#top tier audience they were hype they knew ALL THE LYRICS

[spaceoperetta]

I watch WWE from time to time, as it’s included with my Peacock subscription, and the Backlash crowd was absolutely electric, woowwwwww

[unoriginalanimeho]

Angel Beats! Review: (LOL this is a long ass review. Please enjoy as i felt like it was appropriate for this one to be more from-the-heart like the anime itself :o and Yes, I highly recommend it as you can see. Happy watching)

How to begin... It was a Saturday night when my coworker suggested we watch this anime that he held in high regard. The three of us had just finished work and planned to relax with food, burritos from La Vics. After deciding that we would enjoy our late night meal with a show, my coworker logged into his Crunchyroll account and then... we all fell asleep. The End Jokes aside, I didn’t expect to binge watch an entire 12 episode series in a night. Especially when I had work the next morning. But like the unreal, exhausting next day where I struggled to stay awake for the next 7 hours of work, there is probably no other that comes to mind in terms anime when it comes to Angel Beats!. Animation, Soundtrack, Emotion, Angel Beats practically topped every expectation that I had whenever I begin a new series that I knew so little about. The animation for Angel Beats! is superb. Every movement the characters made, during fast-paced battles to the high-energy school concerts to even just the interactions the characters have with their friends was all on point. There hasn’t been a moment during my viewing where I thought to myself “huh, the animation quality dipped”, which is rare for any series. Especially when similar series with fluid animation quality still suffered during the middle of the series. But most definitely, the most eye-catching thing about the show that highlights this point is the opening. HOT DAMN!: the piano, the Angel’s movements, camera rotation. I can go on and on. Openings are one of the most important and memorable things about an anime. It get’s you hyped for it each week a new episode airs, you connect the opening to the anime whenever you hear it being played as you walk down the street. The animation team for AB! did one helluva job with this project and it’s become one of the most memorable things that I love about Angel Beats!

Speaking of the opening, everything music related about the series is amazing! Let’s first address the hidden support of any anime ever, the soundtrack. Soundtracks are important imo as it keeps the viewers engaged while watching. The music whenever the Afterlife War Front are plotting their secret operations or just up to no good, are all catchy with their tempos, almost reminding me planning phases of a tactics video game. Which could also be synonymous to how the Afterlife War Front are afterall, while they fight to repel the Angel, it’s almost like theyre plotting to play tricks on their fellow student(s) and live out their lives as if they were alive and causing trouble at school. Meanwhile, you have the anime’s rockband group, Girl’s Dead Monster. Despite being a front so the main protag and his posse can pull off their Operations discretely without getting innocent students involved, the rock band’s music not only do a splendid job keeping the student’s attention but mine as well. It’s almost like how K-On has their own music for the anime but is also commonly listened to on other’s free time. The anime’s “singles” as I would call it, also remind me of FLCL, how the identity of the music is synonymous to the anime and vice versa. It also fits so well in the anime so that it has purpose and reason for being included instead of a gimmick to make viewers go “yeah Angel Beats! is good! did you know it also has a single in it as well?”. It instead makes you go “yeah Angel Beats! is amazing! They even have their own songs that help tell its story!” Also Iwasawa’s “ballad” tho TT_TT  Now finally the opening. The opening is beautiful. When the song begins to reach the climax and then hits the chorus, it’s strong as it shakes your soul. It moves you as the piano in both the song and the anime opening strikes each key with power. And the lyrics. While the song is great to listen to without reading or understanding the lyrics, the passion from the singing is fine enough, the lyrics fit so well to the themes and the plot of the anime itself. And honestly, when reading the lyrics during the final episodes of the series, hooo boy does it hit you like a truck.

Going back to what I said about the anime at the beginning, Angel Beats! topped every expectation I had about it. While the story was familiar, students in another world fighting against a common enemy, what made this series stand out so much from anything else I typically watch was its humor, its suspense and its sad moments. The series is fun as hell to watch as the character’s interact with one another. Though all anime are gonna have this sort of interaction between close friends, the way they make fun or prank each other, Angel Beats! seems to knock that out of the ball park with its flavor of punchlines, references to other anime, but moreso, the memes. There are so many jokes that they use throughout the series and they’ll often reoccur, such as the RIP theme, cutting off other characters whenever theyre talking, so on so forth.  Angel Beats! is also memorable as hell for how suspenseful and sad it is. All the characters have suffered most unfortunate deaths, resulting in their revivals in the limbo school/realm (for lack of a better term) where they can continue to live their lives as regular students and fill/replace the voids and bad memories that have occured to them in the past. You have Iwasawa’s inability to live her dream to perform for a live audience due to head trauma caused by her abusive father, Yui’s inability to live a normal life in the first place due to being paralyzed at a very young age, Yuri’s inability to save her own young siblings from thieves/murderers. Though that’s practically the entire list, it’s still nonetheless depressing for an anime, especially when the situations that the characters have lived through in their previous lives are so real and definitely hit so close to home (in a believable sense that is). And goddamn is it especially sad at the last episode. It’s one of the rare and few animes that have made me cry... Anyways, Angel Beats! is a high-tier on my list for good reason and I implore everyone to give it a chance if you haven’t watched it already. 

[thefalastini]

Drake and his Rising Empire

From his iconic role on Degrassi: The Next Generation to selling out concerts all over the nation, Drake is one of the most beloved artists of our time. When it comes to the culture, Drake really made his indent in our way of life.  This is because the Toronto native has been releasing some of this generation’s hottest bangers and he is not letting down yet. Drake can literally take any collaborations thrown his way and turn it into a hot single. Many artists have worked with the In My Feelings artist including rappers like Migos, Lil Wayne, Kanye West and so on. With his album drops and special collaborations, Drake has really touched places in the world and genres of different music where some artists haven’t explored yet. With Scorpion being one of the artist’s musical gems and its many bangers which can get anyone hyped, Drake has since secured his throne in the hip hop kingdom. But as Drake keeps releasing music, is his style straying from what he originally releasing?

Drake’s rise to fame initially begins in the 2000s when he was casted on the hit show Degrassi: The Next Generation. He played the role of a young basketball star by the name of Jimmy Brooks and continued to partake in the part until he parted ways from acting in 2009. Drake was pursuing his rap career at the time before leaving his acting career when he released his first mixtape Room for improvement and its turnout was a success. It from there he released more mixtapes and was racking up an image for himself in the rap industry. His recognition was really on the raise when his second acclaimed mixtape, Comeback Season, was dropped in 2007 and had gained much appraisal behind it. It was this mixtape that not only set the foundation that Drake would begin to build his empire from but also, he was able to release a music video featuring Trey Songs on one of his hit songs, Replacement Girl. In 2008, it was this year when Lil Wayne was handed a few of Drizzy’s songs and called Drake to join him on his tour in Houston. Drake and Lil Wayne went on to release a couple of songs during the time including Ransom and I Want This Forever. Drake had a really successful outcome in the underground when he released his third official mixtape, So Far Gone, free on his blog site where it received two thousand downloads in the first two hours alone. The mixtape eventually made its way on the radio due to the success of the album and was named, “The Hottest mixtape of 2009.” It was his collaboration with fellow artists like DJ Khaled, Kanye West and other acclaimed artists that really gave his mixtape shine. In the mid-2010, Drake unraveled his first official debut album, Thank Me Later where it was an album that made people who were still wary of drake to become full on fans. This album was what set himself apart from other artists in the game including Kanye West who was big in the rap industry during the time. In his lyrics on some of the songs in the album, Drizzy shows a side of him where he is not some Toronto born actor trying to make it big in the industry but a full-on Artist who wowed the producers who listened to it. Ryan Dombal of Pitchfork who reviewed the hot album and quoted “considering this mixed race, half-Jewish, all-Canadian "Degrassi: The Next Generation" alum looks and sounds unlike any major rap star before him, betting the house on nothing but himself turns out to be a wise gamble.” Drake announced his second studio album, Take Care, where it was released on November 15, 2011 and was an album like no other. With some many hit songs like The Motto, Headlines and Take Care, the album quickly headed to the top of the charts not only in the US, but in Canada and Australia as well. This album would be described as the embodiment of Drake’s thoughts and rise to stardom to audience listening to every song on the track. It could be best described as one of the hottest bangers during the time and nothing out there couldn’t compete. The album later was awarded a Grammy for best rap album and drake was already working on his album release, Nothing Was the Same. In 2012, Drake and his producer “40” formed his iconic record label OVO Sound and was collaborating with top Artists like Rick Ross and Big Sean as well as singers like Jhene Aiko and Sampha. Drake really shows his R&B side of himself when he released this album. He also discusses how he tackles family issues while trying to balance his rap life and personal life and still keep a sane mind. Drake gave us a peek into his life at the moment and how events in his life led him to do decisions that made him contemplate some of his choices. Drake took his time to release his next album If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, where his R&B rap style swaps out to become an aggressive upbeat rapper with no time for Bullshit and only time for Money and Music. Drake has shown a side of him that his fans knew he had but didn’t know when he was going to show it. That album was that side of drake. He was no longer the Emotional rapper who sang about his feelings towards past girls but as a top tier rapper who can put other rappers in their place if they get near. With contexts featuring his relationship with the Jamaican community, Drizzy shows how his reach was beginning to expand to other places in the world as well as their music. Craig Jenkins from Pitchfork spoke on his views of the album as he quoted “If You’re Reading This arouses many unanswered questions on a business front, but where it truly delivers is giving Drake room to breathe outside of the lumbering commercialism of his retail albums.” Drake uses this album to shed light on the years of rumors about him and his frenemies who he taunts with his lyrics. A notable message that he delivers in one of his songs was shot at his label mate Tyga after he insulted the Toronto rapper on Vice magazine; Drake claps back with the lyrics written "You need to act your age and not your girl’s age." Drake really showed no chill in this track and basically relayed the message as “if you want to start shit, I’m ready when you are” type of mentality. Drizzy, being one of the top rappers at that time, was becoming a name that everyone has heard of. Whether it is his special appearances on other artists’ tracks or selling out shows, Drake has become a rapper who can take any ordinary song and turn it into top single. Whether he makes one or featured by one.

2016 comes and 2017 goes, Drake has released two albums, Views in 2016 and More Life in 2017, which were not totally albums of catchy songs but pieces that began to show how his music is becoming not one singular genre but his natural flow among different types of music he can automatically hit top billboards with. With that, Drake latest release, Scorpion was one of his Albums to date with each song on the track being not only catchy but lyrical also. Drake uses the album to tackle many issues he is facing during the time as well as address the Pusha T’s claims that he has been hiding a child from the media. Drake uses this album not only to respond to T’s acquisitions but also to explain why he is hiding his son. "I wasn't hiding my kid from the world, I was hiding the world from my kid / From empty souls who just wake up and look to debate / Until you are staring at your seed, you could never relate." Drake is basically explaining to his listeners why he was hiding his son and Pusha T on how he won’t understand until he has a kid of his own. All in all, the album is treasure chest of gems that anyone who listens to it will be hooked. From a review Jamieson Cox of pitchfork, he describes the album as “Drake’s fifth proper studio album is richly produced, studded with gems, and grapples with his fatherhood in a way that casts his arrested development into sharp relief.” Drizzy has become such a huge icon in the international music boards that no matter what he releases, it would become a hit. he has even released hit singles in other genres such as Latin music with his single "Mia" featuring Bad Bunny, a well-known artist in the Latin American music world where it near top billboards on both music boards.

Drake, who has went from child actor to huge rapper prodigy, has made his mark on this world for sure. Whether it is his music that you have heard or his signature owl logo from his label, it is safe to say that he has not only been killing it in the rap game but his OVO sound label has also skyrocketed to becoming a well-known name that every young teen has synced into their brains. With his catchy lyrics and having his merchandise being viewed at the same hype as clothing brand Supreme and other top tier street wear, Drake is only on his rise and there seems to be no dethroning him anytime soon.