Twista's "If Only For One Night": Meh.

Check it out here:
http://www.zshare.net/audio/6130421c56a928/

I first saw mention of this song on another hip hop nerd dorkery website, and the review on it was succinct and articulate. Reviews written with those two qualities always seem to make more of an impact on me for some reason. I think its because before I was a Communication Studies major, I was an English major, and it was pounded into my skull that the best expository writing should always be concise and well articulated. Anyway, I digress.

The review, as I mentioned, was well written enough to make the song itself sound really amazing. So I DL'ed it. I got all hyped up waiting for my little status bar to say "completed", just imagining that the musical marriage of Twista and Luther Vandross was going to approach multiple-orgasm inducing levels. And why not? Long before his death I was a fan of Luther's, his vocal stylings being so reminiscent of older r&b that I really enjoy from the 70's. Plus his lyrical content always seemed to be about mature love and pain and loss, not the emo teenybopper superficial bullshit that's dominated the airwaves for some time now. The review of this song mentioned the sample of Luther's as being sped up. I figured whoever produced this song probably went the right direction with that considering Twista's machine gun "brat-tat-tat-tat" style delivery.

And as far as Twista goes, I was a fan of his long before his elevation by Guinness to "World's Fastest Rapper" status. Actually I remember the first time I heard him was on "No Way Out" so I can't say I've been a fan of his since day one, but still. In any case, although I didn't care at all for his last album, I still consider myself a fan. This track, however, didn't make the album, and I thought, especially based on the review, that perhaps this was one of those amazing B-side type songs a la the "One More Chance" remix. I didn't really think that I wouldn't like the song. Even though the last song I liked of his was "Overnight Celebrity".

In any case, earlier I mentioned that this song was expected to be a multiple orgasmic wedding of hip hop and r&b. Instead it was a completely non-memorable, "two-virgins-fucking-in-the-back-of-dude's-dad's-car" pairing. I won't say I have a perfect ear, but it is pretty close. The song, from beginning to end, seemed awkward, the sample was hardly sped up, and the combination of Twista and the slow Luther sample was so incongruous as to seem purposely made to be asynchronous. Also it seemed as if most people commenting on said review liked the song, too, but I can't for the life of me understand why. I had a pained grimace on my face the whole time because it just seemed to hit me the wrong way the entire time. I don't even know why. It's not so much that I didn't like it other than the whole song just didn't seem to work, exactly.

What made me saddest about this song was the concept. Although done numerous times, Twista seemed to have a semi-original take on the metaphor "inanimate object as woman" and being the "English geek" that I am, I can't help but be compelled to like a well executed metaphor. But the song just didn't even allow me time to appreciate the metaphor. I listened to it once and can't even remember one line of the song. So now I have a genuine curiosity to find out if any of the expert whiteboyz or dumpin readers have heard the song, or like it, or don't. And if you do, why? And if you don't, why not?

I guess the moral of this story kids, is: Don't trust everything you read on the intarwebz.