Jaden Smith is in the midst of Sophomore Curse and Riding a New Wave with his new effort, "EYRS"
Written by Kolin Miller
It is hard to like something when you feel pressured to like it. It is also impossible to enjoy something inauthentic which you’ve already experienced authentically multiple times. It is impossible to enjoy anything Jaden Smith has created.
I am definitely not one for outright hate towards the work of just about any artist. Especially if that artist has spent years refining their craft, taking criticism to the jaw, putting their nose to the grindstone, and focused on earning their spot in the industry. This is precisely why I felt no remorse and slept soundly after writing my first draft of this album review, which consisted of:
excessive iterations of the poop-emoji
funny screencaps of Jaden
a muchdank youtube video which is ironically not all that an ironic depiction of Jaden
topped off with a nice screenshot of my google search “musicians who are only famous because their parents,” which resulted in a first page of results in which Jaden was featured in 10/11 of them.
I promised myself not to include any of Jaden’s insane tweets, because I’m sure we have all come across some of those if we have spent more than 30 minutes on the internet between the years 2014-2018 – I mean, do we really all need to revisit that? Probably not.
Okay for real, I think theneedledrop did a fantastic job reviewing the album in-depth already (disclaimer: I wrote the bulk of this article prior to watching the review so I could formulate my own opinions, and it turns out Melon and I shared very similar critiques), so I’m just going to use the remainder of the article to voice some opinions of mine which may anger or resonate with some of you all depending on how OpEn YouR MiNd is.
The first time I listened to the album all the way through, I had to take breaks periodically in order to empty my ears of the chaotic unabashed ripping off of my favorite artists. We get it Jaden, you like Cudi, you like Travis, you like Kanye, you like Tyler, you like Rocky. I’m sure they like your dad’s movies too, so it’s cool man, you don’t have to try to act like them.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it a thousand times: just because you are rich doesn’t mean your hobbyist artistic pursuits are noteworthy, original, or even good. Jaden makes music that real artists today were making years before they had their first show or their very first fan. It is unoriginal, bloated, boring, dragging, tumultuous to listen to tripe, and nothing more.
I struggled to formulate an imaginary depiction of what this album really is, but I think I’m happy with what I ended up with. Okay, bear with me:
Imagine Travis Scott left his hard drive with throwaway tracks and ideas from his creation of Astroworld
And a homeless Drake from an alternate universe found it
Dropped it in rancid milk a couple times on accident
Drake was then subsequently robbed by JPEGMAFIA who took everything, including the hard drive
Peggy upon realizing the worthlessness of the hard drive took Kid Cudi to play frisbee golf using the hard drive
Cudi recognized it was Jaden’s hard drive and felt bad so he drove it to Will Smith’s house
On the way, Cudi got distracted by McDonald’s and wanted ice cream
Of course, ice cream machine was broke so obviously Cudi offered to help fix it
Cudi tried to no avail to spiritually connect the ice cream machine and align its chakras
Feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders, Cudi did a little “MMWAHAAMMMM”
The earth shook and opened beneath the McDonald’s and the hard drive fell far beyond the mantle
Cudi called his buddy Kanye and told him what happened
Kanye spit up his banana pudding and rushed to the Smith’s house
No one was home so they decided to use their spare key to enter the house and locate Jaden Smith’s diary
The diary contained few words, only headshots of his idols and drawings of himself, as well as an Adam Watts quote written in sparkly pen
Kanye and Cudi quickly used the nearby TinkerToys set to try and rebuild the hard drive and restore the contents as best as Kid Cudi could remember –
Kanye blessed it with Kirk Franklin’s verse from Ultralight Beam
Jaden eventually returned home from summering in Paris and found the tinkertoy hard drive
Jaden uses his weekly allowance of all his father’s Rush Hour residuals to buy the best features and production money can buy
Jaden meditates on a printed sparknotes of Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche for 3 days without food or water, just like they talked about on Kung Fu Panda
Jaden furiously writes down his earth-shattering, paradigm-shifting, youth-mobilizing verses
BOOM!!! – ERYS
What did you think of the Rush Hour series? What did you think of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire? What did you think of The Karate Kid (1984)? Let us know!
K. R. Love