Music & Reviews

Inspectah Deck was never the most commercially viable member of the Wu-Tang Clan, and 1999’s Uncontrolled Substance certainly wasn’t a five-mic classic. But during a worrisome stretch for the Wu-Tang Clan that year, he seemed among the most likely to survive and even thrive if the Clan ceased to exist as a functioning group. Largely self-produced and forgoing any A-listers (U-God doesn’t count), the album harbored no delusions about what it was meant to provide– Deck ripping through one simile-laden verse after another with beats that stayed out his way. But since then, his fall-off has been dramatic, as he’s rattled off increasingly less-noticed solo drops and sounded wholly uninspired on higher-profile Wu-related releases (remember “keep it fresh like Tupperware” from 8 Diagrams?). It was easy to view last year’s “House Nigga” as some sort of nadir, Deck spending five minutes dissing Joe Budden for his Internet fame. This was the guy whom even GZA was scared of following on “Triumph”?

A more positive approach is to see the song as Deck’s attempt to find his place in a galaxy of faded NYC stars; the wise ones realize they’re not competing with Drake. At the outset, Deck seems aware of what could constitute a solid 2010 release on his part. Though the ringside samples of “The Champion” are beyond played, he still lets off rounds of impressively pugilistic internal rhyme. Meanwhile, the Obama-quoting “Born Survivor” continues the low-key revival of Cormega and reveals the image Deck wants to create for himself here, a grind-oriented street soldier not all that far removed from latter-day dead prez albums. They called it “revolutionary but gangsta,” while Inspectah boasts, “Still I’m quick to pop it off/ With the model broads or the Molotovs.”

But as Manifesto runs through its forbidding 20-track playlist, it unsurprisingly falters when it chases Hot 97 spins that are laughably out of reach. The aluminum hand-claps of “We Get Down” evoke a G-Unit beat so generic that even Tony Yayo would take pause, “T.R.U.E.” is a limp rap&B overture for empire states of mind, and “The Big Game” is saddled with a cornball hook of a non-metaphor that can’t fully commit to Auto-Tune. And while the relationship songs of Uncontrolled Substance offered an occasional glimpse behind Deck’s otherwise stoic veneer, “Luv Letter” comes awfully close to Murs at his most needy.

But worse than the blind fumbling for hits is hearing what sounds like an average MC doing an uncanny Inspectah Deck impersonation. It’s disorienting to hear him put such conviction behind subpar get-that-paper rhymes. And while Raekwon, Billy Danze, and Kurupt hold serve, “Brothaz Respect” houses quite possibly the most embarrassingly off-beat Cappadonna guest spot to date (and I’ve heard The Yin and the Yang), and too much of Manifesto is turned over to aggressively average foot soldiers like Fes Taylor and the indefensibly-named Carlton Fisk.

Look, it’s no fun to criticize Deck for reaching for that brass ring. You can’t help but think he realizes this disconnect during “This Is It”, where he counters those who think he’s slipped by boasting of “A million kids thinkin’ he rich/ A million bitches think he the shit.” Sadly, it shows how the dynamic’s been reversed for Inspectah Deck since Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)— you sit there and watch him play himself, knowing he’s lying.

After more than two decades of recording together as Autechre, Sean Booth and Rob Brown can still create the aural equivalent of whiplash if they want to, or showcase a deep knowledge of dance music. The production duo’s energetic 12-hour online radio broadcast from earlier this month– joyfully tweeted about and linked to by fans– was a massive, almost exhausting display of influences and favorites. Floating between Coil and Lord Quas, the mix inspired someone to crowdsource the track list on Google Docs.

Oversteps takes a much quieter approach, focusing on a smaller scale. Coming after 2008’s Quaristice, a varied collection of shorter tracks that originated during live jam sessions, Oversteps leans toward some of the slower, more atmospheric aspects of albums like Amber (minus the metered pulse). After the album’s initial 20 seconds of silence, the opener “r ess” slowly surfaces– cold, distant synths arc overhead while broken, incomplete rhythms clatter and collide– seemingly suggesting that steady beats aren’t the main focus here.

Many tracks, such as “O=0” and “d-sho qub”, do contain propulsive rhythms, and a slow funk and dull handclap seep through “Treale”. But the textures are where things get interesting. Whether it’s from tones floating in space or notes brushing up against each other in quiet but effective dischord, the ambience and atmospheres of Oversteps are haunting. “st epreo” expands and contorts with bass notes that seem bound to the rules of fluid dynamics. “Yuop” steadily builds and crests with ringing, grandiose synths. Sometimes, the lack of propulsion distracts, like on “pt2ph8”. But the overlapping round of notes in “see on see” points to a clear design within the synthetic ether.

Autechre have evoked heavy moods while pushing the possibilities of production technology forward and broadening the vocabulary of electronic music. The famous video for their track “Gantz Graf” suggests as much, that they harnessed the grating sounds of a machine in the middle of a grand mal seizure. Oversteps finds them working in a comparatively less rigid fashion, almost organic compared to something like Confield. Focusing on creating tension and release within their compositions, they’re still incorporating new designs, not merely repackaging the previous products.

Imagine there’s nothing funny about the 1980s. Block out your referential nostalgia, your tendency to make punchlines out of Cazals and keytars. Unlearn everything you know about Stock-Aitken-Waterman and gated drums and the synthesizers in “The Final Countdown”. Try to think about how the music of the era might’ve sounded to you if you were experiencing it for the first time, without any knowledge of where or when it was made.

Now you’re ready to listen to Dâm-Funk. One of Stones Throw’s recent breakthrough stars, L.A.’s Damon Riddick spent the 90s as a session keyboardist for assorted New Jack Swing and hip-hop acts (most prominently on the soundtrack to Master P’s I Got the Hook-Up), and lately has parlayed his love for music into a popular 80s boogie/funk DJ night, Funkmosphere, at the Venice Boulevard club Carbon. His recent work reflects a confluence of these two bullet points on his résumé, as he jumps from retro-novel intrigue (2008’s “Burgundy City” b/w “Galactic Fun”) to indie-crossover remix buzz (his incredible transformation of Animal Collective’s “Summertime Clothes”) to the ambitious sprawl of a five-part debut album series, intended as a mission statement for what he calls “modern funk.”

That series has been pared down to the 2xCD, 140-minute collection Toeachizown, which shares the name of the collection from which it draws. It’s your call how best to experience this stuff; each individual volume of the original Toeachizown series has its own thematic undercurrent (“Hood”, “Life”, “Sky”, etc.) and its own strengths, but this condensed aggregation pares it down to a manageable, cohesive 24-track introduction at the cost of editing down a couple of the songs. Either way, you’ve got a thorough rundown of Dâm-Funk’s repertoire this year, which, even in its pared-down form, is an absurdly prolific output– apparently it would’ve come out sooner, but the man couldn’t stop recording new tracks for it.

Anyone with a thing for g-funk should find instant geek-out recognition in this music, a garage-bound DIY love letter to the post-Worrell musical diaspora that covers everything from Roger Troutman’s eternal bounce to the cosmic jazz crossover of the Clarke/Duke Project. In between, you get slow-ride R&B jams (“One Less Day”; “I Wanna Thank You For [Steppin Into My Life]”), grooves that toy with the more prog- and fusion-influenced corners of funk (“Flying V Ride”), post-disco dance music (“Candy Dancin'”), proto-electro (“Keep Lookin’ 2 the Sky”), and just about anything else you might’ve heard on the SOLAR label 25 years ago. There are nods to the retrofitting treatment that the cream of late-70s/early-80s Moog funk underwent once DJ Quik and Dr. Dre got ahold of it; “Killdat aka Killdatmuthafu*ka” actually sounds a bit more like 1992 than 1983, all sinister chords and bop-gun percussion.

But calling Dâm-Funk’s music straight-up throwback nostalgia only skirts what’s really appealing about it. For the first minute or so, you might dredge up some roller-rink memories, but once that groove sets in– granite-thick Moog bass coupled with drum machine breaks so propulsive their physical impetus overrides their mechanicalness– it starts transcending historical allusions and becomes all about structure and groove, about how just plain fucking great fat Roland basslines and Oberheim kick drums sound together. That’s about when you get waylaid by one of Riddick’s solos– fluttering and unpredictable, often flowing more like something that might come out of a free jazz sax or an acid rock guitar than a funk synthesizer. It’s the secret weapon that underscores how seriously he takes this stuff, the catalyst that should provoke listeners to realize this music isn’t just a fun update of a classic sound– it’s a work of real transcendence.

This isn’t a comedic tribute to talkboxes and widebrims; there’s no Snoop Dogg descending a foggy staircase through a faded VHS haze here. Toeachizown is a deep, astute collection that feels like a natural resuscitation and progression of funk as it stood just before hip hop usurped it. Much in the same way that Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings transform from a reenactment of a circa ’66 soul revue to a distinct set of musical personalities the more you listen to them, Dâm-Funk uses all his vintage equipment as a medium to express his own voice, tucking a lot of stealthy forward progress and experimental tendencies between the notes. Chortle at that keytar all you want– he can still make it sound like the future.

The first song on Fall Be Kind, Animal Collective’s new five-song EP, is called “Graze”, and it starts with a colorful swirl of Disneyfied strings as Dave Portner (aka Avey Tare) sings teasing lines like “Let me begin” and “Let light in” and “Some ideas are brewing.” The song seems to be partly about the struggle of creation– grazing on the imagination, maybe– and then Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) comes in with his thick, honeyed voice to sing a bridge that seems a distant cousin of the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)”. There’s tension in this opening section; the words and music suggest a sticking point, something that needs to be punctured before the song (and ideas) can really flow. And then it happens, the break, but in an unexpected way: a peppy flute melody materializes and the rhythm becomes a kind of stomp that seems designed to inspire folk dancing, while Portner and Lennox pick up the tempo and start singing rounds: “Why do you have to go?/ Why do you have to go?”

The first time through, hearing “Graze” explode into this weird sing-along RenFaire jig is a bit of a shock. It sounds very far from what we imagine a hip, frequently name-checked indie band with abrasive experimental roots to sound like. And their performance of it is certainly not tongue-in-cheek: They sound joyful, and they’re not smirking. (I’m not sure they’re capable of that particular expression, to be honest.) And thus it becomes clear that Animal Collective, despite having become a certain kind of alt touchstone in 2009, doesn’t much care about conventional notions of cool. If they want to get dorky and put in a section that asks you to bust out the medieval garb and hop around on one leg for a minute, they’ll do it. And maybe they’ll put this song in the lead spot on an EP that follows up the biggest and most successful record of their career. All this went through my mind before finding out, after reading Fall Be Kind‘s credits, that the flute sample comes courtesy of an artist whose name became a punchline after an endless run of goofy TV spots advertising his music: Zamfir, the Master of the Pan Flute. Cool? These guys aren’t sweating it.

Like their last three EPs of new material, Fall Be Kind exists in the orbit of the full-length that preceded it but it isn’t defined by it. It’s got songs written before and during the creation of Merriweather Post Pavilion, but they’re songs that didn’t fit that record for one reason or another. Given its fragmented genesis, it’s surprising how listenable and of-a-piece Fall Be Kind is. “Graze” flows directly into “What Would I Want? Sky”, a song that samples Grateful Dead’s “Unbroken Chain” and is easily among the most warm, likeable, and melodic tracks Animal Collective have recorded. It refracts Aquarian optimism through a modern sense of uncertainty, undercutting the loop’s jovial lilt with a tricky structure and lyrics that seem confused about what will happen next. “Sky” contains the first officially licensed sample of the Dead, and it’s the best marketing move the band’s organization has made since they greenlighted Cherry Garcia. It’s not easy to take a cut-up voice and make it the centerpiece of a tune, and it’s harder still to sing along with it in a way that doesn’t sound forced. But “What Would I Want? Sky” sounds as natural as something that grew out of the earth.

The final three songs are more abstract and dreamy. “Bleed” feels like an interlude, something the band might have put on an album five years ago. It’s a shifting drone, with Portner and Lennox’s treated voices singing one simple refrain. It doesn’t develop or do much, but it’s not supposed to. Instead, it serves as a bridge to the EP’s darker second half, which kicks off with “On a Highway”. Something like the A.C. version of Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page”, “On a Highway” is a lonesome tour lament. Over a throbbing, dubby background, which is punctuated by thwacks of hand drums that slowly rise in the mix, Portner offers a series of scenes glimpsed out the window of a van, and he gets unusually personal, even referencing his bandmate directly (“Sick of too much reading/ Jealous of Noah’s dreaming/ Can’t help my brain from thinking”). Lennox’s closing “I Think I Can” is the one song here that takes a few listens to sink in. It’s longer (a touch over seven minutes), with busier production (sequenced piano notes, synth pulses, percussion, and voices flying back and forth between the speakers) and a more circular melody, but the final two minutes provide a terrific payoff to the opening clatter, with Lennox repeating the title’s affirmation in a quick descending pattern as the song finally opens up.

At 27 minutes, Fall Be Kind is short enough to invite another play once “I Think I Can” fades out, which means a return to that striking second half of “Graze”. When a band tries something that shouldn’t work and brings it off, it’s a sign of confidence. Animal Collective’s focus and general disinterest in looking over their shoulders obviously makes what they’re doing that much more appealing. But the most interesting thing about them at this point may be that, despite all the great music they’ve been making the past few years, it’s not hard to imagine them failing. They’ve honed their craft and become very good at what they do, but there still seems to be a desire to go to unfamiliar realms, and it’s possible that wherever they head next will turn out to be place they don’t inhabit as easily. There’s still a sense of gamble with Animal Collective, nothing is fixed– and that’s exactly what makes them an especially exciting band.

There was an exact moment when Rihanna stopped being a milquetoast pop automaton and started to establish a persona unto herself. It wasn’t “Umbrella”; however ubiquitous, that megasmash’s most meaningful and believable utterances– “ella, ella, eh, eh, eh”– meant nothing. It wasn’t February 8, 2009, when Chris Brown beat her with enough force to warrant a 50-yard, three-year restraining order; though that incident and its aftermath informs most of Rated R. And it wasn’t her piercing, uncomfortable, and ultimately valiant interview with Diane Sawyer, where she embraced her role as de facto domestic violence spokesperson with a level-headed understanding far beyond her 21 years.

On 2008’s no. 1 single “Take a Bow”, Rihanna blew off a philandering numbskull and delivered her most realistic performance to date. When she scoffed “please” at the whimpering chump 43 seconds into the track, she officially put the ice queen routine behind her and entered the realm of full-blooded pop stars. (Her newly severe, emo-boy-esque haircut seen in the song’s video did not hurt, either.) “Take a Bow” was witty, funny, and as full of attitude as kiss offs come, and Rihanna definitely sounded like she was having fun with the imagined breakup. Fallouts mark Rated R as well, though they are decidedly heavier. Over the course of the album, Rihanna puts a revolver to her temple on “Russian Roulette”, recalls “white outlines” on “Cold Case Love”, and even threatens to crash head-on into a boyfriend on “Fire Bomb”– not exactly the most politically correct metaphor in the age of IEDs, but it does get her point across. In a recent interview, Rihanna described the Rated R recording sessions as “theraputic,” and the vitriolic, rough, raw end product is about as brutal as you’d expect.

The brutality comes in two modes: sentimentally self-lacerating and superhero defiance. The bulletproof guise is good for the record’s high point on “Hard”, a strutting statement of power bolstered by a roiling undertow of a beat from “Umbrella” producer Tricky Stewart. “Brilliant/ Resilient/ Fan mail from 27 million,” huffs Rihanna, slyly acknowledging the need for such an anthem while justifying its existence. The similarly chest-thumping “Rockstar 101” and “G4L” are harder to justify considering their mindless boasts and torpid production. The more melodramatic fare is also mixed. For every “Fire Bomb”– a stunningly overzealous power ballad Pink would blow shit up for– there’s something like the actually-quite-dim “Stupid in Love” or the lost-in-translation lesbian farce “Te Amo”, both of which aim for Almodóvar but end up closer to Telemundo.

The ballads also suffer due to the fact that they require singing– which still isn’t Rihanna’s forte (tellingly, aforementioned highlight “Hard” is a near-rap with single-syllable “yeahs” for a hook). The strumming “Photographs” comes replete with teary-eyed remembrances (“all I’ve got are these photographs”) and a hint of poignant anachronism– after all, most photos are a “delete” button away from nothingness nowadays. On the track, Rihanna is more wounded than ever, her voice offering as-yet-unheard levels of tenderness. Then, just as her sorrow peaks, the track is sunk by an infuriatingly tone-deaf and goofy verse from producer will.i.am, who can be a real asshole. It’s a frustrating moment from an album pockmarked with them.

Like its lyrical themes, Rated R‘s tones are decidedly darker than anything Rihanna’s done; notably, UK dubstep producers Chase & Status provide production on a few tracks, marking a U.S. pop breakthrough for the bass-riddled genre. Specifically, the undercooked-yet-alluring “Wait Your Turn” shows promise for future dubstep crossovers, and the loping style matches Rihanna’s dourness for better and worse (see: the cartoonish tough-chick clunker “G4L”). Canned rock flourishes turn “Rockstar 101” [ft. Slash], “Russian Roulette”, and “The Last Song” into instantly-dated missteps from a bygone era when a Slash feature was cool. The Stargate-produced “Rude Boy” is the flightiest thing here, a club trifle that would fit snugly on 2007’s Good Girl Gone Bad. It also trumps much of the album’s “riskier” material.

Talking about Rated R in a promo interview, Rihanna said, “Anybody can make a hit, but I wanted a real album.” Such is the flawed logic of a newly legal drinker who has known only skyrocketing commercial success. While the singer is trying to accentuate her individuality and independence with this album, the “dark” and/or “mature” LP is nothing new– from Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope to Christina Aguilera’s Stripped to Kelly Clarkson’s My December, the rebel record is now a de rigeur coming-of-age maneuver. Based on Rated R, Rihanna’s artistic aspirations are currently loftier than her abilities. Then again, her tenacity in the face of the unimaginable public humiliation this year is beyond brave. For a while, Rihanna lacked a compelling narrative but couldn’t yawn without hitting the Top 10. Now her story is overflowing, but her songs aren’t sticking as they once did. Not just anybody can make a hit, and no one can make hits all the time.

You won’t likely hear many tracks this year weirder or more unsettling than the first one on Luciano’s Tribute to the Sun. Can you imagine sucking on a mouthful of pennies– not just the taste of it, but also all the squirms and shudders that would come to pass? Does it make sense to describe a sound as “sour”? If that means anything, does it make such a sound in a dance track sound appealing? Like something worth savoring? Would it help or hurt to know that the sour-pennies part is just one of several parts that run concurrently for almost nine minutes, with some of the others being an anxiously pitched-up tribal chant and what might well be a dozen murderous kids clapping?

Luciano is a techno producer whose sound-world is uncommonly vast and even more uncommonly fertile. In a realm where steely shades of gray compete for space within formalist grids, Luciano favors subtle washes of color. More than that, though, he plays the minimalist’s game of placing sounds where they can grow. An evocative rustle here, a suggestive tap there– something interesting will always happen in between such things if the conditions are made right.

They certainly are in “Los Niños de Fuera”. That’s the first track on Tribute to the Sun, and it works as both a functional charge and a wide-open statement of intent. As the distended vocal wail (the sour-penny part) duels with the handclap chant, the effect is simultaneously ghostly and bursting with life– something both exotic and immediately identifiable. It’s as good an encapsulation of Luciano’s aesthetic as anything he has done.

The whole album makes good on the wide spread of Luciano’s sound, which shares a lot with the lilting experimentalism of Ricardo Villalobos and so many others tracing techno lines these days between South America and Europe. (Luciano has roots in Chile and a home in Switzerland.) “Celestial” follows the album-opener with a percussive mix of hand-drum runs and minimal house beats that scan as South American for all their airy, woody timbres and especially their patience. They’re also trademark Luciano in the way they’re haunted by a humid bass-line that seems to be humming to itself when not distracted to silence by something happening out of ear-shot.

Tracks like “Conspirer” and “Hang for Bruno” take mellow forays through melodic passes, the latter with a gorgeous quasi-trumpet sound that would’ve worked on Miles Davis and Gil Evans’ Sketches of Spain. But it’s the dance tracks that prove most striking. “Africa Sweat” features vocals by Senegalese singer Ali Boulo Santo and an awful lot of touch, in the infectious rhythms as well as some subtle but wowing EQ-tweaks on the kora and drum sounds. The same subtlety plays into “Metodisima”, which runs through an IDM egghead’s store of rhythmic ideas while sounding effortless and contented. Much of Luciano’s best handiwork on Tribute to the Sun works like that: It’s easy to miss certain things in the rush or swell of the mood, but it’s just as pleasing to go back and try to take stock of all that he’s doing without making too big a show of it.

Mayer Hawthorne

A Strange Arrangement, in addition to being the name of Mayer Hawthorne’s falsetto-laced debut, also describes the story behind the making of this one-man soul studio. Performing in L.A. as DJ Haircut, Michigan-born hip-hop fan Drew Cohen thought it would be interesting to record his own sample-friendly music. His complicated form of crate digging eventually attracted the ears of Stones Throw founder Peanut Butter Wolf. According to a Real Detroit Weekly interview, Cohen even turned to the adolescent-approved porn name formula– his middle name and the street he grew up on– as a device for creating his sweet soul singer alter ego. When he received a recording contract for what he thought was a single release, he realized Wolf wanted a full-length and had to bunker down, since he ended up writing and recording just about every part on the album himself. It’s not as authentic and gritty a bio as those found in the liner notes of many soul reissues. But Hawthorne’s on-the-fly origins are fitting for this release, alternately carefree, charming, and sometimes as green as the 29-year-old crooner.

Hawthorne’s smooth voice draws deeply from the work of legends like Smokey Robinson, Curtis Mayfield, and the Stylistics’ Russell Thompkins, Jr. While his naming convention may suggest otherwise, Hawthorne never gets near any R-rated love affairs. Posing in a study surrounded by ephemera on the cover, he sort of looks like a lost Tenenbaum, and plays up a lovelorn, sweet angle throughout the album.

He shines brightest on straightforward tracks where he doesn’t overplay his hand, instead folding his innocent vocals into catchy, energetic, and unfussy arrangements. He can’t match the instrumental chops of Daptone bands or Mark Ronson projects, so he sticks to the basics. Coasting on driving backbeats, feel-good horn and sax melodies, and pleas for passion, “Your Easy Lovin’ Ain’t Pleasin’ Nothin'”, “One Track Mind”, and “Make Her Mine” are streamlined soul, catchy singles that do right by their obvious 1960s influences. “The Ills” nails a Mayfield vibe out of the gate, threading fluid congas among empowering choruses and lyrics about broken levees and single-parent families. “A Strange Arrangement” and “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out”, mid-tempo numbers with more falsetto and apologies for walking away from relationships, showcase blended vocal harmonies. Other than the occasional clockwork backbeat, the closest this comes to Cohen’s hip-hop roots is when he slurs “scared” so it rhymes with “bird.”

The lovelorn singer doesn’t always handle being on the receiving end of a break up quite as well. While lamenting on “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out”, his syrupy vocals stall a bit, and “Green Eyed Love” lumbers along on a half-hearted organ melody and slack rhythm. Hawthorne clearly has the ability to integrate and recreate his influences in his own compositions; it would be revelatory if he added more of his own signature sounds and soul into the music.

Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreak was undoubtedly a divisive record, but a rare one where it felt like both sides were essentially making the same argument: We care about it because it was made by Kanye West. It’s a backhanded compliment, acknowledging that everything he does is a vital listen but also that it would be tougher to overlook the LP’s glaring flaws had it come from someone who hadn’t built up a decade of goodwill through his musical work and personal transparency. No wonder Kid Cudi threatened to retire before he even put out Man on the Moon: The End of Day— his debut essentially exists because of a record that drew most of its power from a singular cult of personality, and that’s a lot to live up to.

Cudi co-wrote several tracks on 808s (most notably guesting on “Welcome to Heartbreak”), and combined with hits in Drake’s “Best I Ever Had” and Cudi’s own “Day ‘N’ Nite”, the commercial resiliency of that album proved that fad or not, this sadsack backpack stuff is here to stay. But whereas 808s was a record about a very public figure attempting a retreat he’d be incapable of sustaining, Man on the Moon uses quotidian, lonely stoner turmoil as a means of introduction.

Now, I still check for Atmosphere projects and I’ve got a functioning knowledge of the Get Up Kids’ discography, so I can’t knock Man on the Moon for skewing emo. And we won’t play the hipster card, since this record lives and dies by its lyrics as much as any document of spit-these-bars formalism. The problem is how these two impulses feed off each other in all the wrong ways, with Cudi inverting the songwriting process so that a supposed pursuit of honesty is rendered predatory and manipulative. “I got some issues that nobody can see,” goes the hook to “Soundtrack 2 My Life”, and it’s a boast as grandiose as you’re likely to hear in 2009. Throughout, Cudi’s issues could not be rendered in a more clumsy or obvious way, blowing up every slight perceived or real (“had mad jobs and I lost damn near all of them”) into trials of such mythical proportions that it needs a bogus four-part “plot” (Cudi is sad, does mushrooms, starts to get famous, is still sad) and narration from Common.

Cudi also slathers his verses with a flat warble that Auto-Tune was made to salvage. It would be numbing enough on its own, but nearly every 30 seconds there’s some terrifyingly underwritten lyric to jolt you into sharp pangs of embarrassment. He’s referred to as “our hero” throughout Man on the Moon, and his superpower is managing to convey unlimited amounts of 🙁 while staying firmly in his vocab-stunted “sorrow”-“tomorrow”/ “room”-“moon” wheelhouse of rhymes. “Look at me/ You tell me just what you see/ Am I someone whom you may love/ Or enemy,” goes a particularly Brandon Flowers-like line of the otherwise effectively spare “Mr. Solo Dolo (Nightmare)”. As far as rap metaphors go, Cudi is Katrina with no FEMA: “I live in a cocoon/ Opposite of Cancun/ Where it is never sunny/ Dark side of the moon,” or, even more pointedly, “Gray clouds up above, man/ Metaphor to my life, man.”

But what’s most frustrating of all is that Cudi can make Man on the Moon feel like a missed opportunity instead of a non-starter. His hooks have a way of burrowing into your brain– you already know the deal with “Day ‘N’ Nite”, and “Simple As…” bears a strange resemblance to “Semi-Charmed Life” but damn if I’ll be able to forget it any time soon. He’s also got a really keen ear for sounds: “Mr. Solo Dolo” nods to the warped Orientalism from Silent Shout‘s quieter tracks and you almost wish the tangible warmth emanating from the strings on “In My Dreams” would reveal itself in something other than a somnambulant intro. Cruelest of all, the album goes a long ways towards redeeming itself with its final two tracks– “Hyyerrr” nods to the haziest productions from DJ U-Neek while “Up Up & Away” unabashedly makes its alt-rock intentions known with jarringly optimistic acoustic guitars.

It makes you think things could get better if Cudi manages to cheer up in the future (and why not? Man on the Moon is the rare record in 2009 that’s beating sales expectations), but then we might just end up with more songs like “Enter Galactic” and “Make Her Say”, the “Poker Face” remake where Cudi, ‘Ye, and Common play misogynistically against type for laughs and somehow make you feel bad for Lady Gaga. Even with “Stapleton Sex” and “Gihad” making the rounds recently, it’s probably still the most noxious sex rap I’ve managed to hear in some time.

Cudi would like to think this record is critic-proof, or at least that’s what I cull from his decision to paraphrase the “there will always be somebody who will shoot down any dream” line from Kanye’s “Bring Me Down”. But that number up there isn’t a judgment of Cudi’s pain, as much as it is an ability to express it– being misunderstood in the Midwest and lost in the big city will never fail to inspire phenomenal art in twentysomethings, but Cudi too often assumes some sort of higher ground even though his self-pity is flaunted no differently than any other tacky rapper accessory.