Stylistically it’s a nightmare: heavy drum machine beats and white-boy rapping over the top of sampled guitar lines from Iggy Pop’s The Passenger sounds nightmarishly bad on first listen, but often the media that grab us the most are the ones that need time to settle in. Remember the first time you heard Joanna Newsom's shrill playschool squawk or the first time Jarvis Cocker's lazy northern accent stumbled out of your speakers and into your heart - diversity sells, but only to those with stamina.
Instead of mulling over the plentiful problems of life in the 20th century, MC Lars is sound-tracking them and manipulating corporate dissatisfaction into fun-laden chunks of self-described ‘laptop-rap’. All three tracks are satirical dissections of different aspects of the music industry with Hot Topic getting a particularly bad deal in Hot Topic Is Not Punk Rock.
Let this be a warning to any other large chains specializing in ripping off the ‘alternative’ culture for a quick buck: selling such unthinkables as “Guns ‘n’ Roses watches, Rob Zombie lunchboxes (or) Led Zeppelin air fresheners” will earn you a serious lyrical mauling, whether it be Lars or the next brash punk who comes along to stick it to The Man.
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8jonathan fisher's Score