The Blancos

One Liner: Brooklyn dudes singing platitudes over hip hop beats.

Wikipedia Genre: No wikipedia.  Uh, like hip-hop-indie-R&B?  Alternative R&B?  Their terrible Spotify bio says the best way to describe their music is "sex, drugs, and 808s."  Appreciate the oxford comma, hate the rest.
Home: NYC

Poster Position: 26
Day: Sunday at 11:15am
Weekend Two Only

Thoughts: Their currently most popular song is one of those extremely tired-sounding tunes of brash braggadocio over a generic beat.  "Know My Name" is, not surprisingly, about how you are going to know his name by the time he is done.  78k streams, somehow.

I fully expect for this song to get an exclusive deal from the NBA to be played before every commercial break during the next Rookie exhibition game (or whatever they do, I don't really follow the basketballs until the playoffs), over some slo-mo shots of the new kids slamming down dunks and pounding their chests.

After continuing down their songs, I guess this is rap/hip hop?  Alt-R&B?  One of the guys has a John Stamos-just-got-out-of-prison vibe, complete with face tattoo, but the other guy looks more like he plays in a Phish cover band in Burlington.  I searched Wikipedia for these guys, and unless they are a Venezuelan sextet, then the closest mention to their name is "Blanco" (song), the lead single off the Fast and Furious soundtrack by rapper Pitbull.  MISTER WORLDWIDE!!!

This article, from 2 years ago, says there is not much written about these two guys, but then doesn't write much about them either.  Their website is pretty much useless.  This bio is completely useless and stupid, unless you want vacuous non-information about how genre-defying and singular they are.  Meanwhile the song I'm hearing right now reminds me of the bad Imagine Dragons thing where they kid of rap.  Really challenging genres there.  Can't find interviews or other information on them.  The Spotify bio says they got their name "from a homie of theirs during the months spent recording at a Brownsville studio in Brooklyn. They rolled up as literally, "The Blancos," but could hang nonetheless."  Yuck.  So we'll just judge based on the tunes.

Definitely a rap vibe.  Kind of a soul vibe as well, like this music would be used for a show about hillbilly gangsters.  Justified or a modern Dukes of Hazzard where Bo is played by Ludacris.  "Radio Lust"starts out with a Metallica vibing-guitar like, then the beats kick in with the lines like "keep your panties on the floor."  You'll hear a lot of those kinds of dumb platitudes in these tunes - "Rise" is chock full of them with bits like "I'mma tell the truth till I die, I'mma keep my head to the sky, you'll never hear the truth in a lie, gotta lotta reasons but no reasons why."  Deep, bro.  "Fool For You" is heavy on the reverb-laden guitar.  The most streamed tune in their catalog is a confused millennial anthem about being confused and broken, "BKCBD" (which stands for broken kids chasing broken dreams).  563k streams.

Not at all looking forward to a crowd of disaffected 22 year olds yelling along to this song about how they have pretty eyes and they're just broken kids chasing broken dreams.  Don't get me wrong, there are folks out there with broken dreams who may still be trying to make it in life, but the crowd of kids smoking designer pot and wearing $500 distressed denim at an expensive urban music festival are not striking me as truly in that category.  

Some of these songs are nice, I sound like I dislike them all, which is not true.  But something about the vibe - confident, mysterious, and yet full of platitudes - grosses me out.