Simon Reynolds is a gobshite

Heh. I'm aware that out of context it sounds like a horrible prospect.

It sounds like The Beastie Boys.

Just to clarify - they don't have to be white guys from the Upper East Side.

Good!

so they could be white guys from anywhere in NYC, right?

I'm sure there are good tunes out there and if you're deep into the scene it probably feels like the most important music in the world, but nobody can claim that it's still important in the big scheme of things, so in that broader cultural sense it is "dead".

There is no "big scheme of things." There is no "broader culture" to have a "sense" about. Start over.

My take on the article, btw: I don't think hip-hop is "dead" because I never thought it was "alive" in some sort of huge society-defining way. I don't believe in mass popcult consensus, only in a zillion simultaneous microscenes that occasionally fire mortar shells into each other's trenches. These days I only hear new hip-hop when I click past MTV or MTV2. So maybe there are good records out there but I'm not hearing them...and I don't care.

but mattdc, i think "a lack of a definable narrative and perceived sense of it being vital" is as much an issue of perspective as it ever has been. i knew plenty of people in 01 who felt exactly the same about it that he does now

in other words, less vital to whom?

& dont say "timbaland & jay-z listen to coldplay" lol

things i think are diff about hip hop & disappointing about it in 2009 -- to me it seems a lot less interested in taking risks w/ novelty in order to cross over to a larger stage, many of its key artists content to record for established fan bases rather than feel like pop audience is at stake for them

& of course lil wayne, t.i., gucci, lil boosie all going to jail is like if biggie and pac both went to jail for 2 years in 96

There is no "big scheme of things." There is no "broader culture" to have a "sense" about. Start over.

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Friday, November 27, 2009 5:48 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

My take on the article, btw: I don't think hip-hop is "dead" because I never thought it was "alive" in some sort of huge society-defining way. I don't believe in mass popcult consensus, only in a zillion simultaneous microscenes that occasionally fire mortar shells into each other's trenches. These days I only hear new hip-hop when I click past MTV or MTV2. So maybe there are good records out there but I'm not hearing them...and I don't care.

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Friday, November 27, 2009 5:52 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^so so so otm

Simon's such a big-narrative guy, though, that for him no narrative = nothing happening

this is why i think he's such a terrible journalist tbh, and why he keeps misrepresenting so many scenes and artists. big narrative to whom? who gets to define those narratives? why is a narrative only existent to people who don't really care about a genre? there are tons of big and small narratives, both within hip-hop and w/r/t how it engages with non-hip-hop, happening at the moment. artist-specific, locale-specific, trend-specific...just because you aren't aware of them, which in most cases is because you're not interested in finding out, doesn't mean they're not important.

also i hate the false binary set up between the hip-hop faithful scouring blogs for the latest no-mark mixtape and the rest of the world - it enables fuckwits like reynolds to effectively dismiss and sweep away anyone with an actual rebuttal to him. you're a hip-hop fan, your opinion doesn't matter!

i think the problem is more that hes expecting the 'big narrative' to move a certain way & instead its moving left or right or sideways -- like, if you're looking for a 'massive change' why not consider that gucci released more material in one month this year than tribe called quest released in their entire careers (credit to noz on that observation) -- & the fact that much of it was still novel & creative & adventurous (it was mostly not filler, anyway) implies that we're in a new recording era -- he's come up w/ a way of releasing tons of material that feels kind of like a living body of work, adopted for the economic realities of our times -- how does that not qualify as a big & new direction for popular music? his entire style of prolific recording, of creating interest thru tons of variations on a narrow niche of themes, is pretty novel in the grand scheme imo

i mean isnt this the same thing hes done with uk funky ... "wheres the obvious signs of progress?? house again??" meanwhile the genre follows a kind of less-is-more strategy to 'progress'

I think the problem is that Simon's not pomo enough to get over narratives in the first place.

i am so not a big picture guy. or a prediction guy. so its hard for me to relate sometimes to people who are. or people who are always looking ahead to the new new thing. i think its a personality thing. i can take one record or even one song from another era and make a universe out of it. or for it. but i CAN dig a musical outlook/worldview that is more sociologically inclined or anthro-inclined. but broad sweeping statements and predictions and generalizations about what is happening/what is going to happen rarely do anyone any favors unless they are rigorously researched and thought out over a long period of time.

*applause*

i actually made a prediction a loooooooong long time ago and i don't think it really came true. or if it did it came true in some less obvious way that i didn't pay attention to. in the 90's when indie/undie rap was gaining strength and listeners i thought this might translate into more of a worldwide movement of people making great native language sci-fi rap of all kinds. and maybe people did and i just never heard the albums. i just thought that mo wax/stones throw/co flow/etc would spur people on to make rap music that wasn't, you know, major label rap music. that it would inspire people to make rap in their own image. ( i was really probably just hoping that the japanese would do this since one of my biggest hip-hop influences in the 90's was my major force box set) again, maybe this happened somewhat and i missed out on it or didn't know about the great latvian underground rap explosion.

maybe i should start a thread for the best non-u.s. rap albums of the 90's/00's. (yeah there was grime but there has always been u.k. rap)

I disagree with unperson - I'm still very much interested in the "big scheme of things", in any artform. And it doesn't seem controversial to me to say that all genres have highs and lows, and this isn't a high for hip hop. But the more comments I read on this thread, the more muddled Simon's piece seems. He'd have been on safer ground if he was talking about hip hop as a cutting-edge pop form which creates fascinating, innovative mainstream stars, which it has been for many years and doesn't feel like now, rather than ringing the death knell for the whole genre. deej's argument about Gucci seems fascinating to me, though I don't know enough about him to comment.

what does w/r/t mean?

reynolds is a cockhead

"with reference to"

this isn't a high for hip hop

no, it's been a terrific year for hip-hop. i mean no offence but you even admit that you haven't heard much gucci mane, who's been one of the biggest hip-hop stories of the year?

dj quik & kurupt
gucci mane
nicki minaj
pill
new era
ugk
marco polo & torae
pink dollaz
the bangz
raekwon
young dro
unladylike
jackie chain
kid sister

^^after all these US hip-hop artists across the whole spectrum of hip-hop did in the 09, you honestly can't say it was a bad year for the form. and that's just off the top of my head. maybe you haven't heard them but that's your issue, not hip-hop's.

*after what

there have certainly been v. good records this year but it isn't exactly a vintage '94, '99, '88, '03 type of year.

also ty dorian.

Well I haven't listened to a lot of Gucci Mane because I didn't much like what I have heard. I've heard a good half of that list and only warmed to UGK, DJ Quik & Kurupt and obviously Raekwon. A lot of the rest sounds drab and predictable to my ears, so it's not been a great hip hop year for me. But yes, I'll put my hands up - I let my personal tastes slide into an objective judgement in my previous post. Good job I'm not writing any pieces on the future of hip hop, eh?

a hoy hoy - "ty"?

Sorry - it's obviously thankyou. Thought you meant the British rapper Ty for some reason.

you're throwing up Kid Sister as a reason hip-hop was good in 09?

Also, seriously, real good old man rap like Quik/UGK/Raekwon has like zero bearing on hip-hop at large. It's like saying jazz had a great 09 because Evan Parker is still putting it down

lol i'm a bit of a ukhh stan and even i think ty is a bit rubbish

Also, seriously, real good old man rap like Quik/UGK/Raekwon has like zero bearing on hip-hop at large. It's like saying jazz had a great 09 because Evan Parker is still putting it down

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 27 November 2009 20:57 (22 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the mos def album is dope too

Honestly, pointing at the Quik/UGK/Raekwon/Mos Def axis is the rock critic/ILX/rap-blogger version of hilolarious "YOU'RE JUST NOT LOOKING HARD ENOUGH LISTEN TO REAL SHIT LIKE TALIB KWELI" comments

"Old man rap", that's my shit right there.

Mine too!

But yeah, Raekwon doesn't help anybody's argument. "Hip hop's booming! Just check out this sequel to a 14-year-old album!"

Kid Sister made my rap year!

Conversely. the whole Pill/Freddie Gibbs/Juiceman axis is basically just the rap version of nitpicking over chillwave and glo-fi and, again, has little to no bearing on hip-hop at large.

EVERY SINGLE YEAR is a good year for rap (or any genre, really!) if you look in the right places... But AN ACTUAL GOOD YEAR is when the good stuff is unavoidable.

This is basically what I've been fumbling towards, only really concise and with CAPS

yeah that's really well-put

man if you really wanted a rap is dead in 2009 example that ama show with a lame em and a lame fiddy and a lame timbo lamely limping to the finish line was all the proof you needed. if that was what you were looking for. thank god all the man on man action at the end of the show made you forget about it.

i listened to rap all year and found it fresh, exciting and generally had a great fucking time listening to it. also i do not care if simon reynolds thinks rap is dead. thank you.

It plays into what people are saying about the dearth of black artists on EOY lists. I love it when hip hop is producing such unarguably brilliant singles and albums that any decent critic has to acknowledge them, without any need for special pleading. This year, it really doesn't surprise me that P4K or NME or whoever aren't going apeshit over Pill. If there's one single as flat-out great, as say, TI's What You Know, then I haven't heard it yet, and I'd really love to.

i blame the economy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5FwduDXz6k

A cynical person might think that a lot of this has to do with getting that Euro.

Pill's only put a couple of mixtapes out though hasn't he? Has there even been an album yet?

I meant Trap Going Ham, which is a big hip hop tune that means v little outside its base. Album-wise, it's pretty much old-man rap or nothing, isn't it?

q: is mixtape culture part of the problem for ppl like me who try to pay attention to what's going on but aren't devoted enough to download and plow through a ton of mixtapes? i tend to be at my best when i can go to a store and buy a cd--so i guess i am prob a minority that should not be catered to. i feel like i'm missing a ton of stuff tho.

sup yall. i'm trying to write my end of year list but i don't know what the huge standout Hip Hop songs that had the streets 'going ham' were. is rap dead or something?

If there's one single as flat-out great, as say, TI's What You Know, then I haven't heard it yet, and I'd really love to.

― Dorian (Dorianlynskey), Friday, 27 November 2009 21:23 (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

why hello there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHe18yE2kXM