The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Monday, O ctober 11, 2010 - 7A The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Monday, October 11, 2010 - 7A ii Wayne is oniy'Human' Newest Weezy album should not be hyped& as jail-born artistry By Joe Dimuzio I Daily Arts Writer Music misery loves company Three days after releasing Innervisions, Stevie Wonder got in a car accident. While Won- der was travel- ing back from a North Carolina LIJWWI gig with a friend I Am Not a at the wheel, a Human Being trucker slammed Universal Motown the brakes on a winding road, sending Stevie's car straight into the flatbed's pile of chopped wood, shooting a stray log straight through the windshield and into Stevie's forehead. The accident left him with bruises, a brain contusion and a multi- day coma. He lost his sense of smell. Gradually recovering, with his musical talent miraculously intact, his colleagues alleged that something had "changed" about Stevie. With Innervisions, the American public took the story and ran with it. Spiritually and musically, Innervisions was Ste- vie's defining moment ... but it was recorded months before the accident. Lil Wayne's I Am Not a Human Being has that Innervisions mys- tique. Released during his jail stint for criminal possession of a firearm, I Am Not a Human Being can be the magical release Wayne- heads want. His imprisonment is the longest period of time Wayne hasn't spent in the studio, which, for an artist so prolific, is about as creatively hampering as a brain contusion. On his humble "Weezy Thanx You" website, Wayne has been responding personally to fan letters and describing his daily routine, full of exercise and bible reading. And now, less than a month before his release from Rikers Island, we have our legend - and an album that betrays it. Truth is, I Am Not a Human Being is a collection of old tracks. Some post-Tha Carter III and Rebirth and a few whetting, sup- posed Tha Carter IV cuts. All of the songs were recorded before Wayne's lock-up. It's an above- average mixed bag featuring a bit more effort than Wayne's mix- tapes, some highlights, some mid- dling tracks and a couple duds. Billed as a return to pure "rap- ping," Human Being is a moderate retreat-to-form after February's already orphaned Rebirth. As a whole, it's less than cohesive and lacks the spontaneity of Dedica- tion 2 and Da Drought 3. Weezy sounds less than energized here, and his flow suffers from saggy wordplay and tired lyrical free- association. He's got some fine beats to play with here from a nice array of varied producers and collaborators, but on the whole, Human Being feels a little pedestrian. Opener "Gonorrhea" features Drake (love him or hate him) and smells like an "A Milli" alternate, with pipey, staccato keyboards and a lazy hook. "I Am Not a Human Being" is a clear Rebirth leftover, complete with stomping snares and metal guitar. "What's Well then, what are you? Wrong With Them" features sped-up vocals and somehow manages to make a track featur- ing Nicki Minaj dull. These tracks come and go. Human Being's best moments come from unexpected places. Drake's producer of choice, Noah "40" Shebib, provides two of the album's best cuts. "With You" is a warm slice of soul with a slick Boi- Ida beat. On "I'm Single," which bears the mark of another of She- bib's 2010 highlights (Trey Songz' druggy "Unfortunate"), Weezy flows anemic in slow motion, and when he says "I'm single for the night," he doesn't sound happy. He sounds suicidal. The album series Tha Carter features Wayne's undeniable shin- ing moments, and at this point, the hype for the fourth is astro- nomical. First single "Right Above It" (again with Drake) gives us a taste, building fat, astral trumpets on a forward-thinking beat and melody. Here, Wayne doesn't just feel at ease - he's empowered. He chuckles, "Life is a beach / I'm just playing in the sand" while we listen to the voice of a man behind bars. In the end, I Am Not a Human Being isn't the supernatural, jail- time Innervisions we need from pop's best rapper. But if we're one album away from Wayne's Songs in the Key of Life - Stevie Won- der's masterwork after his acci- dent - then this'll do just fine for now. My friend Dave smiles when I put on Smiley Smile. He and Itare at least more-than-casual fans of the Beach Boys, and it's one - 1 of their many albums we .. enjoy listening to. I tend toI skip the first track "Heroes and Villains," - going straight JOE to "Vegeta- DIMUZIO bles," because the second that songstarts it's impossible to pay attention to anything else. But in reality, I could play any number of Beach Boys songs to entertain Dave. It could be "Solar System" from Love You or "Caroline, No" from Pet Sounds. We get probably the biggest kick out of "A Day in the Life of a Tree" and "'TilI Die" from Surf's Up, two songs writ- ten by a man in dire artistic and physical health. For us, it only makes the music better. Behind every one of these songs, there's a story -usually a miser- ably sad one - and it has no clear beginning or end. The Beach Boys were a beautiful, timeless group for about ten years. Or at least that's Iaway I see it. Their early hits are untouchable, and Pet Sounds is, well, you should know. By 1972, the Beach Boys had gone from America's darlings to the old uncle at the family reunion who everyone avoids. Brian Wilson - the puppy-faced pop Mozart - had taken enough acid and coke to ruin his body and mind, but the Wilson Broth- ers carried on, with diminishing returns, both recorded and live: touting "Brian's Back!" on tours, dragging him into the studio, ded- icating an embarrassingly earnest album sleeve to his "recovery" on Love You, etc. Dave and I used to spend plenty of hours with PetrSounds. It's easy to love and even easier to praise. I don't listen to it much anymore, because I don't need to. I've moved onto the Boys' records that are a bit tougher to love. Any Pitchfork-reading music appre- ciator can talk miles about Pet Sounds, butI think the real fun comes after. Following one of pop's most critically acclaimed albums of all time was, in this case, impossible, and Brian and the boys failed beautifully. Locked in what fans see as his attempt to achieve pop perfection, Brian plugged away at his "masterpiece." Smile was to be the greatest album ever. And after Pet Sounds, how fucking excited would you have been? Instead, we got years of excus- es, group strife and Brian's emo- tional and physical downfall, and some of the most inexplicable and exciting music the group would ever release. Smiley Smile, the afterbirth of Smile, sounds like an aural acid casualty. From the batshit mus- ings of "Vegetables" to the hor- rifying "Wind Chimes," these songs stun first, confuse second and, finally, endear. They were sparse, strange and empty. There was room for the story to fill in the gaps, room for our imagina- tion to run free. Surf's Up's ending song cycle features Brian, sound- ing as though his vocal cords are seconds from collapse, compar- ing himself to a tree that wasn't "meant to live." The Moog-laden, childlike Love You (my current favorite Brian production) fea- tures songs about patting children on their behind and going roller skating. One night, my friend Cam gave the best description I could conceive for Love You and Brian: "This is Frankenstein music!" Brian's story is one of many. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Sly Stone, at least two of the Beatles - the list goes on. It's the story of pop music, but even more, pop stardom. It's the moment you hear a song and won- der, what does this person look like or do on a Saturday night? It's when you start looking past the music and looking for a story to hold onto. When journalists start asking embarrassingly specific questions about drug use, and my parents glance at the TV and ask, "Who gives a shit?" A lot of people. A lot of people give a shit about these stars, and it's the same reason US Weekly piles up in barber shops and TMZ has a television show. It's that unconscious desperation to belong to something bigger than ourselves; to be admired, or at least paid attention to. Pop stars Appreciating the beauty of a falling pop star. from Bob Dylan to Jack White have cultivated that mystery to build the attention, the persona and their egos, to astral height. And in the end, we love to lap it up. It's like a drug. As Prince (one of pop's most successfully preserved cults of personality) said on 1999, "I'm addicted to your pleasure. I'm addicted to your pain." As I finished typing this, Dave and I caught the back half of "(500) Days of Summer" on HBO, the only part of the movie I've seen, for probably the fourth time. I don't like it, but I'm not going to deny I've paid attention to every frame during the last four times it's been on. I told Dave, "I wish I knew what happened in the beginning of this. Everything is so miserable." He responded auto- matically, with a hint of sarcasm. "Are you kidding? This is the best part." Dimuzio also spends hours with literal pet sounds. If you have a dog, e-mail him at shonenjo@umich.edu. UMMA explores urban sprawl as art COURTESY OF EA SPORTS In Soviet Russia, ball kicks you. 'FIFA 11'doesn't merit its price tag By TEDDY PAPES For the Daily EA recently released the latest annual installment to its "FIFA" series, add- ing to the rep- ertoire of the greatest soccer FIFA11 game franchise ever. How did For PS3, they do it? They Xbox 360, simply repack- WII and PC aged the previ- EA Sports ous best-ever soccer game, "FIFA 10," upgraded the graph- ics (and according to EA, the AI), added some minor new features and slapped a $60 price tag on it. Many players will be tempted by the addition of new team infor- mation and some minor fixes, but such solutions are hardly worthy of a full-price release. The "FIFA" series has always been a notable and innovative member of the sports genre. Online play sets the soccer standard, but it's nothing new. Previous versions of the game already nailed Internet gam- ing with the online "Be a Pro" mode, and to this day it's still the best feature "FIFA" has to offer. In this mode, the user cre- ates a player and takes him into online matches with the realism and intensity that any soccer fan would recognize. Every action the player takes is extremely important; the gamer no longer haphazardly controls a team of 11, but instead a single man, and the gravity of each brief interac- tion with the ball never ebbs. The intensity is as high as if each ava- tar were a real player. The online mode makes "FIFA 11," but it's not even a new fea- ture. It originated in its 2009 predecessor, but it's still on the coattails of features like this that "FIFA 11" tries to ride into gam- ers' homes. There are simply no revolutionary additions to be found in this title. The most tout- ed new feature, one that seems to be long overdue, is the option to be a goalkeeper. And while it seems like a no-brainer, the only time being a goalie is enjoy- able is online, though it's hard to enjoy even then. Sticking to one position has the potential to be See FIFA 11, Page 8A By ADDIE SHRODES Daily Arts Writer Hip-hop artists, skateboarders and break dancers have changed the terrain of urban spaces, Detroit included. UMMA presents: In col- Jakob Koling lages that explore Through Oct.24 modern IMMA urban life in areas like Detroit, Berlin-based artist Jakob Kolding illustrates how this emerging lifestyle cre- ates contradictions in how city spaces are planned and used. Though Kolding has received much attention and acclaim in Europe since he began show- ing in the late '90s, his UMMA exhibit is his first solo display in a North American museum. According to UMMA associate curator of modern and contem- porary art, Jacob Proctor, that makes Kolding an ideal artist for the UMMA Projects series, which began when the Maxine and Stuart Frankel and the Fran- kel Family Wing opened last year and focuses on emerging artists on an international level. Kolding mixes his study of sociology and art to comment on urban planning and life through collages and mixed-media sculp- tures. His collages contain diverse material like black-od- white images, cityscape photos, patterned paper cut into phrases and his own drawings. "Collage allows him to com- bine different spaces, to insert something into a space that wouldn't normally be there," Proctor said of Kolding's use of the medium to challenge the ways people normally view cities. The medium also acts as a cultural sampling similar to what you find in electronic and hip-hop music, which are important influences for Kolding. Kolding grew up in a suburb of Copenhagen, which Proctor said Copenhagen and Detroit converge with Kolding. is also a strong influence in the artist's views toward urban use. "Growing up in a hyper-mod- ernist context like that, people are still playing soccer in the streets, skateboarding or making See KOLDING, Page 8A schooliof information Connect with SI AN INFORMATION SESSION FOR PROSPECTIVE MASTER'S AND PH.D. STUDENTS Noon-4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 23 Great Lakes Room, Palmer Commons RSVP by Monday, Oct. 18 at si.umich.edulrsvp A graduate degree from the School of Information prepares you r an exciting array of Information Age careers. Our Ph.D. program prepares you for teaching and research in academia and corporate research labs. ind out. how our flexible, multidiscplinary program wll benefit you A Michigan MSI can lead to a career as: Archivist, Librarian, Research Analyst, Web Marketing Manager Multimedia Consultant, Data Analyst, Usability Engineer Information Architect, Auction DesignerManage: Computational Linguist, Natural Language Enginee; Policy Advisor Museum Curator Community &ganizer - and many more!