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ATG sizes it all up.

Lil Wayne is finally in jail.
His sentencing perpetually curtailed by oddities (dental surgery, freak fires), the game-changing rapper shipped to Rikers Monday afternoon. One of our brightest stars gone until likely October. Without the luxury of near daily guest spots, the internet will be a less interesting forum for new music.

ATG sizes it all up.

Apologies if we've been a little slow this week. As Texas alums, eyes are collectively focused on this weekend's impending showdown with a bunch of motherfuckers we can't wait to crush.

Some of the staff is heading to Dallas, all of us promise to be absolutely blitzed by the 11 a.m. kickoff. We'll be bumping this.

In the realm of amateur journalism, college papers often exchange essays for big games. It's fun, friendly, intelligent diatribe. A couple of years back, working for such a paper, I wrote one of these "you guys suck" pieces and sent it to Oklahoma's editor.

For whatever reason, my work never made it to press. More than likely scheduling and deadlines interfered, like to tell people it was because they fell back knowing they sucked.

Given the occasion, I've decided to unearth the lost column. Check it after the jump.

Many would agree, perhaps reluctantly, that Pitchfork.com is easily the most influential, most read, most loathed publication for the largest share of music-loving, online-dwelling twentysomethings of this generation. It's a demographic of which your friendly editors are card-carrying members, as are, we expect, many of you. We frequently, occasionally vehemently, disagree with P4k, but it is a hate/love relationship, and we eagerly discuss the site amongst friends just as frequently as we curse it.

Today the online magazine capped off its months-long exploration of the Decade In Music by revealing selections for the top 20 albums of the decade - the final entry in a week-long countdown from 500. If you've spent any time on indie music blogs or forums in the past 10 years, this one is a fairly predictable bunch. (The earlier entries are chock-full of poorly sequenced formative touchstones and one-off obscurities.) Nevertheless, there are some bold declarations, and one vindication of a Wallabee-shoe loving, coke-game-chronicling rapper/ friend to the ladies who happens to be a peerless storyteller and is responsible for the name of this very site.

What follows is a run-down in two (very different) parts.

ATG sizes it all up.

Sorry I've been a little absent this week.

This story has been making the rounds on the Net since last weekend, and I just want to say how retarded and painfully obvious ("check out the ego on THOSE guys!") the whole thing is. The author thinks he's cute or insightful, I guess. The editors are just happy I'm blogging about it.

Also, Glenn Beck is a terrorist, not a cute subject for the media to mull over.

Also, "gangsta rap"? Really?? I can't even let you skate on that one, creamy-New-York-Times-guy. Gangsta Rap is dead (not that any of the people you mentioned were ever associated with it). The members of NWA are all either retired, starring in family comedies, or long ago struck down by The Virus.



P.S. Anyone hankering for a legit academic treatise on a modern hip-hop subject (believe it or not, at least one actually exists) should scope this intellectually rigorous breakdown from ForeignPolicy.com's Mark Lynch. It astutely compares Jay-Z's relationship with haters to the United States' relationship with smaller, temperamental stone-throwers like Iran and North Korea.  

ATG sizes it all up.

Yes.

The So Far Gone mixtape is a modern classic; a vastly influential commodity that's served as both a winter wonderland of introspection and clarity since its server overloading drop in early February and a summer jam programming club playbook.

The EP is worthy validation for our boy, Drake. Aside from its worthwhile art and tangible manifestation, there are two new bonafide jams:


"Fear"

DJ Khalil's somber, tense palettes serve Drizzy's perils of stardom tales beautifully. The track pauses, knocks when the drums kick in, streams into a torrent of horns for a triumphant chorus. Drake's hook straddles on the generic ("Don't believe the lies/look me in my eyes" crooned in Autotune), but his fire verses overpower.


"I'm Going In"

Worthy club banger with Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy and a Screw hook. Drake is uncharacteristically aggressive and loud in inflection, but maintains his dark side on money boast zingers like, "Money flowing like a slit wrist with no bandage."

Jeezy is throwed ("No Autotune but you can feel the Pain") and Weezy is wondrously chauvenistic ("Got a bitch named Crystal/ I let her suck my whistle").

ATG sizes it all up.

As Kanye West stormed onstage, I was watching live; rigged two TVs in the living room for an all out immersion in media. Said power play was for simultaneously taking in telecasts of the NFL's opening weekend. The FOX game. The CBS game.

Anyway, saw the Video Music Awards incident unfold in real time as the Packers battled the Bears; an absolute feast and delight of a game, by the way. For background, NBC usually picks a random pairing of big name teams for its initial prime time Sunday presentation.

This results in a big bill (last year it was Chicago at Indianapolis) but unfamiliarity and as usual, the traditional coaching double-down that nets lots of running, field goals and flat performances.

But these teams have been playing since the 1930s; Chicago versus Green Bay is the league's oldest rivalry and America got lots of aggressive calls and explosive moments. When historic rivals collide under present, intriguing, high stakes circumstances, there's nothing better.

The controversially-acquired Jay Cutler spent an entire preseason exploiting what the defense fed him - mainly dump down passes to running back Matt Forte that burst for chunks of key yards. Under the lights, he forced throws to receivers overwhelmed by the moment. There were tons of casualties to rabid injuries including perennial iron man, Brian Urlacher. In the end, Greg Jennings torched former Texas Longhorn, Nathan Vasher, who foolishly tried playing bump and run against one of the fastest receivers around with no safety help over the top, for a game-winning bomb.

Alright, so the Kanye moment occured during a crucial third down. In the thirty or so seconds during which his shine theft unfolded, I immediately thought, "Kanye West didn't like the finality of the pointless award and drunkenly said something. Who gives a shit?"

ATG sizes it all up.

I could count the number of times I've walked out of a movie on one hand. Not only do I avidly avoid suspected cinematic stinkers, but I generally hate leaving anything unfinished. Usually, if I find myself parked in front of a particularly bad waste of celluloid (Shrek 3, The Taking of Pelham 123), I'll just doze off and catch up on some shut-eye while I wait for the third act resolution. Halfway through District 9, though, as my brother and I gathered our half-eaten, over-priced snack foods, arose from our seats and prepared to exit the theater, I have to admit that I felt pretty good about it. 

ATG sizes it all up.

Joe Budden could do with a warm glass of shut-the-hell-up.

Rather than his forceful, personal, honest Mood Muzik mixtapes or his strong-suited pair of LPs or his ambitious lyrical capabilities, one of the decade's most compelling, volatile personas is defined by petty skirmishes with bigger names.

It makes sense that as we watch the music and persona of Kanye West drift into the outer reaches of the popular stratosphere, ripple effects would start to emerge. But I can only imagine what it was like to watch the pale, shirtless, "free spirits" midway through the interpretive dance of "Robocop" depicted above...