Steve 'Flash' Juon“I’m an esoteric librarian!”
I’m going to cut to the chase here — “BLARF” is not good. Traditionally I’d make you wait a few paragraphs before giving you the final assessment. Like Eric Andre himself I’m going to eschew tradition and do things that are confusingly out of order. He does it for comedic effect but I’m doing it because it simply can’t wait to be said that long.
When I learned that Andre had recorded a rap album I was intrigued, because I’ve long been a fan of his mock interviews and weird “man on the street” antics as seen on The Eric Andre Show. If he could bring that level of humor to a genre that at times takes itself too seriously, we’d all stand to benefit from the levity. Instead under the gross sounding pseudonym of BLARF, he and producer The First Seed create actual BARF.
It doesn’t sound like either man put any thought into this project whatsoever. Andre’s randomness is perfectly suited for shocking Hollywood celebrities who might have mistakenly believed they were booked for a serious interview to promote a new movie. It’s much less suited for a wall of actual noise that he throws lyrics at. “Accept my coupons/I got a Groupon/I’ma poop on your motherfucking tombstone.” He seems to be obsessed with poop on “iSteal,” a song whose title might be even less clever than its bars. This level of scatology is expected from Keith Thornton but ill suits a man who ought to be making his audience laugh. He’s also obsessed with graves. “I’ll fucking cum on your fucking tombstone” quips Andre on the ICP inspired “Wickedpedia.”
One might argue that Andre isn’t trying because he was simply trying to parody the rap trends of the time (2014) when he recorded it, particularly the harsh electronics of Death Grips, although good parody comes from a place of knowing the source material. Andre is clearly only familiar with the sound of the group and not the existential angst MC Ride mines for his content. The irony is that Andre is very good at lampooning the cliched late night talk show format, skewering their traditions with a rapier like wit, but he can’t apply the same insight to hip-hop music. The First Seed produces nothing musically to elevate Andre’s performance, but when he babbles his way through nonsense like “Beef Patty” why would you bother? Avoid this entire project.