Slug & Murs | Felt 3: A Tribute to Rosie Perez

THIS WEEK IN HIP HOP
Wow, so I guess I missed the part where writers, critics, hipsters, and hip-hop heads stopped giving a shit about either Atmosphere, Murs, or Aesop Rock. I found this out as I was in the process of reviewing Felt 3: A Tribute to Rosie Perez. The album is the latest in a series of collaborations between Slug of Atmosphere and Murs in which they choose one producer for the whole album (this time around, it’s Aesop Rock) and loosely dedicate it to a bodacious cult favorite celebrity woman (the first two were tributes to Christina Ricci and Lisa Bonet). It really screams “Gimmick!” But you’d think with all this gimmickry on its side, the project would make some blip on the critical and collective radar and I’d be able to steal ideas from a bunch of other reviews of the project to write my own review, like I usually do. But no, all these critics and writers had to be selfish and leave me to form an original opinion. Those bastards!

All three artists must be painfully aware of these shifting attitudes towards their music. But as it turns out, Felt 3 isn’t a last-ditch attempt by these three former critical darlings to regain the love and adoration that is now gone. Instead, the album is a series of “Fuck You’s” to haters of all varieties. On “Felt Chewed Up,” both emcees address their fading hipster love. Murs scoffs as he “watch[es] the hipsters hop to the next thing, fad to fad so depressing.” Slug advises them to take their “prosthetic tits” and “fake politics” away and “get off his dick.”

Writers and critics don’t fare any better. Slug and Murs have seen their stock amongst critics go the way of the recession now that honest, everyman rap is no longer the “next” thing. On “Whaleface,” Slug speaks plainly about these critics: “Spoken like you know truth, stop pretending/ check up on yourself, tell me who you’re condescending?” Later, on “We Have You Surrounded,” Slug even namedrops Pitchfork as part of a farmyard metaphor, implying that Pitchfork is merely a tool to keep artists (horses, in the metaphor) from roaming freely.

The list continues as Slug and Murs address: materialistic thug rappers (the “Get Cake” parody), materialistic “hipster” rappers (or, “My Little Pony-ass rappers with a stylist” as Murs says on “Paul Reubens”), jealous rappers (“Like You”), jealous rappers (“She’s Sonnet”), and more jealous rappers (“The Prize”). They don’t even like their fans that much, as illustrated by “Deathmurdermayhem,” in which Slug imagines murdering one of his fans in great detail. Sensitive emo-rap, where now?

And yes, if you’re used to Slug’s (and Murs’, to some extent) typically emo raps, this will catch you off-guard. Some may be turned off by all the bitterness and aggression. But the fact that they don’t make bitterness a recurring trend in their music makes it ring truer on this album. They seem honestly hurt and betrayed. This album feels like therapeutic release for them, an inevitable burst of energy pent up from years of trying to be the bigger, “mature,” politically-correct men in a rap/music game that seems to constantly shit on them from all angles.

Aesop Rock captures this sense of claustrophobia in his production style, which pays homage to label BFF, El-P, as well as genre forbears like Public Enemy and Run-DMC. Aes Rock starts out with old school, lo-fi breaks and piles sounds upon sounds upon sounds on top of them. It leads to jarring collages of drug-addled psychedelia, futuristic funk, hard rock, and nihilistic electronica. In other words, it is the sound of joyful apocalypse.

And that is just what Felt 3 is. It’s a couple of guys seeing their world spiral down the crapper, realizing that rowing their boats against the current is fruitless, and then finally deciding to just pull their dicks out and take a piss in the stream. It’s the sort of Brooklyn “don’t give a fuck”-ness that would make Rosie Perez proud. And it might be the only thing they have left to cling onto as the music industry sinks further into oblivion.

by Quan Vu