42. B.o.B.

Previously unpublished, written originally for The Boar.

B.o.B - ...Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray (Rebel Rock/Grand Hustle/Atlantic)

In which T.I. protegé – read 'deformed auxiliary organ' – B.o.B completes the colonisation of hip-hop by Rock 'n' Rote mediocrity (see: 'Empire State of Mind', Lil' Wayne's Rebirth, the last Akon single, etc.) From the Coldplay-earnest milk-water piano of opener 'Don't Let Me Fall' to the obligatory guest-spots from Rivers Cuomo and Whatsername-from-Paramore – curdling already-flat indie-whines – it reconstructs the hip-hop LP as a frictionless, gurning Jools' Hootenanny, a courting-gift to Respectability, a dead dame hip-hop never cared about. The live instruments that form the basis of most of these songs are deployed as a signifier of Authenticity, the dubious virtue of chaining the form to the sub-standard exertions of Real People – my heart sank and bile rose at the moment when the acoustic guitar and bongoes enter on 'Lovelier Than Thou', the most disciplined, the most inhumanly exciting of genres finally swallowed by the hippy jam.

Rock works as part of hip-hop's omni-tongued sonic language – cf. Public Enemy's 'She Watch Channel Zero' and 'Brothers Gonna Work It Out', Mos Def's The New Danger, Outkast's 'B.O.B.' (ha!) – not as the worn-out body of a halfway-house form that satisfies no-one. The production – clogged and constipated, over-compressed and sluggish in tempo – driven particularly by clumpy rock-kit percussion, and swerving into knuckle-dragging guitar-riffs on 'Magic' – only make it more apparent that B.o.B. has nothing urgent to communicate. The best performances are in fact delivered by guests – a laconic, slithering Lupe Fiasco on 'Past My Shades' (whose subject-matter calls for whomping hyphy production, but receives a soulless boom-bap rhythm only slightly lightened by guitar-squeals) and the master, T.I., relentless and sinuous as ever on 'Bet I'; B.o.B.'s own flow stays stilted, staccato as Big Boi circa Stankonia, but without the ideas. Like most mainstream rappers these days, his idea of affect consists of auto-tuned R&B croons – but even here, he lacks the machine-seduction Prince exhalations of The-Dream, or the alienation-effect auto-tune became on Lil Wayne's 'A Milli'. Once or twice, the fog clears and the production corrects itself – on 'Fame' and 'Fifth Dimensions', where the beats shift into shuffling layers, invested with propulsive energy, and 'Bet I', in which invigoratingly material concerns are matched to airy blasts of electro-texture, wonky synths and a carriage of bare-bone kicks and snares. Otherwise, the entire enterprise is overshadowed by a sense of purposelessness, energy become dead weight – even Janelle Monae, that most pure emanation of the pop Godhead, fails to spark 'The Kids', and Eminem's guest-rap on the closing reprise of 'Airplanes' is self-parodic in its impotent rage. Like the last Kelis album – a.k.a. Disappointment of the Year – this is just the sound of the modern R&B industry furiously eating itself.