In Defense of LeBron

LeBron fuckin’ James. You couldn’t escape him in these last few days, even if you wanted to. In turning what could’ve been a simple press conference into the sports media event of July, opinions of James were coming from everywhere. Ranging from “James is a cocksucker,” to “James is an egomaniac,” to “I’m his dad and I want 4 million dollars.” These opinions were overwhelmingly negative (outside of Miami), highlighting LeBron’s unfathomable arrogance and condemning him for, God forbid, leaving Cleveland in hopes of winning an NBA Championship. I’m coming out for Team Bron Bron for the following several reasons.

First, LeBron James is a marketing dream come true. For the last two weeks, Sports Center’s had at least one segment per day on what LeBron will be doing next fall. While they peppered in some highlights from the MLB and talk of a few other NBA free agents (oh and that World Cup thing), all eyes were on LeBron. Is he one of the best players in the NBA, probably of all time? Yes. Did he need an hour-long special on ESPN to announce The Decision? Absolutely not. But that’s the beauty of this whole situation. LeBron changed the way things were done. He could’ve held a press conference from the cave Osama’s hiding in and we all would’ve had the same information. Instead, he created a media frenzy surrounding his decision. He was everywhere over the last two weeks, gobbling up camera time and exposure, only increasing his incredible popularity.

Second, he’ll win a title in Miami. I’m not knowledgeable enough about basketball to come out and make all kinds of grand statements on how much of a powerhouse team the Heat will be in the next several years or why. Luckily, I don’t really give a shit. LeBron’s fucking good at basketball. So is Dwayne Wade. And so is Chris Bosh. Following the example used in Boston, Miami brought in three (well, kept one) superstars and will do extremely well with them unless some catastrophic shit goes down. Everyone’s complaint about LeBron thus far, especially when compared with Kobe, is that he doesn’t have any rings. Problem fucking solved! And it won’t even take Phil Jackson to get him there. Also, Michael Wilbon predicted that the heat would win 3 championships out of 4 during the 2012-2016 seasons, and I always liked him better than Tony Kornheiser.

Third, he’s going to Miami. Think about how sexy that is. Imagine, you are at the top of your field, any field. You are literally among the best to ever do what you do. At age 25 you’ve met with Jay-Z and Warren Buffet several times for advice because, why the hell not? At some swanky party with free caviar and blow, a beautiful woman approaches you. She asks, “So, where do you live?” In a shocking realization, the camera moves back while zooming in on your face and you scream, “CLEEEEVELAAAAAND!” like it’s the Wrath of Khan. Unless LeBron’s and avid Howard the Duck fan, I don’t blame him for getting out of that shit hole (Ed. Note: Cleveland is literally one of the tags under the urban dictionary entry for “shit hole”). And more importantly, while Miami is a big enough city with enough big names and cool shit going on to sustain his superstardom, it’s also not New York or LA, who have been spoiled with cool shit as it is. Yeah, suck it Knicks fans.

Fourth, he’s not like the superstars of the past. This has been a common complaint among the talking heads. Fuck them. No LeBron isn’t like the superstars of the past, he’s a lot younger. While Wilt Chamberlain was busy fucking everything that moved, Magic Johnson was getting AIDS, and Michael Jordan was gambling away all his fortune, LeBron was, well, either not born or really young. Let’s not forget that superstars of the past have all had their faults, and the worst thing we can pin on LeBron thus far is his ego? He’s been called ‘The Chosen One” since before he graduated from high school!  With that much outside pressure feeding his narcissism, we’re lucky he hasn’t gone Patrick Bateman on anyone yet (although, who among us wouldn’t want to see him chop up Jared Leto?  That’s just me?  Forget it).  But back to the issue at hand, no LeBron doesn’t devote every waking moment of his off season to basketball, that’s because he’s busy doing cool shit! He’s in entertainment, why not do a little entertaining over the summer?

Finally, he’s all about the money. The number one complaint I’ve heard about LeBron this week is that he cares more about his brand than he does about basketball. GREAT! Many people in sports media have been shitting on LeBron for being a shrewd businessman because, they argue, he should be focusing all of his time on basketball. Consider that for a moment. We’re not choosing the next pope here. This is a grown-ass man who plays a GAME for a living. LeBron was savvy enough to realize that he is in the entertainment business at an early age. Rather than devote his life to the inherent glory of putting a fucking ball through a fucking hoop, LeBron is capitalizing on the entertainment he provides and is trying to make himself into a global icon. Capitalism is what the country is built on, and if you don’t like it, you can move to France, pussy!

So, there you have it.  Yes, I will be a bandwagon Heat fan if they make it to the finals.  No, it doesn’t really matter.  But one thing’s for sure.  We can all look forward to the Jay-Z track about LeBron  whenever that shit drops.

This Is Happening… a Month Early

This will come as a surprise to no one, but the new LCD Soundsystem album is pretty good.  The album, which James Murphy has recently almost confirmed to be the group’s last, This Is Happening, is set to release on May 18th.  The cd been floating around your favorite series of tubes for a few days now, and the video for “Drunk Girls” was released today.  If you’re a big fan of pandas and confetti, you’re in for a treat.  The album’s closer “Home” (or possibly “What You Need”.. you can never trust those damn leaks for accurate song titles) is a real standout with the typical slow build-up, nice hook, and conflicted yet optimistic lyrics that LCD has become known for.  Enjoy:

Home – LCD Soundsystem

P.S.
While YeahDev might not host the entire album for you to steal listen to a full month before it comes out, just remember:

“Knock and the door shall be opened.”
-Jesus H. Christ

Children of the Night

I’m gonna be completely honest,  I don’t know if this is any good.  At all.  I haven’t even finished the second song.  However, this EP’s artwork is too good not to share with the rest of the world.  Looking for some New York mixtape rappers with an awesome cover?  Thought so.

Children of the Night present: Yes/No.

They even did a remix of a Vampire Weekend song that should get your postmodern/p4k/pbr senses tingling.
[via 2dopeboyz]

P.S.
I would like to draw the reader’s attention to the crisp 500×500 pixel album artwork at the top of this post.  You might be thinking, “Who cares how many pixels wide or tall the image is? I just want to see the album artwork.”  If you did think this, you are probably stupid and don’t understand how the internet works.  You probably watch your videos on YouTube instead of Vimeo, a rookie mistake.  Despite all this, we here at YeahDevelop care about our readership and will lead your internet experience in the right direction.  It is this type of attention to detail that makes reading YeahDevelop a truly worthwhile experience, and for that, you are welcome.

Huntsville International

Being both literate and from Alabama is an interesting experience. Once outside of the south, admitting your heritage will draw quizzical looks if you’re not carrying a pitchfork and wearing overalls, but eventually most people are willing to accept it. Even despite your best efforts, you can never really escape it.  When ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ comes on the radio, you’ll know exactly where to insert “Roll Tide Roll” in the chorus. Despite a long, storied tradition of embarrassment, there are many times when being from Alabama is a point of pride. Cue G-Side.

G-Side has been a part of the Alabama hip-hop scene that has included such talent as 6 Tre Gangsta (of “Fresh” fame), Jackie Chain (did a remix with Kid CuDi), Paper Route Gangstaz (Mixtape with Diplo), and Yelawolf (Featured with Juelz Santana), which has been blowing up on the internet over the past year. From a solid p4k rating and “Best New Music” designation to mentions in Fader and the New York Times, Huntsville’s rap scene has been getting a ton of attention online, but has been unable to convert this into mainstream success thus far.

For Huntsville natives, this transformation has been particularly interesting. For most of us, Huntsville is the home of Wikipedia’s founder and a recession-proof economy, not a place that would give anyone something to rap about. Let’s just say it would tend to look more like this than like this. Despite these hang-ups, G-Side does a great job of putting down these spaced-out, drugged-up tracks with help from the soul-heavy samples of Block Beattaz/Slow Motion Sounds, in an attempt to push Huntsville Rap through to a more significant place in the mainstream Rap scene.

Here are a few highlights with links…

So Gone (mp3)

What It’s All About (mp3)

And some full mixtapes:

Fear and Loathing in Huntsvegas

Huntsville International

P.S.

ROLL FUCKIN’ TIDE!

This is Funny

I wrote 1,500 words to get a free book.

So, Tao Lin is the author of Shoplifting from American Apparel which came out in September of this year.  And if you check Hipster Runnoff as fiendishly as I do, then you’ll recognize him from the I Am Carles T-shirt promotions and random links that Carles puts up there about him and his work.  After I checked HRO earlier today I saw a link about the new Tao Lin promotional campaign and though to myself, “I’m willing to click on that,” and believe it or not, internet, I clicked.  So lo and behold, Tao Lin is offering to mail free copies of Shoplifting from American Apparel to the first 20 people that either write a 1,500 word blog post about his book (he’ll be the judge of whether or not a post is ‘”acceptably’ ‘about him’”) or post a Gmail chat about his book if they’ve read it.  So here I am, writing desperately typing for a free book (if 20 people finish this in the time between when I start writing and when I post this, I am going to kill one of them).

I’ve actually never read anything by Tao Lin, but the title sounds entertaining enough, I have a blog, and I’m a big fan of free shit, so buckle up, we’ll be here for another 1,317 words so that I can leech off of his publisher and score a free book (yes, I do recognize how pathetic is sounds to “score” a book, but you can go fuck yourself (that was 18 words!)).  From what I gather about Lin, he appears to be a pretty solid hipster.  I don’t mean that as an insult per se, but he’s in a creative industry, references American Apparel, and has written for Vice, so the shoe appears to fit.  That being said, his close relationship with HRO should probably indicate that he is also aware of this label, and is willing to poke fun at the stereotypes of his fellow citizens of Greenpoint (I have no idea where he’s from).

I’m kind of interested to see what the writing is like.  From what I gather, he generally writes in a “postmodern” style, so you know, oohh ahh refreshing.  But he has been shat on by Gawker, who are generally too busy sucking their own dicks to notice anyone else, so that is promising.  According to wikipedia, a few other critics have drawn comparisons from Camus’ The  Stranger and Mark Twain, and if his book can live up to half of those evaluations then I’ll be happy.  Actually, I’ll be happy if I actually get a free book, pretty much regardless of the content, but that’s another issue.  Anyway, I couldn’t imagine Lin’s book being as influential as either of these authors’ work simply because it won’t reach such a mainstream audience.  While there is certainly a specific demographic that a postmodern look at America culture in the internet era will appeal too, I just couldn’t imagine that students will be required to read Shoplifting from American Apparel over the summer to get a look at the local color of Brooklyn in the early 2000s.

It’s interesting to try and come up with 1,500 words worth of thoughts on a book and author you know nothing about.  I’m basically trusting in Hipster Runoff that this book will even be worth the effort of writing this many words (only a thousand left!). I’m looking forward to Jesus Christ the Band’s album, for which I believe Lin is doing the vocals.  They appear to go pretty far back.  According to the post that contained the exclusive excerpt of SFAA, he and Carles are childhood friends, which seems extremely likely.  Based on this and some of the other things I’ve read about him (selling off shares of the royalties he collects for one of his books),  it seems like he’s definitely in tune with some sort of commercial interest, but he’s a little more forthcoming with the fact that the line between art and business are extremely blurred.  Nevertheless, he has been able to gain a good deal of publicity from things that are almost labeled as publicity stunts, and for that I commend him.

But going back to the financial issue for a moment, I’m interested to see how this is portrayed in SFAA.  On the surface (again I haven’t read anything by him, so this is all bullshit speculation on my part that is done only for the purpose of receiving a free book), I would assume that there is some sort of tacit approval of shoplifting in the book simply by reading the book’s title.  Then again, it could easily also be some sort of statement on the self-destructive/self-loathing nature of hipsterdom as a whole, so I’ll let you know how that one turns out.  While we’re on that note, I may or may not let you know how that turns out.  As you may or may not know, I am currently a student, which means that I have actual shit to do that doesn’t involve reading or reporting on Shoplifting from American Apparel.  I’m not even an English major, so unless someone leaves a suggestion in the comments detailing how to incorporate this book into a paper on the global political economy, than this post will be strictly for my own benefit.

So I guess we’ll see how it goes.  I understand how the whole “disaffected youth” them can be appealing, but I kind of wonder how long it can continue for.  While the fact that I even bother typing this out probably only indicates my own age (and desperate desire to get to 1500 words for a free book), it seems that the themes of Less Than Zero or Stranger Than Paradise can only be rehashed so many more times until the whole world shares Gawker’s opinion on the matter and the whole subgenre becomes a pathetic caricature of itself.  It’s kind of like how the youth of the 60s were willing to do drugs and start (however naively) riots, where kids today just kind of stick with the drugs.  It seems like Lin’s audience is blasé enough that the best reaction he can hope for is for a few people to buy it off Amazon before their friends borrow it and shoot up more heroin (which is totally back in style!).

I checked the amazon page for this book and its only 112 pages.  I always have my doubts about short books.  While I recognize that any book that gets published goes through enough scrutiny by its publisher that it serves some purpose I always wonder whether or not the words are truly carefully chosen or if the author got bored of it and tied up the ends quickly.  And now that I think about it, I’m guessing that SFAA is the type of book that ends without much resolution in the story lines.  Meticulously chosen literary tactic or writer’s block?  I couldn’t tell you, I’m just here to bitch about anything I can till I get to 1,500 words.

I wonder if Tao Lin will accept this article as sufficiently about him.  While he is obviously the general focus, it’s pretty clear that this is only being written to get the free book.  Given his publicity stunts, I doubt this will be a problem though.  Hell, my blatant self-interested blog post is probably a statement on the condition of the modern American student’s attitude about intellectual, or at least that’s what my American Studies professor might say.  And in her defense, I’ve downloaded enough torrents to admit that I feel entitled to all the free music my internet connection can handle.  But this is not about me, it’s about Tao Lin’s book that he should be giving me for free in exchange for me cranking out 1,500 words that started about him and slowly devolved into my miscellaneous thoughts on anything vaguely related to hipsters or other things that I see as intellectually bankrupt.

That’s one good thing about writing this many words for a blog.  There is absolutely no obligation to produce quality writing.  I know that pretty much all of you (if you’ve made it this far) are probably saying to yourselves, “no shit,” it’s really convenient that blogs don’t matter.  As much as media people try and convince themselves that blogging and other interactive media are the final frontiers of media, there’s a pretty good reason why most (60-80%) blogs last for less than a month, because most people aren’t good at producing content.  For the same reason you can disregard my random ramblings about Tao Lin, you should disregard most of the millions of blogs out there, because we have not proven ourselves.  And now for the most awkward segue ever, Tao Lin has proven himself (slightly) because he has convinced a publisher to print this shit.  Regardless of whether or not you like his style and whatnot, he has created a product that a company can sell, so thanks for improving the GDP, Tao Lin, for that we are eternally grateful.

Blah Blah Blah, Shoplifting from American Apparel is out and Tao Lin writes, Hipster Runoff, free book if I write 1500 words and put it on a blog, disaffected youth, Helvetica.

Oh yeah, grab the new Big Boi track featuring Gucci Mane.  It’s good.

 

UPDATE: Tao Lin is not a lying sack of shit and he promptly emailed me back asking for an address.  Two day shipping!

Fredrik

Fredrik, the sideproject of Swedish band the LK  (don’t you keep up with Swedish electro-pop?), has been coming out with some great shit recently.  After getting some blog hype last year for Na Na Ni, they’re releasing their second album, Trilogi, this November.  They have the type of sound where I should include words like “textured,” and “layered,” or even “well crafted” to explain about how great they are and how much I know about music.
I like “Locked in the Basement,” so there’s that.

MP3s?  Mmm Hmm.

Locked in the Basement
1986
Black Fur
Alina’s Place

You Decide

Anyone with access to cable news and a strong masochistic streak has heard about the heaps of bullshit pouring out from Glenn Beck lately.  Recently making headlines for calling President Obama “a racist,” or possibly holding on to a, “deep-seated hatred for white people,” and even more recently for losing a huge portion of his sponsors over said headlines, Beck is a great example of an opportunist making huge profits off of the United States’ largest renewable resource: retarded people.

Anyway, I’m happy to see that this debate has progressed to the best conclusion one could imagine: accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl (in 1990!).  While it should be clear to any discerning reader that this website seeks to apply Beck’s own pathetic scare tactics to their hyperbolic end, it is pretty funny to see such immature questions raised against him.  And don’t feel bad for this guy; fucker’s making $50 million over the next five years, just from radio!

Anyway, check out the site.

http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com/

Jockin’ Jay-Z

By far one of the most anticipated albums of the year, Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3, leaked tonight, and we’ve got your hipster asses covered.

Without further ado:

The Blueprint 3

Where u been? Listen to this and buy the damn thing:

On To The Next One (Feat. Swizz Beatz) – Jay-Z