GIMME THE PRETENSE

I post shit about stuff and try to sound philosophical.

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PinkPantheress just wants to talk. Sure, she wants other things too but as she sings about living her early twenties life on Fancy That, talking is what comes up again and again.

This isn't the insecure Pink who wondered if she was good enough on "Boy's a Liar". On this mixtape, she's confident and assured. Over a propulsive, 90s arcade racer beat on "Tonight", Pink's excited to pursue someone. The vocals come at pace, like the thoughts are spilling out of her head and she's straining to keep up. But we hear little about the looks of her object of obsession or whether they're good in bed. Instead, the drawcard is talking. It's what Pink finds attractive, what gets them into her bed. The possibility of talking later is the why that makes her leave the house: “Talk later, that’s why I’m going tonight”.

I love this focus on talking because of how it subverts the usually hedonistic content of a typical dance-adjacent pop song. These songs are still about hooking up, but it feels like the thing Pink cares most about is talking, not fucking.

The whole mixtape has great imagery on this sort of connection. On "Illegal", she gets straight into it with the most direct come-on: "My name is Pink and I'm really glad to meet you". But later in the night at one o'clock, all they're doing is talking on her bed. When she observes that the connection feels illegal, it's not because of the sex they're having. She just likes the chat.

I know these are love songs but when I listen to them, I think about talking with my friends. I'm a sucker for conversation. Like Pink, that's what gets me out of the house. A great conversation can be a thrilling, day-making thing. They can lead to one of the most interesting parts of life: trying to understand someone else. It feels like she gets this when she wonders why someone's so complicated on "Tonight". The best chats are often the complicated ones that colour in the picture of someone's humanity. There's a reverence with which Pink treats talking in these songs that captures that magic. I share her mindset on "Stars", where she asks her baby the simplest but best request: "come talk to me".

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Crazy? Yeah. In the past, love was seen as a sickness. During the Renaissance, the physical symptoms and mental obsession of someone in love required medical treatment. And so the title of this love song by the Mint Chicks is apt, with the first part capturing the childlike rush of falling in love. Specifically, the honeymoon period where all you want is to spend time with someone doing nothing in particular.

Then we get to the bridge, where we feel that other bit of falling in love: the self doubt and anxiety. Slow and quiet, it's almost a different song as Kody Nielson murmurs to himself over and over that maybe dying would be better than this. But then as he finally admits his fear a guitar solo erupts and bridges us back towards the hook, sung this time in a higher key. It's like he has come to terms with his doubt and has decided to go back in with even more enthusiasm. Dumb? I guess not.

But really, it's all about that drum pattern. I could, and have, listened to it over and over. My favorite part is the little pause before the roll. It's a moment of suspense that keeps me hanging for another hit.

The first time I heard this song, I was 12 years old. It's interesting listening again as a 30 year old and coming away from it feeling that childlike energy (see also). Writer Ruban Nielson was younger than I am now when he wrote it, which feels kind of fucked up. I can't remember what I felt about the themes of the song as a 12 year old who had barely crushed on a girl. I probably just liked the drum pattern. But that's why I love this song. It's both immediate and everlasting.

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This evening I went to my local park to shoot some hoops, a hobby that I've recently picked up. There's something pure about shooting a basketball. Making a shot is not guaranteed, it's all on you and you can't hide from the outcome - the ball either goes in or it doesn't. I love the delayed gratification as the ball hangs in the air after you throw it up. There's randomness and variation in how the ball bounces, requiring your body to adapt on the fly. I love how you're mainly playing with gravity and that you need to be focused and relaxed to shoot well. If you think about it too hard, shooting hoops is almost a 🌈 metaphor for life 🙌.

As I played, I listened to Hoop Life, the basketball-centric 2014 mixtape by Lil B. The tape is mainly known for "Fuck KD", a diss track to NBA MVP Kevin Durant, a concept so ridiculous1 it threatens to cast a gimmicky shadow over the whole mixtape. But it doesn’t. Instead, listening to it, I found myself inspired.

In Hoop Life, everything revolves around basketball and the act of playing. It's an hour where basketball is the only judge and "see me on the court and let's play" is the answer to all questions. Lil B's raps are simple and crass but vaguely mystical: the tape starts with him repeating "Let's play hoop, bitch!" - by the eighth time it's sounding like a mantra for life.

His enthusiasm about the game of basketball is so infectous that it suggests a love of life itself, in all of its complexities. It helps that many lines can be read as about both basketball and life in general. When he says "Quit ball-hogging bitch, pass the ball trick", is he railing against ball hoggers or the selfish people in our lives? Is "I work on the shot, cause I can't dunk" about improving his jumper, or learning to embrace your strengths?

As I get older, I've started to gravitate towards play as the respite from the grind. Perhaps it's some "getting in touch with your inner child" shit but to me, playing is one of the joys of life. Months long a-sync board games with friends, running around a touch rugby field, trying to throw a ball through a hoop - there's a simplicity to these activites. You win or you lose, you touch the player or you don't, the ball goes in or it doesn't.

When playing, there's no shame in trying and no shame in failure. These zones feel almost utopian compared to "real life" with all of its complexities and trade offs. The meaning you can get from a game of basketball is something Lil B seems get on Hoop Life. I've written a lot of words above, but he encapsulates it in just one line: "I hoop everyday case it's fun".

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RIP Rich Homie Quan

Rich Homie Quan’s death hurts so much because I didn’t know my favourite artists could die like this. Quan was still 33. He’d had his run in the spotlight and should be settling into life as a beloved legacy act, spending his streaming revenues. These deaths are usually from artists who made music before I was born. But I was there for Quan’s peak. His death reminds me that I am getting old too.

He leaves behind some brilliant songs. Songs I love that will now make me think about death whenever I listen to them. In celebration of his body of work, here are a few that mean a lot to me:

I Go In On Every Song

Quan was raised by a single mother in East Atlanta, a shy kid who was drawn to music. He got into trouble after high school, spending 15 months in jail for burglary. It was there where after watching other inmates, he became motivated to rap.

After release, he met a producer named Tezzy. Describing him as “the first person who believed in me”, Quan lived at Tezzy’s studio and honed his craft. But tragically, Tezzy was killed six months after they met. After this, you wouldn’t have blamed Quan if he wanted to stop rapping. But instead, he reacted with agency and belief in his own destiny. He decided he would start going in.

The mixtape titles are funny - they have a stubborn singlemindedness that lends itself to jokes. But when Quan croons the chorus on ‘I Go In On Every Song’, the title track from the first in the series, it’s with a tenderness out of step with the aggresive way it may read on the page. It’s melodic and gentle, sung with contentment. It’s as if after all the hard knocks, he knows the only way to live is to give it everything.

Type of Way

What does feeling “some type of way” mean? The hook has no adjectives. Yet, when you’re shouting along, you somehow know what that feeling is. Quan had a knack for evoking meaning from ambiguity. For leaving just enough there so that whatever struggle your going through in your own life was what made you feel some type of way.

I love his off-kilter delivery. He pauses after every word, which builds suspense that is broken by the rolling chorus. And when he feels like being more precise, those lines just stick in my brain forever: “Mr. CEO is what my title say”

Tell Em (Lies)

Of course, Quan will be forever remembered for his collaborations with Young Thug. Before they released Tha Tour Part 1, Quan billed them as the ‘best duo since Outkast’- bold words for someone from Atlanta. But the mixtape was so good it was true. They had a spellbinding chemistry. They often went bar for bar on songs. Sometimes, it sounded like they were in love.

The value add of them as a duo was never more obvious then on ‘Tell Em (Lies)’, a remix of a Thug collab with Bandit Gang Marco. Listen to the original and hear just how much of a difference Quan makes. His harmonising transforms a bit of filler trap into a beautiful duet, the most romantic song ever made about pulling up, eating pussy and dipping.

Flava

They had so many great songs. The mysticism of ‘Never Made Love’. The purpose in a song they named ‘Freestyle’. The joyous energy of ‘I Know It’. I will never forget the feelings ‘Lifestyle’ evoked in me when I was a poor student backpacking around South East Asia, blasting it from taxis, imagining I was on top of the mountain. I, too, done did a lot of shit (pass my exams) just to live this here lifestyle (getting driven around while drunk on cheap beer).

But my favourite is ‘Flava’, a song that occupied my mind for an entire week the first time I heard it. It’s so fun. Over relentless piano chords, Thugger unleashes a double time chorus I spent hours trying to sing along to. Quan talks about loving his girl so much he lets her count his money. And the best bit is the second time the chorus rolls around, when Quan and Thug joyfully trade lines before singing together in unison at the end. They’re so symbiotic it’s magical ✨

Today, Quan is gone and Thug is being dragged through an endless RICO case. It feels like the sun has set on an entire generation of trap music. While it may be hard not to think about death, I hope when I listen to these songs again, I’ll also think about the joy those two must have felt while recording them, singing I love you to each other.

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Let’s talk about the first verse, a perfect little poem. I find its vagueness so compelling - the words meaning a lot without saying anything specific. There is an outline of a plot. Murky details with just enough definition to entice you to figure it out. I’ve spent too much time the past week trying to unspool the story thread, with its gestures towards death, infidelity and suppressed trauma. And Thug’s delivery of it is full of drama. His voice just above a whisper, he takes cinematic pauses before a high pitched resolution that sounds definitive but isn’t: the last line is a throwaway “for what it’s worth”.

It beautifully sets up the chorus. Reading it’s title and lyrics, you might expect “Never Made Love” to be the kind of chauvinistic song about disposable sex often thrown around in Hip Hop. But it’s not. Instead, Thug croons with pain rather than braggadocio; with a sorrowful knowledge that he can’t open himself up emotionally to truly make love. He repeats those three words over and over, extracting everything out of them before Rich Homie Quan joins in. I love their interplay, the way Quan goes high when Thug goes low. They play off each other, only needing three words to create a pathos inducing chorus that runs for half a minute. It’s spectacular stuff. Would the world be a utopia if Rich Gang never broke up? Maybe not, but when you listen to a collab like this, it’s hard not to dream.

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Watching babyMINT perform ’Hellokittybalahcurri³ hellokitty美味しい’ makes me feel young. It’s thrilling pop that never stops switching to its next earworm. On first watch, the absurd hook and change-ups are what make you hit replay. Then you notice all the other joyful things about the song. I love so many parts: the existential ‘I will die, you will die, baby’ memento mori, sung so sweetly; the bit where Lyu Hsi-yan twists her earnest 'seize the moment’ into 'and throw everything out the balcony window’ before ending with a cheeky 'never mind 😉’; the adorable choreography, which veers into the uncanny valley during the Lex Luger-esque breakdowns.

Most of all though, I love how watching it makes me feel silly and carefree. Because babyMINT brings us along on their fun ride. At the start, Lin Lin promises to teach us a secret…magic…word. After the first hook, Lyu opens her arms expectantly toward the audience, encouraging us to join. When everyone on stage is inviting you to take part in the absurdity, how can you not buy in?

It’s important that each member of babyMINT is so young. Their ages range between 14 and 20 and they bring a youthful energy to the song which I know is fleeting—it’s something ground down as the years pass. That’s why I find it so infectious. It has an wide-eyed optimism you can only bottle once: a zeal for life that makes a nonsense phrase like 'hellokittybalahcurri’ make perfect sense. 最高!

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I miss purity. The older you get, the more you realise that almost nothing is simple. Everything is nuanced. I miss the songs that were about one thing only. Like how "It's Going Down" was just about how shit was going down, or "Circle" was just about throwing that ass in a circle.

My latest favourite of this genre is "Got Money" by Lil Wayne. Once again, the premise is refreshingly simple. Lil Wayne has got money, now hear him rap about it while T-Pain autotunes the chorus.

The production is straightforward. It opens with one of those firecracker snare breaks (see also: "And Then What") before moving into its bread and butter, an oozy synth loop which is regularly joined by an escalating string section. Those strings are a joyful feedback loop, building tension over and over again, and Wayne rides the peaks with typical casualness.

The beat is great, but the purest part of this song for me is the autotune. If the vocal effect - which creates the purest of melodies - ever had a purist, then that person must be T-Pain, who used it to turn his voice into an instrument of digitized perfection.

On "Got Money", his voice is processed to an alien-sounding peak. The way he draws out the syllables when signing "V-eyeeeee-piiiii" is beautiful, and I just love the digital warbles when he shifts between notes. Wayne and T-Pain make a great tag team in the chorus: Wayne’s gravelly voice contrasting well with T-Pain's pitch-perfect one. Most joyfully, by the time the second chorus rolls around, Wayne is joining in with his own "yeah's" and rolling with T-Pain's ad-libs. It's spontaneous and joyful.

There is a purity to the song that I have found deeply satisfying the past few days, as we move into another lockdown and my life gets more and more confusing. That might be because listening to nuanced songs is hard, and I don't want to listen to something like that at the moment. I just want it to be simple.

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Things I didn't expect to happen when listening to Fiona Apple's break-up piano ballad "Not About Love": that I would be headbanging. But at the end of the first verse, when the tempo slows, the suspense builds and those glorious piano chords crash down. I was also crashing my hands down on my desk. Fuck!

One of my favourite things about Fiona Apple is that she uses the piano as a rhythmic instrument. Watch her smack the keys when she plays the song live. That's not the proper playing technique! In fact, the technique is more reminiscent of hitting a drum. And that's what the piano on her songs often feel like; an instrument being used as percussion that has the "minor" side effect of adding melody.

There's a gorgeous section post-chorus when the notes rain down with the same rhythm as a drum fill. It sounds like she is running down a hill, barely holding her balance. This feeling of unevenness pervades the song, from its frequent tempo changes to Fiona's vocal performance, which switches between tender and ragged, often within the same line.

Most satisfyingly, the music reflects the songwriting. It's a breakup song, the morning after an argument, and Fiona seems to be pointing the finger squarely at her verbally abusive man ("Changed the name of the game cause he lost it / he knew it was wrong but he knew it too late").

But she is an unreliable narrator, and when she tenderly sings "I miss that stupid ache" just two lines after forcefully asserting "I am not in love" the story turns complicated. By "missing" the toxic relationship, does she hold herself partly responsible for its failure? Did she try to force something that would never work, just for the thrill of the honeymoon phase?

And that's the best thing about this song. It isn't a revenge breakup song, but a human one. One where Fiona reckons through a failed relationship by looking at the flaws in herself as well as the other party. And it just so happens, that it is also a complete banger.

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Liverpool are...Champions?

I’m not used to this feeling. Since I started supporting Liverpool, the overriding theme of my fandom has been failure. We were always the team whose best seasons ended in second place. Yet here we are, champions of Europe (!!!). I’m still processing.

As a minority born to immigrants, I’ve always viewed life as an (at times, beautiful) struggle, something supporting Liverpool has seemed to fit with. The club is from a provincial city, has a financial disadvantage to its rivals and a history full of real tragedy. Most of all though, when we were good, another team was always just a little bit better. No matter how hard we tried a trophy was always just out of reach, often in heartbreaking fashion.

This season seemed to be a continuation of that. Our technocratic owners had mined every single advantage possible, from assembling an industry-leading analytics team to hiring a throw-in coach, all with the goal of making us better. And it worked: the team lost one game in the league all season and strolled past the champions of France, Germany and Portugal in Europe. Yet a few Mondays ago, it all looked to be for nothing. Kompany’s once in a career goal had won City the league, and the best player in the world was just too good for us in Europe.

It was a gutting few days, but I had prepared myself for it happening. I had been bracing myself for failure all season long. Because when you are used to heartache, what is this season but just another one to add to the pile. I had completely checked out by the time of the semi-final second leg, resigned to spending the summer reflecting on the small margins that turned against us. It was hard to believe that luck was random on that day.

But then, Barcelona happened and I cried. It was the first time I shed tears of joy from watching football. I didn’t even see it live. I was at a professional function and had to keep still while following the game on Twitter. But when I got home to watch the highlights and saw the third goal go in…the tears just started streaming down my cheeks. Pure joy. Compared to the day before, it was such an extreme emotional swing! From bracing myself for an off-season of what might have been to playing in a Champions League final, I couldn’t believe it. When I saw the team drape their arms over each other and sing, I cried again. I was so proud.

And then there was Sunday. When the final whistle went, I didn’t really know what I felt. It was a mixture of joy, relief and…confusion? Because winning a trophy wasn’t in my Liverpool emotional spectrum. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel. It did feel like the end of a certain era of my Liverpool fandom though. After all those trying years, we had won the biggest trophy in club football. The performance wasn’t the most fluid but the amount of hope I get from the result, man. Life isn’t fair, but isn’t it great when it is.

I’m still processing the fact that we are champions, still trying to get past the cognitive dissonance in my mind. The overriding theme of my Liverpool fandom is failure, and my brain is taking some time to rewire. I don’t know what it is like to support a team that has won something. But after Athens, after Macheda, after Hodgson, after Andy Carroll, after the Slip, after Ramos and after Kompany, we are the champions. It’s what I’ve been waiting years for, and if its the end of something, then so be it.

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WRITING AS A MEANS TO HELP COPE WITH AND RATIONALISE THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL

It only really hit me a couple hours later. I was at an exec meeting and realised I didn’t want to talk to anyone, or smile, or be social at all. All I wanted to do was to turn my swivel chair around, look out of the 18th floor window at the boats bobbing up and down in the ocean and let the meaningless cruelty of life wash over me.

I’ve written about tough sports losses before. The 2011 Cricket World Cup final was the original “loss-that-makes-me-think-about-the-existential-meaning-of-sport-as-a-coping-mechanism”. But at least in that game we went down swinging, playing the same brand of fearless cricket that had taken us there. Here, we didn’t even get a chance. After Ramos took out Salah’s shoulder (FOR WHICH I WILL NEVER FORGIVE HIM) all we could do was try to hang on.

This was the worst type of sporting loss. One full of regret at what could have been. I don’t think I have ever been so excited for a game before. Most of this excitement revolved around being able to watch our forward line running at the opposition one last time, playing the same free-spirited and joyful football they had all season. That this was denied to me by one cynical challenge makes me immensely sad. Now we’ll never know what they would have done in a full game against Real Madrid. My Cricket World Cup piece ended on an optimistic note, rationalising that losses could be more meaningful than wins. This particular loss is not one of those.

For me, the enduring image of the game will be Karius in the tunnel before kick-off. His face was so full of pride at getting to this stage and hopeful for what could lay ahead. It was exactly how I felt (minus a large degree of nervousness) and reflected the most exciting part of sport: the moment before the event, when the future is open and the narrative has not yet been written. These narrative moments are what keeps us fanatically following sports. Without it, watching sports would just be an exercise in appreciating technique. Seeing that face now and knowing what would lay ahead is poignant. Man, sport is cruel.

In the midst of the loss and thoughts about the lack of justice in sport, I had been feeling pretty down. Then, before I went to bed yesterday I saw a video of Klopp. “We saw the European Cup, Madrid had all the fucking luck, we swear we’ll keep on being cool, we’ll bring it back to Liv-er-pooool”. Our manager, the morning after his 6th final loss in a row, after his best player got seriously injured, after the keeper he had carefully rehabilitated made two howlers and after conceding a once-in-a-lifetime winning goal didn’t even spend one morning feeling sorry for himself. Instead, in the face of all this, he chose to sing. What else can you do? It made me want to cry, and perhaps that is also what sport is about.

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Playboi Carti subverts what people think rap is. I learnt this last week when playing his new album Die Lit to a group whose rap knowledge probably amounted to whatever was on the top 40. Their reaction was a mixture of confusion and dislike, the kind of reaction that happens when you are talking shit and encounter slightly weird music. They didn’t hate it, but they didn’t get it and wanted something else put on.

Most mainstream understanding of rap falls into two categories. The first is that of the gangsta rapper, a Tupac like figure with tattoos who raps about guns and violence. An exaggerated caricature of black masculinity that is rebelliously cool and also slightly racist. The other is that of the technical rapper, someone who has bars for days, who can rhyme innovatively and who often has a bit in their songs where they rap really fast for no reason. 

Playboi Carti does not fit into either of these understandings. His music isn’t direct and in your face like gangsta rap, nor are his raps remotely technical. Instead, his music floats and glides. The beats typically feature some dreamy synth, over which simple melodies are looped and repeated. The layering of the components are childlike, sounding like something made on early 2000s edutainment software. The sound created brings a similarly childlike joy. Meanwhile, the lyrics seem to consist entirely of hooks and adlibs, repeated over and over. I remember first hearing Magnolia waiting for the verse to kick in, before realising that the adlibs were the verse.

I’ve been listening to Die Lit on repeat since it came out and I don’t remember many song names or lines. Instead, what sticks with me is the atmosphere created by the music. My favourite song is the mesmerising “Lean 4 Real”, which is based around what is just the smoothest synth loop. I love the sing-song verse, especially the way Carti draws out the syllables in “Nic-ke-lo-deon”. The chorus is so simple, consisting of 2 lines that he repeats 7 times. He also repeats his verse. Then, Skepta jumps on near the end and his booming voice provides the perfect contrast to Carti’s mumble-rap yelps.

What Carti is doing is almost abstract music. It’s music you can listen to without really listening to it, yet still appreciate. Music that you can duck in and out off, picking up an ad-lib here, a hook there, a melodic flourish somewhere else. Plenty takes have been made in the mumble rap debate. But when the music it can produce is this good, does it really matter what we call it?

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“Berkeley” is the most clear-eyed and alive rap song I’ve heard in a long time. It’s a simple song, full of statements that seem banal but combine into something quite impactful. It avoids the myth-making of other rappers who talk about their hundred bands and ménage à trois. Instead, it is about the small joys we can find in everyday, ordinary life. The things which make us want to keep living.

It starts with a record scratch – a sound ingrained in the essence of hip-hop – that seems to go on forever. Then a new age synth loop bursts forth and a booming drum break kicks in. These three components form pretty much the whole song and are all it needs. No trap hi-hats or bass variations are required here.

The lyrics are so direct and real. The Based God starts by thanking his parents for giving birth to him, professes his happiness at not being rich, but simply working and advises us not to go overboard (“we slip and slide, we rock the boat; rule number one just make sure it floats”). It’s wholesome stuff, and the consistent speed of his delivery gives the lines a real sense of purpose. That as long as we stay on the path and appreciate the small things, life will be good. Is this what Lil B means by “based”? If so, I like it.

Hip-hop can be a competitive sport. Perhaps because of this, modern rappers have pushed the boundaries of consumption, reaching for more of everything. This is reflected in both the complexity of modern production and the excess of its lyrical themes. “Berkeley” is a glorious anachronism from this. It shows Lil B as someone who is truly living a free life, one of openness and non-judgement, far more admirable than the egotist “free thinking” philosophy being extolled by Kanye this week. Between Ye’s ridiculous comments, Nas’ assault revelations and R. Kelly’s continued denials, its been a hard week. Listening to Lil B has offered me a grounded and hopeful vision of the future. For that, all I can say is: Thank You Based God.

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What do you imagine a Cardi B song called “Be Careful” is about? I thought it would be a warning shot; one of those braggadocios songs rappers sometimes make where they tell you to “be careful of me or I will fuck you up”. However, Cardi’s song is actually the opposite.

Over a gentle beat, Cardi raps aspirationally (“I wanna get married like the Curry’s, Steph and Ayesha shit”) and with a trademark directness (“Poured my whole heart out to a piece of shit”). It’s all good – albeit standard – stuff until we reach the chorus, which is uncharacteristically vulnerable.

It turns out that “Be Careful” is meant as a warning, but a different type of one. She is not warning you to be careful of her, but to be careful with her. “My heart is a package with a fragile label on it”. I didn’t think that Cardi – whose voice is a force of nature – could sound this tender. By doing so she showcases a side to her artistry many people didn’t think existed.

As great as the chorus is though, the most affecting parts of the song for me are Cardi’s “yeah”s. In hip-hop, “yeah” is normally used by rappers to announce their arrival. To alert the listener that they are about to go off. The “yeah”s in “Be Careful” are entirely different. Cardi says them in a hushed tone, as if she is trying to psych herself up. These “yeah”s are emotional ones, out of step with any I’ve heard in rap. More than any of the great one-liners, this my favourite moment from the album.

That Cardi’s album is good seems to be a shock to the general public. The reaction of the (white and male) hiphopheads subreddit to good reviews saw them struggling to comprehend that a popular, sex-positive, female rapper could be critically acclaimed (at the same time, many of them defend domestic abuser XXXTentacion). This sexism is sad. Cardi’s rise over the last year has been a dreamlike story of hard work and taking advantage of every opportunity. To those hating, who does your response say more about, her or you?

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Wow, Liverpool are Fun!

I want to talk about Liverpool. Specifically, this year’s Liverpool. But first, let’s start by discussing my all-time favourite Liverpool season.

My all-time favourite Liverpool season is 2013-14, when Suarez, Sturridge and Gerrard shot us to 2nd place in the league. The season was a heavy one, played in the shadow of the Hillsborough inquests, Suarez’s biting ban and what felt like (and was) Gerrard’s final chance at a title. The best game was a 3-2 win at Anfield over Man City, which was played on the 25th Anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the pre-game, where the entire stadium sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” acapella while Gerrard warmed up in the sun beneath the flags and banners of the Kop. When the full-time whistle went, Gerrard cried (me too) and did an impromptu military style team-talk. Liverpool played with black armbands that day. What I’m trying to say, is that that whole season felt like history being written. It felt important and meaningful. The themes running through it were tragedy, struggle and destiny. It was a wonderful, unforgettable season, but it wasn’t exactly fun.

That season’s team is all gone now. Gerrard has retired, Suarez has left and Sturridge is on loan injured (get well soon buddy). We have a new team now, and this years team is fun.

Fun? Liverpool has always seemed to exist with a higher purpose unrelated to the concept of fun. But yep, that’s what this team is. It starts with the players. The heart of the team, Roberto Firmino, plays with a childlike joy. 14% of his goals have been no-look. He dresses up in Mortal Kombat cosplay in his spare time. Previous teams played it straight with their celebrations, exploding with pent-up emotion. Firmino celebrates with a playful self-awareness, as if he realises that this is just a game and we should have a good time. Sadio Mane takes this self-awareness to the next level by copying Firmino’s celebrations.

The other players are great too. Loris Karius and Emre Can are caricatures of German boyband members. Nathaniel “Clyney” Clyne has been injured the whole year, yet still found the time to appear in and be humiliated on Love & Hip Hop: Miami. Alberto Moreno walks his dog with a hoverboard and should definitely be a guest commentator after he retires. And then, of course, is Mohamad Salah, who is just uncomplicatedly perfect.

Manager Jurgen Klopp embodies all the “serious” values of the club with his passion, socialist politics and empathy. Yet he is able to do so without the overwrought moralism of the (definitely un-fun) Brendan Rodgers. Klopp is fun. Can you imagine Shankly getting away with something like this? Would Rodgers have described a victory like this? Klopp is comfortable in his own skin, gaining the trust of his players by believing in them and treating them with warmth. He is the ultimate cool-dad manager, equally inspiring and self-aware.

Obviously, though we are sitting pretty in the league and Europe, there is still a fair way to go in the season. We could easily collapse against City next week and Chelsea are not out of the top 4 race just yet. But this week I’m just thankful. Thankful that our team is playing such good football. Thankful that our owners (who are 50% fun) are competent and not a corrupt oligarch or an actual country. And, thankful that this team has been so much fun to watch and support.

[gimmethepretense]

Basketball is My (4th) Favourite Sport

I used to think basketball was shit. This was back in the heady days of my football obsession, where I would often lie in bed past midnight reading Zonal Marking reports on my iPod Touch. In football, goals are rarely scored. I equated this lack of scoring action to the sport being “deeper and more meaningful”. As my favourite polemicist Jonathan Wilson said, “the beauty is in the struggle”. Basketball seemed the antithesis to this. Hundreds of points were scored each game. A player could do an extraordinary move but it would only be worth 2 points. In comparison to football, basketball seemed shallow, a sport which focused more on entertainment than play. 

Basketball is now my fourth favourite sport (behind football, cricket and Formula 1, thanks for asking). What happened? Well, the gateway was Jeremy Lin. Linsanity happened during my football obsession, so it was tainted by my snobbish dislike of basketball. It is only now though that I realise the extraordinary nature of what happened. Has any other Western-Asian person held the world’s attention like he did? Has any Asian* in general done so in a way which was completely at odds with how we are stereotyped? The only time I see Asians on the news is when some whiz-kid tops their high school exams. Who are the most famous Asian cultural newsmakers of the past 20 years? (i.e. no Xi Jinping) When Amy Chua released that Tiger Mom book? I’m really struggling here. We’re pretty much invisible. This is what made Linsanity so great. He (slightly) opened up the possibilities of what an Asian could be in the popular imagination. Shit was possible now, and we should thank him deeply. Dave Chappelle said, "it’s never good to be the first black person to do anything” and the same can be said for any other race. Lin is a symbol now, someone who people project what they want an Asian athlete to be like. And he never asked for any of this. All he wanted to do was ball.

Lin’s Time Magazine cover is probably my favourite. The way he holds the basketball up in front of his face like god holding the world. The posture of his body, still rising. The faces in the background, who you know will all be cheering a few seconds after. The perfect “lights up the NBA” caption.

I’ve contributed to the hero worship as well. One of my favourite things about basketball is how important an individual player can be. There are only 5 players on the court. Great players have a bigger impact than in football. They can literally carry teams. Drafting a superstar can change the trajectory of a franchise for a decade. The great man theory of history is bullshit, but who doesn't want to be one? Basketball is full of them. 

There are only 301 players in the NBA (not including those on two-way contracts, etc and so on). This relatively limited number of players in the league means that you get to know each one, something helped by most basketball players actually having a personality. Football is a “serious” sport. Actual wars have been fought because of it. Players have been murdered for scoring own-goals. Perhaps because of this, most football players are scared to say what they think. They don’t want to get bashed by some ultra. They are mostly bland personalities, fitting the stereotype of the sports star who repeats clichés during interviews. Meanwhile, basketball players are fun. They say whats on their mind. They beef with the President. Basketball doesn’t feel like its weighed down by tradition and seriousness. Maybe it an American thing. Players feel like human beings with a personality. It also helps that the NBA is one of the most socially progressive sports league in the world. It’s hard to imagine Chicago Bulls ultra’s giving Nazi salutes during a game the way Lazio ones do.

All this leads to the point of this week’s post, which is a lame justification for why I have spent a great deal of my time this past month playing MyCareer on NBA 2k15. It’s because I want to be a Jeremy Lin. Not Jeremy Lin, but a Jeremy Lin, which really just means I want to be an Asian sports star. I want to soar for the dunk. I want to score 30 in 4th quarter. I want to take five-wickets on the last day. Score a hat-trick in a final. Slide the rock into the house on the last end (pretty much any sport will do). 

Nothing offers a greater approximation of this than playing MyCareer in 2k15 (with your stats edited so you’re 99 in each category). NBA 2k15 is a great game, and basketball is probably more suited to video games than any other sports. The high scoring format of the sport allows it to be easily condensed into a video game without losing realism (in the way 6 minute games of football on FIFA do). This means to succeed you need to not just be good at scoring, but also good at defending, getting out of double teams, knowing how to position yourself for a rebound.... Just a lot of stuff really. My point guard can easily drop 50 points in a game, yet I keep losing games. You need to actually know basketball. 

Playing 2k has driven my obsession with basketball and sapped hours from my gap year. The opportunity to be an Asian hero (though as you can see in the first picture MyCareer still doesn’t allow you to make a realistic looking Asian character) has pulled me back to the game whenever I have spare time. I even bought a controller for it just so I could properly play defence. Most of all though, playing 2k15 offers me an illusion, a world where I have power and control, where I can live out my actual dreams of being a real-life role model for Asians in a safe space, without the risk of failure. 

I’m still getting used to every day being open to all possibilities. I’m still not quite sure what direction I should go, but I do know that my current stasis of waiting for inspiration is foolish. One clearly positive step for me to take would be to uninstall NBA 2k15. It won’t stop me wasting time reading about and watching basketball, but it would cut down on it and move me away from my delusions of virtual grandeur. I will do it soon, but I lost in the conference finals last season and I need a crowning glory to my 2k career (lol) first. I need a ring. It’s going to be a struggle to get it, but I suppose that’s where the beauty is.

[gimmethepretense]

DA BUM LIFE

Or, will Han waste his year?

So, I handed in my dissertation around one month ago. I am officially a free man. It’s a weird feeling. I’ve had something arranged for me to do my whole life (most of these being school) and now I have a year where it’s all up to me.

Every time I see my friends, they ask me some variation of “SO...what did you do today Han?”. SO, in the interests of efficiency, here is a typical day in my life post-dissertation.

9am – Wake up. Turn on phone. Read twitter, news, Facebook

10:30am – Cook breakfast and continue reading media and social medias.

11am – Head over to laptop. Finish up the medias I have been reading.

11:15am – Write an overly optimistic to-do list (“change doctor” has been on it for the past 6 weeks). Start on the first item.

11:40am – Finish first item. Reward myself by reading NBA news (a hobby I’ve picked up in the last two months) or football news (an addiction I’ve failed to control since high school).

12:45pm – Realise I’ve spent the last hour not doing work and panic start on item two of the to-do list, before compulsively opening Facebook 5 minutes afterwards.

12:50pm – Surf (the internet).

2pm – Get yelled at by mum and go eat lunch or realise mum still hasn’t made lunch and make something deeply unsatisfying but alright.

3pm – Go back to laptop and attempt to do more work.

4pm – Realise I haven’t exercised today and reason that exercise will help freshen up my brain. Head to gym.

5pm – Finish Gym. Spend 30 minutes stuck in traffic going home as it is now rush-hour.

5:30pm – Realise I am exhausted by Gym. Eat an ice-block and browse phone on my couch for an hour.

6:30pm – Eat dinner. Get yelled at for not doing dishes. Do dishes.

7:30pm – Attempt to start working again.

8pm – Continue attempting to start working again.

9pm – Call it a night. Reward myself again by watching some Youtube (top of my suggestions atm: “Base Jumping Fails Compilation Part 2”)

1am – Get tried after watching 18th fails compilation video. Rush brush my teeth and go to bed, but not before scrolling through twitter for 20 mins and listening to a podcast. RINSE AND REPEAT.

As you can see, I have been embarrassingly unproductive. So, to avoid losing myself further into the mire of NBA history and food reviews, I’m going to try write something on this old blog once a week.

Every week.

Until I can’t.

Talk to y’all soon.

[gimmethepretense]

Issa Vibe

Jay Z’s new album came out last week. It’s pretty good. This is good news, as since his last album Jay has started to seem less an artist and more a symbol of black business success. “4:44″ reminds us of what makes Jay so great. Its songs are filled with clever wordplay and technical skill. I feel amazed when I hear a line like “Shout out to all the murderers turned murals / Plural, fuck the Federal Bureau” and then remind myself that Jay doesn’t write down his raps. 

Despite 4:44′s quality though, the album I have been listening to most this week has been 21 Savage’s “Issa Album”. Savage’s album stands in contrast to 4:44. Jay’s album was partly an apology to Beyonce for his infidelity and is one in which he is introspective of life as a 47 year old. In a hark back to old times, veteran No I.D. produces the whole album, filling it with gorgeous soul samples and a sense of musical cohesion. Meanwhile, Savage’s album is named after a meme and features a mish mosh of trap beats from the best young producers of today. His raps are not on Jay’s level, with some awkward lines such as “Roulette clips, send a roulette hit / Pull up on your bitch, she say that I got that ruler dick”. So why is this the album that I have been playing most this past week?

The best way I can explain it, is that it is the vibes. While Savage’s songs are not as intricate as Jay’s, they have a vibe to them which can’t be replicated by anything in 4:44. I love “Numb”, in which Savage repeats the phrase “Numb the pain with the money” twelve times, sounding harder and harder which each repetition. And “Bank Account”, where he literally counts from 1 to 8 in the chorus, to signify the millions in his bank account. The simple minimalism of these songs mean you can bump your head to them instantly, without having to think about any deeper meanings.

I think a key aspect to this vibe is repetition. One of my favourite songs last year was “No Heart”. It was a song which instantly hit the first time I heard it, mostly due to its wonderfully minimalist beat. The remarkable thing about the two-tone refrain is how far Metro Boomin takes it, repeating it all the way until the end. Through fitting the similarly repetitious lyrics, it is a perfect beat.

I’m not sure whether this comparison between Jay and Savage is a metaphor for old school vs new school rap, or whether such a comparison is even interesting. This has been the most unclear part of the relationship between these two albums for me. It would be easy to juxtapose their differences to extract some sweeping generalisations about our generation – that we prefer style over substance, that mumble raps show our lack of patience etc, and so on. Perhaps though, the vibe created by Savage simply arises from him being of the age where there is enough time to vibe. Where his thoughts don’t need to think about another business deal on the horizon.