12 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MUSIC
THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 2003
Get Rich or Die Tryin by 50 Cent
Reviewed by Nate Harold
nharold@kansan.com
In recent memory, no other debut has been as hyped and anticipated as New York rapper 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin'. Upon its release, the album scorched the Billboard charts and became the highest-selling debut album since Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle. In some ways the new release does live up to the hype; in others, it falls short.
With executive producers Dr. Dre and Eminem masterminding the effort, 50 Cent comes off as menacing and oddly likable at the same time.
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With a history of selling crack and having been shot nine times, 50 has more than enough credibility to back his rhymes. On the track, "Many Men," 50 raps, "I walk around / gun on my waist / chip on my shoulder / til I bust a clip in your face." Lyrics like these are nothing new to gangsta rap, but 50 delivers them in such an honest manner that he creates a sense of realism that is lacking in many rappers.
On "Back Down," 50 confronts MTV darling Ja Rule, with whom he has had a long-running dispute. "You can buy cars but can't buy respect in the hood / Maybe I'm so disrespectful because to me you're a mystery," 50 spews about Ja's questionable past.
In contrast with this, 50 can pull off the popular party tracks like "In Da Club" as effectively as his confrontational material. This transitional ability could be credited to the production team that includes Dr. Dre, Eminem, musician Mike Elizondo, among many others. The team has constructed memorable beats with an unbelievably fierce kick drum, unexpected use of steel drums, crystal clear synthesizer, guitar, bass and string passages and tasteful uses of multi-tracked vocals. 50 is one of the few rappers who can occasionally pull off singing his own chorus, rather than bringing in additional vocalists on every song. (Does anyone remember P. Diddy's "singing" on "Come With Me"?)
The most evident weak point of this album is the lyrics. 50 tends to not stray from typical gangsta rap fare for a majority of the tracks. However, this can be overlooked because of his slow, relaxed
drawl that separates him from the hip hop pack.
Overall, Get Rich or Die Tryin' is a strong debut. It may not be ground breaking or completely new, but 50 nevertheless has created a record that is believable and appealing to a broad audience. Let's hope the ninth bullet was the last.
Grade: B
Electric Sweat by The Mooney Suzuki
Reviewed by Steve Vockrodt svockrodt@kansan.com
Look all around and seemingly everywhere in the pop culture world appears a reference to times gone by. Musicians, typically rappers, commonly wear retro-style sports uniforms, which also appear in every sporting goods store at bloated prices.
The music scene itself went through an uncommonly long and unusually uncreative stretch of retro-copying music. Bands like The Hives and The Strokes shamelessly stole the image and sounds of 1970's era punk bands, and The Hives going so far as to pull an image cop-off of the Rolling Stones.
With native New Yorkers punk/garage band The Mooney Suzuki's new album Electric Sweat,the band accomplishes much of the same as fellow rip-off artists, however it is not so bad.
Any band can get together and copy a sound exactly like the one they intended, like The Strokes did. The Mooney Suzuki at least manages to bring in sounds and influences from bands unlike their sound and cultivating it to a sound a bit more original and refreshing.
Sounding at times like a fast Elvis Presley cover band, The Mooney Suzuki energetically plows through its 35-minute album with songs largely about love with
lyrics and themes from the same vein of Presley and other R&B artists of the time.
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Sammy James Jr.'s shaky, yet passionate vocals sufficiently compliments the harried, sloppy tone of music the artists and producer probably intended to make. The album gets started off quickly with a song by the album's same name and never really quits afterwards.
the technical music aspect does noth
1. A BAND OF BEES . . Sunshine Hit Me
2. AISLERS SET ... How I Learned to Write Backward
6. XIU XIU ... A Promise
3. GUITAR WOLF . UFO Romantics
7. ANTIPOP CONSORTIUM ... Antipop vs. Matthew Shipp
4. MOVING UNITS .. Moving Units
5. SUPERGRASS . . . Life on Other Planets
8. LIGHTNING BOLT ... Wonderful Rainbow
9. JR EWING ... Ride Paranola
ing to stand out, oftentimes sounding like a stripped-down version of The Hellacopters. Therefore no songs stick out as particularly impressive or worthwhile. Little variations in style make the album difficult at times to get through.
Along with the adamant, unchanging musical style comes an unyielding approach to lyrics that never strays away from the overused love theme, evidenced by songs like "Oh Sweet Susanna," "A Little Bit Of Love" and "The Broken Heart."
10. ERLEND OYE ... Unrest
Grade: B-
With the retro style alive and well, especially among the pop culture music scene, there surely lies an audience for The Mooney Suzuki. Pulling from a different style than most cop-off bands are willing to venture into, punk fans at least won't get this CD mixed up with their Sham 69 albums like they probably did with The Hives.
These Are The Vistas by The Bad Plus
Reviewed by Steve Vockrodt svockrodt@kansan.com
After developing somewhat of a cult following, the band jumped forth with its recent major-label album.
The Minnesota band entered the underground jazz scene with its first self-titled album in 2001 and gained a reputation largely from its interesting live shows.
Followers of the jazz scene, which is in a state of regeneration or decay depending on who you talk to these days, receive a decent kick start back to prominence and legitimacy with The Bad Plus' new release These Are The Vistas.
These Are The Vistas features somewhat of an avante garde style of jazz, an area of jazz still mostly untouched. With a
lineup of only a pianist (Ethan Iverson), bassist (Ried Anderson) and drums (David King), the album is to the jazz scene as Kenneth Anger films were to the movie scene, largely experimental.
Nothing on the album seems more
experimental and as successful as the cover of Nirvana's alternative uberhit "Smells Like Teen Spirit." A total deconstruction of
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the individual verse-chorus-verse elements of the original are reconstructed in an intentionally slipshod manner. The result is an unfocused, yet oddly balanced jazz rendition of the original, punctuated with offbeat drumming and seemingly random shifts among different elements of the song.
Also covered on the album is Blondie's "Heart of Glass," which is similar to the previous two covers.
Showing the band's versatility is its cover of rough techno artist Aphex Twin's song "Film." The band embarks upon a similar quest of stripping down an already original song and throwing it all back together to make a competent cover tune.
The original tunes on the album are decent but not remarkable. The theme keeping the album interesting is the different approach to jazz, departing from the typically tight and structured composition of jazz and arriving to a vastly deconstructed and raw version of the age-old genre. The resulting product should satisfy newcomers as well as hardened jazz enthusiasts looking for something a bit different.
Grade: B
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