Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Song of the Day #265 - Young Thug - Hercules

High like fuckin' martins, woah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TOB2McGSVw

This came out awhile ago, but if you've stopped regularly listening to it in the time since just... get off this blog right now. It seems like this was supposed be on Slime Season 3, which got a sick trailer today, but then a few hours later, changed its name to I'm Up, as evidenced by this even sicker trailer for "Fuck Cancer" that came out even more recently, which flashes the new title at one point... Uhh, first off, the fact that the video for "Fuck Cancer" seems to be at least partially cancer-themed is amazing given that the song contains exactly one cancer related line. Second, I dunno how I feel about the name change, like... is the planned Slime Season tetralogy still on? The Slime Year? I really hope it does. But if this is just like a "bonus" mixtape that doesn't get the SS label because it's too different structurally or conceptually or whatever, that's fine too. Also, third, can you believe how blessed we are these days? If EIGHT WHOLE DAYS seemed like too long to wait for Waves, think of it instead of five days where we get unfocused attention on a new Young Thug mixtape, and then it seems like nowhere near enough time! :D

Like oh man, this song. I think the highlight for me here is the voice he uses on the hook, right at the end, before the Hercu-Hercules part... I feel like before, I could have imagined something where after the "woah" in "high like fuckin' martins, woah", he would have gone into the title, like, "recovered" to his normal range and flow... you can picture that, right? I think that would have been "option zero" for him, and it would have been fine, but he just goes IN on this entirely new dimension of flow... I think the closest thing we've seen to it is on "Flaws" from Slime Season 2, that sort of "heaviness", that "chewing" sort of sound... I dunno, it's just completely beyond. For the end of the hook you're just left reeling from it. And then the verse starts with "I smoke gas, that's that Hercules", in a sort of innocent outsider "if you didn't know what I was talking about" explanation, but if even that wasn't enough, he shouts "strong marijuana!" on the double. It's enough to make you grin from ear to ear.

That is, if you weren't already giddy just from the contextual meaning of the production here. When this came out, Metro Boomin and Young Thug were engrossed in some stupid twitter beef thing, started over like... Metro saying that people shouldn't try to match Future's pace, which Thugger took as an implied slight to him, or something... and it seemed like Metro was on Team Future pretty solidly, what with his involvement with What A Time To Be Alive and his new production tag - Future saying "Young Metro, Young Metro, Young Metro"... it's a hype tag, but my heart broke a little the first time I heard it.

But on this song, an olive branch! Like as soon as you hear those opening synths, that simultaneous simple but pure novelty in both sound, rhythm, and melody... you already know who it is. And then he plays the Future tag, and Young Thug imitates it, which is really endearing, and then asks "and what?" AND THEN THEY PLAY THE CLASSIC "METRO BOOMIN WANT SOME MORE" THUGGER TAG, ahhhhhh that makes me so happy, reconciliation, blessed.

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