Okay-, I'm cheating here, but whenever I get down, I go to amazon and read the user reviews for Kevin Federline's (the ex Ms Brittney Spears) album Playing with Fire, on of the most reviled albums in history. Great quotes include:
"I would rather listen to 80 minutes of feedback at full volume with headphones than catch a second of this from a passing car. This album is to music what Jeffrey Dahmer was to cuisine. "
"like listening to your grandparents having sex"
"He neither kills outright nor inflicts apparent physical harm, yet the extent of his destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record--and his potential damage to the quality of human life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason, he might well be called the "Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse." His more conventional name, of course, is K-Fed. "
"Having a limb removed by a Corn Picker would be less painful.
Please kill me. Please empale me on a rusty, manure covered pitchfork so that my gut can swell up with infestation and gangrene. It is the only thing that could overcome the terrible mind piercing pain that eats at my very soul when ever K-Fed raps. "
Some put there reviews to verse, and a couple people decided to mess with the ratings by ranking K-Fed slightly below the Second Coming. One essay likened him to Shakespeare, and my fave refers to him as Beethoven's Tenth. Maybe I need to post the "genius" reference to another thread.
"Seldom do we witness the birth of genius in our time, the rise of a titan among those enslaved by formalistic vision, limited in both scope and depth. Just as Beethoven forever altered our concept of music in the 19th Century, and both Stravinsky and Bartok traversed startling new paths into the far reaches of what music could be in the 20th Century, K-Fed stretches further into the heavenly ether and places himself in a state somewhere between man and God. I will declare this with absolute conviction and in a sober state of mind--this album marks year zero for music. Just as the arrival of Christ forever split time between BC and AD in the western world, so too does K-Fed split musical history. All that follows this masterpiece will, in its inherent inferiority and spiritual weakness, be derivative of K-Fed at best.
Upon examination of this album's content, it is nearly impossible to fully grasp its brilliant commentary on the human condition. I will say this. Like many modernistic and avant-garde artists who preceded him, K-Fed draws his inspiration from the everyday realities of socialist life, utilizing Menckenesque satire within the confines of stream of consciousness narration. For the ideal example of this, see "Dance with a pimp".
And, as a response to critics, I will proclaim this. In His time, it was Christ who was crucified and Barabbas who was set free. There will come a time when the concert halls of Europe will, in an ultimately futile attempt to capture the very voice of God, set civilization ablaze with the sounds of "Playing with Fire"
To add a bit of obligatory Classical content, I must confess I did a mashup of the afforementioned "Dance with a Pimp" with some of Webern's 6 pieces for orchestra. As you can imagine the most violent, wrenching, dissonant moments occured after I faded out the Webern, and let K-Fed continue.
