Steve 'Flash' JuonIf you can’t tell the difference between a artist who is being terrible in an attempt to get laughs and one who is actually terrible, is there really a difference at all?
“I used to be one of the toys in Toy Story”
That is the dilemma listeners are faced with on Yuno Miles’ album “Yuno I Can’t Rap.” His Wikitubia page claims his rap styles is “intentionally poor quality” and features “off-key singing and nonsensical lyrics.” The word I’m hung up on is “intentional.” It’s not normally so difficult to discern when an artist is terrible on purpose. IceJJFish was doing it for attention and it worked. Even though I have no doubt Lil B is good at rapping, he has made some really bad albums by refusing to cut them down to only his best work. In each case they did what they meant to do regardless of how it would be received. On songs like “Super Saiyan” though I can’t tell whether this bored sounding rapper with his terrible metaphors and punchlines is parodying rap or if he’s that bad at rapping. If I had examples of him being a good emcee I’d know this was a joke but all of his songs come off exactly like this.
“I put peanut butter on a spaceship that was going to Mars
I tried to play 2K online and got hit by a car
They kicked me out the rock band because I broke a guitar
Hanging out with mailmen and Gloria from Madagascar”
It might help to have visuals to go with “Yuno I Can’t Rap.” If he was awkwardly trying to flash cash and jewelry at girls while they laughed at his one dollar bills and rhinestone bling, the “intentional” part wouldn’t be a question any more. It wouldn’t be a stretch to see Yuno Miles starring in a clip that mimicked a scene from Napoleon Dynamite shot for shot. Mind you it would be an incredibly short clip because none of the songs on this album are over two minutes in length, with the longest being “Zombie Apocalypse” at 1:57. It’s also the best track if best is even the applicable word.
“I don’t drink water I drink… bleach”
The more generous side of my nature wants to believe this is a huge joke that everybody was in on long before Yuno Miles came to my attention. The less forgiving side says that Yuno Miles is a terrible rapper by accident and subsequently went viral for being this way. In the latter case he’d either be self-aware enough to exploit his own ineptitude to garner 300,000 subscribers (I won’t lie that’s impressive) or there are people in his circle exploiting him for whatever money this ride can make until the wheels fall off. If I can compliment “Yuno I Can’t Rap” for three things though here are the positives: it’s incredibly short, the bars and delivery are in fact bad enough to be funny, and it doesn’t descend to levels of becoming unlistenable. The worst of the worst have albums that sound like they used a Windows PC headset, recorded their vocals in a bathroom stall, then looped them over whatever royalty free beats they could find. Yuno Miles is better than that, but he’s not good. You decide whether or not he’s doing this on purpose.