Douglas Martin is down with the team.
Are you ready for the surprise of the year so far? The Bun B remix of Parquet Courts’ “Captive of the Sun”—the original, easily one of the least memorable tracks on last year’s still pretty incredible Human Performance—is better than it has any right to be.
While the rest of the album finds the band at arguably the height of their powers (if Parquet Courts are truly the new Pavement, Human Performance is their Wowee Zowee), the original version of “Captive of the Sun” is akin to something Beck might have left on the cutting room floor during the Odelay sessions: A laconic instrumental Rolling Stone would have been frothing at the mouth to praise as “alternative rock meets hip-hop” back when such a term yielded abysmal results (and mostly still would today). Stream-of-consciousness white boy rapping obliquely about New York City traffic. Buried in the back end of a classic album that might have been a hair too long.
Of course, that’s not the end of the story. Here, the Courts members use their Texas bona fides very wisely and enlist an actual rap legend to fill out their loose approximation to astounding results. Bun throws confetti from the sun roof of his Escalade in the streets of Houston, which immediately makes the idea of driving a Cadillac SUV in 2017 sound cool. There’s a lady riding shotgun, rocking a tube top, daisy dukes, and tube socks like Odd Future never fell off. (As the cliche goes, what’s old is new again. Thankfully listening to Tupac will forever remain evergreen.) I propose if WWE Hall of Famer Booker T actually does become mayor of Houston, he should actually throw a parade in Bun B’s honor. It’s safe to say he’s earned it and then some.
