Kanye Graduates With an A-Minus But 50 Cent's a Dud

Steve Earle, Lori McKenna, Prince and New Pornographers get nods

Also in this month's column: Busdriver's "Fear of a Black Tangent," Lori McKenna's "Unglamorous," "Motel Lovers," the New Pornographers' "Challengers," "The Roots of Chicha," Wax Tailor's "Hopes & Sorrows," Kanye West's "Graduation," Honorable Mentions/Choice Cuts and Dud of the Month/More Duds

By Robert Christgau
Special to MSN Music

Oct. 2008

Among the several new hip-hop albums referenced below find two older discs -- one from January, the find its 2005 predecessor -- by underground vet Busdriver, who I once dismissed, too quickly, as hyperintellectual. As someone who believes Kanye West released two of the best albums of the decade in 2004 and 2005, I'm disheartened to conclude that Busdriver's 2005 album tops Kanye's new one -- as well as every new undie-rap venture to come my way.

Busdriver
"Fear of a Black Tangent"
(Mush)

Endlessly satirizing the world's failure to reward his genius, Regan Farquhar makes the leap from too-smart-for-his-own-good to so-smart-he's-good-anyway. Whether he's impersonating Sambo on Clear Channel or a rapper-of-the-month who fell off the wrong end of a bungee cord ("I'm a dead man with golden blood in my bedpan"), his antipop plaints counter the unlikelihood of their analyses with the intricacy of their loquacity -- 23 "or" rhymes in 13 seconds, say. He changes up his pained, neurotic, whiny flow with catchy-annoying singsong, and his low-budget beats get lots of hook out of no discernible sampling. If you doubt his skills, check out Abstract Rude, Ellay Khule, Mikah 9, and 2Mex trying to keep up. Downloaders note: The CD includes a lyric booklet, which is very useful.

Lori McKenna
"Unglamorous"
(Warner Bros.)

Sobriety can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially in a Nashvillian who claims in so many words she expects ecstasy. If she joked around or liked to party, it might give her country goodness the wiggle room every way of life needs. But she does like to rock, and there's no denying her eye for out-of-the-way details or her ear for a decent tune. Of several believable love songs, I'll take the full-bodied "Witness to Your Life" over the spartan title tune. Of several believable unlove songs, I recommend "Drinkin' Problem" to Al-Anon.

Various Artists
"Motel Lovers"
(Trikont)

I'm too far away to judge how vital this particular chitlin' circuit is. But I trust the money-where-her-mouth-is of 66-year-old Barbara Carr, who quit her factory job of 20 years and returned to music full-time in the wake of regional hits "Footprints on the Ceiling" and "Bone Me Like You Own Me." Presumably not all current Southern soul records stick to explicit adulterous sex, Friday-night hustles and the circuit itself. But I bet a lot of them do -- enough for Munich-based Trikont to top its two '60s "Black & Proud" collections with these 18 contemporary songs. Young Sheba Potts-Wright furrows her own groove as she counsels coital subtlety. So does Johnnie Taylor's son Floyd analyzing his woman's failure to bring him his house shoes. Big Cynthia's matched demands for clitoral and vaginal stimulation and Denise LaSalle's Anita Hill-era "Long Dong Silver" are good cheap novelties. And standing tallest of all is a standstill ballad by Carr, who is pained to admit that her macho man is also a "Down Low Brother."

The New Pornographers
"Challengers"
(Matador)

Still a band that improves everyone in it, and more forthcoming this time, though they really ought to risk despoiling their precious graphics with lyrics. Carl Newman will always be too formal (do Canadians really say "hangs in air," not "hangs in the air"?), but when Neko Case steps up to take one of his difficult-love songs, feelings surface -- and also the meanings Case's own albums archly avoid. Plus, who would have thought Destroyer Dan Bejar could write an open-skied Manhattan anthem that ventures into Queens? It's "Myriad Harbour," the indie-rock "New York, New York." Mark Kozelek could cover it!

Various Artists
"The Roots of Chicha"
(Barbes)

These "Psychedelic Cumbias From Peru" taught me why I'd resisted Cuba's belatedly exhumed Los Zafiros and Brazil's lately legendary Os Mutantes. Simply put, they were more sophisticated than the rock 'n' roll they rode into modernity on. These six Amazonian oil-town bands arrived '70s, not '60s, bearing already outmoded surf guitars, teenybopper Farfisas and space-cadet Moogs. For them, psychedelic means the Electric Prunes and "96 Tears" -- in short, garage, which in the middle of an oil boom is kinda poetic. The cumbia beats they grab from up Colombia way are pokey and polka-ish, and the Andean melodies they can't get out of their heads add something new to the syncresis. The most cheerful substyle to emerge from the nether regions of "world music" in years. 

Wax Tailor
"Hopes & Sorrows"
(Decon)

Two big improvements for this very French packager of ear cinema. One: His movie-sample "content" is very much l'art pour l'art, often referencing the tools and tactics of his craft. Two: Not to mince words, he employs more African-American voices, including Ursula Rucker and Sharon Jones outdoing their own records -- and sinking the beats deeper in the process.

Kanye West
"Graduation"
(Roc-A-Fella)

Rank this minor success with hooky background music like 50 Cent's "The Massacre"—no deeper than Coldplay when you pull out the measuring stick, but a lot smarter. Compared to 50's, the hooks are pretty pricey. Yeezy loves designer labels and procures for himself the finest fromage -- Elton John to Steely Dan to Daft Punk softening us up for gay cult hero Labi Siffre, like that. He self-indulges throughout -- not just by expanding at length on his skimpily rationalized fascination with his own fame, but with little stuff like his failure to convert "this"-"crib"-"shit"-"live"-"serious" into a rhyme or "at bay at a distance" into an idiom. Nevertheless, every single track offers up its momentary pleasures -- choruses that make you say yeah on songs you've already found wanting, confessional details and emotional aperçus on an album that still reduces to quality product when they're over.

More: Honorable Mentions/Choice Cuts | Dud of the Month/More Duds

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