When I was 15, I spent many days without talking. Except for maybe on Wednesdays and every other weekend, because I was still under 16 and custody rules forced to me be around my douchebag father and we’d scream at each other at the top our lungs until I ran away or jumped out of the passenger seat of his flashy, 6-CD-playing, post-divorce, self-inflicted-mid-life-crisis Corolla—with a spoiler.

I grew up in the humble, Midwestern Twin Cities in the thick of Saint Paul’s perfect private Catholic school system, where the most scandalous parts of your day was empathizing with the criminal “Desperate Housewives” characters with a glass of wine before bed. Everyone was white, believed in Jesus, hosted Boy Scouts. Fourth of July’s were spent at your cabin; you fought to get a spot on the best country club waiting list; and your husband didn’t actually bang the hot new math teacher behind your back. Try as they might’ve, the Ornberg family—complete with a verbally abusive father, broke irresponsible mother and retarded son—weren’t so good at fitting into the expected perfect-family façade.

On top of dealing with my dad’s unfaithful antics creating a stir among the neighborhood’s Sunday afternoon brunch conversations, I was exiled from my volleyball team, fell in love with a gay man, was cast as an understudy or ensemble character in a third of the plays I auditioned for—the rest I didn’t even make the cut—and sprained my ankle publicly. Twice. And this was just the beginning of my sophomore year. The rest of my time in high school I spent lurking in the background, ditching dances and football games out of angst and maybe a smidge of insecurity.

My passion for writing, music and drawing have always been more important to me than my social stature, because any Holden Caulfield character or Paramore song was more comforting and relatable than my vicious UGG-toting peers. I found great solace in the contents of my 16GB hot pink iPod mini I blackmailed my dad into buying me. I spent hours on MySpace discovering new artists that moved and inspired me, from Weezer to Wu-Tang to the Wombats. Some of this music served as simply my shower sing-alongs, while others became my safety net; specifically the angsty alternative-pop album “Move Along” by the All-American Rejects, daring, twee Brit-pop tunes of “Made of Bricks” by Kate Nash and aggressive mindfuck hip-hop album “God Loves Ugly” by Atmosphere played on repeat for months at a time, shaping my high school years moreso than the cliques that defined the lunch tables or Christian nuns who enforced the uniform codes.

Whenever I revisit some of these albums, I am instantly brought back in the mindset of the adolescent introverted Emily, reopening some of the scars left behind from my exhausting life as an eccentricly lame Catholic school girl.

Before he was Nativity of Our Lord’s public enemy No. 1, my dad was the hip father who drove a Herbie-replica BMW and hung out with Bono every now and then. He was the school’s very own big-shot record-company dude who almost got P-Diddy fired, spent a year and five of her MTV reality episodes with Ashlee Simpson (until the SNL incident). He spent 3 weeks out of every month living in various hotel rooms, but he worked for the largest major label in the country and was the first person to get Lady Gaga on Top 40 radio. He was cool, and he was proud of it.

Being his daughter, pop music was cherished in our household. Whenever he wasn’t out of town at various meet-and-greets or radio stations across the country, he often organized my tween birthday parties with an A*Teens backstage -hangout hour or front-row Maroon 5 tickets. I loved pop music. Not just the sound, all that it represented—sugary melodies, beautiful popstars and just the right amount innocence. J-14 magazine posters of my dad’s coworkers hung next to their autographs and drumsticks he collected for me during the months he spent away on tour.

When my mom decoded his altered MapQuests and hotel room reservation records and it was discovered that during most of those months away he was living a second life with his girlfriend and her kids in Memphis, Tenn., I was fucking furious. Unlike my older sister who was afraid to talk back to my dad’s family-ruining psycho abusiveness, I loved to get under his skin. I loved to tear him down from his high horse he paraded around on. I’d snoop his mail, read his texts and called him out in the middle of Target, and he’d scream back.

Because most of my basic peers didn’t really understand how to compute a fucked up family situation, I found music that had a little sharper edge to it to match my aggressive pain. I then came across the All-American Rejects album “Move Along.” Their wiry, restless rock album carried the familiar catchy pop hooks that I loved, but they were definitely daringly alternative—they proudly labeled themselves as rejects, for fucks sake. And I couldn’t be peeled away from the boisterous album; four sexy mop-head in skinny jeans harmonized in that recognizably emo, whiny yelp above ear-blasting fuzzed electric guitars and loud, obnoxious drum kicks. My friends and I instantly became stalker-fangirls of the group—before they were mainstream, of course—because their thundering electric-punk was everything our moms hated and conformist classmates were afraid of, and we played it on full volume.

My absolute favorite off the album was “I’m Waiting,” because its iconoclastic approach of painting dark emo-alternative stokes over traditional pop hooks matched my desire to purposefully fuck with everything traditional. It begins with two short, lurid power chords echoing back and forth into a full rumble of double-time ax strumming. The frontman—ex-Gap model Tyson Ritter—whimpers one plunky note at a time in a bubbly, sugar-coated pop melody, which if you turn down some of the reverb could’ve easily been an Avril Lavigne B-side. Not only was it a fun tune to sing along to, but the steel-blown power chords could really impale out of those tiny iPod earbuds, numbing my ears to the point where I was forcibly taken out of my shitty reality and into a bed of thick, dangerous music.

Although the rest of the pop-punk album is god-awfully cheesy, it served as the soundtrack to my nightly ritual of drawing or writing locked away in my room trying to shove away my emotions. “Straightjacket Feeling” was the album’s only acoustic ballad, and as the title suggests, it was almost sarcastically emo. But my dorky, misfit 15-year-old self shook every time the poignantly honest lyrics hit my ears: “Etched with marks but I can deal, you’re the problem and you can’t feel/ Try this on straightjacket feel-in’, so maybe I wont be alooone/ Take back now my life your steal-in/ Yesterday was hell, but today I’m fine, without you/ Runaway this time, without you/ and all I ever thought you’d be, that face is staring holes in me again.” Hearing the vivid, jarring chords paired with lyrics that validated my authentic pissed-off thoughts that lingered in the back of my mind was a monumental moment in my adolescence.  To use this powerful, angsty, misfit-championing punk album in place of a child counselor or unwelcome aunt helped console the anger and hurt left behind from my broken family. My anger and depression bottled up, and “Move Along” could immediately diffuse it.

As I grew older and my punk friends transferred to public school, my interests shifted to maintain my image as ‘that cool artistic chick. ‘A bad injury exiled me from returning to my volleyball team, so I started wearing converse and and began my obsession with acting, writing and learning guitar, piano and ukulele simultaneously. I was the all-around fearless second-born, but even though I waned to be different, it pained me to be alone. That was when I came across Kate Nash’s “Merry Happy.” Recorded on her Mac, 4/4 staccato piano chords serve as the punchy tapping beat behind her fluttering British accent that sings: “Watching me like you’ve never watched no one, don’t tell me that you didn’t try and check out my bum/ ‘cuz I know that you did, ‘cuz your friend told me that you liked it.”  Nash, a coy British girl who wears cute dresses, was unable to follow her dream at acting school because of a similar ankle injury, and turned to singing her beautiful bedroom-written poems about being a clumsy 20-something, fitting in and the troubles of getting over “Dickheads” instead. This album, full of Nash’s signature strength, vulnerability and cleverness and atypical songwriting snuck into my head and served as the supportive backbone to my search of my own artistic individuality and self-confidence.

I listened to “Made of Bricks” every day, savoring every clever line and juicy piano chord pretending someday, as soon as I graduated, I’d move to the U.K. where I thought my artistic ventures could only be appreciated. Through her bitter humor and symbolic short stories, Nash comes across as the girl next door with her head in the clouds, a dreamer who sees the world in an honest frame of mind. Her tales about going for the wrong guy (among other problems faced by a 20-year-old woman) are universal, even if she's singing about trainers, tarts and discos. On the thumping “Shit Song,” above a glossy ‘60s girl group ditty, she sings, “Darlin’ don’t give me shit, cuz I know that you’re full of it.” On the jaunty “Foundations,” she taunts her man with the line, “Yeah, I'd rather be with your friends mate, because they're all much fitter.” And she shows her affection to a crush on the adorable “Birds” chorus: “Birds can fly so high and they can shit on your head/ and they can almost fly into your eye and make you feel so scared/ But when you look at them, and you see that they're beautiful/ That's how I feel about you.” The way she translated her emotions through witty, daringly simple writing inspired me to express myself, not conforming to what everyone else was doing.

But I mainly fell in love with “Made of Bricks” because “Nicest Thing” voiced the deepest pains of my teenage years. The song’s cascading strings are gorgeous, and her lyrics are simple, poignant and honest beyond belief. The plucking of an acoustic bass reverberates and haunts into a meteoric rise—the opening ten seconds was enough to haunt a genuine ache. “I wish I was your favorite girl/ I wish you thought I was the reason you are in the world/ I wish my smile was your favorite kind of smile/ I wish the way that I dressed was your favorite kind of style/ I wish you couldn't figure me out but you'd always wanna know what I was about/ Basically, I wish that you loved me/ I wish that you needed me/ I wish that you knew when I said two sugars, actually I meant three/ I wish that without me your heart would break/ Yeah, I wish that without me you'd be spending the rest of your nights awake.” As simple as they were, the words pierced my gut. Images flooded my brain as I realized that I truly had no one who thought I was the reason they were in the world. Somehow I could listen to that song three times every night and it never lost its heavy gravity.  Nash could speak the depths of my misunderstood teenage years, which validated my lonely thoughts and kept me from getting in my own path.

As I grew older, I knew I wanted to pursue my dream of writing. Words were everything to me. I loved learning about their prefixes, suffixes and Latin roots. I never felt like I was fully expressing myself until I could tirelessly type my true thoughts and emotions on a keyboard. This undying love for words is what made me fall in love with an emcee named Slug.

The kingpin of Minneapolis hip-hop, Slug set the standards for Midwestern underground rap. Like Nash, I loved how he wrote bleak honesty tinged with humor, but his lyrics were far more advanced. Although it wasn’t acceptable for a white, middle-class Midwestern girl to become a hip-hop fan, there was something about Slug that I related to. I was struck by his bouncy piano-driven track “You,” which he dedicated to his father. “A whole house full of dreams and steps/ I think you'd be impressed with the pieces I kept/ You disappeared but the history is still here/ That’s why I try not to cry over spilt beer/ I can't even get mad that you're gone, leavin' me was probably the best thing you ever taught me/ I'm sorry, it's official, I was a fist-full, I didn't keep it simple/ Chip on the shoulder, anger in my veins, had so much hatred, now it brings me shame/ Never thought about the world without you and I promise that I'll never say another bad word about you/ I thought I saw you yesterday, but I knew it wasn't you, 'cause you passed away, dad.”

Listening to Slug own up to his mistakes in his rocky relationship with his father was eye-opening, but the way he posed his regretful past in a way that not only challenged hip-hop’s standards but stood alone as beautiful prose changed the way I listened to hip-hop.

Ultimately, without constantly shoving these albums in my ear during the years that shaped me the most, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. It might’ve taken years of depression, but having that time to let myself sink deep into the sounds of Tyson Ritter, Kate Nash or Sean Daley allowed me to get to know these artists to the point of memorizing every word that came out of their mouth, every chord they played on the piano, allowing me to have someone else to look up to outside of my fucked up family and monochromatic Minnesotan community.

Autism through the ages

When my baby brother was 3 years old, he couldn’t start getting ready for preschool each morning until Sesame Street announced what the letter and number of the day was. It became his gospel, a ritual that defined his day. As soon as Cookie Monster unveiled the daily selection, William would grab the corresponding characters from the plastic magnets from the fridge to carry in his pocket and hold them up an inch away from his eyeball, whispering their name in appreciation. While his three older sisters were fighting over the hair-crimping iron, William would flip the pages of his alphabet books to the day’s sacred letter, ask for his peanut butter sandwiches and waffles to be cut in their shapes and incorporated the choice characters in every single one of his daily doodles, Christmas cards and Mother’s Day posters. And even though he was 3 years younger, he’d piss of his big sister when he’d interrupt her study sessions to spell all the worlds on her upcoming spelling quiz.
His obsession with numbers and letters lasted for another year until roller coasters became his new religion. He’d ask for Hot Wheels tracks for his birthday and take over the living room with his customized interstate highways while his boxes of number and alphabet paraphernalia collected dust. A year later, his Hot Wheels sat in storage as he created a massive Pokémon collection, memorizing every detail of every character ever introduced.
Although William showed unworldly intelligence in some areas, there were some concerning developmental disconnects. He was uncomfortable making eye contact and didn’t usually enjoy engaging in conversation. And although he could recognize and spell most words, he didn’t know how to put them together in any functional way.
William was diagnosed with hyperlexia, a type of high-functioning autism. Like him, children with hyperlexia have a constellation of symptoms, including precocious reading skills—far above expected at their age—paired with significant problems in language learning and social skills, often harnessing the socially uncomfortable Asperger’s syndrome.
At first, his diagnosis came as a shock for my parents who were scared that they weren’t able to parent a child with special needs. Growing up, my parents saw that kids who were different were retarded, and therefore picked on. However, after the first months of William’s social skills courses, teachers were able to also instruct my parents that William is still William, a vibrant and quirky young boy, and autism doesn’t define him.
Just like the growing acceptance of gays in pop culture was paralleled with a deeper understanding and looser prejudice for the minority group in society, films and television have a hand in introducing how autism is seen in the current generation’s conjecture of what is normal. In his review for the 1988 Academy-Award winning film “Rain Man,” Roger Ebert points to something that has seemed to cast a dark shadow on how people were able to swallow the film’s unknown qualities: “Is it possible to have a relationship with an autistic person? Is it possible to have a relationship with a cat? I do not intend the comparison to be demeaning to the autistic; I am simply trying to get at something. I have useful relationships with both of my cats, and they are important to me. But I never know what the cats are thinking."
In 1988, autism was portrayed as most people knew about it at the time; when we recall Dustin Hoffman’s autistic character in “Rain Man,” we often recall the scene when he freaks out in the airport, demanding to watch certain TV shows or his inability to “love” in any recognizable fashion. Because of “Rain Man,” some people’s ideas of autism are skewed, assuming an autistic life is an endless cycle of arbitrary yelling, confusing arguments and the occasional spurt of extraterrestrial mathematical intelligence.
However, as autism diagnoses have risen since 1988—today, one in 88 American children has an Autism Spectrum Disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control. And although television is usually painstakingly slow to adapt to such shifts in demographics, some of the challenges faced by the autistic population have captured the imagination of TV writers, who are increasingly penning eccentric characters whose quirks would seem to align with typical characteristics of ASD. Representations of the autistic in film and television have gotten more sensitive, depicting autistic characters as relatable, and even humanistic, such as Sheldon’s seemingly hyperlexic character in “The Big Bang Theory,” or Max in “Parenthood.” In visual art, Jill Mullin’s art compilation Drawing
 Autism rounds up remarkable samples of work by people from all across the autism spectrum, showing how people with different mental processes display their emotions through art. On the other
 hand, the word “retarded” is commonly used in hip-hop as a slur, as seen in J. Cole’s verse in Drake’s “Jodeci Freestyle”: “I'm artistic, you niggas is autistic, retarded.”
There’s been more nuance to the depiction of “nerds” in movies and on television in recent years, but it is still a complicated issue, as comedy writers try to reference what’s familiar. The Big Bang Theory is one of the most popular shows on television, but it is also the most divisive because of it’s attention to detail. The show centers on a quartet of nerd friends that each have unique quirks. In the episode “The Bakersfield Expedition,” the characters’ girlfriends visited a comic book store, which showcased the series in a telling light. The most obnoxiously stereotypical and arbitrary moment of the episode was when the store owner had to tell the customers to stop gaping at the girlfriends since these were just women and thus, “nothing you haven’t seen in movies or in drawings.” However, the when the proprietor suggested to the women that they might enjoy the comic book Fables, it was a specific and perfect recommendation. The Big Bang Theory has often been criticized as a nerd satire by some, but its writers do know their subject and attempt to flesh out the stereotypes, even if they still lean on the stereotypes too heavily.
Ultimately, The Big Bang Theory has pushed us leaps and bounds through understanding austists in pop culture because of the character Sheldon Cooper, the Asperger’s-esque astrophysicist played by Jim Parsons. His lovable quirks and Einstein knowledge toward outer space and science are familiar to the way William operates. Like my brother, Sheldon avoids physical contact, sticks religiously to routine that he won't let anyone sit in his spot on the couch, is pointed and determined to correct any logical mishap to the point of exhaustion and treats social convention like one complex puzzle he can never quite solve. Sheldon summed up these issues in a recent monologue toward the end of an episode. "You may not realize it, but I have difficulty navigating certain aspects of daily life," he said to his friends. "You know, understanding sarcasm, feigning interest in others, not talking about trains as much as I want to. It's exhausting."
Interestingly, Parsons and the show’s writers very carefully avoided labeling Sheldon as having anASD, because they’ve said they don’t want to be limited by what an autistic person would or wouldn’t do. But by not defining Sheldon, they’ve indirectly captured an important aspect of autism—the disorder has common tendencies, but flexible boundaries. Sheldon is an exaggerated version of a person with Asperger’s, but his fussiness is very familiar to those of us with family members on the spectrum. However, if his character was labeled with having Asperger’s, it would help viewers identify with an example of the humanistic qualities that autists have.
A more recent example of autists on television is 2010 sitcom Parenthood, in which creator Jason Katims (Friday Night Lights) created the character Max Braverman—an intelligent, inscrutable, insect-obsessed youngster with Asperger's—inspired by his own son, Sawyer, who was similarly diagnosed. The character is lovable and pointedly true to the Asperger’s tendencies, which Katims was able to accomplish through sharing his personal anecdotes with the writers. The show also employs behavioural psychologist Wayne Tashjian to work with the show's cast and crew to ensure accuracy.
However, like most times I’m faced with depictions of autism, I viewed Parenthood with a defensive mind frame because the struggles and relationships connected with autistic characters can set a
precedent for viewers. And although Max’s character is adorably accurate in some regards, the show is ultimately frustrating, a quirky parent comedy-drama unviewable for anyone under 30. Its clichés are evident through its dealings with druggie 18-year-old daughters, single mother life and just about any other drama whiteys struggle with in suburban, middle class families.
If nothing else, Parenthood introduces Max into the conjecture of normalcy in the same way Glee did for it’s gay character Kurt—it’s painfully cheesy and stereotypical to watch, but at least the show attempts to thrust a new taboo on the train, which will set a precedent for viewers’ experiences with autistic characters. You can never show too many examples of autistic characters as actual human beings; most people unfamiliar with autism are instantly uncomfortable with an autist’s unique presence, so giving viewers a tangible example of someone they can reference and care about, be it a character on a dopey parent sitcom, will help their understanding of how to interact with them in the real world.
The show focuses on a large, tight-knit extended family, almost exactly like mine. The first episode shows Max’s grandpa, unaware of Max’s autism, frustrated about how Max couldn’t care less about his baseball league and putting pressure on Max’s dad to be more assertive with his son. When they try to get him ready for the game, Max screams in frustration and expresses that he won’t go because he knows he’s the worst player on the team. He escapes to his room and buries himself in his pirate toys, where his dad secretly wages him two scoops of ice cream in exchange for his attendance at the game.
The episode results in Max striking out and feeling ashamed, blaming his family for forcing him to play. After the parents get Max diagnosed, they start helping the rest of his family through the process of how to interact with Max: his counselor says "get into his world and connect with him there." His dad begins to play pirates with him, and helps his own dad try to understand the developmental difference Max has, and he extra sensitivity and patience he needs.
This episode reminded me of how my hardass father tried to convince my brother to eat spaghetti. When presented with the meal, William had a hysterical fit, gagging at the sight of the googly noodles and mushy red sauce. He saw the dish as one would see a dice rat on a plate; he couldn't even breathe at the thought of eating it. My dad, raised by a strict veteran on a farm, pushed my brother to tears every meal. "He will get over it," my dad would garble, "if he wants to become a man, that is."
After my parents got William diagnosed, my dad took a few years to understand how to introduce new things to him. His lack of patience contrasted with William's tenderness and sensitivity.
Parenthood did a good job in displaying the frustration that sometimes comes with the difficult miscommunication with an autistic child, however, the show often takes care of the issues in the same episode they're introduced. Max's grandpa understood how to support Max's pirates instead of forcing him to continue his baseball legacy; it took my father much longer to be understanding of how a hyperlexic functions.

Drake, “Nothing Was the Same” (Universal Republic)

 

As hip-hop is the most adaptable genre, the production behind the emcee’s words have been experimented with for years. The beats tinge the lyrics, pulling the listener to a different type of high. Some induce an energetic mood, encouraging a hefty pregame or treadmill run. Others have produced an entrancing, shoegazing trip, pushing us to look inside ourselves and down the lyrics with an even stronger chaser.

Marrying the machismo from hip-hop to the vulnerability of R&B, a subgenre emerged that catered to an emotionally comfortable audience; Combining dark electronic production with the soulful crooning of the various Generation X #problems, “PBR&B,” a cutesy reference to the hipster-associated Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Rhythm & Blues, was born.

Within this infant genre, multiple albums have attempted to become the successor, the Dark Knight of hip-hop. Although Kanye West created an honest interpretation of such sorrowful rap on “808s and Heartbreak” in 2008, the album’s cyborg production lacked unrestricted expression keeping it from a longtime residency on most iPods. The Weeknd released three entrancingly dark mixtapes in 2011, but his monotonous collection of whimpering humptunes got to be too much to sit through. Young Money aficionado Drake bought sizable property in this genre in the early part of 2010 with his first two studio albums, adding menacing synths and ’90s old school highhat hits to his often vulnerable lyrics, but his newest real estate is tested to measure up to the humility of his neighbors’—especially when he lives next door to the subgenre’s sincere Frank Ocean and Kanye West, who keep their doors open and their tissues abundant.

        On his newest release “Nothing Was The Same,” Drake toggles between a relatable self-loathing lover, dejected son and a taunting, obnoxious bro. One minute he rides like Rick Ross, and the next he’s a crooning Marvin Gaye. As always, Drake is pairing baby-making R&B crooners with whiny rhymes about the various trappings of his “unfortunately famous” psyche: people losing touch with him because he’s so damn rich, hookers giving him emotional baggage, etc. However, Drake’s lyrical lack of composure actually becomes endearing when his words are painted with the brush of Noah “40” Shebib’s entrancingly morose beats. The production’s eerie rhythmic and harmonic instability adds a complexity to the album that no other PBR&B artist has ventured, providing the necessary color and emotion to the story Drake is narrating on the album’s 14 songs. “Nothing Was The Same” might actually be the same thematically, but this version, spiked with 40’s entrancing cocktail, hits home.

Drake’s facelift is thanks to his give-no-fucks confidence reaching new heights, providing a strong foundation for innovation and welcoming the album’s warped haze of emptiness. Where mainstream hip-hop’s new releases pull out the expensive machinery, glossy fills and menacing horns, Drake pulls inward, exquisitely sing-songing his pristine, sharp rhymes above melting hi-hats and piano chords that continue bleeding for six minutes, sometimes sans chorus. He says so himself on “Tuscan Leather:” “This is nothin' for the radio, but they'll still play it though/ Cause it's that new Drizzy Drake, that's just the way it go/ Heavy airplay all day with no chorus … I reached the point where don't shit matter to me.”

The album’s immaculate attention to detail is what provides its long-lasting success. 40’s seamless song transitions, which have always been murky and fuzzy, are more noticeable and delectable than ever. “Wu-Tang Forever" is a sunken glimmer of piano with a tiny glimmer of RZA's voice echoing "It's Yourz," before falling incomprehensibly into "Own It.”  On "Started From the Bottom," the bass doesn’t even stick to a singular pitch, it's instead a shifting scale of distorted piano keys. “305 to My City” is aired out completely, a ticking snare serving as the record's only pulse. And the album’s most successful track, the timeless “Hold on We’re Going Home,” carries a bumping groove even Gaye would envy. However, this track's sparkly pop sound is what pushes it out of place on this dimly lit album, which is the darkest, most drugged up of Drake's catalogue.

It’s above the album’s airy production that Drake’s words flow and flutter, stab and sting. On “Own It,” above only a sinking beat that echoes at the intensity of an empty stadium, he laments in a frustrated and piercingly candid tone, “Next time we fuck, I don't wanna fuck, I wanna make love/ Next time we talk, I don't wanna just talk, I wanna trust/ Next time I stand tall I wanna be standin' for you/ And next time I spend I want it all to be for you,” then he shifts to a whimpering falsetto, almost to remove all of his manliness and fall to his knees, the trickling beat still the only thing pulsating underneath his words. On paper, it’s a dorky lyric, but once tied with a forceful thunder of angry throbs, the words are transformed into a tragically doomed plea for there to actually be a next time.

        This is what makes him so appealing and this album so undeniably successful: behind his tortured lyrics, there’s a living, breathing human being. If we compare the albums of mainstream hip-hop artists as abstract paintings of their chandeliers, lenses into how they view their luxe lifestyles, Drake’s is the most understandable. He is, as he says on the R&B groove “Furthest Thing,” “somewhere between psychotic and iconic.” He’s half Jewish and half black, an emcee who didn’t come from a criminal background but instead from the middle class. He can boast about having diamonds and all the while his disconnections with lovers, and can juxtapose his early rap career with his glossy experience starring on the teen drama TV series Degrassi: The Next Generation (something he could do even more of.) A refreshingly relatable change of pace for the machismo that seems to have swallowed his competitors' cocky and commercialized 32-inch-rimmed hip-hop albums, Drake’s a regular dude who yes, three albums later, hasn’t quite figured it out—not unlike most of us listeners. Just like the times I’ve found myself trying maintain my pride by hiding my personal troubles underneath my successes, it’s humbling to hear the album move in a similar arc; to hear him first brag that he’s on it, he’s “started from the ‘bottom’ now he’s here!” When, nine songs later, he coughs up the truth behind his relationship with his dad.

Drake has toyed with both personas: we left off in 2011 with his phenomenal “Take Care” that depicted an alone and dejected Drake in his gold-plated mansion; on “Nothing Was The Same” he’s not only up, but he’s soaring above the ground. “I really think I like who I’m becoming,” he cautioned us on last year’s “Take Care.” Now, he’s screeching, "I'm on my worst behavior" over a blast of chomping synths and machine-gun bass, courtesy of DJ Dahi, on “Worst Behavior.” The track provides the angriest and most blatantly careless version of Drake yet, sputtering "muhfuckas never loved us" between an impressive extended riff off Ma$e's verse on the Biggie throwback "Mo Money Mo Problems.”

The album hit the Internet four days early and with the draw of the lyric “The one that I needed was Courtney from Hooters on Peachtree” he sent an ex’s social media haywire. Sharing specific details of unresolved conflicts on a soapbox only he has access to, he’s relentless, and doesn’t feel a need to change, either. Although sharing specific details of his past adds a “real life” touch to his lyrics (not different from another ex’s voicemails he illegally sampled on 2011’s “Marvin’s Room”) today’s stalkerish bloggers combined with his notoriety provide an unavoidable access to her life, and is a step too far. But who am I besides someone who loves to watch Drake make poor decisions?

At the end of the album, the song “Too Much” featuring SBKTRT’s crooner Sampha provides everything that pundits like DeRogatis wanted from a new Drake album. Drake performed this track on Jimmy Fallon, precursored with an apology to his family, queuing to the lyrics: “Money got my whole family going backwards/ No dinners, no holidays, no nothing/ There's issues at hand that we're not discussing.” He’s always been honest, but his increased fame has pushed him to be more cutthroat and unaffected than ever. And this honesty is easy to miss between some of Drake’s gawdy bro lyrics, but if taken under the production’s drug, it’s clear he isn’t faking anyone with his over-confidence, not even himself.

Although Drake isn’t your most technically skilled rapper, his complex lines and clever wordplay let his lyrics climb up the walls and leave bitemarks on your skin through his conversational tone. Here, his smirky lines and $20 phrases sometimes fit within the same breath: "I wanna take it deeper than money, pussy, vacation/ And influence a generation that's lacking in patience/ I've been dealin' with my dad, speaking of lack of patience/ Just me and my old man, getting back to basics/ We been talking about the future and time that we wasted/ When he put that bottle down, girl, that’s amazing," he raps on "From Time." He runs at the mouth atop tracks that similarly ebb and flow, pushing the listener into a hazy trip of his relentless insecurities so dense as if he's trying to move through us through peanut butter—to the point of near-exhaustion by the time the 14 songs are over.

Although Drake is still sharing similar chapters of his diary, the entries are so relatable it’s as if he’s reading our own past aloud over entrancingly morose production.

Review of Ryan Dombal's "Yeezus" review

We all know that Kanye West doesn’t give a flying fuck. He doesn’t care that he is, most of the time, egregiously misogynist, racist, egotistical, crude, markedly unsuccessful or hip. Ryan Dombal exquisitely explains this concept on his Pitchfork review for West’s recent album “Yeezus,” breaking down the deeper reasons behind what makes the bizarre record so complex. Dombal discerns in a meaningful yet scatterbrained way through countless examples that from the “jarring electro acid house” production to the “heart-crushing” lyrics to its place in both West’s career and hip-hop music, “Yeezus” is much more intricate and original than most corporate-America-infused hip-hop shit—although it takes a few hundred words to get there.

Although the piece sheds educated light on the album in its context, the review doesn’t have strong opinion and doesn’t flow easily. Instead of a work of intricate criticism bringing the reader from A to B to C, the article reads more as an analytical and persuasive speech for “Random reasons why you should think twice before you diss the shit out of this album,” because each graph states an observation, backs it up with examples, analyzes it and moves on without much transition.

For example, Dombal starts the dissertation by poking fun at West’s buzzworthy track “I Am a God,” explaining that sure, we might immediately roll our eyes at the King of Ego’s attempt of outdoing himself, but at a second listen the track actually displays a “breathtakingly vexed” version of West. “Here, Kanye raps about loyalty, respect, threesomes, and, yes, croissants with the urgency of someone being chased by a 30-ton steamroller … pierced by a series of primal screams, pixelated outbursts … In Kanye's hands, being a god sounds stressful as hell, something we can all relate to.” By outlining the relationship between the track’s eerie production and lyrical topics, Dombal explains this unique release should be given a chance since it has relatable material to us mortals. He revisits this later when he brings up how West has consistently dared to make unusual music or how his lamenting of trials and tribulations with women provide a more self-conscious version of hip-hop, but the thesis is hidden and drifts off as a point-taken instead of standing as a strong overarching opinion.

He then breaks down “Yeezus” in context of West’s career. Rather than explaining who West is in a chronological way, he instead addresses how West has and hasn’t changed since we last heard from him in a deep yet thankfully comprehensible manner. He begins by stating that the “Chicago native has always been beguiled by the view from above,” and backs it up with examples from multiple lyrics of vintage Kanye tracks, and how the statement marries similar emotions of past albums; “The album is something of a razor-sharpened take on 2008’s distressed ‘808s & Heartbreak’ and marks a blunt break with the filigreed maximalism Kanye so thoroughly nailed on ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy;’” but juxtaposes it as well, “Meanwhile, XXX creeper ‘I'm In It’ sounds like a dancehall orgasm mired in quicksand and makes previous come-ons like ‘Slow Jamz’ come off like Disney theme songs.” Here, he’s explaining the growth of the man who made this record—but so what? Dombal uses these exceptional descriptions and deep connections to explain the hidden complexities behind “Yeezus,” but falls flat when he doesn’t take a clear stance, often using frustrating quips such as “Whether it's a meaningful stance or a blindly contrarian move is up for debate.”

Dombal completes the review without making a substantial lasting thought. He states how the “unlikely choices demonstrate how cohesion and bold intent are at a premium on ‘Yeezus,’ perhaps more than any other Kanye album,” and doesn’t leave us satisfied or motivated to listen, even though he gave it a “9.5, BEST NEW MUSIC.” He brings up again how innovative the both the album and it’s marketing are (a la army of dark vans lighting projections onto buildings around the world) but doesn’t explain what it even means or simply if its newfangled approach is enjoyable or not. It’s just different.

Flume at Metro Sept.4 concert review

For someone whose debut album single-handedly beat out One Direction for the No. 1 slot on the Australian charts in November, Aussie beatmaker Flume isn’t a flamethrower. His trippy electronic music tinged with the occasional spurt of dubstep drones is something like a black-and-white kaleidoscope: intricate, rippling gesticulations that paint a far-out picture, but grow monotonous and colorless if you look into it for too long. During his Sept. 4 performance at Metro, Flume (Harley Streten) performed a similarly dim set, exciting the audience’s energy with a deliciously peculiar pop-infused production that unfortunately relied too heavily on the melodies of music he sampled.

Streten tumbled onstage wearing a white button-up and a darling ’50s side part at the opening of his set, sheepishly smiling at the crowd. The 21-year-old DJ seemed to stay timidly disconnected from the audience throughout the night, hardly murmuring much more than a whispered, “Yo guys, what’s up?” into the mic. As piercing stage lights and animated visuals of warped pyramids, crying women or two people making out in slow motion played behind him, Flume stood center stage awkwardly hunched over the booth, spastically tinkering with knobs and periodically remembering to acknowledge the audience as if it was his mother walking into his bedroom unannounced.

As intricate as it may be, Flume’s music can be broken down to three simple recipes: a building orchestral melody that features whiny female vocals, such as “Insane” or “Bring You Down;” a drugged-up instrumental ringtone that bleeps and bloops repetitively sans vocals, as heard in “Ezra” or “More Than You Thought,” or creepy and menacing hip-hop, such as “Holdin On” or the rapper T.Shirt sample “On Top.” All songs are laminated in shimmering pop scales, although most—especially when performed live—continue on much longer than their recommended dosage.

The hip-hop-inspired version of Flume was most successful, as his airy synth chords and strange echoed vocal distortions added a fitting and intriguing oddity to the head-nodding rhymes he weaved through his songs. He seemed to believe so, too, as he seemed most immersed during his performance of “On Top” as he raised his hands as if to signal his choir to join in praise. The best track he orchestrated was a remix of the infamous Notorious B.I.G. song “Juicy,” which he underlined with menacing and distorted vampire organs. He seems to adapt well piggybacking off a rapper’s fearless innovation, but without Biggie or T.Shirt’s rhymes to lay the framework out for those tracks, Flume’s production would float unconsciously and unorganized.

What’s perhaps most puzzling about Flume is although the tracks move at a colossal pace, their glistening and high-pitched chords instead inhibit an undertone of stark sadness, which was conveyed even more so when performed live. During his performance of the cloudy track “Insane,” Flume distorted Australian singer Moon Holiday’s vocals into a pulsating building and crashing. The melodies, paired with the production of an airy pop track caused emotional reminiscence, similar to the strangely bittersweet and nostalgic feeling that comes with revisiting old childhood nursery rhymes that carry a happy tune.

During his version of the Chet Baker sample “Left Alone,” Flume kept the original crooning male sample short and chopped and screwed the track at second time, repeating the two-word phrase in a cascading arc as if to really plead to be left alone. This was one of few moments where it was apparent something was different from the album, and although the “live” additions provided a few audible kinks, it was refreshing to hear something new.

Eventually Streten played the track it seemed everyone was waiting for: the single that brought him the No. 1 title, “Sleepless feat. Jezzabell Doran,” a fluttering ditty that is so squeakishly pop that it sounds as if it belongs in the background of a junior’s department store. And so it continued: Fists were pumped, drinks were tossed, tongues were exchanged, the beats stayed the same—but we all left with a deeper emotion tinged in our guts than we might’ve expected coming to an EDM show in Wrigleyville.