Where were you when the greatest song of all time was released?
https://soundcloud.com/joshpan/opus/s-o5jeI
Alright, let's start with a little history lesson. Back in 2014, OG Maco hit a new extreme in minimal, aggressive trap, with "U Guessed It". The simple piano beat, heavy heavy bass, and wholly unrestrained vocals gave this beast an energy unlike anything seen before, parts drill, trap, and Bone Crusher-style Godzilla rap. It found fans as far as Korea, where Keith Ape assembled a crew of Korean and Japanese rappers to produce "잊지마" (It G Ma), a song so heavily inspired by "U Guessed It" that it sparked some beef between the two... as far as I know, it's all water under the bridge? At one point OG Maco tweeted that he gets paid a percentage of "It G Ma" sales, but that tweet's been deleted? People are talking about it here... I don't really know what's going on.
And then, to make everything more confusing, they released this remix, which is insane for so so many reasons, not the least of which was the bizarre non-euclidean cut it took through popularity/geography/genre to find the team of rappers that hopped on it. The most reasonable explanation for it is that there is a God, and He or She is Bored, and Loves a Good Joke, and even more Loves a Good Banger. But now? Now there is only one explanation: josh pan is a God, and josh pan is insane. It's like... you take the bizarre path of this song's lineage, one that jumped across borders and genres and all levels of discourse, and the only way to take it further is to make... a 14 minute multigenre masterpiece odyssey.
To celebrate his signing onto Skrillex's label (????), he's rounded up a few of his best soundcloud producer buddies to release something that is so incomprehensible and insane that it basically had to be a masterpiece or not exist. They tore up the track, taking each of the verses and enshrining them in gigantic temples to the Gods of Trap. And here for once I don't mean the "traditional" meaning of trap, i.e. my beloved Gucci and T.I. and stuff, but every meaning of the word, every bizarre mutated bastardized EDM subgenre and dubstep evolution. It's not stuff I'm usually the biggest fan of, but I enjoy the occasional indulgence with... and here, with the whole pantheon on display, I feel like I'm just shamelessly shoveling food into my mouth at a buffet. It is a wonderful feeling.
Every verse is given lengthy intros and outros that establish the particular producer's sound, often in an atmospheric, melodic, way, and then crank everything cool about it to 2000 in dynamic, cinematic ways. And from that, what emerges - those now iconic verses, those shouts, those decisive words, those insane mindbreaking flows! It's so powerful! And oh my god, a BRAND NEW verse from Anderson .Paak?? "Isn't he the guy that sang a bunch on Compton?" Yeah, and Malibu is a sick album too, but it also turns out he can do this intense Kendrick-style flow!? Okay okay. And at the end, my friend realized that the bell chimes are samples from Majora's Mask?? Like this is some end of the world stuff. And that's OK.
Or rather it would be OK if KANYE'S NEW ALBUM "TLOP: GUESS WHAT IT STANDS FOR AND WIN SOME YEEZYS!!" wasn't coming out in TWO DAYS!!!! (or at least getting delayed again in two days). I think The Land of Plenty is probably the best idea I've heard so far, given the lyrics of a Leonard Cohen song with the same name. I'm also a fan of The Lights of Paradise... The Largest Outdoor Pool is hilarious (cause of the Drake line, yknow)... Idk, idk. Too much, too much. Like many other posts recently, all of this could be summarized with "What a time to be alive". Ahhhh.
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