096: Na$tyjam$, by Crudbump

Crudbump (USA)
Na$tyjam$ (2010)
15 tracks, 38 minutes
Bandcamp

Drew Fairweather is a true renaissance man. Research scientist, artist of various schools (see here, here and here), novelist, YouTube reviewing superstar, blogger, pioneer of Weird Twitter and all-around internet troll – he does it all. Of course, he is also a musician. Or, several musicians. Like Señor Coconut, Drew has a bunch of aliases for his many different musical projects: for industrial hip-hop, he was KOMPRESSOR, for vaporwave he’s Cyber Vision, and for…whatever this is, he’s Crudbump.

Crudbump is hip-hop, on the spoken end of rap. There’s not that much use in talking about the quality of the music, the production or the rhymes though, because they’re really not important. The point is that, as with everything Drew does (except, I guess when he was a research scientist), Crudbump is really funny. There’s all manner of humour here: it’s childish and child-like, it’s brash . It’s sometimes satirical, sometimes scatological, and usually boner-centric. Above all, it’s really, really bizarre.

This is absurdity as art, and it really is rather beautiful. Who can argue with lyrics such as ‘Welcome to Horsetown: here’s a horse’? Then there’s classics such as ‘My Dick’s On The Phone (Rang Rang),’ (‘You better pick up the phone / you better chat with the bone / it’s got important information’) and ‘I Don’t Do Shit’ (‘I don’t do shit that’s my decision / not doing shit is like my religion / look to the east five times a day / and if I’m doing shit then I put it away’). I also want to mention another track by Crudbump but not on Na$tyjam$, a stand-alone single and one of the best Christmas songs ever, ‘Fuck You If You Don’t Like Christmas.’ It’s a staple on my Christmas playlists and a sentiment I heartily agree with.

To be honest, I’m not sure what I can say about this album that isn’t either immediately obvious or just completely beyond words. It’s weird and surreal, and I suspect it might be working on brain-levels far above and beyond anything comprehensible by humans. Meanwhile, I find it just hilarious. Give it a go.