If 2006’s YoYoYoYoYo debut seemed a wonderfully head-spinningly bonkers piece of cut-up electro hip-hop with an ADHD problem, then Everything Is Boring… is a suitably-named-and-distracted sibling who can’t bear to commit to anything for more than two seconds; imagine The Man Who Fell To Earth-style banks of screens subjected to some synchronised inter-continental channel-hopping.
It should sound like a glorious mess. Instead, it’s more a meticulously-constructed tantrum, as Spank Rock (aka Naeem Juwan) adds five years’ worth of getting to grips with fame to the exquisite dirty rap he elevated with that debut. At one minute he’s exhorting all the white girls to “shake it till my dick turn racist”, the next puzzling at a world where “time moves so fast you gotta act twice your age”. Sure, it’s a far cry from the “black CNN” hip-hop that Chuck D exalted, but, like YoYoYoYoYo, it’s a work of pick’n’mixed’n’mashed brilliance that continues to mark Spank Rock out as one of the most inventive rappers today. Bolstered with production this time around from Boys Noize, Sam Spiegel and a returning XXXchange, it’s also that album’s naturally denser, crazier successor.
In a wiser world, they’d find a way of pumping this into teenagers’ bedrooms in the pre-dawn hours. Just imagine the possibilities…
