Welcome back to Five Spot. Every Friday, we’ll examine a recent bit of music news and list five reasons why it’s either brilliant or dumb-assed. Send tips to introducingliston@gmail.com.
Los Angeles Times
On the off chance that you haven’t read about him at, oh… we don’t know… everywhere, Michael Phelps is a bit of a swimming bad-ass. He’s like a dolphin, only way sexier, and he’s won something like 40 gold medals in Beijing just for being so cool.
And it turns out one of the things that helped Phelps win all those gold medals was Young Jeezy. Phelps apparently enjoys listening to Jeezy to get amped before a race.
Now, it’s kind of hard to call anything Michael Phelps did these past two weeks dumb-assed, so, reluctantly, he receives the “Brilliant” verdict for his playlist (he also enjoys Lil Wayne). But here are five things Young Jeezy’s music might make a better soundtrack to than swimming.
1. Driving under the influence. We also would have accepted speeding, driving with no proof of insurance, having an open container or reckless driving.
2. Making inane statements: Bigger than Hova? Really? Really?
3. Shooting at people when they won’t give you their camcorder.
4. Being “gully.” We’re not exactly sure what “gully” means, but it looks like it has something to do with lying about how much money you make in order to lower a child support payment.
5. Talking about the same thing over and over again: Jeezy’s next album doesn’t come out for ten more days, but we’ll just go ahead and assume he’ll be discussing drugs and drugs. And drugs. Oh, and he’ll probably talk about drugs. He might even talk about drugs. And if he gets really crazy, drugs. – Shea Serrano
This article appears in Aug 21-27, 2008.