The Watch - Ep 102: ‘Gilmore Girls,’ ‘Hell Hath No Fury’ Turns 10, and The Weeknd’s ‘Starboy’ Re-up

Episode Date: December 2, 2016

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald are back to discuss the blockbusterization of TV (1:55), ‘Gilmore Girls’ (2:33), and Andy’s recent brush with a Hollywood A-lister (18:30). They also discuss Clipse’s ‘Hell Hath No Fury’ album 10 years later (25:40) and the Weeknd’s new album,‘Starboy’ (36:35). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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There is a big reason for you to shop small at local stores in your neighborhood. Learn more and enroll your eligible card today at Americanexpress.com slash shop small offer. That's Americanexpress.com slash shop small offer. Terms apply. I need supports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to the watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the rigger.com, and on the other line, it's Mr. Me Too. It's Andy Greenwald.

Yo, this is exciting. You know, we're back, I'm in your time zone, but we're not in the studio right now. No, I know. This is kind of exciting. You have, like, we have all sorts of technology we can apply to the situation, man. Andy, this is a sort of strange re-up because we are in between, you know, there's not like a midweek TV show that is demanding our attention. We covered Search Party on Monday, which everybody should be watching.

And I think everyone's sort of looking forward to and getting ready for the finale of Westworld. You know, there's been a lot of really cool. You know, I did want to ask you something about West World really quick. Is, do you think that, did you get a chance to read Allison's piece on The Ringer about is the Internet spoiling TV? I did not, but I agree. I'm just going to give you a blanket, yes. And I think that's a brilliant piece. But, you know, this is something that you've been writing about TV on the Internet for a really long time.

And I've been watching TV and also been on the internet for a long time. And I think that Westworld is actually kind of an unfair show to put this on in terms of, you know, Westworld is actually begging to be unwrapped and unlocked and solved and all this stuff. And I think that's partially what kind of leads you to be a little bit skeptical about the show in general is because if you didn't have all this scholarship around the show, would the show itself actually be entertaining? Um, do you find that it's kind of starting to creep into other stuff? I was reading today a couple of interviews as I like to do with Amy Sherman Palladino. Because, you know, I like to keep up on on ASP's takes. I want to know about Rory Gilmore's sense of privilege and everything. And, you know, but I was just, I even saw people asking her like, oh, there's a fan theory about this.

And I was like, it's Gilmore Girls, man. Like, no shots. Gilmore Girls is definitely what it is. but not everything is going to have Easter eggs and fan theories about it. And I was just wondering if you'd started to sense that creeping into other stuff. I completely, well, not only do I agree with you and not only have I sense it, I'm really glad you brought up the Gilmore Girls reunion. First of all, I'm just glad you brought the Gilmore Girls reunion because I love Stars Hollow.

I actually planned to get a retirement condo there for when this is all over with. But basically, I think Gilmore Girls, which, full disclosure, I have not watched on Netflix, So I feel very confident waiting out. Did you watch it when it was on at all? You know, sometimes I would just when I felt like my life was going too slow and I needed to remind myself the way people who had been snorting at are all talked because that's what those characters sounded like to me. But no, I enjoy it.

It was fine. It was a cute show. I was never a super fan, but I enjoyed it when it was on. But the fact that it is back is, okay, that's fine. I mean, we are definitely in a universe where this isn't even, I don't think this is what we mean. we talk about Westworld, but the internet has affected TV in one major way, which is, it has helped to transform television into more of a vehicle of just fan service, right? Gilmore Girls would not be back on Netflix if there wasn't this enormous desire expressed

on message boards and on Twitter and on, I don't know, I was going to say live journals, but that's just dating myself, to bring it back. But so it's back, but it comes back into this fevered, um, cauldron of discussion that really isn't even about the artistic merits of these, they're four episodes, right? Of these, of these four episodes. Like,

they're four, four, like, episode two, dude, it's like 90 minute run times on each. It's just that immediately, and I'm saying this is someone who did not actually engage with the content,

but was unable to avoid being swamped with the reception and reaction and analysis and dissection of the content, meaning it, it immediately turned, transformed what it was a sweet, you know, well-written, well-acted show into Westworld or lost, right? Like I saw many links to articles about like what the final four words of the series might mean. There was, you know, you weren't even joking. There literally was a headline for a story about what Gilmore Girls gets wrong about privilege.

And then on the same website, what Gilmore Girls gets wrong about journalism. And it's like, I don't know if everything merits this. You know what I mean? Like, as my old biology teacher used to say, not everything is a pig uterus. Not everything needs to be dissected on the table. Are you sure that was your biology teacher? Weirdly, I'm going to be honest to you. That's my financial planner.

But I think that it does transform the experience into something much more heated and much greater than it ought to be. And not everything can withstand that. And I say this obviously is someone who's doing the reverse of what you probably should with these television shows. Because if you were just a fan of Gilmore Girls and you turned on your Netflix machine and you were like, oh, cool, there's more Gilmore Girls. your experience with it is bounded by your own interest in experiencing it. Do you know what I mean? You are not immediately taken out of the engagement of it

and put on this much more hypercritical rapacious interaction with the show, which, again, I don't know if it can support it. Whereas Westworld, I also don't think it can support it, but at least it was designed specifically to feed those urges. See, that's funny that you should say that because I would say that it's the reverse is almost true where Gilmore Girls,

because it would be like, and let's not unnecessarily, like, you know, drag Stars Hollow. Because if Terriers came back, you know, a show that you loved and a show that you have often, like, sort of not so subtly,

you know, urged the universe to bring back into your life and there's really no reason why it shouldn't come back, there would be a degree to which you would have a transactional relationship with that, right? You would expect it to do certain things that it did the first time around, you would expect it to satisfy certain desires, certain urges you would have for it.

Not to make it sound like you have a sexual relationship with that show. I don't know why I made that. I do. It's okay. I can say, but Westworld was coming into a vacuum. I mean, like, nobody knew what Westworld was going to be like. For all we know, it could have been incredibly chatty show, or it could have been a show that really pushed aside a lot of the theological and philosophical questions about

human consciousness and just really was like more of like a straight hard procedural sci-fi and every episode was a different guest comes to the park and they have a different adventure. I mean they they literally could have done that. Who's having the sexual relationship with a straight hard TV show? But I think that you know you know that's what was that's been what's so fascinating about all of the discourse around Westworld that's popped up is that it has almost we've been training, like we've been running up and down the art museum steps with with like Game of Thrones on our back and it's made us strong and it's made us able to do these knuckle push-ups on this content and say like, oh, okay, like here it is. Now Joy and No one are

also incredibly talented at giving us the Easter eggs that we need to make scrambled eggs. You know what I mean? And that is, boy, I got a lot of imagery flying today. We got pig uterces and scramm, like, I don't know, let's go. It's rich. It's just the re-up. But, yeah, I guess I was just, I just wanted to talk about that a little bit. For what it's worth, you know, I did watch Gilmore Girls. Whoa.

Okay, before we unpack that, I just want to circle back to one point you made. I loved the canceled too soon FX series Terriers. I am not denying that. And just last week, when I was in New York, I did a, I moderated a panel with Eric Shrier, who, you know, we had Nick Rad on our podcast from FX. Eric Shrier is the other president of original programming there. And in front of an audience, I actually begged him to resurrect terriers, but let's be honest, I don't really want that to happen.

I'm going to come clean because I don't think it would live up to the expectations in my head, and I think it ended in an appropriate place. And that's not really a popular opinion to have about anything, especially people who want to see Donal Logue getting more work. But because what you're talking about, and I think you really nailed it when you talked about when we have these resurrections, you talk about the expectations we carry, into them and that becoming almost that almost becoming the A story and the the new material itself becoming the B story. It's not so much that I want it I feel like there's an element that

isn't discussed, which is that when people want beloved things from not even their childhood, but from previous parts of their lives brought back, they don't want the thing brought back. They want that part of their lives brought back. They want a time machine, right? They want it because the way we interact with culture, and this is not groundbreaking. This is in some ways like the er text of our podcast, especially one in which we're going to talk about the 10-year anniversary of a rap album. This is all, this is kind of all time travel in a way or a wish to have time travel and to preserve not the thing, but who we were, we interacted with the thing. And the context changes our appreciation of just about anything. And I'm sure there are listeners

who don't understand why we feel the way we feel about Kanye or don't understand why we feel the way we feel about why we've reacted the way we've reacted to Atlanta or divorce or insecure or whatever precisely because they don't link up in terms of, they don't link up chronologically with us.

So I feel like that essentially is part of it. I guess the flip side to go back to Gilmore Girls is that, and this is the most positive spin I can put on it because otherwise I was just throwing up my hands with this stuff,

to be honest with you. But maybe who we were 10 years ago were people who enjoyed watching Gilmore Girls as a TV show and who we are 10 years later are people who want to investigate the concept of privilege in Stars Hollow. Maybe that's where we are now. No, I think that that's not totally fair.

I mean, I think that, and I also... Wait, wait, to be clear, it is definitely not fair for Go On. No, but I mean, like, the assessment you're making of, like, how... I don't think that we bring these things back just to run them through the ringer of, like, the sensibilities, the modern sensibilities,

Is that what you're trying to say? No, no, I'm just saying maybe to be generous, like we're, not that we bring the back in order to do that, but maybe it is better than the better version of what I was saying, which is I want terriers back because I really want to relive how I felt in 2010. Maybe the better way of saying it is these things come back and we, in the best case scenario, we look at them with contemporary eyes, which means interrogating privilege,

which means looking at them like Easter eggs, which means looking at them like serialized content packages or looking at them basically the way we look at TV shows in 2016, not the way we watched it on the CW or was it the WB back, you know, 10 years ago. Hmm. Okay. Well, let's, that's actually, uh, what? Wait, before you table it, though. What'd you think of Gilmore girls, man? Um, well, I had, uh, I was a little mystified by it because I had actually never seen it before. Like, you know, I, I think I was aware of it the way someone who would maybe never watch

the West Wing could become very familiar with it by watching a montage on YouTube. Yeah. Chris, you're one of those people who didn't see Star Wars, but started watching Star Wars with Phantom Menace. You are this rare flower. You are totally unique culturally. But honestly, Phantom Menace had been just

released straight to Netflix. I'm sure there would be thousands of people like that. You know, it's just, it's about ease of access. And I think that it was very similar to stranger things in that it was like a couple of days where there wasn't really anything else to watch. And I felt very caught up on other stuff. And all of a sudden I was just like,

I got to see how these crazy kids make it work, you know? Are you, was that a spoiler alert? Does that mean the final four words out of Rory Gilmore's mouth are why the fuck is the space worm in my throat? Like, is that why it's like stranger things? Yeah. Did you just spoil all of it? Mom, what's a demigorgon?

Yeah, so I watched it. It had it's, it has a, it has a, It's charms, you know, Gilmore. It's not really my thing, but I was not unhappy watching it. I was a little mystified by some of it, but yeah. I think we can end the conversation on here since for the fifth time I'll reiterate, I haven't watched it, which makes me uniquely unqualified to even have this conversation. But I think maybe my annoyance at some of the internet headlines I saw related to Gilmore

Girls come from the fact that we should have shows like Gilmore Girls. And I don't mean to belittle or say it in a pejorative way when I say that Gilmore Girls is a wonderful small show in that it is about people and their relationships and the sparkly very fast way that they talk to each other. And Dainu, you know what I mean? Like that should be enough. It's sort of a different way to suggest the creeping blockbusterization of television that it had to be an event and that it had to spawn the same sort of think pieces that a much more blockbusterization. upbustery show like Westworld or Game of Thrones create. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it's funny to imagine a world in which, because when you said that, I was about

to just go into like a quick little, is there anything that's actually a quote on TV anymore where it's like on any given night, if you sit down and you're like, I am just going to turn on my television, you're hoping for 30 minutes to 120 minutes of entertainment in any given night and there used to be reliably when there were less options you could find that you could cobble it together from multiple networks networks would go out of their minds trying to assemble a night for you to find that right and I was like oh yeah but there's nothing like you're like when you said that I was like yeah I don't think there's anything like Gilmore girls on right now where you could just reliably watch that once a week but the thing is is that you know it's funny crazy ex-girlfriend

ticks some of those boxes and I'm not just saying because it's just like you know like it's it's smart comedy, female-driven comedy with, like, musical. I mean, like, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has more musical numbers, obviously, but Kilmer Girls actually has quite a few in this reboot. But Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is, like, no one's watching that. And I don't mean that in, like, as a shots way. Like, nobody is watching that show, and, you know, maybe they'll keep it on because it's critically adored.

But that is definitely a show that, like, would come back in 10 years, where people would be like, I found Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for, like, the two seasons that it was on, it became a cult hit, people learned all the songs, and they brought it back. Well, that's also why they keep making it. But the other thing that someone who was worked on the other side of the desk in the industry would say, to my point about why when Gilmore Girls returns, it has to be a blockbuster, is because Gilmore Girls, the return is not in direct programming competition with shows

like it or Game of Thrones. It is not just in competition with those things, all the options that we have. also in direct competition with Gilmore Girls, which exists for people to watch at any time they want. Yeah. Which didn't used to be the case. So you have to come back bigger or more weaponized or whatever the case may be, just to be noticed and just to survive and even beyond the idea of having a reason for existing, a reason that I still question. But maybe I won't question it after I learn those final four words. Well, before we get to the final four words, let's take a quick break from our sponsors.

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Just go to bookes.com slash watch. That's B-O-U-Q-S-com slash watch. Okay, Andy, we're back. We're going to talk a little music for the rest of the pod. A little bit of Hell Hath, No Fury. Clips's seminal album is celebrating its 10th anniversary this week, and we're also going to talk a little bit about Weekend Starboy album. But first, I wanted to cede the floor to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

I just wanted to tell you about, you know, people love Hollywood stories, you know, people love it. That's one thing I've learned since moving to Hollywood. No, they hate it. But we have a captive audience. I just, I wanted to tell you this, and I figured this is the time we're talking today, so I'll tell you. Last night I did a, I moderated a SAG Screen Actors Guild panel for the cast of Mr. Robot. That's one of the best guilds, man. It is a strong guild.

It's definitely one of the more demonstrative, dramatic guilds because it was just a roomful of actors. It was right across from Sunset Gower. And right before the thing started, I went to the bathroom as one does. And emerging from a back staircase right by the bathroom was a figure, an older figure with a sort of devilish grin and sunglasses on. Can I guess? And yeah. Was it Josh Lucas? Go ahead.

Great guest. Great guest. Josh Lucas was in the bathroom having a by himself meeting with a mirror. But this character gave me pause. I was like, oh my God. I know this. I know that face. I know that wolfish grin because in fact, he was the star of wolf.

And I turned to the people around me and we're all looking at each other because we're like, holy shit, that's Jack Nicholson. What? Jack Nicholson is in Neuhaus on Sunset Boulevard. And not only that, he appears to be here to attend a Mr. Robot cast panel. No. No, no, no. So I go back to the. the room and I'm like, I run to the USA publicist and I'm like, why is Jack Nicholson here?

And everyone's like, we don't know. We don't know. And I'm like, isn't this awkward because Christian Slater, who's five feet for me, the first half of his career was just bedeviled by comparisons to Jack Nichol. So in my mind, I'm working out all these connections. I'm like, maybe they met and I had an awkward chuckle over some, over a drink and like now they're friends. And so he came to see his buddy. I don't know what it is, but there's hubba. But we're all talking about it. The cast is talking about it. So the event begins. I'm up on stage and it's Rami and Christian and friend of the pod, Sam Esmell, and Portia Doubleday and Carly Chakin and Grace Gummer and Stephanie Corneliusen who plays Joanna Wellick,

who is much more intense in person than she is on the show. What? And we're doing. What? Yeah. She mostly wanted to talk about Catherine the Great and then kept asking me what roughly what years Catherine the Great was alive. It was like 17th century.

I was honored that she thought I would know that, but I also felt very intimidated because she's seven feet tall. Anyway, we're up on stage, you know, and I'm chatting with the cast and making some jokes, giving some quality Rami Burns about him winning an Emmy, and my eyes drift down to the front row. And there's Jack, man. There's the, there he is. Oh, so he got the Lakers seats of the SAG panel talk? Exactly right. There he is right in front of me.

There, you know, he's looking up, he's still wearing his sunglasses. And at a certain point, and he's hanging on every word, like only a super fan of the show would be. And then, you know, I'm joking about something. Carly says something, and I make a joke about, like, how actors, like actor talk or whatever. And I turn, Jack's losing it. Jack loves it. Chris, Jack loves me. I'm killing in front of Jack Nicholson.

And this doesn't make me nervous. This boy, it's the wind beneath my wing, you know? It should. I feel like there's a butt coming, though. So there is a Sir Mixelot-sized butt coming. So I am, but what's surprising, so I have this lift because while I'm doing this conversation, while I'm asking the cast of Mr. Robot about, you know, pranks on set and we show Carly's audition tape for the part of Darlene, there is a second narrative emerging in my head where I'm like, I'm in now. Not only am I in. Jack Nicholson loves me.

Oh, yeah. I'm going to go to Lakers games. You're writing the third Chinatown movie. Yeah, I got there eventually. My first thought was maybe he'd come on our podcast, which is a very, very humble thing to think. Jack Nicholson is my number one fan. Do you think Nicholson knows what podcasts are? No, but that's literally like you rub a lamp and the genie from Aladdin comes out and I'm like,

I'd like Chinese food for dinner. Like, you could think bigger. You know what I mean? Right, right. So this whole panel goes on and by the end of it, like I am literally feeding Jack Nicholson Kibble from my hands. He loves everything we've done. We end the panel with a blooper reel and he's in stitches.

He loves it. There's a younger woman next to him, but not Lara Flynn Boyle in the 90s age inappropriate young. like a younger woman and she's filming the thing. I'm like, maybe, maybe Jack just wants to remember this. Maybe he's told this woman film the guy in the blazer because that guy can really moderate. We come off stage. We emerge from the stage.

And I'm talking to Portia and I'm like, I can't believe Jack Nicholson is here. She's like, I know. I'm losing it. And I turn to Grace Gummer and I say, I can't believe Jack Nicholson was here. And Grace Gummer looks at me. And she says, that's not Jack. And the key from her comment. The key comment isn't that she says that's not Jack Nicholson.

It's that Grace Gummer, Grace, my mother has worked with Jack Nicholson. My mother knows more about him than ordering Chinese food. Doesn't say that's not Jack Nicholson. She says, that's not Jack. Which immediately makes me realize what a peon I am in the Hollywood firmament. Wait, so was it a look-alike? Because how did it convince the entire cast of Mr. Robot other than someone related to Merrill Streep and you, that that was, happening? Did Sam think it was Jack?

This is the power of Hollywood myth-making because the more we thought about it, like Jack Nicholson has gotten a little bit, I don't mean, there's no disrespect, he's an older man, he's gotten a little wider in his last public appearances, you know, and there was a story that I believe is true. It's not like a rumor. I think that

he had generally stopped working because he was losing his hearing. This was not, this man was not that. This man was like, dream version of what we all wanted Jack Nicholson to be, because also we all wanted him to be there, you know? We wanted him to be such a fan of Mr. Robot. He's a fan of Mr. Robot cast panels. So wait, did you go do a, did you do a breezeby to confirm that this was his, this was just a

lookalike? We, it was literally like a magic trick. Like as soon as she told us that, we all were like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. We all knew it. And, you know, and Portia said to me, you know, I'm just disappointed because I thought, you thought he was going to be in your podcast. She said, I thought he was going to ask me out. And I said, well, well, good news, bad news. bad news is Jack Nicholson isn't going to ask you about but good news a random Lupine 60 something who creeps in the front row of sag panels on Wednesday night

definitely wants to be your boyfriend. I think you played that right because the other option there would have been as soon as Grace said that you could have been like yeah I know I know I was testing you and I was testing all these knuckleheads and they got it wrong what a bunch of star fuckers

and then give them all nuggies and walk out yeah so but look I just feeling into me But to me, it's aspirational because any night in this glittering town of dreams, you know, you can also pretend to see an idol incorrectly identify someone. That's a great story, man. I really, I liked that a lot.

I have a story of my own. Okay. About 10 years ago, exactly 10 years ago, it turns out, I started working for the Fader magazine. And I was just like, you know, writing stuff on the internet for them and writing pieces for them. first cover story that I did. Gosh, I think it was a cover. I can't remember. I might not even been a cover. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

But my first big feature that I did for them was an assignment to go down to Virginia with a photographer and talk about, and talk to two brothers who made up this rap group clips, who obviously had been pretty

successful. Like, had like a huge hit with grinding off of Lord William. Lord Willan had become like a real street rap classic. People adored it. People, you know, they were like the perfect rapper foils for the Neptunes, who were the biggest producers at that time in the mid-2000s. And everybody was ready.

Let's go, second album, we can't wait. And they had wound up getting into huge label drama with their label jive over their sophomore record. And, you know, I can't remember quite the chronology of when the we got it for cheap mixtapes started coming out. But Clips was essentially, like a lot of. rap groups around that time, a lot of artists around that time. They were lost, quote-unquote. Like, you would get a lot of these pretty great mixtapes, but the album never lived up to it,

and then they would sort of peter out. Or they would have a great album, but the second album would never come. Or they would just be all sorts of complications and mysteries about why some people caught on. Some people didn't. People would kind of get lost to time. And clips were really in danger of doing that. It sounds crazy to say it now, but it was definitely real. That when I remember when they came to New York to play that we got it for cheap out like basically the entire mixtape plus like classics you know that that was still like people thought maybe clips is only ever going to put mixtapes out from now on and for a while there not even though we got it for cheap tapes weren't really like catching on quite the same way like say gangster girls tapes were were really big or more like even 50 it's also it isn't it also worth saying that just considering we're we're telling this story from the fall of of time to a 2016 audience, you just described the worst case scenario for clips 10 years ago is Chance the Rapper's Career. Yeah.

Like that dude still hasn't made an album, but 10 years ago, it was still a little bit murkier. Yeah, I mean, it would be kind of the equivalent. So basically, I think that because of their association with the Neptunes, because they had done stuff, I don't remember when they did the Justin Timberlake song. But they, like, that was, no, the Timberlake song was before any of this. The Timberlake song was the first appearance was, was. that was that was contemporaneous to Lord Willen okay so but they were pretty I mean it's not like they were starving but they were definitely being their career had been derailed by all this label stuff

and um so I went down to Virginia this record was mythical right like we had heard about this album that was supposed to be called hell hath no fury and it was too dark to be released there was all these reasons and I got down there and I went to hovercraft studios in in Virginia, and it was me, and it was Chad Hugo from the Neptunes, and Malice, and eventually Pusher from Clips showed up, and we all went into the studio, and they took off, like, I remember still this to the day, like, going in, and Push takes off his beeps, and they hit play, and they play Hell Hath No Fury, and my face melted, you know, partially because Pusher wrapped the entire album in my face while I was listening to it,

So I was just like, this is about as good as life gets. I don't really know if I've gotten higher than that. And, you know, like we went on to spend the next day or so together. Like, we ate at a cheesecake factory and walked around the beach a little bit and just talked about, like, where things were at. And it took a while, but, like, you know, you start to get into, you know, I basically not unlike ideas that we talk about with some of the shows that we live, like, say, like night of or something like that,

where like the degrees to which Pusha was pulling things from personal experience but like ultimately like he found that stuff as much as it was autobiographical. He found it to just be incredibly rich text to like work from. Anyway it goes on and on and

eventually Hell Hath No Fury does come out and now is celebrating its 10th anniversary and is considered a classic of that decade, a rap classic of that decade. So this is just like an all like a very long way of saying. I wasn't really even playing. I'm like telling that story.

It wasn't, and I think the thing that I will remember from that the most is the sadness that was hanging around those guys at the time, because it was really genuine that they just didn't know if this was ever going to come out. And either they were going to have to leak it themselves, which would probably further destroy a lot of the credibility they had with their label. You know, there was a lot of stuff probably tied up with the Neptunes at the time in terms of like what the Neptunes couldn't sort of support. and Chad and Farrell had done the whole record with production.

But I remember the sadness around like the sort of state of the record. And I also remember the kind of melancholy that was like there. This was, we're talking like kind of like ex-Burbs, Virginia Beach, you know? Like it wasn't, we were at a cheesecake factory. And it was just there was something kind of like emotionally barren and soulless about where we were. And I remember the, you know, the music very much reflecting that. And the music was also very much reflecting that time. in American life, you know.

This is pre-O-Bama 05 or whenever it was when I heard it. And it was funny, like, I eventually wound up getting to hear it on an iPod that belonged to Clips' publicist. He was like, here it is, like, you have to give me the iPod back. And it was like everything I could do, because I was like, I would never blag on artists' work. But I was literally like, if no one gets to hear this, like, what is going to happen? You know, I can't, I can't be the only person.

And thank God everybody did get to hear it. But let's also contextualize, like, one of the reasons that no one wanted to release the record is because it wasn't, you know, a rap album couldn't be such a, in the popular thinking, not the popular thinking, in the industry thinking, a rap album couldn't be a singular focused work. It had to be basically a pop or, it had to be a salad bar of, you know, of guest features, of R&B tracks, of, of, of, love trap pop songs, you had to just throw everything onto it in the hopes that one of those things might pop and sell the rest of it. The idea of, you know, what we, what I think even now mainstream culture champions in terms of purity, fierce purity of artistic vision in something other than Prague rock, you know what I mean? Like nobody batted an eye when Radiohead made Kid A. But today we're in a world where Kendrick Lamar can make to pimp a butterfly or Beyonce can

make lemonade and R&B and hip hop are considered certain, thank God, but are considered artistic equals in terms of the fierce purity of artistic vision on an album, what an album can be. Hell hath no Fury is still, to this day, visionary. I mean, the track, I was listening to it yesterday, and they basically invented Yeezus on Trill. It's all there as this text. But the thing about it that I still love is it is relentless.

It is teeth grinding, terrifying, amoral nihilism that somehow sounds more inviting than a swimming pool. And, you know, to connect it to the reasons why we love anything on this point, podcast is like it is the to my mind it is probably the ultimate genre album right yeah because i don't it's not just that i don't care if pusha really sold drugs the degree that he's he and his brother claim they do on the record he even he's moved past that i mean he was out there politicking with tim cane and by the way there is the only reason i want another chapter if we got it for cheap is so that they can they can just talk about how there's a senator from virginia named tim kane it's

almost too good to be true. But it's basically like reading one of these crime novels that we're already talking about. It is a relentless, vicious, lyrically brilliant and clever window into a fiercely curated and understood world, which is why we like crime fiction, even though we don't necessarily like, you know, in real life, we don't like shooting people in the face. At least I speak for myself. Yeah, and it's funny. I have to, I have to be honest, when I heard the record, I mean, obviously the first experience of hearing the record was one thing. But when the album finally came out in 06, I would say that I was like 90% committed to it because the 10% that I was holding back was all about, was all tied up in my sort of steadfast

belief that we got it for Cheap Volume 2 was like a truly totemic, like crowning rap achievement. And part of the problem with that was that because they were sort of tied up in this label stuff, they were just like, well, whatever, we'll just rap over, hate it or love it, and this T.I.B. and this ludicrous beat. And Daytona 500. And Daytona 500 and this common beat. And we'll just take, we'll just take the best of rap, and then we'll just destroy it. We'll just be the best Coke rappers there are in the game and two of the best rappers. And so the sort of switch back to this pure Neptune sound. And a Neptune sound that was not, you know, club friendly by any means.

was kind of jarring. But now when you go back and you listen to Chinese New Year, or you listen to Trill, or you listen to dirty money or ride around shining, it's like such a perfect marriage of lyrics and music. It's so great. Because the other thing about it is that, you know, it's artistry in the sense that the music is so, it's so pristine, it enters an uncanny valley and starts to sound fake.

You know, it, it, lyrically, you could mistake, what they're doing for glorifying certain ways of life or certain extravagance, but the music undercuts it in a way that is wholly absolutely intentional. I mean, these are very, very smart guys and they know what they're doing. You know, the music starts to sound like pyrite. The music starts to sound like the diamonds that they're talking about are fake. You know, the music undercuts the celebration of debauchery with that sort of, with the ugly light, the dawn coming up at 5 a.m. in a way that is still haunting.

Not nearly as haunting is the fact that your man, Rosco P. Cold Chain got a hot 16 on Chinese New Year. Oh, forever. Which I hope, I hope, at least pays like the car note for that dude because God bless him. Let, look. I mean, we can't recommend this album highly enough if you haven't spent time with it recently or if you, God forbid, have not heard it before. You should really check it out. Let's quickly wrap up, though, by talking about another person who is very familiar with the 5 a.m.

Dawn Chills, which is a weekend who put out his new album. We briefly mentioned it on Monday, I think. I think, Starboy, you know, I wanted to see, because, like, this is an interesting thing. Like, I was in Starbucks the other day with a couple of coworkers, and the general sort of take on this was, I miss Goth Weekend. You know, in a weird way, when Abel was making this trilogy of Susie and the Banshees' R&B back a couple years ago on his mixtapes, people were like, yeah, but is he ever going to figure it out and write a hit? And then obviously he wrote, I can't fill my face in the hills. And it really worked, everything worked out for him. But do you miss Goth Weekend or are you into Def Punk 80s Michael Jackson Weekend who still,

still his lyrically, content-wise, is still just as dark? I mean, I am generally a fan of ambition and artists. And I love the fact that he made, you know, House of Balloons, which is still a classic, but then was able to go widescreen. You know, it's thrilling to me to see someone who is. so good at doing something within a smaller frame really take to the larger canvas. I love pop songs. I think he's kind of a genius at them because he is one of the rare artists who has gone on to the main stage but still brings, I mean, I mean, he's a punk metaphor, but he still kind of brings,

he doesn't bring the basement, he brings kind of a gutter ethos to what he's singing about. Yeah. And he subverts it just by doing it. I liked the singles off the last record. I think the, my only frustration with Starboy is that for like nine tracks, I'm like, this is a modern masterpiece, and then there's nine more tracks. And I just wish that someone had given him an editor. I know these albums

cost a lot of money these days with the co-writes and everything and CDs or streaming sites are limitless in terms of how much data you need, but I was so excited. Because this dude got daft punk to produce two tracks, and the two tracks are brilliant. Like, it is a brilliant, especially I feel it come in the last

track on the album. But do you include It's sidewalks in the list of songs that are great on this album? Sidewalks should be on. Sidewalks is on my curated version of this album, yes. As is Reminder, which is kind of the spiritual successor to that initial trilogy, but very, very sly, winking update to it. When I hear false alarm, I'm so excited to be 20 years older and then watch a movie about the 2010s

and have the debauchrous rave sequence set to that song because I will immediately know that will be the song that people use to identify 2016 because it just it just seems as if it was written to accomplish that and it does. I even like the Lana Del Rey song, man. You know, I think this guy is really good at doing what he does. I just wish that he'd cut the album by half. But to your point about your Starbucks cipher, what's interesting about fame right now is that the type of fame that we used to talk about when we would talk about like,

Remember how the cure could sell out the spectrum? Sure. Even before Friday I'm in love? Of course, yeah. Because the diehards would come and support them, people who lived and breathed them, you know? The people who liked the songs on disintegration that weren't pictures of you in love song.

Yeah. That type of fandom is what I was thinking of when we went to the St. Pablo tour and we saw the religious ferocity of the people in the Mosh Pit. And similarly, like, those are the people who will just, on the strength of their adornment, will carry the weekend over gold status no matter what he puts out. You know what I mean? And so maybe the nine tracks on this album that I think are a little bit middling and a little bit

recursive and dark. Like that's that's for the real heads. Yeah. I mean those are the albums can be so long. It's for everybody. Those are for the people who still believe in Kisland like me. Do you still believe in Kisland? The professional is actually my favorite weekend song. The first song on Kisland. Yeah, I know. I just think that you know it's it we don't have many artists who are completely, have a completely articulated point of view and then can bring that point of view with them to different palettes, like whether he's duetting with Ariana Grande or singing, or rhyming kid show and bag of blow as he does on this record, which I really appreciate.

For that reason alone, he's to be celebrated. And then the fact that he gets those French robots to, like, leave their chateaus and make songs that are this exciting, I think is a reason to celebrate. All right, well, we will be back on Monday to talk about the finale of Westworld and some other stuff. Until then, thanks for joining me, Andy. Great job, Rich. Thanks again to the Bookes for sponsoring today's episode. The Bookes Company starts with farm fresh flowers that arrive days after they are cut.

Prices start in mere 40 bucks, and there are no hidden fees. Right now, listeners can save $15. Just go to bookes.com slash watch. That's B-O-U-Q-S.com slash watch. Thank you again to Sonos for sponsoring us today. Sonos is the smart speaker system that streams all your favorite music to any room or every room. Control your music with one simple app and fill your home with pure immersive sound. One simple app brings together all your favorite music services and lets you control everything from songs to volume to rooms to starboy to hellhap no fury.

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