Quick Hits, Vol. 132 (The Lox, Bas, Kendrick Lamar, Dropkick Murphys)

The Lox - Filthy America...It's Beautiful.  Weird ass album title.  I talked about these guys a few weeks ago, where all I remember from them was a guest verse or two on a Puffy or B.I.G. track from the mid-90's.  One third of this group is Jadakiss, who has made some good tunes in between here and there.  But overall, this is kind of plain.  It still sounds like a mid-90's rap album, including a terrible and long spoken interlude thing where they make it seem like a crowd of reporters would want to talk to these guys and would be fighting to ask them questions.  So lame.  So Will Smith from back in his popular days.  The most listened to track is the one I talked about a few weeks ago, "What Else You Need to Know," but I'm sure it just has the most listens because it was out for longer.  The top track otherwise is "Secure the Bag," which makes me think it is an off-brand version of Run the Jewels.

That opening voice sounds so much like DJ Khaled I had to go do internet research.  And it is!  Weird that he didn't get a shoutout sample in there, but I guess since he talks at the beginning about KEYS he figured that was good enough.  Eh, the beat is fine.  Nothing special.  And the lyrics are nothing special either.  Just about securing the bag because it has lots of money in it.  Yawn.  It gets much worse on the track with Fetty Wap.  There is no reason to listen to Fetty Wap do anything.  I can do without this.

Bas - Too High to Riot.  I found this guy through some best rap of 2016 list that named this one a top album of the year.  Here is a crazy-sounding statistic noted on the album's Wikipedia page - the album debuted at #49 on the Billboard 200 chart.  Care to guess what gets your debut into the top 50 in 2016?  500k? 100k? 50k? 10k? 2k? 14?  Only 8,065 albums sold and you can crack the top 50.  That seems crazy, but I guess no one buys records anymore...
But whatever, I like this guy's raps.  He's got a good delivery and good beats.  I thought that "Housewives" would be the most popular track (because I had heard it a while back on a mix-tape), but it comes in at second place to the J. Cole assisted "Night Job" with 16.1 million streams.

Oh damn.  He's a big ol' dude.  The cover of this album has a little kid holding an assault rifle over his head one-handed, so I had no idea what he would look like, but he's a hoss. Good track, this whole album is interesting and good.

Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.  Honestly, I'm not sure that it even makes sense for me to write about this album, as I'll be unpacking it for months AND every website everywhere has already written a ten thousand word dissection of every song.  Literally, I just read one that was talking about the significance of this being scheduled for release on April 7.  Somehow that ties into a verse in the Bible.  People are crazy.
But, this is what I do, so here we go.  Actually before I start talking about this album I have to note that I have been listening to good kid m.A.A.d city in my car for the past two weeks, and it is SO FREAKING GOOD.  Seriously, go listen again to the opening track ("Sherane a.k.a Master Splinter's Daughter"), which is not the hot hit from the album, but is such a top notch fantastic bit of story-telling that perfectly sets up the rest of the album.  The naive lust on the track, plus the little details, and then the way it dovetails into that first voice mail, its just so freaking great.
So, this album does not have an obvious storyline like GKMC did, but a few tracks immediately stand out with rock solid beats and lyrics.  Maybe it does have a storyline, just reading the song titles in order, with BLOOD and DNA starting it off, followed by YAH, ELEMENT, and FEEL.  LOYALTY, PRIDE, and HUMBLE.  Then the LUST, LOVE, and XXX trilogy comes along before FEAR and GOD.  I don't know what that story says, but I'd say the themes of this album are the fact that no one is praying for Lamar, that police are scary, that Fox News sucks, and that Lamar has a lot of fears.
"DNA" and "HUMBLE" are the easy hits, I think - the beat on "DNA" is dope as hell and the lyric on "HUMBLE" where he is bagging on photoshop and says he wants to see some stretchmarks, that is perfect.  That track was released before the rest of the album, so it is the runaway king of the album as of now with 72.8 million streams.

Another 73 million views on YouTube.  My question about the track is whether he is talking to himself (my theory) or to his competition.  The Genius song annotation makes the argument that this is a message to his competition, telling them to sit down and shut up and be humble.  I guess I see that, since he is calling himself the Sandman and telling people to get off the stage.  But my thought in listening the first few times is that he is talking to himself - the first verse is his rags to riches story, eating syrup sandwiches to being able to buy the world with his paystub, but then the end of the verse hard stops into saying to sit down and be humble.  I like that version of the story much more than the one that is Kendrick bragging about how everyone else should be humble in front of his amazingness. I don't know, I like to think of Kendrick Lamar as being above that kind of petty little beef garbage and on a higher level.
One thing I definitely don't like on here are the DJ shoutouts that keep happening, like this is some low rent mixtape.  "NEW SHIT!  NEW KUNG FU KENNY!"  Lame.  But one thing I do like is how this album shifts back and forth between the more traditional rap beats as he used on GKMC (see "DNA" or "ELEMENT") and the more jazz-influenced sound he used on To Pimp a Butterfly (see "FEEL" or "FEAR").
The final song is awesome as well, "DUCKWORTH."  This is apparently the story of the founder of Lamar's label, Top Dawg Entertainment, and how that dude was going to hold up the KFC where Lamar's father (Ducky) worked, but Ducky hooked him up with free chicken and extra biscuits, so Tiffith let him live.  Its a cool story, the thought that TDE and Kendrick could just not be here today if things had gone differently at that KFC 20 years ago.
Oh yeah, and U2 appears on this album.  Which sounds weird as crap, but actually works really well.  It isn't a sample, it isn't some terrible thing of Bono trying to rap or Mullen trying to replicate a rap beat with his drums, its just an interlude in the midst of an already busily shapeshifting song, where drum, bass, and piano combine to form a new beat and Bono sings a hook before Lamar continues a diatribe against the current America.  Pretty cool.
First impression after two days of repeat listening is that this is good.  So far, I don't think it is as interesting as either good kid or To Pimp, but that may just be the effect of listening for years instead of just two days.  I'll be keeping this one around to mess with mentally.

Dropkick Murphys - 11 Short Stories of Pain & Glory.  The Murphys really are an amazing band.  I can't think of anyone else who has been this exactly dedicated to one sound and maintained it over the course of 3,000 albums.  I own 2003's Blackout and 2005's The Warrior's Code, and I'll say this, other than a few songs, including the Patriot's Day ode of "4-15-13," this is the same exact formula that has made them awesome over the years - brash Irish-inflected punk made for singing along in a pub or the cheap seats at Fenway.  You can just imagine groups yelling these pithy phrases as they slosh cheap beer on each other: "Don't Count Me Out!"  "I'm a Survivor!"  "Straight from the Heart til the Job's DONE!"  "You'll Never Walk Alone!"  "Hold Your Head up High!"
You may remember them from their "Shipping Up to Boston" Woodie Guthrie-penned tune that was used in The Departed.  And now the Boston sports teams use it at games to get people hyped up.  The most popular tracks from this album are the fast burners, not the few introspective ones, that are made for sing-alongs and soccer stadium chants, with second place going to the "Lonesome Boatman" and its woaoooaooaooaoooaaah soccer chant appearing as the only lyrics over a driving rock track laced with Irish flute.  First place is "Blood," with 1.4 million streams.

Can't you hear a stadium of hooligans screaming this, chugging their tallboys, stubbing out their smokes, and then throwing down into an epic scrap with their bitter rivals?  BLOOD!  BLOOD!  You're not writing the great American novel here, but you're definitely tapping in to a real set of feelings about finding a group and rising up against something else.  Very Irish sentiment.