It’s lonely being at the top, being No. 1, being surrounded by countless adoring fans, each one of which would happily sell their maternal grandmother to have your baby. And, no, I’m not talking about myself; I’m talking about YSN Fab and his new album Time Heals, which may be true, but you know what heals oozing wounds more? Money. And, it just so happens, YSN Fab is not deficient there neither. YSN Fab is “gettin’ rich off this rap” on Ballin’ Soon; he can’t even walk around the neighbourhood his pockets are so stretched with gold and jewelry and various stocks, they fall out, clinking to the ground; a pack of voracious bitches (YSN’s term, not mine) follow him, and they pounce on a wayward gold bar that tumbled from his pants.
“I hate these ungrateful lil’ bitches,” he mutters, and he shakes off one clung to his Gucci kicks. “Yeah, money heals,” he pontificates, “but you know the only thing that come close to money is having sex.”
He enters his mansion, closes and locks the door behind him, can still hear “the bitches” scratching at the door, trying to get in; nonetheless, a quiet erupts, and to break the silence, he says, to no one, “I’m a rap star. I just want to be countin’ cash, I ain need a broad.”
“A broad?” says his butler/friend, Kwazii.
“Yah, you know, like a bitch.”
“Ohh, yah, I know,” said Kwazii, understanding. “They’s vacant eyes, broads. Anyways, check out this diamond around my neck.”
“Another one?”
“‘Course another one.”
“Can I ask you something, Kwazii?”
“YSN Fab, my boy, you can ask me anything – what’s on your mind?”
“Are you happy?”
“Fabby, tell me straight, you thinking about your pops again?”
“Dawg, you think I need therapy?”
“Remember what we said about no self-destructing – you ain thinkin’ about self-destructing again, ain you?”
“I got my racks up, Kwazii. I got my racks up hard. I ain never wanted to be this famous, you know? But these bitches, they come on over and with their ass fat jigglin’, and I ain got to do nothing, they’s bending over even before I look at ’em. And I tell ’em, I say ‘Nah, I ain into pounding no ass today, girl. Get on home.’ And they just wanting dick, and not getting it, get all attitude, say it better when we mad fuckin’; and what that do to me? I hit the bottle, and then I just stare at the clock, watching the second hand tick tick tick, and all I can think about is how much I hate my father. Then she say ‘whatcha thinking about, YSN Fab? And I say back, ‘I’m thinking about my father,’ and then she say ‘whatcha mean you thinking about your father? I’m here, got your dick in my mouth, and you thinking about your father?’ So, you know, Kwazii, I got my racks up. Way up.”
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To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
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Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
