Mostly positive impromptu write up of Noodle Arms Whimsy, including lyrics to that pilates joint we put up last week. Link

Serengeti is weird. It’s not that the lyrics don’t make any sense, but listening to him rap is something like hearing the bastard child of MF Doom and MC Paul Barman reading the old version of James Joyces’ Ulysses, except funny. Serengeti, aka Dave Cohn, rhymes about damn near anything outside of what you would expect him to.

It’s not like he goes all pseudo-esoteric like 2Mex or Aesop, though, but rather he lets his rhymes flow from one immature, childish concept to the next — but there is still a underlying feeling that Dave’s a pretty bright guy. Damn, this is hard to explain, let me just drop some bars:

Like women do pilates
And always talk about these fantastic changes to their bodies
Ha, jokes
The only way you lose weight
If you start to smoke coke
Cause I be at your mix parties
Where wives have fake jobs
And husbands drive Maseratis
And kids say to their mommies
But oh! I’m so bored, I don’t wanna go skiing_

or

By the way, I’m not the man of my dreams
My girlfriend mostly spoke of me and washed-up things like
Jobly challenged,
hardly having balance, loving weird outlets,
and when she goes on it’s quite depressing
like only eating salad dressing
or trying to find a retard from intense testing

And so on. While it’s hard to describe the effect of Cohn’s Chi-accented voice as he jumps from topic to topic, I can say that it is somewhat refreshing to hear a project that rejects the whole gangster/conscious dichotomy: this record is one that stays away from the tired cash-hoes-drugs (actually he talks a lot about drugs, but this time it’s funny) trifecta, but also stays away from the equally tired “oh look at me I’m so radical/progressive/bloody lame as hell” theme that I’m seeing way, way too much of in the underground. Hip-hop is supposed to be fun, kids – and Serengeti obviously has this in mind. Dude talks about some relevant ish, but bottom line, this is a fun record.