proves that even when the current standards are conformed to, 50 can still bring the heat like he did in 2002, even if he is hundreds of times richer and probably further away from gun shots than you or I.

I guess the question must be posed. Does 50 Cent really need to reveal any more of his personality than he has shared so far? It's his 5th proper solo album, and he is still rapping about the exact same things, except now the brags and bravado have been matched by sales and tales, so that they are no longer brags but a heightened form of reality that only the blessed few are able to indulge in. Whilst his mentor Eminem goes about delving in to his own soul and extracting the deepest, darkest depths of it for our entertainment, 50 seems intent on being 50, not Curtis Jackson. There's never been any tension between this persona and his own self as there has between Marshall Mathers, Slim Shady and Eminem.

Essentially, this deals with the two big flaws of this record. Firstly, his sales are explained away by the lack of a club thumper. Secondly, his lack of personality is nothing new. You're buying a record that is made by 50 Cent, not Curtis Jackson, and if Jay-Z's constant pleading has taught us anything, it's that rappers can create whatever character they wish to present to us without fear of reprisal. I mentioned that this could in fact be his most courageous album ever. Unfortunately, it turns out the opposite is true. 50 Cent is a true success story, he has scaled heights that we as mere mortals can not see. There are pictures of him on the internet using a knife and fork to eat stacks of money, or pretending that a stack of 100s is a phone so think he can barely grip it in his mammoth hands. He has scaled the heights and now sits atop them. He no longer needs to sell records. Animal Ambition: An Untamed Desire To Win is the least apt title he could've picked. There is no ambition on this record. Each track is a slow march of themes that he has covered ad nauseum. Money, expensive items, and his apparent lack of interest in women when related to money. And shooting people. The fact that he doesn't even need to take the car out of park now to drive in to a pit full of money shows on Animal Ambition. The final track is instructive. Chase The Paper. "I'm still a rider, I'm still rolling /  A nigga still hold the steel, that's how I'm owning / You chase the hoes, I chase the paper" He got rich, and didn't die. The prophecy was fulfilled, and it seems that's the end of the story, which is criminal because with his talent and ability on the mic, he should be dropping masterpieces at this point in his career. Instead, we are left to await the next release, hoping the criticisms somehow make it to his cloud and actually sink in.

 

 

Rating: 7/10

Interscope have banned Youtube in their offices for the forseeable future. I once sat in a marketing lecture where 50 of the brightest minds in my state spent 2 hours brainstorming the phenomenon known as 'viral'. When Die Antwoord released the insane Enter The Ninja in 2010, someone in a starched white suite put a fat-shaped hole in their door on their way to South Africa to sign these two (and DJ Hi-Tek). In 2014, they've managed the impossible again, with the batshit crazy video for Pitbull Terrier proving the art of the music video is far from dead. Viral isn't a formula, it's an organic, tangible beast that Die Antwoord have in spades.

Donker Mag hit's you in the neck, like all of their releases do. It comes flying in through the window, blending Death Grips intensity with the throb of Timbaland and a couple of emcees who are literally peerless in the Western world. In fact apart from Jack Parow, it's hard to identify anyone who reps the Zef with a similar level of dedication. To kick a massive label deal to the curb over autonomy concerns, after they'd played to 40,000 people at Coachella, is almost unfathomable to most. On So What (from their previous record, Ten$ion), Ninja and Yo-Landi trade bars about their relative poverty and it's removal in one fell swoop. 'Got a million fucking dollars in the bank', 'Not too shitty, fuck you Jimmy, I'm a never give it back'. Money is a real push pull topic for them.

You can forgive Ninja for all his shortcomings because his swagger and bravado is just so damn air tight it's impressive. On Zars he takes out a public service announcement to explain why he speaks with different accents to different people. It's the only concession or explanation we will recieve from him. This track bleeds in to the insane Raging Zef Boner, 'I'm an African, come girl you know whats up / This big motherfucking dick is whats up'. Fuck yeah! Clearly not the most attractive man in the world, as referenced constantly by Yolandi, he laces Donker Mag with so much blatant sexual imagery it's worthy of a spot next to Lil Wayne on the sex olympics podium. 'Panties hit me in the face like wicked / smells like fish, TASTES LIKE CHICKEN!'. He's a love ninja this one.

That's not a diss, and it has always been Ninja's personality that has carried him through whilst sharing mic space with one of the most gifted and technical female emcees since the late 90s. Yolandi was the weird girl in school, like Rooney Mara in Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The girl who dresses weird, talks weird, acts crazy, and yet you are drawn to her through some animal magnetism trickery. Her sex appeal has only ever been accentuated, not exploited, by the duo, which is an incredibly tough line to tread. But when she can spit the way she does, it's not hard to see why she is more than just a sideshow. The way she utilises her angelic delivery is expertly cultivated. She can switch from the sweetest, meditative noises (Pitbull Terrier) to a beast snapping at your heels as you turn and run from her blood soaked teeth (I Don't Dwank). The way she double times on Cookie Thumper! puts Ninja to shame, 'Yo-Landi Visser got the hypest flow / start talking in tongues whenever I get stoned / Motherfucking minds get blown / Everytime I rap into the microphone'. The only crime on Donker Mag is why she doesn't appear more often. Ninja takes up the bulk of the leg work, and Yolandi provides hooks, bridges and asides, but if she spat more it would propel the record to a higher status.

The elephant in the room is the weird juxtaposition of a group rejecting major label dollars to remain independent and true to their homeland, yet one who refuses to rap extensively in their native tongue. Yolandi can quite regularly be coaxed in to Afrikaans, yet Ninja seems hesitant to use it. There is hardly any doubt that rapping exclusively in Afrikaans would diminish their international audience significantly. Yet English is spoken quite freely in South Africa and Cape Town, so it's a difficult conundrum to judge. You could be cynical and say that Ninja borrows the Zef culture (that, admittedly, he has now made internationally famous) and yet refuses to immerse himself fully in it, using it merely as a tool to explain his less than intricate lifestyle. This is short-sighted though, and it'd be extremely difficult to claim that Die Antwoord have sold out in any way, shape or form. Maybe I am in the minority, as someone who disseminates music as a hobby, when I say that more Afrikaans would be a plus rather than a minus. Either way, Donker Mag is accessible.

A lot of that accessibility comes from DJ Hi-Tek, who is severely underrated. His jungle-style 808 bang recalls Dr. Dre, yet he has all the pomp and ceremony of Just Blaze or Kanye, if without the brass and soul samples. Each track is a real jolting experience, and Ninja's outrageous boasts sit perfectly nestled in a sound that is, almost impossibly, bigger than him. The whole record just feels well put together. Raging Zef Boner get's an almost playful beat to counter his dangerous statements, and Shnurr's work on Pitbull Terrier is plain menacing. Then there is something like Cookie Thumper! which initially feels like a Southern minimalist DJ Mustard creation before the anthem is dialled up to 14 with a siren calling all and sundry to the dance floor to hear Yolandi pontificate.

For two emcees who claim drugs to be a daily indulgence, Donker Mag is so well put together you almost don't want to rip the shrink wrap off the CD. This is no novelty act. Ninja pours his heart and soul in to every single rhyme he conjures, and Yolandi is as shrewd as she is talented, able to manipulate her god given gift of a voice descended from a hollywood heaven, she can turn from a sweet pussy cat to an earless Tiger in seconds. It's a thumper though, make sure your grandma isn't nearby cause you're going to need to turn it up to 11.

Rating: 7/10

There's an unspoken rule in underground (and surface dwelling) hip hop, that you need to be a certain kind of messed up to create art that is meaningful enough to have the college kids stroke their beard and nod along. If you aren't, then you need to have superhuman abilities on the microphone. Sage Francis has a toe in both categories. There's something slightly special when someone who could've been lecturing you on political science in university is born with the ability to grace the stage and lay wisdom over beats. Discovering someone like Sage is a serendipitious moment. He's not the man for every type of weather, but his brand of outspoken rebellion matches up with diamond-plated examples like Killer Mike and Mos Def, and his expressed self flagellation is performed with both irony and fervour, in equal amounts.

Being a genius, his mind tends to hop around as if on hot coals. His most coherent release, 2007's Human The Death Dance, gave him a genuine pariah on which to base his potent mouth on, attacking all and sundry related to Mr Bush's presidential reign. His best work has been completed in sharp bursts with clear focus. When he appeared on the (utterly brilliant) Canada Project by Sixtoo, he ghosted in like a sniper, throwing hands and feet at anything that moved, then departed the beat, causing great concern for whoever had to follow him on the microphone. So, talented then.

To understand Copper Gone, we first must understand the environment it was raised in. At the end of his touring of Li[f]e in 2010, Francis announced a cessation of touring. What this actually set in effect was a gradual withdrawal from the world, enhanced greatly by several personal tragedies that befell him and those around him. For a man that was so outspoken politically, someone who managed to weave up to the minute cultural references in to each of his songs, this gave an entirely new perspective on the project Copper Gone. No longer bound by a major label deal, he was free to roam around inside his own mind, and what he finds is confronting and difficult to hear.

The stunning Make Em Purr, produced by the master of emotion Buck 65, gives the most autobiographical account of where the man is at. Francis revisits his self-analysing youth in an entirely more disarming manner. 'I was a lot more comfortable being vulnerable and open / When I was younger it wasn't clear if I was or wasn't joking'. There's little doubt that on Copper Gone, he is deadly serious, and phrases that once may have been cast off's, 'You've been padding your resume / while I've been rhyming about life like I'm rapping my death away' now take on a new meaning. There's soul afoot, and it certainly isn't clean or pure.

Of course it wouldn't be a Sage record without some attempt at humour, although in this case most of it is quite dark and furtive. On Grace, he slops through the opposite of Eminem's Drug Ballad, before aiming his six shooting tongue directly at the establishment he deems guilty of his predicament, 'If I kill your persecution complex that don't make you a martyr / Drop the styrofoam cross, you can't walk on water'. His clowning remains sinister throughout, 'She called me on Christmas, that was my gift / she was worried I might die, I said 'Might die? No shit!'. There's nothing scarier than a comic in the throws of depressive episodes, but Sage still manages to flip his lyrics so adeptly you're smiling as you dial 911 and report he may be a danger to himself, 'Suicidal watch it's diamond studded / Tells me when my time's up, trying to keep my eyes from it / It's so swag, I flash it at the fashion shows / Walks with a limp, it's so pimp and it smacks the hoes'.

As you descend further in to the listening experience his advice on track 4, Cheat Code, becomes clearer and clearer; 'Don't expect resolutions just cause every movie has em'. On Grace his desperation as he considers taking Lithium to correct his chemical imbalance is an ominous sign and it gets no better than that. In an interview with Jonk Music this year he stated that when he is working on an album, nothing can stop him, and he stops taking visitors because he refuses to let anyone see his work lest they influence it in some way. What flowers from this is a man forced to sit back and take stock of his own headspace. The Place She Feared Most turns in to an internal dialogue between Sage and what could be the rest of the world looking in on him, debasing his own self worth relentlessly via imagined evidence. Dead Man's Float even has him flirting briefly with religious saviour, before he intellectually dissects that and shatters it 'But faith couldn't even move low-income families away from / Biblical floods when they were all drowning'.

There are encouraging signs from Sage though. He constantly reverts back to his hulk-like ability with words, raining down lyrical hammer blows whenever his mind runs off on a tangent. On Vonnegut Busy he just plays around, 'For what it's worth I'm richer than cemetary soil / I use slant drilling to get my midnight oil'. At the end of ID Thieves he is roused in to action almost through a cathartic strain of conscious thought, ending the track with a chilling challenge, 'Why you think I let you get away with doing radio-friendly versions of what I do?' before body slamming them. It's this sign of life, this fight, that sustains hope throughout Copper Gone. Rather than being a Trent Reznor hate-fest, or an Eminem admission of guilt, Sage still has that fire burning within him, and whilst that hope is clearly alight you have hope for his mental state.

What is helpful is that sonically this is the strongest Sage release ever. With production from Buck 65, Anders Parker, James Handock, Le Parasite and long timers Alias and Cecil Otter, Copper Gone has the bark to match the bite. Lead single Vonnegut Busy is an anxious boom bap New York classic, providing the perfect canvas for some lyrical acrobatics. Buck 65's entries are theatrical and complimentary, and tracks like The Set Up and Pressure Cooker provide much needed thump. The tendency with projects like this can be to pluck obscure producers out of the air who provide 'artistic', self-serving beats that don't match the fight and fire of the emcee. Francis has never been one to pander to ponce, which ensure a healthy amount of knob turning when you're in the car, in the gym or just sitting in your room wanting to piss your parents off.

'If you're going through hell, keep going'. Sage Francis is a genius, and it's difficult to picture him sitting there in his studio, alone, yelling in to the mic with this much energy and aggression without feeling some form of hope. He is stupidly talented, and for anyone struggling through similar circumstances this record will hit you straight between the eyes, it's evocative and illustrative of how hard it is to battle the inner demons when they get a foothold. But he is still battling. This would be an instant classic if he could keep his mouth on track for an entire LP. Either way, there's enough quoteable lines on here to keep rapgenius contributors busy for the rest of the year.

Rating: 6.5/10

In 2003, supporting the stunning A Natural Disaster, Danny Cavanagh intimated in an interview that Lee Douglas, the sister to John, would feature more prominently in future projects. This record was a turning point for the band, who always sat uncomfortably in the realm of 'doom metal'. Rather than being theatrical, Anathema have always laced their harder edges with an emotional capacity that is beyond most metal bands. The imagery was always dark and stormy, and on a track like Underworld off 2001's A Fine Day To Exit highlighted the Danny's story telling abilities, and his deeply artistic lyrical mind.

2004 hits, and the band are dropped from their label. Danny invests his time and attention in various side projects, and the Anathema wagon loses steam rapidly. He begins to see a personal therapist, and the other band members shuffle off in to the abyss of the music industry, swallowed up in session appointments and local night life revery. Anathema and rap artists have one thing in common. A label saved their life. Signing with Kscope spawned a new lease on life for these Liverpudlians, and a rich vein of artistic form was discovered through We're Here Because We're Here, and the stunning 2012 release Weather Systems.

That 2010 release, We're Here Because We're Here, was both ominous and instructive for die hard fans. Take a gander Pentecost III and you'll see what I mean. But bands must progress, they must reinvent themselves. It'd be wholly cynical to blame their shift of sound on their new label, in fact Cavanagh and co have been firm believers in the importance of the label in their making of music, which obliterates our rapper comparison. The roots of the current sound took hold in the now divide bridging A Natural Disaster, a record that was at once aggressive and raw but, in time, significantly more melodic.

Distant Satellites evokes it's title extremely well, through a combination of wonderfully crafted harmonies between Danny and Lee, through the insistent and compulsive drumming of John Douglas, and the further exploration of keys. There is such a thick layer of strings it almost dwarfs the ambient guitar moves. It's the kind of record you can bite a chunk out of with your ears and carry it with you through life's complicated journeys. Danny has expressed that the bands music can be compared to film scores, or more pertinently with each song depicting a visual image that he has conjured. Certainly, tracks like Dusk (Dark is Descending) shudder with an anxious energy that forces movement at the most vulnerable of times when journeying alone. Of course the physical imagery is always a front for the inner turmoil that Danny channels, and phrases like 'Because I'm trying to be brave now / But I'm frozen in this place now / And it's so cold' hit hard on both fronts.

What evolves throughout the record is a desire for companionship, or the pervading sense that current relationships are insufficient. On Anathema (no, the world didn't blow up when they made a song called anathema), Danny doesn't just trot out the standard 'we hated each other but we loved each other' rhetoric. He descends in to a pit of aggression; 'Slowly dissolving, our time, but we laughed, and we cried, and we fought, and we tried, and we failed, but I loved you'. His voice is a pleading beacon, it's a desolate expanse. It's immediately accessible, yet hinged with a loneliness that he almost seems to cradle. This is finally explored and resolved on the title track, and the story of the album takes perfect shape. A nervous drum beat and dense strings provide the backdrop for Danny's explanation, "And it makes me wanna cry / Caught you as I floated by / And it makes me wanna cry / Just another distant satellite". Not since Wish You Were Here has something this concrete formed in my head when listening to a song about the hopeless plight of lovers stuck in an endless cycle of everyday life. As he takes each breath, you feel the relationship slipping further from his grasp.

The record now opens up. You're Not Alone is a song written in the hope that it's target will hear it in the pervading buzz of digital chatter in the world. Almost as a text message to your ex from a different number. You're not alone. The opening track, The Lost Song Pt. 1, bleeds with both hope and a resignation. "Tonight I'm free / So free / For the first time / I've seen / New life""For you're mine / And I'm yours / For life". Whatever that life may bring. Revisited on The Lost Song Pt. 3, in the simple line "Our scars can't heal". It's then so sad to hear their movement away from each other, drifting through space, unable to enter each other's orbit, defined by the gravity of other factors in life.

Ok so that's a pretty in depth discussion, and now you're asking why have I only given it a 6.5/10 if it touched such an emotional sore point? I think the most disappointing album I've heard recently was The Killers Battle Born. Not because each song was bad, not because it was musically redundant, but because it just didn't do anything. It was just music, not Music!!! That's the problem with Distant Satellites. Whilst Weather Systems was a brilliant exercise in restrained instrumental energy and  huge, roller coaster valleys and peaks, this record runs on a plateau. There's none of the excitement and theatre that Weather Systems had in spades. I liken music like this to a dance music concert. The DJ must be an expert in judging mood, in building the crowd up to huge crescendo's that explode and wash over you, infecting more than just your ears. Instrumental metal toes the same line, and Weather Systems was expertly put together, painstakingly concoted so as to pull you up to the peak, toss you off the ledge, let you hang in freefall, and then give you a giant river of noise to crash land in. Distant Satellites does none of this. Ariel almost sounds juvenile in execution, with the explosion coming like a hammer blow in the middle of the track with no subtelty. Take Shelter is a hideous piece of drum machine noise, where they've just replaced a wall of sound laid with care with an intrusive barrage of sounds. The best thing about music like this is it can be like a really good orgasm. The sex is great for the first 20 minutes, then all of a sudden you're on the trail, climbing the hill towards the peak. Not too slowly, but not too quickly either. Then, when you've been suitably worn out with the climb the pleasure hits and explodes as you reach an unseen summit. Distant Satellites is just one long plateau, where the edge of the cliff is easy to see, and you jump off it knowingly. Make sense?

Emotionally, this record is one giant smack between the eyes. Danny Cavanagh is a master of conjuring a story that takes twists you don't see coming, and it's sung so wholeheartedly you believe his every word. Lee Douglas provides suitable back up, allowing a richer harmony. Unfortunately, the record just doesn't have the technique or skill of the stunning Weather Systems, and that is what lets it down.

Rating: 5.5/10 

When The Roots signed to Def Jam in 2006, Jay Z was presiding over the once powerful label, one that had slipped in to a decline deemed scary enough for the president to release a hurried Kingdom Come. The Roots were neo-rap legends in the underground, masterfully infusing modern jazz with a live band atmosphere, and a lead emcee who was regarded as one of the heavy hitters. They'd also spawned a massive crossover hit, The Seed (2.0), which helped their 2002 record Phrenology achieve platinum status. So what do you think Jay Z said to Questlove when they discussed their upcoming record? "Please, no radio singles. I don’t want no radio". THANK GOD (or Hova in this instance). Since then, The Roots have embodied everything that is desperately missing from mainstream hip hop. They've pushed boundaries (Wise Up Ghost) by working with rock legends, they've made the ultimate ghetto soul splashes with John Legend, solidifying his credibility at a time when it was slipping in to an MTV induced blur (Wake Up!), and they've continued to diversify a sound that is a testament to Questlove's encyclopedic musical brain.

...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin is a concept record, in the vein of Undun, however rather than limit themselves to a single individual voice or character, the band have expanded to include all of those noises, all of those personalities that you encounter in their neighbourhood. With such a bevy of inherent talent gravitating around this group, no less than 29 contributing artists in the writing and production credits, there's always the concern that the resultant output is a mish mash of half thought ideas, or fully thought brain waves that clash. What The Roots have traditionally done well is control the chaos that surrounds them, and especially that which constantly blares inside the heart, Questlove. In an interview with Spin in 2013, he explained that his mood is quite volatile, and his creative output is greatly impacted by that. Yet The Roots have always managed to stay one step ahead of the rest of the hip hop world, through a combination of hard work, insane talent, and a fireproof will to represent those that surround them in the everyday world. Not the celebrity world. Not the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, not hanging out backstage doing shots with Tarantino. The real people who sit at home after a hard day providing for themselves and their families, watching these guys on TV. Sitting there thinking 'Shit man, these guys have it MADE'. If only they picked up a record. Black Thought and his band have a direct line to their soul.

And it's not to be taken lightly. This is a courageous route to take, and Jay Z's comment comes in to it. Questlove said "'I never had a label president beg me for an art record before.", and their output since that fateful day has been border line crazy, when there are probably hundreds of Happy's or Blurred Lines' tucked away inside those musical skulls. ...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin is just an extension of this courage. Weighing in at just 34 minutes, and with no marketable single, it's a tapestry of stories painted on a canvas of disconcerting soul and jazz music, touched heavily by downtrodden beats that mimmick the kind of suicidal work that Mac Miller is putting out at the moment. Opener Theme From The Middle Of The Night, as performed by Nina Simone, is instructive as to the direction this record takes. The line "Wake and begin their day in the middle of the night" cuts through any kind of class structure, taken literally and metaphorically it is powerful imagery to trust in as an opening statement.

From here, The Roots and their collaborators expand on this theme. Second track Never is desperately downbeat, and we find Black Thought peddling his most intense form of cathartic therapy, "What is this gotta be brave / When into the night I'm going to go quietly mane""Life's a bitch and then you live". His first impact is one of severe melancholy, bordering on major depressive. There's few let-ups. On When The People Cheer he takes the almost delicate piano riff and flips it in to an MF DOOM style monotonal celebration of the other side of a party life. The dirty underworld of Ibiza, or a version of Lil Wayne if he wasn't rich; just partying and addicted to sex. The slow creep of the morose, building in to a stampede that is satisfied by the flesh, "I'm thankful that / she keeps providing the place for me to be unfaithful at".

One of the criticisms I will level at the record right now is that we never see enough of Black Thought. Since Organix in 1993, and his lyrical acrobatics on tracks like The Anti-Circle and Grits, he has constantly been at the forefront of underground conscious rap. Spirituality is usually his chosen topic, and certainly on 2009's How I Got Over this was the most potent. However on ..And Then he darkens his view, honing in on death on more than one occasion. "A timetraveler headed to a night catches us / The final stop on the line for all passengers..." is indicative of his message. Yet on the track, The Unravelling, he only spits 10 lines. It's a similar case elswhere, with his only real prolific efforts being The Dark (Trinity), featuring the obligatory "I'm old now watch me work hastag in to a verse", and Never. Of course he is playing a part in each of these tracks, and you can liken him more to an actor, or a tool utilised by the band to delve deeply in to the personalities of the characters they are creating. Despite the fact we see little of Black Thought the man, his dexterity and cadence is such that the record would be much richer if he were to contribute more often.

The manner in which it is layered is quite haphazard as well. There are instrumental interludes worthy of the latest acid jazz release, however they grind uncomfortably up against the desperate brilliance of The Dark (Trinity), the Kanye-inspired soul grab that is Understand, and the saloon style piano japery on Black Rock. Oddly, the record finishes with the almost upbeat Tomorrow, ensuring that the cycle of narrative is completed, as we suffer through the inevitable challenges faced by the protagonists only to be met by an admittedly cautious resolution that there is hope, despite the fact they've just rapped about death and depression for 31 minutes.

The problem with ...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin is it is wildly inconsistent. There are moments of pure brilliance, and everytime Black Thought graces the microphone you shut up and listen because his demeanour demands attention. Each character he embodies takes on their own life, and he alone carries the concept to it's end. The rest of the band seem restless, jumping around through musical interludes that bare little resemblance to the overall mood. More Black Thought please, the man is a genius.

Rating: 3/10


I was in my local record store today, and there was a short blurb above the sale price ($23 by the way) for 360's 3rd record, Utopia. 'It's hard to decode exactly why 360 is Australia's biggest rapper'. This is abundantly true. If you're any kind of fan of Australian hip hop, and I don't mean the standard fare that Triple J trot out every third song, you'll be forgiven for throwing your hands up in disgust when you enter 360's Utopia. In fact Illy's Cinematic probably elicited a similar reaction. Why? Because it just isn't very good..

That's fine, the terms good music and pop music are mutually exclusive in some people's minds. I disagree vehemently, and especially when it comes to hip hop.  Australian hip hop is different though. We've only had a handful of video's on MTV, and we've never once had an artist that is exportable, unless you include Iggy Azalea. And I don't. For some reason, be it the accent, the distance between city's, or the fact that we just do rock so damn well, Australian hip hop has never breached the mainstream. Until now. We have verifiable superstars, with 360's 2011 release Falling and Flying going double platinum. Hilltop Hoods last 4 albums have gone at least platinum, and Bliss N Esso achieving similar numbers. Is this a watershed moment, a sparking point for the industry that has spent so many years forcibly underground?

If it is, then please do not let 360 be our poster child. Or, at least do not let it be Utopia, a record so mired in the paper chase that it languishes dangerously, falling well short of what made the artist in the first place. The guy can spit! In his GTNA battles, notably against Kerser and Okwerdz, he displayed the kind of battle mentality and quick wit that would make Eminem proud. In fact, maybe that was why Em booked him as the opener on his stratospheric Rapture tour? He was a punchline fiend, ducking and weaving through his competition's words, only popping his head up to deliver his next barb. In fact the way he destroyed Kerser over a number of battles and diss tracks may have a hand in why you see 360 charging $1000 for backstage passes to his shows and Kerser playing The Gaellic in Surry Hills.

Probably the only time Kerser landed a punch was when he claimed 360 was soft, and had sold out to the radio. It's a criticism that still stings, and justifications litter Utopia. The first lines of Still Rap are "All these jealous motherfuckers are old now
And people sayin' I'm sold out"
It's so difficult to take him at his word though, when Utopia is laced with high end production, giant choruses (thank you Gossling and Daniel Johns, among others), and the old chestnut of positivity. Most of the record would stand alone as an EDM release, and it's doubtless that summer festivals will have an absolute ball booking 360.

Let's look at the positives though. Following a brief 3 week stint in rehab, 360 embarked on an incredibly admirable change of circumstance. Down to around 67 kilos, and relying heavily on alcohol, he decided that it was time to shape up and become a better role model for his fans. Nowhere is this more clear than on the touching Man On The Moon, a rejection of negativity in the face of hope and belief that highlights the power that music can impart on the life of the desperate. 'Said he was gonna kill himself but didn't because of me', 'Posts like that make the hate worth it', 'All I've done is grown up you're still looking at the same person'. His embracing of the accent only serves to punctuate the message. This is a true from the heart moment, and it draws comparisons to the way Eminem uses his music not only as a cathartic form of self-therapy, but champions it as a way for the downtrodden to get back on their feet.

This is the peak of Utopia. From here each track is draped unceremoniously around the pedestal it creates. The emcee trods down the same stereotypical path over and over again. 360 says fuck his haters, 360 didn't sell out for the fame, 360 is still real, 360 is blessed to be in the position he is in, 360 is the best. He lunges from laughable to dull. The southern inspired Eddie Jones is his attempt to make an Aussie trap anthem, mimmicking the flow that is lacing Hip Hop TXL releases through artists like Yo Gotti and PeeWee Longway. This is the laughable section. There's a reason why no-one from Australia has done a Southern American trap track before, and this is it. Then there is the blatant grab at a culture that relies on chemical enhancements, EDM. It's All About To End, and on the bonus disk Impossible, both featuring the enigmatic and frankly legendary Daniel Johns, are just assaults on your ears. They will probably added a few zero's to his account and ensured that AJ Maddah and co are going to be needing his phone number for future festival dates, but for someone who seems hell bent on solidifying his rep it's just another nail in his coffin.

Despite his penchant for hammering home broad, simple themes, this is the strongest feature of Utopia. Many artists struggle to make a true LP, one that carries a storyline throughout. Not only has he addressed the issue of drug addiction, he has taken aim at both fame and those who hate fame, he's taken stock of his fast route to the top of the charts and he has attempted to stay true to his roots on a number of raw cuts. On Speed Limit, he drops all the rhetoric and just settles in to a true mixtape flash, double timing shit talk and riding the beat in to submission, the way a true emcee does. Sixavelli is a beast, really digging back in to that street sound and faux-gangster bravado that was luminous on his earlier music. 'Pause and ask the owner if he knows the soccer score / if our team's losing then we're fucking up his shop some more'. Must Come Down is a nice explanation of the moment you realise the fun has to stop eventually. It really resonated, 'I could stay here all night'. Purple Waterfall is a trippy hell that evokes images of a dystopian acid trip, and Live It Up is a fist in the air anthem for the frat boys to chant as they beat each other's brain cells in beer drinking contests.

The problem is not the production either, which is stellar, from M-Phazes, LIFTED X RYAN, and Styalz Fuego. The problem is 360. His rhymes feel like they were taken out of a year 3 rhyming dictionary. Sky, Alive, Life. In You And I he attempts to rhyme What, Buzz, From and Fuck. Then he parlays in to 'I was feeling stuck / now I don't need no drugs'. The way he sits uncomfortably on the beat is so unusual for someone who can ride it with aplomb. On You And I he is frequently caught napping despite the laid back BPM, and on Must Come Down he runs out too quickly, but not quick enough to double time. On Early Warning he never manages to settle around the mournful tone, getting stuck behind it then overcompensating. The issue seems to be he is trying to modify his technique to fit on to a production style that he knows is going to win him radio airplay. All of a sudden Kerser's parting shot in a losing battle comes back in to focus.

I want Australian hip hop to do well. I want 360 to be successful. We all do, and maybe that is why people are so loathe to criticise when it comes to Australian artists. But Utopia is more than just a disappointment. It just isn't good music. The huge choruses would sound better without him trying to rap in between them. The experimental and spit-shined production is more comfortable without him labouring behind it, attempting to compose something of substance that will fit with this slower time signature. 360 is most comfortable when he is just throwing lyrical hands, rapping fast for the sake of rapping. Utopia may be this years biggest hip hop release (although Hilltop Hoods have something cooking for us), but it certainly won't be the best.

Rating: 8.5/10

'My debut like some live at the Apollo shit'. Lifted from the retro-funk thrash of She Took The Money, this statement might seem apt for an artist stepping cautiously in to the world of Australian hip hop. But Mr. Clean is in no danger of a mute crowd. He has embodied the fabled 'grind' that so many of his American counterparts love and loathe. The story of With A Vengeance is not one of a man thrust in to the spotlight unheralded. It's more Seinfeld in essence; a body of work built on years of shows, guest spots and impromptu microhpone grabbing. With such a back story, it was never destined to fail.

On a bleak Wednesday evening in April 2012, I ventured out alone to a free hip hop gig featuring the enigmatic Lee Monro (formerly Figgkidd) and up and coming Sydney spitter Ello C. On the bill was someone by the name of Mr Clean. The first few acts were standard fare, your typical Aussie hip hop night. The crowd was quite docile, despite the best efforts of the entertainment. Enter Clean. He wanders up on stage, pulls a mic out of his back pocket and proceeds to drop the needle on something that nearly blew the glass out of the windows, before throwing lyrical haymakers with technical aplomb. I was instantly hooked, and when Monro and Ello C called him back up for a collab and he spat the line 'you're chasing the blues like Gargamel' I was immediately on the Clean bandwagon.

It wasn't an easy one to be on. With 218 twitter followers, a sporadic posting history and only Hard Yak  available for my iPod, I resigned to the fact that he probably wasn't going anywhere soon. But there were whispers, and the giant gestation period that With A Vengeance endured is testament to attention to detail as well as the dual responsibilities of taking care of 3 kids and a middling job. Work with legendary Aussie producer Katalsyt on Black Dragon, and a subsequent tour, served to stoke the hunger.

The hunger. That's what is present in spades on With A Vengeance. Bag Of Merk takes off with the incendiary qualities of a warning shot, as Clean details his motivations. 'So many beats get rid the same when only a few can spit them flames'. Over the top of a disquieting thumping beat, it's enough to make you sit up and take immediate notice. It's not until Diamond Thrust that he nails his colours firmly to the mast; 'I turn on the radio, it gives me a push'. As outspoken as he is skilful, a quick perusal of his social media accounts reveals someone disillusioned with the discordant relationship between radio airplay and talent. So many people have sat at home and said 'Shit, I can do it better than 90% of this trash on the radio'. Mr. Clean decided to damn well do it.

With A Vengeance is littered with his desperation to showcase himself as someone who is authentic and valuable to the rap game, with ability to match it with and best his contemporaries. Steroid Frauds, featuring a deep house mixed with boom bap beat by COLOURED NOYZ is a strain of conscious thought where Clean tackles the most traditional of hip hop themes: I'm better, and here is why. But he rides the beat with such aplomb, switching his flow halfway through bars with such ease it's impossible not to take him at his word. On album closer Ambition he ties the entire storyline up with a blistering performance over a spaced out beat, detailing his motivations for releasing a record and showcasing just why With A Vengeance was destined to be. When the fire burns so brightly within there's no point denying it.

That fire burns within most of us. It's particularly strong in me. I even bought a $300 microphone to supplement my recording process. There's only a select few with the follow through to make something out of that fire (not me), and of that select few, only a small portion have the skill and ability to turn it in to something listenable (undoubtedly not me). Mr. Clean is one of the most adept flow purveyors in this hemisphere. The way he runs up and down the beat with such ease is a show in itself. His seamless movement between standard and double time on Funeral Song is reminiscient of how Kendrick Lamar can morph flows. Faith In The Raw, another Katalyst banger, would overwhelm lesser emcees, drowning them out with shuddering bass drums and an epileptic synth noise, yet Clean grabs his monotone and uses his voice as an extra instrument, droning through the beat with unfailing intensity, sitting comfortably within its confines. He even gets a little R&B on The Highway, lending a dreamy chorus that turns the song in to a real slow burner.

If you take a step back, take your critical glasses off and just sit with the record as a whole from start to finish it is an incredibly accomplished product. There's so much variety in sound that it's amazing Clean can tie it all together and keep the record on brief. Tracks that will blow your speaker system (Bag Of Merk, Steroid Frauds, Faith In The Raw), ones that are direct throwbacks to late 80s party bops (Golden Frame, Enemy Tape), soul and jazz based samples (She Took The Money, Ted Demme), and then pure battle rap with the local DJ numbers (Monsta Squad) which firmly plonk the beat in the backseat whilst Clean's crew of aussie hip hop royalty (Empress MC, Lee Monro, Figgkidd and Muphin, to name a couple) spit absolute fire. And what's a 2014 album without a better version of a Yeezus beat? Hardware evokes its name, with tortured metallic noises underpinned by an ominous 808, and a heavily distorted chorus. 'You've got it in your head that you're a superstar, yet I hate copycats no matter who you are'.

And all of this whilst juggling family and job. On The Tundra he laments 'that middle class stress have you feeling it's a quest just to get a decent rest'. The achievements of these kind of artists can not be understated. They must bankroll their entire project out of their own pocket, they have to some how schedule in enough time to devote to it, despite their job and families, and on top of all that they have to actually turn up. By that I mean creatively and competitively. 'Most wait a lifetime just to do what we do'. It's a blessing to be endowed with such ability, but ability is not even 10% of the battle. There's little more pleasing to a reviewer in this world than when a project like this comes together. I was concerned about With A Vengeance. I wanted it to be good. I wanted it to buck the trend of the road that Australian Hip Hop has stumbled down, with high profile collaborations tailor made for radio, with weak rappers and even weaker reputations blossoming under the belief that just because it is Australian we have to support it. Fuck that. The only reason you should support music is if you enjoy it. With A Vengeance embodies this opinion perfectly, and you know what? He is better than 90% of the stuff they play on Triple J. Hopefully he makes enough money off this to tour and record more, because hip hop still needs rappers with insane skills, even if the public never hear them.

 Rating: 9/10

I never pay for books. My dad has an undiscovered complex which compels him to spend every cent he earns at Dymocks until he has amassed a collection  of literature to rival the state library. As such, if I ever feel the need to read something other than Top Gear magazine or my Twitter feed I am well sorted.

It was actually my Twitter feed which alerted me to the existance of this book, otherwise I'd have had no clue it was written. Following @RuleYork, I noticed that a July 1st release date was set for his memoir. Having listened to PIL2 quite extensively, and having been chastised mercilessly in early high school for being a Rule fan, I figured it was a book right up my alley.

In fact, Unruly will be right up yours too. Memoirs and autobiographies tend to fall in to two categories. The first is one I use instead of Stillnox. Boring. Ian Thorpe, for example, who proved that not only is swimming up and down a pool all day looking a black line exceedingly dull, reading about it is too. The second is the opposite, a complete orgy of excess and insane stories that only the chosen few are privileged to live. Motley Crue's book, Keith Richards, and Ozzy Osbourne have all tread this path, with differing results.

Unruly is disarmingly conversational, and immediately distinguishes itself from other tomes in its field. It is certainly autobiographical, but two separate stories play out concurrently. First, we are treated to first hand diary entries written by Atkins during his two year stint in the American prison system, borne out of weapons and drugs charges from a July 2007 arrest as well as a 26 month sentence for tax evasion. Secondly, Rule looks back analytically upon his life, charting anecdotes and his various stages of intellectual and emotional growth from growing up on the streets with no father to becoming a worldwide superstar.

Now, if you aren't a hip hop fan, or you think that hip hop artists, because they work exclusively with words, are the modern day equivalent of, say, Robert Frost or T.S. Eliot, let me burst your bubble immediately. Rappers can't seem to write. Jay-Z can, and his book Decoded is beautifully presented. Eminem can, sort of. Ja Rule is not an accomplished writer, and his frequent uses of LOL, his constant war against grammar and spelling, and his oxymoronic limited vocabulary may turn you off if you like your prose adept. This is absolutely not a criticism though, and it only serves to lend Unruly an inherently organic quality. This can only have come straight from the mind to the page, with little editing and few re-writes. What it means is a story from the base of the Ja Rule soul. Often he speaks about how he adores his fans, how he wishes to communicate to them that he is theirs, and that he is willing to give up time and money to connect with them. This book, and the way it is written, feels as though you are standing in a room with the man himself, listening to him recount his life and sort all the muddle that is going on in his head and his heart.

A bit of background. Ja Rule was born in Queens, and, after spending his first years with his father, was taken away from him by his mother due to his dad's abusive nature. Unfortunately, his mother was faced with the struggle that so many other black women of the time were. They were single and they had a dependent child. Rule was sent to live with his grandparents, strict Jehovah's Witness'. Through this Rule became wary of the church and its influence, and when his mother was disavowed he was not sad to see it leave, although it did represent yet another abandonment in his young life. To cope he turned to weed, and eventually to selling narcotics, which helped his 'Moms' pay the bills. He was earning a modest $1000 a week pushing, yet for a teenage boy this was the life.

No stranger to the grind, Ja Rule spent his late teens and early 20s attempting to crack the hip hop game. His description of his experiences with record companies and executives paints a vibrant picture, one that was mirrored in many young rappers stories at the same time. Record companies wanted hits, and rappers wanted money. Ja learnt early to distrust those in charge of record contracts, and it is a testament to his persistence and overwhelming talent that he managed to break out of a cycle that so many rappers found themselves stuck in: signed to a label who refused to put their music out.

One of the glaring omissions is exactly HOW he managed to break out of his deal with TVT and Steve Gottleib. He was signed to release a record with his group, Cash Money Click, but when Chris Black was incarcerated for 5 years, the group had no grounds to record or release due to the piece of paper they had signed. Whilst reminiscing (quite enjoyably) about the engima that was DMX, Ja completely papers over how Lyor Cohen of Def Jam managed to wrangle him out of this record deal. Either way, it happened and Rule of course went on to giant success, with his label Murder Inc. spawning massive crossover hits that saw him land number 1 singles in both the US and UK, unheard for a rap star.

Yes, he does detail his beef with 50 Cent, quite graphically. It's an interesting account and certainly one that you wouldn't have heard before. The media jumped on the back of 50 Cent because he had major label backing, he had the greatest rapper of all time cosigning him, and he had the greatest producer of all time on his team. Furthermore, he had bigger hits. Somehow, he managed to outsell Ja Rule who was kicking goals with both feet at the time. Rule's accounts of beating up 50 Cent more than once, and seeing him get stabbed in a club are certainly at odds with the story we have been presented. 50 Cent was allegedly known for 'snitching', and it is unclear as to what role exactly Ja and his crew played in 50 Cent's shooting, which was probably the catalyst for his career.

The way Ja approaches writing about the beef is perfectly in tune with the way he goes about writing Unruly. He begins by detailing it in chronological order, but further in to the book he jumps back and forth, picking and choosing things that are out of context and that crop up in weird places. He believes that 50 and the FBI, through their invention of the 'Hip Hop Squad' (referenced extensively by Jay-Z in the song Dopeman) were behind the shut down of Murder Inc., as well as the blackballing they began to recieve from DJs and radio stations around the country. In one instance, Ja was due to perform at a huge awards show, but was informed shortly beforehand that he wasn't even able to attend, because 50 was performing and said he didn't feel safe with Ja there. By the end of the book, he claims that his animosity has vanished and he no longer cares about the beef, but there is such a sense that it really cut him deeply.

This is the beauty of the book really. The emotions are raw and real. As he speaks about the demise of his label and his career, he laments the way the fans turned their back on him. People who claimed they were Rule fans for life began to doubt him, question his songs and music, and eventually stopped turning up to his shows. It's more than just a commentary on the fickle nature of the pop industry. It's an insight in to how it genuinely effects the individuals involved. Unruly paints the picture of a man with a huge amount of pride, a pride that was hurt by his abandonment. Just as his father left him, as his grandparents left him, as Steve Gottleib left him, his fans, the one commodity he truly believed he had for life, left too. It's difficult to read, especially as these insights are then blended in with his prison diaries, which further show an isolated soul.

Overall, Unruly is an absolute triumph. Firstly, you won't be able to put it down. The way he writes makes it instantly accessible, and he sprinkles enough anecdotes of the high life in with his ponderings to keep you both entertained and intellectually and emotionally stimulated. Secondly, it provides such a good insight in to the way the music industry works, and how during the mid to late 90s, and early 00s, hip hop took over the world. Thirdly, you finish the book feeling like you know the man personally. After finishing the book, I went and worked out for an hour and listened to PIL2. As I lay on the bench at the end of the session I genuinely felt close to him as a person, and that is extremely rare in entertainer's memoirs.

Buy it.

No boring introduction. Let's dive right in shall we?




26. The Lonely Island - Turtleneck and Chain

First impressions of any Lonely Island record are generally 'Why is this so damn catchy?' Most likely you are hearing The Beastie Boys in comedic form, over the top of 'only money can buy' production. Turtleneck and Chain continues the rich vein of funny that these SNL boys transferred from skit to album on 2009's Incredibad. This record see's them dig even deeper in to the well of celebrity, enlisting Akon, Michael Bolton, Beck, Snoop Dogg, Rhianna, Justin Timberlake, Nicki Minaj and the lovely Santigold to supplement their unique brand of funny. Tracks like Jack Sparrow smack of high end production values, whilst Motherlover coaxes the not so often seen sense of humour that rests within Timberlake. Even on their solo efforts they induce uncontrolled mirth. Rocky is boxing hilarity, whilst their accents on Japan avoid any annoyance factor because their lyrics are just so ridiculous. Comedy records are few and far between, and let's just keep it that way. But these boys have perfected the art, with their musicality going much deeper than the tradition which ensures a lasting product.




25. The-Dream - Love King

Have you ever seen The Dream? He's a slightly overweight, quite short man who's past achievements include Nivea and Christina Milian. He's also the man behind some of the BIGGEST tracks ever written. Single Ladies, Holy Grail, Mariah Carey's Touch My Body, Umbrella, and of course, Jesse McCartney's brilliant (yet gramatically flawed) Leavin. Yet he's never achieved solo success. Love King is a sexualised romp through modern RnB that takes the odd detour in funk and early 90s electronica. It's the consumate crooner album. The movement between Yamaha, Nikki Part 2 and Abyss informs future brilliance like Pyramids by Frank Ocean. He is downright devilish on Panties To The Side, he's the most egotistical on Sex Intelligent and the casual aplomb that he and T.I. treat their romantic indiscretions with on Make Up Bag is inspiring. 'If you ever make your girlfriend mad, don't let that good girl go bad just drop 5 stacks on a makeup bag'. See fella's? You too can be a Love King.





24. Arcade Fire - Reflektor

Arcade Fire have been building to a statement. Their previous three records were timestamped in the 2000s, they created and then enhanced that indie rock informed by it's influences but never overcome by them that also launched a plethora of Brit-Rock bands as well as guys like Fleet Foxes and The Killers. But Arcade Fire always seemed to do it better. More polished, more professional. They needed a Kanye moment, and Reflektor, a double disc featuring the most sounds they've ever crammed in to a recording session, was that. From the disco inspired opener to the final cache of noise Supersymmetry, the band went about setting their creative minds free and the result was staggering. There are standard indie kid anthems like Normal Person and We Exist, but there are also periods of pure insight, such as the desperation of Afterlife. 'Afterlife, oh my god what an awful word'. The way the time structure disintegrates in to a funked groove on Here Comes The Night Time, or the pure 70s rock god thump of Joan of Arc prove that these people have stupid amounts of undisclosed talent. Their statement was just that, hopefully it becomes one of intent.





23. Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels

The opening track thumps so hard I picked up a nasty case of whiplash the first time I cranked it. I mean Killer Mike over the top of the most futuristic production known to man (EL-P you god), what could go wrong? When Killer Mike drops lines like 'Marijuana hanging off my breath / Blowing smoke and I'm coughing like I'm damn near death / If I died right now I would be so fresh to death / They would have to say that fat motherfucker coffin fresh'.. EL-P may not be able to match him lyrically, but he drops in to a dysrhythmic flow that suits his space-like beats. Of course, as with all Killer Mike projects, a conscience is shoved directly down our throats till it enters our hearts, yet his precision attempt on other emcee's lives is more exciting. With each lash of the tongue he strikes a peer down, and it takes some of Big Boi's most dextrous work to keep pace with the Southern legend. Run The Jewels is pure rap pornography, well before Rap God.





22. The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World

You go to sleep one night after indluging a touch too much in some rather strong Stilton. Immediately, you enter a nightmarish existence, rooted in history but mired in incredulity. A sepia tinged 1930s sitting room, a scratching record player, and this record blasting at you via BOSE speakers. It's like A Clockwork Orange: you're rooted to the spot, your ear canals forced open. It's so disquieting, yet so intriguing that you peruse it further and further, slowly but surely losing your mind as the stuttering sounds engulf you. This may be a record of samples, but it feels like they were taken from every single psychological melt-piece ever created. The way he plays coolly with your sense of dread is masterful, and it's hard to sit with this record from start to finish, yet it's almost impossible not to.




21. Radiohead - The King of Limbs

The world's most overrated band returns unexpectedly with a stunning piece of math rock. It doesn't inform future releases, it doesn't cherry pick the past, it doesn't even resemble Kid A or Amnesiac or anything that has come before it. It's a stuttery piece of magic that is so diverse it can be remixed by the best electronic minds in the game ande incorporated in to the greatest live music event of the last 2 decades. Yorke is stunning, his dad dancing persona rolls through each track, imposing itself without ever requiring force. Each song stands individually, yet each is perfectly in harmony with the rest of the record, and each sounds almost as if you've heard it before, millions of times. Separator is downright common, and Feral fuses that jittery early 90s production with ghost-like vocals. The bassline on Lotus Flower turns in to an organic being when played life, a writhing snake that causes havoc inside whatever Stadium is lucky enough to house it.





20. Cloud Nothings - Attack On Memory

Dylan Baldi is not an odd fellow. Just because one of his earlier incarnations was titled Cat Killer, and involved short sharp bursts of noise, doesn't mean a single thing on Attack On Memory. His ear for melody is staggering, and each song aggressively pursues a path towards a musical heart that is pure enjoyment. The way Wasted Days builds like the best orgasms before exploding in raptures of screaming, the way Stay Useless starts like an early 2000s radio hit before descending in to punk fervour. It's all very forthright, even if he takes the scenic route. Each track feels like an extended jam session, as Baldi indulges in strains of conscious thoughts. It's disarmingly listenable.





19. Alt-J - An Awesome Wave

A friend said to me one day in 2012 'Hey man have you ever heard of Alt-J?' I thought he was talking about some sort of new emoticon. Searching my memory banks, I remembered a local hipster radio station had been prattling on about them for some time. My mate, who has excellent musical taste, told me An Awesome Wave was the record of the year. He was almost right. A sweeping vista of indie rock tempered by electronic trickery, it was defined as much by it's tender moments (Interlude II, Matilda, Taro) as it's absolute thumping high points (Fitzpleasure, Breezeblocks, Tessellate). Call it an under-appreciated instrument, but a serious bass guitarist can transform any kind of music in to dance-able funk. That throb is present throughout, underpinning Fitzpleasure with a dirty funk groove, turning Something Good from something the xx may write in to a 2 step delight, and charging Breezeblocks with energy. Lead vocalist Newman's quirky tones are used as an extra instrument, as he groans what is basically jibberish in a delightful tone. The harmony's are even reminiscient of Fleet Foxes, but it is safe to say that An Awesome Wave, whilst informed by some well decorated peers, is one of a kind.





18. Hot Chip - One Life Stand

Hot Chip had already perfected the formula before this record. They'd dabbled in early funk, they'd invested in a set of steel drums, and they'd crossed over in to total dance. What has always struck is their ability to write music. To craft a song. On One Life Stand it was beautifully resplendant.Opener Thieves In The Night is reminiscient of their previous classic Out At The Pictures, but it takes it further as the intro bleeds in to the funked out slap of synth and open ended bass. By the time Hand Me Down Your Love hits you're in full dance mode, it's 1am at your favourite dance club, all the regulars are drunk and it's time to cut fucking loose. That piano riff is lifted straight from old Western saloons, before some well chosen strings open the scenery up in to a lovely grassy field. There's so much electronic ability in this single record that they'd never be out of place at the local drug-fest EDM concert. One Life Stand, I Feel Better, Take It In. They all throw hands! The message is never lost though, and that is the lovely part about a Hot Chip record. These are love songs. I Feel Better, 'This is the longest night, we're meeting arms to arms'. Alley Cats and Brothers grab that mateship and solidarity that exists only in England. One life stand. Think about it..

 



17. Brian Eno - A Small Craft On A Milk Sea

There are more sides to Brian Eno than a.. Dodecahedron. This record takes his ambient work to an entirely new level, utilising his insane pedigree to create something as beautiful as The Pearl, as disquieting as Nerve Net and as stupidly catchy as Before and After Science. The movement of Flint March, Horse and 2 Forms of Anger is just pure aggression, which is then completely thrown off course by Bone Jump, which sounds like he allowed his 4 year old to make merry with the xylophone. Paleosonic could've been created by Aphex Twin or Autechre, and Written, Forgotten has this that dusty desert, high picked Bryan Adams sound drawn under the salt lake by the most ominous bass line I've heard in years. There are no bounds for Eno, and this record is proof of a musical genius. Why do you think everyone in the music industry wants him to produce their next project?




16. Gil Scott-Heron - I'm New Here

Much of Heron's work is snippets of sage observation, of disarming insight in to the world and those around him. Often it's been difficult to listen to, more like spoken word political messages than musical endeavours. He's been a shining light, a modern day philosopher (without the food stamps). Richard Russell dug him up, after he'd been mired in drugs and whatever else happens to brilliant minds. There's been a history of this kind of think. Bobby Womack and Rocky Ericksen come to mind, but none of them delivered something as stunning as this. A piece of work from a man who had all the wisdom he'd ever need at 21, now with a lifetime of hard living under his belt. The production is stellar, the way that Me and the Devil canvases his blues growl, that way those haunting strings free him on Your Soul and Mine. 'Standing in the ruins of another black man's life'. 'I am death, cried the vulture'. 'Long ago the clock washed midnight away, bringing the dawn, oh god, I must be dreaming'. 'Where did the night go?'. This is a memoir of a genius delivered via music. His constant pleas to the youthful who probably won't ever hear his guidance. 'If you've gotta pay for things you've done wrong, I've got a big bill coming'. Just listen to Running and learn. It's all we can do now. RIP.




15. Bad Meets Evil - Hell: The Sequel

When Eminem made his comeback, there were a few undergound dwellers who bemoaned his apparent descent in to pop mush. His lyrics were nowhere near as focused anymore, his sense of humour seemed forced,  and his delivery was just not on par. Then this came along. A collaboration between long time friends Royce Da 5'9" and Em, this record blew the lid off both artists careers. Eminem was snarling, aggressive, hilarious. Royce was Royce, a technical genius who could match Eminem's sadistic streak stroke for stroke. What began as a simple comparing of notes and favour for a favour turned in to a full blown recording session, where song structures were forgotten and the focus was on delivery, technical ability. We can see how that bled in to MMLP2, but for Royce it was a huge shot in the arm. His talent is never under question but his success has been. With Lighters, featuring Bruno Mars, he gold plated the record. The rest is just mastubatory material for Eminem fans. A pure piece of hip hop.





14. Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky

14 years. 14 long years.. When I discovered Swans I read that they usually played shows so loud that people in the audience threw up violently as a reaction to the volume. Gira self-funded this record and it set the band on a path of critical success unmatched by 80s rock bands, before or since. Gira is splashed aggressively all over this project. He detests liars, in fact he seems to detest most things. You Fucking People Make Me Sick is the catchphrase of the menstrual process, yet Gira throws it around with true disdain. Mostly what this record is, though, is cathartic release, in the most bloody of fashions. Jim re-introduces that halting, hypnotic way that Swans were able to cut through their audience, to turn their music in to a religious experience. The way it builds to an all out massacre is truly mesmerising. One odd thing about Swans is that no matter how brash, how abrasive their sound is, you cannot help but crank the volume higher and higher still. Pleasure is pain. The boil over at the end of No Words/No Thoughts is just a taster. By the time Eden Prison skips over all hell has well and truly been cut loose, and you are no longer on speaking terms with your neighbours. Fuck them. 





13. Beach House - Bloom

Beach House reside in that special corner of consciousness also inhabited by Sigur Ros. It’s the moment after you’ve gone to bed, before you fall asleep, when you are still awake but already beginning a dream. A lucid reality of pure relaxation. Beach House had the ability, the potential to make an album full of this feeling. Norway was more heart rate raising than anything on this album, but it was their best offering yet. This album feels like a band reaching through the ground and the dirt and the nutrients and pushing through the earth in to the sun. They are blooming! Bloom was the culmination of the dream pop movement. It is the evolutionary peak of that brand of electronic music, and yet I still believe it is an unattainable one. It exists in a perfect bubble, yet within that utopia there are moments of sobering solidarity. Victoria's ethereal goddess mode can only hide so much. Lyrics like "My mother said to me that I would in trouble / Our father won’t come home, cause he is seeing double" only serve to enhance the feeling that you're on the brink of something special. The band seem fascinated with time, and I think Bloom will remain timeless, a piece of beauty they will struggle to match.





12. Kanye West and Jay-Z - Watch The Throne

Get two of the most wildly talented people ever put on this earth, give them absolutely no boundaries, an unlimited budget and a room big enough to fit both their heads in and you get a staggering masterpiece. So many buddy movies have died comical and painful death's. Jay-Z himself had the horrid Best Of Both Worlds project that managed to combine the very worst qualities of both artists involved, a pure cynical move. But Ye and Jay were at their peaks when this dropped. Both had nothing whatsoever to prove, and the calm disdain to which they show the rest of the hip hop world is a testament to both their skill and the hard work they'd put in before this record. Jay-Z is particularly decadent, throwing his most vicious flow on No Church In The Wild before just jamming on Niggas In Paris and Otis. His verses on Murder To Excellence are sublime, "And they say by 21 I was supposed to die / So I’m out here celebrating my post-demise" The way he connects "Tuxes next to the president, I’m present / I dress in Dries and other boutique stores in Paris" (Which is a stupid flow by the way) with the final line 'I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go" is why he is one of the GOATs. Kanye, of course, brings the power. He brings the noise, the funk, the downright fucking talent. His beats are just incredible. Otis is inspired, Lift Off is the jump off anthem of the decade, and Niggas In Paris is so ridiculously brilliant they play it 12 times every show! This could've turned in to a huge pissing contest. It could've been a who's penis is bigger competition. It could've even been an ego-athon. But, honestly? It could never have been those things. Jay-Z is the fatherly figure, he is the God of the game, and Kanye is every of his disciples as well as a few Roman Gods thrown in. This turned in to everything it could have been and more. Modern day masterpiece.





11. Destroyer - Kaputt

Mid 2012, I awoke one morning, rolled over and fired up the Coachella stream on my iPad. The 'Drunk Poet' Dan Bejar was beguiling a captive audience with the gentle rock of Kaputt, and cementing his status as the ultimate indie survivor, as contemporaries like J Mascis and Jeff Magnum became romantic foot notes in a genre plagued by authenticity qualms. With the seemingly careless switch of tone, that morning he could do no wrong, transforming from the ehtereal Da Da Dum of Radiohead to the cutting insight of Cobain. Kaputt is a piece of music so devilishly enjoyable you almost allow it to pass through you, infecting your spirit, rather than allowing it to really wash over you and drown in it's nuance and movement. From the opening pluck on Chinatown, this was a rainy day soundtrack for the ages. Kaputt is the stunning centrepiece, a mournful march of slow horns that evoke dusty back room jazz bars juxtaposed with the bustling activity of a New York morning. 'Wasting your days, chasing some girls alright chasing cocaine through the backrooms of the world all night'. Is it a lament? Is it a celebration? Bejar's almost deadpan delivery allows you to interpret as you see fit. The staggering final movements, Bay of Pigs (Detail) and The Laziest River (which wonderfully channels that late 80s disco-revival sounds of Eurythmics and Peter Gabriel) open up Bejar's head and pick his brains more thoroughly than we've seen in years. The lovely thing about Kaputt is the way each song evolves in to itself, with no defined structure or rules. Each melody is given time to grow. Suicide Demo for Kara Walker starts slowly, tentative, before that lovely croon kicks in and the whole song starts rushing forwards.
Bejar has spoken of the 'pointlessness' of writing songs that are reflections of society and current culture. Kaputt is timeless and will remain so.





10. JJ - Kills

JJ have proven, although only in patches, to be a very suitable equivalent to Sigur Ros, Mum, and the plethora of 'touched' music that has been coming out of Iceland for the past decade or so. Music like this exists in its own bubble, completely removed from the stylings and 'bloggings' of the earth-bound world, and certainly their mainstream releases (with the exception of the stunning Ecstasy, a single sampling Lollipop) have peddled this formula. Kills was at first jolting. A mixtape that paired the most heaven-like vocals and production with some of the more hard-core gangster hip hop ever released. Samples include Still D.R.E., 3 Peat, Paper Planes, Empire State of Mind, Under Pressure (Dr. Dre), Angels (BIG) and 3 tracks by Kanye. It was like the anti-thesis, as if John Kerry turned up in a Russian nightclub at 4am shuffling to t.A.t.U. The shameless auto-tune, ethereal echoes and dreamy lyrics hide a much deeper musical knowledge that is exposed on the way they turn the dirty beat from Angels in to a spit-shined piece of pop purity. New Work begins with the ironic line 'I wake up every day feeling the same way: gotta go to work'. You'd swear Kastlander and Benon haven't done a day of heavy lifting in their lives, but why would they when they make stuff this good? Sampling Nicki Minaj's speech at the end of Believe is just an example of the gravity jump they've made from planet beauty back to the real world. They keep the portal open though, and unfortunately they haven't been able to replicate this duality on previous or subsequent releases.





9. The Knife - Tomorrow, In A Year

Ok, so we're going to make an opera, and we are going to enlist the help of some of the weirdest, most inaccessible electronic artists on the planet. And we are going to package it as an album, rather than explain to people that it is about the life of Charles Darwin. We're just going to.. release it. Well, my sister likes it. She is an Opera singer. Much was made of this being 'an opera' but it really isn't. It's an entirely conceptual take on the life of Charles Darwin, overseen by Andersson and Dreijer with heavy input from Planningtorock and Mt. Sims (the electronic moniker of Matthew Sims). Charles Darwin, in case you were living under a rock or in a Christian school, was the god father of evolutionary theory. He was the man who established that all species of life on earth descended from common ancestors. This is starting to sound like Mogwai writing a record about Zinedine Zidane.. At times, it is unlistenable. Variation of Birds begins with a shrill, undulating noise that gradually explodes in to an operatic backing track with various noises thrown at the listener. Minerals is industrial strength electronics with Kristina Wahlin giving her best Sutherland work. It's just so dystopic and wonderful! We see the storyline evolve forcibly, which is the only way The Knife know how to proceed. Geology sounds alien-like, in the way that someone from the future would travel back through time (via books and research, not a Delorean) and view the initial instances of life on earth via the study of Geology. Seeds, which comes quite late in the piece, is a discoteque number, extremely upbeat that mimmicks the break through nature of Darwin's work on seed dispersal, which was a particular passion of his. Why does this record deserve to be here? It's staggering. If you fully immerse yourself in it, like all Knife albums, it unfolds dramatically, revealing layer upon layer of noise and meaning. How does one go about musically documenting the life of Charles Darwin? Ask The Knife.





8. Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

Damon Albarn is the modern day Brian Eno, although we do already have a modern day Brian Eno.. Maybe call him David Bowie without the front man swagger. He's a genius, but not since Parklife had he really made something complete and truly impacting. You can see his diversity littered across his own musical landscape, from 13 to Mail Music, and most of his work has a satisfying solidarity to it. There's little filler, there's very little pandering, it's actually quite German and workman-like. With this work ethic fuelling him, Plastic Beach arrived and slayed all electronic competition. Gorillaz had already outstayed their kitsch welcome by the time 2010 had arrived. There was little mystery surrounding the band, and they'd already performed Dirty Harry at the 2006 Brit awards. Albarn said of Plastic Beach that he wanted to make it the biggest pop record he'd ever done, but something that had depth as well. A quick perusal of the guest list ensures a healthy dose of both those pills. Snoop Dogg is juxtaposed with Bobby Womack. Lou Reed is pared off against Little Dragon and De La Soul. Mos Def vs Gruff Rhys. It's a bowl of M&Ms with a plate of Skittles mixed together. It is a concept album, with our favourite animated group escaping to Plastic Beach, an island that is both unreal and anchored in every day truths. Snoop Dogg welcomes us before Kano and Bashy remind us that whilst this place can be dirty and dangerous, the inhabitants are not to be feared. What follows is a romp through a twisted take on modern pop, fusing GaGa levels of lunacy with the ear worm toe tap of Terius Nash and The Neptunes. But it is so much more than that! This is an opus, a pop pedestal that Albarn has painstakingly crafted. His best work always seems to be done behind closed doors, and the virtual world of the Plastic Beach allows him the faux-anonymity that he craves. Melancholy Hill reveals the downward spiral, confirmed by Broken, that Superfast Jellyfish inherently promised. By the time Womack delivers his staggering performance on Cloud of Unknowing, the entire record has read like a travel guide to an unrealistic world of despair and middling highs. Albarn fulfills his brief.





7. John Grant - Queen of Denmark

You've heard the story before. Talented musician hits hard times, loses his battle with drugs and alcohol and sex and whatever else, drops off the map only for a rebirth sparked by a chance musical encounter. You can thank Midlake for this resurrection, and thank them you must, because Queen of Denmark is beautiful. I went and saw Grant shortly after this was released and walked out after three songs. I went home and sat down and thought about that cripplingly shy man, the one who spent 5 minutes discussing his local ice cream shop in a monotone, who bemoaned the meal he'd eaten the night before in a hotel because he believed it caused him to look 'rotund' on stage. He wouldn't even face us as he sung. Yet the opener is called TC & Honeybear, a love song intended as his 'coming out' moment, and it is desperately intimate. The way he almost slaughters his own preference on JC Hates Faggots with a confidence tinged with regret. Mostly, what Queen of Denmark displays is talent that does eventually bleed in to confidence. Once those flood gates open, all hell breaks loose and you begin to watch a man unravel, a man who spent too many years at the bottom, of a bottle and life, worrying about everyone else, what everyone else thought, how everyone else saw him, how he came across to the world. This is his NO MORE moment. Where Dreams Go To Die is a vicious attack on a past acquaintance dolled up to sound like a pop song. Silver Platter Club takes aim at the music industry, and the whole inside or outside culture, to which he found himself firmly on the outside. Of course he is desperately good at crafting some melodic moments. Sigourney Weaver is a spaced out intro that explodes in to an acoustic romp with the hilarious chorus 'I feel just like Sigourney Weaver when she tried to kill those aliens, and that one guy tried to bring them back to earth, and she couldn't believe her ears'. But even in this he laments his past, 'So I was taken or I went towards what was west, to where the ground was dead and struck out at the giant sky.''It was there with a frightened voice that I began to cry out loud'. It's so autobiographical in nature, the way he manages to put on wax his struggle within himself and the eventual overcoming of the most malicious mental race he was running. It soundtracks the moments when we truly find ourselves, and are no longer lost to the quirks of the outside world. When we look inward and find exactly what we are looking for.





6. Eminem - Marshall Mathers LP 2

Man, have I waxed LYRICAL about this record. In the true spirit of Rap God I will do this review off the top of the dome, just because. I have listened to this record hundreds of times since it was released. From the moment I put on Bad Guy and walked 7kms before the album finished, then turned around and walked 7kms back just so I could hear it again, to the moment 15 minutes ago when I finished my final set in a ridiculously hard gym session to the playful banter of Evil Twin, this has soundtracked my life since its release. Eminem, Marshall Mathers, Slim Shady. To be honest, it's Marshall who does most of the talking on MMLP2. From the very start of this trio, he was always the most lyrically dextrous, the most prone to mastubatory material when it came to rhymes. Remember the original track Marshall Mathers? It took me months to get that down but by the time I did I felt like a pro. And there is just so much firepower housed within this record. From the Stan throwback on the opener, the Rick Rubin infused time capsules So Far, Rhyme or Reason and Berzerk, the plain insanity of Rap God, the way he somehow murders Kendrick Lamar on Love Game and his ability to craft the definitive pop song on The Monster, this album hits every single note. It was interesting listening to him sit down with Zane Lowe and describe the process of the record. This is a man who doesn't appear to possess a sense of humour about himself, or if he does it is certainly on a level we cannot relate to, yet he manages to connect with us all through his music. When he shoots the dog on the Parking Lot skit and laughs? 'You done called every woman a slut but you're forgetting Sarah Marshall! Oh my bad, slut' or his crazy line after that 'And next time I show up to court I'll be naked, and just wear a law suit'. Back to his interview with Zane, the way he described the process of writing this record really resonates with the final product. On Say What You Say he spat 'But I'll suffocate for the respect 'fore I breathe to collect a fucking check', and he spoke on that, the idea that if Jay-Z or Nas would listen to one of his records and say it was dope, that was his ultimate dream. The fame is a monster for Eminem. It allows him to create masterpieces, it gives him the time and money to do what he loves and what he is gifted at, yet on the flip side he never wished for it, and his true dream is just to get that respect.That is littered all over MMLP2. Rap God was released with a video that won't win any MTV awards, Headlights is a slow, almost dull single compared to what the molly generation now demands. Instead, he digs deeply in to his influences, shouting out the Beastie Boys on Berzerk, giving game time to peer Kendrick Lamar but no-one else, and diving back in to his own catalogue 'sometimes I listen And revisit them old albums often as I can and skim through all them bitches To make sure I keep up with my competition (ha ha)'. Again, in that interview with Zane he describes the essential role his collaboration with Royce Da 5'9" was (Hell: The Sequel). It's influence is plastered all over MMLP2, the way he almost discards traditional hip hop song structure, the idea of 3 verses of 16 bars and 3 or 4 repeats of the hook. Nas once described the way he wrote as a huge bank of lyrics that he had to chop up in to verses to create a song. Eminem is so gifted that he no longer need to do that, he just raps, throwing pauses in every now and then, and the structure evolves around him. MMLP2 is like an Uzi loaded up with punchlines, equipped with a sniper scope. Every single spray hits you straight between the eyes. Genius.





5. Frank Ocean - Channel Orange

Prince, David Bowie and Michael Jackson have a lot to answer for. Combined, they created this perfect storm of performer that everyone from Justin Timberlake to Justin Beiber has been hell bent on replicating in the decades since. Boy bands spawned from this dynamic, which then evolved in to the modern R&B singer; someone who was highly sexualised, minimally talented and willing to sing about one topic ad nauseum. The contemporary consciousness was beginning to reject this stereotype by the time 2012 hit. James Blake was making mainstream waves, Bon Iver had proven that shutting yourself in a cabin and writing about love could win you a serious female following, and John Legend had recorded thought-provoking material with The Roots to solidify his reputation. It wasn't truly until Frank Ocean dropped Nostalgia, Ultra though that this new form of pop star developed. Suddenly, we didn't need Usher singing about having sex in the club. We didn't need Chris Brown spreading misogyny across the airwaves, and Drake's double personality became a source of contention (finally). Channel Orange SHUT the internet down when it dropped. Those opening strings that gave way to the most dulcet of tones. Thinkin Bout You. Not Thinkin Bout Fucking You. Not Supersoakin You. Not Money Over Bitches. It was delicate, yet in that was an inner strength born out of not arrogance, which was commonplace, but talent, gift and hard work. The entire album became a timepiece, it was as if Ocean embodied the personalities of all his predecessors but puts a distinctly Frank spin on them. He takes aim at the silver spoon brigade on Super Rich Kids and Sweet Life, yet it never feels forced or malicious. He delivers a zen perspective, calmly observing the craziness going on around him. He can morph so effortlessly in to and out of these characters. On Pilot Jones and Crack Rock he dirties his suit, yet never gets mired in the muck. His sharp eye is devastating at times, 'your family stopped inviting you to things, won't let you hold their infant'. 'You're the junkie and the dealer'. He enlists the help of the genius Andre 3000 on the staggering Pink Matter, 'what is your woman? Is she just a container for the child', provoking an instant self attitude check. He funks it up with the very best of the 70s legends on Monks and Lost, and he slows it to a snail pace with John Mayer on White.

There are two moments on Channel Orange that will define it, for me, for my musical eternity. The first is Pyramids. It's a staggering centrepiece that involves 4 distinct movements, a 10 minute opus that explores the relationship a woman has with her identity as a human, and how her job, her man, and those around her impact upon this. It's big and empowering without ever feeling forced or put on, which is standard for this kind of message. It takes a true genius to provoke this kind of thought process in a listener without forcing it down their throats. The second is Forrest Gump. He waits until the 2nd last track to reveal himself and his sexuality, and he does it in such a classy way as to remove all doubt about motive or truth. It's almost careless, yet it's so important to the record and the way he is now percieved.

At 24 years of age, most artists either have a needle in their arm, want people to think they do, or they're using the word bitch every 3 lines. Frank Ocean's humility and maturity is displayed in both his lyrics and his production, and Channel Orange is the kind of career-defining work that only the upper echelon can ever hope to achieve.





4. Lou Reed and Metallica - Lulu

It was the year 2000 and the musical world was a cold and desolate place for a band who had sold around 50 million records worldwide. 'Fans' were running in to online musical stores and running out with entire back catalogues on their hard drives, for free! Label executives were on the ledge, bands were scrambling to piece together tours and mums in the UK were being sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Metallica, inexplicably, decided that it might be a good idea to sue Napster. To the tune of $10 million, around about $100,000 per pirated song. Alas, the Metallica legend was now just that, and their new reputation as sell outs took over. The removal of long time producer Bob Rock in 2006, and the installment of Rick Rubin only intensified this debate, and despite the fact that Death Magnetic was an insane piece of metal, the fact it went number 1 only served to feed the haters with more fuel.

So what do you do? Why, you enlist Lou Reed, the greatest mainstream weirdo in American music, and commission a spoken word version of an obscure set of plays written by German Frank Wedekind set to heavy metal music. What could go wrong?

Everything.

Pitchfork gave it a 1 (although, pitchfork's grasp on musical integrity is slippery). It sold 13,000 in it's first week, chump change. Consequence of Sound, who is actually well versed in music journalism gave it 1.5 stars.

Well fuck them.

Opener Brandenburg Gate starts with a mournfully picked acoustic riff before Lou Reed hops in with.. "I would cut my legs and tits off / When I think of Boris Karloff and Kinski /In the dark of the moon" before a blistering thrash opens up the chorus before Reed swells to his full height, announcing "I was thinking Peter Lorre / When things got pretty gory as I / Crossed to the Brandenburg Gate".

The record progresses like this for it's entirety. Metallica, for their part, tone their instinctual noise down enough notches to allow Reed pride and place at the front of every track. Their melody on Iced Honey is, excuse the pun, delicious, something to seriously sink your teeth in. The desperate push and pull on Cheat On Me, as Reed works through a difficult relationship, either with himself, with a woman or just with the notion of good taste is masterfully controlled by Ulrich and co. The graphic nature of Pumping Blood actually made my girlfriend physically ill, and closer Junior Dad is a slow burn of staggering quality, reminiscient of early Anathema and worthy of any comparison with top shelf instrumental metal bands.

For the most part, Reed stumbles around like an old drunken Laureate, spewing lines like 'I am the table' and 'all money can do anything, tell me what it is you want', having conversations with imagined beings and his sub conscious. He's still a very sexual being. On Mistress Dread he gets dragged in to a power strum, wailing 'I'm a woman who likes men, but this is something else, I've never felt such stirring'. At times it is overtly sexualised, blatantly said to inflame and cause consternation, the trademarks of Lou Reed. At others it is just a stark stream of conscious thought set to aggression. For evoking feeling and provoking response this is the most satisfying kind of metal. Rather than turn it on and turn yourself off, you're forced to interact with every muttered line, every outlandish image that Reed's brain conjures.

Metallica had to do some serious damage control after their horrendous public relations of the 2000s. Instead, they created Lulu, something so brazen in it's disregard for radio, sales, critical success, and even their die hard fans that it is immensely brave and honourable. Don't like it? Join the queue, it's a long one.





3. Lil B - I'm Gay (I'm Happy)

Want to understand just what Lil B means to hip hop and his impact on black culture? He is shoving his influence down our throats monthly. His latest piece of genius, 'No Black Person Is Ugly' sees him spitting uplifting broken thoughts over a solemn, appropriate beat, continuing to push the message that is affixed to his twitter personality that we are all beautiful, that this world is beautiful, and that there is value in every single person.

On Neva Stop Me he partakes in a conversation with a second personality, and it not only encapsulates this project it takes a vivid snapshot of the man himself, "Why they call his album that?"
And "How the fuck he feel?" / Bitch I do what I want / And the tracks is ill / Remember Lil B, bitch / That's that dude that's real". Calling your record I'm Gay is a recipe for all the wrong kind of press. They do say any press is good press but this was never designed to shine a light on a lightweight project, it wasn't a token title that was designed purely to cut through all the mush the youtube generation has spawned. It's intention was to shine a bright, harsh light on black culture and exactly what it is like for a young black man growing up in the hood, without all the trash about cars, deals, women and money. There is so much material on this record worthy of quotation it defies belief, and it keeps getting better the more you sit with it. The overwhelming feeling though is always one of hope, even when he is announcing like a street reporter the injustices that he and those around him are facing every day. On Gon Be Okay he opens with a slight piano riff and some choice words from Obama, before saying "Imma ask how you doing today, we gonna win some how some way" intoning that Jay-Z throwback anthem with real world meaning. "This song is depressing, but it's uplifting". On I Seen That Light he fuses a Kanye-esque soul moment with his most focused rap performance on the record, "Karma is real, and you gotta love it". Nowhere, though, does he allow complacency, "How much I work, it would make you stress, I work hard like I'm living cheque to cheque, I made my mind up I'm coming for respect".

There's a tendency with a Lil B project to assume he is a gimmick, something that is hopping on the absolute cutting edge of pop culture and then hopping off at the next stop, a sort of hip hop hired assassin, taking advantage of every opportunity without ever fully exploring himself as an artist or exploring his art. This could not be further from the truth. When he released Rain In England, an ambient spoken word record, it was to widespread disbelief, but it was pure genius. It was almost impossible to listen to, if you actually sat down and fully immersed yourself in it it was like dropping acid and then stumbling around your local shopping mall. It was an alternate reality to escape in to, but one completely devoid of creature comforts. I'm Gay is the sequel to this, or, the PG version. His production is staggering. In the mixtape culture that he has grown up in, the seduction of the latest hit single is too much for 95% of artists, hopping on whatever is hot and trying to outdo the owner. The only semblance of familiarity comes on the best track of the record, I Hate Myself, sampling The Goo Goo Dolls. It's just.. It's stunning. "When you black the media make you wonder why""My skin colour automatic transaction""Why can't I sag, when it's just the style?""People judge me before they even know me, stare at me don't know I'm lonely". It is the summing up of the entire record. For the first 3 instances of chorus he claims that he hates himself, bemoaning the way his people is portrayed in the media and treated on the street, until finally "Everything I've seen was a lie, I'm not ready to die, I love myself".

"You know, we all free now man. Break that mental blockage, free your mind. It's real life man, I just can only speak for real, shit that really feel you know? We all human, we all got questions, I'm just honest I've got questions, but it's all love over here".

Before or since there has not been a piece of art so immediate, so cutting, aimed so sharply at your heart and your mind. It's a piece of pure brilliance that may never be surpassed.





2. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Kanye met Zane Lowe in late 2013, after the fallout of Yeezus had a chance to settle and infect the critical landscape. Amongst many claims, including that 6 years before leather jogging pants came out he pitched the idea to Fendi (or Prada, or however you spell it) and that he was the biggest rock star on earth, he said an almost throwaway line. First, he said in 200 years no-one is going to remember MBDTF, but everyone will remember 808s and Heartbreaks and Yeezus. He then said 'I've already done perfect. MBDTF was perfect, I can't do that anymore'. It's almost a condemnable gesture to take anything that West says as gospel since his early days, but he was spot on. This record is pure perfection. From the alien-like opener, roping us in to his cruel, viscereal world, with the huge chorus, backing his question 'can we get much higher?' to the wonderfully 'Kanye' ending, sampling Gil Scott Heron to punching effect, the record will be remember as one of the most pure hip hop releases of all time.

It was always meant to be this way really. From the moment Ye started making Roc-a-fella waves he was destined to craft this. Imagine the disbelief when someone completely off the street drops by and signs off on This Can't Be Life, a beat that cemented Jay-Z's reputation as a street product when the world was beginning to question his heritage. Then, imagine just how crazy it was for that same kid to produce one of the biggest hip hop hits of all time, Izzo (H.O.V.A.) appearing directly after one of the hardest street thumpers Jay has ever graced on Takeover. Throughout his early career he built a gold-plated critical empire, based around the most inviting soul samples ever utilised in hip hop production. Here was a purist with an ambition that could not be doused. By the time he released MBDTF, people had begun to see 808s and Heartbreaks for the forward-thinking progression it was. Now, we were punched in the gut with pure hip hop, taking it back to the 80s and running through the decades like a marathon runner completing his final lap in the stadium. All the hangers-on, all the superstars who came out to see him jumped on board and ran that last lap with him.

"No one man should have all that power" almost sounds like a lament, a spoilt kid staring up at the shopkeeper who denied him a piece of free candy. It's something he would address in Yeezus, and a complex that has plagued his public career ever since early 2012. "Screams from the haters, got a nice ring to it, I guess every super hero need his theme music". In that song he transformed his rap persona from that kid in the candy store to the shop keep. He was now the keeper of the keys in hip hop, and without challenging the reigning champ Jay-Z he was able to win them by sheer determination and willpower.

The production. Just staggering. The horns that breach All Of The Lights flip Just Blaze's best work in to an insane mess of over-achieving drums. And the roll-call begins. John Legend, The-Dream, Elly Jackson, Alicia Keys, Fergie, Kid Cudi, Elton John, and Rihanna. So Appalled features Jay-Z, Pusha T, Prince Cy Hi, Swizz Beatz (yep) and RZA. Rick Ross appears twice. Bon Iver is available, and Kid Cudi and Raekwon.. Nicki Minaj? Remember her from the Anaconda video? Her verse on Monster created her career. "Bad bitch that came from Sri Lanka" she slays, absolutely slays. It's a smorgasbord for hip hop lovers. Each clamouring to get a piece of these stunning beats. So Appalled see's the Chi-town hero No I.D. help chop up Manfred Mann. Runaway is built on the simplest of piano punch, and Blame Game samples APHEX TWIN!! I mean come on.

Kanye himself is omnipresent, like a puppet master controlling everything below him. When he does descend he provides his most focused performance on the mic of all time, and also his most personal, which is difficult because he hasn't left much off the table in subsequent releases. On Runaway he shows his hand, admitting wholeheartedly that he isn't a personality that is particular enjoyable to be around but he is what he is. On Blame Game he takes this further, openly challenging anyone who takes him on romantically, even describing the process where he attempts to reel himself in but is unable to "On the bathroom wall I wrote I'd rather argue with you than to be with someone else / I took a piss and dismissed it like fuck it and I went and found somebody else". His emotions run hot and cold, 'You ain't fin to see a mogul get emotional", "I had to take him to that ghetto university". It's the modern masterpiece, a myriad of broken relationships, stark self-truths, a total lack of humility that is, oxymoronically, humbly admitted and celebrated. No-one is outside of Kanye's aim, and yet his focus is dangerously insular, a precursor to Yeezus and a rare glimpse inside the mind of a true genius.

"What you gonna do now? Whatever I wanna do, gosh it's cool now!"





1. Kendrick Lamar - Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City

Lamar is a curious fellow. He resides within the Black Hippy movement formed in 2009 in California, a movement that is made up of even more curious fellows. A movement generally has a centralised sound, a touching point that each artist can refer to if they feel they are drifting off track. Kendrick Lamar stands out from his contemporaries, starkly. He employs this spacey, melodic delivery, that in a second can be replaced with a growl of aggression and a quickening of pace. It allows him to talk tough, so to speak, without inducing laughter. For example, imagine The-Dream writing an aggressive gang-focused record. Yeah.

It means that Lamar is a master of manipulation. It also means good kid, m.A.A.d city is the best album of 2012, and a rap record of the absolute highest quality.

good kid, m.A.A.d city feels like a day in Lamar's life, but not just a standard tuesday or an exciting friday. It feels like THE day in his life, the one we all have that is filled with events we thought we could control but we can’t, prompting introspection and re-evaluation of goals and life paths. The day where a certain chain of events stimulates a focused train of thought that then entwines itself with everything you do. This day houses the pivotal moment we’ve all been hit by, out of the blue. You stop and take notice. You observe and comment on rather than coasting through with no intellectual deliberation.

It’s a flawed record, no doubt about that. Viewed as a stand-alone project, if you were to encounter each track individually, I think you might lump it in with every other nearly there rap record, that has 4 or 5 really good songs, 1 or 2 passable songs, and the rest is filler. But when approached as a project it hits you in a complete way.

Maybe it is the interludes with his parents. His father’s unexpected and poignant life lesson. His mother’s entirely relatable progression from annoyed and frustrated mum to slightly more concerned to almost despairing. The humourous narrative that these two play at through the first two encounters with them that makes them instantly accessible as real human beings rather than made up fantasy characters.

Maybe it is Kendricks brutal honesty, his ability to be completely caught up in the moment of something but to provide such a depth in his commentary that each minute in his life feels like 10 minutes of music and dissection. At times he draws you in and takes you with him. The Art of Peer Pressure is a simple narrative, a first person account of an action-packed activity. The complexity lies within Lamar's ability to transport you right in to that car with him, sitting next to him. Standing behind him as he participates in a robbery. You can feel his sweat as the police pull in behind them.

There are times when he expresses his fears and concerns in such a way it is no stretch of imagination to put yourself firmly in his shoes, experience his paranoia and his prevailing attitudes towards himself and his surroundings. Sing About Me, I'm Dying Of Thirst is a brilliant strain of conscious thought in which Lamar walks us through his fears of being a nobody, not making it out of the ghetto, the struggles of people living in desperation, the consuming fear of death, and trying to deal with the loss of family members.

These moments of insight are punctuated by more contemporary, mainstream hip hop moments. Backseat Freestyle see's Lamar on his punchline game, 'I pray my dick get big as the Eiffel Tower /
So I can fuck the world for 72 hours'. m.A.A.d city allows him to stretch his legs over some traditional Southern production from Sounwave and THC, and Poetic Justice has him trading verses with Drake, who promptly copies his flow and hops back on his misogynistic crusade. His gift for hooks keep the album flowing beautifully through these moments. Whilst they aren't contributing directly to the narrative, they provide momentary relief, you are able to relax and be entertained.

Real is the best track. You feel as though you've woken up with Lamar and shadowed him as he experiences the most important day of his life. By the time Real begins, he is lost, his location is unknown, his mind is blown and he has reached a point where he sits down and starts turning things over in his mind.

'But what love got to do with it when I don't love myself
To the point I should hate everything I do love
Should I hate living my life inside the club
Should I hate her for watching me for that reason
Should I hate him for telling me that I'm season
Should I hate them for telling me ball out
Should I hate street credibility I'm talkin' about
Hatin' all money, power, respect in my will
Or hating the fact none of that shit make me real'

We then hear the voices of his two parents, both sobered by worry, delivering their own pearls of wisdom. His father tells him in order to be real he needs god, responsibility, and he needs to take care of his family. His mother's words induce goose bumps. She sounds despairing, worried and scared like any mother would. She pleads with him to come back, that there is positives in his story, that he is real if he returns. 

You find yourself hoping Lamar finds his way back to his parents, you hope he is unharmed and unhurt. His subtle classic reveals itself to you, how deeply you've been drawn in to this snapshot of his life. Absolutely amazing.

Pre-order for only $1 (or more if you'd like) - http://beatastic.bandcamp.com/releases
Album Visual - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q53haR86Ins

Nico's stock is rising. His audacious plan of cultivating 10 videos to go with his 10 tracks on Anti-Matter is bearing fruit, and that is a testament to the way his music has been recieved in the underground community. Not every artist can reach out in this manner, and actually have people reach back.

Beatastic's work has consistently been evocative, has usually managed provoked a reaction. It hasn't always been an easy listen, and there's times when, in the maelstrom of noises he creates, he hits on a stupidly catchy groove only to move on immediately and frustratingly. On This Lazer Life he penned radio fodder in Body Positive, before going left field on a Hawaiian inspired ukelele number Halloween Party. Whilst this was endearing on his earlier music, last years GL1TCH3S went extreme. Dense post-rock, conscious hip hop, dream pop, ambient, it had absolutely everything.

Anti-Matter is a direct rejection of this model. It's an immediately more focussed, structured album, significantly leaner than his previous efforts at only 10 tracks, and housing the kind of sounds that he has been known to gravitate towards as his bread and butter. Incredibly strong percussive elements underpin every track, and these are expanded on through the use of a stressed out bass guitar and multiple high picked riffs which are instantly familiar and serve to cement each track firmly in your head, even after a cursory listen. We've finally pinned Beatastic down and shone a light on the core musical elements that have made his music so fresh and experimental.

The result is quite stunning, and much darker than his back catalogue defines him. Early work was quite positive, and whilst GL1TCH3S had some extremely dark moments (How Fast The Fog Comes In, Addiction, Lctr), Nico allowed the sun to shine brightly when the clouds did dissipate. Anti-Matter is a tense, hemmed in affair, exploring isolation, dissonance and a disquieting sense of slow dread. The tense explosion of The Waiting Game hides the sinister message 'I'm waiting for us to disappear in history', and a quick perusal of the track names reveals Winter Depression, Sleep is Freedom, Pixelated Heart and Abnegation. Not a happy Nico then?

In the interview I've included below, one of Nico's responses informed that he wanted listeners to escape through his music, to get lost within the mood. The direct rejection of his previous work suggests a soul who has spent more than his fair share of time searching for just that; an escape worthy of his time and effort. The brilliant first single, Sleep Is Freedom, is just DIRTY. That low, aggressive bass groove that settles in before the crisp crash of drum takes centre stage gradually grows in to a crescendo, a tsunami of noise that crashes throughout your speakers as the chorus hits. 'I bury my head under the pillows today, cause sleep is the only time I'm free'. If this were GL1TCH3S it'd be accompanied by spaced out electronics and an upper atmospheric joy ride. Instead Nico takes us down in to the dirt and mud with him, switching his voice from haze to anger, 'It keeps coming, keeps coming', an outward explosion of tension. It's a sinister element he's added to his vocal range, a real edge that wasn't previously present. Karma employs it wonderfully, adding a drone quality that enhances the melodic element of the track.

His vocal performance points to the wider changes and evolution that has occurred in his sound. Reminiscient of a Thom Yorke, he now uses his voice as an extra 'instrument' so to speak, and this opens up an expansive set of options on Anti-Matter. His ability to drone and match the tone of the song deepens the sound. On The Ocean, a whistful selective electronic riff lifted straight from the PC explosion of the early 00s, he croons mournfully, allowing his words to drift in and out of the music mimmicking the very subject he is addressing. He's become so adept at this that during the extended interlude of thumping instrumental at the end of Pixelated Heart, his voice morphs with guitar to almost sound like he is performing a duet with himself. It's an immediate point of difference from traditional post-rock who's main weapon is relentless vibration building to crescendo. On Anti-Matter, Beatastic controls the tempo of each track with the dual aids of his voice and his guitar, allowing him to build and crash at will. Nowhere is this clearer than Konishiwa, a desperate grasp at a percieved escape through human interaction, that never fully dissipates as Nico croons 'Let's just blur in to each other..' as the music dies.

If Anti-Matter is an escapist record, the destination wouldn't find it's way on to too many Contiki tours. It's too inattentive to label this a break up record. Whilst there are multiple mentions of human longing, depression brought about by solitude and even desperation, the feeling is one of ambiguity, not of targeted requests. For example, The Waiting Game, 'I'm waiting for us to disappear in history' has a decidedly Capulet trait about it, and this is backed up on Konishwa, with the doleful 'let's just blur in to each other' hiding a morbid message of a soul seeking a partner in the slow march towards the other side. There's no real central figure, which is in contrast to Your Mistake and Karma, two tracks that directly address frustration and anger towards another. Then Sleep Is Freedom paints the picture of a cautious, self-conscious soul dissecting the possiblity of losing their soulmate.

All of this negativity is a fresh direction for Beatastic, and serves to set Anti-Matter nicely apart in his catalogue. The refusal to remain in one place, to be labelled, is endearing if not expertly conducted. But his fusing of heavy, industrial strength instrumental rock with a nervous, wide-eyed dive in to his psyche and the worries and anxieties that assault it is performed with a self-confidence that belies the message. Fortunately, this duality means that the music is, once again, outstanding. There's no longer something for everything in Beatastic's repertoire, but for those that this appeals to there is a huge array of texture and technique that has flourished when given the attention that it always deserved.

8/10

Best Tracks: Winter Depression, Sleep is Freedom, Konishwa



Nico is a lovely bloke and someone I've been in close contact with for quite a while now. He was gracious enough to answer some of my ham-fisted questions, his responses give a nice insight in to not only Anti-Matter but his unique way of creating music.

 BC: Anti-Matter immediately feels more mellow than GL1TCH3S, was this a reaction to your current circumstances or were you more conscious of creating a more melodic piece of music?
 Nico: I hadn't noticed tbh, I actually thought the lyrical content was angrier