Monday, April 19, 2010

I Blog My Hate


Hate that I’ve got to do this, but I must. Hate how crude it’ll seem, but so be it. Hate that YN types like robot Patton Oswalt, but ROFL!

Elliott Wilson just published a widely-read post titled “I Hate My Job”. (You and me both, big homie!) He offers an empathetic and endearing outlook on Moses Michael Leviy (a.k.a. Shyne), post-prison. Lots of people – myself included – have guffawed (to put it lightly) at Shyne’s musical output in recent weeks. As I noted on Twitter, “Shyne sounds like Rick Ross after he's been shot with tranquilizer darts for being mistaken for a rhinoceros.” It’s that bad. The worst part of it is that all these years, I’d been banking on Shyne to make an impact in hip hop – but not in the comical sense we see today (shouts to the Brothers Rosenthal). I feel as let down by this mess as all that time I spent collecting Papoose mixtapes (really).

The scariest and most telling part of Wilson’s post is this little tidbit: “Ask around. Find out, [Shyne] wants to sound like that. Doesn’t ever want to be viewed as a Big soundalike again. Never again. Won’t accept criticism. Constructive or not.” Read that back. “He wants to sound like that.” Really? That gives me even more of a reason to shit on his new music. Imagine if after all these years, Sadat X came along and said “you know what, I’m gonna stop rapping with my nasally voice. I’m gonna rap in Yiddish from now on.” Admittedly, the two wouldn’t be much different from each other; but still, we’d throw him the fuck out of hip hop, veteran status or not. What if Joell Ortiz started rapping with a pseudo-British accent exclusively? You’re telling me that Shyne is making the conscious decision to sound like a lunatic on depressants? Get the fuck outta here. I don’t have patience for this shit anymore.

Hey, Shyne: You wanna come correct with your raps? The door’s always open. But leave that bullshit at home (or in Rykers). L.A. Reid, have a chat with your boy, please. For hip hop.