Spank Rock is not an artist known for restraint. Since his 2006 masterwork “Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo”, Rock, real name Naeem Juwan, has mixed sociopolitical metaphors with aggressive sexual come-ons, Bmore booty-shaking, and XXXchange’s speaker-destroying production. On his newest album, the immaculately titled “Everything Is Boring And Everybody Is A Fucking Liar”, Spank Rock finds a new muse in the form of executive producer Boys Noize, a rising star on the electro-house circuit. By pulling in Noize’s sophisticated dancefloor stylings, Spank Rock’s sweaty, frantic take on hip-hop is improved and refined, resulting in a poppier and more concise, but by no means less enjoyable album, improving on his past efforts and easily becoming one of the best sophomore releases in a year chock full of them.
Noize, a pioneer of sexy, sophisticated synth wizardy, is a weird match with Rock’s frenetic mic stylings on paper, but in practice, the pairing works as perfectly as peanut butter and jelly. On opener “Ta Da”, white noise, vinyl crackle, and musique concrete effects combine to create an absolute stunner of a lead-off track. It’s never a bad thing to let the seams that tie a track together show just a little bit, and Spank Rock manages to pull “Ta Da” off with panache. When combined with Mark Ronson’s boardwork on “#1 Hit (I Can Make You Famous)” the track’s military drum-hits and gliding fart of a synthesizer part actually threaten to launch the track into the Billboard charts.
Where Spank Rock exceeds lyrically on this album is in his sense of humor. On the otherwise lackluster “DTF DADT” , he name-checks The Dude by spitting “Jeff Bridges riches, let’s hear it bitches, look at that bitch blow, her nigga’s in stitches” and ends his 16 bars with the word “cowabunga”, saving the track from the digital trash-heap with these tight punchlines. It was certainly a mistake to make “DTF DADT” a single, but its testimony to Spank Rock’s wit that it shines through on even the worst of tracks. On songs like “Race Riot”, there’s the oft-cited “shake it ‘till my dick turns racist”, and elsewhere a skit featuring viral sensation Hennessey Youngman serves as one of the rare brief comedic interludes on rap albums that make one chuckle.
That’s not to say Spank Rock’s a schticky, one-trick pony. On the footwork-inspired “Birfday”, Rock says “Who the fuck want ice cream/I want ice and cream, but the government don’t hand it out” over a sparse, 808-driven beat that flips the script into a glitch-hop smasher in it’s final minute. “Turn It Off” flips the bird to The Man and material things like social status with the slam-poetic refrain of “Live for something, move for something, work for something, push for something fight for something, stand for something/turn that weak shit off”. It’s Spank Rock’s finest moment on the mic in flow, cadence and lyricism, propelling an almost drumless beat forward by the sheer force of his percussive voice.
If you want, you can shut the album off after bloopy Prince-impression “Baby” – after that, the album is straight filler, no killer. However, the converse is true for the first ten tracks, with each track primed to set fire to your soundsystem. The perfect summation of Spank Rock’s effort with “Everything Is Boring And Everyone Is A Fucking Liar” is in the second track, “Nasty”. Here we see Spank Rock at his most frantic, sounding like a ferocious cult leader screaming in the ear of a young clubgoer under his spell. When the blistering beat gives way to N.O.-bounce kingpin Big Freedia, it’s as if the track suddenly morphs from a tornado to a triple-hurricane. Freedia hollers “Pussy pop, pussy pop pop pop/the pussy, the pussy pussy, the pussy pussy”, his voice ping-ponging around the contours of the beat, smacking it around, absolutely having his way with the instrumental. It’s a scene-stealing guest verse, absolutely bawdy and totally inappropriate for your little cousin’s Bar Mitzvah.
It’s just as well though — he’s nowhere near old enough to dance like Freedia and Rock command him to. If you want an album that you can feel free to play around him, look elsewhere. If you’re trying to find a hip-hop record that distills eurodance, new wave, and the chart pop of today into it’s most high-octane, pussy-poppable package, you’ve definitely found it. Stream the album right here.
