Death Grips - The Money Store (2012)
My comments made a few days ago about how this year has been an abysmal one for hip hop have left me a little shaken with myself. It seems for the third year in a row I have been saying the same thing, since 2010, just two years after my stigma of the genre was broken it seems I love nothing more than bashing on the year in question. It's a little unbecoming and it gives me a glimpse to my own psyche, one that seems, to some degree at least, to be stuck with the same few groups that got me into hip hop with very little room to experiment. It's really strange, 3-years ago if it had the words "alternative hip hop" or "underground hip hop" or even "indie hip hop" in its title I would be all over it, but nowadays I'm far more hesitant to try something new. This could be a sign of sophistication on my part, not just eating up everything that fits within a certain perimeter because I just had my eyes opened and needed to make up for years of lost time. Anyways...
Death Grips was one of those bands I kind of feigned interest in in an attempt to be part of the conversation. While their debut mixtape was rife with fury, it was the kind of directionless fury that's only really fun when you're pissed off or just have a genuine interest in artificially inducing that mindset. As much as I like the idea of being yelled at by what seems to sound like a hobo, in practice I have to be in the right mood to properly enjoy it. The sad fact is, I'm just not that pissed off anymore. It could be my newly found financial stability or the fact that I'm getting older and actually anticipating a life of normalcy, but the fact is I just can't enjoy music that's made for the sole purpose of providing a conduit for those feelings of anger and antipathy.
So with that said, I think it's important to note just how good The Money Store is. It's an album that manages to capture the same torrent of anger from their mixtape Exmilitary, but provide it with some much needed direction, and while I'm still deciphering the lyrics, the album just seems to have more focus. I loved the beats, and while MC Ride's lyrics still tend to sound like the proverbial shouts of a homeless street preacher, I can't help but become entranced with the overall experience.
This definitely has me anticipating their fall release, No Love.
|