Anthony Fantano is WRONG: "Black Ken" by Lil B (Album Review)

this video is not a regular album review
and it's not just here to critique or dispute someone else's album review there's a new mixtape out from little bee free to download called black Ken and I was astonished really genuinely astonished at the negative review given to it by Anthony Fanta no Anthony Fanta no is a very well known and vegan music critic here on YouTube and for me the review from Anthony Fantana is so bad it's so awful it's so misguided and so misleading that it really makes me question the role of music criticism in the 21st century the role of music criticism in an era when you can download this stuff and hear it for free in five seconds at no effort to yourself little B this is not piracy we're talking about little B is intentionally providing you with this music for free and I wanted to provide some reflections on that along with reflections on little B's album maybe a little bit about what little B's music has meant to me over the years because I am I am a rap aficionado rap is 90% of the music I listen to has been for many many years and of course that's not true of Anthony Fantana for him it's only one of many genres he listens to so he's at a little bit of a disadvantage here I don't know how well he knows little B's but that's look let's not get sidetracked back in the day people used to pay $20 cash for a CD I'm Canadian starting about $20 and it was routine for albums whether it's $15.99 or $20 where you live it was routine for a pop album to have two good tracks on it one single maybe one other good track to back it up and then maybe if you're lucky 7 to 12 tracks of filler of pretty low quality stuff and that was a hit album now I'm with two decent tracks and you could pay 20 bucks for it alright so called classic rap albums tons of them really have about four great tracks on them okay and it blows my mind that we've now got Anthony Fantana in such a contemptuous way dismissing this album from little B giving it 5 out of 10 when he admits repeatedly in the course of his review that it has multiple he doesn't give a specific number but it has several a significant number of really good tracks that he himself would like to listen to again that will stick around in his hard-driving okay okay so we're living in an era when I've got to say this whole concept of reading an album from 1 to 10 has become meaningless because you can download an album for free in seconds right therefore by definition every album is either a 0 or a 10 either an album is worthwhile for you to download or it is not now before doing this review before recording this video I checked an album that's considered an all-time classic from little B is the gods father mixtape okay so this is broadly broadly play praised by music critics by rap fans what-have-you and I believe from the gods father mixtape on my harddrive today I have 14 tracks okay the album had like more than 30 tracks on it and 14 survived so what do you think if I'm reviewing that album a free mixtape free to download do you think I'm gonna say it's garbage because more than 50% of the tracks got deleted that kind of critical lens does not make sense anymore now Lil B is an extreme case of this where he is not his own editor he goes to the studio he records a bunch of tracks day in day out and then he puts out the whole stack of music he's recorded for his fans for free and he leaves it up to you to pick and choose what you're gonna delete off your hard drive so yes it is a little bit I mean if you cut if you had come out of a time machine from the 1960s and you were used to highly polished highly professional concept albums where every track is closely related to the title of the album you know what I mean if you had grown up just listening to the Beatles you know sergeant pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band this kind of concept album where every track is part of a clear progression from beginning to end or with a super high recording budget there's nothing extraneous there no Onis tracks you don't have sand then yeah it might come to you as a shock that this new mixtape from little be it has 27 tracks and if you listen to them through you're probably gonna delete the majority of them even if you're a little beef am but this critical ends there were two critical ends there that make no sense look this album it's a ten do you know why right now I can name two songs on it that are great not just good but great I'd say still run it and the real is back those are two albums those are two tracks on the album that are great and then beyond that I don't have to nickel and dime every track here because it's all free music so if I'm talking to a friend or even if I'm doing a formal review I'd say look there are enough really outstanding tracks here to justify your time download in the album listening through and then deciding for yourself skip around fast for back board which tracks you're gonna delete and what you're gonna keep out of the twenty seven an offer here right now another thing that you don't kind of blows my mind all music criticism is biased in favor of experimental music and yet little B still managed to get a five out of ten out of this guy this is Anthony Fantana this is the same guy who gave the Death Grips a ten out of ten okay Death Grips are as experimental as hip-hop gets there's no way you can say that lil B's lyrical content is garbage or little B's lyrical delivery is weak relative to the Death Grips I'm sorry Anthony Fasano but you don't have a leg to stand on for sure there are critics there are voices within hip hop who maybe come out of a very traditional old school you know they just straight-up worship Ghostface and nothing else those faces new school technically but you know we're anything that doesn't live up to a certain particular standard of lyrical delivery and format is not going to get a high grade out of them but Anthony Fasano you rewarded the garbage lyrical content the worse than mumble rap incoherent covering up of totally inept rapping by the death crabs you rewarded that with a ten out of ten all right and that music does not hold up today like most experimental music Death Grips had a track I've seen footage it was a fresh new sound it was experimental it was different the lyrical content is non-existent the quality the rap delivery is zero but at that time sure it was something new something different something edgy he gave that a 10 out of 10 this new album will be is experimental and it's worth while pausing to think on what to mean by an experiment an experiment by definition has an outcome that is unknown has an outcome that is unpredictable if we knew what the outcome would be it would not be an experiment and that's actually true in the hard sciences and it's true in the arts also that's the meaning of what it really is to be experimental this album from little B you know I couldn't believe Anthony Fantana says like the the vocal delivery and the stuff from the B is the same as it always was he makes them dismissive comments it's completely untrue have you been listening little B and this is a real creative departure this is really innovative this is really different musically and in terms of lyrical style and it is reaching back to classic classic sounds from hip hop from the period when gangsta rap didn't yet really exist little B is really reaching back to and evoking memories of guys like school II D real pioneers and Lil B is intentionally staggering his vocal delivery and having these pauses that mimics and even some of his choice of slang is out-of-date hip-hop slang to bring back the sense of that era and he's playing his own keys might be need a great musical intro a lot of the keyboards are summoning up memories of Sega Genesis like it sounds like cheap Yamaha bass out of a cheap synth from that era you know like 16-bit era great sound really striking really different really experimental really new look man this year Raekwon put out an album it didn't push any boundaries there was absolutely nothing experimental an absolute nothing new about I'm a huge Raekwon fan if you asked me to do an all time five right now I would name Redcorn as number one okay but Raekwon put out an album called the wild he put it a new album this year and there is not a single track from it on my hard drive I listened through each track maybe twice and I deleted them all not a single track survived and a whole bunch of tracks from this new album from little beat we're gonna survive and that record album whether you liked it or not you personally subjectively may have God's Liana but there is nothing new there is nothing innovative in it not musically not lyrically there's nothing provocative there's nothing nothing to think about nothing to talk about the new album from the corner just just yesterday I think maybe day before yesterday I was on YouTube and I happened to get the alert a new song from Snoop Dogg you know okay like it was like Oh uploaded ten minutes ago kind of thing I was like I okay I'll give it give it a chance do you think Snoop Dogg has done anything innovative progressive new experimental in the last 10 years in the last 10 years you can look at all these established rappers across the board and say in the last 10 years even if they did something groundbreaking 20 years ago which should probably true with Snoop Dogg snoop Dogg very first album sure there was something new there's something crimp hood there but look man in the last 10 years who has done more for hip hop Lil B or Snoop Dogg its little B that's really the sense in which little B he's a tiny giant he's this small outsider artist and guys like Anthony Fantana can insult him claiming that he has no lyrical skill no lyrical still compared to what he has the lyrical skill compared to Death Grips Death Grips whom you gave ten out of ten to an thief Anton oh please you think little B has no lyrical content compared to Death Grips compared to Snoop Dogg compared to I dare say it Raekwon in the last ten years little B has had songs just talking about feeling sad and I've got to say like lyrically there's more depth and more substance to it then like 90% of what's going on in the Jean you know just songs about being unhappy okay just songs about being unhappy about what's happened to friends of his and you know all kinds of really simple emotional tracks I remember right after the birth of my daughter I was in the hospital you know we didn't have a sound system in the hospital I bought a pair of little mini portable speakers for my mp3 player set it up and I remember listening to the gods father mixtape gold how said a list of a you know maybe five mixtapes little bee that I was listening to while I was in the hospital exhausted sleep-deprived dealing with all this abuse from the doctors and nurses they were such [ __ ] to us to me and my me and my ex-wife you know and you know really feeling that you know Moody reflective vibe often very dissatisfied with life in various ways you know there's a lot of little B music that has emotional content does it have intellectual content not really but like what in rap music does what are we comparing it to are we comparing it to Death Grips gets it and I'm sorry it's alright to be stuck on it but like you know this is a really strange element because I think all music critics are positively biased in favor of experimental music and that's why Death Grips were these kind of critical darlings this kind of arthouse rap and yet little B doesn't seem to get that bias working in his favor when he comes out with a really edgy innovative album like black can that that is an experimental album and deserves to be acclaimed as such right and then the other so the you know I've talked about already I think the rating system from one to ten is now obsolete everything is either a 0 or a 10 either you're going to download it and give it a chance and pick out the tracks you're gonna keep or you're not either there are a couple of tracks there that justify the download that justify you're taking the time because there's no cost or there aren't and to keep stick with that example Raekwon's album the wild is not worth your time not worth downloading I did not keep even one track whereas I feel confident I can recommend this little bee album to you and give it a ten out of ten because there were minimum two tracks I think probably for a lot of people like hip hop where we like it'll be minimum six tracks out of these 27 you're gonna keep does that mean every track is great no and some of them are maybe thought-provoking in terms of the composition in terms of the keyboards but don't follow through lyrically but again that's little beast choice he doesn't give you a shortlist he doesn't give you Sgt pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band he doesn't give you a careful composition he gives you every single thing he banked out in the studio everything swept up off the studio floor and says hey maybe it's worth something to you maybe it's not that's that's how he sees the role the recording artist and that brings me to the last point I want to make here there's this delusion which Anthony Fantana was a complete victim of that the value of music is in looking at the album as one unit right so like one of the most ridiculous examples of this was a Ghostface put out 12 reasons to die right and all the music critics praised this way out of proportion I'm sorry Ghostface 12 reasons it got all this praise from music critics just because it is a concept album and because supposedly liked it hold it tells one story it holds together as one unit right because music critics are still looking for sergeant pepper's Lonely Hearts Club man they're still looking for the album to be one aesthetic unit or statement which it's never gonna be for a little B with free mixtapes I think it's never gonna be period but like what are you really saying you're saying you would have given this a higher score if it had half as many tracks and was twice as coherent as an artistic statement right like if the title of the album was thematically linked each track like sergeant Pepper's learners but it's such [ __ ] guys it's such well I'm sorry twelve reasons from ghost phase twelve reasons is a mediocre album I'm not gonna say it's terrible some of the tracks sounded good when I heard them remixed by other artists I don't think any of them really sounded good in the original album but I have heard some remixes a couple of tracks that hold but compared to ghost phases other output a real candidate for the greatest Ghostface album ever is titled more fish it was the sequel to anyway it was sequel to another album that had fish in the title more fish has no concept no direction you know what I mean none of this cute [ __ ] it was a bunch of tracks some of which he recorded for mixtapes some of which he recorded four albums some which were left over from other sessions put together on one disc you know a bunch of different producers that's the creative process and it's a it's one of the greatest albums in the history of rap music history of hip hop but it doesn't have this thing that these music credits are looking for of being like one aesthetic unit right it's not a sergeant pepper's concept select within ghostfacers genre something like twelve reasons gets overrated something like more fish gets underrated and somebody like little B is basically adding penalized because he isn't turning out albums that fit this unstated aesthetic expectation of what an album is supposed to be that's really left over from the 1960's and 1970's and never had a place in in hip hop frankly and definitely doesn't have a place in hip hop now in the 21st century in the download era all right this this video has gone on long enough for or too long look man I've said this about romance also a lot of guys walk around with this rating system in their head like he has a woman of six or seven and eight or nine you know rating people out of ten the same way people rate albums out of ten but when I was giving advice on dating I said look the bottom line is either you like someone enough to embarrass yourself to go up to them introduce yourself hey say what's going on either you like them enough to take that time make that effort take that risk or you don't so get rid of the numbers game don't let it mess up your head everybody is either a zero or a ten I think that's a lot mentally healthier for the guys I'm not even saying that in like a feminist sense of like this is better too avoid objectifying women or something right and the reality is when it comes to albums and album recommendations we're no longer talking about money we're just talking about time this artist put together a 27 track artistic statement you know and he's free for you to download it doesn't cost you a dime so is it a zero or a ten the only judgment call I have to make is is it worth your time to sift through this and pick out which tracks you are gonna keep on your hard drive for free it is and music critics like Anthony Fantana are obsolete out of touch and the claims he makes that like on this album little bee is doing a bad impression like like his vocal style is doing a bad impersonation of Tupac Fantana you're way off you're way off both in terms of the keyboards and the lyrics anyone who knows hip-hop would recognize that little bee is reaching way back to guys like school Edie and that earliest period of the anti-social persona coming into rap music breaking away from rappers just party music breaking away from rap has put your hands in the air away from it's just don't care those very first voices where there wasn't yet gangster rap and when there were a lot of these weird pauses I mean go back and listen to school Edie that style of vocal delivery doesn't hold up today a lot of that music it was so inspiring was so new it was so edgy at the time and little B has referred to this as his first mixtape in that same sense instead of a sequel it's a prequel you know he's going back to the roots of his genre of hip hop he's doing something new and different but that in a really interesting way is reaching back the musical origin of all I don't know I don't know in this day and age when it's free to download I don't know how you can give this album anything other than a ten and you tell me in the last decade whose really done more for hip hop as a genre in the last decade little B or Snoop Dogg when we look back on this history in this decade who's done more for hip hop little bee or Death Grips the answer is going to be a little bit not death Chris