Welcome to Strangeland

Today marks the day of Aaron Yates's (better known as Tech N9ne) 40th birthday, but more importantly for Technicians everywhere, today is also the day that Welcome to Strangeland becomes available across America. As Tech's 14th studio album since '99, it's safe to safe that fans already know exactly what to expect from him: rock n roll beats, haunting opera sounding vocals, and the brutally paced rhythmic rhyming of the independent rap giant himself, Tech N9ne.

Right off the bat, Welcome to Strangeland provides all three of these elements in the song "Stars." It opens with a deep voice-over with an eerily beautiful piano accompaniment, eventually giving way to the bass/snare/clap rock beat and the lyrics. In tracks like this it's easy to see where Tech takes his name from: he spits verse like bullets, and just when you think he's through he reloads and comes at you even faster. Excellent use of breaks throughout the song give exactly that feeling: stop, reload, kill it, while the beautifully harmonized chorus haunts you even after it's gone.

"Stars" gives way to the album's title track when the star lands in Strangeland. To introduce him, the outro in "Stars" is the intro from the track "Strangeland" off of All 6's and 7's. After the first track, which is an all Tech track, it's easy to forget that this is the fourth Tech N9ne Collabos album, which means it heavily features the other Strange Music artists, or really just anyone Tech feels like rapping with. "Welcome to Strangelan" gives us the album's first taste of versatile vocal wizard, Krizz Kaliko, who in my mind immediately becomes the Willy Wonka of Strangeland (Gene Wilder not Johnny Depp).

The Tech/Kaliko combination has always reminded me of a more wide-ranged Dre and Eminem, and this one's no exception. First of all, let me just say that I am not exaggerating when I say that I could listen to just the beats of Tech N9ne songs all day, their rapping over them is just icing on the cake. They are one of the foundations of the entire Tech N9ne style simply because they're so very different from every other artist out there. "Welcome to Strangeland" features bass heavy synthesizers over a moving bass/rim/clap drumbeat. The Krizz Kaliko chorus is the perfect welcome to the rest of the Tech N9ne collabos, who are featured more heavily in the rest of the album

"Unfair," the third track on Strangeland, feature Kaliko and Ubiquitous and Godemis, both of Ces Cru. This is another perfect example of unique Tech N9ne beats, but the main focus of this song has to be the chorus. How many rhymes for "Unfair" can you think of? In the chorus of this song Tech gives you about 30 of them in 15 seconds. The rest of the song is excellent, the Ces Cru verses are particularly well written, but there's just no competing with the chorus.

The fourth track, "Kocky," features Kutt Calhoun and Jay Rock, and features a beat that sounds incredibly similar to Dre songs. The slow simple beat makes this song all about the verses, which are great but fall short after the first three mind-blowing songs. The next track is another all Tech track. "Who Do I Catch" is another slow beat track, but this time with a soothing piano melody and the fine vocals of the lovely Liz Suwandi. This song takes the album in a dark direction, which continues until the eighth track. "Bang Out" features the 816 Boys (they won a grammy for their song "Aeriola," remember?) and a slow beat which contains haunting high-pitched vocals.

Track 9 is "Beautiful Music," the last all Tech verse track, but this one with Krizz Kaliko working his magic on the chorus. This song doesn't have that great of a beat (nice bass drums though), but it shows how Tech and Kaliko work so perfectly together. Tech keeps his verses moving quickly which are interrupted only for Kaliko's stunning and meaningful choruses. "Won't You Come Dirty" is the 10th track on the album, and it's one truly different from the most other Tech songs. It features Young Bleed and Stevie Stone, and has a slow techno feel to it. It's not a bad song, but as Tech's style is already like a combination of rap and hard rock, adding the techno feel is just a little off-putting.

"Sad Circus," as its name implies, is the beginning of another set of songs from Tech's darker side. It features Brotha Lynch Hung and Courtney Kuhnz as well as a tragically beautiful piano melody. If you prefer Tech's slower depressing songs, you'll like the last five tracks best, as they're all like mixtures of rock ballads and remorseful rap songs. The four after "Sad Circus" showcase the beautiful vocal talents of ¡Mayday!, Krizz Kaliko, Kutt Calhoun, and Jay Da 3rd.

So, like most Tech N9ne albums, Welcome To Strangeland progresses from upbeat to down-tempo, features artists you wouldn't have heard of otherwise, and is worth whatever you pay for it. It's the kind of album that you can't even appreciate properly the first time you listen to it.

Ask Your Doctor About You PSA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgw892-ZwBA

For my visual rhetoric creative midterm project I have chosen to make a public service announcement urging people to have actual conversations with their doctors instead of simply asking for a drug they've seen advertised on TV. The only visual components I chose to use for this PSA were attention grabbing red slides with thick black text for high contrast and easy reading. I considered using still images in addition to the text, but decided that this might distract the viewer from the real highlights of the commercial which are the text and the sound. There are a total of 14 different slides, though most of them are only 1 word different than the ones before and after. I chose to set up the visual portion like this mostly because I feel that this simplistic method of conveying my message compliments what is itself a simple message (Ask your doctor about you), but also because this is my first time using any movie editing software and this method resembled an advanced powerpoint type format. Every audio clip featured in this video is direct from a U.S. Pharmaceutical commercial which has been broadcast on TV in the past 10 years, and it was a simple process to add these sounds to the still images I had created.

While setting up the visual component was easy, designing it was a little more difficult. To begin, I watched about an hour of pharmaceutical commercials online to establish some things they had in common. I ended up finding 4 common themes* that exist in almost all of them, and a fifth which is in most of the ads of a particular type (possible fatalities appear in a large number of pharmaceuticals designed to alleviate symptoms of psychological disorders), but due to time constraints I only sampled clips regarding 3 themes: talking to your doctor, side effects, and possible fatalities. The two that I did not use were an establishment of symptoms (many of which could be caused by a wide range of disorders) and product superiority (ie “#1 doctor recommended,” “the only prescription which treats/proven to treat...” etc). I didn't use these common pharmaceutical advertisement themes due to time constraints with my own commercial, but also because of the five I established, they are the only ones which are designed by the pharmaceutical companies to sell the product, while the others are what they absolutely need to say.

First of all, since what I have focused on in this commercial is prescription drugs rather than over-the-counter or illegal drugs, I have chosen to rely rather heavily on the morality of doctors in general. The argument may be made that pharmaceutical lobbying in not just government but in healthcare practices and doctors' offices is the real problem, since they are paid to hand out prescriptions for certain drugs and not others, but that's certainly not an issue I have the power to affect through rhetoric. Instead, I am assuming that all doctors faithfully uphold the Hippocratic Oath, and that the burden is therefore on the American public to seek, at the very least, a basic understanding of their own medical conditions. That is why the first focus of my commercial is on the common theme of “ask your doctor.”

To legally obtain prescription drugs, you must go through your doctor. This is why pharmaceutical companies lobby in healthcare practices and tell you to talk to your doctor about their product. They list a long list of symptoms and a product which they say will alleviate them, and ask you to do the work of bringing these subjects up to your doctor, and the bribe the doctors to recommend their brand because it would be a shame to do all that work and lose the money to a generic brand. All of this, though, starts with the viewer, whose unprofessional diagnosis already comes with a cure in mind. By asking my own viewers to talk to a doctor about themselves, I hope to shift doctor-patient conversations from patient demands towards doctors' recommendations. Again, this places a strong emphasis on the individuals involved in the doctor-patient relationship; it is not meant to change how direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising operates, but how we respond to it individually.

The second focus of my commercial is “side effects.” This is a part of pharmaceutical advertising which they are legally required to include in their commercials, and it's always the part they want to finish quickly. This portion of their commercials is best known for rushing through a list of everything from headaches to internal bleeding, and doing it all in a cheery voice while images of puppies and happy couples flash by. My commercial does just the opposite; there are no happy images but there are also no horrible side effects. The idea here is that having an actual conversation with your doctor may not bring you that puppy, beautiful wife, or perfect lawn, but it could bring you piece of mind. In both the first and second portions of my commercial, the audio tracks are meant to remind the audience of the prevalence of pharmaceutical advertisements by placing the soothing voices out of context.

The third part of my commercial is the most serious one. This uses a statistic which I gained from a Fox News story, but which they gained from the CDC. Fox goes on to say that there are more annual deaths from prescription drugs than from heroin and cocaine use combined in the U.S. And that the prescription drug overdose rate is four times higher than it was a decade ago (Fox News). The message on the two slides used in this portion is clear: thousands of people die every year from prescription drugs but no one dies from having a straightforward conversation with their doctor. These slides and the final one are accompanied by seven audio segments from real pharmaceutical commercials explaining that their product may lead directly to the user's death through heart attack, stroke, coma, or suicide.

The final slide shown is a repetition of the overall message of the commercial. The possible fatality audio plays through this slide to reinforce the necessity of the message. What viewers should understand from this commercial is that prescription drugs are dangerous and should not be taken unless absolutely necessary as dictated by a doctor with a full understanding of the patient's condition.

* As an interesting side note, I found that many non-prescription pharmaceuticals were fond of boasting about how many doses they required to be effective. This was mostly in terms of “1 a day” “half as many as the leading brand” “lasts twice as long as the leading brand” and so on.


Sources:

“Abilify for Depression Ad.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsqJju3ePJU

“Celebrex Ad.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GvYI4VdVEI

“Cymbalta TV Ad (2005)” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JkKzVKnR7w

“Detrol LA.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVF2ek95Ltw

Fox News. “Surge in Accidental Prescription Drug Deaths. ”http://video.foxnews.com/v/1253221053001/surge-in-accidental-prescription-drug-deaths/

“Lunesta You Can't Stop Thinking? Suicide By Butterflies! (American Commercial FAIL)” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRUVkZ7DKlc

“Prozac TV Ad – Let the Sun Shine In.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p5NzaRcAgY

“Real Valtrex Commercial.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iLTfG75s6g

“Restasis Ad (2009)” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUIyE_q7SAo