Lil Meerkat - Weeaboo Paradise, Vol. 1 (Review)

Martin_Canine LIL MEERKAT
Weeaboo Paradise, Vol. 1
★☆☆☆☆

Even Young Kira would hate anime after this

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Meerkats are cool. Anime is cool. Trap is cool. Sonic is cool. Dakimakuras are cool. Along comes Lil Meerkat with an album that combines all elements and that’s about as hard hitting as being slapped in the face with a salmon.

Coming from a generation raised on animes that were aired all afternoon on a major TV channel the concept of a weeaboo sounds foreign to an Austrian or German born in the 90s (no pun intended). There’s an army of different animated series from Japan that entered pop culture around the turn of the millennium, and whose popularity never really decreased. Artists like cyber hip hop group Dat Adam or multimedia talent darkviktory drew direct inspiration from the dozens of widely beloved shows, Digimon being the most obvious one (it needs to be added that the German dub of the first five shows was based on the darker Japanese version, not the tame, heavily edited family friendly US cut). If that is remotely the American idea of a weeaboo, Lil Meerkat’s Weeaboo Paradise, Vol. 1 is their worst nightmare. The scariest part being the “Vol. 1” in the title.

Early into the album it becomes very apparent that the album isn’t a failed attempt at making trap music, but that it’s all just a big joke by a guy who makes intentionally cheap music combining all possible stereotypes of both hip hop and nerddom for his own amusement. Lil Meerkat’s intention of trolling by taking everything regarded as awkward into one big slimy mess is understandably much fun to him, and more likely than not his biggest reward is an enraged reaction. And for the length of one song, you can get a good chuckle out of it. But making it through the entire 67 minute long album is an exhausting experience, as the joke wears off rather fast, and Lil Meerkat shows no intention in altering his formula from track to track. It’s always the same: nerdy lyrics, vocaloid-like autotune, off-beat rapping, horrible mastering, audible clicking, coughing and other noise, all in bad recording quality. Over and over again. For 26 tracks which vary from 22 seconds to over 7 minutes in length. To make it “so bad it’s good”, it mustn’t become boring. Movies like the accurately titled Troll 2 or the father of unintentionally funny films, Plan 9 From Outer Space, turned to cult favorites because they constantly feature new ideas that appear to terrible to be true and make us shake our heads in disbelief. Weeaboo Paradise, Vol. 1 is probably intentionally bad, so it should do for a laugh fest, right? Not if it only has one idea that gets repeated for feature film length.

The saddest part of the album is that it does not rely on bad, homemade beats, but abuses innocent little gems of production and layers the disaster of a vocal track over. Take for example Infinite Bodypillows. The instrumental is heavenly electronicore that I See Stars would have been proud of. Imagine that in the hands of Andrew W.K., what a party banger he would have made out of it. By the way, Lil Meerkat, these “bodypillows” you refer to - you know, like the one you decided to use as your cover artwork - are called “dakimakura”. The synthetic orchestral beat of My Fanfiction could have been the basis for a Farid Bang song - with a few hard drum kits added, of course. Let’s Mine The Emeralds would get your head knocking with some oldschool 80s pop rapping jammed onto it, but like on all the other songs, it’s mixed so far into the background that you can still hear it but even with the focus of a Jedi master you can’t tune out the overly loud vocals. Hopefully, he used free beats from the net that are still out there for other aspiring artists who take their music making seriously to use and shine.

All Weeaboo Paradise, Vol. 1 eventually does is make you want to rinse out your ears with Young Kira’s Six Feet Thunder album from 2017, to remind yourself that autotuned trap and anime can be mixed with criminally cool results. In the meantime, Lil Meerkat’s album doesn’t even manage to entertain with bad quality - it’s simply lengthy and boring. And quite possibly, that’s exactly what Lil Meerkat wanted in the first place, and the people who even bother to listen to all of it are the butt of the joke.

Comments

Don't diss lord meerkat like that - visitor

I didn't. I gave him a fairer and less harsh review than any other reviewer ever will! - Martin_Canine

Congrats👏 you succeeded in listening to the whole damn thing. I couldn't get past the seven second samples. - visitor

Hey, when I'm gonna review an album, I'm gonna give it an equal chance!

Although I must admit that it was less painful than the Amigos album "110 Karat" from last year.

Why is that so? Because throughout Lil Meerkat's album I knew two things: that this guy is a troll and that apart from me only a handful of people will ever know it. But the Amigos album is meant absolutely seriously, was a huge hit in German speaking Europe and is their eighth (! ) chart topping studio album in Austria, while being almost as horrible and even more repetitive than Lil Meerkat! - Martin_Canine

Oof - oneshot