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 Classifieds Call: #734-418-4115 Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com STAYING IN ANN ARBOR THIS SUMMER? 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Riverfront/Heat/Water/Parking. ! ! www.HRPAA.com ! 1, 2 & 3 Bedroom Apts on Arch Avail Fall 2016‑17 $1050 ‑ $2500 + electric contribution CALL DEINCO 734‑996‑1991 SERVICES FOR RENT SUMMER EMPLOYMENT 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. INTERESTED IN JOINING DAILY ARTS? Email katjacqu@umich.edu and ajtheis@umich.edu for an application. ALBUM REVIEW