The Shady Lab Dre Mathers Eminem Recovery's Back Back Again LP 15

Yeah, it's another "what to expect" post.  Well, kind of.  I guess it's more of a "this is what I'd not only like to see, but what I think is at least semi-likely considering what's happened since his last album"... post.  About Eminem.

As you may have heard, Eazy's (get it? like Weezy but Eazy cuz his name starts with an E? do you love me yet?) back in the lab, and his latest experiment's called... The Marshall Mathers LP 2.  A sequel to an early album.  Hmm.  Not automatically a bad thing, but imagine for a second, if you will, another artist saying their next album's gonna be a sequel to a hyper-acclaimed first-ish album of theirs.  The Joshua Tree (U)2.  Blood Sugar Sex Magik Returns.  Highway 61 Visited For A Third Time.  Son of the College Dropout (actually...).

First reactions?  None of these would sound like awful ideas, but they're not really necessary and it feels like they're kind of grasping at straws, or at least taking a jump backwards after all these years of growth.  That's how part of me feels about The Marshall Mathers LP 2.  However, the rest of me has very high hopes.  Em's already proved a few times that he's no slouch when it comes to concepts spanning multiple albums, no matter how tight or loose

they may be.  The Eminem Show and Encore.  Relapse and Recovery.  So what if he's a few years late on this one?  I'm sure he'll whip something up that's at least on par with the past few years.

That being said, these are a few hopeful "predictions" or educated guesses as to what we could see on the TMMLP2, based on what Eminem's been trending towards, what it feels like he's trying to recapture, what's happened in the world of popular culture these days.

Collaboration with a younger up-and-comer (and by young I mean like, close-to-my-age young).  My vote goes for Childish Gambino cuz he's a personal favorite, but somehow I don't think that's happening.  I really have no idea what they think of each other.  More likely, I'm leaning towards Hopsin or Danny Brown.

A song rife with Breaking Bad references, or at least with an accompanying video that lampoons it.  I just hope he's playing both parts (meaning Walter and Jesse... maybe Gus too... and Skyler... and Walter Junior... yeah, I think I'd enjoy that).  I don't think it's too far of a stretch.  Em's very up on popular culture (as any artist should be, IMO), and I'd think he's no stranger to as big a phenomenon as Breaking Bad.  Not to say I think he should jump on the bandwagon and start publicly advocating for the show for the hell of it.  Nothing against the show or its fanbase, but I feel like that would come across as kinda weird and forced, and very un-Eminem.  I just think there's a lot of connections to be drawn between his persona/phrases/aesthetic and the show, enough to make a song out of.

A sequel to Stan?  I'm talking more "spiritual sequel" here, like Love The Way You Lie Part 2 - doesn't continue the exact same narrative per se, but it's a further exploration of the pairing of those themes with that aesthetic.  Unless... a song about Stan's little brother having grown up over these past 13 years, fostering a burning hatred for the negligent star that (from his perspective) drove his brother to murder-suicide, now ready to take revenge?  Think about it.

Riffage and grooves worthy of the Mike Elizondo days.  We miss you, Mike (yeah, he was on like 4 tracks from Relapse, but he hasn't exactly been a series regular in years).  Don't get me wrong, I love everything Eminem's ever done (musically).  But his more recent albums seem a bit... I dunno, busy?  On a similar note...

Re-exploration of the pop-rap sensibility we saw on Recovery.  Maybe take a few tricks from that and apply it to the old grit and snarl of first-few-albums Eminem.  I know, pop-rap (a la Kanye, Gambino) and good old Midwestern horrorcore doesn't sound like the most homogeneous of mixtures, but sleek and aggressive go together better than you might think.  Black Skinhead, anyone?

M0ar juicy genre-bending.  Eminem's no stranger to including a variety of sounds in his albums, but he's generally hovered in the realm of popular music these days (hip-hop tropes, some pop here, some hard rock there, sometimes a garage aesthetic like in Won't Back Down or his latest, Berzerk).  Let's go batshit with this one.  He's already going for broke by making a sequel to an album almost 15 years later - why not go ass-crazy with it?  Not to say he should up and make this the bastard child of a David Bowie and Brian Eno record.  But hey, with the right balance of the familiar and the alien, this album could do for modern rap what Sandinista! did for punk, what Nevermind did for alternative.  Sure, rap's had several contenders for an album like that since Y2K - but nothing quite there, I'd argue.  Something minimalist and almost resembling spoken word.  A self-lampooning dance beat.  A collab with a metal guitarist.  Rapping in 6/8 over something Mumfordy.  There's endless possibilities in hip-hop, and I think Eminem's got the dynamite to blow that gold mine wide open.

And lastly...

A collaboration with Marilyn Manson that isn't a remix.  Okay, this isn't actually going to happen.  Ever.  But I said a-god-damn momma, I can dream.

Well, I think six predictions and a fantasy's enough for one day.  'Til next time!

Kick-Ass 2; Not A Review

Like the title says, this post is about Kick-Ass 2 and uh... I'm not actually sure what the thesis of this post is going to be, besides trying to deconstruct what about this movie hit home with me so damn hard.

Before I continue, minor spoiler warning, maybe.  This is more preemptive than anything (I don't go into these posts with any sort of outline and I try to do it all in one sitting), and I'll try to avoid as many as possible.  But if I have a choice between a minor spoiler and speaking in Grey's Anatomy narration,

I was beginning to think the things that are could not be if they said that it couldn't be the way it was.

you're getting the spoiler.  I'll give you a big fat MINOR SPOILER labelly thing if one of them's coming up, so, I don't know, close your eyes 'til it's over or something.

I'll kick this off by saying yes, I admit this movie had its problems.  Some of the writing fell a tiny bit flat, a couple exchanges were a bit out-of-place/unwarranted - Example and Minor, Minor Spoiler cuz I don't really reveal anything: Kick-Ass kind of goes off on someone in the movie, even though as far as I could tell, there was no hint at any sort of prior resentment.  Even given the insane position this high school senior's in, some of the shit he says is unwarranted to the point of being out of character and comes across as a big, floating, elephant-shaped WTF in the room. End kind-of-not-really spoilers.  Of course, some of this I blame on them getting a whole different writer/director.

That was my biggest problem with it.  There were a couple unnecessary plot points - not even points, more just a couple random things they mentioned - but I can't really get into those without spoilers, so meh.  Other criticisms I've been hearing include "bad jokes" (not subjective at all) detracting from the plot, "too many characters"

"Cuz fuck ensemble casts, right?"

"Hear hear."

"Srsly."

and being "uninspired" (or, Critic-ese for "I was high when I watched this movie").

I guess if you believe that the quality of a work of fiction is equivalent to the sum of its parts, then yes, you could argue that it's not that good of a movie because of all the little chinks in the armor.  You'd be a bit of a dolt, but you could argue it.

Take any Oscar Bait movie (no, not every movie that wins an Oscar; come on, you know what I mean).  From a purely technical standpoint, those kinds of movies are truly flawless.  They also tend to only resonate with something of a niche audience.

Niche meaning "snobs".

If you're not in that niche, you walk away from the screen afterward thinking either "Well, that was pleasant enough for the senses" or "Well, I could go my whole life without seeing that again".

But sometimes you see a movie that, despite all your misgivings, no matter how scattered and minor and decentralized, really moves you without knowing exactly why, really takes you for a whirlwind, tugs all the different strings in your body.  For whatever fucking reason, Kick-Ass 2 did that for me more than any movie in quite a long time.

Maybe it's because comic books were my first love.  First thing I ever wanted to do was write and draw comic books, before I ever thought of prose as an option.

Maybe it's because I've always been in love with the idea of superheroes, and fuck that superhero/costumed-vigilante disparity bullshit; powers or not, if you do that, you're a goddamned superhero (if you do it successfully, I mean; fine line between "superhero" and "shithead").  They're not super because they wear costumes; they're "super" because no one does that.  No one takes time out of their everyday life to put their life on the line for strangers a couple nights a week.  Maybe because the consequences of these characters' actions are depicted in the most realistic way we're probably gonna get (while still having a movie).

"Some Jackass In A Green Suit Gets Shot After Ten Minutes" just doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Maybe because it's a crazy movie about real consequence, the superhuman pressures of life and loss weighing on our very mortal heads, something we can all relate to whether you're an angry kid

a concerned parent

a bored dreamer

a John Q. Public

or a surgeon, if you're like me and prefer to believe Turk just moved to NYC

...or just an Average Joe with a good heart.

Maybe it's because it's what a "comic book movie" should look like, how it should behave: running the thin line of homage, stepping equally on the sides of gritty deconstruction and age-old tropes, without necessitating the age-old/bullshit excuse of "come on bro, it's a comic book movie; cut it some slack" even in its sillier moments.  Perhaps it's not the comic-book homage movie we need right now, but it's the one-

NO.

Geez, okay, I'm sorry.

Here's my point, going back to resonance in fiction and such:

Does the movie make you feel something?  Then that movie and everyone involved has done their job right.  It's a good movie.  Same goes with any story; books, games, television.  I cringe more than a few times when I watch a Judd Apatow thing, even Freaks and Geeks, but I still completely buy it, it still digs down to my roots and nestles there because the storytelling's so damn good and the people on the screen are telling you they're real, a few grating one-liners aside.

I'm not telling you it'll change your life.  I'm not guaranteeing that you'll love it, or even that this movie's for everyone.  I am saying fuck amalgamate critic sites, and to give this movie a chance.  I'm saying I refuse to believe I'm the only guy that can be so deeply and, I'll admit, strangely affected by this movie.

If nothing else, it's made my mission clear:

I have two years to concoct a plan to get crazy famous and woo Chloe Grace Moretz.

...What?  What'd you think I was gonna say?

(Idea: You could totally reblog this with #teamthomas until she sees this.  You know.  If you're a bro.)

"Bro... you remember that thing I said about dogs chasing cars?" "Yeah Joker, why?" "...Never mind."

Okay, I can't end this post on that.  To play me out, here's David Bowie:

Wait...  Why the hell wasn't this song in either movie?