Adam Keys is Thinking

A joke for a late-night variety show monologue may only be funny for one day (e.g. a joke about a celebrity). A newspaper article may lose relevance in days or weeks. A TV show might feel dated a couple years after its run ends (e.g. most problems on Seinfeld could be solved with a smartphone). Computer programs don't fare well over time either (though there are exceptions).

The best songs demonstrate better longevity. Beethoven and Bob Dylan still work today. There will always be something amazing about "Good Vibrations", at least to the trained ear.

Even the rap trope of yelling the year the song was recorded has a timeless quality to it; it serves as a marker for the state of affairs. "Nineteen eighty nine!" is the first thing shouted in Public Enemy's "Fight the Power", marking the historical context for what Chuck D is about to tell us.

Why is this? I suspect it underlies the act of making music. Besides hit factory music, i.e. ear worms you hear on the radio, a musician's goal is to make something expressive. Expressiveness often leads to qualities that give a piece endurance; timelessness, nostalgia, high quality. Expressiveness is less often an objective for jokes, headline journalism, or television.

That enduring quality, it's tricky. It happens in film, television, and books too. But, for me, there's something about music that has a more direct emotional connection. They vibrate my ear drum and work their way directly to a part of my brain containing "the feels". I hear a good song and I'm immediately thinking about why I enjoy it so much, what makes it so good, or when I heard that song and connected it to an experience.

Maybe that's why music is such a big deal in our culture. Really, really good music connects in a way beyond "haha that's funny" jokes or "huh, that's interesting" writing.

Is it possible to write expressive non-fiction or an enduring computer program? It seems like the answer is yes, but the answers are outliers. Hofstader's Godel, Escher, Bach and Knuth's TeX come to mind. For every GEB or TeX, there are thousands of less interesting works.

Further, the qualities of an enduring, expressive, and yet functional work seem somewhat at odds with the pragmatics of the daily act of writing or programming. A lot more perfectionism, experimentation, and principle goes into these works than the typical news article or application.

And yet, for every "Good Vibrations", there's probably a thousand commercial jingles composed, elevator tunes licensed, ringtones purchased, and bar bands playing "Brickhouse" yet again. Perhaps music is just as prone to longevity as writing, film, or programming but has a far longer timeline on which its easier to see what really worked. In fifty years perhaps, if we're lucky, we'll start to learn what is really amazing in film and software.

(Ed. Herein, I attempt to break down a current favorite of mine, “Otis” by Jay-Z and Kanye West, in terms familiar and interesting to nerds, specifically of the nerd and/or comedy persuasion.)

“Otis” is a song arranged and performed by two best pals, Jay-Z and Kanye West. It opens with a sample of Otis Redding (hence the title) singing “Try a little tenderness”. Opening with a sample like this tells us two things:

• Misters Z and West enjoy the music of Mr. Redding enough that they were compelled to include it in their own music.
• The gentlemen are also well connected and affluent, as not just everyone can afford to sample a legend like Redding in their music

A digression: sampling in hip-hop is one of its key characteristics and is of particular interest to nerds. It is a way that we can connect, through “nerding out” with the artist and find what it is that they respect and listen to. It is also a bit of a recursive structure; “Otis” samples Otis, Otis borrowed from gospel and blues, blues and gospel borrowed from traditional songs, etc. Finally, sampling is a recombinant form; in “Otis”, there is a verbatim sample in the opening bars, but the sample devolves to a looped-beat in the middle of the song and a mere sound-effect at the end of the song.

As Misters Z and West enter the song proper, the rappers trade verses about their affluence (“New watch alert, Hublot’s / Or the big face Rollie I got two of those”), the recursive (again, nerdy) deception they use to evade the papperazzi (“They ain’t see me ‘cuz I pulled up in my other Benz / Last week I was in my other other Benz”), a conflicting verse about how they would seek the paparazzi out (“Photo shoot fresh, looking like wealth / I’m ‘bout to call the paparazzi on myself”), more boasting of their affluence and skill (“Couture level flow, it’s never going on sale / Luxury rap, the Hermes of verses”), and such.

This song features a video, so we wouldn’t be properly doing a nerd dissection of it if we were to neglect that. It opens with our heroes approaching a Maybach sedan with a saw and a blow torch. Following a “car modification montage”, it appears the doors have been removed from the car and the front end of the car has been placed on the back, and vice versa. Another display of affluence, with perhaps a touch of hipster irony thrown in.

The video follows with various shots of our heroes rapping and driving the Maybach through an abandoned dock or airfield. Our heroes are in the front seat of the car and there are four models in the back seat, one seated precariously atop the one in the middle as our heroes make dangerous-looking manuvers in the car. At one point it appears they will lose a model through the door-less side of the car. At multiple points, it appears the boobs of the models might fight free of their loose fitting shirt. It should be noted that the appearance of a possible free boob could be considered quite progressive for a hip-hop music video.

The Maybach is, in my opinion, the most difficult to interpret signal the song and video send. Are we to understand that Misters Z and West are so affluent they can afford to put down six figures on the purchase and massively impractical modification of a high-end luxury car? Perhaps they had a spare one laying around and felt it would be a better use to destroy it than to leave it around. Or, perhaps this was a vehicle for a clever tax deduction?

Mr. West's CPA: You're going to owe a lot of tax on this purchase of your other-other Benz, 'Ye.

Mr. West: What if I were to use it in a music video for the purposes of promoting my upcoming album?

Mr. West's CPA: Well then you could depreciate it at 50% this year and 25% for the next two years, but you're still going to owe a lot.

Mr. West: If I were to take it to a chop shop and have them put the ass-end of the car on the front and turn the doors into wings, could I depreciate it faster?

Mr. West's CPA: throw some models in the back seat, and it *just might work*!

(Ed. as it turns out, the vehicle was to be auctioned and the proceeds donated to charity)

The other enigma of the video is the presence of comedian Aziz Ansari. Mr. Ansari has documented (Ed. hilariously) his friendship with Mr. West. Thus it is not shocking to see him appear in the video. He appears for only an instant, and his appearance marks the absence of the models in the rest of the video. Perhaps, we are to believe, Mr. Ansari is the pumpkin that the models turn into after some deadline has passed for Misters Z and West.

Despite, or perhaps because, of its mysteries, I find “Otis” is a fantastic piece of hip-hop production. The samples is well chosen and deconstructed, the verses are interesting (if mentally unchallenging), and the video is engaging to watch. I would easily rank it amongst the top songs of recent memory, were I one to make lists of top songs.

Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is an amazing piece of classical music. It’s one of the rare pieces that was really revolutionary in its time. But in our time, almost one hundred years on, it doesn’t sound that different.

Music has moved on. We are used to the odd times of “Take Five” and the dissonant horns of a John Williams soundtrack. Music offending the status quo is nothing unheard of.

To enjoy Rite of Spring in its proper context, you have to forget all that. Put yourself in the shoes of a Parisian in 1913, probably well off. You probably just enjoyed a Monet and a coffee. But your world is changing. Something about workers revolting. A transition from manual labor to mechanical labor.

Now imagine yourself at the premier for this new ballet from Russia. You being a Parisian, you’re probably expecting something along the lines of Debussy or perhaps Debussy or Berlioz.

Instead, you get mild dissonance and then total chaos. The changing time signatures, the dissonance, the subject of virgin sacrifice. You’d probably riot too!