Fries and Ketchup: Fashawn's Boy Meets World

The weekly column where we do our best to mention anything we missed in the last week (or longer). It's a lot like those moments when you're out of ketchup, at a fine fast food restaurant, but lack the energy to go and get more; so you scrape away at the dregs on your hamburger wrapper, until all you can see is silver aluminum foil. It's classy, yet unrefined.

Music: The album Boy Meets World by Fashwan features an album cover with a young boy and a bunch of sparkling bubbles, backed by a glossy, gold background. While the bubbles suggest innocence, the expression on the boy's face suggests that the world he's being introduced to is not at all innocent. In fact, he looks as if the bubble of his childhood has just been popped.

The cover promises freshness, and the introduction of something new, but the music inside is actually filled with the sounds of real life experience. What Fashawn does on the album is definitely not new, but it is fresh, simply because it doesn't sound like anyone else who is out right now. His rhymes are straight forward, not flashy. He tells stories that are true to life, and he does this without forcing punch lines or trying too hard to be clever. While Lil Wayne and Kanye have become the dominant voices of hip hop, creating bubbles of celebrity around themselves, they've also become the dominant forces in turning hip hop into a standup comedy routine of mispronounced words and empty boasts, which isn't their fault; afterall, both of them were tucked under the wings of the Jay-Z school. In the face of contrived marketing schemes like "D.O.A." and "Run This Town," Fashawn's frankness comes off as a pin prick sharp enough to burst bubbles.

While Fashawn may not have the star power or the raw talent of his peers, his album is the one that stands out because it does not sound like overthought pretense, and it does not feature a mock political revolution based on wearing black articles of clothing for no reason. It is what it is, and what it is is an honest telling of one's story over soulful beats. This album promises to hold a place in one's rotation because it does not fall victim to the times of its birth. And sometimes that's all it takes for survival.