MellowHigh Hits What Could Be An All-Time Low

I'm now going to hit you with the skinny behind American hip-hip trio MellowHigh's debut self-titled album. For starters, based on what I heard, barring some major miracle, I sincerely want this tripe to also be the seedlings of their last album. I mean...do these guys get paid $1,000 each time they drop the f-bomb? If so then Hodgy, Left Brain, and Genesis Domo will be millionaires by this time next year. I'm going to label this reliance on said word as their "fallback fuck". It's the word they use to let their peeps and the uninitiated know that they're serious about their craft...if that's what anyone with the IQ of a grape would actually, without holding back giggles of incredulity, call this insult to intelligence. The ghetto menace background sounds behind them aren't even put together with anything resembling elbow grease. Whether that's the record label budget's fault or MellowHigh's resorting to laziness remains an unknown variable. Either way, unless you've lived the hard knock life they're making reference to, you're not going to cozy up to their lyrics. I'm too busy reinserting my eyeballs back into their sockets from all the profanity and par for the modern course hip hop swagger to have much reserve energy to swallow the imagery of bleeding eyeballs. What's that you ask? Is there reference made to bleeding eyeballs? Yup. A little something to make sure you have nothing but nightmares when you lay head to pillow tonight and for several tonights afterwards. I take it those out there who had a bedwetting problem as a child are pretty comfortable in the reassurance that you won't regress at this point. Think again. Domo Genesis aims to propel you into TMI land all in the service of talking about the glories of smoking weed. Let's put this slab of..well...what I'm thinking of starts with the same consonant as slab and...well...visualize a toilet in action and you'll get my drift. "I can't give a fuck 'bout what you saying, what you talking. I be sparking, nigga, I just tryna smoke my weed. Blowin' on some gas in a Swisher with some hash in the middle. Dawg, I'm choking, homie, I can't breathe. Got me screaming. Fuck them other niggas cause I'm down for my niggas. Keep on smokin' it 'til my eyes bleed." What about that doesn't scream "good old fashioned family entertainment?" Again we've got the whole social conundrum where young blacks are tossing around the word nigger as if it somehow became an acceptable word between the time I went to sleep last night and the moment I woke up this morning. As was previously pointed out the f word plays a big time role in their "artistry". Visiting the world of rappers like these is akin to blasting off in a spaceship and visiting a whole other world entirely. It's not a world I'd want to revisit but it's there to be explored by whoever's bold enough (or puerile enough as the case may be)to give it a try. "Get'n Drunk" gives me confidence about the future of our much maligned country. The whole get drunk 'til I pass out thing makes me glad I'm a childless person with no interest in trying to teach a child why it's not a great health prolonging idea to engage in such risky activity. The same priniciple applies to sniffing glue, sniffing rubber cement, or, as we local Austinites learned on the news courtesy of a sixteen year-old girl who's got issues different from the ones I'm wrestling with, launching yourself out of a moving school bus. "Roofless" is here to teach us exactly the social skills we should adhere to. Remember...if you do not give a fuck punch that nigga' in the face. One thing seems certain. There aren't going to be too many young black men on the streets of the ghetto in the future because they all will be brought up on assault charges for punching their contemporaries in the face. It's okay to tear your hair out now. I won't tattle. MellowHigh, if it's the hip hop act poised to lead some sort of modern revolution in rap makes me want to ram myself into an actual brick wall until I lose consciousness. At least sweet nothingness should be a welcome respite. I feel saddened not only for the people who dash right out to buy this album, or scramble to load it on iPod, but for the record industry that thrusts this onto the public without so much as a pang of a guilty conscience. Rap lovers, art lovers, hell...anyone who spends their days walking around on two feet deserves better than this. The public's introduction to MellowHigh constitutes a low point in hip hop culture.