Monday, July 20, 2015

Song of the Day #162 - Vince Staples - Norf Norf

I ain't never run from nothing but the police...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HigAB8WeS1Q

Ahh, is it time for school hell already? That can't be right. Oh wait this is the extended remix of weird term overlapping stuff and thus it actually lasts for the next two months, at which point it goes over the waterfall of graduation and then ha ha ha who knows what. School hell is the feeling of not really being overwhelmed by work per se (although that does happen) but living with the constant feeling of work that ought to be done looming over you, so that if you want to spend mental energy on whatever personal project (*cough cough HEe08 writeup aka greatest blog post of all time*) you instead figure you should work on school stuff. But then you don't wanna do that so you just sit there and do nothing.

OKAY but at LEAST I should be able to write a few words acknowledging this existence of this song which is basically perfect in both new and old ways. How stupid am I that I can go like a month or more with this album out there, with people explicitly telling me to listen to it, and I don't, because I have some assignment to do soon? Idk but I have finally rectified it, although most of my relistens break down here, at track two, which gets stuck on repeat.

It's so good he made two videos and this one is really good but not as special as the one I linked above. Clams Casino feels like he's always just hitting his stride... Like as soon as he maxes out the potential in one type of beat, he moves on to something else entirely new at a million miles an hour. This heavy, droney, and yet vibrant and distinct thing sounds like nothing else but also sounds like he's made dozens of these, it's so expert. Same with Vince's flow... it sounds like what we'll get out of the current Young Thug flow-over-everything school of thought after a few decades. He has all the hard swagger of veteran g-funk ("Nate Dogg still here cause of niggas like me") but it feels so fresh you end up scared like they must have been back then. And the hook holy crap the hook. "I ain't never run from nothing but the police" is again so classic and new in one. But my favorite part is how he repeats the last line of the hook at the start of the verse hnnnnng I love when rappers do that okay that's all more content soon pls pray 4 me.

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