Russell Brand: Messiah Complex

I must start by telling you a quite unsavory theory many Brits share about Americans: they think they're pretty damn stupid. Forget all that stuff about McDonald's whores and Rednecks, that's all ancient history, right now they just think you Americans don't know your shit from your ABCs. Let's face the facts: George Bush really did a number on you guys, because now there wasn't just an idiot in charge but if you fill in the blanks like it seems a lot of Limeys did then you'll see there musta' been a whole lot of people lining the streets to elect this guy who were just as stupid, if not more. I must apologize for such a stereotype which I've been fed for years, and even bought into for quite some time, although this isn't going to be a conversation on world relations so it's not me or even the British public I'm looking at with this stereotype in mind, just Russell Brand. Which is the only explanation any of us Brits have had for why Brand, his comedy at least - the man himself seems to have cleaned himself up nicely - has went so downhill since he went to America. Just look at him during any of his American work and you'll see his whole persona change, his normally over-enthusiastic and campy delivery became slow and over-explanatory, his continuos use of cultural references disappeared and his vulgarity was replaced simply by his sexual persona which he played without even a slight hint of self knowing, all as if he was catering to the cliches of his new audience.

Then again this trip to America, which if time is nice will simply be Brand's "transitional years" are actually only a small distraction in his main comedy-ography. His time in the states was made up of: gaining some notoriety through his hosting of the VMAs, getting clean (both in image and in substances), marrying Katy Perry, making a number of movies that vary in quality, divorcing Katy Perry, and finally, and very bluntly, announcing he wanted his bad boy image back with a swift phone through a window. His comedy work there consisted of: his show BrandX, which even with it's occasional highlights will be lucky to ever be mentioned again, a 2012 dvd release of a 2008 gig that had "cash-in" written all over it, most obvious in that it was from the same tour as his previous dvd release only now performed with his apparent (or possibly imagined on my and a few other people's parts) prejudices with performing to an American crowd, and finally the previously mentioned VMA hosting which was already a punch line for Brand back in his 2008 tour.

So I'm guessing we're all just going to forget about his work in America in the same vein that we've all happily brushed aside the fact he was once a heroin addict, or if to forget sounds too strong then at least rebrand it as "character building" - and following that Messiah Complex picks up where his last show in the UK Scandalous left off. He's back (or from this side of things - he never left) trying to get audience members into bed, and he's back to satirizing his own image, the target here being his recent ventures into politics, with as-always hilarious commentary by Noel Gallagher passed on to us.

The stage of the Hammersmith has four faces implanted on it (or five if you count Brand): Gandhi, Che Guevara, Malcolm X and Jesus. There's really two sides to why these faces are on stage: 1) is the side that's put Brand on the news so much lately, and I'll hand it to the guy he seems genuinely passionate about the need for heroes in society and for us to step away from Capitalism and the false needs we have became so chained to. This part isn't really comedy but more "public speaking" in it's simplest form of Brand trying to get some interesting ideas across to us. At one point he says "I only know all this because someone took the time to tell me" and that's all he wants to do here, and the thing is Brand seems to understand, maybe even heartbreakingly so, that he can't be a Gandhi or a Malcolm X, the circumstances weren't right and for so long neither were his intentions, but he really does care and he does want change, and cross my heart I truly believe Russell Brand the three time shagger of the year and recovering junkie truly means it, and 2) Brand say's he wants to show you how he is a little like these people. This is the tongue-in-cheek comedy side of things. As a fan of Brand's since Ponderland I'll vote for this being Brand's funniest stuff in years, with his greatest stage asset (in abundance here) being his spontaneous delivery which gives the jokes a brilliant on-the-fly feel.

Yet the whole gig raises a question about comedy, and your answer pretty much decides whether you should bother with Messiah Complex or not. It got me thinking: should a comedy show be about serious stuff? Going by my tastes (Messiah Complex was my favorite stand up since Jim Jefferies' Fully Functional in 2012) I'd say I prefer a serious line running through the show, with the jokes coming organically. I'm not saying Jefferies is that similar to Brand, who riled up the crowd like he was gearing up for a political rally, but when Jefferies did his routine on religion and most precisely Christianity's hatred of homosexuals and the Noah's arc story among other things he couldn't have picked an easier (or more over-done) target, but the routine works because it doesn't seem like someone taking apart religion just to get some laughs, it sounds like he genuinely cares about the lapses in logic he's bringing up, he sounds well researched, and most likely even read the bible, and these are the real problems he found with it, which is why the comedy works so well. The other type of stand up, joke joke joke, can obviously be funny, but apart from those few who really can tickle the funny bone as easily as they get out of bed in the morning (let's say Frankie Boyle for a reference point), these gigs usually don't leave you with much and when stripped bare are just people exploiting what they can for some laughs. When Brand compares David Cameron to Che he really does raise a good point about what a pathetic excuse for a leader we've appointed for ourselves, and he seems to understand that a change is needed, and you can feel that, in the same way that later on you can sense his disappointment in how Capitalism has turned the Che symbol into a marketing tool such as in car ads he shows the audience. I'm not trying to patronize with what I'm about to write, in the same way that at the start I wasn't trying to offend, but I think there is more who wouldn't like Messiah Complex than those who would (sadly) but for those who don't mind hearing what Brand has to say and don't mind some sections going by without a joke mentioned then I couldn't recommend Messiah Complex more. 

The Month That Was: December '13

Happy New Years. I spent my first few moments of 2014 being sick into a bucket, and the next day a friend's mum asked me what the morale of the night was: and I think she was getting at me not drinking so much. Which I guess is my New Year's resolution, although before that it was to write more (ALOT MORE) which I'm starting straight away with this new monthly feature. It's all about me (hey, I'm just giving the fans what they want!) so without further ado here was my December 2013:

-The obvious highlight was Santy's big day: we got the family together, watched The World's End (my choice - a good one it turned out to be) and we all got drunk on shots and absinthe. I got a laptop, which should go some way towards that New Year's resolution, and lots of films and books too (expect writing on Only God Forgives, This is the End, Consider the Lobster and a lot more in the coming month). After everyone went to bed I stayed up until the wee hours sipping Vodka and listening to angry Eminem. 

- School wasn't as bad as it's going to be when I get back (4 exams spread over 2 days: FUUCK) even then I guess my quality of revision could only be described as "mild".

-I continued my way through "the classics" - of which I'm starting to lose faith in more and more - by reading the first 100 pages of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, my first Hemingway and unless I run out of books by almost all other writers my last as well. Saying "boredom" as a reason why I didn't finish this much loved classic feels like a cop out so I'll just say that a very unlively, to-the-point prose style and a wandering, unstructured story don't go too well together.

- I went a little Lester Bangs for about a week or two after reading the second collection of his work Main Lines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste, which contrary to the reviews is just as good as Psychotic Reactions. I swear there's no writer who inspires me to be a better writer as much as Bangs does.

- I read so much great stuff online this much - like every month - that I wish I had saved most of it so I could spread it around in posts like this, which is one way to say that that'll be something I'll be starting next month, and another way of saying that I don't have any to share now. Apart from this Rolling Stone article. It's a very disturbing article. Plus I find it depressing that I now read Rolling Stone only for the non-music articles (although I bet that would make Lester Bangs smile). A lot of the commentators criticized the article for glorifying the main man of the story although I felt the writer did a great job of showing the slightly fucked up way many youths react to events like this.

- I can say without a doubt I listened to more albums in the last month than in any other month of my life. I started with the aim to listen to every big album of 2013 to write a feature (upcoming) although I eventually gave up after working out even two albums a day would be too slow to get everything listened to any time soon; which is my way of saying that this was a damn good year for music, easily the best one I've lived through.

- My biggest musical adventure was listening to Deafheaven's Sunbather, my first foray into Black Metal. My mother walked past the room while I was listening, which made me feel slightly embarrassed although not enough to make me turn it down; and for some reason I got the image of Lester Bangs in my head, driving around the streets blasting Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music at full volume. Both albums do actually sound a bit similar, which is probably why I managed to get a solid 20 minutes if not more into MMM right after Sunbather (and for just a brief second think that it was a great album).

- That was about it for my month. I'm looking forward to 2014, a lot more than I was for 13, and I hope everyone reading is as enthusiastic as me. Peace out. 

Merry Christmas!

I started this blog back in March and I quite honestly didn't think I'd still be blogging by the time Santy was coming back around, so here's a big thank you to everyone who's checked out the blog; I hope you like what I've been writing so far and whatever I get around to next. I've decided my New Years resolution early: try and write a helluva lot more, which I'll get around to just as soon as the new year's hangover wears off.

So have a Happy Christmas (not Happy Holidays - get with it Americans) and a fucking brilliant New Year.

Charlie

TV Show of the Year: Gogglebox

The writerly cliche of "it shouldn't work but it does" has become so overused, especially in the world of TV writing, that it's now stupid to think anything wouldn't work, even the zany, opportunist crap that a slowly dying Channel 4 has been feeding us for a while. That's why Gogglebox, a show about watching small groups of people (a good mix of demographics, of course) watch the same TV shows you probably spent your week watching, actually makes for some of the most fun TV of the year. On one side it's a social experiment about how we all do what is one of the most universal activities known to modern man, and on the other side it lets you get a quick peep into other people's domains while they've got their hair down, or they're at least acting like they do; a combination which puts it somewhere in the no man's land between high and low entertainment.

The great appeal of watching people watch TV could be traced back to that great feeling when reading a book and finding that a stray thought you believed too weird to exist anywhere but your own head was in the author's head too. Gogglebox puts it's sights on one less than this, showing us people in their own homes watching TV like they supposedly do every night. It's a daily activity for most of the nation, although unlike a stray thought it's something we quite frequently share, which is why unlike if this show was about people brushing their teeth or taking a shit we don't watch to see if we're doing this whole TV thing right, instead we watch to see these other people simply being themselves, see how they do it differently, and if they do it better than us. Most of these people are funny, because most people are funny. Strangely (especially for Channel 4) we're never set up to laugh at these people, actually we almost always have the same reactions as the other people on screen, which is to say that Channel 4 could have chosen a very different cast and made a much nastier show out of it, one based on feeling superior to the people on screen, while instead there's a jolly atmosphere to everything up to the point where each person becomes a like-able character in what somehow feels like an interlocked cast. Because of this you never end up imagining the camera in your front room, trying to outdo those on screen and putting the spotlight on others to carry on the charade to be best; no, instead you really do "goggle" and like all the best goggling no-one else knows your there.

And in their aim to create a varied show the casting squad have clearly based their choices on age and ethnic stereotypes. No one plays up to the stereotypes, with the editing team giving everyone time to get fleshed out, and the show only further showing the universal connection created by TV and the way we all react to it so similarly. This year's X-Factor was featured heavily on the watch-list, and I was surprised at first at simply how much everyone agreed who should win. Maybe I was just surprised that everyone had such strong opinions of who should win on a show most people usually have strongly negative opinions about, although such communal agreement is a good sign we're not all as broken up as professional worriers would have us believe. Then Sam Bailey hit the screen and the fat jokes came pouring in, the obvious defense being this wasn't a group attack but lots of small individual groups pulling the thread of a joke that was just hanging in front of their faces, although if your going to take the shared enthusiasm for a winner then you'll have to take the shared ridicule of her as well. Thing is, I didn't find this bad, it would have been weirder if this joke wasn't made, by which I'm saying I'd probably make this joke - and you know you would/have - which only makes these people feel even more real, helped by the inclosed aesthetic of the show, which has the cast in their own homes, and the detail we get about them only minimal, and read out by Craig Cash, a member of Britain's favorite family of fictional TV watchers, no less.

I feel like the cast members are too good (they make show afterall) to not get some space here. And no, I didn't go for that other writerly cliche of watching and pointing at the screen everytime someone turned out to be exactly like someone I know. I didn't spot my friends in these people, only little bits of myself I've been self-conscious enough to notice. There is a nuclear family in here, in which we have the slightly chubby dad who embodies the nice at-home side of Tony Soprano, the more kids-orientated mother who's probably known to the kids as the "strict one", there's the son who's in a stage of trying to act older than he is (a moment that reminded me of a younger me: the son making fun of Australians to try and generate some Frankie Boyle-inspired shock laughs ("they think they're better than everyone else") only to find his family not laughing, his parents clearly worried about the fact that this is going out on TV, and the son having to keep up the performance lest he lose face), and the younger sister who wears pink and loves One Direction and acts all over-excited. They aren't as funny as most of the other cast members (characters? sketches?) but this only holds up a mirror to the viewer who probably wouldn't be, even though you'd like to you would be just as funny as these other people if put on the screen. The family sits with a mid-screen divide separating the men from the women, and the other characters all stem from this society-default family type.

The other families/friends have more quirks than this real life Simpsons, which almost guarantees that nobody will like all of them. The most obvious favorites are the older couple (my dad calls them a pair of "alcys") who own a bed and breakfast and spend most of the time boozed up. They're commentaries are usually funny stuff. Then there's the actual "old couple" of the show (my grandad described the man as "sex mad") who's interactions between each other are pretty funny. There's a gay couple who don't fall into any stereotypes, there's two old guys who's blank seriousness feels completely out of place with the others, there's the two average-joe heterosexual middle-agers, there's the two black brothers and their father. There's loads of them altogether, and I guess the biggest compliment I could give to all of them is they can't be summed up with generalizations.

Looking back I had more fun with the show than any other non-fiction of 2013. If you are going to criticize the back staging of the show, of which some things have to be artificially staged to make the show's creation possible, then your criticizing the whole fly-on-the-wall genre, which means your complaining to a brick wall of a genre that's already survived any criticism. The fun and occasional insights created are worth any small cases of forced reality. I know complainers would rather have Channel 4 pick addresses out of a hat at random and then sneak into the chosen houses at night where they can install hidden cameras into the living rooms and broadcast these people's TV watching activity for our entertainment, and all on a clean conscience knowing they're broadcasting hasn't lowered itself to the cheap artificiality of other channels. Those few won't enjoy Gogglebox, but for me it made for some great TV.

An Introduction to the Dark Side of Youtube

I must apologize to the gods of focused education who never crossed my mind last year during Media, a course that is advertised as your biggest in into the entertainment biz but when stripped of it's clothes is nothing but one long (unhelpful) drag.

Only it wasn't for me and a few friends who scraped by grade-wise but otherwise had a ball, mainly thanks to Youtube. Just to get on the damn thing, blocked from all schools, makes you feel like a black market trader, and to bring the next round of laughs to the group makes you feel like a caveman bringing fire to the group.

But as any well trained psychologist will tell you: leave some slightly unhinged individuals in an inclosed environment for far too long and when you return to let them out you'll find things have gotta helluva lot of funky since you left.

What this entailed in high school form was a scrambled flurry to find the weirdest videos from what we eventually christened as "The Darkside of Youtube". I gather most of you will never have been, and after entering you may never want to go back (that's if you make it out alive of course) but it's an experience I recommend everyone to have. The videos posted below are each a good introduction to the darkside of youtube.

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared

This video is a good place to start as it's first half is about some kid-friendly characters in a jolly claymation world. Take it's descent into madness as a sign of your arrival.

Dog of Man

The greatest thing about all these videos is they exist completely in their own space. They start to play, creep you out, then end, with no extra explanation and no sequels. They aren't even satires or responses; things on the dark side very rarely have any connection to things on the outside.

Yolo

As last year started to wind down and lessons became mostly nothingness but pretending to revise Youtube became a popular pass time in a lot of my lessons. This was much broader stuff, but this gem, which was watched on dangerous levels of repeat came as a nice discovery.

Nicolas Cage Loses His Shit

Different from the other videos in form as it's a compilation not an original animation. Of course if you think that unqualifies it for inclusion then the fact is focuses on Nicolas Cage (explanation un-needed) should re-qualify it faster than you can say "pissed blood". As it starts to drone on and the clips become darker the music adds a fantastically tragic tone to it all.

Drug Bust Doody

Check out the creator of this one (or all of them for that matter) Lee Hardcastle, as he specialises in gory animations like this one, which I thought because of it's completely unjustified explosions of gore was most deserving of a look.

Going to the Store

This one has a special meaning to me as I remember watching it years ago at a friends house. I would regularly go around to his where he would show me the many weird videos he had found. At the time it felt like a creepy extension of the anime spoofs he was showing me at the time; it later got me some good rep in those Media classes.

Baaa

There's another version of Baaa which lasts for something stupid like 100 hours and like all videos of it's type is a test in irritation, while here in the minute long original the focus is on the weird ass animation. It especially freaks me out with my life-long fear of Cronenberg-esque body horror. This proves it's not just human bodies.

And the grandaddy of all that is mind shattering... Salad Fingers

It's the first of a ten part series that just messes you up more and more with each episode (it comes highly recommended from me) although it's this original episode that still stands as where all this creepy shit can be traced back to.

Hope you enjoyed (if that is the intended reaction?) these videos.

Paul McCartney - New

NEW is a fitting title in the sense that it accepts nothing Paul McCartney has ever made has ever sounded new. John got it right when he slammed Paul for making "granny music" like When I'm 64 which sounded out of place way back in the 60s, and on Sgt Pepper no less; but never fear Beatlemaniacs because to call it old now would be sacrilegious, at least in the sense that if Paul isn't bigger than Jesus (at least not anymore) he is at least more universally beloved. He's like the royal family: old and fossilized, yet also loveable and too important to have killed off, which is really why celebrity after celebrity crammed themselves into the video for Queenie Eye, the album's lead single and worst track, not because they wanted their name associated with the song but because they wanted their name associated with Sir Paul McCartney, the living third of the Beatles people gave a shit about and quite possibly the cleanest celebrity ever: hey, it's good natured ol' uncle Paul, the man who even did some marijuana back in the 60s just so he could fit perfectly into the status quo.

Which is to say I'm surprised Paul doesn't just name all his albums New and change the coloring on the front cover, after all he could have put this music out a few decades ago and it's only the production, which has a fantastically colorful lushness to it, that would set it apart. At least he themes his albums; NEW has been formed from DNA strands left over from Lady Madonna, although it's the moments of quiet ambience where you can really hear the longing in Paul's voice that work best. Which is why "Hosanna"'s the best song on here; you can probably fill an ocean liner with all the different women McCartney has written about over the years, although this song works, just like the other highlights on the album, because it isn't straight up L-word gospel, and not old age sentimentality either; like all McCartney it's masterful nature plays partly on the blankness it's creator provides, yet his simple want to entertain is impossible to criticize when your having fun.

And this is a fun album; it's dominated by filler but makes up for it with highlights that are as enthusiastic as Paul in his youth; the only problem is that this is a pretty basic refresher package of new material and has very little to say, especially not on Paul who's always kept the music and the man far apart, meaning you end up reviewing McCartney more than the album itself. Paul's always been a little flavorless, his almost technical perfection in the beats of songwriting always lacking the personality someone like say John Lennon put into his work. And John hangs over "Early Days" about the early days of the Beatles where Paul goes all soppy Joe on us. But can I really blame him? Could Paul McCartney ever actually give us a Lennon-esque turn over of such a cherished time? I guess not, so instead we have a bit of nostalgic loveliness that dodges any importance that might be expected of it.

Overall I'd recommend NEW. It's forgettable in places but on the good tracks (look out for "Alligator" and "Turned Out") you get a warm fuzzy feeling hearing that Paul still has it, even if it's just for a few glimmering moments.

SPOTLIGHT: Syronix - 7 Months

While Lester Bangs was explaining to me how to be a rock critic he passed on one golden nugget in particular that I've been trying hard to live by since. He said "Charlie, if you’re gonna be a hotshit rock critic, you gotta find some band somewhere that’s maybe even got two or three albums out and might even be halfway good, but the important thing is the more arcane it is the better, it’s gotta be something that absolutely nobody in the world but you and two other people (the group’s manager and one member’s mother) knows or cares about, and what you wanna do is TALK ABOUT THIS BUNCH OF OBSCURE NONENTITIES AND THEIR RECORD(S) LIKE THEY’RE THE HOTTEST THING IN THE HISTORY OF MUSIC, you gotta go around telling everybody that they’re better than the Rolling Stones, they beat the Beatles black and blue" so here's some music that beats the Beatles black and blue, especially if were comparing in terms of electronic dance music.

In terms of holy-shit-this-was-made-by-a-17-year-old-who-just-so-happens-to-know-the-guy-who-writes-this-nowhere-music-blog the most impressive thing is Broken Hearts, which has a headstart anyway because the fucker actually has lyrics. Which is to say this is all blocky electro music with somewhat amateur sound, although is more Avici-style inspiring and less Prodigy-level scary. Although I'll stand by Broken Hearts as a professional sounding would-be chart hit. After that there's Festive Spirit, which ends the album, and is as good a case as any to argue with us dance music nihilists that there is emotion in computer beats.

The album's named after how long it's creator has been making original music, and the 16 tracks here are a collection from those 7 months. I don't know enough technical terms to sell it more than that, although there's some small story or meaning behind each of these tracks. So give it a listen/download or try and find your way around the soundcloud EDM community.

Asher Roth: King of the Blumpkins

Back in 09 Asher Roth released the scourge of all frat boy wisdom and even in it's drunken vagueness the best piece of romantasized American college hijinks that's hit the mainstream in recent memory with 'I Love College'. At the time I felt almost embarrassed liking the song, as catchy and fuck-it-and-worry-about-the-consequences-later as it was - it betrayed my grundgy rocker code and possibly even the code set down by being a mature-for-his-age Brit who was too young to even be attending these parties. It fell off the radios quick, because alas Roth still isn't a household name, and his white skin is his biggest claim to fame in the rap community, although before it disappeared completely I saw the song playing late one night while channel surfing and quickly scribbled down the name, oblivious to me at the time, in the contents page of a magazine I had been reading. Somehow I managed to lose the magazine, the song forever hanging there as a piece of insight into the adolescent world I would annoyingly never hear again, not aided by the fact that the man behind it hasn't made much noise since; there's whispers he'll release another album next year, which will be his first since his debut in 09.

Luckily it wasn't lost forever when I found 'I Love College' again earlier this year, completely by coincidence, and discovered it's just as fun as I remember it. And last week after finally getting around to watching the fantastically inspiring Eminem movie '8 Mile' which sent my mind into delirious fantasies of being a famous rapper, I listened to Roth's debut album, which has him 'Asleep in the Bread Aisle'. And what a fucking gold mine it is; everyone thought music was in the shitter in 2009 which must have went some way into making people miss sight of this treasure trove of unapologetically adolescent party rap and soothing confessionals that was right in front of their faces.

My wannabe rapper fantasies carved a mini-narrative into 'Bread Aisle' which I suspect was Roth's rapper fantasy too; or why else would things kick off with 'Lark On My Go-Kart' which is the most aggressive track here, Roth throwing out swears and adolescent vulgarities as fast as he can. It's the most black sounding of all the tracks here, and the most intensely fast; Roth gets it right when he complements his flow as "oh so sharp". In the fantasy this is the start of the night; darkness has descended and the first hits of drunkenness have begun to take effect. This is taking your shirt off, jumping on a table and yelling "Look guys, look how good I can rap". This track needs to quickly get everyone in the room and in the know; which it does with a real intensity.

Things never do reach the intensity of the opener again, which is ok as we quickly delve into party land. Standing on the table this is what everyone is wanting. The aforementioned college track delves into it's own delinquency and through sheer self belief holds it's head up high. You have the whole room chanting "Chug, chug, chug, freshman, freshman, freshman, do somethin crazy! do somethin crazy!" and things aren't any less delinquent on "She Don't Wanna Man" where Keri Hilson becomes the only featured artist on the album up to snuff. You'd think this fantasy in which you paste your head of Roth's body would belittle an artist who is surely well-tuned in his craft yet The Asher Roth Formula almost supports this open invitation; almost every track has a moment where Roth's flow wobbles, when he raps "All up in your fridge eating left-over shit/Tuna sandwich, butterscotch, crimpets/Cheetos be my choice of chips/I enjoy for a bit" things seem to knock him off balance for a second. It brings you out of the music, something you'd think Roth would want to avoid in the name of professionalism, although these moments find their way onto a good variety of tracks on here; in 'La Di Da' another party-ready highlight he raps "so many questions unanswered, I don't understand/Could you please explain sir" something doesn't quite seem right. Roth never falters when it comes to self confidence, of which he has in droves, but these moments where we are reminded he's not a master manage to break the barry that rap, the hardest genre to supplant yourself onto because of the raw talent required, has set up.

By now everyone's hammered out of their minds; they've never heard shit this dope. There's nothing left to prove, and no-one left to entertain. Now you've got some things to get off your chest, which could very easily fuck up in Roth's face although this, the most interesting aspect of the album, makes the case for him as smarter than you thought. For a reference point: during the final rap battle in '8 Mile' the end-boss battle type moment the whole film has been building up to, Em finally spits some smart stuff as he recounts the tragedies we have watched him slug through during the rest of the film to the surprise of his opponent who was planning on using such quips himself. Em then turns the gaze on his opponent and spreads the word on this guy's life, which in the world of this film come as great insults, the exact lines being "But I know something about you/You went to Cranbrook, that's a private school/What's the matter Doc, you embarrassed?/This guy's a gangsta? His real name's Clarence/And Clarence lives at home with both parents/And Clarence parents have a real good marriage". This could all be directed at Asher Roth, a privileged white suburbanite college graduate who has better college parties than you. The lack of any B-Rabbit style tortured life story could be the butt of the joke, but then look around and you'll see your in the house of some over-privileged prick who's parents are out for a conveniently timed business trip, not in ghetto clubs or spitting it to a very hostile crowd somewhere along 8 mile. Roth's rap is unique in it's laid back nature and it's lack of even sarcastically-swung aggression; which if you think about it for a second makes sense for a kid who isn't rapping to provide for his daughter or prove himself among a club of all-black people. That's Roth's music's unique selling point and what makes him so easy to impose your self on; his raps, without any larger-than-life persona spilling into the lyrics, focus solely on his music and the messages he gets across that are so frequently passed off as "privileged white people problems". It's not that these problems need a spokesperson, they most surely don't, but it's nice someone is getting them across anyway, and in such an unashamed fashion too.

Eventually the night starts to drone-one and the party-goers are starting to slow down; it's the perfect time to start singing "His Dream" which tells the story of an older man reflecting on his life with a few regrets, mainly centered on leaving behind his dreams to focus on being a good parent. It's scored with a backing track which smoothly fits the lonely melodrama of the story. The themes here are big, and it's place on the album can clearly be read as a concept: "This is the emotional one; the one that's gonna make all the critics teary-eyed" which is easy to say since Roth himself isn't caught in this bind, yet this track is so much more than that. It takes real courage in what your saying and that people will believe in it to put out lines like "So he's well aware how vital a father figure is/How big of a responsibility it is/To be a good husband and care for your kids/Never miss an event, helping them with their homework" but that's what Roth does, and even if it's done out of blind-confidence it's at least appeasing to listen to for the sake of hearing serious themes and not have to mock yourself or the song to feel alright about it. By this point the party should be in hysterics, and it is damn funny how far everything quickly goes from spring-break-college-party to this, but everyone's silent while you bust this one out. You've got them all listening, admiring even.

This fantasy's a nice one to have, of being a cool rapper still waiting for a big break, and Roth creates the backing track for this fantasy with "Bread Aisle". And please don't get me wrong, I don't make this comparison as a form of insult; Roth's raps are solid but his flow has a rigidness to it that makes the structure fully visible; he doesn't possess the looseness of Slim Shady. Yet this means you can hear him trying. There's nothing wrong with a rap god, quite the opposite really, but Roth's style taps into a homespun remedy that hasn't yet been heard in the mainstream anywhere else. It's exciting to listen to this disc, listen to him thanking Eminem and also modestly comparing himself to him in "I As Em" as I suspect most rappers of his age do, and listen to him giving a brief chronicle of his life and his changing musical interests in 'Fallin' because his thoughts feel like they have a real weight to them. If Eminem or Jay-Z gave us such small details of their lives, their musical lives even, then we'd call it a cop-out, yet Roth's words take on a greater meaning because they feel so untarnished; he hasn't built a stage persona to stop himself from seeming small, he's simply stayed himself and rapped about things that are big.

And it's this same truth that lets Roth sing songs others simply couldn't get away with. In 'Sour Patch Kids' he raps "Donate your dollars, raise a dollar/Help a mother, save a father/'Cause poverty is probably our biggest problem/And it ain't gon' stop with Obama/To save the world we must start at the bottom" which would sound like the-big-man-pitying-the-small-people if it came from a giant such as Jay-Z and would sound like a inside joke if it came from the likes of Kanye West, yet I can do nothing but believe Asher Roth's aim is true. In 'Last Man Standing' a single which Roth released with Akon in 2011 he says "Face it, I didn't want to be famous, but that's the way it is" although we've had 10 years of Eminem giving us the same schtick to know that this is bullshit, only Roth knows we know it's bullshit. It's said because that's what rappers say, and it's probably what we'd say too, but you'd have to ask yourself if you'd be as unfussy about it as Roth is. Going back to those sour patch kids, Asher Roth raps "But money doesn't mean/A damn thing to me/I just want to be/I want to be free" and fuck it, I believe him.