Weezy is running the world (and I'm not)

Slow week here at TSJ. Unfortunately for me, I have neither the excuse of being clinically photosensitive, nor beach-combing in Mykonos, or whatever blissful bohemian activity/location that halfer is involved in right now.

My presidential campaign lasted quite a bit longer than I expected. I need to add more Slayer to my iPod. I made it through nine songs before being impeached. There were two junctures, prior to my forced resignation, where I was out of the party bed and sleeping on the couch:

Song #2 - "Cali Dro"
Birdman & Lil Wayne

Before Lil Wayne was a national hero, he was still a rapper. Weezy became America's (other) darling in June by selling 1,005,545 albums in his first week of release, earning a name-drop by one of our competitors for office (who, I might add, really has only a slightly less dirty iPod playlist than mine). His work prior to the bestselling Carter III bears the rawness and candour that one might expect of the Artist as a Young Thug. Training wheels before Ducatis, brass before ice in the Rollie. "Cali Dro" is about Dro from Cali. Would Buddha by any other name smell as skunk? Yes, at least after checking with Urban Dictionary, and the border cops keep a long cheat sheet in their Blackberries. So with verses like this, I thought I was KO in the second round:

We Smoke Thunda, It Put Me Under
Im Talkin About Straight Purple Kush That Thundas
See I Be Fuckin With Them Trees Cuz Im Straight Out Tha Jungle
Keep About Five Pounds And We Aint Even Tryin To Hustle
Yall Already Know How That Go

I reckon five pounds is a felony in most states, even if we aint trying to hustle. However, on the last verse, Kurupt drops a brilliant safety:

I Got That White Ivory Ice Tee
Docters, Requestin Dope Weed
Blazin Up So Much Bomb
I Got A Bad Bitch On My Side

John P. Walters, you just got slammed! Doctors do request dope weed! Dope medicinal weed! That's why Weezy keeps a fill of that grass like a farmer! Kurupt's "bad bitch" may just be the mthrfckn law. So I'm still in the game. Then there's this:

Song #8 - "Shut the Club Down"
Girl Talk

I can't wait to dance to this in someone's kitchen. Few summer house parties have been entirely GT-free for the last three years, and rightly so. Gregg Gillis hath returned most triumphantly, choosing to stick with the basic program, outlined in his third album, for his fourth. But sometimes, the popular choice is absolutely the right one. This track features several mashup peaks (you know, when retro guilty pleasure hook x gets dropped under crunk chorus y and all your friends yell the Soulja Boy "oooooh!"), one of which is Rich Boy's "Throw Some D's" over Aphex Twin's sweetly understated "Girl/Boy Song." The effect is downright sentimental, which is rare in mashup-land, but when Rich Boy boasts of buying a Cadillac over those Aphex string plucks, I really feel proud of all the piggy-banking he must have had to do. Another moment is Avril's "Girlfriend" over Dolla and T-Pain, which I actually feel pretty okay about. It's like, working doggedly to launch Avril's last metallic dirigible during the previous spring has at least resulted in this singular hip instant, albeit one that will never be mentioned on the Pink One's website (which, compared to said dirigible of an album, is like a graceful swan of a social networking site). Here's the thing, though: at around the third minute, we get The Cool Kids' "Gold And A Pager" over "A Whiter Shade of Pale." Now, the eponymous sample from the Kids track is, of course, N.W.A.'s "Fuck Tha Police." So, yeah. Slide that past Ann Coulter. But assuming the bloggers miss that one, I'd be dead at yard ten.

Song #10 - "This Is Hardcore"
Pulp

Ten years later, America is still not ready for Jarvis Cocker to say "you make me hard," "teenage wet dream," or even "that goes in there." Nothing goes anywhere in abstinence-only education. This is the man who would later opine that "cunts are still running the world," and this is an idea to which I'm far too congenial to continue running in this honorable race. No, America, I know which way the exit is. You don't have to lead me by the arm.

NB: of amusement to me were some of my randomomizer's softcore picks, which included Marcia Aitken's "I'm Still In Love," Spoon's "Finer Feelings," and Gram Parson's "Love Hurts" (recorded just one year before Nazareth made high school prom history).  The middle ground is for emos and Ryan Adams.