Machine Gun Kelly ft. Wiz Khalifa – Mind of a Stoner
Sensing — or, rather, smelling — a theme here?
[Video][Website]
[4.25]
Katherine St Asaph: I thought Kid Cudi was over.
[3]
Jonathan Bradley: Machine Gun Kelly is a Cleveland native and Wiz is from Pittsburgh, making this an intuitive collaboration, if not a particularly productive one. For whatever reason, more than a few Rust Belt rappers have developed an affinity for streaky synths and pastel vocal inflections that seem to stand in inexplicable contrast with their home region’s history of manufacturing and present of post-industrial decay. Easier to understand is the attraction to weed, which here takes on a kind of Midwestern ordinariness; Kelly’s whiteness enhances the sense that this is drug music for middle America. And there’s the problem: it’s a mistake to be this nondescript when working in a medium with as rich a pedigree as that of the weed song. There are better songs to smoke to, better songs that approximate the feeling of being high, and better songs that pry open the thoughts and activities of the perpetually stoned. Kelly fails to make his musings interesting, be they concerned with his distaste for income tax or the connections he imagines between police lights and American vexillology. If you’re the type to find titillation in the mere fact that this song is about marijuana: cool, but, wait ’til you hear Snoop or Devin the Dude!
[4]
Anthony Easton: The lassitude of a working class stoner with nothing to offer has been written endlessly, sometimes comically, but rarely with this level of severe boredom. I like this less than other examples, but it does what it says it will do.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Now see here’s a song about priorities, and its thick opulent production will make it the go-to song for TV news magazine producers looking for soundtrack music for the latest story about medical marijuana accessibility.
[6]
Megan Harrington: MGK is completely useless. I’m awarding him two points for rapping what he knows. He knows the life of retail associate turned rapper, earning a legal wage — hope there aren’t random drug tests involved — and semi-respectfully not having sex with a married ex-girlfriend. Wiz Khalifa cannot sing, though that’s nominally what he’s been hired to do here. Instead he has the most beautiful manicure and a perfect pair of clear plastic frames. So, one bonus point for Wiz.
[3]
Patrick St. Michel: Various complaints of varying degrees + a sprinkle of dab-induced philosophy + phoned-in “inspirational” chorus = the mind of a stoner, I guess.
[1]
Mallory O’Donnell: 35% does sound a bit high. Too bad “Mind of a Libertarian” isn’t a very catchy title.
[4]
Brad Shoup: In the last couple years, I’ve shelved one Great American Novel idea (Christian hardcore band goes on tour) in favor of another. I’d love to follow a decade in the life of a big-box employee: living in a shitty studio apartment, racking up DVDs and Xbox hours, subsisting on chain restaurants and drive-thrus, sinking night after night in service-industry bars, passing out when the streets are empty and waking to the awful noontime sun. I never did the stoner thing, but I get the torpor, the dread inertia of getting by. Kelly doesn’t paint that picture, not quite, but this would be the soundtrack for the real deal: fuzzy lulling synths, easy-to-follow flow, lobotomized insights. Wiz’s hook packs some ambition (unless those papers are for rolling), but his croaky croon is just another siren song, drawing our hero off the ledge.
[8]
Brad, I would definitely read the Christian hardcore novel. Just sayin.
The other one does sound really really awful, it’s true.