Sasha Frere-Jones: Really?????

i don't think there's anything wrong with preferring bounce beats to eurodisco, tho postulating it as anything other than a constant need for new (or recycled) rhythmic fuel is probably a mistake.

on the myers piece, i'm always happy to see that dead horse dragged back out for another beating.

the real problem with the sfj piece is that he appears to only be capable of listening to like 3 hip-hop albums a year.

Hip-hop is in a state of permanent decline because Jay-Z continues to make mediocre to awful albums, says SFJ.

there was a good album released in 2008, but that will be the last one.

Does Mary J. Blige really have more personality than Rihanna? I like Rihanna precisely because she has a very specific (and admittedly very limited) vocal persona. I also thought this was more or less the standard critical take on Rihanna. Blige I always have problems with because despite the autobiographical bent of much of her material, she can sometimes seem a little anonymous as a singer - I don't tend to remember specific details of her phrasing like I do Rihannna (or Nina Simone for that matter). Or is the swipe really just the opportunity for Frere-Jones to get in the polemical pairing of Blige and Simone, evoking them as artists of equal stature and importance as a kind of rhetorical tweaking of people otherwise not paying attention?

As far as the overall argument, I think it only holds water if you maintain a very limited notion of what hip-hop is. A certain model and ideal of hip-hop, as represented by Jay-Z or Raekwon, might be on the wane, but hip-hop as represented by the Black Eyed Peas (though I guess they're "pop" now, not hip-hop) is doing just fine. Which might spell the end of civilization, but not the end of hip-hop.

This Myers lad is quite the douche.

He wants 'unaffected English prose' yet he stans for Mervyn Peake?!?! I love Mervyn Peake but, um...

And LOLOLOL @ 19th century literature showing us the 'unaffected'.

tbqf i think some of u guys are totally misreading what hes saying -- hes still rong tho

i have a very limited notion of what hip hop is.

The common reader be damned.

Plain reader too.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer be damned.

hip hop's been dead - insofar as it is neither a vanguard for experimentation nor the template for pop chart success - since at least the early part of this decade

If hip-hop is dead can someone please pry R&B from its cold dead hand?

it has become fashionable, especially among female novelists, to exploit the license of poetry while claiming exemption from poetry's rigorous standards of precision and polish.

h8 these dum sluts

yes very good Lamp I'm quite outraged

hip hop is dead women write poetry think about it

I can't read think about it

and now it turns out roxanne shante isn't even a PhD.

It has become fashionable, especially amongst female rappers, to exploit the licence of ho'etry while claiming exemption from ho'etry's rigorous standards of precision and polish.

hip hop is dead women write poetry think about it

all time HOF post imo

Reptilian overlords keepin' Theodore Dreiser down

i blame floetry

just curious but who's who is misreading, deej? i don't get why hip hop "atomizing" and wandering away from it's original form marks the end of it as thrilling new music. seems that's exactly the sort of thing it should be doing in order to keep from growing stale. he sure is reading a whole lot into a few hip hop albums sounding a bit more dancey; but as call all destroyer said above the albums mentioned in the article are probably the only ones he's listened to all year.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33566

also ew he likes DOA

Reptilian overlords keepin' Theodore Dreiser down

LOL I'm actually reading Dreiser now, reptiles can't stop me

http://blogs.law.yale.edu/blogs/admissions/v_l.jpg

why is that picture a the yale law admissions blog

but as call all destroyer said above the albums mentioned in the article are probably the only ones he's listened to all year.

just a q btw, do you guys seriously believe this or is it a job requirement to say stuff like it

why is that picture a the yale law admissions blog

who do u think is running this country????

john it's just the way the article reads

otm

yeah no I get that but it's one thing to say "weird to me how a guy who clearly hears a lot of [genre] can come away w/those opinions" and another to actually get extend that to fantasy-land conceptions of who's more/less informed

(sorry, the whole "I disagree with someone, therefore he's clearly not in possession of the same information as me" style is a big irritant for me) (LOL along w/lots of other stuff today it seems)

dude i probably listen to <10 new hip-hop albums a year but i would never write something that was pre-framed w/"ever year has ONE BIG RAP ALBUM" which is what he basically does.

i think weve probably talked in the past about how when sf-j writes for the new yorker there's a sense that he dumbs things down a bit but to say that the blueprint 3 can be subbed in for "the state of hip-hop" in 2009 is pretty wack--if anything he should be telling that readership that just like every genre there's a bunch of interesting shit happening year in and year out.

my bad I'm just really contrary today sorry

naw man it's cool :)

SONGS
1. Shuttle “Tunnel (High Rankin Remix)” (Ninja Tune)
2. The Streets “Blinded By The Lights (Nero remix)”
3. Pet Shop Boys “Love Etc.” (EMI)
4. 16 Bit “Chainsaw Calligraphy” (Boka)
5. Miike Snow “Animal” (Fake Blood remix) (RCRD LBL)
6. Jesse McCartney “How Do You Sleep?” f/Ludacris (Hollywood)
7. Maxwell “Pretty Wings” (Sony)
8. Major Lazer “Keep It Going Louder” (Downtown)
9. The Streets “See If They Salute”
10. Miranda Lambert “Dead Flowers” (Sony)
11. FaltyDL “Party/Alpafun” (Ramp)
12. Jason Aldean “This I Gotta See” (Broken Bow Records)
13. Kate Voegele “Inside Out” (Interscope)
14. Tonéx “Fiyah” (Battery/Verity/Zomba)
15. Holly Williams “Mama”
16. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart “Come Saturday” (Slumberland)
17. Metric “Help, I’m Alive” (Metric Music International)
18. Kelly Clarkson “I Do Not Hook Up” (Sony/BMG)

ALBUMS
1. Mastodon “Crack The Skye” (Reprise)
2. Sonic Youth “The Eternal” (Matador)
3. Dirty Projectors “Bitte Orca” (Domino)
4. Sunn O))) “Monoliths & Dimensions” (Southern Lord)
5. Neko Case “Middle Cyclone” (Anti-)
6. Sleigh Bells
7. Grizzly Bear “Veckatimest” (Warp)
8. St. Vincent “Actor” (4AD)
9. Raekwon “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Pt. 2” (Ice H20)
10. Prefuse 73 “Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian” (Warp)
11. Fever Ray (Rabid/Mute)
12. Micachu & The Shapes “Jewellery” (Rough Trade)
13. Harmonia & Eno ’76 “Tracks & Traces” (Grönland)
14. Yeah Yeah Yeahs “It’s Blitz!” (Interscope)
15. DJ Sega “Live at The Bowery Ballroom”
16. Freddie Gibbs “midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik”
17. The-Dream “Love vs. Money” (Def Jam)
18. Lady Gaga “The Fame” (Interscope)
19. Lily Allen “It’s Not Me, It’s You” (EMI/Capitol)
20. Joker “Purple Wow Sound”
21. Vowels “The Pattern Prism” (LOAF)
22. Kleerup (Astralwerks)
23. Miracle Condition (Tizona)
24. Del Marquis “Runaround” (Embryoroom)
25. Here We Go Magic (Western Vinyl)
26. Kate Miller-Heidke “Curioser” (Sony BMG Australia)
27. The Arch Cupcake “Box of Bees” (Patriarch)
28. Brad Paisley “American Saturday Night” (Arista)
29. Mokira “Persona” (Type)
30. Erin McCarley “Love, Save The Empty” (Universal Republic)
31. Vladislav Delay “Tummaa” (Leaf)
32. Udachi & Jubilee “Paypur” EP (Nightshifters)
33. Mika “The Boy Who Knew Too Much” (Casablanca)
34. Esser “Braveface” (Chocolate Industries)
35. Modeselektor “Body Language Vol. 08” (Get Physical Music)

http://www.frontiernet.net/~shirleydelfino/DollPhotos/VeryContraryMary20.jpg

my bad I'm just really contrary today sorry

no you aren't

Now what's this.

(xpost to deej)

i just think it's dumb how this whole trend is based off a couple songs and of all the things the new jay z album. he's calling 2009 the end of hip hop over something it seems he's been noticing a bit in the past few months. if he's heard a lot of other hip hop this year, and i don't doubt he has, it's not like he's figuring any of that into the argument.

wait deej are year end lists supposed to be lists of everything a person has heard? fuck I have been doin it wrong for years

that #1 song is exactly why i dont get dubstep.

im just pointing out his year end list doesnt exactly suggest hes particularly immersed in rap music that the rest of the country is listening to

well, or it suggests, as he is saying outright, that he's not that taken with what he's hearing

I mean this is exactly what I'm talking about - "he doesn't like what I like! he must not have heard what I've heard!" lol wut, if I don't see something on somebody's list I don't assume they're ignorant to its glories

has anyone here listened to that dude from gary indiana? is he any good?

hes good & constructs good albums but as a rapper hes a pretty plain trad-gangster rap dude being pushed by a guy w a day job @ stones throw who apparently knows how to market to the white boy crit market