Songs for a Neophyte: 2015.40

Wanna Be Cool
Chance the Rapper/Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment (ft. Big Sean, Jeremih, and KYLE)

[A respite of one month is too long in my endless quest through the year's best music, sighted down the lens of Stephen Barry's musical tastes. I have only a few quibbles with my methodology from previous years. Clearly, I have only a fledgling ability to reckon with the actual sound of a piece, but I feel I have been doing these songs an injustice by focusing so heavily on the elements with which I can clearly identify and intellectualize. Words and pictures are just distracting; they're not the music in the artist's heart. This year, I want to start by listening to the song, usually for the first time, writing words that describe the music as I do. I'll follow each tone poem (an inappropriate usage of the phrase, but still an apt description) with a forget-the-music, write-the-words section. I'll include my friends' thoughts, any lyrical analysis, or dissection of the music video. I think that needs to be after the music. I'll cap each song analysis with a single word to sum up what I think. I like some of the things I did last year and the year before, but as with all intelligently-designed projects, I need to wrack the edges of this one just to find out if my preference for my method was just comfort in the comfortable. And, as always, I might just change my mind on this halfway through and try something else. Neither of us signed up for this, but here we go.]

Acapella
Scat
Bare
Youth
Dissipated
Joy
Fresh
Speech
Monologue
Full
Constructed
Rhythmic
Old-style
Changeable
Morphic
Intelligent

Lyrics.
This is a way more intellectual piece of music than Firework by the illimitable Katy Perry, but it has the same message. In fact, it has the same message as a lot of music. Be yourself. There's nothing to be ashamed of. I just happen to look past the saccharine message because something in the music forgets to be Royals by the pretentious Lorde. It's like the guys got together and all accidentally wrote verses about how awful they felt trying to fit in, then they just kind of assembled them and somebody in the next room was dropping a needle on random records for five seconds at a time and they all thought "That's it!" Maybe that's not what happened, but I like to think it was.
You know, I like how seriously rappers take their lyrics. Other genres tend toward mediocrity and comprehension (from Billy Joel to Justin Bieber; from Johnny Cash to Blake Shelton), but hip-hop and r&b are a constant battle to see who is the cleverest in the land.

Only class I'm passing is English and Math
I don't know, maybe because they both got commas
Maybe because my older bro was on the honor roll
And the other one was always up in front of the honor
So I'm in the middle like the line in the divide signs

There's so much to commend in these few lines, but my favorite piece is the very simple rhyme split to the beginning of the next line. It's not uncommon in rap, but I like it anyway.
They're the last popular poets, actually. Back in the day, Milton was on the shelf next to the Bible. Now, poets are the property of language fanatics and English teachers. Nobody's doing anything clever anymore, not anything that people will read. The last people pushing allusion and alliteration, hucking hyperbole and building with metaphors are the rappers. English used to be such a scrappy language. We wanted so badly to be like Italian and French that we fought wars in words just to be taken seriously. Chaucer was just imitating Boccaccio. Shakespeare was just stealing from Ovid, Xenophon, and Dante (and Chaucer).  Milton wanted so badly to be Homer. Now, English is on top, and nobody using it is taking it seriously.

Janelle
The dissection has more of yourself in it than I was expecting. It's enchanting, and it makes me want to have a similar structure? But I talk about myself all the time. I have a million billion stories that I share every chance I get, but I get the feeling that everyone who matters has heard them all at least twice. I talk so much about myself that I feel at the very least self-important and at the worst megalomanic. I want to change the very way I respond after the very first post. We'll see if I do.
Stephen--Father of Forties
I picked up on the youth. This song is pounding with it. It's a remembrance of times past when things were worse, and an exhortation to those in the same place. Do you really think, though, that a song would have helped you in your youth? Or is it really more about seeing your adult self and realizing "Oh. I survive this, thank God," that gets you through?

Yes.