Image via Complex Original
Another week has passed. And during this one, the government stopped.
But you know what didn't stop? Miley Cyrus! Hahaha. Get it?! She has a song called "We Can't Stop." Also: seriously, she didn't stop. In fact, she hosted Saturday Night Live last night and performed as the musical guest, too. She was really good!
Hip-hop also didn't stop this week. Everyone knows that hip-hop doesn't stop. Hip-hop never, ever, ever stops. It's like the Energizer Bunny. Or the eternal flame at JFK's grave at the Arlington National Cemetery. It keeps going on and on til the breaka breaka dawn. Hip-hop marched on like time. And thank god for that. Imagine what would happened if hip-hop shut-down everytime the folks in charge couldn't agree about something. (Say, if some of the folks in charge wanted to give more people health care, and passed a law to make that happen, but then if some of the other folks in charge were like, "No! We don't like that law! We're going to stop any more hip-hop from happening.") That would suck.
Danny Brown's new album hit Spotify. Trinidad Jame$ hit Tim Westwood's studio. And Kendrick hit Drake. All this and more in What The Hell Just Happened in Music This week?
RELATED: Kendrick Lamar, Drake, And the Battle for Rap Supremacy
RELATED: Poetic Justice? Kendrick Lamar's "Control" vs. Drake's "The Language"
Danny Brown's new album was released on Spotify and it's really, really good.
Date: September 30
Danny Brown's new album Old dropped this week, a response directed at fans who kept asking for the "old Danny Brown." We argued previously that perhaps, rather than going back to an old sound or giving his old fans the finger, the rapper is actually trying to reset the discussion, to see his work as all being a part of a single, inseperable journey. The record is now streaming on Spotify, and it seems our impressions were correct: the rapper has doubled down on unconventional production choices while remaining resolutely himself, blending the avant garde and the grounded, the experimental and the traditional. The critical plaudits are already pouring in. Pitchfork gave the album an 8.7, an improvement of .5 over XXX. So what did Complex do to celebrate? We dropped Danny Brown from the skies. —David Drake
The Mileypocolypse raged forward.
Date: September 30 - October 3
For those of you not up on your New Testament, the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse are on white, red, black, and pale horses, and they symbolize war, conquest, famine, and death. The Four Horsemen of the Mileypocolypse ride on horses made of velvet, leather, latex, and nylon, and they're not horses so much as furry fetishists, and they symbolize The Tongue, The Twerk, The Hair, and The Voice, and they are riding towards pop culture as an omen of something that doesn't quite end the world so much as dominate every single conversation about everything. After all, fuck a government shutdown, Miley did another crazy shoot with Terry Richardson! Billy Rae Cyrus was on Arsenio! Sinead O'Connor wrote an open letter to Miley Cyrus that basically says the music industry is making a prostitute out of her! Miley Cyrus wrote back on Twitter that she's hosting Saturday Night Live this week, so there! Sinead O'Connor responded again by threatening legal action! Miley had her own MTV documentary! The New York Times wrote not one, but two articles telling everyone to just LET MILEY LIVE. And everyone you know on Facebook and Twitter had something to say about it, too.
All of this goes without mentioning the fact that MIley's album, Bangerz, started streaming on iTunes, so you can listen to it the way it was so obviously meant to be listened to: In its entirety. It has French Montana and Nelly and Pharrell and Mike Will Made It and lyrics that invoke the words "LOL" among other breakthroughs in the great American songbook. Yet, the question remains: Have we reached peak Miley? The house odds are that we haven't: We've still got an official album release and a Miley Cyrus remix of "Black Skinheads" to go. We are not at Peak Miley yet. The Tounge, The Twerk, The Hair, and The Voice ride on into the cold, dead night. —Foster Kamer
RELATED: Album Stream: Miley Cyrus "Bangerz"
Justin Bieber drank only the finest, 100 percent pure Cambodian breast milk while his bodyguards carried him to the top of the Great Wall of China.
Date: October 1
There's a skit on Chappelle's Show where the comic sends up Sean Combs's Making the Band. Parodying Diddy's request to have the members of his band procure him a rare cheesecake without using modern luxuries like public transportation, cabs, bicycles, unicycles, roller blades, Razor scooters—which is to say, on foot—Chappelle-as-Puffy asks for specialty food items like sugar cookies and Cambodian breast milk. It's funny because it doesn't feel too far off the mark.
After each request from Exaggerated Diddy, his bodyguards carry him from the room. He gets a piggyback ride. He naps in the arms of one large man wearing a bubblegoose. It takes two of his guards to carry him and the couch he's lamping on, but they manage. Again, funny because it's only a slight exaggeration of a big ego. Turns out it's no exaggeration at all. Earlier this week, Justin Bieber ascended the Great Wall of China born on the backs of his bodyguards. This is what history is made of. —Ross Scarcano
RELATED: Justin Bieber Had His Bodyguards Carry Him Up the Great Wall of China Because That's What Kings Do
Britney Spears made her big comeback with "Work Bitch," and she should be the only human giving Miley advice.
Date: October 2
On Thursday night, I popped a bottle of red wine and decided to watch Miley: The Movement. I was really tired of going on Twitter to find more dudes slandering her body type after seeing the latest bunch of Terry Richardson photos, I really didn't want to hear about how "disgusting" she is anymore, etc. I didn't want to be reminded of the all the different types of misogyny in the world and the how often dudes are just generally shitty. So I sat down on the couch and watched the MTV documentary and breezed through a lot of it except for this one scene where Miley meets Britney Spears.
While talking about how dedicated her fanbase is, Miley explains how she is to younger girls what Britney was to her when she was a teen. There's a really heartwarming part where the two of them sit in a studio and talk about how important the VMAs are to pop culture. But something was a little off. It was Britney Spears. She seems so out of touch now that it makes you wonder whether she recieved electroshock therapy after her breakdown in 2011. Then everything started to make sense: We gave Britney Spears the same type of scrutiny that we are giving to Miley, and then watched Britney lose her fucking mind.
Britney released a new video on Wednesday. "Work Bitch" is one of the first steps of the refreshing comeback that Brit is trying to make, and the whole song is A+ cheesy EDM-pop, which weirdly works out. Except for the faux British accent. But it's the first video in a long time in which Britney is looking like she's comfortable in her own skin again. And as someone who, like Miley, has been a Britney fan since childhood, it's a nice thing to see. Here's to hoping our gawking eyes don't drive Miley off the same cliff. —Lauren Nostro
RELATED: Video: Britney Spears "Work Bitch"
Rihanna dropped a video for a song that came out almost a year ago and it was totally worth the wait.
Date: October 2
Rihanna gets the award for most delayed video delivery in 2013—with Migos "Versace" a close second. Her single "Pour It Up" first hit radio stations on January 8th of this year and the video came out this week. Babies have been conceived and delivered within that time frame. (Some of them, surely, to this very song!) The Mike Will-produced club anthem (I'm just assuming that here, I don't even know what the inside of a club looks like) finally got the visual treatment.
And what a treatment! This is Ri-Ri on her full Beowulf-cave swag, twerking (cringe... oy, that word) on her golden chair—forcing you to watch the throne more intently than Jay or Kanye ever did. As the lyrics in the song suggest, she indeed watches money fall out from the sky. (Though, if you look closely, they didn't even make an effort to make that shit look real—the dollars bills have giant letter "R"s on them. Try buying anything in 7-11 with those, that invisble-ink highlighter pen would be lighting up "counterfeit" so fast, they'd have you in handcuffs before you got to the magazine rack by the door!) But then, stripper poles and their respective strippers appear through the green fog. All of sudden you're watching a bunch of strippers (at least one of which is just Rihanna in a different outfit) dance extremely sexily, in pool of very shallow—and what must be, after however many takes it took them to film this thing, some very stagnant—water. But at no point will you question any of this because the video, as the ladies at The Hairpin pointed out, is absolutely dynamite. You'll just wish you were there. —Alexander Gleckman
RELATED: Video: Rihanna "Pour It Up"
Trinidad Jame$ popped a molly, and sweated Tim Westwood's record collection.
Date: October 3
Conversations at parties can get so awkward. They often start promisingly enough. There's cool neon pink and green lights; some British dude in the corner is playing the beat from "Pound Cake." You see an old friend standing in front of a bookshelf full of records.
"Hey man, it's been a while. How you been?"
"I was coming up in Atlanta just a year ago."
"Okay. Not really what I asked, but that's alright. So, what are people hating on you for these days?"
"Niggas hating on me for the way I look."
"Sheesh. People are so superficial sometimes. I certainly hope you don't blame yourself."
"It ain't my fault—God made me."
"True, true."
It can go on like that for a while. Sure, your friend seems a little off, but he's more or less coherent. But then the momentum really starts to flag, and you're forced to employ a pretty lame conversational cliche.
"So...done any traveling lately?"
"Paris, Scotland, London."
"The Grand Tour! Very cool. Hey, is that weird British DJ pointing at us?"
"Paris, Scotland, London."
"Dude, you just said that. Are you feeling all right?"
This is when it gets really strange. Your friend's starting to repeat himself more, and "Pound Cake" is nearly four minutes long. There is nothing to talk about, nothing, no apparent thread to the conversation whatsoever. In a social emergency like this, there's only one recourse: Talk about the host's record collection.
"Hey, is that Ready to Die up there on the top shelf?"
"Notorious B.I.G. R.I.P. I fuck with you."
"That rhymes a little I guess. Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta take a shit."
Trinidad Jame$ had just such an awkward conversation (with himself!) this week on Tim Westwood's radio show. Westwood is the preeminent hip-hop radio host in England, and a stop by his studio for a "freestyle" is pretty much required for all major MCs visiting the U.K. We use air quotes around "freestyle," because freestyling in these instances is usually code for "some pre-written verse I haven't spit publically yet that may or may not appear on some later single." But applaud Trinidad Jame$, he actually stayed true to the medium, and kicked an improvised "verse." (Dear God we hope it was improvised). We employ the air quotes again for "verse" because, well, just watch the clip. (Suffice it to say that the guy ain't the most lyrical of rappers, even when he's got pen, paper, and a thesaurus). The only thing that prevented it from achieving a Riff Raffian level of so-bad-it's-goodness is the fact that Trini appeared to be using real words throughout. But before you Supernatural fans jump on your freestyle high horse (and don't lie, we know you're about to), ask yourselves this: When Supernat's cataloging the extent of his gold holdings, does he tick off both "All" and "Everything"? And has he ever popped a molly and pushed a buddy around town in a shopping cart? Thought not.
Do you Trinidad, do you. —Jack Erwin
RELATED: Unadulterated Struggle: Trinidad Jame$ Reminds Us Why Rappers Rarely Really Freestyle
Kendrick Lamar threw a clear shot at Drake and nothing about pajamas were the same.
Date: October 3
At this point, award shows are like Lil Wayne verses, they are too many of them and very few of them have any meaning. But this year's BET Hip-Hop Awards (not to be confused with the plain BET Awards), set to air Tuesday, October 15, is offering something worth paying attention to. And if you weren't yet sold on DVRing the next episode of The Biggest Loser or NCIS so you could watch, Kendrick Lamar might have just made you an offer you can't refuse. In a brief clip of the highly anticipated Top Dawg Entertainment "crew cypher," Kendrick takes another step towards full-blown rap beef with the man who just sold 650,000 copies of his new album the first week it was in stores.
I take that back, that's disrespectful to The Godfather. In The Godfather, if the offer wasn't taken, an old movie producer was liable to wake up with the head of his prized horse next to him in bed. If you don't watch the BET Hip-Hop Awards, nothing much will change. And Kendrick and Drake should never be associated with anything so horribly violent. Niether side of this beef really means it that much. (Though the image of Kendrick shooting a horse with his signature gun sound "doo-dooo-dooo," and the horses-heads-next-to-Drake-in-pajames meme that would surely result is pretty funny when you think about it.)
What Kendrick is actually doing is offering us front-row seats for some of the best hip-hop entertainment rap's got to offer right now. Who cares how much he really "means it"? Art is always artiface. Rap, too.—Nick Sella
RELATED: Video: Kendrick Lamar Disses Drake in The 2013 BET Cypher
Papoose reassured us he has this whole Drake/Kendrick beef under control.
Date: October 3
When a snippet of audio of from Kendrick Lamar's BET Cypher leaked this week, people naturally assumed Kendrick was taking shots at Drake with lines like "nothing's been the same since they dropped 'Control'/And tucked a sensitive rapper back in his pajama clothes." But soon a far more entertaining theory emerged: one that held that Kendrick was actually going after far-lesser known Brooklyn rapper Papoose, for whom the weeks since "Control" have been a publicity bonanza due to a response that, um, got people talking. The gist of the theory, which was passed around on social media, is that the bars correlate almost exactly to certain lines in Papoose's "Control" response, and also that it's possible to buy Papoose pajamas. (According to my Googling, it's not, but "papoose" is a common term for a baby carrier, which an infant could sleep in.) As ridiculous as this theory may have seemed, Papoose appeared to take it to heart Thursday night, tweeting reassurance to Drake that he would take Kendrick on singlehandedly. The tweet read "@drake fall back sweetheart I got this #Bklyn," immediately sparking widespread speculation about the ways in which Papoose does not, in fact, have this. Although Papoose later claimed he was hacked, as rappers do, our curiosity had already been piqued about another diss track on the way.
So what kind of fire should we expect from Papoose this time, considering that he's already used up too-good-to-fail lines like "Strip him to his socks, I bet you he got a poo-see [pussy]/Bullets hit him dead in his cootie come out his booty..."? Will he go after Kendrick's decision to tour with Kanye, dissing the fact that, umm, Yeezus rhymes with "She-zus"? ("I hope you have fun on Kanye's tour bus/To me your rhymes are gross like a bunch of pus...") Will he make fun of Kendrick for being on a Robin Thicke song? ("Call me sensitive? You can never join my sobbin' clique/Your rap lines are all blurred like Robin Thicke...") Will "Fall Back Sweetheart" just be three minutes of him mansplaining rap beef to Drake? Only time will tell, but trust: Papoose has got this covered. —Kyle Kramer
RELATED: The Time Has Come: Papoose Finally Responds to Kendrick's "Control" Verse