The Songs We Can't Escape

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More About

• Soulja Boy
• Bun B
• Pimp C
• Hip-Hop and Rap
• Dirty South

"Cookies & Apple Juice"

Subliminal Soulja Boy jabs? So tired, so 2007. Did they pick up this beat for half-price at a Big Lots going-out-of-business-forever sale or something? The gross-outs are no surprise, and Cam either ghostwrote Byrd Lady's verses or she's studying his lyrical tics way, way too closely.

"Red Meditation Part 1"

There's something anti-PC godawful about the name "Cancer Dance"—as it should be, given that this is a noise project. Fitting, too, because "Red" simulates the wildly fluctuating, physiologic agonies a body suffers during intensive surgery. Click through interlocked last.fm pages for an hour or so, and behold an underground-rock future with no investiture in physical product, publicists, or labels; it's almost breathtaking.

"We Made You"

And with that, the notion that the zeitgeist can be succinctly and convincingly framed in three to four minutes of eternally quotable pop is officially as dead as the Dodo. Notice what's inscribed on its tombstone: "Lord help us/He's back, in his pink Alf shirt."

"Unfinished Ballad"

More like "expository intro," am I right? It's as though the players are yawning and stretching, gearing up for the more lively jazz/post-rock to come later on (Un)sentimental.

"Hard As Hell"

Bun-B intimates that at least some of his rap-hustling cash was funneled into the Fantagraphics/Eros Comix coffers. Akon sings about damn near bagging a club slut on a dance floor as if it were analogous to getting a manicure. From beyond the grave, Pimp C dusts off his incidental French. But it all sounds pretty amazing in sum, and it'll never, ever happen again.