Review Summary: If the musical world is a buffet, brokenCYDE is a TV dinner: insipid, detrimental and potentially lethal.
85 of 87 thought this review was well writtenAt the root of all music, there is a unifying concept, connecting all musicians and songwriters together: the love of music itself. Never has music become
too homogenized and superficial; there is always some sort of musical heart beating underneath the gelatinous layers of studio sheen and corporate hyperbole. Searching for this heartbeat in the streamlined, over-processed music that the industry manufactures today can prove to be difficult, but it is nonetheless there, right? Well, mostly. Here lies the problem with Albuquerque "crunk-core" troupe brokeNCYDE: they have no heart. They're like the alarmingly pubescent boys who parade around high school whilst thinking with their ever-present
hormones instead of their malfunctioning, scenester heads. Like a destructive plague, the group's sounds haunt and depreciate their surroundings; uprooting plants and subconsciously peeling wallpaper off innocent walls. Yes, it all boils down to the fact that brokeNCYDE's latest record, "I'm Not a Fan but the Kids Like It", is perhaps the most abhorrent, self-destructive record to appear in the new millennium; a torturous, brain-numbing bonfire celebration of 'crunk-core' that, instead of spurring fantasies of "getting freaky" and "pulling shorties' panties down", is more likely to inflict suicidal thoughts on to the uneducated, vulnerable listener.
"
I walk into the club looking kind of sexy now/I see these shorties in the corner, they started making out"
These words - eloquent poetry presented by the first
real track, "FreaXXX" - are the listener's (or ex-listener's, depending on the time) first exposure to brokeNCYDE's crunkzity-bombasticness (or lack thereof); a tilt-a-whirl presentation of non-dynamic sing/scream distribution. It's important to note that vocalists "Se7en" and "Mikl" can perform neither singing
or screaming and instead opt for a combination of digital warbling and cat-like hissing, furthering the album's inherent unlistenability from simply migraine-inducing to life-threateningly hellish. Unintuitive and unoriginal synth loops and beats (example: any song on the record) rotate lifelessly around poorly written and ultimately sexist lyrics (example: also, any song), spinning a revolving globe of infantile juvenility and raging hormones. Musically, "I'm Not a Fan..." is like putting a collection of angsty knives into a ziploc baggy, tossing them into a microwave and sticking around to watch the results: a) these things clearly do not go together (crunk and core, metal objects and microwaves) and b) if these things
do end up together, the results are going to unpleasant, if not hazardous.
"Look at you, you want my body/Let's go start another party"
This lyrical excerpt from "Booty Call" is in no way significant; it's quite lyrically tame for the record, actually -- I'm sparing the faint of heart who may be reading this review. The lyrical excerpt above is, however, a prime of example of what makes up the bulk of "I'm Not a Fan...": no track does anything to differentiate itself from another, they are all the same and they are all equally atrocious. Every single song has brokeNCYDE amorously and unsubtlely praising their own anatomies, promising ambiguous sexual fulfillment (at least to those who want to get laid by scrawny, white scene kids with asymmetrical haircuts) and just plain "gettin' crunk". Every single song has the same tired and thieved beats, the same carbon-copied synths and basslines. The unholy matrimony that sums up this record is a painful welding together of unoriginality and ridiculous execution that I can guarantee will make you feel like less of a person for listening to it. Alas, I am certainly
not a fan, and the kids
only like it because they're so gratuitously caulked up with so much faux-angst that they enjoy torment and torture. Alas, if this stuff is selling like sweet manna from heaven, I suppose that makes it...
brokeNCYDE: 1
Music: 0
