[Editor's note: Why This Song Sucks determines why particular tracks blow using science. It appears on West Coast Sound every Wednesday.]

See also: The Knux and Kid Cudi perform at Siren Studios, September 24, 2011

Song: The Knux's “Run,” featuring Kid Cudi

History: Dang.

Everyone <3's The Knux. Including us. Especially us. They are L.A.'s gorgeous alt-hop twosome. They have cool hair. They wear jean jackets. Their second album Eraser came out yesterday.

They make music that makes you want to run as fast as you can. They have a (disguised) stylized nihilism that, at times, encapsulates hip-hop's new zeitgeist perfectly, even more readily than, say, the tired gangsterisms of Florida's biggest mistake (Plies), and maybe even as capably as their accidental savant (Ricky Ross). But they are not infallible.

Here on “Run” with their sordid, uncommitted guitars, with Kid Cudi's pointy shoes, and with their homogenization of the vibrant rap bailiwick that made them so vital three years ago, they are fallible like a motherfucker.

Morphology: “Run” is kissing cousins with the raunchier, decidedly more ambitious “She's So Up,” the first track from Eraser.

Quick Aside: “Run” might be the quickest retread of a song since whatever Pitbull's last two songs about culos and boats were. If you're going to redo one of your own songs, you should wait AT LEAST three years to do so. Oh, BTW, Drake's Take Care in stores soon.

Cogent Evidence: The video is enormously entertaining. Watch it above. It is linear and spiraling and stars an attractive woman (cool) who shows her boobs (cool) but does not clean her vagina after peeing (not cool). Yet it does not mask the bruising banality of the song itself. The chorus:

I said she's gonna run, run, run; that girl's gonna run.

Run, run, run; that girl's gonna run.

Run, run, run; that girl's gonna run.

(And she's gonna run.) Run, run, run; that girl's gonna run.

She may be going to run, but she's not really doing anything. She was probably too skinny in middle school. Her name is probably Jennifer. She probably spells it Jenipher.

Scientific Analysis: Via the site for Harvard's Science Center for Dissecting Knux Songmanship, this graphic proves precisely how uninspiring her devised existence is.

law logo2x b

What's more, when compared to the antagonist from “She's So Up,” the most apt historical analog for “Run,” the linearity of Jenipher's existence is found to be precisely 300 percent deficient. To wit:

“She's So Up” Chorus (via the occasionally unsturdy Metro Lyrics)

She's so hot, she's so up*. Yeah she keeps me moving around.

She's so hot, she's so up. Yeah she keeps me moving around.

In graph:

law logo2x b

*It's hard to tell if what's being sung is “She's so hot” or “she's so down.” Science has not solved all riddles, bro.

Conclusions:

(a) The Knux is good.

(b) “Run” is not.

(c) Showing one's boobs but not cleaning one's vagina after urinating is the same amount of sexy as not showing one's boobs but cleaning one's vagina after urinating.

Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.