Posts Tagged ‘Kano’
Album Review: Gorillaz – “Plastic Beach”
Plastic Beach – it’s the new compound for the cartoon characters which make up Gorillaz (and what you see on the album cover). According to a press release, it’s “made up of the detritus, debris and washed up remnants of humanity. This Plastic Beach is the furthest point from any landmass on Earth; the most deserted spot on the planet.”
And that’s an absolutely fitting place for this group of misfits to take up residence since Gorillaz make some of the most genre-melting and unique pop music you’ll hear. They don’t fit in anywhere but on their own unnatural island somewhere in the middle of the ocean.
It’s just too bad that the album starts off like its inspiration, and by that I mean a big pile of garbage.
Plastic Beach starts off harmlessly enough with a minute-long and rather unnecessary orchestral intro before segueing into the second track which is basically another intro track, only this time we get to hear Snoop Dogg phoning in some of the laziest rhymes he’s done as he welcomes everyone to the fictional island. With track three, “White Flag,” we finally get a real song. Unfortunately, it’s downright annoying and easily the worst song on the album. It features two British rappers, Bashy and Kano, who sound like two amateur freestylers struggling to come up with something clever to say over a lousy beat.
That’s over eight minutes of at best useless and at worst annoying music to start off the record. When you dig a hole that deep, it’s damn near impossible to get out. But Damon Albarn finally shows up on track four, and all is well with the world again.