【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Ed Sheeran 2019年《No.6 Collaborations Project》
搬运自：微信公众号【评论搬一堆】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）
翻译：Joonly EC
审译：Ryan-Chopin
排版：Spencer-C
The pop star’s compilation features Cardi B, Chance the Rapper, and Stormzy in a sometimes nice but hopelessly transparent attempt at a hip-hop crossover.
这位流行巨星的全新大杂烩找来了新晋说唱女王Cardi B，嘻哈新星Chance The Rapper，以及英国说唱歌手Stormy助阵，这架势都让我误以为专辑很棒了，谁知道这其实是这位先生对嘻哈赤裸裸地倒贴惹。
The rumors are confirmed: Ed Sheeran finally married his longtime girlfriend, Cherry Seaborn. In an interview with radio host Charlamagne tha God—really, an hour of small talk recorded at the studio of Sheeran’s countryside home in Suffolk and released alongside the album in lieu of any major press—Sheeran fills us in with blissful references to their life together. He’s ditched the good-natured, drunken shenanigans that once led to a scar on his cheek from the sword of an actual British royal in favor of nesting with the person he calls “his lady.” Please congratulate Ed Sheeran on his graduation to matrimony, to becoming an absolute wife guy.
流言终得确认:黄老板总算和他相约恋爱长跑的女友Cherry Seaborn结婚了。在一次和主持人Charlamagne tha God的电台访谈中——一次在黄老板的英国沙福克县的住宅录制的、仅有一个钟头的小访谈——黄老板释出了自己新专辑——他居然没有选择主流媒体来增加此次活动的曝光度。黄老板用他的欢乐婚后生活感染了我们，他抛弃了曾经导致他脸颊上留下伤疤但没有恶意且令人陶醉的恶作剧(上张专辑Divide的一个故事)，转而与他所谓的“他的夫人”结婚了。那就请大家鼓掌恭喜这位终于结婚了的有妇之夫Ed Sheeran吧。
Therein lies the conceptual premise of the bulk of the guest-laden No. 6 Collaborations Project. There’s “I Don’t Care,” an early single featuring Justin Bieber and maybe the best effort on No.6, a vector of the dancehall-lite rhythms sounds Sheeran debuted on 2017’s “Shape of You.” Bieber, a fellow newlywed, shares in Sheeran’s swelling melodies and loving truisms: “I don't care when I'm with my baby, yeah/All the bad things disappear.” Then there’s “Cross Me,” featuring Chance the Rapper and a hook fashioned out of a sample of PnB rock’s 2017 XXL Freshman cypher, a well-meaning if slightly paternalistic ode to their respective partners.
结婚这件事儿应该就是《No.6 Collaborattions Project》的概念前提了。“I Don 't Care(不在乎)”是他和Justin Bieber合作的先行单曲，黄老板可能只在这首歌上费了丁点心思。Bieber也是刚结婚，他和Sheeran分享了不断膨胀的旋律和爱的真谛:“我啥都不在乎，每当和我的挚爱在一起时，是的/所有不好的事情都消失了。”然后是“Cross Me(冒犯我)”，这歌与Chancethe Rapper合作，还采样了一段来自PnB rock(美国说唱男歌手)在2017年的《XXL Freshman Cypher(嘻哈十佳新人麦克风接力表演)》中的表演的副歌，这是一首虽然充满好意但是类似爸妈说教的颂歌，目的也没别的——秀恩爱而已。
But the change in Sheeran’s marital status has not inspired a shift away from the chip on his shoulder: I’m not a cool guy, I’m a regular guy, is the subtext of his career thus far. No.6 opens with a heavy-handed, Khalid-assisted reminder that he is not one of the “beautiful people,” a catchy calculation appropriate for the sad-pop dominating the charts. “Antisocial,” featuring Travis Scott and his signature skittering drums, begins with a bizarre instruction: “All you cool people, you Better leave now.”
但Sheeran婚姻状况的改变并没有让他从肩上的压力中解脱:我不是一个很酷的人，我是一个普通的人，这是迄今为止关于他职业生涯的潜台词。《No.6》以一首沉重的、带有Khalid风格的曲目开场，提醒大家他并不是美丽的人儿(专辑第一首曲目:“Beautiful People”)之一，这首歌虽然悲伤，但阿黄时刻没有忘记他真正的任务——用抓耳的旋律去迎合市场。“Antisocial(反社会)”以Travis Scott和他标志性的打击乐为特点，一开始就给出了一条奇怪的指令:“你们这些酷人，最好现在就离开。”
In an album defined mostly by banality, “South of the Border,” featuring Camila Cabello and Cardi B, is an actual bizarre moment. It’s a Latin-pop fantasy—Sheeran sings of someone’s “caramel thighs” and “curly hair”—punctuated by Cardi’s suggestion that “Ed got a little jungle fever.” Huh? Maybe unintentionally, the raceplay points directly to the elephant in the room: Though he built his fame on confessional, earnest acoustic guitar songs, Ed Sheeran loves black music, and he wants you to know it.
在这张以平庸为特征的专辑中，Camila Cabello和Cardi B参与合作的“South of the Border(边境以南)”确实是一个怪异的存在。这是拉丁流行音乐的幻想——Sheeran演唱了某人的“焦糖色的大腿”和“卷发”——中间穿插着卡迪的建议:“埃德有点丛林癖好”。蛤?也许是无意中，这张专辑里面的“种族游戏”可能只有瞎子能够忽视:尽管黄老板以充满忏悔的、认真的原声吉他歌曲成名，但现在，他想让你知道他热爱黑人音乐。
Unfortunately, on No.6, that appreciation largely manifests as the belief that he is a competent rapper. On one song, “Take Me Back to London” featuring Stormzy, his flow bears a suspicious resemblance to “Bitch Better Have My Money”-era Rihanna. (Sheeran has settled plagiarism lawsuits on at least three occasions and will go to trial on a fourth this September.) There, and elsewhere, his raps are cringey and simplistic, with all of the subtlety of a plot-driven song written by Lin Manuel Miranda: “It's that time/Big Mike and Teddy are on grime/I wanna try new things, they just want me to sing/Because nobody thinks I write rhymes.”
不幸的是，在《No.6》中，这种欣赏在很大程度上表现为误以为他真的是说唱歌手。在一首和Stormzy合作的歌曲“Take Me Back to London(带我回伦敦)”中，他的调调与Rihanna的“Bitch Better Have My Money(婊子还钱)”有可疑的相似之处。(黄老板已经至少三次就抄袭诉讼达成和解，并将于今年9月第4次出庭受审。)不管是在他的歌曲中，还是任何一个nbcs的地方，他的说唱都是怯懦而简单的，带有Lin Manuel Miranda以情节为主导的歌曲的所有微妙之处:“是时候/Big Mike和Teddy肮脏着呢/我想尝试新事物了，他们只是想让我唱出来/因为没人觉得我写得押韵。”
Being a fan of rap doesn’t mean you can rap. I would never delude myself into thinking I could run a kitchen just because I’ve spent years watching “Chopped.” Alongside 50 Cent and Eminem, both way past their prime as rappers, Sheeran sounds even more out of his depth on “Remember the Name”: “Yeah, I was born a misfit, grew up 10 miles from the town of Ipswich/Wanted to make it big, I wished it to existence/I never was a sick kid, always dismissed quick/‘Stick to singing, stop rappin’,’ like it's Christmas.” Those unnamed haters were right and No.6 confirms that Sheeran is Better off sticking within his skillset. “Feels,” which ingeniously unites Young Thug and J Hus, and “Put It All On Me,” which offers Ella Mai a warm piano to shine over, are legitimately irresistible.
成为一个说唱迷不等于你就能够说唱了。我虽然已看了好几年的《Chopped(一档美国厨艺真人秀)》，但不会因此骗自己:我已经是一个大厨了。与50美分和阿姆,两个已经过气了的说唱歌手一起合作,Sheeran听起来更没有水准了，在“Remember the Name(记住我)”中，他这样唱到:“是的,我出生得不好,方圆10英里的小镇伊普斯维奇/我想要功成名就/我从来没有一个生病的孩子,总是被快速辞退/坚持唱歌,停止说唱,就像它是圣诞节一样。”那些匿名的黑子们是对的，《No.6》证实了Sheeran最好还是老老实实唱小情歌，别来嘻哈这里瞎掺和了。“Feels(感觉)”巧妙地将年轻的暴徒和J Hus结合在了一起，“Put It All On Me(都放在我身上)”则为Ella Mai提供了一架温暖的钢琴，让她可以尽情地弹奏。
In a 2014 Vibe cover story, in which a reporter witnessed him freestyle over beats including YG’s “My Nigga,” Sheeran was described as having a “hip-hop soul.” A couple years later, Stormzy, with whom Sheeran has something of a friendship, took it further. “Even with his rapping he can execute it well,” he told GQ. It didn’t quite come out of nowhere. In the early days, he’d experimented with what a collaborator describes as “singing rap.” And in 2011, after independently releasing a handful of EPs in the style of alt-folk-rock singer-songwriter forbearers like Jason Mraz, he convinced grime greats like Wiley and Jme to participate in his No.5 Collaborations Project album, after which No.6 is modeled. Over the years, he’s performed multiple Nina Simone covers, recorded a song in the Ghanaian language of Twi, and told Billboard that Justin Timberlake, unparalleled in the cultural phenomenon of “blue-eyed soul,” was “pretty close to a direct inspiration.”
在2014年Vibe的封面故事中，一名记者目睹了他唱freestyle，其节奏还借用了YG的“My Nigga(我的老兄)”。几年后，与Sheeran有些交情的Stormzy与他关系更近了。他告诉《GQ》杂志:“他能很好地完成自己的说唱。”说明了这张专辑还是策划了一下的。在早期，他尝试了一位合作者所说的“说唱演唱”。2011年，他像Jason Mraz那样以另类民谣摇滚歌手兼作曲家的身份独立发布了几张ep，说服了Wiley和Jme等音乐人参与他的《No.5 CollaborationsProject》，这之后《No.6》也有了雏形。多年来，他翻唱了几次Nina Simone，用加纳语录制了一首歌，还告诉Billboard，在“blue-eyed soul”这一文化现象中无与伦比的Justin Timberlake是他非常直接的灵感来源。
Nearly 8 years, 150 million albums sold, and dozens of arena-headlining tour dates after No.5, he’s employed a similar ethos but with the expanded budget and superstar access of his status as one of the world’s best-selling artists. Like the original compilation project, much of No 6. is as bad in theory as it is in practice. Pop music has drawn from black cultural expression since the dawn of its existence, becoming increasingly absorbent in recent years. As hip-hop and diasporic genres like Afropop, dancehall, and dembow have framed the dominant modalities of contemporary radio, inspiration and appropriation have become business moves as much as artistic choices. But few releases have been as baldly transparent and destined for ubiquity as No.6, which has all the conspicuous mining of a Drake album, but very little of the finesse or cultural fluency.
在《No.5》策划之后的近8年时间里，他卖出了1.5亿张专辑，并在数十场巡回演唱会中占据了头条位置。他依旧采用了类似一层不变的风格，更别说现在他的预算越来越多，而且他已然变成了全球最畅销艺术家之一，成为了超级巨星。就像最初准备的专辑一样，《No.6》的大部分理论和实践一样糟糕。流行音乐自诞生之日起就从黑人文化中汲取灵感，黑人文化近年来愈发地受欢迎。随着嘻哈音乐和黑人流行音乐、舞厅和dembow等散居音乐流派确立了当代电台流行的主导模式，音乐的鼓舞作用和对其经典的挪用已成为一种商业行为，甚至是一种艺术选择。但很少有专辑能像《No.6》那样全专从头采样到尾。《No.6》拥有Drake专辑中所有引人注目的元素，但不可能有Drake那种技巧和他的文化流畅性。
