Let’s Talk About Pop! Pop! Pop Music! Jay-z and Kanye West's Watch The Throne

Have you guys hung out with kids lately? I mean, I know Joel has kids, but they still shit themselves and therefore probably don't listen to pop music. I'm talking about kids ranging from say 9 to 13 or what the terrible human beings that host The Today Show call "tweens." I don't know if you know this, but basically, for the past decade or more, these little fuckers basically dictate 75% of what we hear on the radio, or if you're like me and don't listen to radio, they are the reason that you know all the words to Taylor Swift's discography even if you've gone out of your way to never listen to her ever.

Instead, you walk into a grocery store and hear: "She wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts" and then you hop in a cab and hear: "She's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers" and then you go to your AA meeting and it's all "Dreaming about the day when you wake up and find what you're looking for has been here the whole time." And you know the worst part?

The music is so goddamn catchy you can't help but sing along to "If you could see that I'm the one who understands youuuu" and the next thing you know you have to call your dad and tell him that you're gay.

I hung out with my girlfriend's 12-year old brother this weekend. It was a good excuse to eat candy and watch scary movies, so we took a car ride to the local video store and my girl put on the local top 40 station. I instinctively went to change it only to have her smack my hand away. "Danny likes this," she told me. I looked back at him incredulously. "Seriously?"

He was doing that 12-year old kid thing of not looking at you but just kinda looking at nothing. "Yeah, it's good." He and I were clearly listening to a different song. All I heard was Katy Perry singing about her weekend with Kenny G playing saxophone and percussion by what I imagine were the clip-clopping hooves of the grim reaper's horse, Binky (that's right, Binky).

"Her voice sounds like if a suburban soccer mom and a robot had a retarded baby."

"Who do you like?" He asked, and became truly befuddled when I told him that I don't like anything on pop radio. I don't like sounding like an elitist music snob, but I feel like one when comparing my musical tastes to those of a kid who was born after most of my favorite albums. I responded with my basic, go-to answer: "I like a lot of music. Indie rock, rap…"

"Do you like LMFAO?" I vaguely remembered drinking shots on a boat the year prior, then doing regrettable things with a regrettable woman with LMFAO as our background music, so after vomiting in the parking lot, I looked back at him and said "Well… they're like the Sir Mix-A-Lot of their generation. I prefer rap music with good story lines and a lot of feeling. Back when I was 12, I listened to Ice Cube a lot."

"THAT GUY FROM THE BEER COMMERCIAL?!" He shouted, as we headed home with our bounty. "NO WAY!"

The guy from the beer commercial you guys. There's no such thing as an oldies station for rap, and I doubt most rappers would ever dare consider that their music is anything more than contemporary, even if they're all shouting about their stuff being "classic." So here's this kid asking me how I could possibly explain enjoying the music of a guy who shills a beer equally known for ruining livers AND townhomes, and I had to tell Danny that Ice Cube was so good in his prime that when I was a kid I actually asked my mom if I could get a perm to look more like him. My mom actually said that I could, which made it uncool, so… I dodged that bullet, thankfully.

I wanted to have some kind of common ground with Danny. He's a good kid, and I knew the only way I can get him away from Pop Music's steely grasp would be to convince him that there is great music to be found elsewhere. Sadly, I'm not good at conveying things that I love, so I hoped that we could agree on our mutual hatred and work from there.

"Have you heard that Jay-Z & Kanye West album Watch The Throne?"

He answered by jumping out the car window, never to be seen again. I don't want to sit here and tell you that their new album is terrible, but I guess the better question would be, dear Grandpa Lou devotee, who did they make this album for?

Jay-Z & Kanye West are the two most famous rappers of our era, and they recorded an album about being incredibly wealthy. I mean, popular rap with very few exceptions these days revolves around accumulating stacks of cash, but these guys have reached some kind of oligarchical super wealth that King Midas could only dream of (or so I was told). There are things to enjoy on the album, notably Jay-Z phoning his verses in and still being better than Kanye, who clearly wants to impress us on it. But of the singles off the album so far, H.A.M. is the closest musical experience to an abortion that may ever be recorded, and Otis, a song that "features" the late great Otis Redding—who has been dead nearly twice as long as he ever lived—has what the kids used to call "a fucking sample" of the soul singer as the entire background of the song. No drums.

I can get behind soul samples. I can get behind Kanye West and Jay-Z making Watch The Throne. I can get behind pop music being escapism for people who eat at McDonalds and have a foot disease that want to pretend, however briefly, that blowing their paycheck on bottle service at da club once every two months is a great way to live. I CANNOT get behind rap with no drums. Not ever. When did Kanye West & Jay-Z start listening to Anticon and start thinking that fucking with the formula was the way to go? The album was surely not meant for the kids, but it definitely wasn't made for me. I wonder if A. Samuels (the guy who recorded this song below) is the only one who can ever truly appreciate it: