Steve 'Flash' JuonThe cover of “GREEN FUR” represents our AI generated modern life whether intentionally or by accident. I’m not accusing Smoove Dinero or anyone involved with this album of using it to create the album cover; instead, I’m asking you to look at it and ask yourself the same questions I did. “Is that a dog or a cat? Is that even a real breed? Is that a photo of a real animal or computer generated?” You don’t even have to make the green fur color the question. That part is obviously not found in nature. It’s everything ELSE that makes you wonder what the hell you’re looking at.
My real concern is that I’m old enough to know “PASSIN ME BY” is both a reference to The Pharcyde and a direct loop of the song by the same name. In our increasingly absolutely insulting world of AI generated everythang, this could in fact “pass by” without anyone noticing. It’s to Smoove Dinero’s credit that he’s not hiding it by putting it in plain sight, but without human beings with decades of history listening to and writing about music, these are things that would be completely lost in the sauce. The only comfort I take from this cold reality is the theory I saw posited recently that AI will eventually eat itself by having to scrape AI generated content instead of human made content. If it keeps feeding on its own dead corpses we’ll wind up with BSE in written, audio and visual form.
The good news is that I think Smoove Dinero is a real human being. I even found a PR firm who put his bio online. (Go ahead and invent a conspiracy theory that the PR firm is AI generated too. I’ll wait.) The bad news is that doesn’t necessarily make “GREEN FUR” a great listen. Dinero reminds me a little too much of the late Drakeo the Ruler without the latter’s charisma. He’ll take the comparison as a compliment and maybe he should, but by making it I also mean that raspy rapping at nearly sub-audible levels is very hard to pull off. I tried hard and low to find lyrics on this album that would set Dinero apart, but on “EXPENSIVE PAIN” the bars do not impress.
“I lost so many I can’t die before a nigga see a million”
You can’t get more cliché than “GREEN FUR.” That’s a shame because somewhere behind this awful album cover and his glowing PR bio is a real young man who went from Bridgeport to Brooklyn in search of his American dream. Whoever that kid is has to be more interesting than the music he made. “Bad” isn’t the right word. It’s just paint by the (green) numbers. It doesn’t stand out and it doesn’t tell his story. It’s just the same opps, the same foldable money, the same pursuit of happiness. Don’t tell me their stories Dinero, tell me yours.