SOUNDTRACK: CHANCE THE RAPPER-“Juice” & “NaNa”(2013).
NPR has raved about Chance the Rapper, both at SXSW and now with Acidrap as one of their favorite albums of 2013.
Chance the Rapper has a couple of different vocals styles (kind of Jamaican, kind of falsetto, also a deeper voice) and his lyrics are crazily all over the place.
I have no idea what “Juice” is about (I’m not hip to the slang, man), and of the two I like that one less. “NaNa” is just crazy fun–it’s got a great bass riff–weird and all over the place, like slow funk. He sounds more Jamaican here, and the lyrics are just nutty
In terms of rap, his style is quite different–fun and weird (there’s a lot of laughing during “Juice”). The chorus of “NaNa” is a kind of whine and taunt. And various things keep interrupting the song (is that part of the video or the song? I don’t know). And by the end, the song keeps telling him (or us) to shut up.
It has a feel like Childish Gambino, which i like. And I like that he’s doing something different. I suspect with a few listens this could be a great mixtape. You can get the whole thing for free at his website.
[READ: June 9, 2013] “Thirteen Wives”
I’ve read a number of Millhauser stories before, although I don’t recall if I generally like him or not. (hmm, it seems that I do).
This story seemed more like an exercise or a challenge—can I write about 13 different women and given them all different characteristics. For indeed, that is what the story is. The narrator explains that he has 13 wives and they are all equal in his eyes. After some perfunctory explanation about how this works, he sets out to describe them all.
And then we get the 13 one-dimensional women that he has married and the one defining characteristic about her (the one who is always in sync with him, the one who is submissive, the one who is bitchy, etc).
And really that’s all there is to it.
There’s not a lot of story, it’s just characteristics of these women. And, most of the portraits were so simplistic that if he had combined them altogether, he could have had one complicated character. Which mat have even been more satisfying, just less sensational.
I suppose that if there had been more of a story around the women this might have worked, but as I say it just felt like an attempt to write about 13 characteristics of a woman.
Leave a Reply