The Big Day

Can you believe it?

Thesis

So, it's 4 AM (again). I'm moving out of my childhood home and into the first real place of my own. A place with no staff to cook my meals or clean the bathroom. Of course this is terrifying, but it's also among the more exhilarating Changes I've undergone. I doubt tomorrow will be very memorable. It'll mostly be aggravating, what with lifting heavy objects in the late-August heat and struggling with the (small, so small) size of the apartment. Oh well! We can sip it all away with an easygoing wine dinner. What more, we can dream it all away in brand new bedrooms. Can you believe it? Though this isn't a giant leap for mankind, it is a step in the right direction for some sort of self-sustaining version of myself.

On my own

Not me. Dallhaus, the most loyal of friends, will be right at my side. We're moving ourselves in (working parents, fam), and we're still working on a name for the place

> New York City
> The Bishop
> Bag End

> The Birthday Party

It'll have a jungle-themed bathroom and several globes. It'll have two well-adjusted residents. It'll have a clean kitchen and plenty of lamps. It'll have room enough for the two of us. Just the two of us, he and I.

Summer Music Review 07

Well yeah, I'm totally preoccupied with the insecurities I have about moving my life from one place to the other. And I'm in a totally "Marvins Room" mentality. But something tells me it's time to review that blockbuster record you should have already downloaded.

Watch The Throne [2011]

by Jay-Z & Kanye West

(Roc-A-Fella; Roc Nation; Def Jam)

Cash-grabbing partnership with a living rap legend? Throwing thousands in the air for an Otis Redding sample? Beyonce and Frank Ocean singing the hooks? Funky accordion waltz outro to nearly every song? A shameless Blades Of Glory clip interrupting an otherwise stellar track?

This is what you call a victory lap.

If anyone deserved it, it's Yeezy. After the endlessly rewarding and self-effacing artistry of MBDTF (an album so Big it's instantly recognizable by its acronym), he's earned the right to just have plain old fun with Jay-Z. I mean, seriously, what more can they say than, "Jay is chilling/Ye is chilling." This is not a deep album. This is not an emotional masterpiece. In fact, almost every song is a simple, ostentatious exclamation of the duo's absurd wealth. There's the occasional, shallow commentary on blackness in America, but any sort of insight is flat-out invalidated by "other other Benz." Well, not invalidated, but made moot - because: Jay-Z & Kanye West. Because these two stars actually made This Album (presumably in luxury suites across the globe).

And This Album is great. Great fun. Listen to the instrumental drop out and charge back at you before Kanye's breathtaking first lines of the record: "Coke on her black skin made her striped like a zebra/I call that jungle fever." Listen to the raging, brostep synths of "Who Gon Stop Me." Listen to the string section finale of "Why I Love You." This is the kind of music that elevates. Makes you feel ecstatic, huge. Who cares that "Welcome To The Jungle" is pretty forgettable or that "Made In America" quotes Ricky Bobby? How can you deny the accessibility of this music?

There's no grand statement to be made here. No pretensions. No dark or twisted. It's just two of the most celebrated artists of our time rapping over big budget, grandstanding, stadium rock levels of holy shit production. Pure fantasy.

"Marvins Room"

Let me take a sentence to say: probably the Best Song Of 2011.

Conclusions

This was a more well-rounded post than my past few, in the sense that it talked about my personal life as much as it did music. As I've said before, this is Not A Music Blog. I just love music with all my heart and more. I love music in a better way than I can love my friends. Even so, I can't wait to open up my life to this co-written chapter.

Aforementioned Best Song Of 2011