Bitch, You're Dead!

There is a Japanese art movement that focuses on the combined theme of grotesque and surreal eroticism. It's called ero-guro, and the works under this movement tend to be exceptionally bizarre (one particular art feature a young girl being horrifyingly mutilated with her head being perfectly split all the way through on a certain angle, with a bunch of eyeballs exploding out as a replacement for blood). Dating back to the 1930s as a response to the country's pressuring economic and political state, some ero-guro works are drawn with meticulous attention to detail that can evoke a keen sense of disgust and oddly, interest, though ultimately its hyper-obsession towards extreme perversion and taboo made ero-guro generally seen as a form of weirdo entertainment.

But as far as I am concerned the movement doesn't take itself very seriously; self-proclaimed "kisou mangaka" (bizarre manga artist) Shintaro Kago, for example, sometimes used ero-guro as a sort of comedic effect in some of his work, which might've led him caught under the attention of a certain creative music producer.

A closer look on Steven Ellison's main project, Flying Lotus, screams a loose personal connection on his discography. From naming his debut album after his year of birth "1983," to his sophomore effort "Los Angeles" (his birth place), he then advanced on towards pretty universal topics, at one point being somewhat literally; on "Cosmogramma" he alluded it as a "map of the universe," though he much dedicated it to his mother after she died due to diabetes. "Until the Quiet Comes" explored the themes related to dreaming and introversion, and "You're Dead!" acted as, for the time being, the final progression for all of those: the inevitability of death and what comes after it, and it's a logical choice when you think about it.

But despite the seriousness of the subject matter, FlyLo playfully treated it with little sense of sorrow, despair or gloom. If anything he drawed similar lines to the eccentricism of Shintaro Kago's ero-guro work, and it's plausible FlyLo saw the relation and decided to hire the former to make the artworks for You're Dead! in the first place.

The concept of You're Dead! is quite simple. We all gonna die at some point and it's a natural phenomenon that we can't avoid, but the question we tend to ask ourselves is "where we will all end up to?". That last part of the sentence is important, because what FlyLo did was he answered the perplexing question through his own intricately developed musical expression. In some ways, it can be seen that You're Dead! is a mixture of his previous works. The twisted hip-hop centric sound of 1983 and Los Angeles, the futuristic and jazzy Cosmogramma, and the subtlety and chill vibes of Until the Quiet Comes, FlyLo exerted these influences vividly in You're Dead!

To put it simply, FlyLo's synthesis of hip-hop, electronica and jazz fusion is flawless. It's a highly impressive effort no doubt about that, but the rather disorganized and crazy nature of You're Dead! might take more than a couple of listens for you to get it. But once you do you'll realized it all makes sense. The opener "Theme" represents the feeling of death, the erratic and tense vibe of the track symbolizes our fear towards it. This motif continued until the fifth track "Never Catch Me" commences, where the prior climax of "Fkn Dead" leads to the song's soothing and eargasmic counterpoint.

"Never Catch Me" is essentially the first collaboration between Kendrick Lamar and FlyLo. Not surprisingly, both excel on utilizing their strengths to make the song magical. Kendrick's bars were spot-on and ever-so articulate, following the impeccable beats FlyLo laid out. The overall mood was remarkably soothing despite Kendrick pretty much spitted fire rapidly about life and death and how fascinating it is, though the transition from the chorus to the end of the song filled with gleaming synths and wonky beats takes the cake in terms of being an absolute pleasurable mindfuck, which resulted this song being one of the many highlights of You're Dead!

From there onwards "Dead Man's Tetris" (yes, the title is an acronym to DMT) signified the listener's descent of initial confusion to the enjoyment being in the afterlife. Notably, FlyLo himself spitted some bars under his alter ego Captain Murphy alongside with Snoop Dogg, about "blowin' some trees" with beat innovator and FlyLo's major influence J Dilla (R.I.P.) to "bouncing on that astral plane". Like its hallucinatory lyrics the song is indeed fun and goofy, being a sudden contrast to the emotional intensity of "Never Catch Me" prior. The album kinda slowed its pace at this point, but it's still very exciting regardless. Tracks like "Coronus, the Terminator" and the album's closure '"The Protest" are one of the many examples on FlyLo's knack on making dreamy and angelic beats.

The sound design on You're Dead! throughout is dense. The tracks were short and sweet as most of them only spanned for about a minute or so, which gave the album the disjointed feeling at first. Once you get used to it the album feels like a one long song, like an abstract journey of sorts, and an incredibly gorgeous one at that. It's easy to see you really can't pick one track as a sample to see what the album as a whole to offer, since you gonna miss a lot of context (which is also part of the reason why I avoided linking samples here, and hell the artworks were incredible I couldn't contain myself to show them).

That said, You're Dead! is filled with great ideas being executed with surgical precision. Rarely an album succeeded on mixing hella lot of influences without making it sound off putting or gross, but it's even more rare to see an album being able to stay fresh after countless listens and revisits. You're Dead! is an ambitious and fulfilling project thanks to the efforts of FlyLo and friends (Niki Randa, Thundercat, Herbie Hancock to name a few), and it's one of those albums that I implore you to listen doesn't matter if you're a fan of hip-hop, electronica, jazz fusion or any other musical art form you've aligned yourself with, because for what's it worth, this is a fucking masterpiece in modern music.