metal bands that came out with albums this weekend (some with bonus crossword puzzle clues)

Ulcerate (I like metal bands that are just medical conditions), REZN, Crypt Sermon (honestly a better place to do one than the Farmer’s Market, guys), Malignancy (even worse than ulceration), SQUID PISSER (there’s nothing funny to say about this), Celestial Sanctuary (sounds surprisingly peaceful), Crowheart, Lucifer’s Hammer (it’s not your grandma’s hellish weapon!), Moru, DAGOBA (not finished, your training is), Golgotha, Fellwarden (but he gets back up again), Darkend, Darkened (if you go to a double bill of these two bands, you can’t tell which one was announced), D’muata, New Horizon, Paradise in Flames, APES, Downfall of Mankind (seems like we’ve been falling down a long time), Astral Lore, LARCɆNIA ROɆ (they could have just removed the E’s, they didn’t have to cross them out), Katakomb, Stonekind, Merged in Abyss (this is a pretty romantic abyss), Shamash (what she-hulk does?), Aelvetica (what the spidery metal font is called), Erzsébet, and Angel Sword!

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: metal bands that came out with albums this weekend (some with bonus crossword puzzle clues)
it's categorized as: Uncategorized
link to it, please: Saturday, June 15th, 2024

I saw Skid Row open for Guns N’ Roses on May 25th, 1991

My teenage friends and I liked Skid Row just fine, but considered them a bit of a corny also-ran compared to the unhinged titans of rock we considered Guns N’ Roses at the time.  They had a hit with cautionary “18 and Life” about a young guy who drunkenly shoots his friend and gets life in prison, and a couple of other minor songs.  They weren’t a laughingstock like Winger or Warrant… my teenage friends and I basically respected them.

We were a little surprised when they took the stage at Alpine Valley and played incredibly energetic versions of all the songs we knew.  Sebastian Bach (born Sebastian Philip Bierk), the lead singer of Skid Row, was in top form and crushed the set.  We couldn’t help but be impressed.  It was the first time I’d ever seen an opening band really impress.  By the end of their set, the crowd was hungry for more, but they were clearly not allowed to overshadow the main event and apologized saying they really couldn’t do an encore and their time was up.  The crowd was disappointed but… hey, Guns N’ Roses.

It was actually a cold late May night.  Alpine Valley is an outdoor venue in southern Wisconsin, and general admission seats past the assigned seats in front have no shelter.  You’re just sitting on the grass in the elements.  As we began the long wait for GNR, it began to drizzle a little.  Axl Rose and company allowed us to wait in the wet cold for a little over THREE HOURS.  We really wished we could have had a longer Skid Row set.

By the time Guns N’ Roses finally came on, after 11pm, we had a long drive home, and we were underwhelmed by the first few songs and joined the slow exodus of soggy people filing home early in the show.  As we left we heard Axl Rose screaming at us, “Where you going, you wusses*?” (* He didn’t say wusses.)

The rumor is that Bach got fired from the band for being unwilling to open for KISS.  Side note: Bach was originally discovered singing at a New Jersey wedding by Jon Bon Jovi’s parents, who told him he should audition for Skid Row.   Skid Row didn’t last long after the night of the show we saw, but Sebastian Bach somehow kept going.  

He joined a rock supergroup with members of The Breeders, Frogs, and Smashing Pumpkins (hilariously called The Last Hard Men) but Atlantic decided not to release their debut album.  He auditioned for the fairly successful supergroup Velvet Revolver, but was rejected because Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash said, “I love Sebastian, but it, if you can imagine, it sounded sort of like Skid N’ Roses.”  (The lead singer of Slipknot was also considered, but ultimately they went with the lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots.)

Sebastian turned to acting as well.  He played Riff Raff in a production of The Rocky Horror Show and Jesus Christ in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar.  He had a fairly long run on the sitcom Gilmore Girls as the lead guitarist of a band called Hep Alien (the most Girlmore Girls-ey band name I can possibly think of).  He appeared on the show Trailer Park Boys.  

He also appeared in countless reality shows including the VH1 reality show Supergroup (where he formed a super group with Ted Nugent, Scott Ian, Jason Bonham, and Evan Seinfeld and was named Damnocracy… you can not make this stuff up), Celebrity Rap Superstar, Gone Country, and a show called I Married…Sebastian Bach.

Incidentally, Sebastian Bach never stopped recording and releasing solo albums.  Most are forgettable but decent, but 2007’s Angel Down recieved a lot of critical acclaim and I must admit I found some retro pleasure in how hard it rocked.

Why am I telling this story? Well, today vocalist and guitar player Sebastian Bach, formerly of Skid Row, releases his solo album entitled Child Within the Man. Long may you rock, Sebastian Bach!

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: I saw Skid Row open for Guns N’ Roses on May 25th, 1991
it's categorized as: Albums, Concerts, Reviews, Uncategorized
link to it, please: Friday, May 10th, 2024

Paul Simon’s perhaps final Seven Psalms?

I wasn’t expecting a 33 minute, single track Paul Simon album contemplating death, but Seven Psalms is definitely worth a listen.

It almost feels like a Sufjan Stevens album: spare, pretty, plaintive, faithful.

I was curious if his wife, Edie Brickell’s voice would appear at all, and, sure enough, in the final half, it does. I’m actually a fan of hers, and she’s continued to make music in the last decade, although none of it has really captured me. It’s nice to see her singing the writing of an ultimately stronger songwriter.

I’ve always had an appreciation for Paul Simon, who has had several eras of relevance: several Simon and Garfunkel albums with several monolithic hits, his fun solo hits from the 60’s and 70’s, the way Graceland was so widely loved and then kind of disdained in later eras for his use of African music, I still remember thinking “You Can Call Me Al” was hilarious when it came out.

People are of course comparing this to recent “final albums” like Bowie’s Blackstar and Cohen’s You Want it Darker. If he actually kicks the bucket in the next few months, the comparisons will be inevitable. In any case, it’s a mellow, humble thing, not a giant, crushing, ambitious work like Blackstar.

It’s definitely unlike any other Paul Simon album though. he says that its 33 minutes are designed to be listened to in one go (which I am currently doing) hence why he smashes every track together into one, and ends it with a gentle harmony with his wife of decades, “Amen”.

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: Paul Simon’s perhaps final Seven Psalms?
it's categorized as: Albums, Reviews
link to it, please: Saturday, May 20th, 2023

Leslie Feist is Multitudes

I’m finally getting a chance to listen to the new Leslie Feist record, Multitudes.

I’ve long loved Feist, and her first two albums Let It Die and The Reminder are all-time classics in my house. Her songs were always simple, funny, romantic, relatable, and tragic to me.

Her early song “Brandy Alexander”, comparing her FWB to a rich, sweet cocktail made me want to try that cocktail for years, and by the time I had an opportunity I didn’t want to flood my system with all the lactose.

I must admit with each passing Feist album since The Reminder, I have listened less and less thoroughly as they’ve seemed more meditative and their themes less easy to understand.

Feist’s incredible keening voice is like no other, but it was always her funny, relatable songwriting that brought me back. The Fleet Foxes songwriting over the years always kept me coming back, but I always felt like Feist was slipping away from my understanding. The words of her songs never added up to something I’d return to.

Listening to Multitudes I am definitely enjoying it. Its songs are standing out more to me than the songs of Metals and Pleasure, but I’m not quite hearing anything I’d put on the “driving playlist” yet.

It’s definitely worth watching the two great music videos she’s put out in support of the album, especially “Hiding Out in the Open”, where she does some extremely clever green-screen trickery that gets more funny and inventive as the song goes on.

It’s not QUITE as awesome, but the video for “Borrow Trouble” is pretty great as well and has some similar psychedelic trickery and seems recorded in the same studio. The dancing and movements remind a person that she’s steeped in physical performance and once went by “Baby Lap Lap” when she toured with shock electroclash rapper Peaches and performed onstage with hand puppets.

Her “Multitudes Mini-Concert” doesn’t have quite as considered production, but still has a few clever visual ideas and is clearly performed in the same place:

Enjoy!

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: Leslie Feist is Multitudes
it's categorized as: Albums, Reviews
link to it, please: Thursday, April 27th, 2023

A Return to Björk’s “Weird” Volta

Revisited Björk’s Volta for the first time since it came out today. I definitely appreciate it more today than when it came out.

By the time it came out I’d been hanging on Björk’s every word for years. I knew every word of every one of her albums. Even though Medulla was a little bit of a rough listen, I really appreciated what she was doing to innovate here.

When Volta came out it seemed like she was a little out of ideas, and just being weird for weirdness’ sake. It was less grounded in traditional music than most of her albums and just felt like a pastiche of some of the weirder and harsher moments in Post and Homogenic. Also, songwriting-wise it just didn’t seem like the ideas were there.

Listening to it now, I can hear the ways it was ahead of its time, and was influential. Now I’ve also listened to MUCH MUCH weirder music than I had in 2007 and it doesn’t sound quite as out there anymore.

Even this dazed article calls it her “weirdest album”, which, was it even in 2017? Even in 2005 she had made the MUCH weirder Drawing Restraint #9. https://dazeddigital.com/music/article/35751/1/bjork-volta-ten-year-retrospective…

I still don’t love it, but I was able to enjoy it this time, instead of completely dismissing it.

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: A Return to Björk’s “Weird” Volta
it's categorized as: Albums, Reviews
link to it, please: Thursday, April 27th, 2023

the sweet snob is the midnight dj

fun fact: edie brickell wrote one sick funk song


From the sweet snob midnight hour it’s Al Green, with his secret weapon minor hit, Back Up Train. “ease the pain. take me to my baby.”

Sound and color. Blow your mind.

The most dangerous song in freak folk.

“I’m through having your harsh march stare down my size.”

This song makes losers feel like winners.

“I’ve been in showbiz long enough, you need to wait your turn.”

This is a dope rap in its own way.

This dude never made another song this cool but damn.

I actually think it’s pretty cute that the ONLY EVER legally approved Grateful Dead sample is in THIS SONG, and it doesn’t show up until 3:09 in the song and makes the song sound like it’s saying words the original song LITERALLY DO NOT SAY.

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: the sweet snob is the midnight dj
it's categorized as: _ My Personal Classics
link to it, please: Wednesday, March 16th, 2022

The 25 Sweetest, Snobbiest Album Covers of 2021

You may not even recognize the artists I picked for my top 25 album covers, since smaller artists sometimes put the most effort into making attention-getting album covers.

Sadly, musicians rarely credit the artist of their covers, but when I’m able to, I call out the artist name. In some rare cases it’s actually the artist themselves who made the cover, like in the case of #10’s Darth Sueder VI by AJ Sueder.

I had to rank the covers in some order but I think every single one of these covers is great. So with that, enjoy my favorite 25 albums. Enjoy, I say!

#25: Failure – Wild Type Droid

#24: Exbats – Now Where Were We

#23: Castello Branco – Niska: Uma Mensagem para Tempos de Emergência

#22: Ty Farris – No Cosign Just Cocaine 2

#21: Acid Mammoth – Caravan

#20 – Diablo Swing Orchestra – Swagger and Stroll Down the Rabbit Hole

#19: The Architects – For Those Who Wish To Exist

#18: Udondolo – Urban Village

#17: Ritual Divination – Here Lies Man

#16: Bodies of Water – Is This What It’s Like

#15: MECO – Transmute

#14 – POLYDANS – Roosevelt

#13: Ghett – Conflict of Interest

#12: Fotocrime – Heart of Crime

Hot and dorky in a very French way. Like the movie Le Samouraï:

Much like that vibe, Fotocrime’s cover is lurid and ugly-beautiful. I want to read the graphic novel I wish existed.

#11: Sad Night Dynamite- Sad Night Dynamite

Did human beings submerge an actual functioning Limo to get this picture? Was a picture altered? I can’t know, but it gets the feeling of the album across. “Icy Violence” is the (very Gorillaz inspired) song that really goes along with this cover.

#10: AJ Suede – Darth Sueder VI

AJ Suede does his own covers and he does an incredible job. The cover of Darth Sueder VI just gets everything right. The parental advisory sticker in Japanese Kanji is a particularly slick touch.

#9: Villagers – Fever Dreams

Such a crisp, beautiful image that asks more questions than it answers. All I know is that bear is super fucking magical.

#8: K-Drama – Both Sides of the Blessing

This is easily the best Christian rap album cover I have ever seen. I challenge you to find me a better one. Was it enough to get me to give this album a serious listen? Not yet. But this album cover is working on me.

#7: KEY- BAD LOVE

This ray gun wouldn’t kill Godzilla, but it would stun him.

#6: Logic1000 – In The Sweetness of You

This is like the uncanny valley of food. Sure, someone really made it, but my brain still isn’t convinced. Luminously lit, but I’m sure that cherry still has a pit.

Jell-O cake appearance: 10

Actual edibility: 6

#5: Odette -Herald

Odette is gorgeous, her music is gorgeous, and this cover is a gorgeous and grotesque painting of her.

#4: Mexican Institute of Sound – Distrito Federal

One of the best albums I listened to because of the cover. Fun, funky, Funkadelic-inspired, the music and the cover. The cover does a great job of letting you know the funky Mexican experience you’re about to have. Electric war babies definitely might get spanked. The slop might get cosmic. This cover has the most mystical, Mexican porn pop-up window.

#3: Baker Boy – Gela

This person is beautiful, the painting is beautiful. What do you call polka dot war paint? Fun paint?

#2: CARCASS – Torn Arteries

I just can’t believe someone did such a good job of making a human heart out of vegetables. That person is a true artist.

Speaking of, I try to find the artists who made these covers, I really do. It’s amazing, however, how uncommon it is to see album covers artists credited.

#1: Eidola – The Architect

This cover is good worldbuilding. I immediately can imagine an entire work of fiction where this Architect character exists, where this mask makes sense. Either someone actually fabricated this incredible mask, or very skillfully used CGI to overlay it on an actual photo. Either way, the effect is incredible.

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: The 25 Sweetest, Snobbiest Album Covers of 2021
it's categorized as: Album Covers, Reviews
link to it, please: Sunday, January 9th, 2022

2021 Album Cover BEST and WORST Honorable Mentions

These are the odds-and-ends that deserved their own categories.

BEST / Fashion

Lovely photo, but the outfit and hairstyle are what elevate this. This guy’s slightly oversized, rumpled dinner jacket over matching pants with bright red shirt and tangled gold accents are sublime. If I saw this dude in person, I’d walk right up to him and tell him how fresh his style is. I feel like you could pull this off in several decades of the past 100 years.

BEST / Attempt to Get All of the Members of a K-Pop Group on Cover

There were almost as many K-Pop albums released this year as heavy metal, which is a lot. K-Pop albums tend to go one of two different directions:

  1. Incredible graphic design
  2. Fit all the inevitably large number of band members on the cover

A surprising number of K-Pop bands choose #2 and their attempts can often be hilarious. What Red Velvet did here on their album “Queendom” is pretty darn next level, involving baloons, birds, wind, and earth moving equipment. It’s safe to say they “really nailed the shot”.

In the runner-up, they managed to get everyone’s heads even, and some pretty incredibly typography to boot. Once you see that R kicked in the stomach and doubled over you can’t unsee it, though.

WORST / Attempt to Get All of the Members of a K-Pop Group on the Cover

Boymen are pretty much the worst offender in this category. There’s a lot of gradations of bad before you get here, however. In full size for your eyeball bleeding pleasure:

BEST / Funniest

This album cover of a confused knife wielding clown demanding to know what, exactly, is so fucking funny, had me in stitches all day the day I posted it, and I still haven’t found a funnier album cover this year.

First runner up for funniest, these two guys holding an info card over themselves with important info like name and “type of voice” (super high tone!) plus drawn on bowties and hairstyles definitely tickled me.

Funniest runner up to the runner up. This guys cover for drugs depicts him both “together” and fully drugged out. I love that in the “fully together” version his tie is still loosened and he’s still smoking a cigarette. In the drug photo he looks properly deranged. Hope you’re having fun, Tyler Posey, recovery is not far behind.

WORST / Ringo Starr Release in 2021

Ringo. You are a goddamn former member of The Beatles and can presumably afford some real heavy-duty PR muscle, but the reality is, your version of cool ended in 1990, which is why when you saw this bargain-bin album cover, you said “YES! CHANGE THE WORLD! THIS IS MY ALBUM COVER!”

The truly hilarious thing here is, that there’s a runner-up in this category…

…yes, another scrubby photo of Ringo Starr, another laughably outdated sentiment and album cover that would have looked dated in 1990. And those… extra jacket zippers? My god.

BEST / Graphic Novel Style

I saw a lot of comic book cover-type art this year, but nothing nearly as striking as this comic look inside a lonely memory. Incredibly impactful graphic image. Crisp, clean, balanced, perfect depiction.

WORST, er, BEST? / ATBGE (Atrocious Taste But Great Execution)

These covers are very well executed, but still incredibly gross and/or cheesy.

WORST / Grossest Mouth

I can’t believe I have to report this had to be a category of its own, and that I actually REJECTED several other gross mouth photos. Stop trying to pass off gross photos of your mouth as an album cover, people.

The busted lip and broken tooth somehow make this, every so slightly grosser than…

…the also horrifying runner-up. There are many, many other examples this year I won’t pain you with.

Best Minimal Use of Type

WORST / Minimal Type Design

Everything about the Yung Head$hit title and cover make me feel dumber. Creativiting Us: From Darkness To All… the holy what? I assure you this dude’s raps are just as poorly written and executed. It’s legitimately embarrassing. But to top it off, the weird mix of alignment, type-sizes, and just horrible balance are really a headscratcher.

BEST / Most Mixtape-ey Mixtape Cover

Checking all the mixtape boxes is important in a Hip Hop mixtape cover, but this one checked all the boxes and then some. Sure other mixtape covers have a cup of lean, but does even their pitbull have a Rollie and a scale? Probably not. Lil’ Migo has corrected that.

BEST / Album Cover I’d Definitely Play if it was a Mobile Game

Well, you know exactly what kind of glossy math rock this is going to be as an album, but I couldn’t help wishing this was a mobile game! I want to play the old dude with the flamethrower and sword mowing down approaching biplanes with fire! Missed opportunity!

BEST Themed Series of Covers – Cue Dot Records

Some time last year, the experimental and electronic music label Cue Dot Records came up with a simple idea for their album covers: a 5X5 grid of colored circles creating an incredibly low resolution icon. Then, for well over a year, they’ve used this framework to express the concept of the individual artist and album releases they put out.

I couldn’t really pick the best, so I’m just posting most of their release covers for 2021. To see all the rest, just go to the Cue Dot Records bandcamp page.

I particularly love Manfred Hamil’s “Everything Fades” for the clearest illustration of an idea in so very few bits.

STAY TUNED for the best album covers of 2021

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: 2021 Album Cover BEST and WORST Honorable Mentions
it's categorized as: Album Covers, Reviews
link to it, please: Saturday, January 1st, 2022

Album Covers of 2021: HEAVY. METAL. EDITION.

If I had to guess, I’d say more heavy metal albums are released than any other single genre. Of course, I’m lumping together Drone Metal, Grindcore, Sludge Metal, Stoner Metal, Black Metal, Industrial Black Metal, Space Metal, Melodic Metal, Thrash Metal, Symphonic Black Metal, Funk Metal, Rap Metal, and a bunch of other metals I can’t even think of right now. If you think I made any of those up, you definitely don’t metal. But now you can get a taste, without even listening to any metal.

That is because heavy metal album covers have their own world. Their own aesthetic. Their own complicated iconography. Get a taste of it here, starting with…

The Worst:

Some metal album covers look like a skilled 7th grader did them, or they’re just so corny you can’t believe an adult thought they were cool.

The Gnarliest:

This is the core of the heavy metal aesthetic. Body horror. Apocalypse. Apocalyptic body horror. Gates opening to hell. Horrific monsters. Dystopian future war. Things growing into or out of people’s faces.

The Best

These are the best conventional heavy metal album covers. They’re overdone and gnarly, but in a really cool, balanced way!

The Unconventional:

You wouldn’t even guess these were heavy metal albums. I laud these albums for taking the Heavy Metal Album Cover in a new direction.

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: Album Covers of 2021: HEAVY. METAL. EDITION.
it's categorized as: Album Covers, Reviews
link to it, please: Thursday, December 30th, 2021

The 10 WORST Album Covers of 2021

I stopped doing Twitter reviews of bad albums at some point earlier this year. Why? Because no matter how funny my reviews are: no one “likes” bad album covers. Thus, no one sees the reviews. So I’m sure I missed many bad album covers, because I only included ones I posted at the time. Also, there are dozens of bad Hip Hop Mix Tapes released every week and I generally don’t cover them because…I feel like it would veer into actually racist territory. There’s a notable exception on the list.

For instance there are a million of these:

That said, I am absolutely certain that my #1 worst album of the year is actually, objectively the worst album released this year. It would take a very bad album cover indeed to beat it for the rest of the decade, in my opinion. It is horrible. Props to Exclaim’s excellent list. They caught many I missed, and although we disagree on a few, I am happy to say we both agree on the #1 worst album of the year.

Not included are bad heavy metal covers because heavy metal covers are their own genre, and I’m giving them their own list.

#10: Willie Jones – Right Now

Right No.

#9: Sun Kil Moon – Welcome to Sparks, NV

There are a lot of album covers like this, a cruddy, poorly exposed photo with some lens flare that the artist themselves took. They clearly deluded themselves into thinking was more meaningful than it is. This is just a photo of the sun shining through treetops with lens flare that washes out all the contrast and saturation of the photo. If this was on Instagram you would just scroll right past it, perhaps with a snort. Then he just slapped some white text and a horizontal line on it. Good job, Mark. That really makes me want to listen to more of your depressed warbling.

#8 – BennY RevivaL – GLAAD GAME

Months later, and I still can’t decide how intentionally bad this album cover is. I am all for sex positive gender expression and weirdness, absolutely, but this is an assault on the senses that I can’t let slide. I feel like they promised too many friends a spot on their cover and had like fifteen minutes to put the collage together and run to Kinkos. All the photos mashed together without any kind of border or layout. The font mixing. The white-on-rainbow-in-a-narrow-strip. It all seems designed to harm the eyes. And it’s successful.

#7: Lil Wayne & Rich the Kid – Trust Fund Babies

This is what multi-millionaire entertainer Lil Wayne chose to front his collab mix tape with Rich the Kid. I get that he’s projecting low expectations but damn is it bad.

#6: DoisPes & bedhop – C A F E

If I were going to teach a typography and graphic design class, I could use this album cover as a thesis level study on what not to do. It’s like a parody of bad typography. See if you can identify all the horrifying choices they made.

#5: DJ Blackpower – blp2021: “for ur own good”

It burns.

#4: “CHAIN GANG HALO WORLD” by BLACK KRAY AKA SICKBOYRARI is LIVE FROM GOTHGANISTAN

I will admit that this recording and album cover no longer really exists on the internet, but it did on August 20th, 2021. However, Goth Money Records still exists and this definitely matches their album cover profile. Allow yourself to just slowly absorb all the elements in this album cover. It’s magnificent. I almost regret putting it in the “Worst Albums” list and not the “Best Albums” list.

Almost.

#3: Margaret – Maggie Vision

There’s so much glow on Polish hip-hop artist Margaret’s album cover, it’s hard to find an element on it that’s not glowing. The logo is glowing. Maggie herself is glowing. The disco balls are glowing. The overlapping boxes haphazardly laid over each other are glowing. There are a few bonus glowing spheres in the background, just to make sure there’s enough glow.

I actually listened to this album, and it’s a relatively well-produced and enjoyable, if cookie-cutter, Polish pop album. I’m genuinely sad for her that she was saddled with this hack job of an album cover.

#2: Rigo – Pimpin On The Web

Every Friday of the year, there are at least five truly awful Hip Hop mixtape covers. I usually don’t bother to cover them, even though some are laughably bad. But still, I have some special hostility for casual misogyny and glorification of sex trafficking in 2021. The stereotypes here are so ugly, so lazy, so poorly executed, so lumpy and stupid, that I just had to highlight how bad this cover is. It’s sort of like a bad political comic, but even worse.

#1: Drake – Certified Lover Boy

You’ll notice I use the 80’s hip-hop terminology whack here to describe Drake and the fact that he thought this whole thing was a good idea. I use whack instead of some other word to say it sucks for a specific reason. Whack has the connotation in hip-hop terminology to mean not only is an artist is bad, but that they’re embarrassingly bad and they don’t even realize it. They think they’re really good, but their self delusion is part of what makes them and their art suck so badly. That’s why I use the term here liberally, and I’ve never used it more appropriately.

Drake’s incredible achievement of in-poor-taste peak whackness couldn’t have been done alone. Drake actually commissioned the “world famous official fine artist of pure whackness” Damien Hirst. Damien Hirst is the type of guy to:

So, it’s kind of a marriage of whackness made in heaven. I get what he’s going for here but this is multilevel whack on whack on whack. The implication here is that Drake’s “character” in this album, the titular “Certified Lover Boy” is so virile and prolific that he’s an equal opportunity simultaneous impregnator of women of all races and creeds that they can be reduced to an emoji to save time when representing them.

Can this possibly get worse? Yes. Let me provide some context:

Drake, notably, definitively lost 2018’s most insane rap battle when rapper Pusha T revealed that Drake:

A) Had appeared in “blacker-face” for a previous project he did… yes, this is a picture of young Drake:

B) Had a secret love child named Adonis who he was planning on announcing to the world with an Adidas shoe line and press tour.

Pusha T’s rap (which I very highly recommend listening to if you like brutality) basically tanked the Adidas deal (we guess the shoe line must have been called Adidon) and ended Drake’s high batting average of “winning” rap battles in the public eye definitively.

So, to some extent, this album cover can be read as him trying to rebrand himself as someone who’s proud of having fathered a bunch of secret love children. You see where I’m going with how truly whack this is?

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: The 10 WORST Album Covers of 2021
it's categorized as: Album Covers, Reviews
link to it, please: Wednesday, December 29th, 2021
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