Unkle Adams, or How to Brag About Being the Best and Actually Say Nothing at All

Chapter One: This is, Huh, Wow

Meet Unkle Adams.

Born Curtis Adams, this Regina, SK artist is known for many things: by claiming that he's the most positive in the conscious hip-hop scene and by amassing tons of debt in order to make it look like a damn miracle whenever he gets his second viral hit.

I first heard about this guy in 2016 through one of my Facebook friends. They had shared a picture from Unkle Adams' Facebook page - I think it was the cover of "I Am Stronger" - and I thought that it was the end of it. A mere joke on a hip-hop artist with a bad logo. And then a few days later, as if by sheer luck, I stumbled upon a post by the Facebook page "Young Thugga La Meme" - a video claiming that "even people who hate rap love this!" In the description was a boast, claiming that "this rapper rips the mic without talking about hoes, guns, drugs, jewelry, or women." And of course, it was one of those trendy viral Facebook rap songs that used an electro-swing instrumental and where the guy claimed to be really positive and fun for the whole family. To me, it was just another mediocre song. The video was silly, as were most big Facebook videos with good production value, and the song even more so. 

And of course, the rapper was the Unkle Adams from that photo. Turns out that the dude had made something of a minor comeback - first known in 2013 for the transcendently awkward anti-bullying anthem "I Am Stronger," which I hadn't heard until that weird electro-swing rap song went semi-viral. In that song were these ham-fisted attempts at showcasing how utterly devastating bullying can be. As a survivor of bullying, both in real life and on the Internet, and a former bully myself, I found the song to be a bit...unnecessary in its details. I mean, yeah, its intent is to show the dark corridors a victim of bullying can walk down, from the hesitation marks to the suicide attempts to how it negatively recontextualizes their bad experiences into "I am the one who's causing my parents to argue every night, the world would be better off without me" and it did serve as much-needed motivation to an Australian survivor who formed an I Am Stronger chapter in his hometown, but when you're trying to talk to victims and survivors about how to overcome bullying, maybe don't make the verses entirely about how bullying destroys lives. In particular, don't throw in a line like "she went to sleep permanently/she drank bleach." Not only does that come across as somewhat calloused, it's really damn awkward to hear that sort of line in what should be a kid's harmless introduction to how backpack rap can at least have a positive effect.

But that electro-swing song - oh, boy, that was something. Later in Young Thugga La Meme, I found out the name from the repeated shares of that song - "Original," which most of the users had rendered out into "Origineux" in order to make fun of how Unkle Adams destroys the pronunciation of the word so it can rhyme with "show." And around that time, in order to make fun of how that song was trying so hard to be viral, people took the "Lil B fucked my bitch" mini-meme from 2010-11 and applied it to this otherwise unremarkable family-friendly conscious hip-hop artist - except that he'd be sleeping with married women (wives) because those were the people who were unironically sharing his videos at the time. This eventually got to the point where the admins of the page, which was supposed to be a Young Thug-themed shitposting page, created a group called "Unkle Adams Originalposting" in order to section off the people who kept flooding the page with Unkle Adams content, including videos from his YouTube where he'd dab and play as crazy characters in order to go viral.

In Originalposting, we mostly just made fun of this guy. He was doofy, his music videos semed way too professional for an artist who only had about 15k monthly listeners on Spotify, his songs were always really awkward and seemed to talk about how better he is than you by virtue of being family-friendly and positive, and he had this hilarious naivete about him. Every time he'd try to mess around with a Snapchat filter, we'd turn that into a character with an unnecessarily complex backstory. He'd play as Mr. Trapezoids, a swole Unk with a big square chin not too dissimilar from Chad himself, and we'd give him a tale about how he's this clone created by Unkle Adams solely to be his healthy-living bodyguard. The next minute, he'd play as Cleetus, a mostly unfunny parody of a struggle rapper bragging about all the shows he's playing while going off into tangents about frying up an egg-whites omelet, and we'd turn him into a white nationalist who uses rap to attempt to redpill people into his beliefs. Mostly, we just made fun of this really doofy rapper - we'd repost his music videos, make fun of how utterly professional and low-budget they look, and mostly make the same jokes over and over. It got to the point where we thought about shutting down the group - we were essentially beating a dead horse.

It had a short revival once a few members discovered some old tracks recorded by Unk in 2007-08. These songs were more adult in nature - more shocking and darker, but still unbearably corny and trend-riding like the Unk we all knew and loved. We took to calling this period of Unkle Adams' career "Dark Unk/DrkUnk." More on that later.

That all changed one cold February day this year. Almost overnight, Unk had posted these nine vlogs - all part of an aborted miniseries, the "At Least a Million Mission," that he did to anticipate the (unreceived) viral success of his newest track "At Least a Million," which was a song about being happy with what you've got (how money doesn't always equate to happiness) - and they all told this increasingly dire story: our middle-class Unk was in debt. $164,000 worth of it. He attributed all of this debt to necessary "rap game loans" in order to create the hit that was destined to send him into the stratosphere. He spent almost all of his money to create the track, film the music video, buy the unnecessary wardrobe for the music video (including those Kangaroo shoes with the side pockets so you can hide your two grams of weed put in your quarters for the Powerade machine when you get parched), and market it onto radio - only to find out that, while gaining some minor radio play late at night, he wasn't hitting the sweet spot that he did when "I Am Stronger" and "Original" went viral. 

He eventually started getting store credit cards, buying a comical amount of TVs and power drills, and pawning them in order to make more money in order to market his song to even more outlets. Soon, he thought he received his big break - a promoter wants to put him on tour - but as he finishes flipping more TVs to buy himself a better car to tour in the tundra, the promoter flaked out on him, revealing that it was all a big scam. Either way, Unk pressed on and managed to put himself into an even worse situation - albeit with renewed attention from the Originalposting group. We latched around these videos, laughing at Unk as he sat around with those nine TVs still in their boxes, talking about how Kendrick Lamar used to do this before Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City came out. And of course, because we were only ones talking about this, Unk tried to fight us and blamed it all on a live reaction Anthony Fantano did with Chris "I like to own the libs" Ray Gun regarding the "Original" video, calling the former "The Needle Dick." Shortly, Unkle Adams and Anthony Fantano made up and Unk came out with a song called "Friends Over Enemies," a nice change of pace from his relentlessly corny work. Of course, that didn't last and Unk was back to trying to appeal to everybody on the Internet, trying desperately to find that elusive #1 hit record.

So why am I talking to you about this guy?

Chapter Two: Goddamnitbabyyouknowiaintlyintoyaimonlygonnatellyouonetime AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Because Unkle Adams hasn't changed. He's still the same guy he was in 2007.

No, I don't mean morally - the dude has obviously underwent some major character development, not to mention giving up alcohol, cigarettes and weed sometime around 2012-13. He seems to be in a much better place spiritually. I mean lyrically.

Unk's lyrics are still the same. Sure, they're family-friendly and they're inoffensive to the point of being funny, but they're still the same at their core.

My main problem with Unkle Adams' lyrics is that his hooks are often disconnected from their verses, often going as far as having conflicting approaches and topics. His hooks pretty much state the intent of the song - "I Am Stronger" is about rising above being a victim of bullying and taking a stand for yourself; "Original" is about being yourself regardless of what others tell you to be; "The '90s" is about how your childhood can help shape you; "Friends Over Enemies" is about not holding grudges. When you get into his verses, however, they become an entirely different story.

Going back to what I was saying about the Dark Unk/DrkUnk period. Thanks to the revived interest in Unkle Adams, several members of the Regina hip-hop scene circa 2007 - notably Andrew Hincks, the owner of the 306 Skate Shop, and Spyte, Unk's former battle rap partner turned alt-lite podcaster - have come forward with stories about how Unk, along with his real-life nephew, would often try to bully and grief a bunch of rappers in the scene, even going as far as turning down opportunities Andrew would give him in order to perform concerts at venues that also hosted big-name artists like Xzibit. This behavior, along with Unk not wanting to address any of it, has left tons of burned bridges in the scene. This has also led to the discovery of the long-lost debut album from 2007, North of Dewdney, which is pretty much the opposite of positivity. This album includes what Originalposting considers to be the Holy Grail of Unkle Adams' discography: "Boozetune," a song about binge-drinking and rape. Or what it seems like.

When a significant-sized portion of the song - a demo from around that time - was leaked by Andrew, I took a listen to it and found that it was exactly the same as everything else he's ever done. It's a brag rap whose hook was entirely disconnected from its verses. The hook is about binge-drinking, dirty sex, and rape - sex, drugs and rock and roll in its purest form. The verse, however, was just him bragging about how better of a rapper he is - how awesome he is that he still has this killer flow and coming up with these lyrical spiritual miracle rhymes despite going on a bender with Spyte the night before. On the North of Dewdney version, Merlando's verse at least makes sense - he's talking about date rape and how he's taking advantage of the atmosphere in the bar in order to get away with it - but Unk's is as disconnected as it was in the demo.

So, DrkUnk has disconnected hooks and verses. What about Unk now? The cloyingly positive rapper who strives to be origineux? Exact same thing, but like I said, family-friendly.

Take for example "Original."

The hook is obvious - "I don't wanna be how everybody else is/I much rather be original."

The verses? "First off, I'm thankful for everyone that followed me/and everyone that doubted me can swallow their apology." Okay, that could kinda tie in with his originality and how he wants others to be themselves, if a bit on the humorous side.

"I'm the kind of character that's written in mythology/written in the present day, it's in my biology/to rap about equality and rock the mic properly/it's obvious a lot of you can learn from this philosophy/I'm not a know-it-all, I'm full of curiosity/I'm fascinated by the stars and their luminosity." Okay, a bit on the bragging side - he's better off in terms of having his priorities straight - but otherwise states his point clearly. He's there to be positive, to be friendly, to make you your best you.

"My girl's from a James Bond flick - I won the lottery/plus, I mold young minds similar to pottery/I just stole your fans, better call it in a robbery/I'm so original, my clone couldn't copy me."

Oh, okay. Like, I kinda get the point with the "mold young minds" lyric - Unk was an anti-bullying presenter at the time - but everything else seems to talk about how better he is than you or, hell, even his clone. He has the hottest girlfriend. He has the class of Sean Connery's version of James Bond. He's so awesome, he took your fanbase. He's so awesome, you can't replicate him.

But that's just one time! How worse can it get?

"I don’t wanna blend in how those other men did/Before they even got goin’, their careers ended/But not me - I’m driven by a very different engine/That keeps rippin’, givin’ me incredible momentum/So if you’re offended by anything I mention/Or anything I wear - if you have an objection/Write out a complaint and place in your rectum/Or, better yet, type it in the comment section/That’ll give this video a little more attention/My God, your iPod needs an intervention"

While he does try to talk about originality here, he's talking about it in reference to himself. He's more original than you. He's more an individual than you or the blonde Australian dude from those Energizer battery ads. He's a better rapper than you. He has better motivations than you. And if you have a problem with him? He tells you in his family-friendly way to go fuck yourself since you're just a troll. And a person with a bad taste in music because you don't listen to him.

The same thing goes on in the third verse. He talks about how he's so successful, he's selling copies of his albums in Europe and Japan. And how he's been the best since he was just a fertilized egg. He's better than you to the point to where if he's going through a bad day, he'll make a song about it and be true. He's cracked the code. He's the Truest Individual (TM), you can't fool him. An indi-bloody-vidual, as Jacko put it.

Like, his song about originality has more in line with Jacko's "I'm an Individual" than the artist he's ripping from here: Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. However, Jacko's song is a joke - it's designed to be funny because part of the song is about how Jacko, whose public perception and character in the Australian Football League was that he was this rough-and-tough hooligan who clowned around and mocked anybody, is enough of a unique being that he's a bit of sophisticate - whereas while Unk's song has lines that are designed to be funny ("write out a complaint and place it in your rectum," "I'm so original, my clone couldn't copy me," "I've been original since in my momma's ovaries"), it's meant to be an uplifting-if-really-upbeat song about being yourself and how you can tap into that. It teaches nothing to its listener other than that Unkle Adams is better than you. It's an ineffective lesson, one you're sure to fail the test in when it comes to the subject, you ain't gonna know the rest of it. That's why he doesn't resonate as intended - he's still bragging about how he's more awesome than you even in a song that's supposed to teach you about how you can be as awesome as he. It's as empty as a man bragging about how he's the greatest when trying to sell his submerged car on Craigslist. It means nothing.

That's what I mean by "he hasn't changed."

Chapter Three: This is It. We're All Going to Die.

Lyrics are the most important component of modern music.

Sure, a good melody and a good concept can create a good song - I don't expect Terry Riley to write a novel to recite over "Poppy Nogood" nor do I want one - but in most pop music, the lyrics have to match the song. That's why Jay-Z's verse in "Monster" and any Pitbull feature are considered to be the most incongruous and largely incompatible things in their respective home songs. "Monster" is designed to be about how fame can turn somebody into a monster - both in popularity and in morality. Everybody seems to get - except for Hova, who immediately talks about all the awesome movie monsters he loves. Of course it's a damn fine verse - Hova has an awesome flow and he at least stays on the subject of monsters in general - but it's a minor stain on an otherwise straightforward high-energy message song about the dangers of fame. Pitbull's features don't mesh with the genre of the song he's being featured on - he still raps like he were trying to make the most hardcore brag song ever, like he hadn't entirely made that switch to hip house in 2007-08 - but Mr. 305 is so full of energy and so funny because of his oddly intruding presence that we can't help but to love the dude. Hell, the dude's so cool, he even held a concert at a Wal-Mart in Alaska that 4chan voted him to visit as a joke and showed it off on his YouTube channel.

It sucks when people often miss the point of several songs from the '90s - namely big alt-rock hits like "Little Black Backpack" by Stroke 9 and "All Star" by Smash Mouth - because they view them as having no lyrical value but kitsch musical value. "Little Black Backpack" is a nice little summary of '90s radio rock, from its Metallica-inspired intro to its full-on embrace of Semisonic-style power pop by the end. "All Star" is the ultimate sell-out hit - an overproduced hit by a band known for an entirely different sound (third wave ska without the horns) before switching over to a predominantly power pop style for their follow-up, one with vague lyrics about being your best you and, again, not letting anybody weigh you down. However, to say that Stroke 9 and Smash Mouth only intended the basics from those songs is to erase the general attitude of '90s radio rock.

'90s radio rock was largely one of two things: sarcastic or deliberately clashing. Most Nirvana songs tend to fit into the former - Kurt Cobain's lyrics often critique some sort of thing, but you wouldn't know unless if you read really hard into, say, "In Bloom" or "Pennyroyal Tea." "In Bloom" is a straight-forward grungy power pop song about being a fairweather fan of a band that only cares about the surface level of something - in essence, "he don't know what it means/don't know what it means when I say..." It's a neat little summary of the kind of guy who only likes Nirvana because they're the flavor of the month, not because they like what Kurt has to say or like how he approaches writing a song - in Kurt's own words, the kind of person that didn't go his concerts until he had a hit on MTV.

As for the latter, quite a few '90s radio rock songs tended to have these utterly upbeat instrumentals, only to be offset entirely by lyrics that clash with how happy everything seems to sound. For example, Limp Bizkit's cover of George Michael's "Faith" is designed to be a joke from the start - it's an unnecessarily brooding and alt-rock-sounding version of what is pretty much a straight-forward pop rocker about love, but with tons of aggression thrown in during the hook and the outro, culminating in Fred screaming "GET THE FUCK UP" and DJ Lethal going full-on ham with his turntables as Wes, Sam and John rock out as hard as they can. Over a love song.

On the opposite end, we get songs like "Little Black Backpack" that are designed to be the happiest feel-good songs in the world - think of poppy silly little love songs, the kind that Paul McCartney sang about. However, it's lyrically a break-up song, albeit with a catch - the girl the subject's dating is justified in breaking up with him because he, in response to her letting some guy hold her backpack while getting a Surge from the vending machine or using the bathroom, decided to beat up the guy holding the backpack, eventually to the point of having the backpack stained in the dude's blood (implying that he killed this guy) and scolding his girlfriend for making him do that. He doesn't see himself as having made the mistake - no, it's her. She gave that guy the backpack - she should know that it was gonna make her boyfriend upset to the point of outright murdering somebody. Basically, it's the "she was asking for it/you were the one who made me mad" argument, but framed as this upbeat power pop song that would otherwise be straight up about love.

And we get songs that mix the both of those approaches - Smash Mouth, Incubus, A, Green Day, The Offspring, etc. often took this approach when writing songs. Musically, "All Star" makes the lyrics appear like they're just positive slogans just strung together in that hyper-literate-but-cool '90s style of writing, but taking the lyrics in with the rest of Smash Mouth's released work, you get a sense that the entire point of having an upbeat and overproduced crossover hit is to communicate how deluded the guy is when trying to convince himself that being a slave to trends just to get his face on the satellite picture is actually a good thing. The lyrics are very much tongue-in-cheek, albeit subtly so - to the point where people miss the point of the song and license it to illustrate happy moments in some sort of wacky cartoon character's life. On a more successful note, "I Choose" by the Offspring off their woefully underrated album Ixnay on the Hombre (aka that album that's stuck in B.D. Joe's dashboard stereo) is this really upbeat song about, well, becoming a drug addict and lying on the floor, near death, having disappointed your mother. And of course, Dexter paints this downward spiral as something close to rebellion - like it were the end game of the punk ethos. Why bother? "This is life, what a fucked-up thing we do."

I love good lyrics to a good song is what I'm trying to say here. I especially love it when the music and lyrics compliment each other - even if it's as straightforward as an upbeat song about trying to be a better person than you were when you were a wife-beating angry young coward and a sadly wistful song about how being homesick can clash being in love or as subversive as having this up-tempo power pop rocker about being rejected by a love. Poetry and music have been connected to each other since the Sumerians figured out how to create total bangers by fusing the prettiest melodies of 5000 B.C. with the hottest thought-provoking poems about being in love - and to see that ancient tradition being carried on and elaborated in something as relatively new as rock music, which was first considered by music elitists to be unnecessarily juvenile, makes me smile. A song that actually works - be it a song that comments on how utterly evil-sounding a lot of break-up songs can sound by having the unlucky man murder a dude just for holding his qt 3.14's backpack while she gets a Surge just to stay awake during Tommy Boy because you demanded that she see it and she doesn't care much for Chris Farley and David Spade...or a song that's shows how anybody can become a much better person, even an inveterate wife-beater who tried to use his allostatic load to justify his own abusive behavior...or an epic 23-minute song about a monstrous man who only finds peace in his tumultuous life when he decides to jump off the roof of a lighthouse - can go a long, long way. Even an unnecessary crunkcore/electro-rock remake of one of my favorite Christmas carols still makes me smile, even if it's remembering that Kirk Cameron did the Worm to that song.

Unkle Adams doesn't do any of that. His lyrics make me feel nothing. They teach me nothing about the writer. At least with Luke Esterkyn, I get that he thinks that a lot of break-up and love songs can sound incredibly misogynistic and disturbingly possessive. At least with John Lennon, I get that he knew he was incredibly fucked up and he wants to be a much better person despite how hard it is to shake off his most toxic behaviors since they're the only ways he knows how to cope with his mom's tragic death. At least with Joni Mitchell, I get that she's madly in love with this guy, but she's also homesick, so she wants to have at least one more last good time with him before she leaves him for good. At least with Peter Hammill, I get that he knows that even the most evil of men can be emotionally-complex and torn-up beings who are afraid to confront their horrors. At least with Dexter Holland, I get that he feels that the SoCal punk scene needs to be more responsible and not just be a carefree druggie punk because "that's the punk thing to do." At least with Steve Harwell and Greg Camp, I get that they think that media has a stranglehold on our minds and tries to make us believe things about ourselves so they can sell you more things based on our insecurities.

I don't get that with Unkle Adams. At all. I don't get an insight into what Curtis Adams is. I don't get an insight into what turned him towards rap in the first place - why he wanted to hang out with personalities like Spyte and then throw them under the bus just to have a cool diss track over some hot instrumental his friend made. I don't get why he had that crisis of conscience. I get that he had it - there's a clear delineation between "drunk as fuck headed to the pump" and "peaks and valleys, man, peaks and valleys" - but nowhere in his songs do I get that. Even on songs that come really damn close to being autobiographical - "The '90s," "Friends Over Enemies," "At Least a Million," "Industry Snakes" - he manages to iron out all of the character just to have something that sounds pretty and nothing more. It's especially tragic with "Industry Snakes" because it's a summarization of how he got into his $164k/227k/???k of debt and how he got fooled by get-rich-quick music-industry scams, but rather than figure out why he fell for the scams in the first place and analyze why he was drawn into the allure of Kaa-met Ertegun's eyes, he instead just paints it as a necessary humiliation conga he went through just to teach others not to fall into their obvious traps. And at the end, sure enough, it's another boast - when he's rich, he's gonna really screw over those snakes who are totally gonna want all his money (even though the design of the scams would make them stay away from Unk even if he does get signed to a major label). He just talks about all the cool shit that was in the 1990s in "The '90s" - not about how he discovered rap, not about how the Rap Renaissance might've shaped him to dig deeper into the genre, not about how his childhood seemed to be innocent but not without merit. He's not teaching me anything about himself other than the fact that he's positive and he thinks he's better than you.

Epilogue: I'm a Five-Star Man! I'm a Five-Star Man!

A lot of my favorite musicians, filmmakers, artists, writers, and creatives in general happen to be unsung. John Kimbrough, in my opinion one of the greatest songwriters of the '90s, didn't get the fame he deserved with Walt Mink - even with deals from Columbia Records (which fell through) and Atlantic Records (which dropped them). Jay Robbins, a great man, a loving father, a great songwriter, an excellent producer, and (in my opinion) one of the creators of post-hardcore starting with the first Jawbox album in 1991, is still relatively obscure by '90s rock standards - sure, Jawbox is getting some love now and his production on the D-Plan's Emergency and I pretty much makes the album, but compared to the massive praise Ian MacKaye still gets despite more of his dumb decisions coming to light with each passing year, they're still a blip on the radar of the casual post-hardcore fan. Alex Chilton and Chris Bell only got their dues in the '90s - and by that time, Big Star albums were out of print, Chris Bell had been dead for 15 years, and Chilton had moved on to being a session musician who got name-dropped in the occasional song. Even Chilton died relatively poor in 2010.

I get it, Curtis. Being a creative is tough...

...but being a creative means that you put your heart and soul into every goddamn thing you make. You imbue whatever you're making with yourself. It's part of the reason why I think Barthes' death of the author is a very bad idea that leads to people defending Louis C.K. jerking off in front of Hannah Gadsby because "he made Louie, which is a good TV show." I love Annie Hall as much as anybody - hell, even more so since it's one of my favorite rom-coms - but I don't care much for Woody Allen as a person, to say the least, nor do I wish to defend his relationship with Soon-yi because "I really liked that funny movie where he played the nerdy Jewish guy and Diane Keaton/Louise Lasser/Mia Farrow was his girlfriend." Not even Moses Farrow, the dude who'll defend Woody to the death from the molestation allegations and has come out with stories about how Mia Farrow was an abusive mother, wants to defend Woody's relationship with his sister.

But even if you happen to be a Jewish comedian-writer-"actor" with a black cloud of sex scandals looming overhead, you still put yourself into your work. That's why I don't like Woody's new movies. They're so negative - he's so bitter about the scandal re-emerging that he's effectively using his films to rant about how Mia did him wrong. It doesn't make me want to sympathize with him. Annie Hall makes me want to sympathize with the dude because at least I get where he's coming from with it - and it's not a place of hate. He knows his relationship with Diane Keaton didn't work, but he knows that they're good friends and he can see how he was the one who made those mistakes. He was the one who tried to change her. He was the one who thought was better than she. In essence, Alvy Singer is how Unkle Adams keeps coming across as. I mean, a hyper-confident and braggart Alvy Singer, but still, it's at the core of what makes Unk's songs feel so empty. He's so sure that he's better than you that he doesn't even think about getting vulnerable. And when he does occasionally, it feels empty. He still presents himself as better than you - that he's realer than you for going through these problems and having a three-day Internet spat with Cal Chuchesta, but he's still saying nothing. He's saying nothing. He's a lyrical spiritual miracle, but he's saying nothing.

Apathetic positive Unkle Adams, I've no sympathy for him.