Review Summary: "If I knew what I knew in the past
, I would've been blacked out on your ass"
After the mega success of their album
The Money Store, the band, Death Grips, decided that they would take their pop influences to a more, so to speak, extreme level… But not after prematurely leaking their album
No Love Deep Web on the interweb just to drop themselves from their dumb label cos all big labels are bad! Once GOOD Music picked the band up, they then decided to take the poor production from
The Money Store and
That One Album with a Pink, Throbbing, Erect Penis and make the music severely clip not from lackluster equipment but from turning the dynamics up to levels only Metallica and Imagine Dragons could only dream of because loud is good! All thanks to the all-mighty wisdom of Rick Rubin, the Death Magentic Grips have created the industrial hip-hop masterpiece that teenage hipsters will be talking about for ages:
Yeezus.
So what changed so much since the band had created
The Money Store and
NLDW that is making their fanboys whine so much? Well, the beats are schizophrenic as ever (see opening track “On Sight”) but for once you could tell what old MC Ride is preaching in the midst of the chaos. On the song “I’m in It,” MC Ride reveals his love for twats and Asian chicks who have pussy that taste like sweet-n’-sour sauce and having a sad cum about it. On songs like the pseudo-Marilyn Manson romp that is “BLKKK SKKKN HEAD” and pseudo-prog rocker “New Slaves,” MC Ride passionately shouts about not only pussy (and 300 bitches and trojan condoms) but how he, from African descent, feels scrutinized by American pop culture media and the *GASP* government. Probably the most shocking of all is MC Ride thinks he’s Charles Manson and proclaims many times in the record how much he thinks he’s the 2nd coming the one and only Jesus H. Christ (the record ain’t just titled Yeezus for shock value, yknow).
However, just after the 4th song on the record (“New Slaves”) you realize how weak a lyricist MC Ride really is. As interesting a revelation it is, pussy can only be an interesting topic for so long. Oh yeah, and apparently, MC Ride’s got money. Lots and LOTS of it, which is funny considering how much the band seems to base their attitude and looks on being mentally deranged psychopaths who don't give a shit about paying taxes, thus making them homeless. But it makes sense when you consider the fact MC Ride bought off Jimmy Page’s castle. However, there is a song about how weak Ride’s bladder is in terms of holding his liquor, but it’s fine ‘cos once you’re noided, you can’t just go back. He’ll take his own life like he kept it all this time. But, man, Ride really isn’t joking when he says he’s noided I mean the guy believes the government is really after him, his dough, and his pussy, all because he’s black; and once he’s eliminated, world domination by the whites!
The only real lyrical stand out on the album is “Guilt Trip” which is a calm (when you compare it to the other songs on the record, anyway) psychedelic, ambient tune that details something that sounds like heartbreak, but, then again, the lyrics seem to focus on someone’s birth date being connected to Capricorn or some cryptic shit. Oh yeah, and goddam Kid Cudi is up on this track spitting some bars about how someone left him or something; he sounds too much like a wolf howling at the moon to make sense of what he’s saying. There are also quite a few other collaborators, but they’re either sell out r&b artists or some artist as obscure as Bjork (Justin Vernon anybody?) and chopps the vocals up.
Despite MC Ride’s subpar performance, you also realize how lazy the band has become. While the beats have relied on sampling and manipulated production for synths and a solid “melody” to work off of for drummer Zach Hill to masturbate over, both the producer, Flatlander, and Zach Hill seem to have been placed in the far back burner for a majority of the record while Rick Rubin works his magic. Like he’s done with records like Metallica’s
Death Magnetic, RHCP’s
Californication, and Ulver's
Nattens Madrigal,
LOUDER IS MORE BETTER!!! The distorted synth riff that starts the album off sounds like glass bottles vibrating on a flat surface as the same goes for other tracks like “BLKKK SKKKN HEAD” and “Send it Up.” Speaking of production and sampling, it seems odd that “New Slaves” would end with a ripped sample of some obscure hard rock Hungarian band rather than have, perhaps, Flatlander and Hill do a cover of it. The band say they record things wherever they go to stock up on samples, but I don’t know if it’s Flatlander or Rick Fucking Rubin, but the goddam “Uh huh, honey”s on “Bound 2” can get on your nerve sometimes.
Speaking of “Bound 2,” it’s almost fascinating to see how the band’s music videos have evolved as much as their sound. I mean, Yeezus!, the music video for “Bound 2” features Kanye West’s trophy wife Kim K naked, riding MC Ride on a motorcycle in Africa! What a terrific use of the MC’s name! “BLKKK SKKKN HEAD” is an interactive video online with a CGI beefed up MC Ride spazzing out in total blackness in sync with the melody-less song (although, to be fair, drums are primal for a band with keeping tempo and all Hill did was spazz out of tempo thru all their songs).
The only thing comparable between
Yeezus and
The Money Store (I've been threatened by lawyers to not speak of that album with a dick further for Copyright reasons) is the industrial sound. Death Grips may be selling out but who knows. “The Fever (Aye Aye)” almost sounds like “BLKKK SKKKN HEAD” or perhaps “On Sight” but, in all honesty all the similarities end there. Hell, MC Ride’s already getting himself a bigger ego and been maligning the other members of the band threatening to fire them. But what seems saddest is what Lou Reed has said of the record:
Quote:
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"majestic and inspiring [...] no one's near doing what he's doing, it's not even on the same planet. It sounds like Niggas on the dark side of the moon!”
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Indeed it does Lou Reed.
