Gucci Mane is undoubtedly one of the craziest rappers in the game. He’s done several prison stints, and recently served a 90-day stay in a mental hospital after pleading insanity to legal charges. In what is seemingly an attempt to validate his own insanity, he celebrated his release by getting a tattoo of an ice cream cone on his right cheek. He’s got some crazy jewelry,too- a Bart Simpson chain, an Odie chain, several chains for Atlanta sports teams- it’s so heavy, as the song goes.

He is also one of the best rappers currently out there. He’s super prolific- in his 12-ish free months in the past two years he’s released about as many mixtapes. When rapping, Gucci’s metrics are almost always perfect, maintaining both meter and rhyme scheme, and he is able to use lots of near-rhymes. My personal favorite aspect of Gucci’s rapping is his delivery. He rambles through songs effortlessly, delivering punchline after punchline without stopping his flow to call attention to them. They just sort of happen. Below are two of his best songs

Gucci Mane- Excuse Me

Gucci Mane- Lemonade

While Gilmore Girls is definitely full of millennial meaning and narratives. In the first episode,  the interaction between Laurelai and Rory, highlights differences between generational groups. Rory definitely fits the millennial outline. She has a very good relationship with her mother, she’s intelligent and self-motivated, and in the end understands that going to a private school is better for her long-term goals than staying in public school. She has Ivy League goals. She ‘gets’ school uniforms and embraces the idea. Laurelai several times warns Rory about making the same mistakes she made in her youth, highlighting the difference between their mindsets at that age.

The second episode highlights the technological aspect of the millennial generation. Computers and their use are all over the place. Rory uses her computer for research and homework and to instant message Logan. The music kid is displays a tech savviness. Cell phones are also used throughout  as a primary means of communication. And similar roles/uses are seen throughout almost all of the millennial television we watch. Technology, computers and cell phones in particular, are very much a meta-narrative seen throughout.

Rory’s feminism is more visible in the second episode. In her interactions with her editor and, more so, with Logan show her as a strong, deliberate, and driven young woman. But the most feminist of her actions is confronting her father and asking him to leave her mother be. Not only does she confront him, but she really asserts both her and her mother’s independence.

Anyone who listens to hip-hop has most likely come across his beats. He did two tracks on Rick Ross’ album, produced most of Waka Floka Flame’s Flokaveli, and made the beat for the new Jay-Z and Kanye single HAM. Dude makes HEAVY beats, banger central, and makes them all on his computer using primarily Fruity Loops. And he’s 19 year’s old!! He’s a millennial, part of a rising tide of millennial’s making it big in rap.

We talk a lot in class about how the predictions put forth by Strauss and Howe, and the marketing strategies of ABC Family are self-fulfilling. Despite this, the concept of millennials seems to be gaining ground and holding up relatively well. In light of this, the ABC Family’s transmedia strategy for Kyle XY seems lie a really good idea. Their transmedia interfaces and gathering places for their  constructed fan community allowed for an easier and quicker development of this base. So whether their predictions were initially true or not, by planning around and marketing to a millennial demographic facilitated its development. So despite the flaws of Strauss and Howe, I think the classification of our age group as millennial is valid, at least within the parameters of generational thinking.

As far as Kyle XY, its portrayal of the family definitely fits within the millennial framework. The dad looks like every dad in every handy-man/suburban dad oriented commercial (a lot like the much-loved host of Dirty Jobs), works at home, and is relatively tech-savvy as he works with computers. The mom, with her fashionably short modern hairstyle and extensive wardrobe, works as a psychologist (which seems a very millennial job given our generation’s use of adderall, ritalin and the like). Both kids are tech-savvy, with cell phones and video games, and the daughter works at a coffee shop. They are the archetypal millennial family, created by a channel that is leading the millennial charge. They are the perfect environment for an outsider or stanger like Kyle to learn both what millennials are like and how to become one.

Tyler the Creator- Yonkers

New stuff out today from Tyler the Creator aka Ace the Creator aka Wolf Haley, leader of the LA rap collective Odd Future. Good but not great rapper but he’s a really good producer. This track and video are definitely a good introduction to Odd Future and what they’re all about. OF are millennial hip-hop, most of the members are between 17 and 22, and Tyler himself is 20. More info and downloads at oddfuture.tumblr.com

James Blake- The Wilhelm Scream

After a series of EPs, James Blake’s self-titled full-length officially dropped this week. Blake is known his two seemingly distinct musical personalities- a dubstep producer (exemplified in CMYK) and a well-trained singer (exemplified in his cover of Feist’s Limit to Your Love). This album displays these two working together with great results.

Blake is part of the emerging deconstruction trend in music (deconstruction is also an emerging trend in rap but that’s a little different) that focuses on portraying feelings and emotions rather than explicit ideas. Other acts in this arc include Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti who work with a 1970’s pop/rock/disco sort of sound, How to Dress Well who produces lo-fi 90s-sounding R&B, Destroyer who focuses on late70s-early80s singer-songwriters, and DJ Nate who picks apart hip-hip tracks to make jumbled-sounding dance beats. It’s really cool how these artists are able to take music that seems to be closely tied to a certain era and break it down into universal feelings and emotions.

A Wilhelm Scream, the track linked here, while not era-specific, is still deconstructionist in that it breaks down an often overlooked element of media into an emotion. A wilhelm scream is the canned scream heard in older movies let out usually right before they die. It’s often from a minor character and it’s an expression of pure desperation and helplessness. Blake expresses this through both the lyrics and production. As the song progresses the noise and haze gets thicker and thicker and more and more covers his voice, the lyrics are becoming literal as he falls and turns. This all stops completely for him to express the finally verse almost a capella before it ends. It’s an absolutely brilliant and universal song and highly recommended.

The tension found between Freaks and Geeks, and Veronica Mars highlights the differences in generational thinking purported in the reading from The Chronicle. For the teenage characters at the center of either show, Lindsay and Veronica, respectively, they are in a state of confusion and uncertainty, which is a part of growing up. However, their reactions to this are very different. Lindsay finds herself caught in a limbo between social acceptance and academic success, and really struggles to find some sort of identity for herself. Veronica, on the other hand, is very confident in herself and action-oriented, two ‘millennial’ traits, and takes initiative to find answers to her questions. Also, while I don’t buy the idea of the changing parent-child relationship among millennials as discussed in the article, it is displayed in the two shows. Lindsay’s relationship with her parents consists primarily of awkward conversations and dinner table fights, whereas Veronica and her father are very close. This could also be a product of circumstance, given the Mars’ family history. One other point from The Chronicle that I observed in Veronica Mars is that the idea of a millennial generation is exclusive to well-off white kids, or at least kids who look well-off. Veronica and her dad live in what, from the outside, looks like apartment and eat instant macaroni and cheese and “aspire to the lower-middle-class.” Their appearance, however, is very much to the contrary of this. Their apartment is decorated like an upscale apartment, with nice furniture and paintings and other decor. And they both seems to have a large wardrobe of new and fashionable clothes. Their appearance certainly certainly belies their social status.

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