There’s nothing quite like being from Indiana, you might say. We were that state that produced the vice president who spelled potato “potatoe,” back in 1992 or so. And we’re bordered by the birthplaces of, respectively, the Chicago Bulls, 8 Mile, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and commercial fried chicken, and yet we’re still seen as a bunch of white-bread farm boys.
I guess I’m mentioning this to frame what I see as a certain “found art” [1] exhibit of this dude I worked with in a Terre Haute Applebee’s giving me a ride home one time, with particular pertinence to his musical selections. I think when we got in his car he had “Lose Yourself” by Eminem playing but also he’d been talking to me about this dude Logic and was dying to play him for me. Since there was already a dude named DJ Logic, about whom I frankly gave two equal sh**s and a fu**, I really had no idea as to WHETHER I’d heard of Logic the white rapper [2], let alone formulating an opinion on him.
Ok so the first thing I heard on this Logic album was this Rick and Morty [3] bit that was like about as funny as muscular dystrophy, give or take a couple documented cases [4], and that I guess was supposed to be the draw there.
But distraction and sophomoric theatrics seemed to be the name of the game there, in the form of an introduction completely unrelated to and obtuse of the rest of the “subject matter.” This is par for the course for this Logic dude, too, as proven by the ridiculous bevy of hype tactics surrounding the release of his new album, No Pressure. These tactics include, of course, that completely pointless “novel” that the quote-unquote “rapper” released not too long ago, a beast-mode verse on the opening track “No Pressure Intro” that I’m pretty sure is not actually Logic rapping (I looked on the Genius credits and there are like 10 different people listed under “songwriter” for this joint) [5], and of course this announced “retirement.”
I mean, if he was that good of a rapper, why would he have that fagget R&B song second? And if he’s retiring, why would he say “Logic falling off is an obscenity”?
And what the fu** kind of rapper retires? What, does he have to like run through a bunch of helmeted tacklers on the way to the studio or something? Rapping is not a hard thing to do. I mean, Taylor Swift can do it. I’ve done it. Any human being over three years old who doesn’t have Down’s Syndrome can do it. And I mean if Logic just wants to recede from the public eye then why is he publishing a novel with major marketing and distribution and rubbing shoulders (or more likely kissing the a** of) Eminem, in his entirely forgettable collabos? Ho-hum, at least we still have Childish Gambino, in all his polymorphous, robotic mania, to save us from a J. Cole monopoly on rap, at which point of course Cole would probably “retire” too to focus on some underdog cause like “U.S. women’s soccer rights,” or something along those lines.
.
[1] “Found art,” as diagrammed brilliantly in the fine movie Ghost World (based on a Daniel Clowes graphic novel), is the phenomenon of the perception of a candidly rendered object in the real world wielding an artistic value, though it wasn’t initially conceived as “expressive,” by illustrating a truth about the world which might clash with our prior conceptions.
.
[2] That would have been a better name for Logic, maybe: “Logic the White Rapper.” He even kind of looks like a white rabbit on this album cover, like floating around in this wonderland looking thing or whatever.
.
[3] Here’s another pitfall of the legalization of marijuana: the popularity of the show Rick and Morty. On the upside, I think one of them occasionally slipped into not talking like he had Charlie Sheen up the a**.
.
[4] All of this should serve to show how dead-as-a-doornail music has been the last two decades, or nigh thereon, and how hypnotized people are by cartoon characters that are actually, like, saying dirty things!
.
[5] Along these lines is anyone else sick of rappers having like 15 different producers on every album? And I’m talking to you, Kendrick Lamar. It’s not like his beats were like Dre or Kanye worthy or anything.