Your Girlfriends and Boyfriends

Nobody knows exactly how young people act more than, you guessed it, young people. As a young person, I've been through the grit and grime that is adolescence, high school, internet drama, blah blah blah. I'm still an avid social networker and I sit and watch how people act from my computer screen and I'm some weird combination of surprised and not surprised at all. Everyone in the world, especially the youth, likes to preach about how everyone is a backstabber and everyone is two-faced. They preach and preach and preach about it yet they do nothing to protect themselves from it. You're obviously aware that no one can be trusted, stop fucking trusting people! With this post I actually want to say that while normally your significant other is the person who is closest to you, they are the one you should trust the least. This is because more than likely your significant other and best friend will be your biggest enemy sooner or later. They are just an "I think we should see other people" away from declaring war on your ass. Once you piss a girl off, or a boy for that matter, you've got to watch your shit because they will do anything to see you go under. Everyone gets pissed off at the way other people, even their closest friends, act and they need to vent. So everyone gets together with their girlfriend or boyfriend and says "Fred is a dumbass. He thinks he knows everything, blah blah blah". We're all guilty, I vent to my girlfriend all the time, but you have to watch it. Spilling every bit of your guts, heart, and soul to your significant other is a mistake in so many ways. One, it leaves absolutely no mystery as to who you are and kills the spark in the relationship. Two, if you're trusting them with all this information they have that over you, also they know you're more likely to want to stay with them, making them realize they can probably get away with cheating and playing your heart like a fucking bongo. Three, your relationship probably isn't going to last. You're probably somewhere between the ages of 15 and 25 and I can almost guarantee that the person you are with is not the person you are going to be with when you die, considering you live to be 70 or so. Knowing that you are probably going break up, and probably soon, do not tell you girl or boyfriend what a fucking idiot you think your best friend Fred is! She's going to hate you in a matter of weeks and she's going to tell Fred, Bob, Sally, Ray, Sandy, Katie, and Paul how much shit you talk about them all the time. Everyone has to vent, but keep the shit talking to a minimum and keep it between yourself and someone you know for a fact you can trust! If you're thinking "I'm going to be with this person forever and I love them more than I love my own penis!" You are not thinking logically and you're probably someone I hate. Talk shit about how annoying Tom's stories are to your grandma or something. For real, shit spreads all over the place like fucking mono. If you talk shit it will get back to the victim of the slander so watch what you say. I understand you like this person and they're very pretty and nice or whatever, but don't abandon every drop of logic and straight thinking you are capable of. It's okay to let loose and be yourself around someone, but leave just a bit of mystery to keep things fresh, and don't do or say things you know you are going to regret eventually.

Make Me Proud... Or Not

The publicity is starting to pile up for mister Drizzy Drake as the release date for his second album gets closer. I'm told it has a November 15th release date, which of course is subject to change since no one releases their album the day they say they're going to. The current situation between Drake's music and I is an interesting one. I heard Drake for the first time back in 2009 on Forever, a track I listened to solely because it was a Weezy/Eminem collaboration. I was quite surprised when Drake came on and started killing shit. He had me at "Like a sprained ankle boy, I ain't nothin' to play with". I bootlegged So Far Gone and was simply amazed. Not since Kanye West had I heard such emotional hip-hop but most importantly, it was something I could relate to while keeping my manhood in tact. Thank Me Later came out and while it didn't pack quite the impact So Far Gone did it was still an amazing record. Hell, I jammed to it yesterday during a long car ride. Drake basically dropped off the map after the album release except for a few features here and there. As I started to hear talk of a Take Care album in the works the features became more frequent. I began to get excited. Drake was killing the features, on the All Of The Lights remix he does laps around every rapper in the game with an intensity that would make Eminem back up a bit. Really, I'm sure Wayne legitimately considered retirement after Drake bodied him on the track. I was stoked. I ran around telling everyone they shouldn't sleep on this album because Drake is going to show up and change the game again. Then I started hearing tracks from the album. The first album cut I heard was Headlines. The Boi-1da beat sounds exactly like everything else going on in rap right now. Drake skips around over the rushing pizz strings delivering they occasional sick one liner and a ridiculously boring, sung, unlyrical chorus. I'm thinking 2.5 out of 5, maybe. Then I hear Marvin's Room. Going in I can tell I'm going to bored off my ass. 40's fucking underwater drums beneath a muffled, dragged out synthesizer and Drake's boring singing. His singing is okay every now and then but for the most part it's a little weak, sometimes flat, and always boring. The song has a decent concept but is vastly underproduced. Drake, I realize this guy is your best friend and he has some kind of fatal disease, but that does not mean he can make good beats. Let the big boys handle the production. He delivers a decent verse and the song rides out as would be expected. This morning I wake up and my twitter feed is filled with posts about a Drake/Nicki collab from Take Care called Make Me Proud. I hit iTunes and preview the track to see if I would like to purchase it and I'm not so shocked to hear something right out of the Headlines family tree with pretty predictable everything. Drake does Drake and Nicki does the same shit she does, every day of the week, every week of the month, every month of the year, and so on. Really, at one time I thought this girl was so sick, then she released more material and guess what, everything she does is the fucking same. Different friends have showed me different cuts on youtube that I'm told will be a part of Take Care and it all sounds like more of the same. I love Drake but my expectations for this album or lower than my standards for sex. I would love to see the Canadian hip-hop Jesus pull a classic out and surprise me but I really just not expecting it. Will I buy the album? Almost definitely. Will the fact that I paid hard earned money for it skew my point of view and make me more likely to write good things about it? Quite possibly. Watch The Throne was solid and Tha Carter IV is a nice listen, so maybe Drizzy will continue the trend of quality rap albums in the latter quarter of 2011. Only time will tell.

I Think I'm Having a Heartastroke

Finally I get to use the words today and productive in the same sentence. I willed myself awake after only a few hours of sleep to move out of my house, a task that I almost put off entirely until the last minute. After five hours of moving an entire truck bed full of clothes and five guitars among other things my possessions were finally in my new living space. After getting slightly emotional leaving the house I grew up in I made my way to Princeton (which is not where I am currently living, by the way). After lunch with my brother, I got up with a buddy of mine and we made our way out and about. My travels eventually led me to a room full of new acquaintances that happened to be puffing on the wacky tobaccy. I have nothing against pot smokers and I personally think pot should be legal, but smoking it is just not my deal. At this point I was pretty tired from lack of sleep and moving my shit all afternoon. Predicting this, I stocked up on extra strength 5 hour energys. I decided that since everyone else was getting stoned I should have something going on, so I preceded to chug off three of the 5 hour energys. Soon after my buddy and I left and came back to his apartment, which brings us to the present. Upon entering I exclaimed: "I think I'm having a heartastroke!" as the energy supplements began to put my blood flow into hyperdrive. Oh, I also acquired the new Foster The People album. From what I've heard it sounds like indie gold, but I'm sure I'll dedicate and entire post to the album when I've heard it all. Ever notice how fucking rad Google is? My friend and I had a huge back and forth about how helpful it is. How he learned to rid his computer of viruses and make his own toothpaste and how I learned to (excuse me while I go pee) jump the wall on Wario's Stadium on Mario Kart to skip half the track with Google. Bing is just crap. Honestly, have you ever used it? The commercials make it look like it might not suck, but it really just sucks. I'm not all about the 'This is what I did today' blogs but I felt the world should know this useless information. I'm tired as shit. Also, the fucking McRib is back, I think I might have a heartastroke. Oh wait, too late.

Ringo Starr IS in fact, your mom.

Alright, my first blog ever, appropriately titled Ringo Starr IS in fact, your mom. As you will come to learn I am quite a big Beatles fan. One of those musical snobs who says everything created after 1970 is absolute garbage and John Lennon is Jesus. I like to think not but one would probably have sufficient reason to dump me in that category. Anyway, today I have an ass-ton of homework to do, I have to finish moving out of my house, and I have to set up equipment and soundcheck for a party I am DJing tomorrow night. However, I find myself in my living room, in my boxers, reading about Ringo Starr. Reading about musicians on Wikipedia is certainly in my top 5 list of favorite things to do, right up there with drinking, having sex, eating, and social networking. I've read this same shit time and time again but I always find myself reading about Ringo's technique. As an all-around musician I always find myself tearing songs apart and analyzing the musical aspect of them, which can be a gift and a curse. As is the case with The Beatles' music, I always put specific focus on Ringo's drumming. Ringo is a left handed drummer who learned to play on a right handed kit, just like my father. But unlike my father, Ringo is basically unable to do a standard drum roll. He makes up for this lack of ability by playing very musical drum parts. His rhythms are so accented and his grooves so set in the music. Ringo Starr is not just a drummer, but a composer. I pride myself in having a very good sense of song and song structure. I imagine that is the way Ringo thought. When I first got into The Beatles I though some of Ringo's drumming was (excuse me while I google how to spell) preposterous. The first fills in songs like Hey Jude and A Day In The Life were not the ones I expected to hear. Ringo's drumming, to me, has a very anxious, jittery feel to it. The songs I mentioned, and many other songs in The Beatles' catalogue have Ringo's signature style to them which is anything but smooth. Also, the way Ringo composed parts was outstanding. As a beginning drummer, the drum parts to Come Together were amazing to me. It isn't that they were that difficult to play, it's just that no one composes parts that way. The same goes for Tomorrow Never Knows, a slightly difficult, amazingly hypnotic drum part that drives non-stop throughout the entire song. Ringo was amazingly solid. He seemed to never loose the tempo playing live or in the studio and apparently over The Beatles' ten year career he messed up in the studio less than a dozen times. Although I am probably a faster drummer than Ringo Starr, I try to let his playing influence mine as much as I can. The man has a compositional instinct behind the kit that I marvel at daily.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGyqoURpiK0