I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

Trae, "Real Talk"
Trae, "No Help" (feat. Z-Ro)

Whoops! I probably accidentally just made you think Restless - the debut album from Trae which you'll probably be hearing about long after the expiration date since all the college rap nerds are going to need SOMEthing to glom onto once the crushing weight of just how boring that Lupe Fiasco album really is begins to register - is way way way way way better than it actually is (CIRCUITOUSNESS~). Well, it ain't. I mean, one hates to be terse when talking about music, but facts are facts, and the weakness of Restless' middle section is about as obvious and immutable as the light-particle duality once you've experienced it. Plus his flow's not all that great - not that he's Rick Ross or anything, but God does the speed schtick get old after a while, and GOD do the attempts to slow things down and spit conventional ever grate (there is, after all, a reason why nobody ever listens to Twista albums straight through). Fuck, I didn't even have much time for "Cadillac", Restless' obligatory (and usually world-redeeming) posse cut with all the H-town players, and as someone who still uses the phrase "I got the internet goin' nuts" at least once a week in casual conversation, that's a hell of a departure.

But here's the thing: After one tour through "Real Talk", the second song on Restless (actually, the first if you don't count the intro, although the intro's a surprisingly weird, neat little track), I was frantically trying to push stuff around my ongoing best-of lists to make room for it; likewise, by the time "No Help" hit that impeccable chorus, I was already forgiving volumes and volumes of sins levied against my ears by the aforementioned soft-in-the-middle bit. These are killer fucking songs, the kind of songs that take over your earspace and start dictating the terms. It's pointless to deconstruct why; the great thing about Houston rap is that, probably more than any other major scene, it's so blissfully overt about itself - none of that pesky lyrical content or auteurist production techniques, just stuff you can either like or, well, who cares? I mean, whether or not you like "Real Talk", that shredding guitar sample is going to be coming through; fortunately it's an axe murderer, like someone took that moment in "Harder Better Faster Stronger" where all the samples get thrown in the cosmic blender and turned it into a menacing, skittering behemoth. Likewise, nobody gives a fuck about anyone's opinions about how come "No Help" works or not - hell, if you listen to the lyrics (assuming you can ever slither out from under the weight of the hook to get any perspective on the verses, anyway), that's kinda the point. They're good songs not because they don't need explanation, but because explanation might actually ruin them - and if there's one thing I learned from taking a class on the films of Steven Spielberg while attending USC's film school, it's how to not ruin something by talking about it too much.

But, in the end, that's practically the catch of Restless: there's three, maybe four songs tops that can't bear a lot of explanation, that stand up to out-riding-upon (and I'm being as charitable as possible and giving one of those slots to "D. Swang" despite the absence of that critical sample). As usual, I'm sure I'd be a lot more interested in the album's content if I ever concerned myself even a little bit with the quality of its execution; Trae definitely has his moments as a lyricist, and although to my ears most of those moments conveniently happen to be contained within "Real Talk" and "No Help", I'm sure someone with more of an investment in quality rap will turn up all kinds of great little shrugged-off bits the quality of "I'm a gangsta/they don't make these on the block". But judgements of quality are for people who like looking like they know something, and as we've covered time and time again in this space, that ain't me; I'd much rather just throw the two best tracks out there and let people turned on by their tangible, readily apparent virtues get down to business on their own. Sure beats the hell out of "O NOES, NOT ANOTHER SONG ABOUT SLANGIN' AND BANGIN' LOL", anyway. (Click here to order Restless from Amazon.com)

The Music, "Freedom Fighters" (Phones Electric Eliminator remix) - There's a very substantial part of my consciousness that wishes to Christ that superproducers would just stop working with the exceptionally loathesome Music; they are a disturbingly facile definition of a horribly dire band, and the world of music would only be greatly improved if the Music suddenly found themselves hurtling towards the sun at a remarkably high speed. And yet, they don't, and consequently my iPod will forever be water-logged with remixes like Jacques Lu Cont's of "Bleed From Within" or, now, this, courtesy of Who Know You. And - brace yourselves - it ain't going anywhere anytime soon, because it's a storming little slab of electro-house, exactly the kind of thing the boys in MSTRKRFT set out to make every time they sit down behind the boards. But it's still an incredibly dangerous artifact - I mean, I was just now listening to it again to write about it, and I actually caught myself thinking "Y'know, what with all the batshit freakout craziness happening on the actual track, especially once you get all those tinkling little synth shimmers, maybe all those sub-Primal Scream-y lyrics aren't so bad - hell, they actually almost kinda work if you look at them as the counterpoint to all that music going on, and then there's the issue of" and then I started beating myself with a hammer. I mean, it really is quite a little track and all, but there's simply no excuse for the Music. No there is not. (The Phones remix of "Freedom Fighters" was apparently only available on promo CDR, which I cannot find for sale on the internet anywhere for the life of me. Click here to visit Gemm's listing for all

ELSEWHERE
- Badminton Stamps with that hot new DFA remix of Hot Chip's "Colours". It may well be the most unexpected-sounding track they've put out in years. I can pretty much gurantee that whatever you'd have thought a DFA remix of a Hot Chip clapalong monster would sound like, it probably wasn't like this. In a good way, of course.

- POST ONE FITTY BITCHES