The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, January 11, 2016 — 5A

ACROSS
1 Potato bag
5 Rod in a grill
9 Macaroni shape
14 Vintage soda
15 Chisholm Trail
city
16 Red, in roulette
17 Mine extracts
18 Club used for
chipping
19 Capital of Ghana
20 *Mattress support
22 Spoken for
23 Skinny fish
24 Quick message
25 Blue Ribbon beer
28 Palm Pilot, e.g.,
briefly
30 Carve in stone
33 Attributive menu
words
34 Parisian partings
37 Leave rolling in
the aisles
38 Sermon topic
39 *Light, friendly
punch
41 Sitter’s handful
42 What some
missiles seek
44 Stevenson title
doctor
45 “I warned you!”
46 Gothic fiction
author Rice
47 WWII espionage
gp.
48 Bugs and Jags
50 “Fire” bugs
52 Bourgogne and
Chablis
54 Longstocking of
kiddie lit
56 Spots for airline
magazines ...
and, literally,
what the first
words of the
answers to
starred clues can
all have
61 NBA great
Shaquille
62 Footnote “p”
63 Sitter’s handful
64 Modern mil.
treaty violation
65 Egg cell
66 Humdinger
67 Knuckleheads
68 Short- or long-
sleeved tops
69 Marked, as a
ballot

DOWN
1 Stereotypical
“Dahling!”
speaker
2 Flight-related prefix
3 General Mills
brand
4 Affectionate
greetings
5 Marble cake
pattern
6 Capital on the
Seine
7 Pic to click
8 Grab from the
grill, as a hot dog
9 Poetry Muse
10 Tracks down
11 *Wishful lifetime
agenda
12 Storybook brute
13 Withdraw
gradually
21 “He loves me”
piece
24 Sounding like
one has a cold
25 Old Turkish title
26 Otherworldly
27 *Slapstick
slipping cause
28 Sneaks a look
29 Obligation
31 Typical Hitchcock
role

32 Publicizes
aggressively
35 Martial arts
schools
36 Currier’s
colleague
40 Backup strategy
43 When the big
hand is on two
49 In working order
51 Leans slightly
52 Beating around
the bush

53 Agenda bullets
54 Common koi
habitat
55 Look __:
investigate
56 Washday woe
57 Nesting site,
perhaps
58 Essence
59 Leafy veggie
baked for 
chips
60 Gym specimen

By Gail Grabowski and Bruce Venzke
©2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
01/11/16

01/11/16

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Monday, January 11, 2016

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

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G.O.O.D. MUSIC

Oh hey, almost didn’t see you there.
Pusha T returns 
dopely on ‘Dawn’

By SHAYAN SHAFII

Daily Arts Writer

Pusha T has been quiet for a 

very, very long time. In the fall 
of 2013 he released what was 
shockingly 
his first solo 
album, 
My 

Name Is My 
Name, 
and 

has given us 
nothing more 
than a handful 
of 
features 

since. Where 
seasoned 
hip-hop 
heads 
were 

more 
than 

familiar with his earlier work 
with Clipse (dating back to 
2002), 
newer 
uninformed 

fans aggregated quickly once 
he signed to Kanye West’s 
G.O.O.D. Music imprint in 2010. 

As Pusha T has grown 

older since parting ways with 
Malice, 
he’s 
become 
more 

noticeably distant from the 
cokeboy lifestyle that once 
fueled his raps (“I was really 
in that Travelodge!!!”). He now 
does interviews with CNN, 
rocks Balmain, and quietly 
enjoys his influential grip on 
the rap game. Darkest Before 
Dawn, though not even his 
proper sophomore LP, is a rare 
opportunity to hear from the 
man himself, and he evidently 
has a lot to say.

Darkest Before Dawn plays 

out a lot like “Scarface,” except 
without the scene where the 
police raid his home. He just 
wins, but it’s not enough. The 
new King Push seeks justice; 
he doesn’t want his younger 
brethren to go through what 
he went through. For the first 
time, we hear him rap not from 
the perspective of a Miami 
Vice cocaine cowboy, but from 
that of a 38-year-old label 
president who’s seen it all. One 
of the album’s highlights is the 
album-closer, 
“Sunshine”. 
I 

expected the title to be a simile 
for the way his SL 500 gleams 

in the light or something, but 
instead we got the most socially 
conscious and racially-charged 
song of his career.

The beat drops in layers, à 

la Lil Wayne’s “Let The Beat 
Build,” except with more subtle 
releases. There’s the sound of 
a scream right as Push snarls 
“These ain’t new problems / 
They just old ways / I seen one 
time turn sunshine into Freddie 
Gray!” By the time synths and 
drums chime in, he’s already 
thrown shots at Don Lemon and 
saluted Chief Keef. The song, 
overall, is an unexpected turn 
to close out a Pusha T album, 
but it shows his age. While a 
former Clipse manager is still 
in prison for involvement in a 
national cocaine ring, Pusha 
T has grown old enough to 
philosophize the condition of 
Black America regarding police 
brutality and the war on drugs.

Even the songs that seem 

most hedonistic have serious 
undertones; 
who 
would’ve 

thought that a track titled 
“M.P.A (Money Pussy Alcohol)” 
would be less about celebration 
and more about the potential 
pitfalls 
of 
vices? 
“M.P.A” 

stirred a lot of excitement when 
the tracklist revealed features 
from A$AP Rocky and Kanye 
West, but Push’s first line 
deaded any hopes of a banger: 
“The three leading killers of 
you n****s, is the shit that’s 
most appealing to you n****s.” 
The 
Kanye-produced 
piano 

loop gives the song a mournful 
air not too dissimilar to “Blame 
Game.”

But the album isn’t all 

serious. Tracks like “Crutches, 
Crosses, Caskets” see Push get 
back to his ever-so-poetic shit 
talking. He tiptoes on the beat, 
throwing shade at everyone 
in an aggressive whisper. It’s 
less about making threats and 
more about addressing the 
current state of rap from the 
perspective of a veteran with 
nothing left to prove: “All I see 
is victims!”

Pusha T is in a totally unique 

position in the rap game where 
he has gone from one half of a 
duo adored exclusively by rap 
nerds, to a unanimously well-

respected MC with hardly 
any solo material. He has one 
of the finest discographies in 
rap behind him with Clipse, 
but only caught the nation’s 
attention when he was the 
“dude in the salmon suit” 
during Kanye’s 2010 VMA 
performance. He doesn’t really 
have anything to prove, but 
he kinda does. In the same 
vein as much of the best rap 
music released in 2015, Darkest 
Before Dawn is delivered with a 
certain air of charity about it. 
It’s just something to hold us 
over until he delivers what will 
inevitably be another fantastic 
record: King Push.

FOX tackles racism

By SAM ROSENBERG

Daily Arts Writer

Among the few television 

shows currently on air that talk 
about race in America, FOX’s 
new animated series “Border-
town” is one 
that takes the 
issue head on. 
Originally slat-
ed to appear 
on FOX’s ani-
mated lineup in 
2013, “Border-
town” ’s setup 
involves 
two 

racially diverse 
families 
and 

tackles the “clash between cul-
tures” concept commonly seen in 
TV comedies with promising but 
mixed results. 

From the minds of “Fam-

ily Guy”’s Mark Hentemann 
and controversial animator Seth 
McFarlane, “Bordertown” takes 
place in the fictitious Mexifor-
nia, which sits on the U.S.-Mex-
ico border. There, we meet the 
bigoted border patrol officer Bud 
Buckwald (Hank Azaria, “The 
Simpsons”), who lives next door 
to the amiable Ernesto Gonzalez 
(Nicholas Gonzalez, “Resurrec-
tion Blvd”). As established in the 
show’s manic opening credits, 
there is a subtle shift in class sta-
tus, with the Buckwalds residing 
in a shabby, dull-colored house 
and the Gonzalezes living in a 
pleasant, brightly-colored home. 
In addition to Bud and Ernes-
to’s supportive wives and dys-
functional families, Bud’s shrill 
daughter Janice (Alex Borstein, 
“Family Guy”) and Ernesto’s 
stuffy, college-educated nephew 
J.C. (also Gonzalez) are involved 
in a romantic relationship and 

eventually 
become 
engaged, 

causing racial and cultural ten-
sions to ensue between the two 
families. 

“Bordertown” 
is 
definitely 

timely, using blunt, dark humor to 
underscore stinging sociopolitical 
commentary in the likes of “Fam-
ily Guy,” “American Dad” and 
“South Park.” But while the show 
highlights burgeoning progressive 
ideals in our society — interracial 
relationships, immigration laws, 
cultural assimilation — it tries so 
hard to replicate the insight found 
in the aforementioned animated 
sitcoms that it often misses more 
than it hits. Because “Border-
town” both embraces and satirizes 
PC culture, as well as other issues 
regarding modern America, it has 
trouble balancing between insen-
sitive jokes and engaging social 
consciousness.

The plot in the show’s pilot epi-

sode, “The Engagement,” starts 
off with potential, but quickly dis-
solves into a mediocre retread 
of raunchy animated sitcoms. 
A new anti-immigration law 
is introduced and eventually 
passed, which delights Bud but 
leads to J.C.’s accidental depor-
tation, despite him being a legal 
American citizen. With J.C. and 
Janice’s 
engagement 
threat-

ened, Bud and Ernesto seek to 
retrieve J.C., yet their teamwork 
doesn’t really incite a friendship 
between the two.

Some bits in the pilot elicit a 

laugwh or chuckle, though most 
go for the offensive and taste-
less. But for all “Bordertown”’s 
tiresome aspects, the least devel-
oped are the characters, most of 
whom are (literally) drawn as 
caricatures of their respective 
stereotypes. Bud represents a 
familiarly flawed TV patriarch, 

taking from the oafishness of 
“Family Guy” ’s Peter Griffin and 
“South Park” ’s Randy Marsh, 
but even those characters offered 
some depth and humor to their 
shows. While Ernesto seems 
to be subverting many cultural 
stereotypes, his disposition as a 
family man is his only real defin-
ing characteristic.

The only character who has 

some redeemable qualities is 
J.C., who portrays a modernized, 
assimilated Mexican-American. 
But even as refreshingly honest 
as he can be, J.C. isn’t necessari-
ly likable, especially in one scene 
where he makes an explicitly 
meta reference to how Mexicans 
are commonly depicted. After 
J.C. is ejected from a “deporta-
tion cannon” and lands in Mex-
ico, he finds a throng of people 
gathered around a tortilla that 
allegedly contains the Virgin 
Mary (a phenomenon that appar-
ently happens in real life). J.C. 
interrupts and exclaims that the 
scene “only reinforces a negative 
cultural stereotype,” to which 
the Virgin Mary emerges from 
the tortilla and chastises J.C. 
before returning to heaven. 

It’ll be interesting to see how 

much farther along “Border-
town” will go in the route of 
spotlighting 
relevant 
matters 

regarding racism and immigra-
tion towards Mexican-Ameri-
cans. Perhaps an episode that 
delves into the contradicting 
perceptions of Donald Trump’s 
racist demagoguery in the 2016 
presidential race would make for 
some intriguing television. But 
for now, “Bordertown” needs to 
improve on how it can make its 
budding premise into something 
that is both funny and compel-
ling. 

TV REVIEW

C+

Bordertown

Pilot 

FOX

Sundays at 9:30

A-

Darkest 
Before 
Dawn: The 
Prelude

Pusha T

G.O.O.D. Music

He’s old 
enough to 

philosophize 
Black America

He’s in a totally 
unique position.

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