“Pearl Jam, Schoolboy Q and the World of Oxymorons”

You probably saw it in the eyes of your kin a long time ago: this is not a cooperative world. In fact, who knows what kind of world it is, but it’s not cooperative.

Every band goes through days of wine and days of whine, and nobody’s going to confuse Schoolboy Q with Nas or even Malice from Clipse. He’s got a pretty tight flow, though, and the beats are definitely melodic enough to allay the fear that hip-hop’s completely swallowed in the shoot/stab etude.

In other worlds, it’s a society within itself, as Pearl Jam’s albums have continued to be, from, not Ten, but Vitalogy, on through a large part of Backspacer and Lightning Bolt. And of course, the functionality of these albums actually resembling interpersonal psychic assemblages represents an oxymoron for the fact that they are actually product, and that it is the job of these artists, these employees, to make these records. In this way I think Beck made a rehash of Sea Change with Morning Phase, not to mention that “Morning” is a ripoff of the Allmans’ “Melissa,” right down to exact guitar sound. The difference is, Eddie Vedder and Schoolboy Q don’t mind showing themselves to their employers.