Holiday Special: Jake Paul's Litmas EP (Album Review #3.5, if you must)

Hi, I'm Stellar, and welcome to the first HOLIDAY SPECIAL of Stellar in Neverland! I'm going to start off by asking you a question: When you hear the phrase "Christmas music", what's the first thing that pops into your head? Maybe it's "Silent Night" or "Winter Wonderland", or if you're anything like me, maybe it's  Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas is You". Well, whatever it is, hopefully it isn't on Jake Paul's new Christmas EP.

I haven't even listened to it yet (note: I wrote the preamble the day before I listened), but I can already tell this will be my reaction to every song. 

For those who are blissfully unaware of Jake Paul, he is an YouTuber, "actor", "rapper", and all-around probably the least talented person I have ever come across. He began his career on Vine, a now-defunct app used to post seven-second videos. Vines are either comedy gold or abysmally stupid. More often than, not they fall into the latter category, which Jake Paul's certainly do. Once Vine shut down in 2016, he took his obnoxious brand of comedy to YouTube, where he currently makes painfully embarrassing vlogs and prank videos. He also starred on the Disney Channel show Bizaardvark, which I would describe as being the dollar store version of iCarly and, make no mistakes about it, the worst Disney Channel show I have ever watched. He was on the show until July 2017, when he got fired because of controversies over some pranks he pulled, which brings me to the next thing you need to know about Mr. Paul before we begin: JAKE PAUL IS A PATHETIC EXCUSE OF A HUMAN BEING. He lives in a Beverly Hills mansion with his posse of vlogger friends known as "Team 10" (wonder how long it took him to come up with that name). In the house, they perform loud, obnoxious, and occasionally dangerous pranks, which are very disturbing to his neighbors. As if that weren't bad enough, hordes of his fans (known as "Jake Paulers", what a creative name) frequently visit the Team 10 house and are collectively a burden to the neighbors. Despite numerous complaints and even a public nuisance lawsuit, Jake Paul has done nothing to ease the people's (very reasonable) complaints. He was also manipulative towards former girlfriend and Team 10 member Alissa Violet, made disgusting and racist comments to a fan from Kazakhstan, and was proven to have been a bully by former classmates, despite claiming to be anti-bullying. He gets into petty beefs with other YouTubers that I can't bring myself to care about because I don't want to lose brain cells, and just everything he does is dumb, obnoxious, clickbait. The only people who unironically like and defend Jake Paul are twelve-year-old girls who don't know any better and think he's like, so totally dreamy OMG.

In May 2017, he, with the assistance of Team 10, dropped his own song called "It's Everyday Bro", which is...I'm gonna be honest with you all: "It's Everyday Bro" is one of the best examples of a "So Bad It's Good" song I have ever seen. It's a horrible song. None of the members of Team 10 are competent rappers, the beat is garbage, and the lyrics can probably kill your brain cells due to their inanity. One of the members of his posse legitimately thinks England is a city (and was appropriately mocked by the Internet in a series of memes). But that's why I find it hilarious. The fact that somebody honest-to-God thought it was a good song is amusing. Despite most of the internet thinking the song was hot trash (and a handful thinking it's So Bad It's Good), the song got a ton of media attention and views on YouTube. This inspired Jake Paul to make many other songs (all of which are garbage) and even a Christmas EP, titled Litmas.

Yes, Litmas.

I'm going to suffer through it, because what better way to get into the holiday spirit than to completely destroy a (most likely horrible) Christmas album from one of my favorite punching bags? I didn't mention this in the title, but this is another edition of First Impressions, the series where I listen to songs I've never heard, give my opinions, and rate them from 1 to 10. Last week, I did a First Impression of Taylor Swift's Reputation, and even though I can't stand her, I still had hope she could make a decent album. In contrast, the hopes I have for this EP being worthwhile are practically nonexistent. At best, it will probably be So Bad It's Good and at worst it will likely make me want to start smoking crack. Let's just start this monstrosity and get it over with.

1. "12 Days of Christmas" ft. Nick Crompton
Great! We're barely into the EP and I'm already pissed off! "The 12 Days of Christmas" is probably my least favorite Christmas song of all time, even without the Jake Paul remix treatment. And if you think this version is going to change my opinion, you're wrong. The beat sounds like it was produced in GarageBand in 15 minutes. Jake Paul's vocals are drenched in autotune, but the effects don't make him sound any better. If anything, they make him sound worse. This dude just flat-out CAN'T SING. And of course, the lyrics are brain-dead. We all know the story of the original "12 Days of Christmas", where it's just the narrator listing off things they've gotten from their true love. In Mr. Paul's hands, he's receiving:
-12 million brain-dead idiots...I mean subscribers
-11 vloggers vlogging
-10 diamond plaques (as in the plaque YouTube sends you when you get a certain number of subscribers)
-9 reindeer twerking (yes, really)
-8 new puppies (to be fair, puppies are actually a reasonable thing to put on your wish list)
-7 British booties (??????)
-6 Gucci cases (I assume this means phone cases since Jake's an internet celebrity. Does Gucci even make phone cases?)
-Lamborghinis (Not a specific amount, just Lamborghinis. Also the way Jake sings this is the most annoying thing in the world.)
-4 Yellars (Apparently he calls his sunglasses "Yellars". I don't get it either.)
-3 Jake Paul tees (Because he has to plug his merch somewhere)
-Two new baby twins (I don't think anyone who mentions reindeer twerking in their Christmas song is anywhere near mature enough to be a father...but that's none of my business.)
-Chance and Anthony (These are his friends, and if he only gets to see them on the holidays, then they're really cruddy friends.)
Okay, I didn't know what half of that stuff was without the help of Genius, and even with Genius I still don't know what some of them are. My IQ probably dropped 20 points over the course of this song. 1/10
2. "Litmas" by Jake Paul, Team 10 and Slim Jxmmi
The title track is next. This song is called "Litmas", and based off of that wonderful title, you can already tell that it's garbage. Was anyone asking for a trap Christmas song? The beat to this one steals from "Carol of the Bells", which actually makes it sound somewhat Christmassy. It also ruined "Carol of the Bells" for me, which sucks because that's one of my favorite Christmas songs. The chorus of this one is Jake Paul chanting "Christmas is lit, Christmas, Litmas" over and over again until your ears fall off from the sheer horror. Slim Jxmmi from rap duo Rae Sremmurd is featured on this song, and it's like...dude, how'd you go from "Black Beatles" (a song I actually happen to like, thank you very much) to this trainwreck? Jake's rapping is the worst thing about this song, as his bars include referring to himself as "the young Santa Claus" and Mrs. Claus as "his side-chick", as well as the line "My parents are divorced, I made two Christmas lists, it's just so they know not to get the same s**t." Yeah, this one gets a 1/10 for obvious reasons.
3. "Deck the Halls" by Jake Paul, Team 10 and Anthony Trujillo
Dude, I just played this song in my band concert a few weeks ago! Couldn't you have waited a little bit to ruin it for everyone? More badly autotuned singing and rapping on this one, oh joy. Every time Jake Paul sings "bling bling bling bling blaoh" instead of "fa-la-la-la-la" in the chorus in that ever-so-obnoxious way, I just grimace. For whatever reason, there's a reference to "Bad and Boujee" by Migos in the post-chorus, which is...what? The verses are equally mind-numbing, and I can't tell the difference between Jake's voice and Anthony's. There's a line at the end of Anthony's verse where he mentions sneaking off with Mrs. Claus while Santa's not looking, lovely. And the beat is generic, annoying trap. Who wanted a trap version of "Deck the Halls", of all things. Not me, that's for sure. At least it's short. 2/10
4. "Fanjoy to the World"
Let me just get the obvious question out of the way: Fanjoy is the company that makes Jake Paul's merch. THIS MAN REWROTE "JOY TO THE WORLD" TO BE ABOUT JAKE PAUL MERCHANDISE. To quote that Taylor Swift song from last week's post, THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS. The chorus on this one is Jake Paul chanting "buy dat merch" over and over again, because of course it is. I checked out his merch website and A.) not even that cool and B.) overpriced as hell. I can name a million better things to spend $90 than a Jake Paul sweatshirt. But hey, lame merch deserves a lame song. Like that last song, the only good thing about this song is that it's mercifully short. This one gets a 1.5/10 because while it is astonishingly stupid, at least they have the courtesy to only be stupid for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. Thanks, Jake Paul.
5. "Jingle Pauls" by Jake Paul ft. L0gan Paul
"Jingle Bells" is a Christmas classic. "Jingle Pauls" is not. AGAIN: WHO ASKED FOR TRAP VERSIONS OF THESE SONGS? The lyrics to this one are about the same thing as every other song on this EP. It begins with him shouting out his merch again. We just heard a song about your merch, bro, we don't need another one! Then he talks about going in a Tesla and a Lamborghini, his merch, his fans, and everything he's already talked about in every other song. This one is a collab with Jake's brother Logan, except it's not actually Logan. It's Jake pretending to be Logan, and his voice is even more annoying. Dude, you're not Ariana Grande, what makes you think you can do impressions? He ends his verse as Logan by just saying "dab" 16 times until it doesn't even sound like a word. I hate this song. 1.5/10
6. "It's Christmas Day Bro" by Jake Paul, Team 10, and Jerry Purpdrank (ft. Anthony Trujillo, Chance Sutton, Erika Costell, and Nick Crompton)
Naturally, the EP ends with a Christmas version of the so-bad-it's-good staple "It's Everyday Bro". I ironically enjoy the original, but I don't want a Christmas version of it. The lyrics of this one are exactly the same as the original lyrics, except with bad Christmas puns. "Santa Paul" did not give me life, thank you very much. They also rewrote the iconic lyric "England is my city" to be "London is my country", which is trying way too hard to recreate the memetic status of the original. There are seven verses on this thing, and each one of them is equally stupid. Did they really need that many? There are How The Grinch Stole Christmas puns, a boast of "delivering gifts like the Energizer bunny", and I think a reference to Hannah Montana? The original song is wonderfully stupid, but this one is just plain stupid. 1/10

IT'S OVER, FINALLY. Thank God. I'm not even going to list the best and worst songs on here, because they're all the worst song on here. This EP wasted my time, and I blame humanity for rewarding stupidity by letting Jake Paul do this. That's right, it's all of our faults for this. We let this happen. I give this EP a 1.5/10. The only thing it could be used for is for the government to play around the holidays at Guantanamo Bay in order to get prisoners to give up information and suffer. I hate Jake Paul and this EP makes me hate Christmas, which I didn't think was possible. There are billions of Christmas songs out there, and I haven't heard half of them, but I can guarantee they're all better than this.

I'm sorry this was such a negative holiday special, but if you enjoy listening to people roast horrible things, maybe you'll get some joy out of it. Next week, we'll balance out the negatives of this mess with some positive. I'm gonna talk about songs I actually liked next week in my top 10 favorite songs of 2017. I already know it will be really long, so I'm splitting it up into two parts. The first part will be on Wednesday, December 27th, and then I'm trying something new and posting the second part on Thursday, December 28th. Be sure to check those out if you like Positive Stellar! I'm Stellar in Neverland, and I'll see you next week! Peace!

Stellar