God’s gonna trouble the water: What’s in a performance? In responding to the letter prompt “There’s nothing left to conserve,” Madison Pegram looks at one of society’s deepest and most concentrated efforts of conservation: art. Pegram examines multiple selections from Alvin Ailey’s Revelations, a classic piece of American repertory dance and tribute to black American culture. Through various movements, Pegram draws out the value of forward-thinking conservation, through the radical “conservative instinct” of Alvin Ailey’s pioneering American Dance Theater and what stories transmitted through dance mean for her grandmother, mother, herself, and the generations to come. In doing so, culturally-informed choreography helps “conserve and revitalize African American tradition by bringing it into the language of modern dance,” draws its audience into the new by respecting and revitalizing the old.
Charlie Phelan, assistant editor
Too much of a good thing: The newest wave of rap always gets maligned. Go through some old Internet forums and look at the way people talked about Lil Wayne. Online commenters treated like he was a disgrace to hip-hop. Lil Wayne? The guy making Tha Carter II and Tha Carter III? The guy ripping through mixtapes like a Gatling gun? That Lil Wayne?
In a genre all about battling for control and building on the work of your predecessors, there seems to be something in the listener that is naturally resistant to the idea of the new. We like guys that try to technically improve the conventions more than we like the ones who create their own, initially. This, conversely, also makes the new arrivals so exciting: the potential for something different, something that ducks pre-established methodology in favor of individual ingenuity.
This is what I had to remind myself while listening to Rest In Bass by Che. And I tried, I really did. I’ve listened to some weird, out-there rappers. But this album is bad. It’s really bad. What’s most frustrating about Rest In Bass is there are some genuinely cool moments. “ROLLING STONE” has adlibs that sound like Che’s trying to cool down a hot plate. The beat on “HOOD FAMOUS” warps and collapses in on itself. On “BOSSUPPPP” he ditches his high-pitched yelps in favor of a lower, more relaxed register. There are times when this album sounds good, but it’s simply not worth sifting through unlistenable songs to get there.
Great artists know how to identify these kinds of moments and use them, cutting the fat to make quality albums. Take Whole Lotta Red, which has become the blueprint for nearly every trap album from the last five years. Carti figured out how to take great ideas and build entire songs around them. “Rockstar Made” is just one monstrous guitar. “ILoveUIHateU” is just one screechy synth. Go listen to that album and tell me one reason why you would ever listen to Rest In Bass again. It’s the relentless repetition of these types of moments that creates the hypnotism of stellar trap albums. Rest In Bass never gets there.
Barter 6. A Great Chaos. DS2. These are albums that start with small, strong foundations and build upwards. On Rest In Bass, it seems like Che is just throwing things at the wall and anything good that comes from it is incidental. On great albums, these moments are intentional. Here, they’re accidental.
Charlie Phelan, assistant editor
Image: Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VII, oil on canvas, 1913 (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow).