6 — Friday, October 13, 2017 Arts The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ACROSS 1 Yanks’ foes 5 Operation designed to hurt 10 Shipboard resident 14 CFO, e.g. 15 Not as likely to mess up 16 Walk without getting anywhere? 17 TW ... 20 Shoelace site 21 Shipboard chums 22 Tenn. neighbor 24 Apartment listing abbr. 25 DCYC ... 34 Nice with? 35 Gobs and gobs 36 Cart for heavy loads 37 Filly’s brother 38 Fighter eulogized by Bill Clinton, among others 39 Old-time teacher 40 “The Grapes of Wrath” figure 41 Beams 43 Prime real estate? 44 CI ... 47 Downed a sub, say 48 In-law’s wife, possibly 49 Refrigerates 53 One of a biblical ten 58 AGT ... 62 Like quality beef 63 One “sitting lonely on the placid bust,” in a classic poem 64 Course with relevant tangents 65 Regular guys 66 Finals, e.g. 67 Spot DOWN 1 “Star Wars” warrior 2 Nerve cell part 3 Cravings 4 Ewan McGregor, for one 5 They’re often free 6 Sched. question mark 7 Kind 8 Once called 9 Sir Georg Solti’s record 31 10 Rotating rod 11 Conduct 12 Hurting 13 Puts money (on) 18 Dash 19 Not at all reflective 23 On the lam 24 Backs up a videotape 25 Cobb salad ingredient 26 Bring to mind 27 Composer Mendelssohn 28 Good-sized wedding band 29 Prefix for “sun” 30 Madison Ave. pitchers 31 Carpentry, e.g. 32 Worries 33 Church numbers 41 Reacted to an arduous workout 42 Shoes without laces 45 Gymnast’s powder 46 Ibiza, por ejemplo 49 Key of the finale of Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 50 “Les Misérables” author 51 “Now it’s clear” 52 Old Fords 54 Hard-working colonizers 55 Spice Girl Halliwell 56 Second, e.g. 57 Sharp side 59 Reach capacity, with “out” 60 Actress Mendes 61 President pro __ By Morton J. Mendelson ©2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC 10/13/17 10/13/17 ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: RELEASE DATE– Friday, October 13, 2017 Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis xwordeditor@aol.com WARNER BROS. RECORDS ‘Lil Pump’ delivers hype despite lack of substance Lil Pump is neither meaningful nor innovative. It has no message or theme, and Lil Pump very clearly has nothing of substance to say — but if you are listening to Lil Pump expecting something meaningful, you are listening to Lil Pump for the wrong reason. 17-year-old Lil Pump emerged out of Miami, a member of the South Florida wave that includes rappers such as xxxtentacion, $ki Mask the Slump God and wifisfuneral. These artists have in common varying degrees of manic-depressive tendencies, hedonistic worldviews, disregard for convention and raw energy. Lil Pump tends toward the latter three, his lyrical themes never delving beyond the debaucherous. He first gained fame on Soundcloud with the single “D Rose,” accompanied by a fantastic music video shot by visual artist Cole Bennett (whose videos are a veritable who’s who of up-and- coming rappers). Follow-up releases “Boss” and “Gucci Gang” helped propel him to further viral fame, half of which stemmed from an appreciation (more often than not ironic) of his wild and rowdy aesthetic, while the other half stemmed from unbridled hatred of everything about him. Lil Pump is certainly a controversial figure. Many feel that he is furthering the devolution of rap music with his shallow lyricism; others appreciate the mindless hype. He has become something of a running joke on the internet due to his songs and persona at times feeling like an astute parody of Soundcloud-rap culture. No matter if you love him or hate him, you can’t deny that Lil Pump goes hard. Every song is as intense as the last — Lil Pump does not take breaks. South Florida rapper and frequent collaborator, Smokepurpp, has repeatedly described the music of Florida as “ignorant,” and Lil Pump certainly fits this description. The instrumentation is dominated by chilly dissonant bells and piano floating on top of bass that sounds like the producer turned the volume to eleven. This blown-out style is characteristic of producer Ronny J, a big influence on the South Florida sound, responsible for hard-hitting tracks such as “Ultimate” by Denzel Curry and “Gospel” by Rich Chigga. Ronny J is credited on three tracks across the album, sharing production with an assortment of lesser-known producers such as Mr. 2-17 and Bighead. 808 Mafia member TM88 is responsible for the eerie “Foreign,” one of the album’s highlights. The beats are often poorly mixed and cheap, but always fun and energetic. Joining Lil Pump are an assortment of big ticket rappers, most notably a cosign from fellow Miami rapper Rick Ross. The songs featuring these artists are the high points of the album (not including the singles) as they tend to actually be properly mixed, and the features provide some respite from Lil Pump’s rather repetitive nature. With that being said, the featuring artists never steal the show — Lil Pump does a surprisingly good job of holding his own, and you never forget that you’re listening to his album. Lil Pump has major faults — while Lil Pump does not intend to convey much meaning through his songs, his lyrics are still impressively bad. No matter how much unruly charisma Lil Pump possesses, there are only so many times he can repeat the phrase “Gucci Gang” before it gets boring. It is possible, as Lil Pump’s guests remind us, to make a song go hard without the lyrics beginning to feel like some sort of sacrilegious, barred-out mantra. The repetitiveness is at least tempered by some surreal bars: Across the span of the album Lil Pump turns down Harvard, sells cocaine to your grandma and has a stroke — not necessarily in that order. While it’s likely Lil Pump’s intention to embrace the lo-fi aesthetic dominating Soundcloud rap now, most of the tracks on this album sound like ersatz Ronny J beats, often terribly mixed (looking at you, “Boss”). This combination of mind-numbingly stupid bars and often chintzy beats becomes increasingly more difficult to stomach as the album grinds on, and it doesn’t help that Lil Pump spends the whole time reminding the listener that he has had sex with seemingly every member of your extended family. If you want to turn your brain off and feel the pure hype of Lil Pump course through your veins, listening to Lil Pump is a good move. If that doesn’t appeal to you, you’re going to really hate this album. JONAH MENDELSON For The Daily Lil Pump Lil Pump Warner Bros. Records KOCH MEDIA ‘Wadjda’ is a rousing tale of female empowerment In “From the Vault,” Daily Arts takes a new look at old films. It’s your 18th birthday. Your parents generously hand you the jingling keys to a 2006 Subaru. This is the most momentous moment of your adolescent life thus far. You are a woman. Unfortunately, for women in Saudi Arabia, this rite of passage has never been a reality due to strict laws that divide genders in the country — creating two very separate spheres of life. On Sept. 26, 2017, however, those harsh lines began to blur when Saudi Arabia’s King Salman issued a decree that now allows women to drive for the first time in the nation. In 2012, the first Saudi Arabian female director, Haifaa al-Mansour (“Mary Shelley”), directed “Wadjda” and instilled in her titular protagonist (Waad Mohammed) a desire that Saudi Arabian women alike shared: to drive. No, not drive a car, because al-Mansour understood that this was not a possibility, but rather drive something else: a bike. Al-Mansour imbued her story with the sentiment that these women wanted to be able to drive, or to take control, of the even smallest parts of their lives without a male voice dictating how they could transport themselves. This notion of female driving is not new; in Paula Vogel’s 1997 play, “How I Learned to Drive,” the notion of driving a car means much more than physically steering, but rather assuming agency over one’s goals, desires and maturation. When Wadjda puts her mind to something, she gets it. She sticks out as funky and unconventional — her coarse, espresso-rich, mane- like hair is always unruly (she has better things to do than sit in front of a mirror for hours and straighten her locks until they become burnt ends like her mother’s), and her ear lobes are lined with sparkly studs. So when Wadjda decides that she will win her school’s Koran contest to win money to pay for a bike — for her first ever opportunity at freedom — she really does it. “Wadjda” opens up with Wadjda and her fellow schoolgirls singing verses from the Koran, as the camera traces their Mary Jane loafers in a tight close up until Wadjda’s scuffed, gothic Chuck Taylors with violet laces stand out from the rest. She is no ordinary girl. The next scene shows Wadjda counting up her riyals in hustler fashion, as she listens to Grouplove’s 2011 bubbly pop rock song “Tongue Tied.” Al-Mansour not-so-subtly depicts that Wadjda’s desires stretch way farther than the Arabian Peninsula, especially those desires which make her want to be seen as an equal to the opposite sex. Wadjda doesn’t ask for much; she spends most of her time alone. She doesn’t expect her totalitarian headmaster, Ms. Hussa, to give her any respect. When Wadjda wins the Koran contest and Ms. Hussa gives the funds instead to Palestine and not to Wadjda, she is disappointed but from surprised. She doesn’t ask her negligent father to give her attention as he goes between his two families. She doesn’t think of her male peers as anything more than an immature. When Wadjda’s mother tells her that her father likes her hair long and straight as a way to attempt to seem attractive to him and save their relationship, Wadjda rolls her eyes, telling the audience that even at a young age, she recognizes that changing oneself to appeal to men is foolish. “Wadjda” closes with bittersweet fireworks, as Wadjda and her mother embrace. They watch her father’s marriage ceremony from their stucco balcony, as if, finally, they are both in sync that pleasing a man is an impossible battle and that female companionship is steady. It is a tough pill to swallow, but Wadjda persists nonetheless, and the audience senses that in this lonesome moment, she is not alone. It is as if Wadjda helped initiate the battle for equality and being the driver of one’s own life, so now Saudi Arabian girls like her can ride their bikes (and cars) off to freedom into the burning Middle- Eastern sun. SOPHIA WHITE For The Daily FILM REVIEW ‘Victoria & Abdul’ misses mark WARNER BROS. RECORDS “Victoria & Abdul” is the latest entry in the surprisingly crowded “British imperialism drama” genre, following on films like “Viceroy’s House” and “A United Kingdom,” in which a white English person finds themselves in a type of Odd Couple-dynamic with a person from a country under colonialist rule and forms a close bond with them. It is the latest film to take a story that begs to serve as a criticism of a power- hungry system of governing and instead uses it as a trite dramedy. While certainly well-acted and intermittently endearing, it completely misses and sometimes seemingly intentionally obfuscates what should have been the thesis of its entire narrative. The film tells the true story of the friendship between Queen Victoria (Dame Judi Dench, “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”) and her Indian servant, Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal, “For Here or To Go?”). Historically, the two were incredibly close, with Karim acting as a sort of teacher to the Queen on subjects relating to Indian culture. Before her death, she would have knighted him as a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order despite the friction it caused with members of her house. To state the obvious, Dench is fantastic as Queen Victoria – reprising the role she played in 1997’s “Mrs. Brown” — and she brings all the gravitas and emotional complexity that one would expect of an actress of her regal reputation. The script is rather ham-fisted in its treatment of her, climaxing in the most Oscar-baiting speech of the year, but the flaws have nothing to do with Dench’s work. As Abdul, Fazal is perfectly charming and shares a nice camaraderie with Adeel Akhtar (“The Big Sick”) in earlier scenes, but again due to the writing, he comes across as disappointingly one-dimensional. He is all too rarely given the opportunity to do anything other than smile and offer praise and wisdom to Victoria. It is clearly that script, written by Lee Hall (“War Horse”), which is the film’s biggest stumbling block. “Victoria & Abdul” is fine, if all too slight in its first half as it deals with the developing friendship between its two titular characters. It’s in the second half that it devolves into a series of blustery, tittering confrontations between Victoria and her staff, all but completely abandoning the bond at the core of the story and robbing Abdul of all agency. He becomes a background player in a film in which he is ostensibly one of the stars. JEREMIAH VANDERHELM Daily Arts Writer “Victoria & Abdul” Focus Features Ann Arbor 20, Michigan Theater Read more online at michigandaily.com When Wadjda puts her mind to something, she gets it It is a tough pill to swallow, but Wadjda persists nonetheless MUSIC REVIEW FROM THE VAULT