Brokencyde

I'm Not a Fan, But the Kids Like It! (2009)

Josh

I hesitate to use the word "bad."

Bad Religion's Into the Unknown was bad. The Clash's Cut the Crap was bad. Yet behind these misguided endeavors was a noble spirit, earnest musicianship, and at least moments of greatness (in "It's Only Over When…" and "This Is England," respectively). More on this later.

Every once in a while, a band comes along that is so bad, so mind-numbingly appalling, such an artistically bankrupt abomination that you are literally embarrassed to be a part of the same species as the Neanderthalic fucking retards that produce this aural vomit. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Brokencyde.

While Brokencyde's first significant release, BC13, flew under the radar mainly as a sleeper hit on MySpace, their debut full-length album, I'm Not a Fan, But the Kids Like It! has 17 tracks, guest appearances, and even charted at #86 on the Billboard 200 charts its debut week. Certainly, the band must have branched out a little, expanded their repertoire and gained some much needed maturity, right? I mean, obvious references to drugs, drinking and sex gets old after a five-song EP; they had to explore new ideas in the over one-hour running time of their new album, right?

Heh. Astoundingly, the band took the sole theme from their previous EP and managed to beat that dead horse even more. Did you like that one recycled crunk beat? Great, you're going to hear it 17 times in a row here! On this go-around, Brokencyde don't stick to just ripping off crunk beats--they've blown their lyrical wad and are now resorting to ripping off lyrics from legitimate hip-hop artists.

For example, one of the songs on this album, "Tipsy," details going to a club, drinking, and having sexual escapades. Sound familiar? That's because J-Kwon wrote the same song six years ago, even giving it the exact same title. Compare the choruses:

J-Kwon: "Everybody in the club getting tipsy"
Brokencyde: "We gonna get a little tipsy when we hit the club"

Granted, most of Brokencyde's fans were eight years old when J-Kwon's "Tipsy" came out, but this blatant disregard for artistic integrity is perhaps the most offensive thing about I'm Not a Fan. They don't even try to be real musicians. For fuck's sake, one of the members sole responsibility is to run a fog machine and strobe lights. When Bad Religion and the Clash released mediocre records, it was an attempt at creating something honest and legitimate. Brokencyde revels in stupid. They revel, as revealed in the album title, at being scorned by virtually everyone other than the most gullible teenagers.

For this reason, I hesitated before writing such a negative review of this album. I needn't provide any more masturbatory fodder for these guys to feed off of. Then I saw the music video for their song "Freaxxx," which appears on this album. In this video, which is linked below, a cute blonde girl smiles and bobs her head at the camera while two of the fucking slimeballs in this band hold her by the throat and scream "LIAR!" I was in disbelief, and realized that it is truly impossible to be too negative or too hard on this wretched group of people. Fuck this band. Hard.

The kids don't like it.