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Thursday, May 9, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS

After releasing her ruthless, 
heavy-hitting 2018 album Nasty, 
Rico Nasty seemed ready to burst 
from the underground and dominate 
the mainstream. Her collaborations 
with Kenny Beats, the underground 
producer du jour, have been nothing 
shy of sensational, particularly when 
they involved flipping a classic sam-
ple or reworking a legendary beat. 
Take her song “Countin’ Up,” for 
example. Kenny 
Beats 
cooked 
up 
a 
bass-
dominated, 
smile-inducing 
retooling of The 
Neptunes’s beat 
for 
Noreaga’s 
“Superthug,” 
and Rico Nasty 
proceeded to rip 
it to shreds. Rico 
Nasty’s 
tenac-
ity and ferocity 
are what made 
Nasty one of the 
best rap releases 
of 2018, so when 
she announced 
Anger Manage-
ment, all the 
eyes in the rap world were on her.
From the get-go, Anger Man-
agement finds Rico Nasty with the 
pedal on the floor. After all, the 
album promises the energy of a 
temper tantrum. She’s pure gas on 
album opener “Cold.” She does it 
all on this song: She talks shit over 
yet another face-melting beat from 
Kenny Beats, she raps aggressively 
and she screams. A lot. It’s refresh-
ing. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a 
rap album with a sound quite like 
this, and I especially don’t think I’ve 
heard one poised to sustain this type 
of energy over the full runtime. Rico 
Nasty attempts to do just that on 
this album, but that may be because 
it barely clocks in at 19 minutes in 
length. It’s short, sweet and to the 
point, but that might turn out to be 
too good to be true.
Other high points include the 
Earthgang-assisted “Big Titties” and 
the Jay-Z/Timbaland- interpolating 
“Hatin.” “Big Titties” finds Rico, 
Earthgang, Kenny Beats and dance 

producer/“Harlem Shake” creator 
Baauer at their most kinetic. Kenny 
Beats and Baauer lay down a ridicu-
lous beat accented by wacky vocal 
samples, wolf-whistles and clanging 
cowbells, not to mention absolutely 
pummelling 808s. Rico Nasty and 
Earthgang both deliver acrobatic 
verses, but Rico Nasty is especially 
elastic, bending words and syllables 
at whim. She throws down some 
complex bars, some funny ones too, 
and she even spits a bar in which 
she claims she’s so “supercalifra-
gilisticexpialidocious.” It’s fun, and 
it’s definitely a 
welcome change 
of pace in today’s 
rap climate.
“Hatin” finds 
Rico Nasty spit-
ting over a Kenny 
Beats remake of 
Jay-Z and Tim-
baland’s hit “Dirt 
Off Your Shoul-
der,” similar to 
Nasty’s 
remake 
of 
“Superthug.” 
Where Jay-Z was 
reserved, 
Rico 
Nasty is vicious. 
She goes hard, 
and she knows it. 
She talks smack 
with the best of 
them. To that end, she kicks the song 
off by exclaiming, “I got bitches on 
my dick and I ain’t even got a dick.” 
“Hatin” is a perfect modern remake 
of a classic song, and Rico Nasty cer-
tainly does it justice.
Surprisingly, outside these songs, 
the album begins to drag, and, at 
19 minutes in length, that is not a 
good thing. As Rico Nasty begins to 
cool off, the album’s quality begins 
to diminish. Songs like “Mood” 
and “Relative” are decent at best. 
The closing half of the album feels 
rushed. It’s good, no doubt, but it 
seems unfinished. Even with the 
tonal shifts, the album still begins to 
feel a bit samey. Anger Management, 
while certainly good in its own right, 
does not call for many repeat listens 
outside of a few sensational and 
truly different tracks like “Hatin” 
and “Cold.” It does, however, call 
for more attention to be paid to both 
Rico Nasty and Kenny Beats in the 
future because, clearly, they are on 
the verge of a breakthrough.

“Long Shot” is certainly titled 
around its premise: The political 
rom-com stars Charlize Theron 
(“Tully”) as the U.S. Secretary 
of State and Seth Rogen (“The 
Interview”) as her speechwrit-
er and eventual love interest. 
Theron’s incandescent, piercing 
beauty contrasts so starkly with 
the 
guffawing 
teddy-bearish 
charm of Rogen, but the movie’s 
core irony is that they success-
fully conjure a believable chem-
istry with each other.
For me, the most difficult lit-
mus test for any comedy is sim-
ply how frequently its jokes land. 
“Long Shot” definitely passed. I 
often found myself laughing at 
both the cheap and the nuanced 
gags. The film achieves an effec-
tive balance between the two, 
featuring moments like Rogen 
crashing down a sleek glass 
staircase as well as snarky, intel-
ligent one-liners about global 
politics. While the pacing of 
the story had its flaws, slogging 
through scenes that felt inessen-
tial, the film itself never paused 
to become totally serious. Even 
when hostage crises and bomb 
threats erupt, Rogen’s awkward, 
hyperventilating Fred Flarsky is 
always there to remind us that 
we are still inside a comedy.
But perhaps what’s worth 
discussing more than the two 
stars’ ability to carry the entire 
movie on the hilarity of their 

romance is the potent politi-
cal ideas the film suggests. The 
world of “Long Shot” is a politi-
cally sardonic reflection of our 
own, built around both harsh 
realities and amusing hyperbo-
le. Bob Odenkirk (“Better Call 
Saul”), for example, plays Presi-

dent Chambers, who spends his 
Oval Office scenes not signing 
bills and planning policy, but 
watching old episodes of him-
self in his heyday as a TV star. 
Another fascinating character 
is media mogul Parker Wembley 
(Andy Serkis, “Black Panther”), 
some toadish combination of 
Rupert Murdoch, Steve Bannon, 
Harvey Weinstein and Exxon-
mobil. He and Chambers, the 
amalgamations of evil that per-

meate all politics in the world of 
“Long Shot,” are unambiguously 
wicked, compelling vehicles for 
commentary on how citizens 
and politicians should respond 
to their brand of malice.
One of the more question-
able ideas the film suggested 
was that of centrism and com-
promise as long-term paths to 
victory. Charlotte’s ambitious 
environmental reform policy, 
while resonating with her diplo-
matic audience, faces the recur-
ring dilemma between integrity 
and widespread support. With 
more democratic presidential 
primary candidates seeming to 
appear everyday, this particu-
lar notion of centrism as a tool 
seemed the most foreboding 
about current American politics. 
And yet, whether this message is 
appealing or not, the film itself 
could not clearly communicate 
the logic of its theory. The result 
was an ultimately idealistic, 
potentially problematic portrait 
of the 2020 presidential race.
And yet, for all of the parables 
it offers, “Long Shot” does not 
have to be an artifact of intense 
political scrutiny to enjoy it. 
The fact that it manages to carry 
any nuance at all is impressive 
in and of itself. As a pleasant 
and satisfying crowd-pleaser, 
it more than works. Maybe the 
title encompasses more than 
a relationship between Fields 
and Flarsky, also taking up the 
hopes of remedying rampant 
corruption in our political sys-
tem. And if that’s an idea too 
alarming to swallow, don’t fret 
— it’s just a rom-com.

‘Long Shot’ pulls off more 
than your typical rom-com

ANISH TAMHANEY
Daily Arts Writer

LIONSGATE

JIM WILSON
Daily Arts Writer

Long Shot

Lionsgate

Ann Arbor 20 + 
IMAX, Goodrich 
Quality 16

Anger Management 

Rico Nasty and Kenny 
Beats

Sugar Trap

Rico Nasty starts 
shit with new EP

FILM REVIEW
ALBUM REVIEW

