Category: Music

#REVIEW: Tupac Shakur, the Authorized Biography, by Staci Robinson

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music, Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

I’m not generally the type to gatekeep, but it’s not hard to find out whether someone is a Tupac fan or not. Ask them his birthday.

June 16th, 1971/ Mama gave birth to a hell-raising heavenly son/ See the doctor tried to smack me but I smacked him back/ my first words was thug for life, and Papa pass the Mac

That’s the first lines of Cradle to the Grave, the penultimate track from his album Thug Life, and … okay, you can be a Pac fan and not know that line right off, but I think more of us do than don’t. And I’ve taken a moment to myself on more June 16ths than not, since he passed away. Not a big thing, mind. Just a moment. But he made sure we all knew his birthday so I figure it’s worth remembering.

There have been a lot of words written about this man since his death. Take a look at Amazon; a search for “Tupac books” will provide you with half a dozen self-published books about him, mostly full of conspiracy theories, and any number of other works written by more, uh, authoritative entities. It was the words Authorized Biography on the cover that got me to pick this one up; turns out Tupac’s mother Afeni Shakur hand-picked Staci Robinson to write this book, which immediately gives it a hell of a lot more authenticity than the usual.

Part of me didn’t want to read it, to be honest. Pac is one of a very small number of people whose deaths made me cry. I don’t remember exactly where I was when I found out Kurt Cobain had killed himself. I don’t remember where I was when I found out Christopher Reeve or Stan Lee had passed. I remember where I was when I found out about Chadwick Boseman, but there were no tears. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I found out Tupac was gone. I wasn’t completely certain I wanted to revisit everything, to be honest.

And the thing is, it’s not going to be that difficult to write a biography of Tupac Shakur that doesn’t properly respect him, “authorized” or not. Afeni Shakur died in 2016 so it’s not as if she was around to review the manuscript. A whole lot of people he was close to are gone, as a matter of fact. And … well, let’s be real. Pac was messy. At best. He wasn’t the violent, unrepentant criminal that the news media portrayed him as, but he had a hell of a self-destructive streak that was showing itself very early in his life and that he never really got control of as an adult, particularly in his last few years. If he hadn’t been shot in Vegas in 1996, the cops would have gotten him by now. There was never a universe where Tupac Shakur lived to die of old age, and he knew it.

It was a moment, the day when I realized I’d outlived him.

This is a worthy memorial to him, I think. Robinson had access to what must have been an enormous volume of Pac’s own writings dating back to his childhood– one thing I’ve heard about him from every single person who ever knew him is that the man was never without a notebook close to hand, and could shut out the rest of the world when he got something in his head that needed to be written down. I’m not going to dig up the video right now, but Shock-G tells a great story about Pac disappearing for a while, walking around looking for him, and finding him in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, buck naked, and writing lyrics in a notebook.

The book is stuffed full of poems and fragments of lyrics and drawings and other writings, so many that I’m pretty confident that I’d recognize Tupac’s handwriting if you put it in front of me. It’s difficult to write biographies of writers and musicians, honestly, especially when they died young– it’s easy to fall into a rhythm of and then he wrote THIS, and then he wrote THAT, and sales charts and blah blah blah, and the book ends up in a lot of ways being a history of his intellectual development as much as anything else. He could have been one of history’s greatest intellects, born at a different time and in different circumstances. Robinson talks about his voraciousness for reading and his compulsive need to write in a way that, fifteen years ago, would have put me in mind of Thomas Jefferson and nowadays can’t help but remind one of Alexander Hamilton.

I never knew that he’d gotten married while he was in jail. Never knew that he’d dated Madonna, either, which I find hilarious. And I fell down a hell of a rabbit hole this afternoon when I realized that the book never mentioned Juilliard– I knew that he’d attended, but not graduated from, the Baltimore School for the Arts, which was where he met Jada Pinkett, who became a lifelong friend, but I thought that he’d attended Juilliard at least briefly. This story turns out to be false, and I’d love to know where the hell it came from– if you search for “Tupac Shakur Juilliard” you’ll find dozens of people confidently revealing that he’d gone there, often under a full scholarship, but Juilliard doesn’t seem to know about it, and it’s not mentioned on Wikipedia, and it wasn’t mentioned in the book. Pac never graduated high school, as it turns out, although he did eventually get his GED. I know I’ve told people that he went to Juilliard. I really do wish I had a way to track down the source of that story.

If I have a criticism of the biography, it’s that the book ends as abruptly as Tupac’s life did; he dies on the literal last page, and while I don’t think Robinson had any responsibility to get into any of the rumors and wild conspiracy theories about his death, especially once The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory(*) came out posthumously, I feel like something about the police (lack of) investigation and his legacy would have been warranted. His ashes are buried in Soweto, in South Africa. I didn’t know that, and I found out from Wikipedia today, not from this book. The man has released more albums since he died than he did when he was alive; I feel like one chapter in his book after his death isn’t asking too much.

That’s what I’ve got, though. No other real criticisms, and while I wasn’t initially sure I wanted to read this, in the end I’m glad I did. I haven’t taken the time to listen through his discography in a while, and I’ve been bobbing my head to Me Against the World while I’ve been writing this. All Eyez On Me is next, and that one needs to be LOUD, so I may need an excuse to take a drive for a couple of hours. We’ll see. In the meantime, this is well worth your time and money.

(*) If you really want to gatekeep Tupac fandom, ask somebody what the actual name of this album is, as I think most people just call it “The Makaveli album,” and I admit I just typed out The 7 Day Theory and had to stare at it for a minute to figure out what I’d left out.

#REVIEW: Orgy of the Damned, by Slash

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I commented to my wife last night, on the eve of the release of Slash’s Orgy of the Damned, that I was super psyched about the album coming out, and I felt kind of odd about it. She asked why, as she does, and I pointed out that he’s had quite a few solo albums since his Guns ‘n’ Roses and Velvet Revolver years (this is number six, as it turns out) and as I own exactly none of them I couldn’t explain why I was so excited about this one in particular. Nonetheless, I’d found out it was coming out a couple of months ago and had been checking on a regular basis since then to see if it had magically come out early.

I genuinely didn’t remember what had gotten me so hyped about it. Then it came out this morning, and I bought and downloaded it immediately. As it turns out, Billie Eilish also has a new album out today, also downloaded immediately, and I chose (poorly, as it turns out, because Billie’s music doesn’t really lend itself to highway driving in my car) to listen to the Eilish album on the way to work. I queued up the Slash album on the way home, and the first song hit.

Oh.

Oh.

Slash– yes, Guns ‘n’ Roses Slash, Velvet Revolver Slash, sexy faceless top-hat big-hair yes-that-Slash, fucking Slash Slash, released a blues album.

Motherfucker.

Yeah, that’s why the fuck I was excited, because some of you with similar tastes as mine are already flailing around and happydancing and spending money, and how I managed to discover that Slash had a blues album coming out and then forgot it was a blues album while still somehow intensely anticipating its release anyway is an open question,(*) but now that it’s here I might actually listen to it more than Dark Matter this week. I mean, maybe not, but it’ll at least come close.

As far as I know the album is entirely covers, mostly of blues standards, although Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes does an absolutely stunning fucking version of Steppenwolf’s The Pusher, which is definitely bluesy as hell but maybe isn’t quite a standard. But he does Hoochie Coochie Man with Billy F. Gibbons, and Born Under a Bad Sign with Paul Rodgers, and Papa Was a Rolling Stone and Stormy Monday, and did you know Iggy Pop was, if not actually still alive, at least still recording music from beyond the grave? Because he does a version of Awful Dream that probably doesn’t live up to Lightnin’ Hopkins but is definitely sung by a corpse while Slash is playing guitar.

Okay, every track’s not amazing. But then there’s Key to the Highway, sung by someone just named Dorothy, who I need to know more about, and Demi Lovato is on here for some reason? And if you haven’t gone out and bought this yet, I’m probably not going to talk you into it, but I really need to go back and check out the rest of Slash’s solo releases, because he truly is one of the most amazing guitarists alive and this album is an absolute delight and there’s no reason to think the rest of his solo work isn’t similarly amazing. Go get it.

(*) It is possible that the fact that the thing is called Orgy of the Damned might have something to do with it, as there are approximately 92087346181 titles available in the English language that are going to immediately scan as more blues-adjacent than “Orgy of the Damned.”

Guess what I’m doing tonight

On By Luther M. SilerIn MusicLeave a comment

On nepotism and Willow Smith’s EMPATHOGEN

On By Luther M. SilerIn movies, Music, ParentingLeave a comment

Fun fact: under certain circumstances, I’m not at all convinced that nepotism is a bad thing. Take sports, for example. My understanding is that there’s been some debate about whether Lebron James’ son Bronny ought to be entering the NBA draft or not. But here’s the thing: maybe (I have no idea, and don’t intend to check) Bronny can use his dad’s no doubt impressive influence to get drafted higher than he might be otherwise. But if he can’t perform at the NBA level, he’s not going to perform at an NBA level. There’s nothing Lebron can do if his kid goes out there and averages two points and six turnovers a game. He’s not gonna get playing time, and if he does, there are a billion people out there who are going to be losing money when he’s on the court and eventually it’s going to catch up with him. I remember when Bob Knight insisted on recruiting his son Patrick. Patrick dragged down the team. It was a terrible fucking idea and IU’s basketball program paid for it.

It seems like the place where nepotism is the biggest problem is in politics and business, along with those parts of the entertainment business where, y’know, knowing things can be useful. There are too many examples here for it to be really necessary to list any, but nonetheless, the previous occupant’s wastrel children and Meghan McCain come to mind immediately. You don’t even know about Meghan McCain because her dad was good at something. You know about Meghan McCain because her grandfather was good at something. Similarly, Eric Trump would be living in a trailer park if his grandfather hadn’t been rich. Go find a picture of Rudy Giuliani’s kid sometime. He barely even looks human.

Which brings me to Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s children. They have tried, tried oh so hard, to make Jaden Smith a thing. Jaden Smith’s not a thing. He’s not gonna be a thing. Because in order to actually be a thing in the entertainment industry he’d have to be talented, and if he is talented I have yet to see any evidence of it. Which is why he doesn’t show up in things that don’t have his parents’ money and influence behind them.

Now let’s talk about Willow.

Okay, you would never have heard Whip my Hair if it wasn’t for Willow’s parents. Fine. But do you happen to remember how that story ended? The kid shaved her head in the middle of the tour so that she didn’t have to perform the song any longer. She’s got all kinds of interviews talking about it, but I’ve always enjoyed hearing Will discussing it here.

Willow just released empathogen, a … jazz album? I have her two previous albums; I haven’t listened to anything earlier, although I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and dive into her work before I discovered her on lately I feel EVERYTHING. Her last two albums have been punk rock, and they have kicked ass. This is completely different, and from what I’ve seen her first three albums don’t sound like any of these last three either. I’m not convinced empathogen is a jazz album, although it’s definitely jazz inflected, but most of the instrumentation is guitar, bass and drums; if there are any horns or other strings on there I didn’t notice them on my first listen, which I will admit was in the car and not exactly careful. The vocals are definitely jazzy. I’m not even sure I liked the damn album, but I’m absolutely fascinated by it. (Thinking about it, empathogen is as much of a jazz album as Cowboy Carter is a country album. The influence is clearly there, but you can’t pin either album down to a single genre.)

There’s been some talk in the last few days about whether Willow is a “nepo baby,” in other words, whether she owes her career to her parents’ influence or not. I would like to suggest that given how wildly, insanely eclectic Willow’s musical output over the last nine years had been, I’m really fucking glad that her parents are Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith and not Steve and Carol Smith … because the kid wouldn’t have a career if she didn’t have a leg up. The music industry doesn’t work with people who refuse to fit into boxes like this. Can you imagine what would have happened if some random fuckin’ kid told Jay-Z that she was done with her fun little hair song and wasn’t touring any longer? We’d never have heard from her again. And, I mean, we can argue about whether Will Smith as a parent should have said “Okay, baby, I got you” or, uh, something else(*), but the fact is if her parents weren’t famous I wouldn’t have these albums, and if nepotism gets me lately I feel EVERYTHING and empathogen once in a while, I’ll maybe put up with some fourth-generation news nitwit if I have to.

Suri Cruise and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt are both either already or about to turn eighteen, by the way, so I look forward to the two of them owning the world in, oh, five years or so.

(*) “Baby, Mr. Jay-Z is going to cut Daddy’s balls off and bury both of us underneath Madison Square Garden. You’re gonna grow that hair back today if I have to sell your soul to Satan to make it happen.”

#REVIEW: Dark Matter, by Pearl Jam

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A secret about me: my opinions cannot always be trusted.

I was wandering through old posts the other day, as I am occasionally known to do, and I came across a post where I described Pearl Jam’s last album, Gigaton, as “forgettable” and had very high praise for Binaural, an album that I just said was possibly my least favorite of their albums. So … sometimes my opinions change! This is a thing that happens. In Gigaton’s case I am much more fond of it than I was when it first came out (this has been known to be a thing with their work, I’ll admit it) and while I don’t have anything bad to say about Binaural I was apparently really in the mood for it when I wrote that other paragraph.

So if you want to take me saying that Dark Matter is Pearl Jam’s best album since Vitalogy with a bit of salt, I will not look askance upon you. I will say this: the last time I remember being this floored by an album, the last time it ran through my head constantly for two weeks, the last time I listened to nearly nothing else (other than a few Taylor Swift spins, mostly under duress) for this length of time since it came out, was the Dave Matthews Band’s Crash in 1996.

I will have this entire album memorized soon. I don’t think there’s a single weak track. There’s one song, Something Special, where you could make an argument that it belongs more on an Eddie Vedder solo album than a Pearl Jam album, and one song has a bridge that I feel like sounds like a transition into another one of their songs, but that’s all the criticism I can muster.

It’s amazing. It’s their best work in, literally, two decades. I cannot wait to hear it live, and if you have ever been a Pearl Jam fan you owe it to yourself to pick this up. I’d go through song by song, but somehow I have another hockey game to go to in a few minutes, so this is the best I can do for now. If I’ve still got it on 24/7 rotation in another week or so I’ll go ahead and do that. For now, Scared of Fear, Wreckage, Won’t Tell and Waiting for Stevie are my favorite tracks, but again: there are no skips here. I love it I love it I love it.

Consider this a preview, I guess

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Yes, I know I haven’t reviewed the Pearl Jam album yet.

I fucking love it. I’ve been sitting on writing about it to see if the shine wears off and it hasn’t. This is their best album in a long, long time– definitely since Avocado and probably before that.

But I’ve been shaky and nauseous since I got home this afternoon after a day of feeling fine, and we’re still doing state testing tomorrow so I absolutely cannot miss work under any circumstances, so I’m probably going to go to bed obscenely early tonight. I’ll try and get a fuller review tomorrow, but if you’ve ever enjoyed a Pearl Jam album, you need to download this one right the hell now.

#REVIEW: The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, by Taylor Swift

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It’s boring.

There, I said it.

I could make this post a lot more complicated and detailed if I wanted to, I suppose. I have had a lot of thoughts about Taylor Swift over the years, and I am fully aware that Ms. Swift has no reason to care in even a hypothetical sense about what I think. She’s a billionaire and she’s more talented and influential than I will ever be at anything and I’m not the target audience for this anyway. I have had many, many opinions about her over the years; I still never really thought disappointment was going to be one of them. One of her greatest talents is how incredibly ear wormy her music is. I don’t care if you’re a Taylor Swift fan or not; you have five of her songs memorized. You may not even know you have five Taylor Swift songs memorized, but you do.

I have listened to this album at least four or five times by now, and I could name a couple of individual lyrics over its 31 tracks, but none because I thought they were clever or impressive. I was psyched about her doing a duet with Post Malone; he’s wasted. There are people mad at her about a line about living in the 1830s that is utterly a nothingburger and is out of context besides. There’s another line in another song that I thought was memorable until I realized that Justin Bieber of all fucking people had already written it. There’s one song where she says fuck, like, sixty times, but I can’t remember the name.

Four listens and I can’t hum a single track and there’s nothing I can even start singing along to even if I was capable of matching the slow, breathy voice she’s using for every single song. The whole thing sounds incredibly samey and there’s little variation in tone or tempo or musicality anywhere.

Also: ma’am, you are in your mid-thirties and it is time to stop singing about high school.

I dunno. I genuinely loved Evermore and Folklore and Midnights was pretty OK with a few tracks I really liked. This one’s a dud for me musically, and lyrically it’s yet another Taylor Swift Has Ex-Boyfriends album after three in a row with very little of that type of content.

I take no pleasure in this, but blech.

In which Taylor Swift did it again

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music1 Comment

I pre-ordered Midnights, Taylor Swift’s last studio album, only to discover when I got up on release day that she’d released a previously-unannounced deluxe “3 AM” edition with several extra tracks three fucking hours after the base version of the album released. She waited three hours and then released an entire new version of the album while I have to assume the vast majority of the people who had preordered were still fucking asleep and hadn’t had time to even listen to Midnights yet.

When The Tortured Poets Department got announced, with a pre-order available, although you could, if you wanted to, spend $1.99 to download something or another that was eight seconds long, I decided there were probably going to be shenanigans afoot again and decided not to pre-order the thing this time. It didn’t look like she was releasing any singles anyway, and she didn’t.

iTunes insisted that the thing was coming out on the 21st, so I was a little surprised when my wife let me know yesterday that it was out already. And that I’d been exactly right– Taylor had pulled the exact same bullshit move again, only worse— that now the new version was a fucking double album, and was clearly the version that she intended to release, for a dollar more than the original pre-order price, and a different cover, and yep, you can still order the original, half-length version if you want to … and every single person who pre-ordered it got the inferior version, because no fucker anywhere knew the “Anthology” version even existed prior to it being released a few hours after the fake-out version.

I have come around on her music after many years of loathing her, but holy shit, is this a bullshit move, and the people it’s hurting the most are her biggest fans. I can’t believe I’m not hearing more about it; maybe it’s a function of the fact that most people stream nowadays. I don’t know what proportion of her fanbase is still buying digital music rather than streaming it. One way or another, I feel like she– and by definition, Apple, as well as whoever else might have been involved in this– owes her fans either a fucking way to get a refund or a way to buy the extra tracks for a dollar. This is an absolute fucking asshole move.

Never, ever, pre-order a Taylor Swift album, kids.

(I haven’t listened to it yet, by the way. The new Pearl Jam album is, after four more listens in addition to the two in the theater, absolutely fucking phenomenal, and it’s absorbed my attention. I’ll give it a spin this weekend sometime.)