Duke Nukem, Joe

I don't know why I have to turn every single hip hop album I listen to into an existential crisis, but it happens every time. It's like I'm perpetually fixated on the answer to "What does my opinion of rap music say about me?" without realizing that it's not about me. No one gives a fuck what I think, whether positive or negative. It ain't that deep.

An original draft of this album review started with the following sentence: "Oh my goodness, no." That was my immediate reaction, and I feel like it's going to be others' opinion as well. I'm assuming that a majority of Record Club members—myself included—only have a passing familiarity with "crunk," or any type of rap that is this hard. With music that at first appears harsh and hard and unfamiliar, one can be tempted to dismiss it. If it wasn't for Record Club, I would've made it three songs into this album before giving up.

Another draft of this review (this album review was really hard to write!) got into the specifics of one specific qualm I had this album, and with most hip hop albums that I listen to. I was able to come to a realization about how I've failed as a music critic. I also was writing it as pretentiously as possible, and it didn't work out well. But here's that draft, before I hit a dead end.

"You can do better than this."

That's my Creative Writing 101 professor. I'm in his cluttered office. It's during office hours, and we're following up on a first draft of an album review that I wrote last week. I was young and brash and thought I knew everything, so of course I got offended.

"That's my best work. It took me hours to write that."

"There is so much room for improvement, Joe. Shall we go through it?" The man was displaying a patience that all great college professors possess.

"First, I think you might want to reconsider this section about how you dislike, um, how did you put it? 'A brazen lack of humility.'"

"But Professor, c'mon, you've heard the album. Am I wrong?"

"No, but I have a few concerns. The first is that this isn't the first time you've expressed this bizarre need for humility in music. This is a creative writing course. Rehashing something you've already said isn't creative."

"Fair." I had no answer to that.

"More importantly, I think you might want to consider how this might look... a bit racially insensitive? I.e. the fact that this only seems to be an issue when you're discussing a black musician."

"But Meghan Trainor—!"

"See, I knew you were going to say that. I remember reading your piece on Meghan Trainor. You do realize that her 2016 hit 'Me Too' was tongue-in-cheek, right?"

"..."

"It was meant to lampoon the very bravado that you yourself claim to hate in music. She's on your side, albeit she is expressing her opinion in a shitty off-brand D-level pop-star kind of way. Whereas you are just writing shitty blog posts. But you're two sides of the same damn coin."

"So what you're saying is that I only express this specific opinion when I'm listening to and writing about hip hop, and that those artists that I'm reviewing in those particular case more often than not happen to be black."

"I'm saying even more than that. I'm saying that you are showing a fundamental misunderstanding about what hip hop even is."

"I don't disavow the accusation."

"Braggadocio is baked into the very foundation of hip hop."

"And this is a good thing."

"It's not a good thing or a bad thing, but it is absolutely a true thing. And I think you are just approaching it from the wrong direction. I get the feeling that you are so offended when an artist thumps his or her chest and says 'I am the best' because you have a low self-esteem, and sincerely wonder that whether their superiority conversely means that you have some inferiority. And that offends you."

"Shouldn't it?"

"It shouldn't. This isn't about you, Joe. Not really. It's not some competition. Someone's success doesn't necessarily mean your failure, at least in the context of the creation and distribution of art. The artist here isn't saying 'I'm the best, and you're not.' He's just saying 'I'm the best,' and he's doing so in a variety of fun and funny ways. There's an energy that comes from that. You're supposed to feed off that power. It's supposed to make you want to beat your chest too, and proclaim that you are the best too. God, you're so fucking sensitive."

"C'mon, relax. This is supposed to be a college professor speaking to his student here. I described you at the beginning of the review as 'patient,' and now all of a sudden you are getting heated? That's inconsistent character writing."

"Hey, I'm the professor of Creative Writing here."

"Okay, let's say that I was wrong about this particular aspect of this album. I admit it. I've been unfair. I disagree that it's a race thing, but I understand the optics of unfair criticism consistently lobbed toward a specific genre that is historical known to be created and sustained by the African American community. I promise to be more sensitive toward this issue in the future."

Oh yeah, that was bad, and it was about to get a lot worse before I pulled the plug. But it was only bad because of the dumb premise—I mean what I said about trying to look at this genre of music in a different light while exploring Duke Nukem.

 

Duke Deuce, as a character on the album, is attempting to an express a series of emotions—elation, power, self-worth. So all the references to being good at sex and tough enough to tote a gun and all the N-words, maybe we can not take all of that literally, and instead allow them to collectively heighten our own emotions. Not to literally "treat the pussy like Michael, stab it till I kill it," but to use that confidence in one's ability to feel more confident about your own ability. Maybe get a taste of that power, at least in the metaphorical sense.

 

I don't necessarily know if this particular conclusion translates into a good score for Duke Nukem, but it's something at least. It's something that made me like this album a lot more than I would've otherwise. But is it a good album? I don't know. Probably not.

 

I went back and forth on this album throughout the week. My appreciation was like a sine wave. Sure, I was high on the album when I realized that the opening song samples the Stooges' "Dirt" (the first time in my life I recognized a rap sample without having to look it up!), which is such a good choice.

 

But, like, also, this album is really repetitive, right? I mean, how many times can Duke rap over a sad-sack piano riff? How many times can I hear his dumb catchphrase (you know exactly what I'm talking about here)? This album could've been half the length and would've been stronger for it.

 

Then again, there were a bunch of little things rattling around the album that I like a lot, and acted as life rafts in the rising tides of boring-ass crunk. That verse by Mulatto in "KIRK" is pretty good, even if it is the same trick that RTJ pulled on "Love Again (Akinyele Back)." Some of the lyrics were funny—the aforementioned Michael Myers reference, for instance. Some lines were so incredibly dumb they eventually became funny—like the "GANGSTA PARTY" line "I make your ho kiss the dick, mistletoe." I also laughed every time Duke Deuce said his own name, because it legitimately sounds like he's saying "Doo Doo," and because I am six years old, I think that's hilarious.

I guess maybe that's technically a criticism, that some of Duke Nukem sounds like a Tracey Jordan rap album, and that can't have been Duke Deuce's intentions. Like, the chorus on "MOVE" is literally "Get back bitch! Move! Get back ho, ho!" It's silly. I like it, but probably not for the right reasons.

Alright, I think we pretty much covered everything—thoughts about the genre, convoluted premise, funny rap lines, doing everything I can to not actually talk about specific songs. What's left? Oh yeah, just one more of these, for old time's sake:

WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5

 

Postscript: ONE WEEK LATER

"You can still do better."

"What?!" I'm back in my Creative Writing professor's office, and he's reviewing my second draft, after I changed all the stuff about Deuce Duke being cocky, which I realize now is the point.

"Yeah, it's an improvement, but there's still some cringeworthy stuff in here. For instance, there's a paragraph in here about how some of the lyrics are 'so bad they're good.' I feel like I keep seeing that in all your reviews for hip hop albums."

"I'll defend myself here. I really do believe that."

"But don't you think that comes off as a bit snobby? As if you could write a rap verse better than one that compares your penis to Michael Myers' weapon of choice."

"Okay, but if I'm going to compare my own musical talents or lack thereof to every musician that I listen to, then wouldn't I just rather become a musician myself instead of writing about it every week?"

"No, what I mean is that you're a music critic, right? And so you have to ask yourself what are the intentions of the artist that you are reviewing. The criticism comes from determining whether the artist did what they intended to do. Did Duke Deuce intend to devolve into parody when he wrote about a Michael Myers penis? No, he was intending on express that aforementioned braggadocio in a funny way. You can say it's funny, because it is, but if you're going to say that it's funny only because it's dumb, then you have to back that up. And you can't, because you wouldn't be able to come up with anything better yourself. And if you say it anyway, then you're a snob."

"Alright, alright, fine, I'll take that out in the next draft."

"That's another thing. You didn't take anything out of the first draft. You simply included it in your second draft as a block quote."

"And?"

"What, you are trying to sound clever or something? If you wanted to show us how motivated you were to write a good review, you would've just rewritten it and included it in your final draft in a more seamless way."

"You know I'm too lazy for that."

"I was starting to get that feeling, yeah."

"I might even include this conversation about the second draft in the final draft."

"Oh god, please don't. No one likes when you do this."

"Too meta for you?"

"See, just using the word 'meta' is embarrassing, let alone trying to do something that you think is clever in a 'meta' way but ends up being fluff. You're here to review Duke Deuce's 2021 crunk album Duke Nukem, right? So then why are you bothering with all this extra bullshit about your fake conversations with my fictional existence? Who could possibly enjoy this?"

"I don't know. Somebody might. It's just... I get bored writing album reviews every week sometimes."

"So why even do it at all? Joe, you've been coming into my office with your album reviews for 113 weeks in a row now. No shit you're getting bored. Why are you even doing this?"

"There are definitely moments when I am bored or frustrated or when I just don't fucking feel like writing anything. There are other times, though, when I get to touch something beautiful in music that I would not have without Record Club, and I get to share that beauty with my friends as creatively as I possibly can. Those moments happen like once a month maybe, tops. But those moments make it all worth it. They make this dumb hobby feel worth it, despite all the other shit. But of course, there are other moments, like this week, when I just feel worn out, ya know? That's natural. I'm not going to like every piece of music that hits my desk, even if I'm the one that's picking the music out myself that week. Even if I don't like it, it doesn't make sense to me to go smaller—though clearly I am in the minority here. Instead, I'll go bigger, even if 'bigger' means writing a whole bunch of bullshit that really doesn't have anything to do with Duke Nukem and really strains to be 'clever' in a 'meta' way and probably fails in that regard to everyone reading this but me."

"If you want my opinion on the matter..."

"I do. That's why I am here."

"Then I think you're just scared of the fact that it is pretty plain to everyone who has read any of your bullshit in the past 113 weeks that you simply do not know how to write about music, and you use all this other stupid shit as window dressing to hide that fact. And you would think that you'd use 113 weeks to try to, I dunno, improve your writing and your abilities. But instead, you seem to have gone in the opposite direction. You've started to concentrate less on the music itself and what it means, and more on how you're going to express your 'opinions' in your weekly review. You're losing sight of what this is all actually for. We're here for the music, Joe, not to read your fucking fake transcripts or whatever the fuck you decide to do on any given week."

It was then I realized that this wasn't a Creative Writing professor at all. Which, I mean, wouldn't have made sense anyway—I haven't step foot in a college classroom in almost a decade. No, this was not a professor but a figurative manifestation of all my deepest self-doubts. And after reading my album review for Duke Deuce's 2021 crunk revival album Duke Nukem, and its accompanying postscript, I started to think that maybe he was right. I have wasted a lot of time with this. With all of this, really. But I knew too that I wouldn't ever be able to stop, that I'd keep wasting my time on this blog, writing album reviews that not even I will like, that I'll just keep writing and writing instead of, ya know, writing and editing. That I will keep thinking that I'm "clever" when I write this kind of shit but really it's coming off to everyone else as sophomoric and lame. That some insane person will still be reading this "review" at this point and will wonder when the fuck it will end. Well, it ends now, I guess. Until a new week begins, anyway.