Taking Back Dipset To Tour With Dipset Park and My Dipset Romance!

Fucking visionary, maan.

Aww. This is going to sound so mean. But here's what you get when three or four different teen phenoms from vaguely different eras join forces to Not Go Bankrupt. HIM has their own thing. I don't know how they did it undetected, but those crazy heartagrammos got their logo and horrible singles ("Wings of a Butterfly!" "Wicked Game!" /wtfbbq) on every hoodie/iPod of the misunderstood. I don't pay attention to this kind of thing, but they're probably still making money. My Chemical Romance definitely are, though I'd give them another album or two, maybe even throw in one of those Unplugged Lives where the crowd sings along with every single syllable and drowns out the singer with their EMOTION (why isn't Dashboard on this tour?). Placebo never sold any records to this crowd and never will, probably because they're actually OK. 2006 collab with Michael Stipe isn't gonna land them a headlining slot in the U.S. though (why isn't R.E.M. on this tour? they could perform Around The Sun in its entirety...in conjunction with All Tomorrow's Parties of course). Taking Back Sunday never were. For a split second it looked like Brand New, Hawthorne Heights and all that shit was gonna take over and then. . .oh shit, remember Finch? No? What about Slipknot? They've stuck it out for awhile, though; it must be that Victory Records lifer complex. Hatebreed's gonna do a reunion tour when they all have new livers and hip replacements. But kidding aside, TBS was at least big enough to pull one of those Box Car Racer-style side-project coups with Straylight Run, so they must've been cared about at some point. And then you have Linkin Park. Here's a weird level of deluded-fame obnoxiousness. The big finishers on Last Rap-Metal Band Standing don't curse (amplified by forerunners Korn and Limp Bizkit f-bombing their way to the top), don't have much of a sound (like also-rans Papa Roach, they're so embarrassed about rapping to get to where they are that they abandon it like it's nothing) and have no real personality (Linkin Park is such a meaningful band name that they changed it from Hybrid Theory so they could have a dotcom, and "Everything you say to me/brings me one step closer to the edge/and I'm about to break," really speaks to me). LP embodies the strangest paradox of the post-3 Doors Down/Nickelback age: people so retarded they mistake their insincere arena-bang for craft. I don't expect a musician to fucking hate himself, but why can't these utilitarians just treat their gig as a job? I'd at least like to know that LP's love of hiphop keeps them hurt that they have to cross over to the MCR crowd to stay rich; the fans are cheesed-out by rapping now but they still love it. Except that's not the case. Basically acknowledging they got rich off of trend-hopping they seek the Big Maturity with Rick Rubin producing for credbility and will probably sound like Hawthorne Heights. Minutes To Midnight leaked; I didn't care. What interests me is if the crowd claiming they seriously find catharsis in My Chemical Romance and not ridiculously entertaining Queen parodies is going to embrace former mook-rockers with the same naivete. Yeah, I'm an asshole. Fuck teenagers. They don't know shit.

Unrelated: the Jim Jones/Cam'ron beef is hilarious. I don't think there's ever been a single Cam'ron beef that isn't hilarious. Jim Jones' Jay-Z feud was pretty classic, too, but I don't think there's ever been a more unintentionally hilarious rapper than Cam'ron in history--who was actually good.