6
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