The utter injustice of Cassie’s career gives me a minor rage stroke. It’s not like favs aren’t flopping every single day of the week, but unlike some notable where’s the album acts (JoJo, Tinashe, Frank Ocean) there is no alternate universe Cassie to take her place. Cassie’s glassy, emotionless vocals are truly one of a kind (see below) and she emerged as the affectless alternative to the popular ideal of woman as keeper of all the feelings. Cassie sings with no feeling, at best mustering a sort of half-hearted ennui -- ennui! She can barely feel a feeling that is already anti-feeling! “Me & U” is, on the surface, a song of seduction, but it’s delivered with an assassin’s precision. It’s more deadly than sexy. And in her stead, there’s nothing. We’ve boomeranged back to ultra hi-def 360* surround sound E-MO-TION and the serial killer popstar that Cassie promised to be never was.
Get me in the mood and I will always bring up the incident to which I've obligated myself to refer to as “Cassie's 9/11”; an infamous live appearance on the Big Tigger & Julissa-era of BET's “106 & Park” where Cassie arrived with producer/songwriter Ryan Leslie as DJ/Hypeman, an ensemble of dancers and back up singers, her own remarkable beauty... and no vocals. An Ashlee Simpson type derailment with maybe 1/10th of the recognition for an artist hot off one of the biggest singles to emerge from Bad Boy in years, who'd subsequently become the girlfriend of her label patron Sean “Puffy” Combs (at that point careening through one of his varying 'Diddy' phases). When later asked to address the peek behind the curtain at the relative amateurishness for Cassie Ventura, the great and powerful Oz of the 90s said her inability to perform was 'cute' and demonstrated she was 'a real human'. In that regard then, while Cassie is a human, “Me & U” is anything but. Over a dainty rhythm track, Ryan Leslie sends a symphony of synths in and out phantasmically, while Cassie's voice is pitch-tuned and corrected to a level of stability found when things have been frozen into crystal. “Me & U” is a massive construction, and is admirable for its architecture and design, but more and more fascinating when you realize how little humanity it holds. Never mind vocaloids or vocoders, Ventura was the sound of the machines trying to express love.
107 "The House That Built Me" by Miranda Lambert
108 "Cover My Eyes" by La Roux
109 "You Practically Rock" by Kupek
Before and during his rise to become Internationally Acclaimed Cartoonist Brian Lee O’Malley, Brian Lee O’Malley was also Kupek, ultra-lo-fi singer songwriter. And in that brief period, he managed to also release one of the best songs of the decade. "You Practically Rock" builds pathos out of catchphrases: “If I keep digging I’ll get to China before you”, “If it kills me, the Glock is cocked”. The production is chintzy, the sentiment is passionate, the topic is a girl he longs for who doesn’t care a bit: the conclusion "Why don't you throw your hands in the air/ And wave them around like you just don't care", a meaningful - and clever - payoff to the chanted “Get your damn hands up” that echoes behind the earlier verses. O’Malley is almost inarguably a better artist than he is a musician, but “You Practically Rock” establishes him as more than a dabbler in another medium. He’s the rare man who can do both.
Make no mistake, there’s real artistry shaping the heaps and heaps of relatability that make “You Practically Rock” so indelible to my 00s experience. At the time, I was nothing more than relieved to hear the sort of dumb/cute thoughts I had reassembled in a way that made them not just palatable but catchy. With hindsight I can see that catchiness is easy enough to come by, making dumb/cute thoughts palatable is a tough undertaking. But as he is with the hero of dumb/cute (Scott Pilgrim, of course), O’Malley weaves and winds savvily, avoiding begging, avoiding (much) self-pity, and avoiding cloying. The last counts the most. “You Practically Rock” is on the right side of earnest, just enough eye contact, and appealing under that shaggy haircut. Scott Pilgrim but a pop song.
