song of the year competition heats up

[crustcave]

So listen, I thought for sure that track, Say Goodbye to the Sea, on the new Trembling Blue Stars Album was a solid lock for my favorite track of the year, until I picked up the new Bone Thugs album, which I know I'm a little late on, but whatever. They fucking center a song around a Fleetwood Mac sample, Never Break the Chain, if you're interested. It's a fucking sick song, turning the weird inverted sexual tension of Fleetwood Mac and applying it to phony friends. Rarely has a sample been used so effectively. I mean it's more like a fucking epigram than just borrowing some weird cut that nobody's ever heard of a deep funk record. You could write a pretty lengthy essay on them using this sample. For instance have you ever noticed that Bone sings about romance less than any rap ensemble (or solo artist for that matter) ever? And that Fleetwood Mac has probably never written a song that wasn't about heartbreak. Are Bone Thugs soldiers to such an extent that they've clipped their heart's ventricles to further benefit their mission of brotherhood, bonding and really fast rapping that still manages to sound stoned? I know a lot of people talk about Outkast moving hip-hop beyond MCs rapping over beats and into a more pure musical art form, or some sort of shit that I think I can sort of understand (though I'll argue until I'm blue in the face that the context of these arguments are rooted in a swampy stink of racism, it's more about artists breaking boundaries than legitamizing an art form that hasn't needed legitamizing in years, but whatever) but the point is Bone Thugs does that on their new album with a subtlety Outkast will never ever have. Fuck it's just really goddamn good, expecially Wind Blow. The mix of hillblly and lightning quick midwest rap makes me understand what would have happened if Crucial Conflict had been really really talented.

I just wanted to rant about that for a little.