Category: Uncategorized

For years I wrote off anything attached to the name A$AP Rocky, assuming he produced music on the same level as the Meek Mills and 2 Chainz’s of rap. However, his recent album Long.Live.A$AP quells all of my skepticism and distrust. A$AP Rocky’s album is close to being on par with Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid m.A.A.d City, but falls short in a few crucial areas. A$AP Rocky, despite showing amazing potential with this record, still cannot seem to abandon his common themes of drugs, guns and women, which permeate almost every song he’s ever released. A$AP shines when he is able to circumvent this habit and rap about significant issues. This dichotomy defines Long.Live.A$AP; half of the tracks (mostly those which feature other artists) are so outstanding that they could be considered the top Hip Hop releases of the year, while the other half are downright amateurish. A closer look at a few of the songs better represents the album’s range.

Arguably the most well known track off of Long.Live.A$AP is “F**kin’ Problems” by A$AP, 2 Chainz, Drake and Kendrick Lamar. As 2 Chainz is only useful when used as comic relief in absurd songs, I applaud his feature on this song. The premise is downright ludicrous, and there’s nobody better to perpetuate its ridiculousness than 2 Chaniz. Furthermore, he is deservedly only allowed a few words in the hook, which is arguably too many already. Beyond this, the song allows A$AP, Drake and Kendrick to boast their male dominance and establish themselves, essentially, as alpha males. However, they do so in a skilled and creative way, and it pays off. “F**kin’ Problems” is a catchy, well-versed song that, while most likely will not live longer than a few months, is more than enjoyable for the time being.

After skipping the next track, we arrive at the album’s masterpiece. “1Train,” featuring Kendrick Lamar, Joey Bada$$, Yelawolf, Danny Brown, Action Bronson and Big K.R.I.T. is without a doubt one of the best Hip Hop singles in the past year. This song is easily comparable to “So Appalled” off My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy; both tracks feature a deep and hypnotic beat (Hit Boy keeps his streak going) and a series of superb verses from featured rappers. A$AP takes it a step further and eradicates all choruses from the song; these 7 rappers follow one another without any pause, spitting unbelievably powerful lyrics. This is unsurprising, as Kendrick, Joey and KRIT are considered the three best young rappers in the game at the moment, and bringing them together with such lyrical freedom could only have produced amazing results. Joey, at age 18, is grappling with the prospect of working with artists like Jay-Z, and staying connected to his networks and life at home. He states, “And I’m thinking about signing to the Roc/But my ni**as on the block still assigned to the rocks.” Anchoring this impressive team of MC’s, Big K.R.I.T. reflects on his process of becoming a true artist, powerfully remembering issues from earlier in his life. He recalls, “All I had was rap when all they had was wack/All I wanted was love, all they had was dap.” In my opinion, this is an utterly brilliant line. Considering his initial stages as a rapper, he maintains that he was making real rap music while his competitors were not; he was looking for the confirmation and was not receiving enough of it.

Conversely, the album also boasts songs such as “PMW (All I Really Need).” Standing for pussy money weed, this song offers nothing into A$AP’s abilities as a writer or rapper. The other songs fall under the same category, and are too congested with sounds of gun shots and harsh sexual references to be considered impressive music. Unfortunately, Schoolboy Q’s features appear on these types of songs, but his verses are for the most part much better. There are also a couple songs such as “Fashion Killa,” “LVL” and “I Come Apart ft. Florence Welch” that, while not on the same level as “1Train” are nonetheless excellent. All in all, A$AP is showing a ton of promise with this album, especially considering the unprecedented level of talent he was able to recruit in the form of his featuring artists. However, if he wants to really make a name for himself in the Hip Hop world, he needs to relinquish his juvenile obsession with rapping about girls, guns and drugs. If Long.Live.A$AP is any indication, he is on the right track.

I love cooking. And baking. And food.

You may scoff and say “Who doesn’t?” but you don’t understand. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE food. My father always says that other people eat to live but I live to eat.

The roughest part of living in dorms was always the food aspect. I missed cooking like I would miss a limb and I missed having delicious food. In high school, as soon as I came home from class, I spent a good three hours designing a four-  to five-course meal and then making it and then the glorious part: eating it.

While I have adapted to eating godawful shit dining hall food, I still miss food. Real food. That I made with my own hands. While listening to Edith Piaf. It’s especially rough after breaks, where I go home for the few days off class and cook again. I went home MLK weekend and haven’t fully adjusted back to dorm life. And the pictures and taste of the chocolate raspberry tart I made still haunt and taunt me.

Thus, in my despair and separation from sweet treats and savory wonders, I have turned to porn. Food porn, that is. And found a whole new world of art.

Food art is especially emphasized in Japanese culture, where it is commonly believed that people eat with their eyes first. Thus, food has an extremely visual aspect and a chef must not only train to prepare delicious food but also learn how to present it in an extremely aesthetically pleasing way. Beautiful geometry, symmetry, and variation in color are especially utilized.

And everyone who wastes their days away on Reddit and Tumblr knows bento art aka lunch box art. Bento boxes, Japanese lunch boxes, are known for having different compartments and are the inspiration for some crazy art.

Artistic fruit bowls are also becoming an extremely popular way to add pop to a party due to their relative affordability and DIY potential.

For the hardcore:

How I want to learn how to do that one day… Instead of having an ice sculpture at my dream classy cocktail party, I’ll just carve a bunch of fruits and display that.

Edible Arrangements have nothing on this.

Yes, the following is a real thing, not Photoshopped.

Microsculpting is also a thing.

Hungry yet?

Fruits, vegetables, nuts and other gifts of Mother Nature are already ridiculously beautiful but this is just a whole another level.

Sorry for the lazy post. I just wanted an excuse to search for more food.

This past weekend I visited a friend at Stanford University and had the pleasure of going to the Cantor Arts Center, the University’s museum. The museum has an enormous collection of Rodin sculptures, and although I have seen many Rodin in passing throughout my life, I have never had the opportunity to view endless (as their collection felt) Rodins in the span of merely an hour. The museum had over three rooms of Rodin as well as an outside sculpture garden of his sculptures. Of all the works, however, what was the most stunning and awe inducing was The Thinker of 1881, the enormous 182 x 77 x 142 cm bronze sculpture of a man sitting, his head in his hands, ruminating over his thoughts. Rodin’s rendering of the human body, I believe, is unique in for his capability of capturing the human form, movement and ambiance is utterly and entirely reminisce of the actual human being.

Amazed as I was by Stanford’s Rodin collection, I decided that, upon arriving back in Ann Arbor, my first stop would be to spend some time in UMMA. Somehow, in all my countless ventures at our University’s museum, I missed what I believe to be a true highlight of our entire museum’s collection – the sequential statues by Rodin titled “Dance Movement”. Although these Rodin sculptures are far smaller in size than the massive sculptures featured at Stanford, being in the presence of Rodin in Ann Arbor was yet another reminder of how often I find myself taking for granted the incredible works of art that are present at UMMA. The museum’s truly exhaustive collection is one that should be both highlighted and cherished.

Date: 2 February

Time: 18:82 (for those uncultured [re: non-”pretentious”] Americans–4:22pm)

Place: Diag

The bells oddly tolled a few minutes late, marking the time the artist arrived to when he started as a waiting period. He stood with brush in hand, close enough to the canvas to look like he was touching it (but there is always room for Jesus), and stood completely still. Dead still.

The frame was 3×3 and white—white like the frail, thin hands of the woman who stood a distance aways, flaming red hair. 3×3 like her mouth as it made a “C” to read the first word, “Lily…” She started from the top of the steps of the grad library and descended at a rate of one step per 3 minutes. After she had reached and tapped the bottom step, she repeated her motion backwards up to the top steps and topped the topmost step, and then she repeated her motion forwards down the steps and tipped the bottom step…

The man was too aware of her movement and each time a tap, top, or tip rang through his ear he jolted the brush in a circular fashion that obscured the staircase from being a staircase. In the end it resembled a face, a foetus, a flower, but really the staircase turned inwards. It was filled with color: light green, dark green, medium green. He was dressed in black and smoked a dark-chocolate brown cigar (rebel) that was shaped all to phallically for the passersby dressed in head-to-toe white.

Her hands quivered. The snow was falling over the scene and gently smudged the green into green into green. He w(h)ip(p)ed the mistakes out of the canvas and the wooden frame began to morph. But he couldn’t go too crazy. He stepped back and stared through it as if it were a window looking out onto the scene. As if he were paces behind the woman’s frame, safely inside the stacks of white pages, staring as if the blanket was coming down all too fast against his feet, and before long his eyes would begin to close over the white landscape of his eyes.

But they hadn’t any time and the chimes struck again. Her mouth folded into a “C” as she whispered–this time, “She was fast asleep.”

He quickly moved from the center of the “M” and grabbed, from behind a garbage can full of rats, gray paint. A gray that would paint the London sky on a rainy afternoon, a grey that would splash the sidewalks and sewers, the grey of cityscapes, and the gray of a fog that won’t quite lift. He took the gallon and dumped it onto the art. No canvas, no frame stood in its way and once the entire gallon had dissolved onto the canvas he got a spray bottle full of vodka. He sprayed and shot and shot and sprayed and now that the two were just buzzed enough he picked up the frame and brought it near to her. It was her 13th time on the 1st step. She picked up her foot and sent it crashing through the grey/gray/green stair-fa-foet-case.

“His own identity” as the artist “was fading out into a grey” canvas and all he knew to do was to rip the frame from itself. He could not have done it soon enough because as she read aloud the last word, the whole scene became “dead.”

These events I find most odd, peculiar. I can’t help but laugh and ask for forgiveness when something like this happens close to me. Guilty by association. I felt that it was…different…and some would even say…but I’m not them and I’m not to say. It is on these afternoons at 19:41 where I can only think that this was a “portrait” told by an artist, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The bell chimed.

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) boasts a colorful and poignant soundtrack written by composer Dan Romer and the film’s director Benh Zeitlin. Its score is rooted firmly in a sense of place and a sense of indefatigable spirit, its identity very much dependent on the identities of the setting and of the characters themselves. We hear the tension and the determination and the release as the young heroine fights to save her bayou community in the face of impending disaster.

The sounds are wonderful— folk elements have been blended with more traditional orchestral ones. We hear banjo and accordion, sober piano and the bright notes of brass instruments and perhaps a glockenspiel, and under all that what seems like a full oddslot string section supporting the entire thing. “We wanted the score to have an indigenous texture, but also have kick-you-in-the-face energy that modern pop music is so good at,” said Zeitlin. “To the rest of the world, it’s just a Cajun band, but in her [the protagonist’s] head it’s reharmonized and orchestrated.”

And that’s just it, isn’t it? Even as the film takes on the world through the perspective of the impossibly young protagonist, so does the music. “‘She sees herself living these glorious moments,’” said the composer, moments that a child scores for his or her own world, to accompany a life in which one is always the lead character.

The music is inexplicably satisfying, full-bodied in some places, simple and straightforward in others. But running all through the score is a forward-moving energy, lungfuls in and out, clear and wholesome, a sort of jubilance at life, go, go go.

Until Flash embedding functionality is restored, listen here.