I can never be sure if the reason why I think Ipecac Neat is far and away the best P.O.S. album is because it’s actually better than everything he put out after it, or if it’s because it was one of the first hip-hop albums I ever liked, because I listened to it over and over and over and over in high school memorizing every word. This is the problem with all criticism: your response to every record you hear is conditioned by your life’s experience of music, by what you’ve heard and when and how many times and how you felt about it, and also by what you haven’t heard. So throughout this review let’s keep in mind that I got into rap through Rhymesayers and enjoy it now primarily through anticon., and that when P.O.S. makes references to punk rock I get them but when he makes references to rappers I generally don’t.

Things that were bad about Audition that are also bad about Never Better:

-almost all instances of singing
-songs about how no one will ever be like him (now in third person!)

Exciting new bad thing about Never Better:

-people chanting “yeah” in the background

Things that are good about Never Better:

-frequently employs heavy drums and thick bass
-frequently employs fast momentum-pushing drumrolls
-stef can still rap pretty dang good

What the fuck awesome:

-guest vocals by jason shevchuk

Problems that I have with this record which point to larger issues regarding mediocrity and stasis or maybe regarding growing out of certain styles of music or conversely getting so into old records that you don’t have space for new ones:

-i feel doomtree-fatigued, like i’ve heard a dozen records with all these people rapping on them, and rapping about the same things. where is the new? where is that which will make me feel like i’m listening to something that i haven’t heard before? where, i ask you, is attridge’s inventiveness?

I mean the record is solid. P.O.S. can rap like a motherfucker, and he doesn’t give a fuck what you think of him, and if he can be a little sentimental at times and a little over-pop-referential at others, at least he disses Obamarama in one song and sings a Fugazi lyric in another. So maybe the reason why I don’t feel it like I felt Ipecac is a problem with me, and not with the album. Maybe real criticism is impossible and we’re all just hanging out rationalizing our subjective emotional responses. Whatever. I hung out with Stef a couple weeks ago, I beat him at Super Smash Brothers, he was nice and funny and he told me that he really, really likes making rap records. So if he likes it and a lot of you guys like it, then what do one douchebag’s headphone-wearing musings on mediocrity and stasis matter?

Tags: Hip Hop