Rich Homie Quan's Type of Way Not Worth Travelling

I'd like to open this post with a "breaking of the fourth wall". When I sit down to post a blog about a new cut or album, I honestly want to like what I'm reviewing. That I can't is probably due to in no small measure to the music industry itself which seems to like following TV's myopic vision of trying to ascertain what it is people want to hear? For instance if emo ever steals a large portion of the spotlight you can bet any and every label worth its salt is going to be drooling over potential bankable acts like a Pavlovian dog. Right now it would appear hip-hop, alone, or travelling in packs, is the prevailing flavor. By packs I mean so and so featuring fill in entourage of added rap acts here. Luckily we also have Imagine Dragons, Of Mice and Men, and Luke Bryan floating around to keep the bitch tally from getting ridiculous. I'm not going to elaborate on Miley Cyrus or her hit "We Can't Stop" because watching her blush worthy gyrations at 2013's MTV Video Music Awards spoke volumes, none of those volumes anything I'd waste a perfectly likable afternoon on. Okay Miley!! You is all grown up and wanting to flaunt your womanly wiles!! It failed. What you did do is lock a lot of raised eyebrows in the stun position. But what I'm trying to say with all this current musical events business is I really want to look at hints of today's music and future hits and say, "This sounds pretty neato to me. Glad I sat down and discovered this for the first time. In an unpredictable world where many of the surprises we get aren't exactly good ones, the promise of likable new music springs eternal. So off I went listening to Atlanta rapper Rich Homie Quan's "Type of Way" at least a little curious about whether Billboard's brass should be proud the song is the current #1 on its Heatseekers chart. In a word, no. In two words, hell no. In three words, bloody hell no. I could go on but you'd get tired of me, I'd go to the kitchen and pour my sorrows into a pint of ice cream, my health would start eroding, you'd feel pity/sympathy/revulsion. This blog is about the straight dope on yesterday's and today's music. Dope is a good word to enforce here. That's dope as in: "You'd have to be a dope to think Rich Homie Quan is breaking any new ground with his wordplay. Let's see if the signs of overused, done to death rap cliches are present within these lyrics? Got your under the microscope mentality working? Perfect. Mention of a really hot car worth more money than the house you're paying off the mortgage on? Check. In this case the ride is a Custom Breitling. At least I've never heard of the car. That's some novelty value. Still bragging about how the car is supposed to make me feel some type of way isn't. Be honest Rich. By be honest I mean in a way where the first grade intelligence of your rapping could somehow be overlooked. You bought the hip-hop Cliff's Notes didn't you? They told you what every bad ass rapper needs to say to convince all of three people that he's got mad skills and that he's someone guys want to be and that the girls want to ride like a mechanical bull at a classic country saloon. Is there even a hint of originality in the background beats. Tyler Perry needs to don his Medea persona, go to urban districts everywhere and tell the rap fanatic youths of today that there ain't no woman gonna marry you if bitch is the only description you have for her. Maybe that's a Pollyana sentiment but you'd have to be pretty low down on the self esteem scale if Rich Homie Quan arouses your loins. Every where you look his whole focus is how something made me feel a type of way. Sade should sue him for slander. It's supposed to be flattery but not when it's thrown up against: "This bitch I'm with got me feelin' some type of way. Is it because my homies rich you feel some type of way?" Stop...there's cliche number two...the ol' bedazzle 'em with bling. Just this once I'd like to hear an appropriate response like: "No, it's not because you homies rich. It's because you're thinking rubbing that in my face will transform you from some gutter thug into a person worthy of respect." It's a long shot dream but, if you don't dream, that dream has no chance of coming true...ever. Anyway back to Billboard's Heatseeker Champion (tepid bathwater bozo is more like it). "Some type of way, make you feel some type of way." Look into his eyes. It's getting creepy. He's subliminally planting the "some type of way" mystery heebie jeebies inside of you. Pretty soon you'll doubt your own sanity! EEEEK!! But bravely we must continue. "Heard she wanna fuck me, know you feel some type of way." Rich has incorporated step #3 in hip-hop Cliff's Notes...the brazen flaunting of one's fucking. To sum up we got a bitch. We got some bling and we got some pretty serious mattress tag going on. Now aside from being textbook hip-hop Cliff's Notes drivel what do these three cornerstones of hip hop hunk posturing have in common? None of them would make me want to download this flaking pile of excrement to my IPod. Not that I really have a working IPod but if I did I wouldn't insult the sanctity of said device by ramming this cosmic chowder blow down its throat. "I set it off like Queen Latifah?" Let me tell you something Rich. First of all, don't you dare drag one of the first ladies of rap into this botched amateur night bit of posing you're doing. She has a talk show coming out next month. You have a rap song that, if there's any justice in this unjust world, will be forgotten inside of a month. Again, possibly wishful thinking but I must let my own freak flag fly proudly and defiantly. Bad habits need to be curtailed before they blossom into full blown societal cancers that ruin lives, rip apart families, and fool the musical conglomerates into thinking people actually would waste a month's pay on concert tickets to see people like this. If alcoholism and smoking are bad habits and threats to the societal fabric of this planet, so is criminally idiotic rap. The interjection of some other bad boy interweaving laughter and the word "fuck" into the mix isn't raising this stink bomb any higher. Rich needs to suck on his own merits. He doesn't need some similar alpha dog vouching for the character he doesn't have. He's actually seen fit to include how he and his homies did some other man's ho and it made him feel...you guessed it...some type of way. If this drive by sexing victim wears gold chains and has a heavyweight pugilist's thick neck I'd say the brother feels mad enough to make Rich a permanent part of some ghetto issue brick wall. Hope his insurance premiums are paid up. The only type of way that "Type of Way" makes me feel is turned off. Maybe I'll have to die before a revolution in rap occurs where insecure males don't need to posture over everything right down to how my Granny could whoop your Granny. Revolutions take time I'm afraid. In the lead up to rap utopia, real or imagined, there have been and will continue to be casualties. "Type of Way" sets the cause back a good twenty years. Makes "Nuthin' But a G Thang" sound like a day at the symphony. At least The Chronic had the devilish beats to help you forget the vid didn't shy away from treating women like playthings. "Type of Way" is one Heatseeker that deserves to be stripped of its oxygen ASAP.