Planet Hemp
Usuário

It's 23-something on a Friday night.

My feet are like two cheese wheels, and, just to stick with the dairy metaphor, my balls are like two provolone cheeses.

Tough week, that's for sure. And the only positive note is that the next one will probably be worse.

As I write, my lovely is upstairs at the Bartle mansion, engaged in that makeup removal process that in commercials happens in a few seconds thanks to a single cotton pad designed to clean and sanitize perfectly while remaining completely intact, but that in reality lasts about as long as a 16-course wedding banquet and produces so much purple bag waste that it would justify the resignation of 3 city planning councilors.

In situations like these, to relax I indulge in a game of Spider and, as a soundtrack, let YouTube decide for me: basically, I open YouTube's home page and start a random video among those "recommended."

Nine out of ten times, I find myself listening to some super gay stuff with a female singer (who systematically turns out to have red hair), minimal piano, and nicely groomed guitars: these are the same times I find myself, about half an hour later, in the bathroom next to my girlfriend—still in the midst of her makeup removal—plucking chest hair with her cuticle tweezers and wondering when I stopped being the Lord of Sin to become a girly girl with frills and lace.

Not tonight.

Tonight Mr. Tube recommends someone called "Usuario” ('95), the debut album of a band called Planet Hemp, which of course I'd never heard of before.

Intrigued by the opening of the first song, I move to Wikipedia and discover that this gang of criminals is a Brazilian group active between '95 and 2001, famous mainly for the membership, among their ranks, of the great Marcelo D2.

What's that? Who is Marcelo D2?

Obviously, who the hell knows. But I have a feeling he's a kind of chimera born from the carnal union consumed at a rest stop on the Salerno - Belo Horizonte between Jake La Furia's mom and Caparezza's hairdresser. Meaning he has a beehive that looks like Moira Orfei on amphetamines with shea butter on one side and an exaggerated fixation on marijuana on the other.

And anyway, this "Usuario" rocks.

Better yet, I'm more or less on the fifth song, and it seems pretty nice: the formula is that of a super tight rap sung in Portuguese over tracks ranging from funk to rock, with some pretty hardcore ventures where it's all about getting high. With the added value that these guys actually know how to play quite decently.

The Portuguese sounds very "against the government feeling of eternal hatred" and stuff like that, very passionate. Like there's this song called "Porcos Fardados" which, to me, not knowing Portuguese, could be about anything, like a recipe for a stuffed pork tenderloin with foie gras, but I'm completely convinced it's a ruthless diatribe against the "puta policia."

Beastie Boys meet Pelè Didì Vavà - What we have to do to get by

Beastie Boys meet Vavà Didì Pelè. Give it a listen, maybe you'll like it too.

Unfortunately, I couldn't listen all the way to the end because now I have to run, as I'm being told it's late and I need to turn it off.

But you don't be like me: listen to it all carefully, then come back here and tell me if you liked it.

But above all, if you really have to pluck your chest hair, do it barehanded, biting down on a leather strap and using a bottle of awful whiskey as an analgesic.