Golden Rules is a stop sign.
Look, I have two modes. The active, social, happy Brandon. And the anxious, tired, awkward Brandon. One wants it all. One can't muster the strength to leave the house. One wants to see my friends shine onstage. Run up a bar tab. Laugh and slap backs and make highly questionable choices. One is wondering why when I fell asleep to the evening news and woke up to America's Got Talent on the TV, I still haven't changed the channel.
Golden Rules just happened to be the last thing I added to my library and what came on when I finally got up. And only then because my phone was going to die. While texting a few people that I didn't think I was going to make it out, some soulful combination of R&B and Outkast made me stop. Literally stopped a text message mid-bail. Golden Rules transformed my desk chair, a refuge from the world, to a dance floor for my nonexistent, ghostly white ass. As my minuscule hip muscles gyrated, I decided that I was gonna go kill shit!
Stop!
Mode changed.
Golden Rules' funk was just the crimson octagon to facilitate the interruption of my neuroses. Stopped me in my paranoid tracks. The horn-driven "Never Die," featuring Yasin Bey (Mos Def), is a blunt lit, window-down cruise through the city soulful as a trillion night lights reflect off of every intimate surface. Perfect fucking music for the opposite of correctly answering Final Jeopardy, celebrating by wiping the Triscuit crumbs from off my sweatshirt.
Golden Rules is Paul White, British hip hop producer guy, and Eric Biddines, twangily-adorable rapper, singer, and Palm Beach, Floridian. White does is best to keep up with the syllable liberating Biddines' sing-raps. Dude has me all "Pow, no-bod-y now." He's everything America loves and hates wrapped up into one, "weeeeEEEEE don't need to worr-AY!"
Paul White is most known for his production for Danny Brown and Homeboy Sandman. This Golden Rules thing he's got himself into in ON, though. These breaks are armored vehicles dressed up like Mardi Gras parades. Fun to look at but still DEADLY! Like the consequences of not following the order to rock the fuck out might be met with actual real life scorn.
So look , you mother fucker, put your stupid pants on and STOP! Stop being such a pussy because there are people out there who love you and who you love and new ones to meet and moon roofs to howl through and drinks to drink and a whole life of beauty and trust and friendship out there for your sad, sorry ass!
GO OUT!
HUG SOMEBODY!
STOP!