Monday, February 11, 2008

Monday Kelefa Sanneh Bashing

The world's most irksome pop music critic ponders We Got It for Cheap: The Mixtape, Volume 3, a new CD by the hip-hop duo Clipse in a review in today's New York Times.

Now, as before, [Clipse members] Malice and Pusha-T specialize in punch lines that can be grim or goofy or both at once. Barely a minute into the first song, Pusha-T lights into Lil Wayne. “I don’t respect who you applauding,” he snarls, scoffing at Lil Wayne’s newfound status as a kingpin, adding, “His metaphors boring/Don’t make me turn daddy’s little girl to orphan/That would mean I’d have to kill Baby, like abortion.” ...

Still, over beats pilfered from Jay-Z (“Roc Boys”), Kanye West (“Good Morning”), Raekwon (“Rainy Dayz”) and others, Malice and Pusha-T deliver almost nothing but witty, well-made stanzas. And when they get carried away with wordplay — “Rotate them chickens like a weather vane/The wind blow, it come and go, I’m a hurricane/Listen again: I hurry ’caine” — the only sensible reaction is to get carried away with them.


I think the ever-Panglossian Sanneh has grossly overstated that last bit. In fact, after reading the aforementioned witty, well-made stanza, the reaction I actually had was to do a Van Gogh and cut off one of my ears.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

the reaction I actually had was to do a Van Gogh and cut off one of my ears.

Oh, don't do that, please! Just send him a silk purse instead, since that's what he's trying to make ...

MBowen said...

"Rotate them chickens"?

Does that make any sense in context?

Anonymous said...

I've finally figure it out!

Kelefa is simply living by my grandma's golden rule: "If you don't have something nice to say about someone..."

danny1959 said...

Is it me, or do either of those quotations even make sense?

TMink said...

Danny, if it is you, then it is me too.

Trey