Albums
< Plastic Little
Welcome To The Jang House
words by Stuart Stubbs
To make sure you know just how rude Plastic Little are, they axe all instruments for their naughtiest rhymes. Or at least that’s what the acapella opening ‘Brooklyn’ implies (“Oh Brooklyn, if you were a girl I’d eat you out, and for five days I wouldn’t wash my mouth”), and the intro to ‘Cum Quick’, which, also instrument-less, is as subtle as its title suggests. But then the Philly four prove us wrong, not so much by stepping over the line but by defecating on it as they leap across the threshold from the obscene to the plain offensive. Not with ‘Hola Plastique’s’ “Why date her, if I can rape her?” questioning, mind, but rather the nabbing of a few couplets from The Smiths’ ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’, cooed in their original form, amongst filthy beats and filthier lyrics. Gasp!We were comfortable with the spaffing of Michael Jackon’s ‘Thriller’ hook, all over the humorously named ‘Cheap Thrills’, and the pilfering of Tag Team’s ‘Whoomp There It Is’ – which, let’s face it, is quite at home on a dropout hip hop mash up like this – on ‘Hi Bitches’, but poignant, trouble lyrics of The Smiths!? Completely offensive!
Of course, that’s not what Plastic Little are aiming for with ‘Welcome To The Jang House’: a collection of songs from a past album and EP, with a couple of newies thrown in. They surely want their uber frat-house hip hop to make us gawp at how cock-driven it all is. At how they make Eminem look like ‘caring boyfriend of the year’. At how much your mum’s going to hate it. But here’s the problem: at 14 tracks long, the shock wears off quicker than a rampage on Grand Theft Auto. When you don’t have time to breath between kills (or, in this case, songs about fucking HARD) it become numb, quickly. Which is probably why the brilliant ‘I’m Not A Thug’ is overshadowed here as Plastic Little’s Jurassic 5-ish hip hop is too shocking to shock.
4/10 in stores Sept 29
Latest Reviews
Mike Relm - Spectacles
Let the face furniture of San Fran disco-er Mike Relm fool you. Forget that he’s named his second album after his eyewear.
Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls
One of Vivian Girls is called Kickball Katy. She plays bass even more nonchalantly than your average Valium-scoffing four-stringer.
Plastic Passion - Contrived Imagery
They're saying that punk's dead, y'know? Spiritually, if not physically.
Wetdog - Enterprise Reversal
Had ‘Enterprise Reversal’ been a five track EP of a release its toneless blahs from lead shouter Rivka Gillieron would have still been a struggle to sit through.
