Greetings Fresh Nerds.  Happy to be guest posting for my homie, and adding my brand of…well whatever the f*ck it is that I do (over at my site coolmarriedguy.com).  So last week I tweeted something about an album that I found in my iPod that I couldn’t really understand why I put it there.  I don’t like it, I pretty much never liked it, so why exactly is it there? FN himself kinda dug the idea, asked me to compile a list of my top 5 “WTF Is This Doing In My Ipod” albums, and here I am.  So here’s my list.  I’m sure you’ll disagree with all or some of these, but we can debate if you want.  I will warn you though, I’m way qualified to have an opinion.  Ready mutha f*ckas?

5) Kid Cudi- Man on the Moon: The End of the Day

Now before you tell me how I’m crazy because Cudi is super dope and incredibly  talented…stop….I agree.  I think Cudi is like SUPER DUPER dope and has great intentions, but his album is not good. I think Cudi is of the mindset of myself and many or all of my favorite rappers, and knows both how to rap, and how to pick beats.  Here’s the problem though: He didn’t really do either of those on his album.  He sang and experimented with basic, stupid beats.  Outside of Day n’ Nite, Make Her Say, Pursuit of Happiness….ok and I’ll give him Solo Dolo, there’s a bunch of experimental garbage. I’m all for experimenting, but not on your first album.  Basically I think Cudder feels as if everyone is familiar with his body of work because people like Jay, Pharrell, and Kanye dig him, but we’re not.  Now he has me thinking that I overrated him, and I’m incredibly disappointed.  I’ve known this since I downloaded the album, yet it still sits there in my iPod, taking up GBs, and helping to guarantee that I’ll have songs to skip when I listen to it on shuffle. Damn, yo.

4) B.O.B.- The Adventures of Bobby Ray

No, YOU’RE buggin’.  I basically ignored the name B.O.B when he was really starting to bubble, and get co-signs from a lot of well respected industry folk.  Then, like many, I heard Nothin On You and was impressed not only by the fact that the beat reminded me of A Tribe Called Quest, but also that his flow was reminiscent of the ‘90’s, which let me know he knew his roots, and was learned for a young man.  I was in, and I knew the album would be great…

“WRONG!…..WRONG!” – Charlie Murphy

So I guess Bob is giving a serious recording career the old college try, but what that means is commercial crap over actual good music.  I can’t fault the dude for trying to actually have a recording career instead of trying to appeal to Okayplayers, but I can fault him for being another statistic on the “Couldn’t find a happy medium between commercial and good” list.  The album has 3 good songs, and 3-14 gets you fired.  Seriously, why does this occupy space in my personal jukebox?

3) Sade- Soldier of Love

…………………………………..Oh sorry, I was dosing off from giving this album one last listen.  Damn, Sadey, are you serious with this album?  I’d have to say that the Best of Sade, is one of the greatest collections of music in existence.  For years I’ve missed Sade’s sweet yet husky voice, assisted by the incredible music stylings of her back-up band Sweetback (who helped Maxwell on his first album, and had a pretty great album of their own in like ‘97,’98).  At night I’d pray “Lord, dear lord, please send us an album from the incomparable Sade Adu.  Make it great, make it wonderful.”  But I guess I forgot to specifically pray for the album not to, in addition, be the most boring album I’ve ever listened to in my entire life.  Seriously, I’d rather listen to someone do Morse Code for 24hrs straight, then ever hear this album again.  And as your boy Fresh Nerd put it “Sade’s album did suck.  Didn’t she have a song on there called Baby Daddy? Who’s idea was that?” If I even fix my fingers to type what I feel about that, I’ll punch my monitor. I have to delete this right now.

2) John Legend- Evolver

This is the album that sparked this post, yet still not my number 1 (more on that in a minute).  Man, do I love John Legend’s music.  Man, do I hate this album.  Is there a such thing as the Junior Curse?  Cause frankly Johnny’s 2nd album was pretty great just like his first.  So what the hell happened here?  Well I’ll tell you one thing: Green Light feat. Andre 3000 is one of the best songs ever made.  After falling in love with that song, I saw a commercial for the album that included a snippet of a song called Good Morning that I thought sounded extra John Legendy and got hype for the 3rd installment of his brand of soul music.  Once I got the album (that I actually downloaded legally, which I almost never…..wait, nothing), I learned that the aforementioned Good Morning was only an intro, and was only tolerable for about 2 measures.  The rest of the album was…I don’t even know what it was.  It was just there, and that’s just not good enough.  It’s not that the album is terrible, it’s just that it’s not showstopping and that sucks., especially since John Boy set the bar so high with his first 2 albums. I don’t know, maybe it’s me.  And what pisses me off the most is that I depend on artists like JL to come with a masterpiece every time, especially since music in general gets worse and worse as the days go on.  I would think that alone would push him to create a thing of beauty, not a unused file on my desktop. DELETED. Green Light, you can stay.

1) Various Artists- The Twilight Saga- New Moon

Hahahahahahaha! I literally can’t think about this without laughing.  Being the good husband, uncle, and brother that I am, I went to see New Moon with my wife, niece, nephew, and sister.  In the midst of laughing hysterically at all of the forced scenarios that allowed Taylor Lautner to appear shirtless through out the movie, I noticed a couple of pretty hot songs playing in the background and instantly thought “Could the Twilight Soundtrack possibly have good music on it?” Then immediately thought “Wait, do they still make soundtracks?”  Sure enough, the song that reeled me in was by Radiohead’s own Thom Yorke (silent “h”, silent “e”, just in case you were wondering).  In addition there was a creepy little song I dug by Lykke Li who people like Talib Kweli have recently been endorsing,  but I still have no clue who she or they are.  So instead of doing the sensible thing and just getting the songs I liked, I downloaded the whole album illegally legally . After never as much as thinking about, let alone listening to either of these songs again, a few months passed and I was in the gym, rockin’ the Pod on shuffle as I normally do.  That’s when it occurred to me: “Um, WTF is this doing in my iPod?”  This tween bloodsucker soundtrack is so random, so stupid, and so far from anything resembling music I like.  Now I’m left with a routine shuffle that includes artists like “Grizzly Bear, Sea Wolf, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and Band of Skulls.” Wha-whu-wha-whaaaat?  This is literally the most ridiculous musical reach in my tenor. Good thing I didn’t pay for it It sucks that I, um, paid for this. DELETED. Thom, (I pronounced it with “h” this time) you can stay and hang out.

So that’s it folks, feel free to debate or laugh at me for having seen all 3 Twilight movies, and joining Team Jacob (though I know she winds up marrying Edward, becoming a vampire, then having a baby who later marries Jacob, further explaining why he was so drawn to her).  Come check me out at my site, where I regularly do my thing, and post a lot of hot sneakers, good music, and cool or entertaining products I find while perusing the web like someone who actually gets paid for it, with the occasional hint of relationship advice.  I’m at www.coolmarriedguy.com.  Holla atcha boy, blokes.

Whutsiznaim