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Kevin Abstract: Meet one of fifteen members of America’s newest (and self-proclaimed) boyband BROCKHAMPTON

Photo courtesy of his online booklet for solo album Miserable America

(http://www.american-bf.us/AmericanBoyfriendDigitalBooklet.pdf)

Meet Kevin Abstract, Ian Simpson, or simply one of the faces behind hip-hop collective BROCKHAMPTON. In the same year he graduated high school, he released his first album: MTV1987. Born out of Corpus Christi, Texas—another Southern rapper.  You’re probably asking, why does this guy matter?

Well, he’s important for a handful of reasons.  First, he’s a prominent member of the group BROCKHAMPTON (visiting The Depot this coming February).  They’re the front of the DIY rap scene, and the self-proclaimed boyband of America. That’s right—the stole the title from pop groups like N*SYNC, Backstreet Boys, or whoever the hell Disney is wheeling off right now.  They are a collective of fifteen or so rappers, musicians, producers, marketers, agents, whatever.  They’re trying to do Odd Future, but better.

What else?  He provides a platform for LGTBQ+ artists in the masculine scene of hip-hop.  A track of SATURATION II, one of the biggest albums of the year, Abstract explains why he keeps rapping about his sexuality.

“Why you always rap about bein' gay?"

'Cause not enough niggas rap and be gay

Where I come from, niggas get called "faggot" and killed

So I'ma get head from a nigga right here

BROCKHAMPTON’s songs, in the style of early A Tribe Called Quest, will rotate through multiple rappers in a song.  Abstract touches on being gay or his mother’s homophobia often, but not enough to define him purely.  Abstract is a giving a platform for queer artists and listeners, but that’s not all he is.  He’s a leader, an artist, an entrepreneur, and a goddamn dreamer.

[limnotlimb-blog]

Music Memoir

chapter one: this must be the place (naive melody)

 “C’mon, Annie” Lauren elbows me in my side, “stop dragging ass!”  I push her and laugh, spilling her Miller Lite tall boy in the process.  We’re followed by our usual round-up: Tori, Gabby, and Blake.  I feel the bass in the air well before I see the party itself.   It was an old house, a couple miles down from our university campus.  It was our friend from high school’s housewarming party, and we didn’t know anyone else who would be there.  I was nervous, but had also found it’s usually more fun that way.  We can be anyone in the distorted light of parties with strangers.  The summer after high school, she was our first friend to get her own place and we were ecstatic to party somewhere besides our mom’s houses.  The door ajar, I push it open, feeling the warm air against my legs.  The traditional fluorescent lightbulbs have been abandoned for bulbs in hues of pink, orange, purple.  People are packed, not quite to sardines, but it was going to get there before the night was through .

My eyes drift, surveying the scene and people within it; warm eyes and sangria smiles across everyone’s face.  There’s beer pong playing right inside the door, a timeless game of skill and drinking. I move past a giggling couple to the table where drinks are in the kitchen and they had everything, and I mean everything.  I was impressed by the spread of refreshments, from cheap beer to the most popular liquors and even wine in addition to the bowl of sangria.  There were six packs of Gatorade stacked up on the left side, which act as a sort of holy water against the evil of tomorrow’s likely hangover.  I scoop some sangria, a tangy red with floating bites of oranges, into the signature solo cup of the same color.  I become best friends with a girl in the bathroom who had an extra hair tie, whose face I immediately forgot as soon as I stepped from the bathroom.  My boots stuck to the floor, creating a noise of tape being peeled from plastic as my heel escaped the layer of sticky, spilled PBR. I feel the laughter in the air almost more than the rhythmic bass itself.  The unmistakable verve of David Byrne’s voice echoes through me, “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” is welcomed readily and I can’t help but agree with the title: this must be the place!  Any party that ditches the tradition of electronic music in favor of 80’s pop automatically wins a place my heart and ears.  I lean against my best friend Blake and we smile, dancing to the irresistible nostalgia of the 80’s which we never lived through.  How long has this song been playing?  It feels longer than usual.  Or faster.  Is it the tempo?  It could be a remix.  Or did some asshole accidentally push the “repeat” button on their Spotify app and we’re doomed to repeat dance to this song until the end of the time?  Ha! What a weird limbo to exist in, neither here nor there; neither of the 80’s nor modern dance music.  I know one thing for sure, if I was going to be doing the limbo, it would have to be with Talking-Heads era David Byrne.  Talking Heads eventually leave their spotlight, and is picked up by fellow nostalgia. Tears for Fears, DEVO, David Bowie, Hall & Oates, Prince, and the like; all my classic pop friends were here.  The strangers were strangers nor more.  They were the girl from the bathroom with the hair tie, the cute boy that pulled me in to play beer pong with, the smiling couple who just had to have us over for dinner sometime, and of course a few faces from high school in addition to the friends I arrived with.  

Under the lavender light I felt alive.  My heart swelled and I felt like a babe in the woods.  My wide eyes were naïve in this sweet light.  I felt like I could touch the stars of glitter across my friends faces and swim through the night.  I felt beautiful and infinite and all the clichés at once.  I didn’t want the night to end, and ended up passing out on the couch between my friends, still wearing my sticky boots.

Cover up and say goodnight, goodnight.

chapter two: golden years

 It’s the summer again, this time three years later.  It’s the summer of which two balloons, gold, were permanently taped up in my kitchen: “21” they read.  My birthday was before the official beginning of summer, a sunshine day in late May.  Every two weeks after that, more or less, one of our friends turned the same, ever-so-hyped twenty-one.  It felt like “Groundhog Day”, but instead of Bill Murray and a rodent, it was cheap beer and bad decisions .  I found myself in the same night with the same people with the same events playing again.  We felt originally liberated by the party.  But, by this time, house parties had grown old, and the thrill of paying too much for liquor in public was very much in trend.  It was a Tuesday.  Or a Wednesday.  It was some day, it was any day.  I remember I wasn’t feeling incredible.  Something inside me itched, and I bit my lip anticipating the night.  I was feeling an anxiety in going out again, already having a bad night worrying about having a bad night.  I had been snappy all day and was talked into going out to the bar, my friends convinced this would relax me.  Why not give it a shot, I thought.

Our friends dropped us off as they rolled downtown on their way to a nightclub instead.  Arm in arm with my boyfriend, Conner, we were followed by two more friends as stepped out into the pavement.  The day’s heat still radiated from the sidewalk as we flashed our ID’s to the bouncer. In the state of Utah, all alcoholic beverages purchased must be consumed within the fence of the patio, making it a very crowded space.  This patio wasn’t much of a patio at all, more like a wooden pig pen attached outside this building.  It was about five feet deep and thirty feet long.  It overflowed with loud twenty-somethings, chain-smoking cigarettes and breathing it into each other’s faces.  In the small space their laughter bounced off each other, each smile magnifying the last.  I couldn’t make out individual conversations because of the crowd, so they simply buzzed as a whole to me as I walked by.  The smoke was lit by the neon signs behind them, Budweiser AT THE TWILITE CLUB.  Vivid pinks and blues shadowed their faces in opposite directions.

We had to push past layers of bodies to make it the bar.  Two of their cheapest beers (Rainer tall boys) and two shots of whiskey, please.  While I gagged, I couldn’t deny the whiskey warmed my stomach and got me closer to where I wanted to be.  That anxious itch in my heart felt soothed, but I still felt tense about work.  I had worked somewhere for three years, and needed to quit.  One shot please.  I was pissed at the dent a stranger left on my car, another. I wasn’t making enough money to cover student loans? Fuck it, let’s do a whiskey ginger.  It tastes better anyways.  Starting to feel anxious about the money I’m spending here, too? Hey, treat myself, right?  The heat of anger left my heart and moved to my stomach.  I didn’t want to be an angry girl, I wanted to just be fun.  I didn’t want to snap at drunken compliments, I wanted to be the party.  I wanted what those pink-blue faces had out front, I wanted the smiles and to forget the rest of the world outside of this dingy bar. I wanted to be happy again.  I realized I ached for the easy summer after high school, when I felt forever was now.  I remembered my sangria smile and wanted to be that again.  

My thought was interrupted.  I had to pee. The lounge’s bathroom as painted an outdated pink and the line poured out.  Why did I even come here tonight?  The cheap drinks were hard to resist (whiskey sours for four dollars?!) but I sure was paying for it now in this endless line to sweet relief. Groups of girls and boys would pour out of these tiny single stalls, cackling in shrieks louder than when they went in.  One girl, donning a beanie labeled “baby” shoved into me.  I pulled back: “lighten up!” she yelled past the sound of her friends’ grinding teeth.  I made my way into the stall, finally, and pulled my skirt down and took a seat. That hyped-girl was right, I need to loosen up.  Why did I come here if I was just going to be pissed off about it?    It started feeling hollow to me.  I found comfort in the dim light before, leaning against friends in the old pleather booths.  They weren’t here anymore; they vacated as newer things excited them.  People familiar had left this scene and I felt terribly alone.  I wasn’t where they were, and home is where I wanted to be.  

Past the bar there was a jukebox.  A relic of a past I never knew, I still was fond of it.  I liked this jukebox.  I liked it because when I flipped through the selections again and again, I saw my friends.  I found David Bowie’s “Greatest Hits” resting after D’Angelo but before The Rolling Stones. I keyed in 6809, enter and Bowie’s “Golden Years” started to creak through the old speakers and serenaded the bar from the grave.  The twangy yet funk guitar rang in; and I moved my hips in rhythm.  I loved to dance but this felt foreign.  My legs moved wrong and arms were awkward.  That heat in my stomach returned, but not for long while it started working its way up my throat.  I moved past my boyfriend and the bodies, back into the baby-pink bathroom.  No line, I managed to grab a stall just before the whisky evacuated my stomach and right back the way it came.  Don’t let me hear you say your life is over, life’s taking you nowhere, angel.  Oh, Bowie, how do you know?  You’re an angel now; or maybe the mothership took you back to mars, Starman.  Come on, get up, baby.  Never in the twenty years we both lived on this earth did he call me baby my name, but it felt good to think he was singing to me.  Look at that sky, life’s just begun. Nights are warm and the day is young.  There was no sky in this stall, just a bittersweet pale pink.  I wiped my mouth and looked up nonetheless.  I felt cold in this bathroom, and rocked back.  I didn’t want these to be my golden years. Those my senior told me these were going to be the best years of my life, and that scared me.  What the hell was I doing I sat on the floor with my back to the wall.  There’s my baby, lost that’s all.  A soft knock on the door.

“Baby?” his familiar voice asked.    Once I’m begging you to save your little soul.  Standing up, I wipe my gagged tears.  I open the door and there’s my guy.  Conner takes my hand.  “Let’s go home”.

Come, get up, my baby.

chapter three: warm enough for you

The next day I wake up to my roommate’s cat sleeping on my face.  I picked him off me and he looks at me, annoyed. He blinked, meowed, and ran off. I wrap myself in my robe and make my way to the bathroom.  I run the water into the ivory bathtub.  As the water is running, I find my Bluetooth speaker in my roommate’s room.  I work my way back, stopping only to feed the cat, and stop the water, adding the finishing touch of pink rose Epsom bath salts to the blue water.  I find the album on my phone and press play.  To SZA’s sweet voice, I drop my robe and step in, feeling the warmth rise as I sink in.  

Why is it so hard to accept that the party is over? Bring the gin, got the juice

Bring the sin, got that too

 I’m glad I got over my aversion to contemporary music.  Thinking back to those summers before, I couldn’t believe I dismissed decades of music purely because of the time it was created. Pretentious, yeah, I thought I was the shit back then. It was as if I was somehow superior because I owned “Dark Side of the Moon” on vinyl and definitely listened to it before you had (despite being born twenty-three years after its release).  I remember holding my iPod classic, finding it proper I only fill it with classics.  At this early age, around fourteen, I had fallen victim to the “hipster mentality” that was gaining traction in my suburbs, with a dash of rigid loyalism to classic rock.  I would dismiss artists or songs, simply because they were popular. Looking back at this, I don’t completely understand why I would limit myself.  Music could make me feel so many things, why would I dismiss entire categories or eras of music simply to feel “cool”?  In my bath I still felt the cold shiver of cringe, the kind only past embarrassment could cause.  I felt I knew so much back then.  This was met by an irony I was well aware of, that at any point in time I will think I know so much.  And three years from now I’ll think the same about this moment, then three years from then, and three years from then, and so forth.  I’ll be in perpetual state of vanity and naïveté until the end of my days. That’s something I should just accept now, I figure, why fight it?  There are plenty of other things that have happened over the past few years, besides my slight increase in self-awareness.

Won't you just shut up, know you're my favorite

Am I...

The cat found his way back in and sat atop the bathroom sink.  He stared blankly at me again, got down, and walked over. He put his front paws against the rim of the tub.  “Mrow” he yelled.  I reached my wet hand out and waited. He gave sandpaper licks then gave me a wide-eyed stare.  His name was Bowie, which my roommate named due to the striped marks across face; not too unlike the Aladdin Sane cover with the blue and red lightning bolt across the rock star’s face.  I called him Bowie-cat, so no one would confuse him with rock-n-roll’s deity—as if that was going to happen anyways.  He could be the reincarnate, I hoped, as he was born around the time his human counterpart died.  There’s the vanity again!  If David Bowie decided to come back down to our earth I’m sure as hell it wouldn’t be this cat.  I could dream though, I figured.  

Bowie-Cat stepped down and I let my hand rest in the air after him.  I wanted him to stay, but who tells a cat what to do? I was alone in my dim bathroom, and despite the warm water I felt the unmistakable chill of loneliness.  I wanted my friends back, real and famous. I wanted Bowie and Prince back, I wanted my old friends from that summer after high school to come back.  I wanted my friend that overdosed to come back, and all his shitty friends too.  I remembered the night before.  I did feel better, in those moments.  All those people in the Twilite Lounge were in it together that night, in a pool of whisky and laid-back smiles.  We were swimming together in it and I felt a little less lost.

Warm enough for ya outside baby, yeah

(Tell me that it's warm enough here for ya)

Is it warm enough for ya inside me, me, me, me

Warm enough for ya outside baby, yeah

 SZA’s lament still echoed in my bathroom.  I lowered my face into the bathwater, smelling the rosewater and I submerged. I sink my nose in first, blowing bubbles against the water.

I get so lonely, I forget what I'm worth.

We get so lonely, we pretend that this works.

 I lower my face in and feel the warmth creep over my closed eyes and hair.  I want to incubate in here, have this rose bath become my cocoon. Then perhaps I could emerge once again in three years, doubly wise and not hungover.

chapter four: blackstar

It had been a few months since my last visit to the Twilite Lounge downtown. I know this because the leaves had abandoned their post and now crunched under my heel.   Conner and I had been lying low, spending our nights at home with our new friend: HBO.  We get a call; it’s our friend’s last night in Utah before he makes the move to upstate New York.  He was going to start over, his aunt had a restaurant up there or something.    His name was Bo, and he as a wanderer.  Twilite Lounge was his favorite bar, with his favorite drinks priced cheap and favorite drug dealers.  I look deep for courage and manage to gather it, somewhere between applying my winged eyeliner and burgundy lipstick.  One thing was still certain, dark lipstick made me feel like a bad bitch and I was ready to face the world.  

I take the liquor slower this time.  It’s hard to say no when your friends throw salt-rimmed tequila shot in your face yelling “Shots!”  I indulge and take one, and shake my head at the combination of salt, tequila, and lime. I was feeling confident that night, and the tequila only fueled that.  I see our friend Bo, and we join him in a booth.  The sound of pool balls clacking together and drunken hollers blurred and I smiled on all of them.

I wanted to see Bowie that night.  I wanted to feel the exuberance of his single “Fashion” or the unforgettable joy of “Under Pressure” where Bowie and Freddy Mercury of Queen belt together.  I clicked through and through… I couldn’t find his greatest hits anywhere.  My eyes frantically searched and the only Bowie I found was stark black star against a white square.  My heart sunk at this album—it was his swan song of an album: Blackstar.

“They took it off! Conner, it’s gone!  They put ‘Blackstar’ instead.  Why the hell would you want to listen that here?  That’s not a good song for drinking.”  I pointed harder against the glass while I spoke, as if that would magically change what was behind there.

“It’s what’s ‘cool’ right now.  Or, it’s what they play when they want people to leave.”  Conner smiled, “You know, bum them out and kill their buzz.”

             Conner put his shoulder around me and assured me the album was still out there, we could even listen to it on the way home.  My mind was still stuck on “Blackstar” while he comforted me, because David Bowie knew he was dying.  He knew for a long time, it was a cancer.  It was the first album without himself on the cover, it felt like a goodbye.  His face missing on the cover felt clear to me, we better get used to not having him around.  The most striking track, to me, would be “Lazarus”.  I may not be religious but I can appreciate a good old fashioned biblical allegory. Lazarus rose four days after his death by the hand of Jesus.  David Bowie wrote this song for an Off-Broadway production with the same name.  It followed the character that David Bowie played in 1976, in “The Man Who Fell to Earth”, an alien who came to Earth in search of water to save his home planet.  Spoiler alert for a thirty-year-old movie—the alien is sensitive to light and blinded by a paparazzi camera.  He is unable to fix his ship and return home, now stranded on the planet Earth. The production follows the alien years later.

David Bowie was asked to write “Lazarus” for this fictional character’s second story.  Despite it being for a musical production, it does feel thinly veiled to be biographical. David Bowie did portray the man who fell to Earth, and he act the same alien persona in his music.  Was he not the Starman?  Had he not contemplated life on mars?  He was a space oddity and beautiful.  

I stood frozen, lost in thought, my finger on the button and my eyes unfocused on the album cover of Blackstar.  Conner came up to me, and I showed him the tragedy of Greatest Hits’ goodbye.

David Bowie died three days after the release of this single, music video, and the album.  I remember waiting after I heard, I waited for four days.  I watched the milky white record of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars spin round and round, while I refused to take the needle off the record.  It spun in silence, but I didn’t want it to end. After the four days, David Bowie proved he was no Lazarus and did not rise—I felt alone without him in this world.

I stayed and closed the bar that night.  I had a pocket full of quarters and was determined to get that sweet high score on the Indiana Jones pinball machine up front.  I didn’t want to leave Conner and his friends, but I couldn’t go and be with them either.  I arrived late that night, and by time I arrived most were well on their way to a hangover the next morning.  I didn’t want to play catch-up, so we were working on two completely different wavelengths.  I felt uptight and, honestly, lame.  I felt like a boring old woman, only able to watch my friends from across the bar.  I felt like I couldn’t connect with them.  I nursed a local pale ale on tap, and played pinball wizard against the machine.  My final pin ball for the game slid past the two clickers and into the machine.  Game over.

             I felt a tap on my shoulder.  It was Bo.  I said before, he was a wanderer.  I had only known him for a month or two, but he was my boyfriend’s best friend for the past six months when he wandered into Salt Lake City.  He had greasy fake-bleached hair and was covered in hand-poked tattoos.  His eyes were red that night and his jaw was working overtime.  I didn’t know how I felt about him as a whole.  He had once showed me his tattoo: the twin towers and a plane, reaching from above his hip bones to his nipple.  The ink was crudely tattooed into his side, resulting in what seemed like a toddler’s doodle, vibrated into his skin.  I didn’t know if it was in remembrance of 9/11, satire, or maybe an ode to the conspiracy theory he believed in.  He told me he was passed out on heroin at the time, and while he would never admit regret to anything you could see it in his eyes.

             He also showed me beauty in his poetry and his kindness.  His heart ached for those in pain, and I could see the art bursting out of him. He was grandiose in his stories, and while I suspected hyperbole I would never call him out.  There was something magical about this character, and I didn’t want to pop the surreal bubble he lives in.

             Without words, he wrapped me in a tight hug that pulled me off the ground.  He whispered to me, “I’m scared to go.  I’ll miss all this.  Don’t hurt him”.  Just as quickly as he had embraced me he was gone, sliding past bodies pulling a smoke out of his pocket to smoke on the patio.  I stood for a moment, dazed, and went to find Conner.  He and a handful of our friends were crowding a small booth in the back.  

             Conner and I were tired that night.  I still felt out of place and it showed—I was itching to get out of there.  I asked if we could just quickly slip away.  Conner looked me in the eyes, with a serious c’mon. We couldn’t leave without a real goodbye.  I knew, and I was avoiding it.  Bo was such a surreal character and he slipped into my life without precedent and it felt weird to have him leave.  Conner grabbed my hand and wove me through the bar.  We couldn’t find him anywhere.  I checked the girl’s bathroom stall and behind the bar, no Bo.  Conner checked the boy’s restroom and the patio, no go for Bo.  We saw a friend of his and asked him where Bo went; he said he saw him skate away about ten minutes ago.

             How fitting, for this character to leave with a cat’s goodbye.  He slunk out of our lives as easily as he slipped in.  Conner and I stared down the street in the direction his friend pointed, and I felt Conner accept his friend had moved on to his next misadventure.

             I drove us home that night.  My mind wandered while I drove us the brief distance to my house. I looked to my right and saw Conner’s face, the red of the stop light reflecting off his face .  I saw shimmer below his eye before he was able to wipe it away.  I looked back to the road and felt a guilt settle inside me.  I had judged Bo the first time I met him.  He was on a 24-hour cocaine binge and his mouth was running a hundred miles an hour while he talked to me about the magnificent craft of Charles Bukowski. I couldn’t help but think of course this guy likes Bukowski.  He was strange but left a mark.

             I parked the car and walked with Conner inside. He undressed and slid into bed in quick motions, and was out before I had taken my shoes off.  I could tell his heart was hurting; he was going to miss his friend.  I found him exhaling a slight snore, and it seemed I wasn’t the only one who heard him. Bowie-Cat came in, greeted me with a “mrow!” and silently jumped on the bed and laid on his pillow, next to Conner’s face.  I pet and kissed both of their heads and went to my living room.

             My mind was empty as I sat down to unlace my Doc Marten boots.  I was reflecting on the night, and to fill the void David Bowie’s Lazarus started to creep in.The kick drum and rhythmic picking of an electric guitar.  The saxophone chimes in melancholy.  Look up here, I’m in Heaven.  I’ve got scars that can’t be seen.  Bowie’s voice rang in.  I again thought of Bowie in Heaven, then I thought of Bo in Upstate New York.  I’d never been there, but maybe it could be his heaven.  I know Conner was going to miss him.  His sleeping mind was probably replaying tonight over and over.  

I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen.  Everybody knows me now.

I judged Bo for the things he did.  For the binge-drinking and drug use, for his strange tattoos.

Look up here, man, I'm in danger.  I've got nothing left to lose.

I'm so high, it makes my brain whirl.

             As I kicked off my boots it began to sunk in. Bo was gone, David Bowie too.  It was like all the empathy I should have been feeling while I knew Bo himself flooded in.  I felt a shame boil in my belly.  It was like Bo fell to earth in Salt Lake City.  I started to understand, then.  These blue and pink faces weren’t necessarily free of loneliness or pain. In fact, it probably was felt inside them under the belly of cheap liquor like mine was.  We were all the same, just trying to be less alone. Things like drinking made it easier, it created a common denominator for people.  It became easier to talk, mouths became looser and social anxieties relaxed. Everyone was just trying to feel a little more connected, a little freer.  That’s what I felt those summers ago.  I felt liberated in the orange-pink light and fuzz of sangria.  Parties and bars and drinking, they were all methods to arrive at that feeling.  It may not have been a healthy reliance, but it felt good to exercise that right.  I deserved to feel connected, everyone does. Every pink and blue face I met deserved it.  We may have all fallen to Earth, blinded by its beauty, with nowhere to go.  We’re here on Earth until we’re not—until we return to heaven, mars, nowhere, or everywhere.  It’s easy to feel alien in these bodies, but we can find each other in the dark here, with the assistance of neon lights and long nights.  

Oh, I'll be free

Just like that bluebird

Oh, I'll be free

Ain't that just like me?

   The end.

   Tracks (In text)

This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody) Talking Heads

Golden Years David Bowie

Drew Barrymore SZA

Lazarus David Bowie

 Tracks (bonus)

Kiss Prince

Head over Heels Tears for Fears

I Can’t Go for That Hall & Oates

Hung Up Madonna

Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider of Montreal

Heroes David Bowie

[limnotlimb-blog]

Album Review: (Scum Fuck) Flower Boy

Tyler, the Creator—the rapper, producer, artist, director, fashion designer. The creative powerhouse drops his fourth album.

Tyler, the Creator, wraps the listener in his vibrant orange world of nostalgia and aching.  This is Tyler’s fourth studio album, and it’s as if he finally has found the words to portray what he’s been trying to say for almost a decade now.  While the released title is Flower Boy, the unofficial and full title is Scum Fuck Flower Boy.  Tyler is most well-known for his aggressive persona and tracks.  Theresa May, as the secretary of the U.K. at the time, banned him from the country for “encouraging violence and intolerance of homosexuality”.  His rage has been his trademark.  

The album flaunts a breadth of featured guests.  Frank Ocean croons soulfully throughout the album with Kali Uchis.  There’s soft indie artists like Anna of the North and Rex Orange County that are nestled between tracks with rappers like Lil Wayne and A$AP Rocky.  Hell, even Jayden Smith is even on this album.  

 Tyler’s grown up on this record.  The album has a genuine tenderness to it.  He moans over loneliness, boredom, and love—and it’s wrapped neatly in a floral theme.  With the title, we get two personas of Tyler: the scum fuck and the flower boy.  If you liked tracks like IFHY and Fucking Young/Perfect, this album expands on that sound.  Tyler gets real sentimental on this album, and I can’t stop eating it up.  Don’t worry, we still get Tyler’s signature angry bangers.  It’s just, this time, cradled in a package topped with a sincere sunflower.  This record shows there’s more to Tyler than just trolling and confrontation—this album is a soulful journey.  He’s thoughtful and introspective on this album.  It’s is embedded in a dreamy atmosphere with giant honeybees and sunflowers. He steps away from the spotlight, focusing more on producing on this album.  He made these songs with the guest artists in mind, and it shows.  The entire album works very well, it still feels focused even with the wheelhouse of guest artists.  It is concise in it’s forty-seven minutes.  

 The album’s most controversial element is that of his “coming out”.  Throughout the album, Tyler raps tenderly about boys.  Probably the most infamous lyric in this vein is from I Ain’t Got Time— “The next line will have them like whoa/I’ve been kissing white boys since 2004”.  This is a pretty big statement from the guy who dropped the word “faggot” over forty times just two albums prior.  To fit the romantic floral imagery, Tyler comes out of a garden shed, coaxed by Estelle’s voice.  “That is where I was hidin'/That was real love I was in/Ain't no reason to pretend… Garden shed for the garçons/Them feelings that I was guardin'/Heavy on my mind”.

However, is Tyler saying this?  Or Flower Boy?

Tyler is famous for his trolling.  He loves to fuck with people.  Each album has one or more personas.  There’s the deep-voiced therapist in Goblin, the hell-raising Tron Cat from his original mixtapes.  Is Tyler gay?  More importantly, does it fucking matter?  

[limnotlimb-blog]

Live Review: Tyler, the Creator’s Flower Boy Tour

November 7th, 2017           Salt Lake City

by A. Michael Lim

The complex is buzzing by time we get there.  The dense, cube-like building flashes lights along its sides while a security guard half-ass searches my bag and we make our way in.  The line for merch was insane—a line snaked through the room side to side.  Tyler was no longer just an icon from his Odd Future days, but a creative force to be reckoned with.  His fashion brand, GOLF, has skyrocked to nearly the level of Supreme’s.  Hypebeasts (defined by Urban Dictionary as: “a kid that collect clothing, shoes, and accessories for the sole purpose of impressing others) populate the line, in the 80’s revival of vinyl coach jackets and torn mom jeans, Odd Future socks underneath with either torn up vans or no shoes at all.  The room is buzzing in the dark with bright neon stage lights casting shadows.  Vape clouds puff up from the crowd.  Taco, Odd Future member and Tyler’s touring opening DJ, has his set up in front of a large white box—had to be nine by nine feet (at last).  Purple and greens lights flash across it.  Kendrick Lamar’s “King Kunta” blasts over the speakers.  I checked my phone to see if it was 2015 again, but I guess Taco loves a good Kendrick throwback as much as anyone.  The song buzzes into an electronic noise, and fades out.  Lights dim about halfway, and Taco exits—leaving a vacuum stage.  I could feel the audience hugging the stage, holding their breath.  Cheers ensue, either to celebrate the end Taco’s mediocre DJ skills or in anticipation of Tyler.  I’ll admit, personally, it was both.

Stagehands move the DJ set-up off the stage.  The stark, white box is alone on the stage.  LED lights shine violet.  The way the material captures the light, it seems like a sheet over a cube frame, and a split second after that occurred to me, the sheet was pulled off. Inside?  A grid-frame of with a figure standing inside.  He faces away from the crowd.

Pale Levi’s with a white tee tucked in, topped with the signature GOLF-branded snapback in black covers the figure.  “Where This Flower Blooms” slides over the speakers. I was overflowing with energy, but the soft tune pulls me in.  The man turns and raises his face to the light: Tyler, the Creator has arrived.

He immediately wraps us in his world of technicolor sunflowers and OJ Simp-Suns shining.  Yellow light shines behind him as he moves in and out of his black-frame.  Frank Ocean’s recorded voice swoons.  As it ends another cheer erupts, and the rhythmic and jarring buzz of “Deathcamp” interrupts the clapping.  And you know who fucking comes on stage?  Jasper Dolphin.  Y’know, from the old Odd Future mix-tape days?  This guy hasn’t produced shit since 2014, but here he is—jumping and screaming on stage with the one, and only, Tyler.

             Jasper leaves the stage but Tyler runs through his hits.  My favorite moments?  After Mr. Lonely and the crowd gets quiet, Tyler asks “Ya’ll Mind if I do some old shit?” and IFHY begins.  Tyler goes through some old hits when “TAMALE” shakes the audience.  Nothing could contain me.  I was in the 21+ area, which was admittedly less jacked than the rest of the crowd, but I threw my body and screamed “TAMALE-AYYY!”.  I apparently knocked over some girl’s drink, and she started squaring me up to fight.  …I didn’t even notice.  I was captured my Tyler’s Wolf throwback and was blissfully unaware.  My boyfriend grabbed and pulled me away just in time to miss this chick’s manicured fist.

             Then it was a whirl of Flower Boy songs.  “Please don’t save me” Tyler mumbled, maybe more to himself, before the final song: “See You Again”.  The most heart-aching track, Tyler spit raps yet cradles us in his voice.  And before I was ready, his voice relaxes and through the microphone announces “Thank you, Salt Lake City”.  The rainbow of LED lights dim onstage and the floor illuminates in a light created by dull, fluorescent bulbs.  My breath held a beat, and I felt it: we all loved Tyler, and too soon it was over.  I didn’t want to leave but it was time to go.  My best friend pulled me in and grabbed my hand “Let’s go”.  I looked back at the empty stage, and that last lyric hung in my head: I don’t know if I’ma see you again.

  SET LIST

1.       Where This Flower Blooms

2.       Deathcamp (Ft. Jasper)

3.       Foreward

4.       Boredom

5.       Biking

6.       911

7.       Mr. Lonely

8.       IFHY

9.       She

10.   48

11.   TAMALE

12.   Who Dat Boy

13.   November

14.   Glitter

15.   I Ain’t got Time!

16.   See You Again

[limnotlimb-blog]

DAMN.’s Second Coming: We’re Gon’ Put it in Reverse.

A track-by-track analysis by Annie Lim

This is the album in reverse.  On December 5th, Kendrick Lamar verified the fan theory that DAMN. was originally meant to be in reverse order.  This is a track-by-track of this version, which will be released as a collector’s edition.

I was taking a walk the other day…

 DUCKWORTH.

In an ethereal tone, Bēkon & Kid Capri’s sweet musings introduces the album.  Kendrick

We meet Lamar, a kid who hails Mary and marijuana—we learn where Kendrick came from as he asks us don’t judge me, then we tumble back in time. Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith spares an employee’s life while robbing a KFC, who was Kenneth “Ducky” Duckworth—Kendrick Lamar Duckworth’s father.  

This is about the few who survive the grim cycle of violence and gangs in Compton.

GOD.

Walking to the bank and flexing, Kendrick lets us know that his is what God feels like.  Success is God to Kendrick, in the first verse were he brags his success.  The song winds down, don’t judge me, and God doesn’t think Kendrick knows who he is talking to.  His mortality is reminded to him, and the song winds down.

FEAR.

This is the most important track in the album and begins with a voicemail from the rapper’s cousin. …you have to understand this, man, that we are a cursed people…”  He reminds Kendrick what to fear, and that’s God himself.

A giant at running time 7:40, Kendrick dives into the abyss of his fears.  From ways he, as a man, could die to that of his career. This track is self-aware, asking itself if he can face all these in fourteen tracks.

The song ends as it begins, a biblical speech in a voicemail by Kendrick’s cousin, Carl.  “He’s gonna punish us, the so-called Blacks, Hispanics, and Native American Indians, are the true children of Israel.  We are the Israelites… He’s gonna chastise you because he loves you”.

What happens on earth, stays on earth.

 XXX.

This song hints at the inner turbulence both inside Kendrick and the socio-political scene inside America today.  Kendrick sees two paths, one of god and one of wickedness.  This hints at the upcoming elements of duality within the album,

Is America honest or do we bask in sin?

LOVE.

Kendrick, backed by sweet-voiced Zacari, muses on love.  This tracks wraps the listener in his deep intimacy.  He wants unconditional love.

Love me, just love me….

 LUST.

This track is what you, between the sheets with another body.  Hot breath and sticking skin, overheating but it feels too good to leave. This is a lust for more than sex, but for a day wasted on sipping lean and shooting guns out windows tuning into the news “hopin’ election wasn’t true”.  Lust steps over the boundary of being only something of physical bounty, but also of wanting a different political tone.

Whatever you doin’ just make it count

 HUMBLE.

There’s no way you missed this song.  The infectious beat will get inside of your bones.  Kendrick challenges his competition in the face of full irony of the title.  The video literally has Kendrick in priest’s robes, flashing between more religious then urban imagery.

 “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom” Proverbs 11:2

 PRIDE.

After the high of Humble’s beat dies down, this is what we’re left with: pride.  A remorseful beat introduces what is known as the deadliest sin, the “perverted love of oneself”.  Kendrick looks himself hard in the mirror.  He looks over himself, over his ideals and how they vary and even contradict themselves. In a perfect world he’d forgo money for faith, dreams of another life where he could be this selfless.

I can’t fake humble just cause your ass is insecure.

 LOYALTY.

Rihanna and Kendrick bless us with a duet.  It’s a sexy, trance-inducing track  This song is the single on the album meant to get girls like Bad Girl Ri-Ri’s hips swinging. The beat is almost as sexy as the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlh-dzB2U4Y).  What? What of jealousy and lust in a relationship?

It’s so hard to be humble…

FEEL.

Kendrick uses the word “feel”, or some variation of it, seventy-two times in this song.  These are the raw insecurities of Kendrick Lamar.

ELEMENT.

In an album filled with duality, it’s only fitting that after a lament of his flaws Kendrick would flaunt his dedication to his game.  Kendrick brags his figures but lets us know you can’t take him out of his element. He’s still K-Dot, the kid that climbed out of Compton’s violence into his unlikely fortune and fame.

If I’m gotta slap a pussy-ass nigga I’m gon’ make it look sexy.

 YAH.

This is the most personal Kendrick speaks of his religious and political views, as well as his social standings.  Radars are buzzing, everyone wants a piece of Kendrick.  Fox News want to use his name “for percentage”, an example of third-party strangers using his name and message to make money.

DNA.

Kendrick has kept down the rage inside of him.  But the sin of wrath bubbles to the surface.  He

Got war and peace inside my DNA.

BLOOD.

A blind woman is pacing It—it seems like she’s lost something.  Kendrick Lamar, K.Dot, Kung-Fu Kenny (or however you know him) walks up to her.  “Hello, ma’am, can I be of any assistance?  It seems to me you have lost something…”

“Oh yes, you have lost something” She dreamily states and trails off.  “You’ve lost your life”

And he’s shot.

The quote of Fox News reporter Geraldo Rivera, stutters in, shown in the gif below, and the album ends.

Damn.