this year i had promised myself i would not leave those cherryblossoms to shiver alone under the gray skies as i had done a year 2 years ago & after weeks o’ procrastinating on april 6, 2025, the final day o’ the cherryblossom festival, i finally forced myself to venture forth to the “quad” o’ the university of washington, where there dwelled cherryblossom trees nearly 100 years ol’. according to uw themselves, there are multiple stories explaining whence these trees originated, including being planted as part o’ fdr’s new deal policies & being gifted by japanese & japanese-american organizations various times o’er the years.

but i was greedy that day & chose to explore nearby areas while i was in the vicinity, having no idea what i would be stumbling myself into.

my venture truly began when i got off the lightrail in capitol hill @ john st. & broadway e, which is not to be mixed up with the og broadway in new york: this 1 is apparently up for lease if the advertising sign just below its name speaks truly.

there i waited for the 49 bus whose pole had a branding deal with a hello kitty character i’d ne’er seen before: the toast angel. as those who’ve seen my various photos & read my transcriptions o’ the poems i’d see on my travels know, i’ve always held a deep respect for the anonymous people who scribble out these graphics & poems when all eyes are blind in all these crannies & corners o’ cities, ne’er to have their authorialship known & ne’er to know the responses o’ all those who witness their works.

after the 49 had finally come & picked me up i departed @ harvard ave e & e shelby st. in eastview & then turned right, going down incredibly bougie neighborhoods down a steep incline on which i saw some woman impressively run down with her dog while i crept carefully with the sense that a single wrong step would cause me to topple forward. from up here i could already see portage bay @ the end — in fact, as i’d later find out, an e’en better view than @ the end:

but i eventually did reach the bottom & was able to find a decent view thru the petals o’ a cherryblossom tree that had made an early appearance:

i was not alone gazing @ this sight: standing there — if not ignorant o’ my own presence, then indifferent — also gazing into the scenery was a sturdy, hardened fire hydrant whose jungle-green pallor looked e’en mo’ rusty under the colorsucking dim skies:

howe’er, as one must always do eventually, i had to leave my new acquaintance & head back. why i went back the way i came instead o’ continuing north & seeing new scenery, i don’t recall — i think i wanted to see if i could capture a better view o’ portage bay from the other side o’ shelby st. in any case, i did catch a few nice sights going back up, including 1 home which seemed to be covered @ the front by a large fence made o’ brambles, which reminded me o’ the bramble bushes in front o’ my late grandmother’s house that she would demand i futilely try to trim down on many summers:

in contrast to the verdant fire hydrant, higher up i found a particularly dull-colored pickup truck which seemed it could be no mo’ indifferent to the extravagant sight:

& farther on i encountered a different fellow connoisseur o’ nature who definitely seemed unaware o’ my presence, so enraptured as it strolled thru its suburban alleyway surrounded by recycling bins, empty to all other life but a bush o’ pink daisies:

still not satisfied, instead o’ continuing north from my eastern distraction, i went west to the other end o’ the triangular edge to see the water on the other side — lake union, to which portage bay connected round the norther tip — @ the e allison st. public shore on fairview ave e, where i could get a much better view o’ the several suburban homes o’ many colors, spotted by the e’erpresent e’ergreen firs & many boats, lining the cliffs before the lake, careless to the danger they put themselves to by standing so precariously on the edge during an era o’ water-raising climate change, their black windows like eyes gazing as imperturbably as i was into the waters:

after this short 2nd detour, i finally continued northeast toward my main destination, the quad o’ the university o’ washington university bridge, which connected eastlake & university district across portage bay. from where i begun my northeastern path i could see a highway bridge bridging the same 2 regions straight north off i-5 from the south looming high ’bove with small flickers o’ movement o’ the cars racing in either direction:

below that bridge there was an orange sign warning me, “be prepared to stop”. later i saw another orange sign warning me to “end detour”:

i was too foolish to listen to either o’ them.

in fact, i almost immediately stopped on my path to look @ the piles o’ dirt & rock permanently parked on 1 side o’ the road, surrounded by orange & white striped traffic stands like its very own entourage.

as well as another early appearance o’ a cherryblossom tree being admired by a rare figure — but beyond mere observation; this figure wanted to feel the cherryblossoms fall onto its face & feel it round its feet:

in contrast to this quiet scene, as i crossed under the highway in the sky i could hear the rumble o’ constant creature activity up there, indifferent to the greenery below:

eventually i reached university bridge, its celadon color making a great match for the gray atmosphere around us all, its 3 bisected eyes staring straight & ignoring me, its red-&-white-striped arm held up, beckoning.

’course this bridge offered yet ’nother view o’ portage bay o’er the side o’ its short walls transitioning from green girders to darkstained stone columns, 1 big 1 holding a sign warning o’ the dangers o’ leaping into the bay. presumably this is aimed @ those foolish ’nough to think they could cannonball in for a brisk swim & not as a redundant, counterintuitive warning gainst those who seek consequences fatal & tragic:

eventually i crossed the other side o’ the bridge & after descending a few levels o’ stairs, i had entered the campus o’ university of washington, which i would soon realize was less o’ a “campus” & more o’ its own city with multiple streets, avenues, & e’en multiple bus stops:

as i entered the college grounds, i was met by a sinister sight i didn’t expect to see: under the dark shadow o’ the structure whose stairs i descended i saw an orange o’erhanging with the shadows o’ the words, “the wall of death”, guarded off by stalagmites & a wire fence. according to wikipedia, this was originally a dangerous motorcycle jump ramp that apparently became so dangerous that the seattle department of transportation blocked it off to prevent anyone from using it, relegating it now to just a sinister museum relic. & apparently the newspaper seattle weekly called it 1 o’ seattle’s worst works o’ public art, tied with some badly sculptured troll, so i’m glad i was able to capture its tackiness in this haibun.

nearby i found on the sidewalk what seemed to be a spraypainted advertisement for a new album by a band called “stray kids”. i later looked this up & found out it’s a k-pop band, tho its mix o’ hip hop & electronic elements, a’least in their 2024 albums, makes them sound a bit like linkin park — so look forward to me featuring 1 o’ their albums on “nostalgic novelty noughties nu-metal” someday, tho probably 合 (hop) hop rather than the album advertised here, ate, since “(hop) hop” is a funnier name & i love its 1st track, “walking on water”, & its chorus with its “woah-oh, woah-oh, walkin’ on — ( ¡wicky-wicky! )”.

but ’twas not just humans i saw @ the campus: in a large green field o’ grass ’tween 2 buildings i saw pecking @ said grass 2 black-necked, gray-bodied canadian geese. i took multiple photos o’ them as i edged closer to them, expecting them to flee or fly away @ any moment, but was surprised to see how comfortable they were with humans: e’en right up to their faces, just a yard away, they just turned their heads up & stared @ me stoically. i did not, howe’er, have the boldness to try going right up to them & touching them, not wanting to disturb their lunch.

as anyone familiar with my haiku knows, — or may have e’en inferred from the earlier hydrant i met @ portage bay — i have a fascination with fire hydrants with their humanlike outspread arms to the side & the jutting eye that seems to stare, so you can imagine my excitement when i saw a fire hydrant standing there, wearing the purple & yellow colors o’ the university o’ washington as if it were a student itself showing off its pride:

eventually i reached the central square known as “the quad”, where there congregated a’least dozens o’ yoshino cherryblossom trees whose leaf roofs spread so far they practically covered the sky — & covered the grass with dropped petals.

unfortunately, on that afternoon, the quad was also packed with several people, so ’twas impossible to get pictures o’ a cherryblossom tree without somebody in the picture. but someone i was happy to see, hiding up among the blossoms, was a pastel unicorn balloon:

but eventually i had to depart from these trees & continue onward. by this point i was already tired o’ wandering this huge quad & decided to take 1 o’ this campus’s many buses on stevens way & pend oreille rd to as near to my next destination as possible, which was a short half-kilometer trip on the 67 stopping on stevens way & rainier vista ne. ( i was also too tired to bother taking photos o’ said bus station ). that destination was montlake bridge, dividing portage bay & union bay. but before i crossed it i took yet another detour down sets o’ stairs to the side to get a closer look @ the bays, as well as several strange incantations painted along the wall on the other side, including “lambing szn”, “r we there yet?”, “fear the panther”, “you keep diggin’”, & “monkey bonky 2021”, their stark colors reflecting & melting into the waters.

as i stared @ the bay & the passing boats, i walked long the thin paved path strewn with red leaves — as if i had been transported to the southern hemisphere, & ’twas autumn here — fallen from canopies hanging o’er the side rails, as if trying to gaze into the bay themselves, casting cold shade o’er a lonely bench, aimed rigidly @ the bay, but with nobody sitting on it.

i retraced my steps, climbed back up the steps, & crossed this new bridge into montlake, only to immediately turn to the side @ the other end o’ the bridge to trace round the edge o’ this urban island ’long the arboretum waterfront trail, starting @ “the story of north island” totem pole. unfortunately, i could not find much information on what this “story of north island” is, beyond a review on google maps claiming that this totem pole washed up in seattle, broken into 2 pieces, & was restored by some mysterious organization know as “the committee of 33”. wikipedia claims that north island is in new zealand & the story o’ north island seems to be a māori creation myth in which a demigod named māui creates north island by fishing up a giant fish who becomes that island using his grandmother’s jawbone. this figure apparently has a litany o’ famed tales, including his last, where he attempts to gain immortality for humanity by… climbing into a goddess’s vagina & slipping out thru her mouth, only for her obsidian vagina teeth to chew him to death — proving that humanity’s affinity for strange fetishes, which so many think spawned from the internet, in fact predated the written word. one wonders if the old image o’ the caveman dragging his wife by the hair was really the earliest form o’ consensual bdsm.

this trail was a 20-minute hike, crossing 2 li’l islands, marsh island & foster island. that wasn’t the part that surprised me, having mapped out my arbitrary voyage before i left home — tho i didn’t anticipate how tired ’twould leave me, bold on the memory o’ having spent a whole week doing nothing but walking around in new york city last october. what i hadn’t expected was the effect that the rain, which i had intentionally scheduled into my trip so i could get the best view o’ scenery possible, would have on the trail. @ this point what i anticipated to be a light drizzle turned into heavier showers, making e’erything soaking wet, from myself to the wooden decks, which shone light gray under e’en the most cloud-muffled o’ suns:

the effect was that this “trail” was thru swampland, whose dirt paths made for walking were transformed by the storm’s baleful magic into mud lakes one had to wade thru & whose waters swelled so that they submerged half o’ 1 bridge. i, who had ne’er learned to swim, crossed this with trepidation.

this trail had me cross quite a few steel bridges, 1 o’ which contorted & craned on for several yards; & tho only 1 was outright submerged in water, none o’ them felt so sturdy that i was sure none o’ them could collapse into the water any minute.

eventually i made it to the end o’ this seemingly ne’erending trail @ memory point, where a stonebordered cliff o’erlooked union bay & in the distance i had just crossed i could see the faint ghost o’ the zigzag-roofed buildings o’ the university of washington:

i sat on the convenient bench to rest for a few minutes, but i could not rest long, as this was still not the end o’ my journey. from here i had 1 mo’ trail south into foster island toward my final checkpoint, the seattle japanese garden.

thankfully, this trail involved no mudponds or half-sunken bridges i needed to cross, but was mostly just a very long paved path bordered by grass & plenty o’ trees. @ this point i was tired ’nough that i was satisfied with the less extravagant scenery if it meant less burden getting to my destination. especially since the unlucky part was that this trail went e’en longer, going o’er 30 minutes & 2 & a half kilometers. because o’ this, i didn’t stop @ as many o’ the distractions this giant parkland area provided, which regrettable included turtle pond, which i didn’t e’en realize was there till i looked back o’er my maps now.

i did stop @ the arboretum garden to use the restroom, refill my water bottle, & buy a book & strange mushroom plush. i’d thought ’bout exploring this arboretum’s flora, but i was confused as to where it went, & i took that as an excuse to continue onward.

finally, i reached the seattle japanese garden. i was so tired & my ankles were so sore that i barely had the energy to explore & admire it, but still forced myself to do so. despite having such an official name as the seattle japanese garden & having to pay a $10 entrance fee, this small garden wasn’t as impressive as the highline seatac botanical garden i visited back in 2022, which was free, had greater variety, & had nicer scenery packed into a smaller space, requiring less trudging.

but i still found much to appreciate in this humble garden’s pretzel-shaped japanese maples fenced off by rocks, stone lanterns, tiny stone bridges, & trickling small waterfalls:

the advantage o’ this garden being so small was that it took no time to scour it in its entirety. by this point my gluttonous, greedy appetite had been o’erfilled & i was ready to head back home — which still required a 15 minute walk thru many blocks o’ random suburban neighborhoods, ending @ a dilapidated bus stop on 24th ave e & boyer ave e, which i was too tired to capture on film. as it turned out, this bus, the 48, led me to just a short walk from the university of washington & its light rail station, — ’cause ’course it has its own rail station — whose train would take me back home. but as i headed toward this station, i saw to my shock behind said station that the university of washington also apparently had its own airport:

& as if to mock my exhaustion, this light rail station for some reason had several flights o’ stairs i had to descend before being able to embark on the train.

despite all the trudgery, in addition to my sore ankles i was also so cold from being out in the rain so long that i was feverish by the time i reached home — a chill that could only be cured with takeout masala & a whole day’s worth o’ sleep.

The map o’ my journey:

Beyond hearing “Youth of the Nation” on the radio, — & I believe that was the only song I e’er heard from this band on the radio — I was 1st introduced to this band from their greatest hits album ( weirdly, I most remember listening to this album while reading a book ’bout the Columbine massacres that my sister got for free from her job @ a book store, which, um… adds an interesting context to this music ), which was a common way for me to accustom myself to a band I learned ’bout from the radio. Tho I have been hesitant to “cheat” & focus on only the hits o’ any nu-metal band, — usually focusing on specific albums so I don’t just focus on the most memeable hits, but also the songs nobody remembers, some o’ which just as worthy o’ memery — this is a series largely based on my own particular experience with nu-metal & 2000s rock music in general. I tried browsing thru this band’s actual albums & couldn’t really decide which album, since I ne’er listened to them before & none seemed to stand out ( tho I s’pose Satellite was the highest contender, especially since ’twas the album with “Youth of the Nation” ).

If you are not familiar with this band, P.O.D., or “Payable on Death”, is a Christian nu-metal band — & unlike Skillet, which was arguably mo’ alternative rock, P.O.D. is unquestionably a nu-metal band, with corny rapping, downtuned guitars, & DJ electronica. P.O.D. is also notable for not being just a bunch o’ pasty-faced honkeys, but with a… Mexican-Italian-indigenous lead singer, who, ne’ertheless, still looks like Fred Durst’s long-lost brother in this Wikipedia article, & a black guitarist. Tragically, they still sound as corny as a bunch o’ rapping crackers, howe’er. So they’re like Rage Against the Machine, but lame: ¡Rage Against the Devil! Actually, that would’ve been a cooler band name than P.O.D., which I know will be get tiring to type.

1. Southtown

I really like this song’s bass, especially @ the beginning & before the 1st & 2nd choruses. The drums are pretty nice, too, specially the rapid drumming @ the end o’ choruses. The guitarwork sounds repetitive, howe’er, as is the singing, which is barely mo’ melodic than talking or mo’ rhythmic than rapping, & sounds ’bout the same in the verses & the choruses, while the bridge is just shouting vague off-brand Rage Against the Machine slogans with the politics stripped out.

The lyrics are… fine. Nobody seemed to care ’nough ’bout them to leave any annotations or explanations on Genius. While they’re vague, they say ’nough to imply the sentiment o’ growing up in a rough neighborhood & praying to God that… I dunno, ¿it gets less rough? ¿The protagonist escapes to nicer neighborhoods? Unfortunately, we don’t get much o’ a picture o’ how rough this neighborhood beyond allusions such as, “you know those kids don’t play”. Some don’t e’en seem specific to the protagonist’s circumstance, like “these times, they’re getting tough” or “could be the next guy that you take before I wake”. I mean, yeah, I guess you’d be mo’ likely to die in a crime-ridden hood; but it’s not as if middle-class people in suburbia don’t think ’bout how they could go @ any time.

Sadly, tho, the lyrics aren’t bad ’nough to be funny. The worst line is probably telling God, “you’re the diamond in this rough”, which just reminds me o’ that South Park joke ’bout Christian songs just being love songs for Jesus. I mean, God isn’t e’en “in this rough”: his ass is safe in heaven, where he doesn’t have to worry ’bout being popped off as a casualty o’ gang violence.

Grade: C

Music Video

It’s your typical late-90s nu-metal music video taking place in a sunny suburb in California with the band members in khakis, dreads, & tats on stage rocking out. I swear I saw this exact same music video for a Papa Roach & Sum 41 song.

Grade: C

2. Boom

1st, the rapping in this song is much bouncier than the previous song, as is the grinding guitar riffs. The bass isn’t as interesting, but it’s close with that breakdown in the opening o’ the bridge.

The lyrics are a mixed bag. There’s mo’ rhyming & a li’l mo’ detail to what the rapper is saying, but they’re still not really saying anything, & the topic o’ this song is less interesting: it’s just a brag rap ’bout being successful; & since this is a ‪✝︎-rock band, they can’t e’en go that hard on the bragging.

The funniest thing ’bout this song I just learned is that ’twas included on Clear Channel’s lame-ass memorandum on songs that requested their stations not to play after 9/11, because remembering explosions exist, e’en metaphorical 1s by a Christian rock-rap band, would’ve traumatized all Americans.

Grade: C

Music Video

This is a much mo’ interesting music video than “Southtown”’s: P.O.D. in their orange jumpsuits show how badass they are by… beating a bunch o’ nerds @ table tennis. Also, they barely win against the nerds.

Grade: A

3. Going in Blind

This was 1 o’ the songs I’d skip when listening to this album, & now I know why: it sucks ass. The singing is terrible, lacking any kind o’ compelling rhythm or melody, stretched out agonizingly in places that don’t deserve it, & has way too much forced vocal energy & in general is melodramatic, especially those goofy ass echoes on the odd lines in the verses.

The lyrics are so vague & empty, I have no idea what this song is e’en ’bout, other than that it expresses distress in some way. They seem so jumbled that they almost seem to contradict each other @ times. ¿What does “going in blind” mean? ¿Having faith in God? That’s what, “¿do all these roads lead back to you?”, implies; but “time after time, I can’t see the signs” implies the opposite.

Hell, this song can’t e’en keep its perspective correct, flipping multiple times from 1st & 2nd person, with the 2nd person seeming to change, as well. As mentioned, “¿do all these roads lead back to you?”, implies that the “you” is God, which would be fine mixed with the 1st person, a discussion ’tween the protagonist & God, but the 1st lines in the song is, “this life’s not like you wanted it”, which sounds less like an omnipotent, e’erlasting being who can get whate’er they desire @ the snap o’ a finger & mo’ like a mopey teenager, especially when a later line says, “it’s your right not to feel again, just breathe again”, since I’d expect a Christian not to claim that he can tell God what rights they have or don’t have. The 1st 2 verses sound mo’ like they’re trying to console a suicidal friend; — bad consoling, since “it’s your right not to feel again” sounds like it’s encouraging suicide — but then we get the line, “it’s all right if you’re missing him”. OK, ¿so is the friend suicidal ’cause someone they cared ’bout died? But then immediately after that you get, “in his eyes you can live again, free within”, which implies that they “he” is God. ¿So is the friend “missing” God? ¿Missing how? ¿Did the friend personally know Jesus when Jesus was alive? ¿Or does he mean “missing him”, as in not having Jesus in his life? ¿So it’s OK to not have Jesus in his life, but he should, because “in his eyes you can live again”? This song is a mess.

Also, this song is when I noticed that the mixing on these songs is ass: all the instruments seem to mush together & sound fuzzy, especially the chorus.

Grade: F

Music Video

Another nu-metal music video cliché: the band singing in the dark while we cut to scenes o’ randos having nondescript forms o’ sadness: look, this middle-aged man is cheating on his wife & is reminded o’ his sinful behavior by seeing his ring on his finger.

Grade: D

4. Roots in Stereo

You know you’re in for a treat when you hear 2 generic riffs & drumbeats, followed by some rando crying out, “A-REEKI-OH-OH-OH”, in a fake Jamaican accent. That rando is, as P.O.D. singer Sonny Sandoval announces, Matisyahu, who is a white Jewish person from New York, who, indeed, does reggae.

& speaking o’ Sonny, he doesn’t disappoint with his opening line, “I got that boom bye bye so nobody disrespect jah love”. I don’t know what “that boom bye bye” is, but it sounds dangerous ’nough for Clear Channel to request not playing it on the radio, so I won’t disrespect. The song continues with lyrics o’ this calibre, while Matisyahu chimes in by crying out his own weird phrases a few times, & e’en gets a verse or 2. @ 1 point Matisyahu says to Sonny in a call-&-response verse, “me say, ‘hey, natty dreadlocks, ¿where you come from?”, & Sonny responds with the poetic line, “where the mountains watch the city & waters touch the sun”, whate’er that means, as opposed to what you’d expect: “¿what’d you call me, cracker?”.

E’en the music is going crazy on this song: on some verses during the latter half the guitar just starts squealing repeatedly.

Grade: 5 out o’ 5 Honkey Dreadlocks

5. Alive

This is a nice song. In fact, it’s probably too nice for a nu-metal song: it has the iconic nu-metal downtuned guitars, which are usually used to give a grimy, ugly, dour feel to the song, which is jarring when the singer is singing ’bout how happy he is to be alive, especially during the particularly dour-sounding bridge, where the music slows, the guitarwork is full o’ feedback, & the singer sounds raspy.

The lyrics are what you’d expect: a bunch o’ Hallmark Card clichés. Hell, the 1st 2 lines are, “every day is a new day / i’m thankful for every breath i take”. ’Course, there’s also the vague allusions to God thru lines like, “I can’t deny you”, &, “now that I know you, I could never turn my back away”, which are so vague, they could just be ’bout a human he’s really in love with.

Still, it’s the nicest song so far & the dour sound, whether intentionally or not, adds a dark ironic tone to the song that actually makes it mo’ interesting, like Devo’s “Beautiful World”.

Grade: B

Music Video

This is ’bout the same as “Going in Blind”’s, but in daylight & with mo’ dramatic ( & with worse effects ) filmography. It’s a’least amusingly bad & the scenery o’ P.O.D. rocking under a bunch o’ highways is mo’ interesting than being in front o’ a couple bushes, so it gets some extra points.

Grade: C

6. Youth of the Nation

Their biggest song, & for a good reason: unlike most o’ the songs we’ve heard so far, which couldn’t seem to settle on a coherent tone, blending dour nu-metal sound with optimistic lyrics, this song’s iconic far-’way-sounding bass & military marching drums fits perfectly with this song’s dour subject matter o’ children’s lives falling apart.

Lyrically, too, this song is much better than the others: while it does have that ✝︎-rock condescension & maudlin moralizing, — O no, a girl became a whore… — a’least the stories are specific. Also, “told the world how he felt with the sound of a gat” is probably the hardest lyric P.O.D. has e’er written. E’en the chorus’s repetitiousness, which would many times be a flaw, fits this song, as it’s essentially a chant; & “we are the youth of the nation” is a memorable line.

Grade: A

Music Video

I’m mixed on this music video: it sure looks nice, with that opening NY skyline under thick yellow fog, & the setpiece for the band with the wall o’ pictures o’ students is much mo’ inspired than a generic Californian suburb; but the scenes o’ young people driving round various places doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the song. Like, this is a song with 3 stories in it: ¿you couldn’t show these stories? Contrast with the much mo’ iconic music video to Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy”, which does a great job o’ actually representing the song’s similar subject matter.

7. Sleeping Awake

I always thought this was just your typical ✝︎-rock song ’bout looking forward to dying — naturally, ’course: no cheating by suicide — & going to heaven, which is metaphorically represented by “Zion”, the name o’ the Jewish holy land ( ’course, with how much the Israel-Palestine conflict has flared up yet again & the increased scrutiny the ideology o’ the founding o’ modern Israel, “Zionism”, has gotten, “dreaming of Zion” has different connotations now ); turns out this song is actually ’bout The Matrix, as this song was made for the The Matrix Reloaded soundtrack. Lucky for me, I don’t care, as heaven is as real to me as a city in a sci-fi movie.

This song sounds nice; & unlike “Alive”, it tones down the dour nu-metal elements & sounds softer, rather that deep, but still having a frantic energy to it that keeps it from getting boring. & while I don’t imagine myself singing it @ the latest antiwar protest, “dreaming of Zion awake…” is an infectiously catchy chorus.

Grade: A

Music Video

O, wow, we have the band playing in a brownish-white mansion: we really are going for all the nu-metal music video clichés. O, but we have this side by side with a grimy, sci-fi area — which is a blatant ripoff o’ the music video for Linkin Park’s “Papercut”. Tsk, tsk.

Grade: F

8. Rock the Party (Off the Hook)

& now we’re back to hilarious tonal whiplash: the repetitive rough riffs give this song a menacing sound, but the lyrics are ’bout having the tamest party that Jesus would approve o’, with such cringe lyrics as, “& ain’t nobody getting crazy, so you know it’s all good”. I sure wouldn’t want my party that’s “off the hook” to get too off the hook. On the other hand, this song did predict Fortnite dances with, “floss your style”. It’s too bad, ’cause the aforementioned menacing riffs would sound great with a song whose lyrics aren’t constantly reminding you o’ how lame it is.

Grade: C

Music Video

I could only find this music video on some rando YouTube channel called DarkDave, so hopefully this video doesn’t get taken down. It’s odd that P.O.D. wouldn’t be interested in showing it, since the setpiece o’ them rocking in the middle o’ an absurdly long bus with weird fish-angle shots is 1 o’ the few that isn’t a nu-metal cliché. I mean, nothing really happens in it, but nothing seems to happen in any P.O.D. music videos so far, so the bar is low.

Grade: C

9. Lights Out

& now we have ’nother brag rap with all the hardness o’ Will Smith, with lines like, “chiggity-check, microphone check” & “we bang boogie thru your system, subliminal”.

’Cept this 1 sounds worse: while I like the deep, grinding riffs in the bridge, I’m not found o’ the squeaky, repetitive riffs in the verses.

Grade: D

Music Video

& now we’re back to generic setpieces. ¿Where’d they e’er get the idea to do something so creative as to film themselves on Times Square? You bitches aren’t e’en from NY: you’re from their biggest rival, California. ¿You couldn’t film yourselves in San Diego’s urban center — or, hell, ¿Hollywood?

Grade: D

10. Goodbye for Now

This is a nice song. & unlike “Alive”, this song’s softer strings & notes fit well with this song’s mellower sound. Plus, while the lyrics are still vague, the subject matter o’ dealing with a loved one’s death is much mo’ interesting than just… being happy ’bout being alive. & the leader singer’s singing isn’t nearly as forced.

Grade: B

Music Video

Yup, that lead singer sure is walking thru an unrealistically windy city under the cast o’ a color filter. You know, it’s really sad that the band I choose to do a greatest hits album, with the most music videos, has the least interesting music videos.

Grade: D

11. Execute the Sounds

& then we get yet ’nother brag rap with corny-ass lyrics, — nothing says you’re the “real hardcore”, as they claim, as starting a lyric with counting like you’re the Count: “It goes 1, 2, 3… the crew is called P.O.D.…” — fake-Jamaican rapping, & goofy, annoying twanging strings thruout the verses. I guess the chorus has pretty decent energy.

Grade: D

12. Will You

This is the most generic o’ vague love songs, & worst off, it’s annoying & boring @ the same time: the verses are sing-songy, with an annoyingly repetitive smaltzy ending to e’ery line, the chorus is just shouting & a basic rise in bitch, the bridge is basically just talking & just repeating, “yesterday”, again & again, the instruments go from sounding squeaky in the verses to just being a bland blast o’ noise during the chorus. & if the uninspired lyrics in the bridge aren’t ’nough, the verses, which also mostly just list off vague negative words that rhyme with each other, & the chorus, which is just 2 lines that could come from Valentine’s Day cards, aren’t much better.

Whate’er complaints I’d have ’bout all the earlier songs, a’least they all sounded distinctly P.O.D.: this song could’ve been written & performed by any C-list nu-metal band.

Grade: F

Music Video

This is the 3rd time we have a music video going back & forth ’tween the band rocking in some random place & scenes o’ generic sadness. A’least the setpiece for the band — a construction site with a excavator digging ’hind them — is mo’ interesting than most o’ their other music videos.

Grade: C

13. Truly Amazing

Lol, this song is from the official soundtrack for The Passion of the Christ.

Actually, I like the gloomy bass & low-key singing during the verses, which kind o’ fits the bittersweet energy o’ the whole “humanity is saved ’cause Jesus got literally crucified”. Unfortunately, the annoying chorus, where the singing sounds off pitch & seems to have too much forced energy, kinda ruins it.

What I’m saying, this song’s all right, but for bittersweet song’s ’bout Jesus’s sacrifice, it’s got nothing on “Gethsemane” from the superior Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack.

Grade: C

14. Satellite

In addition to our typical squeaky guitars & a chorus which is just chanting the word, “satellite”, we get the singer sometimes going into this weird baby talk in the verses on parts where he sings, “but only time will tell if it’s truly for real / can’t change your mind all i know this is what i feel” &, fittingly, “some call it asinine”.

Not only does this song work just as well as a generic love song as a Jesus song, it actually works better as a love song for a normal person. I kinda get what the composer was going for by representing an all-seeing deity as a satellite watching o’er you; but what he forgot is that another general factor o’ satellites is that they are subordinate to what they revolve: the satellites are, by the nature o’ the laws o’ physics, smaller masses trapped in the gravity o’ the larger mass. I’m pretty certain depicting God as this li’l helper fairy who exists purely to solve humanity’s issues is blasphemous in all forms o’ Christianity.

Grade: D

Music Video

It’s exactly what you expect: scenes o’ a satellite zooming in on San Diego interspersed with scenes o’ the band jamming. Sometimes they’re on a stage, sometimes they’re in the woods with a gnarly color filter. It’s yet another P.O.D. music video.

Grade: C

15. Set Your Eyes to Zion

Coincidentally, ·“set your eyes to Zion” is what I’m doing, if we describe “Zion” as the holy land o’ when I don’t have to listen to this album anymo’ or have to think o’ interesting things to say ’bout these songs.

So we start with somebody — possibly Sonny Sandoval still; Matisyahu is not credited on this song — saying, “Here Mr. Deadman… rejoice”, in a goofy fake Jamaican accent, & then we get goofy generic tropical riffs that sound mo’ like surf rock than raggae. Also, I think I heard that winchlike sound & the rare rattle sounds from a song in Mario Party. There’s also these alien-like “woooo-oooo” sounds thruout, which don’t sound relevant to raggae or Zion, unless Zion takes place in outerspace.

Meanwhile, the singing & rapping barely sound like they have any rhythm & just feel lazy. E’erything ’bout this song feels lazy. The lyrics aren’t e’en amusingly bad, like with “Roots in Stereo”, but are just uninspired lines ’bout God being great which the composer attempted to texturize by adding stock imagery, like describing God as “shade even @ 96°”. If “Truly Amazing” was an inferior “Gethsemane”, this song is an inferior “Benjamin Calypso” from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. A’least that song referenced a specific, interesting part o’ the Bible, where Joseph’s brothers who backstabbed him & intended to leave him to die prove they changed their ways by sacrificing themselves to save their 2nd youngest brother, Benjamin. It will ne’er not boggle my mind that with how many great dramatic stories in the Bible, ✝︎-rock bands ne’er reference them in detail, but just give generic lines ’bout how great God is.

Grade: D

16. Here We Go

I kinda like the deep riffs thru the verses, especially with the short pauses before the drumbeat, but hate the squealing riffs in the chorus & how uninspired the chorus’s melody is.

Lyrically, this song is just a generic love song, but with maybe God mixed in a li’l. Actually, it’s funny: the lyrics in the 2nd verse kinda sound like he’s trying to introduce his girlfriend to God as if he has a cuckold fetish & wants to watch Jesus take his girl. It doesn’t help that he keeps talking ’bout “driving this to its knees” in the bridge. Tho the ending to the 2nd verse is confusing: the 1st 2 lines are, “she never did believe in love until she’d seen him”, implying that she was a dirty atheist before he introduced her to God, but then ends with, “she says you’re going to think I’m crazy / but you got to believe me”, which implies she is the 1 nervously trying to introduce him to her cringe religion.

Grade: C

17. If It Wasn’t for You

You know a song’s good when the 1st think you hear is off-key shouting, “IF IT WASN’T FOR YOU”, only to be followed by corny coffee-shop beatnik monologues ’bout how based Jesus was. Sonically, this goes back & forth ’tween sleep-inducing notes & loud blasts o’ manufactured music, none o’ which I particularly enjoy listening to.

Also, this is nitpicking, but “if it wasn’t for you, none o’ this would mean a thing”, is an absurd line for a Christian to God. Christian theology holds that without God, you wouldn’t e’en be able to sing this song — which, now that I think ’bout it, might not be the best way to sell cynical atheists on wanting to be happy ’bout God’s existence. E’en mo’ absurd is the following line, “if it wasn’t for you, tell me, ¿why else would I believe?”. I mean, yeah, if you were sure there was no God, then by definition you wouldn’t be believing in the existence o’ God — that’s what “believing” means.

Grade: D

Conclusion

In hindsight, given all the meming we’ve done together on various other nu-metal bands, it’s surprising how… bland P.O.D. is. “Roots in Stereo” was the only song worth meming on — & e’en it was no “Monster” by Skillet or “Rawkfist”. & beyond a few standout tracks, hardly any o’ these songs are surprise bangers or e’en worth remembering @ all. It almost feels… blasphemous, ironically, to have a rap-rock nu-metal ✝︎-rock band that’s so forgettable.

One might argue that my decision to focus only on the hits may have skewed my experience here, but I’m almost certain it made things better than the alternative: I listened thru albums like Satellite & their self-titled, & if anything, the deep cuts on those albums are e’en lamer & mo’ forgettable.

Final Grade: 😴

Crossfade was a vaguely 2000s-sounding rock band who released their self-titled, Crossfade, in 2004 & I listened to it as a kid then. ¿Is there anything interesting to say ’bout this album? I sure hope so, ’cause we’re going to be looking @ it this month.

1. Starless

A decent banger, especially the the noodly deep riffs that sound like revving engines that open this song & the way the main singer elongates the last word o’ e’ery line in the chorus. Granted, I’m not sure how I feel ’bout the ultra whiteboy reggae rapping our boy’s doing in the bridge.

The lyrics jump all o’er the place, but all tie to the vague energy o’ being unhappy, which will be a pattern on this album — & in 2000s nu-metal / post-grunge in general, ’course. I just love how the 2nd verse starts with the brag o’, “i can transcend you & mentally bend you”, only to continue with mo’ lines ’bout unhappy the singer is.

As for the chorus, it is just a muddled metaphor: the singer sings ’bout feeling vaguely “starless”, whate’er that means, but then describes himself as “ready to fade now”. OK, ¿so are you the space that possesses the stars or are you a star yourself? & then the backup singer moans ’bout how he’s “grayed out”, which isn’t something black outer space or stars do, e’en when they implode. If they’re talking ’bout star death, that’s a terrible metaphor for depression, as star deaths are not only glamorous, they also eventually lead to new stars or planets, which is way mo’ hopeful than the singers probably intended, given the dour sound o’ this song.

Grade: B

2. Cold

The big hit from this album — probably the 1 song you’ll find from the band in 2004 playlists & the like. It’s a fitting title, as I always felt cool on this song, neither hating nor loving it, but its subject o’ regret for letting relationships fade out is relatable, I guess — tho I’m sure there were many, many better songs o’ the same mood back then. I do kind o’ like the warm guitar tones & the robotic, droning way the backup singer says, “never meant to be so cold”, but the lyrics are just bland & trite: “you’re the antidote that gets me by / something strong like a drug that gets me high”. If she was the antidote that got you by, ¿why was it so easy for you to ignore her? & while telling someone they get you high is great for a loud, wild, fun song ’bout a freak with which you have sloppy sex, it doesn’t work when you’re trying to be romantic.

Grade: C

Music Video

That said, I do like this music video & its irony o’ having the singer loudly sing an apology song, presumably aimed @ his girlfriend, with his whole band only to be so into singing said song that he shoves off said girlfriend. That twist saves it from falling victim to the tediousness o’ being yet ’nother 2000s music video where the band just plays in a dingy, poorly-lit room.

Grade: A

3. So Far Away

The problem with doing these song-by-song reviews is it forces me to notice things I wouldn’t — & probably shouldn’t — care ’bout, such as the absurdity that a sweet, sorrowful song ’bout how regretful the protagonist is that they were so cold toward their girlfriend is followed by a bitter song ’bout how glad the protagonist is that he left his bitch o’ a girlfriend while taunting, “now i’m blaming you for everything…”.

Musically, howe’er, this is much mo’ interesting than the previous song, starting with a slow, droning country-like menacing intro, building up to the point o’ doing some Papa Roach style whisper shout @ the end. It’s goofy as hell, but, hey, if anything it’d work nowadays — I’d take it o’er MGK pretending to be a country singer.

Grade: B

4. Colors

This is the other single from this album & is e’en lamer than “Cold”, with its smarmy subject-matter o’ telling some girl with low self-esteem, aw, honey, why you gotta be so down when it’s not shinin’ off your best colors, which just reminds me o’ the cliché o’ weird men telling random women to smile. The melodramatic way the singer sings “SURELY NOT THE BEEEEST COLORS THAT YOU SHIIIIINE” with this hokey metaphor ’bout some woman’s “colors not shining” makes it e’en lamer.

It gets a D instead o’ an F ’cause I like the music’s texture & while the melodies & beats are forgettable, they’re not nearly as unlistenable as some o’ the other stuff I’ve listened to for this series.

Grade: D

Music Video

E’en the music video is much lamer than “Cold”, just being the band playing on a rooftop — gee, that’s original — in Breaking Bad Mexico interspersed with random clips o’ some woman… vaguely unhappy with her home life, only for the music video to end with her climbing up to their rooftop & dropping a necklace into the street — possibly hurting someone if it landed on them, the inconsiderate asshole — to solemn silence. How deep.

Grade: F

5. Death Trend Setta

If there’s 1 thing you can credit to this album, it’s got variety. We follow a hokey pop-country-style ballad with this stomping song with some great whiteboy-rapped prechoruses. Howe’er, this song’s funky-fresh title ( notice the way “setter” is spelled “setta”, which is a linguistical twist they do down in “the ghetto”, according to my research ) stands out from this song’s otherwise predictable lyrics o’ vague petulance toward some associate — possibly an ex-lover — with the protagonist out o’ nowhere proclaiming, “& now you see i could be / another would-be / another death trend setta” whate’er that’s s’posed to mean. Considering the line “would-be”, which is pejorative, it can’t be a boast. ¿Is this random associate trying to make our protagonist not be himself just to fit in & not use corny-ass phrases like “death trend setta”. I dunno. Still, it’s a catchy song.

Grade: B

6. The Deep End

O, now I remember why I wanted to review this album: this amazing obscure gem. We start with some goofy-ass twanging notes, followed by our main singer singing his heart out with this amazing metaphor: “i built my life like my bike on a rigid frame / so nothing bends it only breaks into / pieces & pieces”; & then, in case you didn’t get ’nough time to quite appreciate these eloquent lyrics, the other singer in a comically deep, southern accent repeats this 1st verse, line-by-line. & then in the 3rd verse the main singer comes back to whine ’bout how boring his Saturdays are.

Grade: S

7. No Giving Up

I’m also glad I was reminded ’bout this song, a funky-fresh whiteboy dance rap jam ’bout how you should totally, like, not end your life, homey. Move o’er “Not Like Us”: this summer I’m cripwalkin’ to these G-funk lyrics:

when you were just gettin’ in the groove
now you’re faced with something new

i’m hittin’ back y’all, kickin’ these 4 walls
just as hard as i can till i can’t crawl

well it’s all right we’re sayin’ our goodbyes
to the past & everything that ain’t right

Note: those last lines probably don’t work as well as the composer thought, given you’re s’posed to be trying to convince someone not to say goodbye to e’erything.

Grade: A

8. Dead Skin

¿Another store-brand country song?

some days i pray
someone will blow me away
make it quick but let it burn
so i can feel my life fade

¿& what happened to “no givin’ up now, y’all”? This song is literally the opposite o’ the previous: the last 1 was all, “forget ’bout the past, it’s OK”, & this 1’s all, “I can’t shed my skin / ¿why can’t I begin again?”.

Sonically, the hokey music & verse singing isn’t doing it for me, & the way they sing the chorus, especially the, “I CAN’T GET OUT OF THIS DEAD SKIIIIIIN”, sounds weirdly muffled. Still better than that “Colors” song, tho.

Grade: C

9. Disco

This song is just bizarre: verses mocking somebody who seems to think they’re hot shit, but they’re “act[ing] like a whore beggin’ for crack or a sack”, but actually the singer could totally beat their ass, only to contradict that with the last line o’ the verses, “with every breath you take you bring me down”; then we get some whispered tough-guy lyrics; & then we get a bouncy chorus ’bout how somebody’s discoing so much that they soiled their own pants — I’m not making that up, that’s part o’ the chorus. & I don’t e’en know what’s going on in the bridge — “¿so what’s your point?”, indeed. If I had to guess, this song is probably ’bout some friend o’ the singer’s who ruined their life doing drugs, & the discoing is a goofy metaphor for these drug trips. It’s very odd how the band bounces from vague & cliché songs like “Cold” or “Dead Skin” to mindboggling songs like this.

I won’t pretend it’s not catchy & fun to sing ’long to, “you’re wasted now & you’re gettin’ on down with the disco…”, tho.

Grade: A

10. The Unknown

This song’s main doomy riff is the best on this album, as is the solo in the middle & the weird sounds o’ a car skidding on the road. The lyrics, meanwhile, are vague & bland, but inoffensive, with talk o’ “walkin’ in your shoes” & “steppin’ all over your soul”.

Grade: B

Conclusion

Like Breaking Benjamin’s Saturate, this album was mo’ interesting than I remember.

Final Grade: B

Like Puddle of Mudd, Hinder is 1 o’ those bands you know rookies don’t know ’bout when they call Nickelback the worst post-grunge band e’er. Hinder is Nickelback, but somehow e’en less interesting, as a’least Nickelback sometimes make songs ’bout prom queens dumping their newborn babies in the trash, whereas I’m pretty sure the most out-there song Hinder has e’er wrote is 1 ’bout having hate sex after smoking weed. ¿So why am I covering this band? Well, for 1, the other band I was considering, Buck Cherry, seemed e’en less interesting…

The album we’re reviewing is the only 1 anyone cares ’bout, Extreme Behavior — extreme for boomers, that is. You can see how extreme this album is by the super sexy vanilla woman in heart-red lingerie, which certainly pops 1 o’ my monocles.

1. Get Stoned

If this sounds like a generic hard-rock song, prepare yourself: this was its 1st big single & with its ringing opening, marching verses, & catchy chorus o’, “go home, get stoned”, — that is the extreme behavior this album opens with, doing 1 o’ the least dangerous drugs that e’en my nerdy ass does — which was clearly meant to be relatable to all the white trash couples ( no hate ), this will surely be the least generic o’ this album’s repertoire.

& honestly, it’s a banger, I guess. I’ve thrived thru several years o’ not listening to it, & will probably not go back & listen to it again hereafter, so I wouldn’t exactly call it a fav, but I do have nostalgia for it, a’least — & I do like that growled, “LEEEEET’S”, that opens up the chorus with all its cheese.

Grade: B

Music Video

The music video is just the band singing on stage with them surrounded by sexy women. Yawn. Worse, the band doesn’t e’en have rizz: the lead singer is a twink who looks like he belongs in an emo bad & does awkward movements with his arms as he sings that makes him look like he has some motor dysfunctions.

Grade: D

2. How Long

This song is low-key kinda a banger, too, with its fast-paced chorus, especially the growly way the singer sings, “I can’t see him with you”, as he leads into the chorus. Howe’er, here is where I start to notice the terrible lyricism, especially in the chorus, where we get the double-decker o’, “¿why’d you go & break what’s already broken?” ( if it’s already broken, ¿how could one break it after? ) & “I try to take a breath but I’m already choking” ( trite ).

Worse, this song in general is a childish incel anthem, whining ’bout some woman who’s with someone else & how she tries to friendzone him, to which he replies, maturely, “with 1 finger I said, ‘¡fuck that!’”. Yeah, you sure burned her, bro. You sure triggered that mom from 7th Heaven. This is surely the extreme behavior we were promised by this album’s title.

Grade: C

3. By the Way

( Sigh ) I was hoping we would go longer before we got a lame, whiny ballad. & this particular song offers nothing: it is the most generic o’ hard rock ( that isn’t e’en hard ) songs. I’ve already forgotten the riffs & drumbeats, so let’s talk ’bout the lyrics. We get this great chorus:

& by the way
by the way
¿what made you think you’d have it your way?

Yeah, ho, it’s my way or the highway. Great to see we’re rhyming the same word with itself. This is literally a lamer version o’ the famous chorus from a Backstreet Boys song. I repeat: Hinder is being mogged by the Backstreet Boys. Also, I’d much rather listen to that song. With its bouncy chorus & snappy drums, it’s probably harder, too. ( Tho, ’course, not as hard as this memetic version from the ol’ internet that only the real ones know ).

The rest is no better. The refrain has the singer state plainly that he is having a breakdown. As I mentioned when reviewing Papa Roach’s “Binge”, I love when songs just tell you directly how they feel without any poetry or cleverness. This is nothing compared to Breaking Benjamin’s classic, “WHAT I FOUND IN THIS TOWN / I’M HEADED FOR A BREAKDOWN”. Take notes, Hinder… o’ 2 decades ago, I guess.

Grade: F

4. Nothin’ Good About Goodbye

A song so generic, it literally starts with cowbell — & a basic rhythm on it that’s basically the iconic 1 from Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog” but slowed down & lower-pitched, to boot. Then we get the annoying, simplistic, thumping chorus, with the 1 exception being the way the singer drops his tone when entering the eponymous line.

The lyrics, on the other hand, are hilariously insipid. The 1st verse ends with the bizarre lines, “but then you called to say / you forgot that broach of your mother’s” ( replacing the mo’ natural possessive “mother’s broach” with the awkward prepositional phrase, “that broach of your mother’s”, to contrive a rhyme ). The 2nd verse matches that with, “but then you called again / to tell me how you’re going to blow my best friend” ( doesn’t sound like such a tight friend to me if he’s cucking you ).

Unfortunately, the rest is just boring & repetitive, with 2 whole section o’ just saying, “fa-faling apart”.

Grade: D

5. Bliss ( I Don’t Wanna Know )

Ugh. Technically, this probably has the singer’s best vocal performance on the chorus, but his best is just D-tier Sick Puppies singer, who is already a C-tier Three Days Grace singer. Meanwhile, the verses, as well as their drumbeats & main riffs, are all so snore-inducingly predictable.

The lyrics are no less predictable, & lack the cheesy humor o’ the previous song’s attempts @ lyrics: as a highlight, the chorus rhymes “kiss” with the totally original phrase, “ignorance is bliss”.

Grade: 😴

6. Better Than Me

I think you can do much better than me…

You’re right, Hinder: I could be listening to much better music than this. ¿What’s wrong with me?

This is a post-grunge ballad, which you know will suck, with its basic-bitch piano notes & strings. We do get a return to the odd lyrical choices o’ “Nothin’ Good About Goodbye”, with the singer singing with the deepest o’ agony, “I really miss your hair in my face / & the way your innocence tastes”. True poetry.

Grade: D

Music Video

I’m honestly surprised a song other than “Get Stoned” & “Lips of an Angel” got a music video. Apparently this album had 5 singles, including “How Long” & the upcoming “Homecoming Queen”. I ne’er heard any other than “Get Stoned” & “Lips of an Angel” on the radio, because nobody likes Hinder ’nough to need 5 singles in their life.

Anyway, this song’s music video radically reinterprets the song from a man sitting in regret in an empty house o’er the relationship he destroyed to a man literally killing himself by doing drugs, which also destroys a relationship. Unsurprisingly, it’s melodramatic, especially the way the man smashes the lightbulb to cook his evil drugs & the weird headscarf the woman wears to his funeral — which is to say that the music video is much mo’ entertaining than the song itself.

Grade: B

7. Room 21

This song is so amazingly trash. We have the goofy-ass Taco-Bell-cowboy fake country twang & the singer trying this sleazy voice, but just sounding goofy — especially the way he o’erannunciates, “this BYIIIITCH blew me away…”. Then we get to the chorus where whate’er cowboy tone we were trying to convey is completely blown ’way by the boy-band “buh buh-buh buh buh…”s. Later on the singer is apparently too chickenshit to say “cock”, so he says, “she said she loved the taste o’ my O, O, O…”, like an elementary school child.

This is what Genius had to say ’bout this song:

It’s that song about a 1 night stand! LOL Yeah Austin, it certainly is!

No comment.

Grade: 🤠

8. Lips of an Angel

¡Nooooo! ¡Not this song again! I already talked ’bout this song in the divorced dad rock album review, where this astonishingly only got an A, tho I think I should’ve bumped that up to an S.

Well, I didn’t really review it in detail, since I was focused more on relevance than quality; but I did say there that this song blows ass, & I stand by that. It’s a cheesy, schmaltzy ballad ’bout a dude talking lovingly to a woman he’s seeing on the side on the phone, with such heartwarming lyrics as, “O, well, my girl’s in the next room / sometimes I wish she was you”, as well as telling this other woman, “it’s hard to be faithful / with the lips of an angel”. Apparently this protagonist has ne’er heard o’ “emotional cheating”: bro, you ain’t be faithful.

Honestly, this drama wouldn’t be a bad concept for a song, but Hinder can’t write for shit & this song wastes its paltry verse lyrics ­— you know, what would be the meat o’ the song — on inane small talk. We don’t e’en know why this dude likes this woman, beyond I guess her voice being sexy. There’s no development o’ the drama o’ his girlfriend finding out or anything. E’en the song title is a waste: you’d hardly imagine a title like “Lips of an Angel” to refer to a side fling, nor is it particularly memorable or clever. It’s easy to get distracted from the main drama by the generic schmaltzy language. Imagine a trite, “I lovey lovey lovey love you, baby…”, & a few times there’s a few brief mentions o’, “O, yeah, so my real girlfriend’s in the room, so…”.

But mostly, this song just sounds like ass, with its twinkly opening frets & the melodramatic way the singer sings, especially on lines like, “sounds so sweeeeeeeet”. This song exploits e’ery cheap ballad trick in the book, & I hate it for that.

Grade: F

Music Video

The music video only makes this scenario look e’en mo’ absurd: the song has his girl in “the next room”, while here she’s in the same room, clearly looking @ him while he bellows into the phone ’bout how much he’s in love with another women.

I also feel like ’twas a bad idea to make his girlfriend a blonde bombshell, as it makes the protagonist look e’en dumber cheating on her for someone else he praises purely in aesthetic qualities — unless the twist is that his girlfriend has a gremlin voice, which would explain the protag’s emphasis on the other girl’s “lips of an angel”.

Also, we get more o’ the lead singer’s awkward arm gestures as he sings. I do like the extra drama o’ his yanking on his hipster tie like it’s a noose during the chorus near the end.

Grade: C

9. Homecoming Queen

Cool, so we’re starting out by ripping off the famous guitar riff from “Sweet Child o’ Mine”. Surely nobody would notice, certainly not the kind o’ boomer hard-rock fan who’d listen to Hinder.

If you could believe me, this is the worst song on the album. We have schmaltzy crooning singing o’er what sounds like music from a cheesy TV show opening. But the absolute worst is the chorus, with the “SHAME, SHAME, SHAME / THAT OUR HOMECOMING QUAAAAAENN”, with the singer intentionally mispronouncing “queen” just to keep the rhyme. Truly a sonic war crime.

The lyrics are clearly trying to be poetic without anyone actually thinking ’bout what they’re talking ’bout, so we get nonsense like, “she’s the holy ghost lost without a trace” & “& she never walked on water…”. Yeah, it’s crazy that some homecoming queen isn’t Jesus: I remember in Revelation they promised he’d return as a homecoming queen.

This song also has this condescending aura o’, “O, this poor girl ruined herself by getting into so much whoredom”, specially with the vomit-inducing lines, “she’s just somebody’s daughter / just looking for somebody to love her”, which seems hypocritical, given how the rest o’ this song treats women. & like all o’ Hinder’s songs, this song is so vague & abstract that I don’t really know what the problem is. For instance, we get the following lines:

but loved partin’ & havin’ too much fun
then she hooked up with the wrong someone
& he promised everything under the sun
& it seems to me
she’s a casualty of all the pressure
that he put on her
& now we’ve lost her for good

But no elaboration on what any o’ that means. ¿Who was this “wrong someone” & what did they do? ¿Were they a pimp who turned her into a prostitute? ¿A drug dealer? ¿What “pressure” did he put on her? ¿& what happened to her to make her “lost for good”? ¿Did she also give birth during prom & throw the baby in a dumpster? This could describe anything from a life-ending tragedy to some dude butthurt that another dude got the girl he wanted.

Grade: F

10. Shoulda

Hinder just keeps making these songs based round phrases that are both cliché & corny as hell: in this case “shoulda, woulda, coulda”, which sounds like what a child would say. But to be fair, this song’s concept isn’t terrible, & this time Hinder does give enough details while still being poetic, with the lines, “if I could go back in time / I’d say those 3 words”, clearly referring to “I love you”. It’s not amazing, but it’s the best lyrics I’ve seen from Hinder so far. Unfortunately, the rest o’ the lyrics are goofy. We follow that up with the bathic, “when you said those 3 words / I kinda freaked out”, as well as mo’ trite & corny rhymes, like, “& this can’t be saved if you can’t be found / you hung up & left me for dead on the ground”.

As for the music… I don’t care ’nough ’bout the music to talk ’bout it. Somebody is certainly playing drums & guitar on this song. I assume there’s bass, too: I think it’s buried in the mix.

Grade: D

Conclusion

& now we see why Hinder has been forgotten while Nickelback still stays firmly lodged in our minds: Hinder isn’t e’en memorably bad, just bland. They had a couple hits which weren’t e’en that good or outright awful & a bunch o’ padding round it. My deepest apologizes for how boring this review was, but if we are to get a clear look @ 2000s metal / hard rock, we must acknowledge the tediously bad as well as the wonderful awful.

Final Grade: D

Encore was an album so bad that people theorize Eminem made it bad on purpose to deliberately sabotage his own career due to becoming so jaded with his rap persona, e’en tho I haven’t seen any quote from Eminem backing this up. ( Mo’ likely ’twas a mix o’ being on drugs; rushing out songs to replace songs that were leaked… because for some reason he couldn’t just release the album with leaked songs, for no reason given; & just wanting to get this album out, & thus lacking the ambitious care that went into his earlier albums when he was trying to make it, now that he had already made it ). After 3 classic albums & only 2 years after what many consider possibly his best song e’er, “Lose Yourself”, his devolution here is striking.

As a kid who didn’t have the most discerning tastes, I didn’t notice quite as much, tho as I went down my older sister’s collection o’ albums in chronological order, I did lose interest round albums 3 & 4. In particular, I mistook the goofiest songs on this album for the usual wackiness he exhibited back on The Slim Shady LP, where he would have songs involving him rapping ’bout raping a fat woman o’er Italian soap opera music & ’nother where he rapped ’bout beating up Foghorn Leghorn with an acorn. Tho those songs were considered the worst on this album, those were actually the ones that stuck with me the most; & since this is a series that revels in fascinating disasters, they will surely be the songs we fixate on the most today.

1. Curtains Up

Like all Eminem albums, this is full o’ kinda pointless skits. This a’least opens the album’s o’erarching story where he walks onstage to cheering crowds with a gun hid ’hind his back ( which you wouldn’t know unless you looked @ the insert o’ the CD ) & continues the theme introduced in its earlier twin, The Eminem Show, o’ the irony o’ people hero-worshipping someone as fucked up as Eminem.

Grade: A

2. Evil Deeds

Eminem: “¿What if I repeated the last phrase o’ each line multiple times to pad out the 1st verse?”.

“& also, ¿what if I randomly interpolated a remix o’ ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’? Also, ¿have I mentioned that my dad was a deadbeat yet?”.

predominantly, predominantly,
everything’s always predominantly
predominantly white, predominantly black
well, ¿what about me?
¿where does that leave me?
well, I guess that I’m between predominantly both of ’em

it turns out Logic is not the 1st “biracial” rapper, after all.

We also get such gems as, “it’s such bullshit, it’s tuch mull bish” — no, I didn’t mistype that last part: he just says a bunch o’ gibberish for no reason — & him interpolating “Ring Around the Rosie” for no reason. What we don’t really get is much o’ the multiple internal rhymes that is kind o’ why people like Eminem so much. This whole song sounds halfassed, from the rambling lyrics, basic chorus, & generic bump-clap beat. Hell, it’s so halfassed that the last verse ends with Eminem talking ’bout passing the baton to 50 Cent, only for the song to end. ¿Did somebody leave 50’s verse out or was Eminem just, like, “¡psyche! ¡fuck you, 50, if you think you’re featuring on my album!”.

Grade: F

3. Never Enough ( feat. 50 Cent & Nate Dogg )

O, here’s 50 Cent.

In contrast to “Evil Deeds”, which was a hilarious trainwreck, this song is just… fine. It’s got a dramatic beat, Em’s typical catchy “miracle spherical lyrical” rapping, & an e’en catchier chorus with Nate Dogg’s smooth voice. Granted, Em’s voice sounds weirdly strained in the chorus, but whate’er. I could put it in the background & enjoy it perfectly fine.

Howe’er, none o’ the lines are memorable for being good, & the lines memorable for being weird aren’t as funny as the kind o’ trainwrecks we’ll see later. Eminem whines ’bout how people don’t respect him ’nough, as he does all too oft, despite being 1 o’ the most respected rappers out there; 50 Cent says some generic gangster shit, with 1 particular line standing out to me: “i go ballistic as hieroglyphic”. Genius tells me it’s a reference to the phrase, “to go up the wall”, & I believe them, since it makes mo’ sense than anything I could theorize; but I was already familiar with the phrase & somehow putting together the riddle o’ “¿what do ballistic & hieroglyphic have in common?” didn’t lead me to that phrase. It doesn’t help that it awkwardly uses an adjective as a simile: would’ve made mo’ sense to say “i go ballistic as hieroglyphs”. Whate’er: I’d take a weird-ass line like that o’er forgettable lines like, “you gon’ say the wrong shit & get your whole face split”.

The other line that stood out to me was in the middle o’ Nate Dogg’s smooth chorus o’ normal, serious lines, where he suddenly bursts out, “no matter how many magazines on my nuts”. I can’t tell if this is bragging ’bout magazines loving them or mentioning Eminem’s long beef with the owner o’ the hiphop magazing The Source, Benzino — yes, Eminem beefed with a magazine owner, & that wasn’t e’en the goofiest beef he was in round the time. All I imagine is somebody holding up a large stack o’ magazines on their cock… which, now that I think ’bout it, would mean having a strong, presumably large cock, so… I guess it actually works great as a brag.

Grade: C

4. Yellow Brick Road

Well, it’s certainly not Breaking Benjamin’s “Home”, that’s for sure.

I’d already heard that this was the song Eminem made to respond to the excavation of ol’ racist raps he made in response to a black girl dumping him. What I didn’t know till I relistened to this song is that he “addresses” it by rambling for 3 verses ’bout irrelevant shit ’bout his past like Grampa Simpson before finally coming up the story o’ the girl who dumped him & being all, “Yeah, it was racist, sorry ( ¡tho some people thought my rapping was so good! )”. I love how he claims he was only dating this black girl to piss off his on-again / off-again girlfriend, Kim, which makes it sound worse: it’s easier to empathize with someone who was racist due to having their mind clouded by emotional pain than someone who was just annoyed their scheme didn’t work.

Also, lol that X Clan was “racist” ’cause ’twas Afrocentric. I don’t e’en know where this idea that white rappers were out in the early 90s: the Beastie Boys still had plenty o’ hits in the early 90s, like “Pass the Mic”, “So What’cha Want”, & “Sure Shot”, toured with respected rap acts like Cypress Hill as early as 1992, & collaborated with respected rappers like Biz Markie & Q-Tip. Em could’ve just learned to play the guitar & drums & became a rock-rapper: problem solved.

Also, this song sounds like ass: I hate the click drums & the weird mouth sounds Eminem makes in the background thruout & the goofy squeaky notes, as well as the country-bumpkin chorus. Tho “Evil Deeds” is, from a critical level, mo’ half-assed, I would actually rather listen to that than this song, which isn’t funny, just boring & annoying.

Grade: F

5. Like Toy Soldiers

I think fans generally like this song. I am not 1 o’ them, howe’er: I ne’er liked Eminem’s super serious songs. I’m sorry, but you can’t go from rapping ’bout wrapping a rope round your penis & jumping from a tree or raping your own mother to making this kind o’ mawkish ballad comparing yourself to a solider ’cause you beat a rap beef with the owner o’ a fucking hiphop magazine or Ja Rule, who is so unimportant people only remember him from losing a beef to Eminem. Famous bitch boy Drake wasn’t this whiny ’bout his beef with Kendrick — & Eminem won this beef.

Also, the lyrics are lame & uninspired, with the 1st 2 lines rhyming “solider” with “never blows his composure” with “i hold the weight of the whole world on my shoulders”. Usually when Eminem has wack lyrics they’re a’least memorably goofy, like “that’s an awfully hot coffee pot” or “you bring the buns, i’ll bring the asperger’s”: this song’s mostly shit any rapper could write.

Grade: D

Music Video

The music video adds extra bathos to the melodrama by trying to depict 1 o’ Eminem’s homeys dying in the hospital with all o’ the acting props o’ a 12-year-ol’ school play & plenty o’ poorly-hidden green-screening. My favorite part is when Eminem suddenly tosses a food cart o’er while in the hospital waiting room, presumably with rage, but he has the dullest o’ expressions on his face.

Grade: D

6. Mosh

I think Eminem fans also genuinely like this song, which shows how easy they are to impress, given that there were many, many better antiwar songs by rock bands like System of a Down. The beat & rap meter are so stock, the political commentary is rudimentary, the 1st verse goes into a weird tangent ’bout Eminem’s achievements for some reason, &, worst o’ all, it tries to make this cringe comparison ’tween moshing — a type o’ dancing — & protesting. & it’s not like Eminem couldn’t do good political songs: “White America” is a great mockery o’ the hypocrisy o’ conservatives criticizing him, dripping with the thickest o’ irony. But the problem is that this song is 100% serious & genuine, & I can’t take seriously the idea that The Real Slim Shady is going to lead his listeners into dancing the bad politics ’way. People call stuff like American Idiot or Muse’s weird cyberpunk album or e’en some people consider Rage Against the Machine cringe, but none o’ them e’er made songs ’bout revolutionary dancing. All I can say is, for someone notorious for his very, very naughty homophobic language, Eminem sure made the gayest political song e’er, & it’s not e’en ’bout gay rights. ¿Where was the outrage @ that injustice?

Grade: F

Music Video

Congrats to the 15-year-ol’ Newgrounds animator for their great work on the animated parts. Honestly, I kinda like how weird this music video looks with its tacky blend o’ different animation styles & live action, e’en with the cliché conspiracy theory stuff ’bout Bin Laden being fake or the weirdly irrelevant tangent that isn’t in the song @ all ’bout racist police.

Grade: 🕺

7. Puke

All right, now here’s the kind o’ stuff I want to listen to: a goofy-ass song that starts with the sound o’ puking where Eminem drunkenly wails ’bout his bitch ex, with plenty o’ elongated line-ending syllables & off-key falsetto. I think my favorite line is the 1 where he ends a line early with “instead of a letter that you’d probably just shred up”, & then fills in the remaining space by just going, “yead-dah”. Genius claims he’s saying “yeah”, but that’s complete bullshit: he’s saying, “yead-dah”.

Honestly, tho, some o’ these lines are kinda metal, like the part where he just goes off on his ex, calling her a “fucking cokehead slut” & saying he hopes she goes to hell & that “Satan sticks a needle in your eye”. If only the average post-grunge “my ex is a bitch” song from the likes o’ Theory of a Dead Man or Puddle of Mudd had this much spiteful energy, they’d… well, they’d still suck, but a li’l less. E’en funnier, Eminem follows these hateful lines with, “but please don’t get me wrong, I’m not bitter or mad”. Whether Eminem is in on the joke or not, I don’t care.

E’en the stomp-clap beat with the heavy bass is pretty catchy.

What I’m saying is, I actually kind o’ like this song, tho I’m not sure I could e’en decide on a real critical grade for it, so we get the obvious grade:

Grade: 🤮

8. My 1st Single

This song is a shitpost: the chorus is Eminem basically saying, “lol, I made a shitty song”, while burping in the background while the most horrendous clickity-clack beat plays on endlessly while in the verses Eminem sputters absolutely nonsense — e’en by his standards. ¿E’er wanted to hear the riveting story ’bout Eric waking from swallowing generic-brand sleeping pills to find that he had gay sex with his best friend, Derrick? ¿Who’s Eric & Derrick? Fuck if I know. ¿Want to hear ’bout a fictional sex tape o’ underage Britney Spears & Justin Timberlake while they were Mouseketeers in the Mickey Mouse Club? ¿No? Well, fuck you, that’s what you get. I guess you could say the verses’s lyrics are somewhat imaginative. But there are much better shitposts on this album, already. This is nearer to “Evil Deeds” in terms o’ lack o’ effort.

Grade: F

9. Paul (Skit)

O’ all the skits revolving round Eminem’s manager, Paul Rosenberg, this is 1 o’ the least inspired. Yes, Eminem, you’re really edgy & dangerous for making the same jokes ’bout Michael Jackson that e’eryone else was doing @ the time.

Grade: D

10. Rain Man

Here’s a much better shitpost, especially with the weirdly catchy chorus, “’cause I ain’t got no leeeegs / or no braaaaain / niice to meet you / hiii, my name is… / i forgot my naaaaame”, only to pause after trying to say his new name & to say in a very quiet, monotone voice, “Rain Man”. In this case the song is less ’bout Eminem intentionally making a bad song & mo’ implying that Eminem’s too mentally retarded to make a good song, which, given the effects the drugs were having on his brain @ this point, was probably somewhat true. I find the line, “i just did a whole song & i didn’t say shit” ironic, as he says mo’ in this song than “Evil Deeds” or “My 1st Single”: we get to learn that Eminem was the 1 who killed Superman by putting him next to Darth Vader & we get to learn the complex intricacies o’ what is & is not gay sex on the 2nd verse from him & his friend, Dr. Dre.

Grade: 🌧️👱‍♂️

11. Big Weenie

¡Here we go! ¡The best song on the album! This song is essentially a parody o’ what all diss tracks are: claiming one’s “weenie” is bigger than their opponent, with the ’bout the same essential maturity o’ this song’s chorus:

you’re just jealous of me ’cause you, you just can’t do what i do
so instead of just admitting it you walk around & say
all kinds of really mean things about me
’cause you’re a meanie, a meanie
but it’s only ’cause you’re just really jealous of me
’cause i’m what you want to be, so you just look like an idiot
when you say these mean things, ’cause it’s too easy to see
you’re really just a big weenie, a big weenie

Interspersed ’tween these choruses are absurdist verses wherein the protagonist tries to investigate why the addressee is being so “mean” to the protagonist. This includes putting sunglasses on a frog & asking the addressee what they have in common. The answer to this brilliant riddle is that they’re both “green with envy & look like idiots with sunglasses on ’em”, which ’course made the sunglasses completely irrelevant. Squeezed into this song’s short 3 verses are further gems o’ brilliance: for instance, we get the deep philosophical musing: “¿now why did they make Yoo-hoo?”, only for Eminem to reveal the absurdity o’ such an assumption that there is a why to anything with the following nonsequitor, “pippity-kaka poo-poo”: food exists purely to come back out as feces. Such is the frivolous cycle o’ existence in which we find ourselves trapped. & we can’t forget the profound moral @ the end o’ this song: “that if you say mean things, the weenie will shrink”.

We also get a poetic description o’ just how much bigger Eminem’s weenie is than our unnamed addressee’s: “mine is like sticking a banana between 2 oranges”, somehow rhyming the infamously rhymeless “oranges” with “yours is”, “doing this”, & “pointless”, thanks to Eminem’s weird accent. ( We get similar bizarre rhymes in verse 2 with “booth all day”, “truth, OK”, & “tooth decay” as Em smoothly transitions from bragging ’bout his rapping prowess to pointing out his rap opponents bad dental hygiene ).

People like to portray this song as an attempted ( & failed ) diss track gainst Benzino, but given how self-deprecating this song is, I doubt it. @ the beginning o’ the 2nd verse Em flubs in the middle o’ the 1st line, only to stutter out in the tone o’ someone clearly bullshitting that, “that’s just what you wanted to hear is that i fucked up, ¿ain’t it? that i can’t bust 1 take without looking @ no paper”. & in the middle o’ verse 3 we get the line, “you look like i sound like singing ’bout weenies”.

’Hind this whole song is an absurdly dramatic & repetitive pounding beat & chord. But as a garnish @ the end, after the final chorus Eminem mutters, “fuck off my dick”, followed by some weird monster voice sounding like it’s crying. Truly this is art.

Grade: S

12. Em Calls Paul (Skit)

This is just the previous Paul skit, but from Eminem’s point o’ view, & with the weird voice effect Em uses when he’s playing as “Christopher Reeves”, for some reason.

13. Just Lose It

This song’s mo’ annoying than funny, & is the most dated on this album, revolving round the same jokes ’bout Michael Jackson that e’eryone’s already made by now, as well as some other pop culture references — many o’ which were already dated back then, like the random references to Pee-Wee Herman — & some randomly thrown in potty humor, none o’ which has any connection to any part o’ the song like in Em’s magnum opus “Big Weenie”, for flavor.

I think what’s most absurd & dated ’bout this song, that strangely nobody seems to mention, is in the chorus, where Eminem makes a joke ’bout saying, “yeah, boy, shake that ass — oops, I mean girl”, & then in the music video it shows a li’l boy being replaced by a li’l girl shaking her ass. Only in the early 2000s could someone imply that paedophilia is only bad when gay without becoming a source o’ ridicule.

Also, the juicy synth beats are gross to listen to.

Grade: F

Music Video

If you ignore the terrible music, the music video is actually pretty good. It actually goes into greater depth on the Michael Jackson mockery, making fun o’ him getting his hair set on fire, as well as all the flashy costumes he & other artists like MC Hammer had. I think this would’ve worked better if the references were just left as visuals & the song, I dunno, focused more on the absurdity o’ Eminem’s fame in comparison.

Grade: A

14. Ass Like That

& then we get the tragic tale o’ a racist Indian stereotype possessed by a dog puppet being hassled by the police just ’cause he popped a boner in the movie theater while watching some movie stars he finds attractive, some o’ which are underage. ’Twas brave o’ Eminem to use his platform to speak out on this lesser-known example o’ police brutality gainst minorities. While ridiculously racist, I have to admit the fake Indian sitar music with the deep bass is catchy, as well as the ridiculously childish, “¡da-doing doing doooing!” @ the end o’ each line o’ the chorus.

Genius calls this “what many consider to be a low point in Eminem’s career”, but I refuse to believe this song is worse than “Just Lose It”: “Just Lose It” is a song anyone could make in a few seconds; its jokes are all stock, & it’s somehow e’en mo’ paedophilic. While this song may not be good or well-written or e’en funny, it’s the kind o’ bizarre concept that nobody else could come up with, & I have to give it credit for that.

Grade: Da-Doing Doing Doing

Music Video

You can’t say the music video wasn’t well-made, given the source material, especially with the opening scene where Eminem fights with a dog puppet ’cause it insulted him, that explains how this all happened. I particularly want to highlight the use o’ puppets for when Eminem is possessed by the dog & the goofy way it parodies ass anthems o’ the time with all the women in the background shaking their ass whole Eminem’s in front playing with a slinky.

Grade: A

15. Spend Some Time (feat. Obie Trice, Stat Quo, 50 Cent)

I love how after a string o’ intentionally absurd songs, we get this song that tries to be serious, but is e’en mo’ absurd because o’ that. After some terrible, off-key singing from Em, trying to speak from the heart ’bout heartbreak, only to kill any chances o’ me taking this song seriously with the 1st line, “if there’s any bitches in this room”. His guest features don’t help: Obie Trice starts his verse with the Shakespearean lines, “I never woulda thought that I’d see you outta control / even though my penis was deep down in your hole”. This is immediately followed by Obie Trice being so desperate to find a rhyme with the poetic word, “hoes”, that he mangles the term “soulmates” into the awkward, “mates of soul”.

His verse is then followed with somehow e’en worse singing from Eminem, with his voice twisting highly in a particularly annoying way on the rhymes “mine” & “right”, but this time Em is accompanied by a woman with the most hilariously high-pitched voice in the world, as if this woman sucked a whole balloon o’ helium.

& then, in stark contrast to Em trying too hard to sing, we get Em barely e’en trying to rap, with many lines seeming to not e’en rhyme, which is kinda what he’s s’posed to be good @: the 1st 4 lines end with “before”, “truly are”, “daughters”, & “drawers” — &, no, e’en Em’s weird accent can’t contort those into rhymes.

I love how the 2nd chorus with its tragic singing is interrupted by Stat Quo laughing out, “ha ha, yeah right, bitch / spend some time on my dick”.

& the last verse has 50 Cent being terrible @ flirting with women, with such suave lines as “you have very nice lips”, but somehow getting the woman anyway.

Forget “Ass Like That”, “Big Weenie”, or “Rain Man”: o’ all the songs on this album, that this song exists is the most baffling — which is probably why nobody remembers or talks ’bout it. Eminem is the kind o’ rapper where him singing a serious song ’bout heartbreak is mo’ baffling than him singing a song ’bout jerkin’ it in a movie theater.

Grade: F

16. Mockingbird

This song is just as lazy as the rest, but because it’s ’bout his daughter fans eat it up. Eminem is less rapping than mumbling thruout the song, barely rhyming, — which, again, is kinda what he’s s’posed to be good @ — & the main beat is the most cliché nursery rhyme music. On the plus side, Em’s singing on the chorus is pretty all right, as opposed to the rest o’ this album. The final chorus with the intensity @ the end is high & above the best part o’ the song & the only time Eminem does something serious well on this whole album.

If anything, this song is the biggest wasted potential on this album &, really, the biggest casualty o’ Em’s drug-induced state: as far as I’m concerned, any song worth remembering on this album up to this point is only worth remembering ’cause it’s a drug-induced fever dream; this is the 1st song that would’ve benefited from being made by a sober mind & polished into a real song. Whereas most o’ the other songs are just random bullshit, this song’s lyrics are saying something, but are basically just typed out prose that needed to be revised into an actual song structure. O well. I guess @ the same time you could say this attempt @ serious self-reflection while under the grips o’ drugs is interesting in itself.

Grade: D

Music Video

The decision to use home videos certainly fits this song. Honestly, the footage is mo’ interesting than the song itself. Hope none o’ the people in this footage — if it’s real footage & not staged with actors — are too embarrassed by it now.

Grade: B

17. Crazy in Love

I feel like it’s blasphemy for Eminem to blend the music & chorus from 1 o’ the biggest hits from 1 o’ the greatest women-led rock bands, Heart, with more o’ his mumbling misogynist rants ’bout his bitch ex who he, ne’ertheless, is still in love with. Let’s face it: this is a fucking Theory of a Dead Man song, but rapped — it’s “divorced dad rap”. I don’t want to hear Eminem clumsily compare his toxic relationship with someone else — where he sweetly croons, “you let me beat the shit out of you before you beat the shit out of me” — with… ¿his relationship with Dre? ¿Are they gay lovers? ¿Eminem’s daughter, Alaina’s, relationship with Hailey, her ( nonbiological, yes ) sister? OK, I don’t e’en want to continue with this line o’ thought. People complain ’bout the goofy, dumb songs on this album, which were clearly muddled by the drugs, but I would say those were mo’ harmless & less embarrassing than when Em tries to talk ’bout his serious life problems & it gets muddled by the drugs. It’s like the difference ’tween being round a zany drunk who spews goofy conspiracy theories or just says whacked-out shit & being round a morose drunk who mumbles ’bout some tragedy that befell them in muddled nonsense: the latter isn’t funny; it’s just awkward & depressing. I don’t e’en feel like I should have the right to listen to this song — like I’ve stolen Eminem’s personal diary.

In any case, I’d much rather just listen to “Crazy on You” by just Heart themselves.

Grade: F

18. One Shot 2 Shot

¿Why is the “1” spelled out, but not the “2”? You know, people blame Eminem for being whacked out, ¿but where was the quality control from all the producers round him, who were presumably mo’ sober? ¿You’re telling me Paul Rosenberg complained ’bout outraging Michael Jackson, but didn’t notice this obvious blunder?

Anyway, this song is the riveting story o’ Eminem’s rap group, D12, being caught in the middle o’ a shootout narrated in the least interesting way possible, with repeatedly exclamations o’ the general variety o’, “¡Holy shit! ¡This is crazy!”, mixed with needless details o’ what street so & so is on. We ne’er e’en find out why this shootout happens & it ends anticlimactically on the very last line with Proof just shooting someone in the knee — ¡which wouldn’t e’en be fatal!

The beat on this song, while repetitive & bland, is actually 1 o’ the better 1s on this generally musically sterile album; but the chorus is just annoying & goofy. Eminem sounds like he’s in a Dr. Seuss book the way he childishly counts off the gunshots, as well as with goofy euphemistic lines like, “this is where the fun stops”, which is hurt further by the sing-songy bouncy music. This is like the least gangster song ’bout a shootout e’er.

Grade: D

19. Final Thought (Skit)

A nice climactic build-up. Honestly, the o’erarching story o’ Eminem going on stage with a gun hidden ’hind his back & ending his show by blowing his brains out is the most interesting part o’ this album.

Grade: A

20. Encore / Curtains Down

This is a fun song, & a good swan song to this album & to what we might call an entire era o’ Eminem’s music. It’s hands-down the best unironic song on this album; & yet it’s nowhere near the greatness o’ the surrealist lyricism o’ classics like “Role Model” or the force o’ the bitter sarcasm o’ gems like “Marshall Mathers” — or any song off The Marshall Mathers LP, for that matter. I will almost certainly forget e’ery generic gangster rap line on this song. ¿Wasn’t Eminem liked specifically ’cause he was an alternative from the generic gangster rappers who flooded the 2000s?

Grade: C

Conclusion

This album is a mess, with 1 thing consistent thruout: sloppiness & just throwing shit @ the wall & seeing what sticks. I will go to my grave insisting that the “worst” parts o’ the album — the goofiest — are the best in that they are a’least fascinatingly bad, while the rest is all forgettable & mediocre.

FInal Grade: D