K-OS

'I wish I knew Natalie Portman’ is an odd rap song that’s either really good or pretty awful.

I honestly can’t decide. The mainframe of the track is built around Phantom Planets 'California’, better known as the theme to the O.C, so yes, you’d be forgiven for confusing this with another Frankenstein’s Monster track, built with borrowed bits from the archives of musical history, but if you look a little deeper there’s a bit more
to it than that.

First off, K-OS isn’t a bad little rapper, he’s strong vocally and he’s distinguishable enough to not to fall in with the rest of the modern 'rappers’ who sound pretty much identical to each other. In all fairness though, he did that by limiting the auto-tuning, which is a godsend in anyone’s books.

Lyrically it’s a bit hit and miss, the chorus is simple enough to get in your head so that you’re singing it way after it’s finished, but the rest of the song seems relatively rushed and forced at times.

To be honest, I just don’t like the whole something borrowed attitude to music these days, when did it become unacceptable to actually write songs yourself from scratch? Either way, it’s a decent enough track - not sure what the names all about though.