The Brow: Music Reviews

LOW BROW
T-Pain
Thr33 Ringz

In his latest album, T-Pain proves that despite how much star power you throw at him, he will continue to create heaping, inane piles of overstylized crap. Thr33 Ringz sports a whole slough of hip-hop greats: Ludacris, Chris Brown, Lil Wayne, T.I., Kanye, Diddy, Mary J. Blige and others grace the album, but to no avail. As per usual, T-Pain’s vocals are autotuned to oblivion (creating an unfortunate Daft Punk parody), and the same service is afforded all featured artists, killing the power that kings like Luda and Kanye could bring to the album. Lyrically, the album is woeful (not that you’d expect much from the guy who once offered up “she made us drinks, to drink, we drunk ‘em, got drunk”). T-Pain’s mantra for this album seems to be: You can’t have too many “shawties” in a track. My advice: Don’t bother with Thr33 Ringz. Save yourself a few bucks and play “Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin’)” on repeat. You won’t know the difference.

–Caleb Melby

MID BROW
John Legend
Evolver

John Legend’s new album starts with a strong 1-2 punch. “Green Light” employs the same spacey sound effects that made “Love in this Club” and “Sensual Seduction” such enormous hits. Legend, though, goes back to the source of this celestial obsession, bringing in the original intergalactic hip-hop pioneer, Andre 3000, for an admirably cheeky guest verse. As for “It’s Over,” the source material certainly isn’t original, but Legend’s voice floats so lithely above the beat that you will hardly care about the lyrics, or the fact that Kanye West almost derails the song with a regrettable autotuned verse. But Legend’s successful experiment with a more modern emphasis on making “hits” seems to have distracted him from developing his go-to piano ballads. But that’s the beauty of iTunes, isn’t it? For just $1.98, you can have the best of Evolver, and for an extra buck, download “Ordinary People” if you want a reminder of of his extraordinary potential.

–Kyle Berlin

HIGH BROW
Los Campesinos!
We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

There is something to be said about dedication. And I am going to go out on a limb and say the fact that all members of Welsh indie-pop septet, Los Campesinos! changed their last names’ to match the band’s title — a la the Ramones — is definitely a sign of commitment. Whether this then translates into success is another story, and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed is anything but beautiful. With grating boy-girl harmonies, animated but disconcertingly jumpy arrangements and trite observations the band appears to be amassing all the most superficial aspects of indie-pop and then rolling it up into one giant cliché.  For example, in “It’s Never that Easy, Though, Is It? (Song for Kurt)” we are asked which is worse:  “To see my ex-girlfriend/Who by the way, I am still in love with/Sucking the face of some pretty boy”? Or to see it “with my favorite band’s most popular song playing in the background”?  Two words: muy malo.

–Allie Gross

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