Review Summary: im not proofreading this. you hear me
Okay speed run
Scaring the Hoes review let’s go
I am listening now through laptop speakers which is actually a really good way to listen to music like this because if it had a direct line to my eardrums through headphones I think that maybe my brain would start leaking out my eyes and nose like soup.
The first single,
Lean Beef Patty is so hard, you guys, that when Peggy kicks into high gear and the beat drops into a hell pit of slinky, acidic synths it feels like the blood in my veins is carbonated and the world has opened up before me into a kaleidoscopic nightmare world where everyone is a cartoon character that is either in their death throes or have just discovered for the first time that life is good because it’s full of mind-altering substance which include, but aren’t limited to, cocaine, ecstasy, love and The Internet. I am not editing this by the way. I only allow myself a certain small window of time per day to write because otherwise I look at my use of language critically and I’m becoming increasingly convinced that that is a really harmful thing to do.
Anyway I’ve already seen a sickening amount of discourse online about the mixing on this album and while sometimes it’s difficult to hear Danny Brown rapping I don’t really care because he’s one of those guys that has a voice like an instrument and that instrument can be annoying one second and euphoric the next regardless of whether or not his lyrics are as legible as a doctor's handwriting. Sorta like bagpipes. Danny Brown’s voice is bagpipes. Also when one of his one-liners does us the honour of rising above the chaos it feels like a nice little treat. In
God Loves You he makes some off-colour remark comparing himself to Moses and it reminds me of when you raid your Mum’s pantry and you find some brownies so you eat them and then half an hour later you can’t move your limbs and your brain is cobwebs and you're uncontrollably laughing at the way Daniel Day Lewis says I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE in There Will Be Blood. I could criticise the mixing of his vocals, or even the general lack of cohesion that Scaring the Hoes proudly displays, and I think I’d be right to do that, but also I’m not really interested in doing that because today I was depressed as hell and then I heard the Kelis sample in
Fentanyl Tester and I giggled! Would you believe that? I giggled! I am too old to be giggling! But Danny Brown is in his forties and JPEGMafia is like thirty-two or something.
Yesterday too I was listening to
Burfict while walking across the bridge into work and I imagined myself as a Star Wars villain slowly entering an ornately decorated council chamber and ominously drawing my lightsaber (which would be a deep purple I think, or like mulberry). This happened involuntarily, like when you’re half-asleep and you dream your falling then wake up to catch yourself. In writing this and listening while I write I’m thinking that maybe the best thing about this record is that it evokes involuntarily reactions constantly. It’s on some deeply physiological *** – my body is a little bit less my body when I’m listening. I was going to say that instead of my body it’s Peggy and Danny’s body, but now that the thought has crystallised in its final form I understand how that sounds. Having said that I reckon it’s not entirely a lie either.
It’s the current year which means that before we criticise something like this we should reflect on the enjoyment and benefit that can be derived from being confused and subsequently breaking down where this confusion comes from and what it means. In
Orange Juice Jones for example I spent my entire first listen trying to extricate the sample from the fast-paced raps. And at first I was like This Sucks. This Does Not Work Or Make Sense but then I listened again, and probably five more times, and decided that the reward was in picking something new out every time until the song, well… it didn’t make sense still, but internally I was joining the parts together in my brain until I felt a sense of accomplishment from being able to move in time to the beat without going with my first impression and being a little bitch about it. I think it’s really important to not automatically attach your confusion to the wanton application of negative descriptors. Can you tell I am afraid of conflict?
I hope you understand what it means when I say that it’s only being like ten minutes since I started writing this. My fingers are moving really fast which is super exciting for me personally because the last couple of months every movement I’ve made, from the mental to the spiritual to the laconic creak of my knee joints, has been really slow and slothful. So on like, a base level that is another weed-brownie point on this record’s scorecard – that the vigour in its bones is clearly transferrable to the listener.
Sorry sorry sorry: the beats. I’ll talk about the beats for a bit because I’ve been on this site for years now and know first-hand that you ***ers are puritans that turn to fuming pillocks when a reviewer skirts past how a piece of music sounds. I love you by the way, and I differ from my eighteen year old self in the regard that I understand this frame of mind and even agree with it now, in a sense. What I really appreciate about this collaboration, aside from the sampling, is the effort that Peggy has put into stretching and flipping the disparate samples into forms that play off of each other in a fun way. The way the sexy loungey jazz pianos in
Jack Harlow Combo Meal are wedged inside the minimal gaps of a breakbeat. It’s a fascinating and melodically pleasing choice because the smoothness of the pianos become energized in the presence of the percussion and the percussion is softened by the presence of the chord progression. Here and in most songs the parts meet in the middle of a storm and it creates some sort of alchemy that makes every sound pop and stand out. It’s testing the boundaries of technologies and it’s testing the boundaries of convention in a way that feels totally in step with the artists at the helm, like of course they did this. We expected them to do this, and they did do it.
The other important aspect is that blend of organic instrumentation with the blips and bloops and erratic drum-machine patterns. I love it when rap albums do this because subconsciously I think it gives certain musical conventions a chance to evoke something new in the listener. Consider the fact that if the blaring horns in
Where Ya Get Ya Coke From were taken in isolation, they would take the shape of triumph, but in the song they are entirely mischievous and angry and a little bit evil. I’ve never met any dude who has sold my friends any of the coke I’ve ever snorted. This is an incredibly modern and stupid fear, perfectly encapsulated in an album operating in proximity to feelings that are mainly modern and stupid. Okay that’s enough about the music. Making this concession has reminded me I don’t really know what I’m doing and I don’t feel particularly inclined to contend with that notion because it’s twelve-thirty at night time and I have to do my washing tomorrow.
I’m excited to see even more discussion about
Scaring the Hoes but I feel like through all of it – whether it’s positive or you’re gonna come in here and be like “this is deliberately obtuse” (it is) or “reviewer is a pretentious loser” (I am) – we should all remember that it doesn’t matter what you think any more than it matters what I think. I could know all the music theory in the world. I could have grown up in Peggy or Danny’s childhood homes. I could be a philosophy nerd specialising in how hip-hop has somehow brought us closer to answering the Big Questions than we’ve ever been in the ten billion years since Plato invented the word “why?”. But even if I was any of these things, and I hated this ***, it would not change the fact that this is a combination of sounds we’ve never heard in this configuration before, and it **especially** wouldn’t change the fact that walking into work yesterday I felt like a Star Wars character.
I lagged a bit in the second half there; I listened to the whole album twice during those last two paragraphs. This sucks. I feel like I’ve let the album – and myself – down. Wish me luck on the life admin *** tomorrow. I’m going to listen to
Garbage Pale Kids while I handwash dishes and I bet half the water that started in the sink will end up on the kitchen floor because of it.
