#466 Busdriver - Beaus$Eros

In the driver we trust!

We're in for a long one here folks, but I'm going somewhere with this.

I didn't have a typical Busdriver experience. I came across his music at a crucial, formative moment, which is to say I discovered Busdriver when I didn't know shit. At the ripe age of 22 I was still out of it enough to think that contemporary hip hop was only toughguy end-of-line-rhyme type shit. I'd missed Masters of the Universe, Organized Konfusion, Stankonia, Cold Vein, Operation Doomsday, shit that would have even started to prepare me, so think how double hard my mind was blown when I heard the mind-blowing Temporary Forever. That was the first rap album I ever loved and became my go-to rec for people who said they didn't like rap (who were abundant as fuck in aughts Orange County). Dude rhyming over fast horn riffs, rhyming unicorn with shoehorn, indulging in artsy, noisy, madcap turns: it spurred me to challenge a lot of my assumptions about music.

Unfortunately I also was still dumb in my relationships with rap, bands, and the world. One night I was stunned, STUNNED, to see Busdriver show up at a Unicorns show. In fact, full stop. Aside: So its 2003ish and I go to see basically my favorite band, The Unicorns, at my favorite venue, The Echo. Next thing you know fucking Busdriver gets on stage, and he freestyles over Unicorns squonktastic shitstorms. Let's lay this out: I go to my favorite venue to see my favorite band with no heretofore known hip hop leanings and my favorite rapper shows up and freestyles with them. Bull. Shit. I find the man himself afterwards and managed to stutter my way through saying what's up while The Truth of Spontaneous Human Combustion rang in my ears and I generally assumed that Busdriver hated me for reasons stemming from a general crushing ignorance of how to be a white rap fan and an assumption that it had to be complicated. This exchange did lead to being a third of the entire audience at the worst promoted show possible, where I bumblingly tried to procure a copy of Cosmic Cleavage before trundling off and watching awkwardly as Busdriver made the best of a shitty situation, gamely rapping to basically no one. I think the last time I saw the dude was as the most enthusiastic experiencer one of the first Corn Gangg shows (though I tried unsuccessfully to get in to see him open for Deerhoof) and then I moved thousands of miles away from LA. Edit: No! I saw him play with Kneebody, whose drummer I went to high school with. That was fucking insane.

My regret about this respawns from the realization, over the years, that Busdriver probably could have a pat on the back around then. As far as I can piece together, the dude was immensely talented, knew he was immensely talented, and was frustrated at fuck about where it was getting him. More generally, Busdriver seems like a self-conscious guy. Not unduly; he's probably pretty normal on that front for an actual person. But by rock star / rap star / public figure standards, where you're supposed to not give a shit, Busdriver obviously gives a shit what people think of him and his music, and about how his music is getting out there or not. And who wouldn't? Its not weakness, its an uncommon honestly, a lack of the kind of filters that most artist wrap themselves in, with facets of that honesty glinting off of the presumed half-truths of Least Favorite Rapper, Cool Band Buzz, Avantcore, Rap Sucks, even coming out of the crannies of The Weather's Glorified Hype Man, and on and on, to say nothing of the struggles referenced on the eventually-obtained Cosmic Cleavage. It's the kind of post-hardcode intimacy and vulnerability that Kanye and Drake are twisting to epic proportions lately, and Busdriver's been doing it for a decade. He's a real dude, too bad I didn't realize that before I moved.

I mention all this as context for the arc Busdriver's albums took: after his Pinkerton-personal Computer Cooties he put out a series of albums that just didn't feel wholehearted. The Fear of a Black Tangent / Roadkillovercoat / Jheli Beam sequence was dotted with adventurous production that didn't quite fit the rapping, with songs that smelled like they were fishing for airplay, sounding generally like an artist struggling to redefine himself, while struggling to define his relationship with his audience and his potential future audiences, trying on different stylistic outfits, but finding them baggy in the shoulders, tight as the waist, and in colors that didn't match the eyes. A guy who once engaged in constant surprise suddenly reveled in choruses with sing-song hooks; consider Kill Your Employer, unsuccessful as irony and bereft of sincerity, leaving only a chorus skin on a bloopablip skeleton, emblematic of the era's weakest moments (though Least Favorite Rapper and Manchuria were highlights).

And then Computer Cooties came out, and maybe the freedom of the small, free project snapped him out of his trying to please phase. That project was all over the place, and clearly just a matter of rapping, no gloss, just sick fucking rhymes, priming Busdriver, just maybe, to make the album he'd been trying to make all those years, to finally do himself right.

So, right, I don't know shit, this is all wild conjecture, but its how I read the decline and possible redemption of one of my once-favorite musicians, and it just so happens to fit into the narrative capped by Beaus$Eros. Which is to say that this album sounds like modern-era Busdriver, with none of the jazzy turns that marked Temporary Forever, but for the first time the man owns the sound.

---Actual Review Start---

I'm running just the barest bit long, so let me try to give the diligent reader a shortcut to work with: Bon Bon Fire is all you need to hear to understand what makes this whole album work:
- Musically, its bouncy, downright catchy, but weird as hell. With subbass buzz, trippled doo doos, chiming girl vocals, squirks and squalls, fitting together perfectly, echoes, drop outs, fuzz ins, tiny dubstep squibbles applied with admirable restraint.
- Structurally, its as adventurous as you could want, going high and low, and back and forth, narry a chorus to speak of, and that dropoff at 3:00 into the double drop-off at 3:20 into soaring croons at 3:40 is one of the finest sequences I've heard all year so far. It's a madcap chain of hooks that refuses to resolve into a single chunkable nugget for easy storage, demanding repeat listens, sounding like underground Hey Ya. Anyone who knows me knows that's a curiously high compliment.
- The lyrics are classic Busdriver, dropping Clam Chowders and Lay Pipes straight of Cosmic Cleavage, dropping Matt Lauer's and Oligarchy's straight off Temporary Forever.
- The delivery is legit. For once Busdriver owns his swears and N bombs, he owns this whole song, finally escaping that guest-on-his-own track tone that plagued his last few albums.

It's a goddamn great track.

Even Kiss me Back to Life, which bears some of the hallmarks of previous chorus-drenched, indieventurous-flecked tracks actually pulls the trick off this time, the chorus soaring, breaking down into herky-jerky bridges with confidence.

I still don't know what's going on on NoBlacksNoJewsNoAsians, but its brilliant, utterly original in structure, dropping off before it wears out its welcome by subverting the very countdown cadence it spent the first two minutes establishing.

In short, there's the sound of Busdriver taking chances here, of not giving a shit, of getting back to saying what's on his mind. Dude put out a song full of electro disco throb that repeats "ass to mouth" a few dozen times as a hook; this is a guy who is fucking going for it, fitting right in with the recent Das Racist and Spank Rock albums that have left trashy slashes across the last year in music. When he shouts "I'm the antichrist!" and Midnight Vulture breakdowns take over and the chorus comes back trippled up over doublehard bass and you're bobbing your head like hell you know something's going right.

My main complaint is that there's not enough actual rapping on here, plenty of tracks are at least as sung as they are spit, but you know, these days I'm not even that bothered by that. Frm time to time I've had to describe Busdriver as a madcap, Zappaesque art-rock songwriter that just happens to rap, and that fits perfectly well here: as a well-paced, inventive, experimental indie rock album this is the best I've heard in a while. Besides, Drake and Kanye's aforementioned output has opened a mainstream door for proggy, intimate, singsongey R&B-tinged hip hop that blurs lines, and this album fits that trajectory: adventurous structure, inventive production, delivering the occasional unflinching sexual diversion. This is nowhere near as bracing in its emotional content, but its a way better album than Drake's and comes surprisingly close to Kanye's (which I confess to liking a goddamn lot).

I need more listens (I apparently just wrote 1500 words about an album I've heard twice) to take it all in, but its been running around in my mind for days. There's a lesson for you here, kids, though I'm not sure what it is. Be true to your heart? Hang in there baby? I'm just excited to see this return to form from a criminally underappreciated rapper, may he finally find success 4.5/5

You might like this if: you like crazy structures, hooky hooks, incredible rhymes, well-integrated production and hyperinflected, hard-edged delivery. And hey, let's get really old-school Busdriver: even if you don't think you like rap, give it a try.