Saturday, April 20, 2013

album review: '#willpower' by

You know, people have occasionally asked me why I write this reviews/essays/rants. 

People have wondered aloud why I bother to listen to music I know full well that I might despise and then spend my time writing at great length about it. People have raised the argument that these little musings will never really amount to anything, and that since I'm not getting paid as a professional, I'm just wasting my time. People have said that since my opinion is worth the exact same as everyone else, my attempts to spur debate or inform others is nothing more than ranting from a soapbox. People have argued that since my voice will likely do nothing to sway people from buying an album or changing the critical discourse, I do not have the legitimate authority to pronounce an album a 'failure' or 'bad'. I mean, the album sold hundreds of thousands of copies and the singles charted well and 'since success is defined by the majority opinion of the masses, what gives you the right to judge it one way or the other'? Do I really have the conceit to say something is 'wrong' or 'bad' or 'a failure' when society has deemed it otherwise?

Yes, I do have that conceit - because I love music. 

Because music is more than just notes in a time signature, but is an expression of art. Because music isn't just poetry set to a tune, but a transmission of ideas unlike any other. Because music is an expression of art and culture that can encapsulate prevailing cultural attitudes and themes in ways that historical texts cannot. And sure, some people can dismiss music as being inconsequential art that really doesn't 'matter' all that much, but if we look through the timeframe of history, to the things that might survive our paltry human existence, that has the potential to last forever, art and culture are the few things that can hold their meaning and relevance outside of the passage of time. 

And yes, I know that I probably won't shape anyone's opinion, or that my words hold any great sway. I know that writing this blog outside of any burnished publication is as noteworthy as screaming empty words into the wind or scrawling graffiti in a bathroom stall. I'm fully aware that nobody in the industry is listening to me or taking any heed to what I'm saying, and that because of that, people are likely to draw the apt conclusion that I'm wasting my time.

But there is a place in society for the critic, for his role to analyze, discuss, and interpret the art presented in front of him. People use the line 'everyone's a critic' to disparage critics they don't like, but I'd argue there's more to it than that, and that there's a difference between being a critic and being a good critic. A critic will say he or she liked something - a good critic will say why, and explain why, and will provide the context for his opinion. The good critic will strive to interpret the art before him and speak truthfully, and then be able to communicate his analysis and interpretation and opinions to the masses. Because, at the heart of it, the good critic believes that the artist is showing something of himself through his art, and the critic's role is to interpret and analyze that something, and place it within its cultural context.

Which is one of the biggest reasons why pisses me the fuck off.

For those of you who are unaware, is the frontman of the Black Eyed Peas, and has been widely touted as one of the most influential performers/producers of the past couple of years. Yet outside of his work with The Black Eyed Peas, he has consistently run into considerable difficulty finding solo success. Now there are a number of reasons for this, but to explain them, you all need to understand a few things about and his approach to music.

The first thing you need to note is that he puts the majority of his work into his production and sound, not his lyrics. This is why the majority of his lyrics seem to be unfinished or incomplete, or at the very least shallow as all hell. Now as someone who likes good lyrics and songwriting, this already sets me on edge, but shallow cliches can work if they're phrased correctly or are about something that's actually interesting/fun. 'I Gotta Feeling' (arguably the best song The Black Eyed Peas ever wrote) is a great song because the cliches are about partying and having a good time - but most of's cliches on his solo work is about much greater he is than everyone else, something that gets old really fast.

Now to be fair, as I've said before, ego can work well in music, provided there's enough personality to back it up - and here's where we run into my second big problem with, namely that he never sounds like he's engaged in his material. I've read articles and interviews with him where he appears to have a lot of interesting things to say and a lot of energy in which to say them, where people rave that he's some sort of genius savant, but none of that intellect or energy comes across in his music, which only seems to be about the most superficial and shallow of things. Once again, there's nothing wrong with writing silly and stupid songs about partying and having fun - Andrew W.K. built a career out of it - but Andrew W.K. brings energy and an abundance of personality where just doesn't.

But okay, if puts the majority of his effort into his production, that's obviously where I should look for more personality and excellence, right? But here's the thing, and my third big problem with the guy: his instrumentation is bland as all hell. Yes, his work can be catchy, but that doesn't make it good. Sure, I see more personality in his beats than in his vocal delivery, but too much of it is glitchy and atonal and minimalist in the worst possible way. And comparing him to talented and interesting producers like Timbaland or Kanye West or even fucking Mike Posner, he falls flat. Hell, even David Guetta, who I consider one of the most boring and bland producers working today, at least manages to channel some of EDM's 'bigness' into his material to give it presence and personality! And that's not even discussing's usage of sampling, which at best is glaringly out of context and at worst is this. It almost seems like appropriates music not because it fits the context of his song or might be interesting, but because it's somewhat popular and can be retrofitted into something guaranteed to sell.

And here's where we run headlong into my biggest issue with he's not so much an artist as a marketer, a pioneer of buzzwords and advertisement in music unlike anyone else working today. I remember reading an article that talked about label executives raving at's mastery of powerpoint presentations detailing well-researched marketing and business plans associated with his music and discussing brand recognition and market penetration. Now, I get that artists have to sell their material - as gauche as it is to suggest it, music is a business and requires money - but's approach to music is so nakedly commercial that I can't help but feel that I'm listening to advertisements instead of, you know, songs.

And when you think about it further, all of his stylistic choices bear the mark of commercial advertising: shallow, borderline meaningless lyrics; earworm hooks designed to lodge in your mind; and subject matter that tends to be about emphasizing how much better he is than his competitors. If anything, it seems like naked commercialism might just be the core of's artistic soul: making music designed to sell and sell again. I mean, for fuck's sake, he titled his new album with a hashtag, how much more transparent can you get?

And yet, I am willing to put all of this aside. After all, if Mad Men taught us anything, it's that advertisement can indeed be a work of art, and it's entirely possible that's embrace of the nakedly commercial can be considered a commentary on it, analogous to the artwork of Andy Warhol's examination of consumerism in the modern world. Sure, it could be considered nakedly commercial and displaying seething contempt for the plebeian masses that buy into his brand, but maybe that's the point is trying to make. So, with all of that in mind, does's brand new album #willpower work?

No. No, it does not work. It does not work because to suggest that level of sophistication on behalf of would be slanderous libel of the highest order. It does not work because to suggest that degree of effort on the part of would be misleading to an awful degree.

But mostly it doesn't work because this album is fucking shit.

I honestly don't even know where to start with this abortion of an album, because it represents such a stunning, cataclysmic failure that I'm a little amazed that it somehow got past the record executives. If I were willing to give any vestige of credit, I'd say it's an exploration of terrible musical ideas in some sort of avant-garde performance art piece designed to piss me off - but that would be giving it far, far too much credit that it does not earn. In short, if we're looking to put together a list of the worst albums of this year thus far,'s #willpower would leap to the top of that shortlist in record time, and it's within striking distance of Chris Brown's Fortune for one of the worst albums I've ever heard in my life.

Let me try to begin with the element that puts the most work into when he 'writes' a song, the instrumentation, and here I have the only two compliments I will give this album: can write a catchy tune, and the production on most tracks does sound impressive. In fact, I was a little surprised by segments including classical violin and acoustic guitar, organic instruments that actually seemed reminiscent of the early years of the Black Eyed Peas.

Unfortunately, the tunes opts to have played on these instruments tend towards being arrhythmic, atonal, and godawful. Forget any claims of 'experimentation' - the number of places where the instrumental tune deviates from any sane chord or time signature is flat out incompetent to a disturbing degree, and the admittedly impressive amount of polish on the tracks gives me the disquieting feeling that was the point. Forget the awkward flow of The Band Perry, manages to blow them out of the water with tunes that flow like a feces-and-charcoal waterfall. It is appalling.

But what's perhaps most infuriating is whenever the song is developing some sort of instrumental flow, just enough to distract me from all the other elements of the song that piss me off, interjects with a blast of synth fuzz or a badly tuned synth beat that comes out of nowhere and completely disrupts the flow and atmosphere of the song. I can't count the number of times that abandons a completely serviceable melody to grab a tiresome, grating, atonal beat that sounds like someone ripped half the circuits out of a chiptune production machine. And that's not even touching on the places where the songs are entirely driven by sloppy, utterly unimpressive 'hip-house' beats that would be laughed out of a Scott Storch / LMFAO set from the mid-2000s! Not only are these beats grating as all hell, none of them have any sort of driving force that would make me want to dance or engage myself in the song. Even fucking Chris Brown realized that a crescendo was necessary at some points to build to a dramatic climax in a dance song!

I'll come back to Chris Brown in a bit (because, surprising absolutely nobody, recruited him for this rancid, plagued tumor of an album), but I also feel I should mention the vocal gimmicks. has been a long-time fan of autotune, and under some cases (Ke$ha, T-Pain, and Kanye West) immediately spring to mind, these sort of gimmicks can enhance the personality and atmosphere of the track. Not here - no, if anything we get both a reversal and a failure of this technique, where the autotune not only seems to render more obnoxious and insufferable, but it renders all of his guest stars completely without personality. You know, completely rendering their presence on the track moot! This boggles the mind - because, you know, the presence of a guest star is typically used to enhance or add additional variety to a song to compensate for the weaknesses of the main performer - until you realize the main 'artist' is, who has a terrible reputation for stripping the personality from his collaborators (I've heard his collaborations with Usher, Nicki Minaj, and fucking Mick Jagger, and's production strips away personality like paint remover). And considering the varied amount of guest stars on this worthless album, it's a little astounding how often he manages to render them completely superfluous.

But really, with all of the above problems, I would typically only describe the album as 'bad', and not worth hating to the degree I do. Unfortunately for me, more than manages to incite my wrath with his lyrical choices, nearly all of which are beyond bad. I kid you not, at approximately three different points, I nearly gave up listening to this album as a serious endeavor, because I could not believe the shit he was putting on record. I was on the verge of tears of fury at this album because if this shit can get approval in today's music scene, something is dangerously wrong with the record industry.

And to appropriately express this, I'm going to be breaking one of my cardinal rules by printing segments of the lyrics here for each of the eighteen songs on this accursed disc. I usually don't do this for my own sanity - I fear that reproducing said material in print  is tantamount to endorsing it, and I don't like cluttering my review with stupid shit - but to truly understand why this album pisses me off on such a raw, visceral level without listening to the thing (which I do not recommend, if you can't tell), you need to see this:

  1. 'Good Morning' - "When life gets tough, remember we were never born to die / When times get tough, remember we were born to be alive" - well, okay, these lyrics aren't entirely bad as they are utterly superfluous, the sort of meaningless platitudes that fill's lyrics. In fact, this little introductory track is arguably one of the most inoffensive on the album, but I'm still going to mention them to prove a point that these are what the lyrics look like at their best.

    Also, how is it that I found a similar sentiment much easier to accommodate when the late Steve Lee of Gotthard was singing them on the Ayreon album 01011001? Oh, right, it's because Steve Lee has fucking charisma and Arjen Lucassen is a genius.
  2. 'Hello' - this song, like the last one, isn't terrible, but in the chorus continuously repeats this line: "I don't wanna be alone tonight / I'll be rocking with you, rocking with you, rocking with you". Okay, fine sentiment, you can build a good song around this, and since the instrumentation during the chorus was decent, I had hopes for this song. But then when he moves into the pre-chorus and verses (smothered in bad electronica), you get lyrics saying "I'm here with all of my friends, with all of my friends" and "I got them ladies, them ladies". So either's friends and ladies are entirely imaginary, or he's not going to be alone tonight, will he?

    Also, no points for jacking the chorus line of a classic 80s synthpop hit.
  3. 'This Is Love' - the album delivers one of its two decent songs tonight, and even it can't strive to be above utterly mindless club electronica. Once again, this song starts with a decent piano hook and Eva Simons works her ass off to anchor the song on the hook, but the lyrics are just mindless bragging from, the chorus running on the principle that love can be created if we love the song as much as does. So if I guess if I don't like this song as much as does, I just don't understand love, right?

    Also, watch the video and tell me from's facial expression if it looks like he loves this song or is just really constipated.
  4. 'Scream & Shout' - ah, the big hit with Britney Spears that has one of the most annoying electronica hooks in radio right now. For me, the instrumentation and Britney's awful singing does more to sink this song than the lyrics, but that still didn't stop me from finding this gem, which Britney repeats ad nauseum: "When you hear this in the club / You're gonna turn the shit up / You're gonna turn the shit up / You're gonna turn the shit up". Uh, quick question here, Britney, how the hell can I turn up the music in the club if I'm not the DJ? And if I was the DJ, I can tell you I'd be playing much better tracks than this dreck.
  5. 'Let's Go' - good job stealing the title of a bad Calvin Harris track that came out less than a year ago,, and grabbing one of the most repulsive singers in the industry to sing your worthless hook. But as much as I hate Chris Brown, he can't hope to match the terrible lyrics and even worse sentiments. Just for an example, attempts to rhyme these lines: "Step off stage, I scream for more / My nated junk, I love gold". Putting aside whatever the fuck the second line means (other than to make me intensely uncomfortable), 'more' in no working universe rhymes with 'gold'! And on another note, I know is referencing pot when you say 'buffing purple hazing', but any music nerd will also recognize it as a reference to Jimi Hendrix's 'Purple Haze', a song to which isn't within spitting distance in terms of quality.

    Oh, and the song's subject matter is him pressuring a girl to have sex with him - charming.
  6. 'Gettin' Dumb' - this entire song is absolutely fucking wretched and I hate everything about it, from the nauseating beat to the sentiment that when one goes out to party, one should actively work to become stupid. Yeah, no. And really, I could be here all goddamn day quoting the horrible lines and forced rhymes in this atrocity like "Watch out for the dumb dumb, watch out" (read that out loud and imagine trying to sing that in a club and not sounding like a complete twit), but here are a few lines that managed to pique my annoyance because you can bet thought they were so damn clever. They are "We stay on top like finalists / Burn up the floor like oxygen" - in what universe does 'finalists' rhyme with 'oxygen'? Also, given that I refuse to be 'gettin' dumb', I should also point out that without an actual fire, oxygen does not spontaneously ignite! Although, given oxygen tends to burn quickly, it might be an apt metaphor for how catastrophically's attempts to take over the club are.
  7. 'Geekin'' - You know, only would follow a song about getting stupid with this atrocity, which takes a terribly botched chiptune and attempts to fuse it with's technology fetishism. Speaking as a nerd with a physics degree, the song offends me on every level, particularly in the lyrics where we get such priceless lines as "Hey y'all, I'm the fucking nerd / I'm about to ball real big, Mark Zuckerberg / You know the nerd is a perp, what you heard? / Ain't need to follow, but lead up, tweety bird". And I could go on about all of the absolutely terrible lines in this song, but I think the sentiment behind the lyrics needs to be explored further, as it ties into my 'advertiser' theory from the beginning of the review. Because, in short, this is a bragging rap about how is a 'gangsta geek' and how we all bought his tunes, where he fucking includes an Intel advertising sound bite as a sample. He's attempting to rub our nose in the fact that we bought his shit, that he's now the alpha nerd 'getting his geek on'. That's fucking disgraceful.
  8. 'Freshy' - oh, you can tell the obvious intellect apparent in a song called 'Freshy', can't you? Coupled with the minimalist (yet still utterly grating) beat, and Juicy J manage to say nothing on this track that hasn't been said better by T.I. or Ludacris at some point in their careers. What's worse is that their flow seems like it was jacked from Gucci Mane or Soulja Boy, and their verses seem to directly contradict each other (with Juicy J talking about hoes and drugs, while is saying 'no more cocaine').

    Oh, and continues his plagiarism by attempting to co-opt the nickname 'big willy' (that's Will Smith's rap handle, asshole) and appropriating a line that a far superior rap group made famous.
  9. '#thatpower' - you know there's something terribly wrong with your album when Justin fucking Bieber is the saving grace on your song. But even his hook is utterly mindless and can't stand up against the insufferable synth track and terrible beat. But to be completely fair, most of's verse is merely bad instead of being insulting (although any time mentions his 'little muscle' I cringe -, nobody wants to hear about your penis, okay?). Although I'm not going to be completely charitable here, because there's no excuse for lines like 'Whatever doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger / So imma get stronger' or 'I beat it through my mama'. And yes, I know what the latter one is supposed to mean in context, but it sounds really goddamn gross.
  10. 'Great Times Are Coming' - really, Because I'm just over halfway through this album, and the only great times I can see are the end of this album. But yeah, this song starts off kind of pretty with a nice little organ intro - before completely dissolving into a clattering, grating synth that makes my head throb. In fact, that seems to be a motif of the song - taking decent classical instrumentation, and then beating everyone over the head with EDM until you hemorrhage. Oh, and, in your stupid bragging track, don't drag Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King in as justification for your shitty music.

    And interestingly, it appears that a segment of the EDM he sampled was stolen from Denis Koyu's 'Tung', which seems to have pissed off Youtube but doesn't surprise me at all, given how many lyrics he's stolen from other, better artists. Still doesn't make it any less despicable, though.
  11. 'The World Is Crazy' - and now is going to talk about politics like he understands them and has some nuance he could share - which he doesn't, and has never had. And while for once the instrumentation is tolerable thanks to collaborator Dante Santiago, the problem comes in the lyrics, which read like a cross between Jadakiss' 'Why' and the Black Eyed Peas' 'Where Is The Love'. The infuriating thing is that it incorporates the worst conceits of both songs: the vapidity of 'Where Is The Love' (where his opening verse mentions cannibalism, dumpster babies, dirty politicians, talk show shamelessness, and wasting people's time on the internet and his second verse covers lying priests, school shootings, unemployment, desensitization, prison culture, and tabloids - and yet he has nothing to say on any of these subjects) with the conspiracy theory bullshit of 'Why' (why would you bother going into the ocean looking for bin Laden's body if you believe he's dead?).

    But really, the element that infuriates me the most is in the chorus, where he asserts that "everybody in the world has lost their mind" and that "everybody is going crazy". Okay, two things. Firstly, is your assertion that everybody is going crazy except for you, because I think I'll take issue with that. And secondly, by implying everyone is losing their minds, you're absolving them of responsibility - and frankly, I'm not entirely willing to absolve dirty politicians and school shooters from their responsibility!
  12. 'Fall Down' - Again, this is a song where the initial instrumentation implies it could have worked - the acoustic guitar is nice and Miley sounds better than she has in ages - until the beat drops and the entire song becomes an insufferably bad party song again. And yeah, the song gets all sorts of uncomfortable when Miley starts singing lines like "Boy, just be my lollipop, let me let me lick you up" - yeah, I don't want to have the mental image of Miley Cyrus blowing, thank you very much. But sickeningly enough, that's not the reason I hate this song.

    No, that comes from the fact that it's a shit-blisteringly obvious rip-off of a song helped write called 'Crazy Kids', which was cowritten and performed by Ke$ha! Fortunately for all of us, Ke$ha's fanbase of 'Animals' caught onto this and went fucking ballistic (justifiably so, because Ke$ha is eons better than and Miley Cyrus) and got the video pulled. But you see what I have to deal with here - this is shamelessly recycling his own material, and thinking we'll all be too stupid to notice! The sheer contempt has put on display for his audience is repugnant.
  13. 'Love Bullets' - unlike the previous song, 'Love Bullets' is merely incoherent and bad over being insulting and gross. And once again, while the instrumentation is dreary and headache-inducing, the lyrics are the real problem. I don't know how the line "Shoot me with your love" makes any sort of sense besides the obvious metaphor for ejaculation, but really this is just a song about a bad relationship where neither Skylar Grey or seem to care besides making bad war metaphors make zero sense. Really, it's more boring as all hell than anything else.
  14. 'Far Away From Home' - and continuing the trend of giving me a splitting headache with subpar instrumentation and shitty vocal delivery is this song featuring Nicole Scherzinger, formerly of the Pussycat Dolls. Now, has worked with the Pussycat Dolls in the past (completely unsurprising to me, considering they were a band created explicitly to sell music videos for masturbation and is an expert salesman if nothing else), but this song makes the terminal mistake of trying to be about something substantial, something for which and Scherzinger are completely unprepared. No, this is a song about a girl running away from home to become a movie star and only ending up in porno magazines, and a boy running away to Hollywood to sell drugs (???) and then use his ill-gotten gains to move his mother out of the ghetto.

    But here's the catch: plots from The Complete Hack's Guide To Screenwriting aside, Scherzinger and sound like they're supporting these decisions and endorsing them, when really those dreams are destined to ruin those kids' lives! So on top of being a plagiarizing asshole, also happens to be a terrible role model.
  15. 'Ghetto Ghetto' - and here is where attempts to rip off Nas' 'I Can' but with none of the flow and sharp songwriting. Now I'll be generous here and say's sentiment seems legitimate here as he raps about hard times in the ghetto with the generalities that seem to suggest he hasn't spent time in a ghetto for well over a decade. However, it's more than a little disingenuous for to complain about a lack of good positive role models for kids in the ghetto and how they want to grow up to be "Like Gaga like B and Nicki and Ree" - when on the LAST GODDAMN SONG he was endorsing that lifestyle! And it really doesn't help matters that the kid Baby Kaely singing the chorus is painfully weak and would be rejected from a Kidz Bop album.
  16. 'Reach For The Stars' - the only other tolerable song on the album, thanks entirely to the welcome presence of Lil Jon. Now, some of you might wonder why I tend to tolerate Lil Jon's empty party songs while condemning's. The rationale for that is simple: Lil Jon has personality, energy, and is a producer with a key eye for stomping, kickass crunk beats, something is not and will never be. But as it is, this song is completely average and really not worth mentioning - it's the 'Don't Wake Me Up' (Chris Brown's solitary tolerable song on Fortune) of #willpower, and even with that, it's a pale shadow of the Black Eyed Peas' own 'Meet Me Halfway'.
  17. 'Smile Mona Lisa' - this song caught me off-guard because it's a stripped down, Italian-flavoured acoustic ballad, which I definitely found to be an interesting change of pace. And I'll be fair and say that nails the atmosphere of this song. But here's my problem: his lyrics make him come across like a jealous douchebag, trying to block his girlfriend from going on and being successful because he's a distrustful ass. And given the stripped down, very personal feel to this song, I think this might be the closest we might get to something 'real' from - and it reveals him to be the same sort of bro-douchebag in the vein of Jason Mraz or John Mayer. Fan-fucking-tastic.
  18. 'Bang Bang' - you know, Brad Paisley's 'Accidental Racist' raised all sorts of uncomfortable eyebrows and it's going to be a fucking shame when the rest of his album is overlooked by history because of that goddamn song. But in comparison to this song, which presents as an uncomfortable racist caricature in the vein of old minstrel shows, 'Accidental Racist' can't help but appear almost benign in comparison to this jaw-dropping atrocity. Not only does it appropriate and twist the message of an old and excellent Nancy Sinatra song, it features a fucking scat breakdown, which only (and rarely) sounds good delivered by good singers with personality - and if you haven't been reading my review thus far, is NOT ONE OF THEM! 
And that's it. That's eighteen songs, over an hour of 'music' - and the only thing I got out of the whole endeavour was a fucking migraine. No deeper message, no subversion, nothing that suggests that isn't as vapid, self-absorbed, and contemptuous as I believed. Everything he did on this album has been done better by other artists - hell, in some cases, they've been done better by The Black Eyed Peas - and the amount of rip-offs and straight plagiarism is despicable. I made the claim at the start of my review that's artistic persona bears much in common with that of a marketer, and I was proven right. The shallow recreation of better ideas, thrown against a droning beat designed to lodge in your skull, all to enhance the 'brand superiority' of This is not music made to be enjoyed or because had something to say - no, these are tracks intended to sell me on

Alright,, so let me pass judgement on you as an advertiser: your beats are monotonous and grating, your message is incoherent (if not stolen from better products), and your brand lacks recognizable distinguishing factors in the marketplace. It is the knockoff brand, the cheap imitation crap you get when you can't find anything better. People have asked why I write these reviews: this is one of the reasons, because the listening public deserves better. All throughout this review, I provided links to better songs, ones that have some shred of artistic integrity, songs i can recommend and that will stand the test of time. Even pop art - hell, even pop music, which many would consider the most disposable songs on the planet - deserves better than this advertising masquerading as music.

Oh, what's that, You want me to judge you as a musician and artist, not an advertiser? Well, in that case, your hooks lack substance, your beats are badly positioned, your instrumentation is haphazard, your vocal production is sloppy, your lyrics are asinine and arrogant, your delivery is tepid, you waste your guest stars, you shamelessly rip off and plagiarize, and to top it all off, you have nothing to say. You advocate anti-intellectualism, terrible decision making, and misogynist behavior, and you have none of the personality or wit to make any of this transgressive behaviour tolerable. 

And the worst part,, is that you're better than this. That's probably the most infuriating thing about #willpower, in that there are tiny shreds of a good idea here. There are snippets that have real beauty and real potential, and you clearly have the money and industry clout to make the album you want - and you made this trash. It is bar none the worst album you've ever made, and I sincerely hope that if you consider this the height of your talents, that this album flops and your long-overdue fifteen minutes comes to a screeching end.

The good critic will strive to interpret the art before him and speak truthfully, and then be able to communicate his analysis and interpretation and opinions to the masses. Because, at the heart of it, the good critic believes that the artist is showing something of himself through his art, and the critic's role is to interpret and analyze that something, and place it within its cultural context. And with that in mind, I can say definitively that has nothing to say, and his album does not deserve to contribute to the cultural discourse. Skip it and avoid it like the plague.


  1. I understand and agree with what u said..But BEPs best song is Where is the Love.. Try that and some of the pre Fergie BEP (Positivity) He used to a good lyricist but become focused on beats and equaled good music to chart success.. Listen to their song with Jack Johnson, Gong going he became johnny lol

    1. You know, the more I listen to 'Where Is The Love', the less I like it. I'll admit it's a good song, and they made a good choice bringing Justin Timberlake on for support, but that song feels very trite and lackluster. It mentions all sorts of problems in the world and says nothing about them other than, 'OMG, the world sucks, what are we going to do?'

      And I'm not touching anything with Jack Johnson, mostly because if I'm looking for an artist more boring and bland than, it'd be him.

  2. You forgot to mention that Let's Go ripped of the beat of Rebound by Arty and Mat Zo. Honestly, that was the worst thing William did on this album, in my opinion.


    I finally got the courage to read this... THANKS, NO. HATE. HATE. HATE. HAAATE.

    NO, I DON'T regret my words. At least you acquired your purpose: piss fans off. Thanks.