If you’ve heard of Brokencyde, it’s probably associated with the phrase "worst band in the entire universe." They’re a rap group, nominally, who rose to something of anti-prominence a few years ago as a "screamo-crunk" group.
Simply put, if you watched a Brokencyde video, you saw something too terrible to look away. Their name was perhaps the most confounding thing about them. Was it a play on the phrase "broke inside"? Are they murdering being broken? Or maybe there was a side of these bros that was inherently broken?
This is unimportant, because Brokencyde are terrible. Guilty Pleasurez, Brokencyde’s newest album, came out in November. I accidentally downloaded it while I was trying to find a leak of the new Nas album. I decided to listen to it, all the way through.
Intro: This sounds like a scene taken from Jurassic Park, but with stupid synth stabs thrown in there. It’s short, which is nice.
"Burnin’ (f. Tre Nyce)": The first lyric of this is, "I like to get drunk," but I’m less mad at this record than I thought I was going to be. I could totally see a 14-year-old being into this. This is less terrible, and more just sounds like Far East Movement or LMFAO than anything truly offensive and terrible.
"Phenomenon (f. Paul Wall)": Paul Wall is on this song? What the fuck? Tre Nyce (who I have never heard of) made a lot more sense, but Paul Wall has, like, an actual career and stuff. Paul Wall, you are better than this. Or at least I thought so.
"Whoa!": Stupid, stupid, stupid four-on-the-floor electro that even the cokiest idiot in LA would loathe. All of these songs are about being fucked up in the club and talking to girls who then laugh at them (I inferred that last part).
"Magnum (f. Mickey Avalon)": This song is important because it is the first one in which they actually scream. That makes it more annoying aka more memorable. This song contains a lot of allusions to the film Zoolander. My roommates and I are now drinking, and it is this song’s fault.
"Never Back Down": This song contains one of those horrifyingly cavernous dubstep drops, lots of screaming and is probably the most overtly rappy song on this album so far. It has a weird inverse charm to it that would cause me to want to listen to it twice if I were on ketamine.
"Fly Away": The chorus of this song interpolates Enrique Iglesias’ "Tonight I’m Fuckin’ You." I present this fact to you without commentary.
"The Party Don’t Stop": This song lifts lines from Ke$ha. I wonder if Brokencyde survive off of alcohol. Do they have mothers? What do they think of their music?
"Doin’ My Thang (Scream Version) (f. The Dirtball)": Call it Florence Nightengale Syndrome, but I kind of love this song. This is basically them screaming over a beat that sounds a lot like Nicki Minaj’s "Beez in the Trap," with The Dirtball rapping really, really fast at the end.
"Ocean View": This opens to pan pipes and the sounds of seagulls. For ten seconds, it sounds like it should be from a Japanese RPG that was released for the PlayStation in 1996. Sadly, this song is not from a JRPG. It’s from a Brokencyde album. Its beat kind of sounds like Twista’s "Wetter".
"Girls, Girls, Girls": A straight-ahead cover of Motley Crüe’s "Girls, Girls, Girls" might have made a lot of sense for Brokencyde, especially as an attempt to position themselves in the timeline of idiot goofball dudes making casually stupid music. That would have been smart. But Brokencyde are not smart. They’re just stupid.
"Let’s Dance!": This song is indistinguishable from the other songs on Guilty Pleasurez that do not feature screaming.
"U Mad Bro": "Trollers gone troll, but we don’t really gonna care though." You caught me, Brokencyde. This song is about how people talk shit about Brokencyde on the Internet. What’s crazy is this song is actually not too terrible in an "Insane Clown Posse" type of way.
"Still The King": Well, we made it. Guilty Pleasurez spans a mere 45 minutes, but it feels like it’s years long. Just like all of the songs on here except for "U Mad Bro" and "Doin’ My Thing," this song is boring and stupid and generic and should be listened to by no one. When they first came out, Brokencyde were so uniquely terrible that you couldn’t avert your gaze. You hated because you cared. But a good chunk of this album seems to be a legitimate attempt by these dudes at making shitty club pop. And by actually trying to make something that people won’t universally hate, Brokencyde have rendered themselves completely and totally irrelevant. It was a zero-sum game for them. I’m just glad they got to zero at all.
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