Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.

-A.E. Housman, “To An Athlete Dying Young”

I used to hustle, now all I do is relax and strive
When I was young, I was a fan of the Jackson 5
I drop jewels, wear jewels, hope to never run it,
With more kicks than a baby in a mother’s stomach
Nasty Nas has to rise cause I’m wise
This is exercise ’til the microphone dies
Back in ‘83 I was an MC sparking
But I was too scared to grab the mikes in the park and
Kick my little raps cause I thought niggaz wouldn’t understand
And now in every jam I’m the fuckin man
I rap in front of more niggaz than in the slave ships
I used to watch C.H.I.P.S., now I load Glock clips

- Nas, “Halftime”

In 1994, hip hop artist Nas released the greatest hip hop album of all time. A genre which has since grown to encompass Ready to Die, All Eyez on Me, Enter the Thirty-Six Chambers, The Blueprint and Tha Carter has yet to produce anything which surpasses Illmatic. And it’s not just your correspondent who thinks so. The Source gave Illmatic five mics out of five the month it came out – one of only nine albums to receive such a score on first blush. Rolling Stone and Time also recognized it as a strong contribution, and passing years have only added to its acclaim.

Illmatic was Nas’s debut album.

10. Brush your Shoulders Off (Jay Z) — Time passes, seasons change, the Electric Slide gives way to the Cha Cha Slide at weddings, but one thing remains: DJs and emcees always want you to do something. While some music may ask more of us than dance music does, no other sort has the gall to up and demand it in the lyrics.

At least Jay Z here had the courtesy to demand something simple and easy to do that doesn’t require you to move your feet or get your heart rate up above 60 beats per minute or so. You can even do it while you’re holding your drink! Now I understand why the man is so successful — he doesn’t waste energy. (And because Universal has embedding on lockdown, here’s the DJ Danger Mouse remix. It’s probably for the best)

There’s also the sense that Jay Z wants you to do it for your own good, which is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it’s courteous and encouraging. On the other, “Who do you think you are telling me what to do, Jay Z! Geez!”

But as a performer and lyricist he (Kanye West)’s got nothing. The celebrity thing is annoying, but it’s his music that brings out the ass-suckery.

He has, in my opinion, no flow as a rapper and no skill as a writer. Nothing really important to say. No clever word play (which is arguably one of the foundations of rap). Nothing.

-sarielthrawn, April 17, 2009

Are we even surprised that he (Kanye) may have never seen any ‘Robocop’ movies? He probally [sic] thinks anything by Tyler Perry is genius!

-CyanideSmoker, April 17, 2009

After my last article for this site, in which I discussed the disjuncture between the Robocop films and the Kanye West song of the same name, a few of our readers left the comments that you see above, calling into question the very premise that Mr. West is worth Overthinking. Chief among the complaints were that Kanye’s skills as a rapper are sub-par and that his lyrics are as vacuous as the most banal of his peers. I had been planning on jumping in on the discussion, but by the time I had gathered my thoughts (and refreshed my memory of several of Kanye’s songs), several days had passed (which amounts to years in internet time), so I just let it drop.

Then, last week, the internets were abuzz with the leak of the new Clipse single, “Kinda like a Big Deal,” which features a guest verse by Kanye. Hearing him rap (rather than autocroon) made me think again about the debate about Yeezy’s merits as a lyricist and rapper. In particular, my attention was captured by this quatrain near the beginning of his verse:

Spittin fire on the PJ in my PJ’s
Fire Marshall said I took it to the Max like TJ
Yeah people I said Marshalls, replay
I guess I’m like the Black Marshall meets Jay

At first glance, it would seem that the haters are right—this guy isn’t saying anything! After all, ‘Ye uses the word “marshall” three times in four lines and apparently just keeps saying the letter “J” over and over to make his lyrics rhyme. However, as Fenzel’s discussion of Dragonball has recently shown, repetition can be a powerful device for creating meaning within works of art. After the jump, I’ll parse the layers of meaning in these lyrics and will show how viewing this brief quote in the context of Kanye’s total output as a rapper challenges the notion that he has “nothing really important to say.”

I swear that this isn't photoshopped.

I always hate to let advertisers win.  I love advertising, in a perverse way, but whenever I realize that an ad or a piece of product design has convinced me to buy a product, I die a little inside.  I am a unique snowflake with free will, dreams, ambitions, my own little spark of divine fire, etcetera, but bombard me with pretty lights and colors and suddenly I can be programmed to exchange my money for your goods, another cog in the capitalist machine.

But as much as I hate it, sometimes I will come across a piece of branding that sends me blindly fumbling for my wallet.  This happened to me today.  Readers, I give you:  Doritos Late Night.

Matthew Wrather hosts as he, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Jon Perich overthink 2009’s Summer Movies through June. (Considering that last week they spent a lot of time talking about art, this probably qualifies as going from the sublime to the ridiculous.) Covering:

• Pre-Season: Watchmen, Fast and Furious, The Hannah Montana Movie
• May: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Star Trek, Angels & Demons, Terminator Salvation, Night At The Museum 2: Battle of The Smithsonian, Pixar’s Up
• June: Land of the Lost, The Taking of Pelham 123, Year One, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen

Tell us what you think! Email us or call 20-EAT-LOG-01—that’s (203) 285-6401. If you haven’t yet, take the very short survey! And… spread the overthinking by forwarding this episode to a friend.

Download Episode 43 (MP3)

Overthinking It would like to bid farewell to Bea Arthur, who has died at the age of 86 of cancer.

Believe it or not, I’ve wondered from time to time what it would feel like when Bea Arthur died. She’s been playing older women on television since before I was born, but always stern, strong vigorous ones with a humanizing touch of whimsy and joy at living. She never seemed to falter in the face of aging, just as she never stepped off her unique center of gravity on our culture – declining the passivity or ingratiating tendencies associated with so many female character actresses and comediennes, while refusing to disrespect or disregard her own femininity.

As part of her life’s work, Ms. Arthur redefined the boundaries of “womanliness,” and when she’s been a traditional butt of jokes, it’s often been at least in part because people knew her, and her image, could take it. It’s often hard to define where acting falls in the scope of the greater mission of art, but I would say Bea Arthur gives us a great example – she created characters in such a way, uniquely and independently from writing and direction – that she has expanded the sense for our culture of what things mean.

You could be as cool as this guy.

It’s a great day at OTIHQ. Thanks to a link from IMDb, the CLICHEMAGEDDON! contest is a great success. Our newsest OTI t-shirt, I say this as a Durkheimian, hit the internets today. And summer movie season is ramping up.

Not that we ever venture out of doors, with so many media experiences available on teh interwebz, but we’ve also heard it’s been warming up out there.

Though it will (spoiler alert) be the subject of our next Overthinking It Podcast, I wonder what movies you’re particularly looking forward to this summer?

Sound off. It’s the open thread.

[Today, we step into the Think Tank, our steel cage match of ideas and friendly one-upsmanshp, to consider what is the best logo in the world. Read carefully all the entries and vote for your favorite at the end.]

Perich: The Red Cross

The Red Cross has the superior logo, out of everything in the world that does currently or could ever possibly use a logo, for the following reasons.

In a world where summer blockbusters loomed right around the corner…

Only one website could hold a contest to celebrate…

Is that animated GIF giving you a seizure yet? Good. You will need to build up your tolerance to rapid-fire explosions if you plan on surviving summer movie season.

Summer movies are all about… good Lord, that thing is annoying. Okay, everybody click “More” to get rid of it. I’ll see you on the other side…

The basic elements of manga are characters, motif, story, theme, direction in the form of picture composition, sound, action, effects . . . and then timing, sense and many other factors . . . . I began to understand that unless I comprehended and mastered all those factors myself, I couldn’t even begin to draw even a simple “Well, it’s kinda interesting,” light-read type of manga.

Toriyama-sensei is like a god to me.

- Mashashi Kishimoto, creator of Naruto

The man who brought you all the characters from Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior and Chrono Trigger has a magnum opus. It is one of the most widely disseminated and influential works of fiction from the waning decades of the 20th century. Many mock it, everyone imitates it, but no one duplicates it, because it has duplicated itself more than an ancestral family yogurt culture. It is a genre of one.

Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball just may be the best printed work you’ve never taken seriously. If you have taken it seriously, we here at Overthinking It are here to say: you’re probably crazy. And you’re not alone.

Today begins a series of in-depth discourses on this chi-blasting work of staggering genius. But first, I need you to do me a favor:

Stand up.

Assume a ready position, feet shoulder-width apart, staring straight ahead.

Scream for five minutes straight.

Done? Good. Now, read on –