Top 10 Albums of 2018

This year wasn't a particularly strong one for the kinds of music I'm interested in. I attempted to keep up to date with major country releases on and off, and most of them were deeply disappointing. Most of the rap I listened to didn't stick with me. I didn't keep up with my friends' stuff, even, all that much. But hey, here's a thing: at the bottom of this list, in its own section, I'm going to list to some stuff from the scenes I've orbited for a while. Check them out.

#10 Janelle Monae - Dirty Computer

I've always felt a little embarrassed over how much I like Janelle Monae. Which is: a bit. I think her work is fantastic, what I've heard of it. I also haven't had much of it on rotation. When I listen, it often clicks with me. When I'm not listening, I tend to forget about it, other than that she's very good and doing really cool stuff. Dirty Computer was very nearly the same, for me, until I forced myself to listen to it a half dozen times over the course of this year. I'm not sure that I get it, now, necessarily, but this sure is one hell of an album.

#9 Nine Inch Nails - Bad Witch

I've never been a fan of Nine Inch Nails. In the last few years, my feelings have softened; I kind of hated them back in the day. When I got into industrial and noise in my early college years, I really hated them. Then I learned about how much he was genuinely a part of that world, and eventually started dating someone with a longstanding love of them. Then they appeared on Twin Peaks, and I was like fine. Fine, I guess I'm okay with this Trent Reznor nerd.

I listened to Bad Witch - maybe the first full album of theirs I've ever listened to? - because of an offhanded recommendation made on the Black Banner Magic podcast. In the backseat of a car driving in the dark, it ended up surprising me. Bad Witch is full of weird breakbeats, sometimes reminding me of (and I'm not an expert here, trust) some weird halfway point between UK Garage and Atari Teenage Riot. Other points - "Play the Goddamned Part" in particular - didn't so much feel reminiscent of Nurse With Wound as they transported me directly back to walking through the woods listening to them at night in 2007.

Anything that puts me in the headspace of Atari Teenage Riot and Nurse With Wound is something I'm going to have a fondness for. I don't know that I love Bad Witch; I probably won't even return to it that many times. But there's a specific kind of joy to it that I can't deny, for me at least.

#8 Trust Fund - Bringing the Backline

I wasn't a huge fan of We Have Always Lived in the Harolds, the last Trust Fund record I listened to; it took down the energy from Seems Unfair, their previous, and became contemplative. Which wasn't an objectively bad thing, but my favorite song of theirs is "Football," and I think that's what I come to their music for: incisive pop punk about selves, little moments in relationships, and a pleasant, conflicted energy. That's not fair to them as people or musicians, but it is what it is, I guess.

Bringing the Backline is a nice dialectical synthesis of Seems Unfair and Harolds. The soundscape is way lusher, not just by tweaking the main instrumentation with fuzz and other effects but adding synthesizers and some other new instruments. All of which is mixed to keep Ellis Jones' vocals at the forefront, which is incredibly important.

If anything, the thing that Trust Fund does so well is to be a band that cracks jokes that aren't particularly funny, and to be funny without cracking jokes. Jokes can do a lot of things other than make you laugh; they can show character or reveal psychology. Jones is good at that, and it's pretty cool to hear.

#7 T.I. - Dime Trap

T.I.'s the anti-Jay-Z. Both are some of the first models of what it looks like to be an old rapper who isn't washed up, but continues to redefine his own work without getting lost in the past. Jay-Z's model is of a business, man, though. T.I.'s is a slow, steady radicalization.

He's not at the forefront of anything. "The Amazing Mr. Fuck Up" is one of my favorite tracks on the album, but the beat sounds like some shit Lil B was doing in 2012 when he was "proving" he was more than a novelty, only with more money. His politics aren't as sharp as Vic Mensa or Vince Staples'. But no one else has his body of work, and the way he presses and shapes it is still meaningful.

And there's always something about me that will get weak kneed for a rapper who overflows his bars, especially when it's done in a way that conveys that the rapper just wants to keep going rather than being unable to edit. T.I.'s one of the kings of that.

Song by song, it's not the strongest album he's ever put out. The back half suffers a bit, but the closing track - "Be There" - wraps it up pretty nicely.

#6 Lil Wayne - Tha Carter V

I have this problem where any time I think I want to write something quick about Lil Wayne, I almost write ten thousand words. I am not going to do that. My verdict, quick and dirty: Tha Carter V is disappointing, but it's also way better than it is disappointing.

It's disappointing because Tha Carter III made expectations impossible; these numbered Carters have to be perfectly in line with the times, push beyond them, and breakout successes. That's not what this is. It's a reflection, in line with most of Lil Wayne's other music since the fallout with Cash Money. It fits into his phenomenal body of work really well, and has some absolute standout moments. It's a very, very good record.

#5 Pistol Annies - Interstate Gospel

Even without this third album, their first in half a decade, the Pistol Annies were already all timers. Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe, and Angaleena Presley push each other's individual tendencies towards irreverence, subversion, and striking images into the stratosphere; many songs get a single verse from each, and it is clear that any one of those verses could have been expanded into a very good song. They rule.

This record is a bit of a weird one, though. Track by track, it's incredibly solid. The songwriting moves along quickly and pleasantly, highlighting both quips and central ideas without a single song seeming to drag. "Commissary" is a possible counterexample, but only because I don't think the characters get enough space to develop. "When I Was His Wife," "Got My Name Changed Back," and "Milkman" are all examples of the Annies at their finest, full of joy in shit talk and language. Another example: the first verse of the second proper song - "Best Years of My Life" - are:

I picked a good day for a recreational Percocet
I've got an itch to just get high
I'm in the middle of the worst of it
these are the best years of my life

On the other hand, the album opens with "Interstate Prelude," which turns out to be the first minute and change of the title track. As an opener, it's fine; in context of the album, it's a bit awkward. It seems, at least on a first listen, to be aimed at signaling that the girls are proper Christians, despite what you're about to hear. Because that's more or less what the song proper conveys, if in the metaphor of being on the road as a musician.

My impression, more or less, is that this is a Pistol Annies record that has incredible songs, exactly like you'd want. As an album, I'm a little less convinced. But that's okay with me. It has moments of intergenerational tension in "Milkman," of solidarity among women in "When I Was His Wife," of the strange social formations around coupledom in "Masterpiece." It's full of good shit, in other words.

#4 Robyn - Honey

I've been basically checked out of Robyn's output since Body Talk 1-3, and if Honey is any indication I haven't missed a whole lot (apparently it's her first release since then? -ed). Her music still vacillates between incredibly straightforward singles sung in her breathy falsetto that work very well, surrounded by songs that verge on talking, often. Her themes are still about brokenness in relationships, becoming-robotic (but rarely, maybe never, digital), and alienated bodies writhing against themselves and with each other. And it's still hella compelling.

It's in the space that those oscillations create that her distinctive lyrics find their footing. The chorus for "Beach2k20," for instance, goes:

[Do you want to go out]
To this cute place on the beach
They do really nice food
I mean, it's right on the beach
Come through, it'll be cool.

That last bit is one exemplar; Robyn's so often in a mode of awkward aloofness, a fake uncaring that comes across as flirting. It's one way that she focuses. Another: she characterizes her second-person, only to be merciless toward them, as in "Because It's In The Music:"

And I wonder when you hear it
Are you getting that same feeling?
Like you wanna break down and hide.
I keep playing it anyway

If there's a thing that I appreciate about Robyn's records, and which I only realized listening to Honey, it's how much that focus matters. Her range gives her the ability to talk specifically and personally about the "you" that most pop music leaves as ambiguous as possible, without collapsing it into memoir. Which couples with her thematic fascination with alienation from bodies - her own included - to become hella relatable. Also the way she insists on four-to-the-floor kicks even when they're demonstrably unnecessary is very endearing to me.

#3 cupcakKe - Ephorize

Ephorize was sort of my go-to album this year. If I wanted to listen to something and wasn't in the thrall of either of my top two, it was probably what I turned on. Even if I didn't, I'd consider turning it on before deciding, say, to check out something new or to give Tha Carter V or Dirty Computer another shot.

There's something about the way that cupcakKe structures a chorus that gets me every time.

Tap the head of the dick, duck duck duck goose
Head of the dick, duck duck duck goose
Get that dick up and runnin when he fuck this cooch
Covered in all my cum the dick be lookin' like a goose

is genuinely the best. She largely uses simple phrasing and heavy repetition in a funny voice, and it hasn't gotten old to me at all. Even when it's on her weird social justicey tracks ("Crayons" from this album) that I'm less keen on even though I appreciate that she consistently does them.

If you know cupcakKe's music it's probably because of her sex songs, which are very good. They're good because of their content, but mostly because they give her a canvas on which to play with goofy one-liners. I prize rappers who convey how much they enjoy themselves while they perform their craft above everything, and cupcakKe is up there.

cupcakKe also released an album late in the year, Eden, which wasn't quite the heavy hitter her first was. There is a song called "Garfield" where the chorus is just her saying "fat cat fat cat fat cat fat cat fat cat fat cat… Garfield. Garfield Garfield Garfield, Garfield Garfield Garfield," though, which is pretty excellent.

#2 Priscilla Renea - Coloured

I think this might be the actual best country record of this year, but the one that follows managed to eat me alive so well that I can't help but put it at number one.

Coloured is such a neat thing. It's a reflection on growing up black in America, using country and pop (and some rap, musically) as a medium. It opens with "Family Tree," a song with a striking central image and that has a chorus that erupts like a fucking volcano in the chorus. "Jonjo" follows, which is catchy and affable and just joyous. Crucially, "Denim" is on this album, fulfilling the quota every country record must meet of having a song with an overly belabored metaphor that is kind of wack but also really endearing.

The closing two songs are what make the album, in my mind at least. "Let's Build a House" is a slow, methodical appeal to resilience (sorry Robin James) that at least gestures toward a kind of collectivity, again with a strong central image, and is also just a lovely song. And then there's "Land of the Free," which explicitly refers to its propagandistic function:

If you don't believe it's true, I guess I wrote this song for you
You'd think I'd say these words because I hate America?
No
That's just life for me
Living while black in the land of the free

It also has a complicated relationship to reparations, and a lengthy, Hendrix-esque rendition of the National Anthem at the end. I love it for all of that. It's such a particular thing, so clearly and fully felt, and so welcome in its genre. I love this record a bunch.

#1 Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour

In my messiest moments this year, I spent weeks doing very little but listening to the back half of Golden Hour - from "Space Cowboy" on - on repeat while playing the Microsoft Solitaire Collection. I was doing daily challenges in each of the five variants while those songs played. I can't really hear any of them without my vision partially dissolving into Klondike. I did have a wonderful moment, on the way to see Taylor Swift's Reputation tour, sharing a love of this album with two friends. That has hopefully helped it to stay away from becoming my new Hybrid Theory, the Linkin Park album I still can't hear without subvisualizing the sewers of Cabilis from EverQuest.

This is a good fucking album. I've always been a bit low on Musgraves' work - she has felt to me, for some time, like country music for people who don't like country music. Which is fine, I guess, but it isn't for me. Except when it is, like, perfectly made for me.

There isn't a bad song on the fucking thing. "Slow Burn" sets everything up so well; "Lonely Weekend" is such a compelling look at the kind of person I know (and can be) who really needs to backseat their relationship and enjoy friends. "Butterflies" is damn near perfect. "Oh, What a World," is very good filler at worst (that continues the vocoded motif that the rest of the album needs to work), "Mother" is incredible, and "Love is a Wild Thing" is maybe the closest the album comes to a forgettable song, and probably also the best traditional country bop on the record.

Let's keep going: "Space Cowboy" is so good it made me want to watch Cowboy Bebop, a show it has nothing to do with, really, and which I don't give a shit about. "Happy & Sad" is the best song about anxiety I've ever heard, including that it doesn't know that that's what it's about (or at least the narrator doesn't). "Velvet Elvis" is the most annoying thing in a very heartwarming way. "Wonder Woman" isn't for me but I very much appreciate the sentiment. "High Horse" is what sold me on the album, because it bangs and because its criticisms are so vague and so endlessly intriguing. "Golden Hour" is the best possible way to close this thing out, and "Rainbow" is a really nice coda.

Speaking of which: it's no Rainbow, but I'm frankly surprised anything this year even got remotely close. That's the highest praise, from me, I think, that I could possibly give.

Some Other Stuff You Should Listen To

Quick note: some of the folks here I know well, some I have hung out with a handful of times, some I barely know at all or effectively don't. This is just some stuff from a scene or two I've never been a part of but have been around for, well, like, a long time, lets say. I'm not a good guide to it, either. Look these folks up and find out who they've worked with and shit. It's worth your time.

• Tryptich by The Bedroom Witch (watch the incredible short film)
• A History of Sexual Violence by Beast Nest
• Energies by Practical Records
• This Can't Be Happening by Moths Protect Me
• Unreality by SRSQ

Top Tens of 2017: #2s

Here are the second best podcast, film, album, TV show, and videogame of 2017:

#2 Podcast: Trillbilly Worker's Party

The Trillbillies are a group of three leftists who live in east Kentucky and talk about stuff. It's a great combination of shooting the shit, lefty hot takes, and deeper dives into specific theoretical issues. They specifically talk about Appalachian culture and politics a lot, which is a nice differentiator from a lot of lefty political discourse.

More than anything, what sets this apart is the way that the trillbillies trust themselves to say interesting and insightful things in the middle of bullshitting without putting unnecessary pressure on themselves to be Right or Perfectly Communicative or whatever. It's not just a way to generate ideas, but a great example of how to practice leftist ideas in conversation.

#2 Film: Split

I've said before that Shyamalan can't come back since he never left, and Split is a pretty solid example of that. As a racialized director who chose and was forced into a Spielbergian mode, a lot of his work has been, in my opinion, a way of wrestling with that duality through metaphor. There's a reason Bright falls flat as fuck where After Earth succeeded in spades, is as succinct a way to put it as I'm going to manage.

Part of that metaphor has been Shyamalan's increasing usage of mental health to drive plots, which is almost always kind of a fucking mess. The Village might be the earliest example, but it intensified strongly in The Visit and now here, where it becomes the essential premise rather than the background. I don't know that taking it as a comic (which the surprise cameo at the end confirms it to literally be) ameliorates that at all, but I'm also not sure that I have much to say beyond calling it out.

What makes Split work, though, and also makes it a genuine departure from much of Shyamalan's earlier work, is that the central relationship is between young women. They are painted with fairly broad strokes, but their dynamic creates a sense of a real group of people at odds with each other in genuine ways.

There's also, of course, McAvoy's impressive performance, and the creation of a genuinely compelling villain that promises to give Shyamalan a chance to revisit the world of Unbreakable at a moment when comic book films seem in need of a look at an angle.

#2 Album: Chill, Dummy by POS

Despite some slightly more forgettable tracks in the middle of the album - none of which are anything less than very good - the opening and closing of Chill, Dummy are the standouts. It closes with what I called the best 8+ minute rap song of 2016 (and what is probably the best song of that year period).

I could probably say a lot about it, or at least quote it at length, but I really do think everyone should just listen to it. It's a sprawling invective against police and the state, an honest reflection on shittiness in past relationships and life, a sweeping collaboration that doesn't take the focus off the personal, and a song that has the lines:

That bright black with a sharp tongue and the beats crack
and he bites back with shark teeth and he eats that.
That black bloc'er that can't stop when the coppers creep
and I don't show up, I'm trash talk and I'm fuck peace
I'm Chris Dorner, I'm Doberman dirty, off leash.
I'm Mike Brown, I'm Eric Garner, I can't breathe.

The opening salvo of "Born a Snake" and "Wearing a Bear" are the other moments of the album where POS' lyrics are coupled with his anger and passion to create something fucking incredible.

#2 TV Show: Sense8 (season 2)

If the first season of Sense8 was an admirable experiment with some interesting results, the second is made in the same lab, with the same beakers, and entirely different chemicals. Or, to use a metaphor more in my wheelhouse, it's a show that has been affected by the agent of history, its inherent contradictions heightened.

Those contradictions: Sense8 is a show that wants to have profound things to say about community while subscribing to a fundamentally technocratic worldview. It wants a sort of soft socialism but can only see it through a strict division of labor and an evolutionary path rather than a social one.

This season kind of drops the ball on Wolfgang and Kala. But it does go hard with Sun and Capheus in ways I really appreciated. More generally, it just goes in a way that I very much appreciated. Like all of the best of the Wachowskis' work, it is very much a collection of excuses for setpieces that end up dominating the memory of the piece, and, it turns out, it is quite good at that.

It also might just come down to the fact that Nomi's speech at her sister's wedding made me cry in a way nothing really does. Fuck I really loved that moment.

#2 Videogame: NieR:Automata

There are an absurd number of positive things to say about NieR:Automata. The way it plays with and integrates disparate genres in a cohesive way speaks to its insistence on integrating difference. How enjoyable it is to just run around and mash through simple fights. Its beautiful look that isn't afraid to craft big, annoying environments to let you discover a particular metaphor. It is an incredible thing. Instead of trying to turn this into a holistic essay, though, I think I'd be better able to just list off a few points here that illustrate why this game meant so much to me.

The moment that hooked me on the game in my first playthrough came early. After the first handful of hours, you take a quest that leads you into the desert. You're tasked with taking out some groups of machines who have been acting up. The desert itself is a huge circle of sand dunes and jack shit otherwise. Early on in cleaning up these groups, I stumbled across a pod. These are effectively your ranged weapon, with some characterization. The one you start with is basically a machine gun; the one you find here locks onto enemies and launches a barrage of missiles at them in intervals. This fundamentally changes your interactions within this space: instead of running up on enemies and comboing them while shooting, you can hang back on top of a dune and rain death from a distance. I was struck that I had perhaps never been put in the position of the American War Machine in such a potent way before. Especially as my companion harped on the fact that the machines' speech was just gibberish, that their protestations and terror were nonsense, and that they were simple tools of great evil forces.

The game itself is largely about these machines and their disparate attempts to learn to be human. The side quests, genre-specific as they tend to be, are where this is fleshed out. There are the obvious, well-written ones, like the androids in the Resistance camp who go crazy when they realize they've killed their friends, or who are actively and non-consensually reformatting their partners to make them stronger. It's also in the boss design, like when you fight a machine in an amusement park named Simone (du Beauvior) who is obsessed with winning the love of another (Jean-Paul (Sartre)) despite not knowing what that "love" actuallys is, and so she becomes cannibalistically obsessed with the practice of gaining personal beauty. But the ones that work best are the ones that are literally nothing more than tropes of the genre. A robot named Father Servo spars with you a half dozen or so times; you run shitty races in a series called Speed Tests. These machines are little gameplay challenges and fetch quests and ways to ask you to keep playing. But they're also bizarre little stubs of development for characters that shed light on the broader world. They're specializations, in a way that emulates human society. Except that they end in evolutionary dead ends when they can't be the best.

The flip side of these highly humanistically developed machines are the philosophical ones. The highest example is the aforementioned Jean-Paul, who proclaims basic tenets of 20th century French existentialism. He is a prick, but more than that he is a product of his environment. Pascal's village is a little oasis in a world that's ravaged by endless war, so of course the ideas it would produce aren't exactly hopeful. It is premised on Pascal's own pacifism, as well, meaning it isn't exactly fertile ground for revolutionary thought. But there are also the robots in the amusement park who have an ideology entirely centered around joy; the forest kingdom which has an eternally-infantile king (machines don't grow up) that privileges loyalty and protection over everything. Every thought these machines have stems from their material conditions. Including the ones who hover over the edges of tall structures, only able to be interacted with by hacking, who have nascent questions about the meaning of life, which ends in their self-destruction.

The second time I beat NieR:Automata (endings A-E), I teared up at the end credits. The game ends with you playing a shmup with the credits, which eventually escalates in difficulty to the point where it either is impossible or is nearly so. Eventually, as you die, you get asked questions about whether you want to give up. Behind those questions are bits of encouragement from other players. My first time through I thought that was effective and cute; my second I nearly lost it. I have no reason here, or takeaway really, other than that for a game that is so "spoilable" the actual experience is consistently stranger and more beautiful than knowing could possibly interrupt.

Top Tens of 2017: #4s

Here are the fourth best podcast, film, album, TV show, and videogame of 2017:

#4 Podcast: The Solecast

I've been listening to Sole's podcast, on and off, for the last couple of years. In the beginning it was, I'll be honest, out of a mixture of lurid interest and solidarity; I do consider him a comrade and a friend (he also came on my podcast this year, full disclosure I guess?) but the early bits were fairly rough. This year in particular has seen him take what he's doing with the podcast and take it to the next level.

As far as leftist podcasts go, he is hitting a sweet spot that a lot of others that I've listened to absolutely don't. I straight up have no interest in the pure comedy stylings of a Chapo, and while I appreciate the interview-heavy, soundbite-producing style of Revolutionary Left Radio, it can be kind of exhausting. Sole also focuses on interviews, but is significantly more invested in a conversational style that stays on track with (what I assume are) prepared questions.

I appreciate the tack Sole takes with getting guests, sort of alternating between "bigger name" guests like Mackenzie Wark or Sage Francis with folks doing art or on the ground organizing, which provides for an interesting experience of hearing stories and theories in a sort of holistic way. Plus he talks to folks who are into permaculture and shit, which I super don't care about but he clearly does, and that's what makes it interesting.

Among my favorites are his interview with rapper Mic Crenshaw who was involved in creating the anti-racist action network and rapper POS who doesn't do much political organizing, with rapper & disabled rights activist Kalyn Heffernan, and the episode with a J20 defendant. Making that list genuinely surprised me with how many musicians there are on it, since I tend to not think of this podcast that way at all, but hey, what do you know.

#4 Film: mother!

I don't think mother! is necessarily a hard movie to talk about, but I am fairly certain I am not going to do a good job of it. It might be a movie that portrays a horrifying empathy for the abuser. It also might be a secret sequel to The Others that doesn't want to commit. It also might be (and, if you've read me in the past, you'll probably figure out that this is my preferred reading whether or not it is the most supported) a story of a man in love with the embodiment of his house.

The first 45 minutes or so of this movie look like Stoker shot on a GoPro. Jennifer Lawrence is constantly framed dead center in close up, with the camera movements primarily following her and occasionally swinging around from front to back or vice versa. It's a very weird choice that gives a lot of weight to the very early scene in which she walks to her front door and then encircles the foyer by walking through each of the rooms in a tight circle. If she's the house, that sequence is also in some sense her as the camera. The technique in general recalls specific sequences from Requiem For a Dream, or the shot of Becky (Amanda Seyfreid) in season 3 of Twin Peaks being high in her husband's thunderbird.

Because of this, the movie itself is able to be signposted by the only two exterior shots in the whole thing. The first happens at about that 45 minute mark, and signals a slight release of the camera from Lawrence's character. It still tracks her closely, but sometimes is allowed to come to rest at an entryway, allowing her to wander around a room. It also marks the introduction of the first outsiders, a man played by Ed Harris and, later, his wife, Michelle Pfeiffer. Their kids show up, an altercation occurs, and the beating heart of the house is made more material when some of the resultant blood cannot be mopped up. The blood or the house show Lawrence's character to a secret room in the house in a scene that is somewhat similar to certain moments in Silent House, which I still maintain is pretty good, okay.

The second exterior shot happens somewhat later, and marks the point at which the husband (Javier Bardem, who is a poet afflicted by writer's block until Harris & Pfeiffer's characters show up) begins to invite into the house a whole society of people. Just before that, though, Lawrence's character has a vision of renewal in a wide overhead pan out, showing the home and the woods blooming with life. She is also pregnant. It should be said: this is a movie which doesn't do subtlety, in the same way that Aronofsky never has. As she's in the last stages of pregnancy, the house is overrun with Bardem's character's fans who eventually go from admirer's to an entire society that progresses from riots to religious societies to cults and full a brief, full-scale war film. That last bit is maybe the only part of the movie that super didn't work for me.

So yeah! I did, as expected, a bad job of talking about that. Sorry about my book report? It's a really interestingly-shot thing that wears its allegory on its sleeve in a way that is more fun to watch than to reminisce on. Aronofsky made a weird movie about a woman who is a house and I fuck with that pretty hard okay.

#4 Album: T-Wayne by T-Pain & Lil Wayne

Any other year this would have been my favorite thing ever. And in a lot of ways it still is. It's the long-held collaboration between the two titans who completely altered the musical landscape just about a decade ago, and it is kind of clear why it was held back. There's a ton of joy and play in it, but hardly any memorable hooks or exciting production. But that play alone makes it lovely and delightful.

#4 TV Show: The Shannara Chronicles (season 2)

The first season of MTV's (now Spike's) The Shannara Chronicles was one of my favorite experiences of watching something in 2016. It was a delightful little thing that got a surprising amount right, even if it failed in many other ways. That is, in many ways, the story of this second season as well, if slightly more muted. The big change (aside from the channel) is that it leans a little more into the Diversity aspect and doesn't do quite as good a job with the source material.

A big pet peeve: it is made clear in the novels that the Sword of Shannara is capable of being wielded by a Shannara not because of something inherent in the bloodline, but because of a mistaken belief among the public that that is the case. This season explicitly goes back on that, which is kind of a major bummer.

Otherwise, it is a lovely little thing, a genuinely enjoyable experience that has a number of flaws and falls apart at the end.

#4 Videogame: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I never quite got out of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild what many others did. I'm barely interested in open worlds and I have very little patience for emergent gameplay. I do love weird systems clashing, but in the actual act of play I'm significantly more likely to wander to the invisible edge of the world and run alongside than try to combine inventory items and environmental hazards to form a unique way of dispatching an enemy. Despite the fact that it is very much not my playstyle, enjoyed my time with the game a ton. Which is to say that it was a chill time that I appreciated in 2017.

Top Tens of 2017: #9s

Here are the ninth best podcast, film, album, TV show, and videogame of 2017:

#9 Podcast: Switchblade Sisters

Switchblade Sisters is the first time I heard one of those terrible ads on the Maximum Fun Network and actually went ahead and checked out the podcast. It took me a few weeks, honestly, to stop regretting that I had done so; and even more to really feel like the show was getting into the swing of things. None of which is to say that the host, April Wolfe (formerly of LA Weekly (RIP)) or any of the guests were bad or uninteresting; the show has had a real professionalism from the jump, and with small exceptions there haven't been major changes in the format over time. Part of what's endeared me to it is accepting the self-imposed limitations; the rest is growing to enjoy what is there.

I've had the argument about the length of podcasts a number of times throughout this year; a few times with my co-host on the Playdate Podcast, and a few times in discussions with friends where I asked what they preferred. I appear to be one of the only people I know who doesn't give a fuck about the length, and might even prefer them to be longer. That comes partially out of the fact that I started listening to them when I had about three hours of commuting a day. But it's also, I think, because I have no qualms pausing and picking back up, whereas other people seem to.

Switchblade Sisters, I imagine you'll find it gratifying to learn, is about an hour long; less because it has the normal intro, outro, and ad breaks. For my money, that's the show's biggest weakness, but I can also accept that I'm the outlier here. Every time, though, I want there to be more; on the older movie under discussion; on the guest artist's process; or just in allowing the rapport to be developed a little more naturally. It's enough of a problem that I nearly dismissed the show a couple episodes in. An hour for a comedy show makes sense; an hour to juggle a critical appreciation of a film, an artist interview, and a shitload of bumpers is kind of a crime. The inverse suggestion, of course, would be to focus on one of the first two at the expense of the third, but that would make this a much worse show.

The real turning point for me was the discussion of Rosemary's Baby, in which Wolfe and guest Jessie Nickson-Lopez got into a discussion of why this movie so affects them without shrinking away from Polanski's shittiness as a human being. It leads to an interesting conversation about art, in the abstract and in particular, and to good responses from Nickson-Lopez that might otherwise have been very abstract or entirely missing. It's a cool thing, and I hope the show finds more ways to thread its particular needle as it develops.

#9 Film: Better Watch Out

I saw this, primarily, because it stars Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould, the kids who starred in M. Night Shyamalan's second to most recent film, The Visit. In that, they were brother and sister; here, she is a babysitter to Oxenbould's friend on a night when things go awry. If nothing else, this is worth watching after The Visit to see that Oxenbould isn't exclusively capable of playing a deeply annoying character, and to enjoy their chemistry again. There is else, of course, but not a whole ton of it.

If I can say another thing that might oversell this movie: it's a bit like a slightly watered-down version of You're Next. That movie is significantly better, of course, but both do interesting, often funny things while undermining the home invasion genre. Not just in the mechanics of the invasion, but even down to the final image, in a certain way. So if you're looking for something a little less fun than that with a couple of interesting aspects it doesn't hit, this is a cool little thing to enjoy.

#9 Album: Dedication 6 by Lil Wayne

Despite weak Nicki and Drake verses and a general lack of the kind of difficult joy he's been spitting for the last few years, there are still lines like "do I look like I'm playing? Kaepernick" that continue to solidify the fact that Wayne is, was, and remains the best at this shit. The chorus that goes "When I bust I yell Eureka!" is a pretty perfect example: it flows well, he sells the fuck out of it, and the repetition only gets funnier every time. These are his comfort zones and they are illustrated beautifully.

Otherwise, honestly, Dedication 6 is in many ways my least favorite Weezy release in a minute. Which is okay. I suspect it's been better-received than most of what I actually fuck with. It feels like another step in the saga, and I'm still following along close.

None of which is to say, of course, that it's anything other than a very good listen. I don't genuinely consider Wayne the greatest of all time for no reason. Even when he misses, I value that over most artist's hits. Because he's extraordinarily enthusiastic about rapping, and very good at it, and willing to try things that alienate one aspect of his fanbase on one song and then the opposite aspect on the very next. And that doesn't just lead to him being all over the place, but to changing the game on a regular basis.

#9 TV Show: Slasher (season 2)

Someone who watched enough TV to actually fill out one of these lists would almost certainly not include this, but hey, here I am. It's the first Netflix original season of a show that originated on Canadian TV, which was turned into an anthology series during that transition. Or maybe that was the initial plan. I don't know; I watched the bulk of the first season before skipping over to the second, which is the one that came out in 2017.

This time around is the story of a group of camp counselors who return to their old stomping grounds five years after they sorta accidentally killed another counselor. They've heard that the land is being sold and are worried people will find the body they haphazardly hid. Since those events, an intentional community has sprouted in the area with a small handful of members. Once they get to the site (in the middle of winter), some masked & en-snowsuited entity starts taking them out one by one. The whole thing is kind of a mess, with characters that get a lot more screentime than they have development opportunity and a story to tell that isn't strong enough to support the runtime. This is somewhat helped by the fact that the setting itself is conceptually cool and prep work was done to make it feel interesting, although it too goes mostly uninterrogated because it's easier to just blanket it with snow and get mildly interesting shots.

Probably the most interesting thing is the way the season is structured; that whole plot is intercut with scenes from five years prior, developing the characters during the period in which the murder happened, and some in the interim. It more or less works out that whoever's backstory is being developed ultimately dies, which works especially well in the first episode. The person in question seems to be being set up as the final girl real hard. On the other hand, that kind of subversion definitely undermines the possibility of making a stronger story or developing characters to a great enough extent that they can draw you through the weak central mystery.

#9 Videogame: Night in the Woods

I'll be completely honest here: I originally wanted Universal Paperclips on this list, and up until the last moment it was. I think that game is very interesting, but I also couldn't put together a strong case for it in the way that I thought I could. It's a cool thing, though. Probably. On some level, I'd much rather Oikospiel, Book One be on here, but I also just couldn't get the words together for that. Or even Everything, which just didn't click with me at all. Hey: play Oikospiel. While I'm here: Moloch (Zero), The Tearoom, and LOCALHOST are all really cool small things that came out this year that I wish I had been able to figure out how to put on this list. Also Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp was a weirdly compelling thing that I nearly figured out how to talk about.

And, I'll be honest, the main reason I cut Night in the Woods initially was because I couldn't think of anything to say about it. It's a game about a young girl who drops out of college to return to her small postindustrial town and figure some shit out. She then spends time hanging out with her old friends and uncovering a mystery that begins with a severed arm and ends with some town cultists sacrificing precarious youth to the god of industrialism. Along the way, Mae (the aforementioned girl) comes to some soft conclusions about her own mental health, her attitude toward her hometown, and her relationship with her friends and parents.

My experience with Night in the Woods was basically cut in half. I played the first half (or so) around when I first got it; I enjoyed it enough, but I honestly spent more time in the 2D soulslike Demontower inside of Mae's laptop than in the game itself. I picked it up a bunch of months later and finally finished it when I was considering doing these lists, and what they might look like. That's when I initially cut this from the proceedings. The problem was basically that I enjoyed my time with it, and think it a pretty impressive thing, but that it never really hit me.

On the other hand, though, it has pretty incredible writing which hovers between being tumblr-esque while maintaining a naturalistic quality that shows up in both the dialogue and the characterization. One person who you meet with regularly (if you choose to) reads you cutesy poems; another hangs out on a roof and just wants to talk about horror movies. Both of them manage to ride those tropes while also suggesting a sense of interiority beneath. It's honestly impressive, although (for me) it often didn't extend beyond that.

It's also a game that says 'fuck cops' early and - well, not often enough. That has really pleasant minigames, like Demontower or the Guitar Hero-lite that you play while Mae is at band practice. That takes seriously episodes of dissociation as both personal and political problem. And that tells an interesting story of someone who got stuck in a dead-end family business instead of going to college (I didn't go Gregg's route. He seemed super annoying). But more than anything, it's a game that does a ton of work to tell a story of the economic destruction of a small, midwestern town, and how that plays out in individual lives. Which I appreciate a lot.

This is why I cut it, though. I think what it does is cool. But I also just spent a lot of words saying just that. And I can't just say it, because I don't feel like that does it any justice. It's a weird thing that I also found pretty frustrating. Play it, or a bunch of the stuff I listed at the top. That's just my opinion though.

Top 10 Rap EPs of 2016

10. Wriggle by clipping.

I'd somehow never actually listened to clipping. prior to this EP, and as far as introductions go it's not a bad one. It makes sense that they'd get grouped with folks like Death Grips and Run the Jewels, and even with an EP that I'm not over the moon about I think they're likely better than both (excepting "Guillotine" from Death Grips, which is the only song from this new noise rap shit that I'm really about, despite noise rap being Kind Of Exactly What I Want All The Time).

9. Maiden Voyage by Signor Benedick the Moor

A long, intricate track about life and anger and saying goodbye on a maiden voyage, followed by an aggressive four minutes of sparring with Jonathan Snipes & Daveed Diggs makes a pretty solid EP.

8. Double Ecstasy by Antwon

Antwon's been good for a minute now, and he stays good. More than anything this EP is a wrapper around some really fucking nasty kicks. The goofy joke of beeping out the titular word of "Luv" like it was a swear is a pretty good encapsulation, especially given how unforgiving the song itself is.

7. Cam & China by Cam & China

That beautifully thick bass holds together this really solid effort from these two MCs. From trap drums to Wu-Tang piano loops to drill church bells, Cam & China's self-titled's in theory a mess of styles that doesn't stumble. "That B" and "Playets" especially hit.

6. Untitled by Prodigy

I haven't exactly been following Prodigy's career closely, so apologies if you have and this is not a surprise but: holy fuck this Dubstep Ass EP from Mobb Deep's own. Full on moody depths and screaming highs and Prodigy just putting down exactly what he needs to and no more.

5. Solid by Z-Ro

Z-Ro dropped two real solid records this year, but his EP is easily his best release. It's got "Legendary," which is definitely his best single from this year, and "Thru the Roof" is a fucking wild collaboration with B.G. It's seven songs of the Houston legend shining and it's delightful.

4. Mongo by Abdu Ali

There isn't a lot to say about Mongo other than that it fucking bangs. And it's the kind of shit you listen to to have your faith renewed. And that it's near perfect. And how the fuck is "Did Dat" even real, that's how good it is.

3. There's Alot Going On by Vic Mensa

There's Alot Going On isn't the tightest record on this list, but it has the hardest hitter. "16 Shots" is a wild fucking song that deserves all the superlatives. Mensa keeps fire in his voice on "Danger," and has a good time fucking around on tracks like "Liquor Locker," and that range is crucial and fun.

2. Prima Donna by Vince Staples

Prima Donna mixes Staples' more experimentally-inclined raps with low fi recordings of him singing, but the possibility of that being peaceful is shattered (with a very loud gunshot) at the end of the first track.

Screwed up Andre 3000 verses and thick sine waves and overdriven guitar samples wrap around Staples' lazy tight rhymes when he isn't singing. It's the kind of record that boils furiously just under its placid surface.

1. Us or Else by T.I.

T.I. in full on 'fuck a platinum plaque' mode is inspiring as fuck. There's so much about this EP to love. More than anything is its refusal to make peace with white listeners: from T.I.'s flow and pronunciation to the way he treats his subjects -- primarily topics around and including Black Lives Matter -- it's a tight collection of songs that gives no quarter to anyone who would quibble on semantics or refuse the movements basic premise.

"Warzone" is the obvious standout, with its chorus of "hands up can't breathe," but there isn't a single track here that doesn't go. Whether he's calling for justice or calling in folks who aren't down to ride against cops, it's everything.

Top 10 Rap Albums of 2016

10. T.I. - Us or Else: Letter to the System

The full album version of T.I.'s near-perfect EP Us or Else doesn't quite live up to the earlier, but it also has a different goal. The format and the subtitle make that clear; instead of talking directly to his people, Us or Else: Letter to the System broadens T.I.'s audience to include people he feels like he needs to persuade, or at least confront.

9. Tachyon Ghetto Blaster - Heaven on Earth

NB: I went back and forth re: posting this in a forthcoming list because I've chatted with Kaigen a few times, and the artist bio he uses is still the one I wrote for him a few years back. I opted for this instead because 1) I like the fuck out of this album and 2) why not, I hardly know him (or Orko Eloheim at all).

Heaven on Earth is Kaigen and Orko Eloheim's debut EP, rapped in English and Japanese, and full of the kind of shitkicking bass and revolutionary lyrics that Death Grips and Run The Jewels only gesture toward unconvincingly. It rules.

8. K-Rino - The Big Seven

Houston went in this year. Two solid Z-Ro albums, two releases from Trae the Truth, two from Riff Raff and two from Slim Thug. And then there's 7 in one day from K-Rino.

The most remarkable thing about The Big Seven is just how consistent it is; Rino apparently wrote and recorded the albums over the course of about a year, and while there are definitely songs that suck, none of them are because he lets his standards drop. That's six and a half straight hours where K-Rino doesn't choose a single beat he can't quite ride, or write lazy in a way he can't deliver. And even though little of The Big Seven rises above that level of consistency to be something truly special, when it does it's pretty cool.

The most obvious example is when K-Rino is rapping about the Wizard and the Sorcerer; he goes into full storytelling mode, and his ability to consistently weave words gets complimented by a focus that takes him to a higher level. K-Rino also seems especially comfortable over Anno Domini beats (who are, as far as I can tell, a beat farm) that lean toward almost drill-style oppressive bells. In the right elements, his consistency becomes not a faint praise but a real asset.

On the other hand, K-Rino's got some shit he feels strongly about, and talks about so often, that makes it hard to go all in for him. These range from your run of the mill conspiracist tendencies like fluoride and chemtrails to complaining about how he gets labeled anti-Semitic because he likes to point out how Jews run the world or whatever. In a lot of ways its less disappointing than it should be, as in line as it is with a lot of rap that trends conscious. On the other hand, it's enough to put a damper on the whole project. Let's do a quick album by album:

• Universal Curriculum is an album that reaches and explores styles, with a slight focus on sentimentality.
• Conception of Concept has some hard shit on it, and some fun shit too.
• Enter the Iron Trap is K-Rino's polemical album, from the pedantic "T.B.E." to the political "Exposing the Motive" and the historical "Elijah," and "Keepin' Your Name Alive," so much of it is an argument.
• Wizard's Ransom is, appropriately, a speculative album, in the obvious way -- there's another story of a magical battle in the title track -- but also in the way that "If I Had" and "Game for Your Daughter" are of the genre of pretending K-Rino has children to pass advice on to.
• American Heroes is a weird one, focused on broader America: BLM songs like "Administrative Leave," alternative histories (not in the speculative fiction sense) like "American Heroes," and paeans to straight cops like "Good Cop." God dammit "Translation" is probably the epitome of his -- and most -- conscious rap shit, full of good shit and then also lines like "question Jewish lies? that's anti-Semitism" and whatever that shit was about vaccines.
• Welcome to Life is the advice album, and is significantly more confusing than it appears at first blush. Especially "Same Old Same," track 5 of album 6 of 7 that's about how rap tends to repeat its themes that is somehow not unironic, and "Abortion Song," which I assumed was just going to be gross but has a little more nuance to it.
• Intervention is somehow the most consistent album of all seven, and includes the Wizard's final battle and a pretty decent thirteen minute posse cut.

7. Sasha Go Hard - Nutty World 3

Sasha Go Hard has been a staple, as far as I'm concerned, for the last three or four years. Of her two mixtapes this year, The Realest I Know has more straightforward hits, but Nutty World 3's consistent production that hits hard as fuck makes for a better whole.

6. Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition

The fucked up thing about Atrocity Exhibition is that it kind of falls flat as an album. If you take it as a sorta conceptual whole with a unified aesthetic, at least. For something that seems like it ought to live or die on the appreciation of an aesthetic concept, that should be a death sentence; but the actual thing about Atrocity Exhibition is that its insistence is less about crafting a whole, and more about carving out space for some incredibly dope shit. "Really Doe," "Ain't It Funny," "Pneumonia" and "When It Rain" are all such incredibly good songs that absolutely wouldn't work without the rest of the album not quite working. Atrocity Exhibition is a controlled crash that serves up some beautiful shots, and those shots end up standing head and shoulders above most things that came out this year, including albums that were better than it.

5. Chance the Rapper - Coloring Book

The degree to which Coloring Book is about faith is something that I think has been talked about a lot, and it is good and true. The reason I really, really love it, though, is because it is a collection of people who really fucking love rapping. There's Chance the Rapper first and foremost, but then D.R.A.M. and Thug and Yachty, T-Pain and Noname and 2 Chainz and fucking Weezy, who is the best of all time. At rapping, of course, but especially at being happy to be rapping, because he so clearly is, no matter how he's doing it. And I don't really know that I can give something higher praise than that.

4. TT the Artist - Queen of the Beat

Baltimore came through in 2016, and TT the Artist is exemplary of that. A massive Baltimore Club showpiece, Queen of the Beat almost has a Trina meets Big Freedia vibe. More than anything, really, it's just a bunch of really dope music, with a dope rapper going in over it.

3. D.R.A.M. - Big Baby D.R.A.M.

There are big chunks of Big Baby D.R.A.M. that I'll likely skip whenever I listen to it in the future -- much of the album trends R&B more than I personally care for -- but the stuff it does well is such a celebration of rap and such a fun thing to listen to that I can't help but adore it. ""Broccoli"" with Lil Yachty is the breakout single, but ""Cash Machine"" is the best fucking single of 2016 without a close second, period.

There's also just some shit on this record that I enjoy. The bonus track ""Workaholic"" is a good example; it's pretty whatever in a lot of ways, except that it sounds like swagger at a sprint. Or the fact that "Sweet Va Breeze" feels genuinely weird with its cuts and whole vibe. It's the kind of closing song that makes how uneven the whole album leading to it was feel, if not intentional, at least acknowledged and ignored.

2. DJ Khaled - Major Key

If Coloring Book is a mixtape that works so well on its merits as a love of the act of rapping, Major Key is an album from the man who has made a career of it without really doing it himself. I've largely not seen Khaled's social media resurgence from the last year or two, but he's been instrumental in bringing together people who do the goddamn thing well and with love for a decade or more. He's a key figure in the '08 renaissance, when pop rap moved on from the circle of interchangeable, technically competent dudes to become the thing that it is today; Lil B may be the father to too many styles, but Khaled's the uncle who rounded up those kids and made sure they played and grew together.

Khaled's uncle-status is important because it gives him an in with so many people; he's never really had to inherit beef the same way peers or the head of a master-apprentice relationship has to. He's always been a bridge builder, for better and worse (I blame the entirety of Rick Ross' success on the man). So when he says "another one," you better fucking listen.

A lot of what makes Major Key so incredible is the way it pushes its participants. Take Kendrick's verse on "Holy Key," which starts out pretty sub-par until it ratchets up and becomes one of his best features in a year full of pretty strong appearances. Or take the fucking Final Fantasy arpeggiation for Travis Scott and Lil Wayne on "Tourist," which gives both opportunities to switch their shit up in ways they're both very good at. Or, the most obvious and outstanding, the way that "Nas Album Done" is a fucking Nas song with a contemporary beat that the dude goes fucking in over. Being completely frank, "Nas Album Done" is good enough that it alone is enough to push this whole album near the top of the list; the fact that he pushes people to new levels -- including a fucking track with Wiz Khalifa, Wale, and Meghan Trainor that isn't unlistenable -- adds to that, as does the album cover and the goofy, fun insistence on the theme. But fuck, man, "Nas Album Done."

1. 2 Chainz - ColleGrove

I've promised in the past that I wouldn't publish the 5,000 words I wrote about Wayne's 2015, so I'll keep the embarrassing shit to myself here, too. I'll leave it at the fact that Wayne's split from Cash Money has seen him alternately killing it and doing really important base (re)building in a way he has been doing all along, but hasn't had to do actively in like a decade. It's fucking great and inspiring and he just loves skating and hates cops and he's the best.

ColleGrove is 2 Chainz' album because of that split, but the collaboration is super important. The first song is basically just tity telling everyone how much he loves Wayne, and the rest is Weezy making sure 2 Chainz does his absolute best. It's such a fun, expressive thing, so focused on building together and enjoying and rematerializing history in the present to keep moving forward. It's a love of rapping that is situated and storied and there's a music video where Wayne and 2 Chainz are rap battling like its 8 Mile and it's the cutest thing I've ever seen.

Top 5 Rap Songs Over 8 Minutes of 2016

5. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - "White Privilege II"

"White Privilege II" is the worst 8 minute rap song of 2016, but it was necessary to put on this list -- even considering there are a couple shitty Mac Miller tracks that didn't make it -- because it's a large part of why this little list exists in the first place. There were plenty of reasons to be pissed at the discourse of 2016, but for whatever reason the shitshows around this monument to Macklemore's ego was a gum under your shoe moment (for me). Even #WeAreTheLeft hasn't been as persistently annoying as this.

But I'm not going to go back and reread all the shitty thinkpieces. I'm generally not about that "the only reason that you could possibly think this is if you hate rap" shit talking, but those takes about how this song was an act of solidarity or a performative calling in put me in that spot. The song itself is enough. My hot take at the time was that it had more in common with Eminem's "Kim" than anything else; in length obviously, but also in tone and goal. It is so clearly a song from the perspective a character that wants desperately to justify to the listener that they are justified in their actions. And there's nothing wrong with that on its own, of course. I'm not the person who wants to rubric all rap by authenticity -- though I realize there are real reasons to take that position -- by any means, including that annoying refrain about how I'd be more into it if Macklemore, say, just admitted that was what he was doing. This song's the worst on its own terms, no matter what terms you gift it. It's the worst because it inspires nothing but timidity and the fear of conscience in its makers and its listeners. It's the worst because it sounds like shit for eight fucking minutes.

4. J. Cole - "4 Your Eyez Only"

The Great J. Cole Debate of 2016 was garbage to begin with, and I'm on team hate, for the most part. Part of that's due to what I prioritize; I think J. Cole raps like he's actively repressing his emotions, and it puts his stuff on that same conscious tip that I've had very little patience for forever. "4 Your Eyez Only" almost gets past that, though, and I appreciate that he's got some range. Also: Better than Macklemore.

3. Tory Lanez - "I Told You / Another One"

This song kind of doesn't count, because it's almost clearly two songs slipped together into one. But then, a later one on here does similar, and I'm not fucking including Mac Miller on any list, so Tory Lanez gets it.

And technicalities aside, Lanez tells a solid story with this track. It has pace and narrative and it hits and, unlike Cole, he is capable of displaying multiple emotions. Look, I didn't say that this year was a banner for specifically 8 minute rap tracks. There was one that was terrible, one that was incredible, and one that was absolutely worth mattering. You've seen the first, and the next two are the third and second, respectively.

2. Kendrick Lamar - "untitled 07 | 2014 - 2016"

I'm not as into Kendrick Lamar's surprise album from the beginning of this year as, I think, most (although I'd have put To Pimp A Butterfly at, or at least near, the top had I done an album list last year). But if there's a standout from untitled. unmastered., it's absolutely "untitled 07 | 2014 - 2016." For as much as Lamar is heralded as bringing experimentation into pop rap, I think he's far more the latter than the former; untitled. unmastered. kind of confirmed that for me. But when he does hit that experimentation on all cylinders, it's about as good as any rapper with his level of technical and pop success has ever gotten. "untitled 07 | 2014 - 2016" might not quite be all cylinders, but it's damn close.

1. P.O.S. - "sleepdrone/superposition"

The reason I noticed that this was a trend at all was because, barely a month after Macklemore's shitshow, P.O.S. dropped a huge track of near-identical length. There were two big differences, which you may be able to guess. Have you? They were: talent and reception.

"sleepdrone/superposition" is not only the most exciting thing P.O.S. has done since his recovery, it's the most exciting thing Doomtree has done since No Kings. More than that, even, P.O.S. is positioning himself as one of the strongest voices in an underground scene that's become hugely stratified between the breakthrough noisy shit that's deeply boring and the more experimental end that keeps threatening to disappear up its own ass by failing even to push forward in a way people don't like. More than that, "sleepdrone/superposition" is probably just straight up the best song of the year, in a year that had some heavy fucking competition.

From the way P.O.S. wheels between personal and political statements to the bars from homies to the oppressive and intense production, "sleepdrone/superposition" is fucking incredible, and absolutely worth 8 minutes of your time.

No Accidents of a Down

This is a follow up to this, which was a response to this. That second link is an essay about art tumblr The Jogging's switch from, basically, well-photographed visual puns with titles to conspiracist images relying on certain constants (an MS Paint aesthetic and far right rhetoric being the most relevant).

Here's another thing that The Jogging, and any theory of the conspiracy theory that sees it exclusively as the terrain of systemic thought with capitalism as its ultimate horizon (which I have been as guilty of as anyone), rather than (as I'm now attempting to formulate it) a discourse of totalization that runs parallel to capitalism as its own totality: System of a Down.

I think it's fairly uncontroversial to position SoaD as operating within the broader conspiracist framework, even if looking at the lyrics to any individual song doesn't capture that element of their broader performance or place within the cultural landscape at the turn of the millennium. Which is kind of the point; recent emphasis on conspiracies like Truthers and Birthers positions the conspiracist as a member of the radical right, and The Jogging organizes itself within this moment. But the aesthetics they adopt are inflected by the strategies they employ; so while there are still a large amount of the sort of narrative image macros that they are creating being made in earnest (although this is more a legacy of Birthers, a group who they haven't yet explicitly engaged to my knowledge, than the Truthers at whom much of their content is aimed, at least based on my peripheral engagement with 9/11 Truth sites and discourse around 2004-2006) the epiphanic juxtaposition of the familiar (discussed last time), inherited from photography and providing the explicit link between previous and current practice, necessarily temporalizes the images. The amateur graphic design is a thing of forums and Web 1.0; it's very 90s.



If you've ever gone back and listened to some of the (broadly categorized) nu-metal (and its orbit) from the (very) late 90s through the first half of the 00s, and if you're me, you'll have been struck by the ease with which the vocalists switch between what seem to be legitimate leftist critique with stunningly obtuse conspiracism. SoaD is an obvious example, as is Rage Against the Machine, but even groups like Incubus or Papa Roach were getting in on it. There were a lot of things going into this, from the near-universal adoption of disaffection that apparently undercut their critiques to the conspiracist framing to the fact that at the end of the day it was all an industrial investment in the production of goods which captured a market who repaid the investors handsomely, of course, but there was also the experience of knowing shit was fucked up, figuring it probably had a cause, and then hearing, say "Prison Song." It's a pop song about prisons that suggests an analysis, and the shadowy "they" was there too. It was, for me at least, a supplement to Tupac, whose embodiment of his dramatic persona was at least as important as his actual music, and Outkast, whose Bombs Over Baghdad I didn't then understand but fucked if I wasn't desparate to be able to, and, well, we'll get to the real embarrassing shit in a minute. The point though was that at the same time as the slow death of Web 1.0 began (I'd peg it as ramping up from 2002-2005, beginning to truly transition around 2006), including those latter-day Napsters (the most famous, I believe, being Kazaa), was a moment when the aesthetic of conspiracy theory was firmly embracing a rhetorical mixed-leftism, especially in music. P.L.U.C.K. is still a bit of a weird song to listen to.



There's a longer relationship between conspiracist thought and aesthetics and various (generally relatively weak, admittedly) anticapitalist political positionings. Obviously the history of right wing conspiracy theory is much stronger and more prominent, given, well, Hitler. And most species of the JFK Assassination conspiracy, which is the general template for American conspiracies that don't involve lizards. But there are also things like Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea's The Illuminatus! Trilogy which, while on some level satirizing them, produce a convincing argument for the fecundity of the conspiracy as site of mobilization against the mode of production - even if that mobilization takes the shape of Hella Hippy Sex and Dope Submarines (in every sense).

The point, though. Or, actually, first, let's talk about Truthers.

Here's a thing you don't see acknowledged often; at the seed of the 9/11 Truth movement was a pretty simple sentiment: Fuck Bush. Or, more fancifully, Bush is Hitler. The contemporary prevalence of the "false flag" narrative is, as far as I can tell, a direct consequence of the legion of forum posters around 2004 who looked to the Reichstag Fire to explain what to them seemed to be clearly the actions of a government, as synecdochized by its leader, who had manipulated the spectacularization of democracy to become the illegitimate most powerful man in the world, and whose actions were primarily seen as curtailing civil liberties and cozying up to various Big Money interests. Obviously I'm being selectively attentive here, and there were other competing narratives and even these claims were less revolutionary and (way) more racist in their content than I'm framing them, but this narrative also tends to get subsumed into later developments within the group (primarily its post-07 complete subsumption into libertarianism, which had always been large, and even dominant, within the discourse, but never explicitly hegemonic until that point).



One way to think of it would be as nearly identical to Eminem's video for "Mosh," in which the rhetoric (both spoken and visualized) of insurrection, albeit one mediated through celebrity and animation and a whole host of other shit, is ultimately captured by the institutional mechanism of electoral politics. Whether you treat the Truther subsumption into the Tea Party as authored internally (like "Mosh") or externally (Koch Brothers), it remains the same; impassioned conspiracists, whose mode of being is fundamentally against the existing structure of power in a way that draws on opposition to historical right wing states, end up coopted or pushed out.

To which one might reasonably respond: well, then, it seems the idea of conspiracy theory as "an inability to think, in the current instance, outside the horizon of capitalism" is perfectly apt. And depending on your understanding of how capitalism works, maybe my conceptualization of conspiracy theory doesn't change that at all. That's cool, I'm still working on it. Maybe I'll change my mind. But back to The Jogging. But first we'll have to take another brief detour through System of a Down.



The conspiracist rhetoric isn't just in the shadowy other that haunts things like "Prison Song." It's actually largely a consequence of their environmnentalism, more than anything else. I don't think SoaD actually explicitly reference chemtrails at any point, but they were constantly going on about Recognizing Natural Beauty, the destructiveness of industrial production (which was hella weird to me even as like a 14 year old or whatever), and all that. It, like basically every environmentalist movement, ranges from the militant to the thinly-veiled fascist, but the real effects were its tendency to organize. Under the naturalist rubric came the New Ageist peaens to freeing your mind, which roped the calls for revolution to general guru bullshit. They were the key to the conspiracization of the whole because they were what transformed it into a totality. The whole damn world was pretty, and you can still see that if you look; and I know I said earlier that drugs were a systematic function of the prison industrial complex, but they also free your mind so! And addiction's bad?

Am I begging the question by suggesting that The Jogging's artistic endeavours ought to confirm more closely to my personal experience with conspiracy theory? Sure, probably, yeah. But I guess we can finally actually talk about that.

As I said before: this is all relevant context because of the aesthetic production going on on the tumblr. I'm willfully ignoring the bulk of Horning's argument, that this is interesting because it is an attempt to articulate a certain methodology of artistic practice native to the internet (resting on the "accidental audience" of Brad Troemel) and the conceptual juxtaposition of the internet as system with conspiracy theory as systematized thought/production. I'm ignoring it not just because I largely think The Jogging (and Troemel's essay) sucks, or because I want to suggest to them a way to better their practice. I'm ignoring it because I think its a bafflingly dehistoricized claim, operating exclusively at the level of squashing together two metaphors haphazardly and considering that an argument.

Here's the thing: this shit's flaccid. It's operating according to the principles of the laziest photographic fine arts, its aesthetically rooted in a historical moment it refuses to grapple with, and its apparent goal is the extrapolation of art to subjects outside of the (to use the term inappropriately promiscuously) gallery while also de-gallerizing the gallery subject? On top of that, it's premised on an idealization of the internet that's not so much TINA subjecthood as pure corporate fantasy in press release form gone ontology. To quote Horning again: "How does one productively think about the inability to think? How do you imaginatively confront the apparent waning of imagination that the conditions of artistic production online tends to instigate, where the circulation of an image begins to trump its content, and serial production militates against patiently crafted masterworks?"

I'm just not sure that the answer to any of those is to double down on the weakest aspects of an already dull project, I guess.

David Banner Vs. Lil B: The Collapsing Into Each Other of Swag Rap and Radio Rap

(This post is going to be a bit top-heavy with the embedded youtubes (or, if you prefer, a bit bottom-heavy with text). I thought about distributing them more evenly but fuck it.)



So, for all you out there who don't follow swag rap, here's the deal. David Banner made this song, Swag, dissing the trend, taking aim specifically at Lil B.

You might recognize David Banner as the rapper who did that 2-bit (but still pretty fantastic) Ying Yang Twinz rip off, Play



Taking aim at swag rap does seem to be the new trend among rappers who no one really gives a shit about anymore. You might remember The Game teaming up with Tyler, The Creator (and sampling Lil Wayne, all "featuring Otis Redding," Watch The Throne style) for that really abominable sub-sub-Eminem track, Martians Vs. Goblins



(Lil B's response to which, is, by the way, fantastic:



and then Lil B released his I Forgive You mixtape, which doesn't actually explicitly reference The Game, but hell if that isn't the funniest way to respond to a diss)

But anyway, that's all sort of beside the point. Lil B's response to David Banner, in which he jacks the beat for Swag and turns it into I Own Swag.



Now, I'm going to be entirely honest here: before I started writing this, I was under the impression that I hadn't heard hardly any David Banner songs. But as I'm writing, I'm looking him up on youtube, and realizing something kind of strange; David Banner has, apparently, been behind every song on the radio for the last decade or so that occupies that exact 'radio space' - where you enjoy it when it comes on, and it inspires no interest beyond that. I don't think I'd ever really known that I was listening to a David Banner song before Swag, and yet I keep finding these songs that I know most of the lyrics to on his VEVO channel. Like, honestly, somehow David Banner even managed to make a song featuring Akon, Weezy, and Snoop fall completely under the radar. That's pretty remarkable.



But I'm not here to talk shit about David Banner. Because I actually kind of like the song Swag. I think the criticisms he's leveling at swag rap are fucking laughable, obviously - especially the shit about "They won't spit the truth / These niggas been scared / Call my flow the puddin' / The proofs in there / I say the shit they say I shouldn't / I ain't never cared." David Banner isn't exactly a fucking conscious emcee - which is a good thing, fuck "conscious hip hop" and all that shit - and, as far as I can tell, he's never said a controversial thing in a major song, ever.* And then, even, it seems like he's almost taking subliminal shots at himself when he says shit like, "Is anybody on the next level, with me / I'm hearin' niggas dissin' god, y'all think it's witty / I ain't laughin', we don't play in Mississippi" (emphasis mine).

It does seem a bit weird to identify who in particular he's targeting. Lil B is definitely the main one, and V-Nasty is pretty fucking explicit in the chorus; but then, Banner did a song with A$AP ROCKY recently, he of Purple Swag fame. It leaves me wondering how Banner feels about, say, Danny Brown, or Lex Luger. Or if the first half of the chorus is intended as a diss at Brick Squad.



Swag is produced by Swiff D, whose beats sound to me basically like really conservative attempts at swag rap beats, like if Clams Casino were constantly worried about how A&Rs would react to their beats. Or, to be a bit more dickish, like how you'd imagine the Fruity Loops-wielding producer for a really unremarkable Southern California rap crew would sound.

The thing about all this, though, is that I think both David Banner and Swiff D actually excel way beyond everything else of theirs I've heard on Swag. The song might be intended as a parody, but if you listen to it as a pastiche, it is, or at least I think it is, pretty interesting, and not a bad example of the form.

And I mean, Banner definitely intended it as a parody, but listen to some of his other songs; he's a pastiche artist. He's almost as bad as The Game, in terms of biting the style of whichever other rapper is on a song with him. The reason The Game's diss at Lil B didn't come out interesting is because his pastiche never reached out far enough; he just copied Tyler, the Creator (and not even all of Tyler, just the part of Tyler that is heavily influenced by Eminem).

The difference between parody and pastiche, being, here, to take from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s introduction to The Signifying Monkey, that pastiche is different from parody insofar as pastiche possesses an "absence of the negative critique." (xxvi) That is, pastiche takes previous texts just as parody does, and both rework them, and effect them; but pastiche does so not under the rubric of the critical, or particularly the negative critique, as does parody. Instead of being "about the clearing of a space of narration," pastiche "seems to be intent on underscoring the relation of [the] text ... in a joyous proclamation of antecedent and descendant texts." (xxvii)

Now, if you're following me here, and you've listened to Swag, and paid even the slightest attention, you're probably about ready to tell me to fuck off. The song's about as explicitly a diss song, which might be also called a song of negative critique, if we were kind of poncy, as a song can be, short of Banner including some "Fuck you Lil B" punch-in somewhere.

But then, the way that the song plays out is kind of strange. The way that the diss is constructed is definitely not along the lines of your ordinary rap beef; Banner says very little that is directly insulting, instead jacking Lil B's flow, and his ad libs, and some of his memes, and just incorporating them whole. There are moments, lines about how disappointed in the state of hip hop that he is, that sort of shit. And some weird implication that, like, Lil B is the reason that people didn't care about Oscar Grant's death or something. I'm not really sure.

The point being, though, that as much as David Banner wants to decry this new aesthetic turn in rap, he can't do it in the traditional, parodic way; Banner can't simply come at swag rap the way BDP could come at the Juice Crew, presenting criticisms in order to clear a space for narration. He, instead, has to position himself within the aesthetic, in the hopes that doing so will be understood to be subversive of it. His gambit, though, relies so heavily on the critique remaining implicit, that it's actually not that hard to just willfully ignore it, and listen to the song as though it was a swag rap song by a new convert.

Part of the fun in taking the song this way, for me, is how it reframes Lil B's shot back. Not only because Lil B is actually a lot more explicitly taking shots at David Banner (in that he says his name), but because of how Lil B's response is itself also, then, more pastiche than parody.

Again, even though Lil B's song takes the form of the diss, and seems to mark itself clearly with the intentions of the negative critique, it doesn't really serve the purpose of clearing out a space. The comparison I made earlier, to the Bridge Wars, is an example of diss tracks that do precisely this; these crews attack each other, throwing into question the other's authenticity, claims to veracity, and so on, precisely in order to assert their own narrative into and over the tradition. With Tupac Vs. Notorious B.I.G., the disses were, again, attempts at a geographical dominance over the tradition, only coastal instead of inter-borough. Banner might rep Mississippi, but he's made his share of hyphy-biting tracks; and Lil B might rep the Bay, but he's made no secret of his debt to southern rap like Lil Wayne. The only real sense one could make of Lil B vs David Banner, in geographical terms, is actually meta; Banner being the representative of regional hip hops, Lil B being representative of post-geographical, Internet hip hop. Which might be an interesting lead to follow up on, but I'm not going to do so here.

I Own Swag is not, for the most part, your ordinary Lil B song. Unlike, say, Nas Vs. Jay-Z, where the diss tracks are designed to show off the emcee in his element, his flow perfected, Lil B reaches out for a style that he very rarely employs and is, frankly, not very good at, technically. He sounds more like David Banner than he ever has before, for the most part, except in those moments where he breaks the flow, and reinserts the swag into the song.

When, for instance, Lil B breaks his flow to sing "You know I'm more famous than you," or when he suddenly says, "Obama BasedGod," and seems so pleased with what he's just said that he stops and repeats it. And, to a lesser extent, how the whole second half of the song doesn't have any raps over it at all. It is in those moments that the song steps up out of the parodic mode, I think, and takes the moments that would have been read as parodic before that with it.

What I'm trying to say here, in perhaps a bit too roundabout of a way, is that this beef seems to me to be less battle and more dialogue. A sort of discursive instant within the development of swag rap, the moment this new genres maw opens up to consume and internalize certain thematic and technical content that it has up to this point not had access to.

***********************

I've claimed before that "To be Based is to reach a state at which one's very essence becomes communicable." If Based is still, at this point, and I think it unquestionably is, the most advanced theorization and mystification of swag rap that so far exists, and if my description of Based is accurate, which I have seen nothing to indicate that it isn't, then what is going on in this David Banner Vs. Lil B beef is a further reorganization of rap music along the lines of the Based philosophy/meme.

One of the biggest absences that Swag Rap hasn't really contended with so far, in its ascent from a subgenre to a contender for synonymity with the genre as a whole, is the question of its reterritorializing the mainstream rap tradition. Without anything resembling a program or manifesto, aside from the explicit non-thought of Based, but an open enjoyment of appropriation and certain aesthetic and memetic threads that constitute an ostensive & mutable unity, the (potential) "becoming rap" of Swag Rap means that that which is currently just "rap" will be displaced, and made to reconstitute itself along some other lines.

The point that I made at the beginning, that David Banner is the perfect example of a rapper who occupies the 'radio space,' is precisely what I mean by this. It's not quite "pop rap," not quite "southern rap," not quite anything that we can identify when it is presented to us as it normally is. This isn't to say that Banner's music doesn't come out of these (and other) material traditions, that it doesn't have its own work done to it and that it does, and so on. It is just to say that it is a perfect example of that specific set of hegemonic principles that allow something to be just simply rap, the sort of privileged invisibility of nonspecificity that record label money allows.

If the work of pastiche is the insertion of a text into a tradition, joyously or not, as opposed to the clearing of narrative space to create a tradition (parody), and if David Banner and Lil B's "disses" at each other are really more pastiche than they are parody, then, I'm claiming, what we have here is this exemplar of "rap," in Banner, absorbing and being absorbed by Swag Rap, in the form of its head theorist/mystic, Lil B. And in I Own Swag, I think, we see in embryonic form what could very well be known soon as a simple, unqualified, "rap."








*For real, I mean, this video just came out, but if you can show me one David Banner song that has anything near the political content of Lil B's verse on this I would be very, very fucking surprised:

Post-Kanye Schematized; On Swagger

(A response)

I've made a couple overtures towards a reading of "Post-Kanye" hip hop, without really establishing on what grounds I'm attempting to claim this paradigm. So, first of all, I'd like to get out of the way the assumptions, or givens, or whatever, that I believe act as the foundation of this argument.

First and foremost, it requires a view of hip hop as a self-replicating system - an inhuman, like capital, corporations, or nations. I think this is true of most proper genres; something doesn't really act as a genre until it establishes the conditions of its own replication. Genre, that is, is more than the coordination of aesthetic points; it is the mill, into which the grist of labour (of producers, consumers, aesthetics, and so on) is fed, in order to generate more genre.

Second, since hip hop is an aesthetic inhuman/genre, its primary knowledge of self is its embedded meta-narrative; since genres are not necessarily self-sufficient or coherent, for one to engage in its own reproduction it must subsume objects as relations to this meta-narrative, which is not fixed. Debate over what it is that the meta-narrative of the genre consists of are, of course, always rampant - thus, sub-genre - but it can suffice to be said for our purposes that it provides the structure of narrative, along with a more or less fixed set of protagonist-types, antagonist-types, and structures of viable struggle.

My initial argument for a "Post-Kanye" was that if Kanye's impact on hip hop was considered to be structural, what could most coherently be argued was not that his impact was aesthetic, but rather on this meta-narrative, and that what it consisted of would be the shifting out of the category of antagonist the figure of the hater. For Kanye, the hater is not someone to be struggled with, but is straightforwardly a category that produces value. Haters no longer have to be contended with in any way; they provide no critique worth legitimizing, and they don't even need to be overcome; they simply exist, en masse, and can be seen as a stable source of value-production.

This is, I'm arguing, very different from how haters were dealt with before Kanye - and I do not mean to claim that before, they were simply universally reviled. "Fuck the haters" and "Love your haters" are very different statements, and both existed long before Kanye had any impact on anyone. What they share, however, is an orientation towards haters, which the shift to "I <3 Haters" lacks; that of the hater as a contentious force, vs. the hater as a simple given, towards whom no proactive measures need be taken. What Kanye's hip hop does then, I might try to say, is very different from proletarianization; it is, in fact, more analogous to a making middle class than a making prole. It pretends that the structural antagonism on which hip hop is predicated simply doesn't exist. And when we're all in this together, well, being radicalized becomes a bit passé.

When I say Post-Kanye in this phrase, I mean it in the way I've always understood the 'Post-' prefix - as a moving past, but one which is indelibly marked by that which it surpasses. In this way, what Post-Kanye means to me is the generation of rappers who (perhaps unconsciously) recognize the structural deficit in hip hop imparted by Kanye, and attempt (also probably unconsciously) to rectify it. Thus, rather than taking a strictly Yeezian view of the structure of hip hop, they recognize that the hater is no longer necessarily a viable narrative opponent to the artist, and yet recognize the need for such a figure to exist.

The political economy of Kanye's hip hop, the argument might then go, is basically Keynesian, papering over the structural antagonisms with increasingly spurious wealth. That his celebrity biography is defined by unrelenting careerism (which feeds back into the music he releases - at the height of his manufactured controversy, he released 808s & Heartbreak, which seems like it should be enough to unequivocally prove my point) only underlines why, when Nico says "But taken in another context, couldn’t [Kanye's I <3 Haters] just as well be a sincere and almost Christ-like manner of speaking," my immediate response is to say, no, and fuck Kanye.

To return to Cher Lloyd, though, and swagger: Nico's post seems to me, at first, to conflate haters with trolls, and then to argue more along the lines that the haters are actually those being trolled, while the trolls themselves are the swaggerers. In a sense, this latter version is precisely what I'm trying to say Kanye obviates; for him, there seems to be no need to troll or goad the haters. They're simply an ontological fact of hip hop, to be afforded only the most cursory (dis)respect. And so, too, for Cher Lloyd, in this song. Her naysayers are very real, and prominent, but there is no sense in which she envisions them as serious opponents. They aren't even motivation; they simply exist, produce (unintentional) value, are abstractly addressed. There is no production of schadenfreude going on, because there simply aren't two agents. Haters have been absolved of their agentivity, and one doesn't go about taking pleasure in the pain of rocks.

There is a similar claim, I think, in the final paragraph of the post JR linked me to, which points up the similarities betwen Lloyd and a young Mick Jagger, in order to make a dig at "rockist authenticity." Which is all well and good, I suppose, but again it leaves me cold. If your target is a group of people so desperately musically illiterate as to find anything "novel" about this song, then you aren't contending with a group against whom you have to truly struggle; surely they are a very privileged group, and socially ingrained, even moreso in Britain, but they're still a group that can be easily bypassed, whose very definition makes their criticisms irrelevant. The GZA line "First of all, whose your A&R / A mountain climber who plays an electric guitar," or the Jay-z line "Industry shady it need to be taken over" aren't irrelevant at this point - the music industry, like most industries, is still largely by and for straight white men, of course, and it would be stupid to claim that it wasn't - but the conditions have changed. Twenty years later, that same A&R is almost certainly listening to Gaga while he's climbing the rock wall at the gym, or smiling and tapping along when he hears Arcade Fire leaking out of his sons room. Maybe he even turns on Rihanna's S&M to hide the sounds of the Internet porn he's watching when he's masturbating while his kids are home. The point being that while rockist authenticity he may crave, he's sure as fuck not going to let that stand in the way of his profit, and he knows as well as anyone else that deep down he might be a hater - but so what? And isn't that, in a very real way, a good thing?

And this is where, I think, swagger as a sort of labour is necessary to understand this turn in hip hop. At its very core, swagger is of course a jaunt, or a sneer; it is fabric hung from your frame just so, or stones and chains. It is, in other words, an etching of the body in the world, a performative gesture, and it is a very specific sort of performance. Following Evan, I would say that it is a performance of a very particular kind of dispossession, an affective position which codes for no resolution, and whose only outlet is a form of explosive violence. Swagger is, that is to say, both the schematization of Kanye's hip hop, and the precondition of a riot.

This is only so performatively, of course, but then I'm not the person to come to to see performance as a secondary, or parasitic, form of action. And swagger is precisely, of course, the performance of this position as if it could be otherwise, as if this position could produce, have effects.

To turn back, as I'm sure I will again and again, to Soulja Boy's "hop up out the bed / turn my swag on / took a look in the mirror, said what's up / yeah, I'm gettin' money, oh;" it is precisely the garbling of language here, the accident of ambiguity that this lyrical construction creates, that points through the impasse of labour/swagger vs. rage/swagger. Is Soulja Boy, here, describing a situation in which he looks in the mirror, swag turned on, and gets money, or one in which he looks in the mirror, swagged turned on, and says to himself "I'm getting money?"

It, of course, absolutely does not matter; Soulja Boy is a figure who quite literally gets money by saying "get money." There is no gap. And to reach the point where the word and the thing are one and the same - or, more precisely, where there is no differentiation between performance and action - one must simply turn one's swag on.

To swagger is to perform - to make of one's body a sign - an affective condition - which, to be clear, I mean to be much closer to 'material conditions' than 'feelings' - as though it could possibly be productive. To labour is to perform - to transmute one's body into labour-power - a productive process - the creation of consumer objects or services and surplus-value - as though labour itself were outside the regime of production. Both are, in the end, a mystification, a falsifying of origin; and it is only the swagger jacker/jagger, or the scab, whose material demystification of this individualism brings about the proper return to real order of things.