most pathetic excuse for wordplay in Young Money's "Bedrock"

to be clear i said not good-sounding was the most important thing to me, not fun was just a response to rennavate's post

i think the problem with a lot of the beatdown drake reviews is they try to take dude down on some highfalutin artistic merit shit, when really it's like: his raps are bad and don't sound good.

this is some omar little style "lol the notion of criticism!" shit -- there's nothing wrong with treating drake as a highfalutin artist and criticizing him accordingly

well yeah to an extent it's worth discussing seriously, and i thought your old drake post was good, but he's right that there's a critical mass of anti-drake (and pro-drake) articles this week and even having picked a side both are pretty tiresome to me at the moment

well, i mean obv there's a deluge of opinions right at the moment, but it is an event album

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/jimmy-and-me/Content?oid=4277699

jordan imo i'd say your drake takedown is the most effective of those i've read, because it's the least highfalutin and mostly focuses on deconstructing what is so bad about his raps, and thus expresses what i feel is the actual main bad thing about him as an artist. many of the album reviews going around, and it's like you would have to engage with his lyrics on an unnecessarily profound level to get shit like

Seemingly significant personal events like his parents' divorce, his grandmother's move to a nursing home or his girlfriend's abortion are treated as if Drake were the only one on earth to ever experience such trauma. There's no depth or exploration of these occurrences, either; they're simply noted and then brushed to the side.

shit like this feels unnecessary to me because his most heinous offence is something much simpler, albeit more significant.

I sort of really want to write about the fact that Drake is CANADIAN, too. How the fuck is a CANADIAN the most buzzed about rapper right now? (Of course, him being most buzzed about is contentious, I know). It's a pretty big deal; Drake has already pretty much become the biggest Canadian rapper of all time... there's an interesting analysis there waiting to be done, think.

Seemingly significant personal events like his parents' divorce, his grandmother's move to a nursing home or his girlfriend's abortion are treated as if Drake were the only one on earth to ever experience such trauma. There's no depth or exploration of these occurrences, either; they're simply noted and then brushed to the side.

yeah this is an affliction of thinking that rap has to be about "something"

I dunno about that. I think the problem being highlighted there is that he is trying to say "something", but has nothing to say about the "something".

he doesn't have to be the most perceptive and substantial rapper, it could at least be witty or cool. i'm not saying critics who try and take down drake for being vacuous are wrong because 'hey it's rap music', but to me that's peeling back layers of something way uglier and more important. like, calling a dude out on having sub par jay leno monologue raps is more cutting and meaningful to me than how he doesn't have anything insightful to say about his girlfriend's abortion. it's okay to knock him for both, but i think the focus should be on the former.

The greater point is that he's not successful at either of these things.

http://www.myimgs.net/images/wsdc.jpg

yeah this is an affliction of thinking that rap has to be about "something"

― Youve Beenexposed (J0rdan S.), Thursday, June 17, 2010 8:18 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what rap that is good isnt about 'something'

mentioning Pill proves my point btw

http://drvee.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/strawman.jpg

You are quite literally the first person to mention him on this thread.

I mean, shit, you are basically trolling.

who, deej? never!

what rap that is good isnt about 'something'

loads of rap, good rap, isn't based on what is being said but on how it's said. so rakim has a few love raps and socially conscious numbers but basically sez he's dope in extraordinary ways. alley boy and young dro sit up in big rims this year. if chuck d or cormega or whoever didn't rap well it wouldn't really matter what they rapped about.

*on big rims

well if there's anyone that i would say wouldn't be as revered as a rapper without his subject matter and POV it's Chuck D, but yeah point taken. i mean if someone told me a Redman record wasn't "about" anything I'd be like OK i guess but who the fuck cares?

http://www.tradebit.com/usr/djmixtapez/pub/9002/The-Mixtape-About-Nothing.jpg

from fact magazine:

Thank Me Later is as strong a debut as the rap genre has had for years now, and with it Drake deserves to be popular and acclaimed to boot. His story might be different, his style might be quirky, but his relevance right now can’t be denied; this album could be as important for hip hop as Merriweather Post Pavillion was for contemporary indie rock.

i mean what is this the global challops conspiracy?

clearly it's the skinny jeans Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

if it was just the critics who were rating this thing then i'd just put it down to ignorant critics still searching for the "big Hip Hop record" that didnt come out last year. but then theres the rappers co-signing drake too. don't get it

i think the rappers co-signing are more understandable/predictable than the critics. dudes in the industry are basically a bunch of yes men who'll rally around whoever it makes sense to feature on their next single etc. anyway.

i mean a critic can at least have an opinion on shit without any real consequences most of the time. if a famous rapper doesn't like or publicly endorse another famous rapper it quickly becomes "beef." i think Jay-Z might be just kind of passively going along with the Drake thing because anytime he didn't vocally throw support behind someone like Game or Wayne when they were coming up it turned into some ridiculous media circus.

yeah that is true i suppose. whole thing is quite depressing. i'm left hoping jeezy or t.i. drops some jaw-dropping summer album and the industry can actually rally around something worthwhile.

tbh T.I. could drop a Drake cover album and I would enjoy that more than Drake himself, because I really can't stand the way dude sounds

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/clicktrack/2010/06/album_review_drake_thank_me_la.html

Chris Richards (ex Q and Not U and now Wash. Post critic)likes it:

His concluding paragraphs:

Though he's been championed as incumbent rap royalty, Drake's strongest analog resides in a neighboring star system. Her name is Taylor Swift.

For generations, both country singers and rappers have traded with the same currency: the notion of authenticity. Accordingly, both Drake and 20-year-old Swift are pushing their respective genres forward by retooling what it means to be "real." He gets his heart crushed in the tabloids, she gets her heart crushed after sixth-period Biology. Both can flip these painful personal experiences into supremely pleasurable hooks.

Yet as similar as they are, Swift's songbook galvanizes fans with its youthful charm. Drake's output feels far more downcast, much more remote.

He's tugging on a strand of pop music that feels both magical and rare - the kind that brings us all together by reminding us that we're all alone.

christ what is with this theme of drake's universal relatability

the record these ppl want this to be was released last year by kanye west!

xpost to some dude: also his management were tight with jay era roc-a-fella

the richards review was upthread

yeah obviously Jay has personal connections to the guy via Kanye and other people too. i'm just saying i think Jay is probably tired/wary of "get out of the way old man" friction with new stars and is just trying not to rock the boat at this point.

supposed to have a phone call w/ Richards today abt something unrelated on the terms of "let's not talk about Drake" haha

if there was an article interviewing some emo cult of drake fans that'd be one thing, but it really just reads like critics are taking (for the sake of the argument) tolerable possible-platinum and trying to find wrestle poetry from it and its success. the reviews praise him so much for his complex miserabilism without really suggesting what THEY get out of it, instead saying WE do - something apparently proven by his success even though that could easily be credited to famous friends and TV stardom.

these reviews are ridic

yeah it must be an industry thing cos drake is hardly consistent with jay's otherwise impeccable taste xp

I realize critics aren't usually comfortable getting personal in reviews, but this "when drake weeps, we weep" shit really does require a little openness on the part of the writer.

i hate to say it, but there appears to be a lot of relating to a middle-class d-bag among critics.

the p4k ending is "his struggle is our struggle and so our struggle is cool"

comparing drake to taylor and basing it on assumptions of authenticity is the dumbest bullshit.

I hate to pull the "critics overpraising popular shit to keep their jobs" card because it's a real tired one usually used to ignore a writer's argument, but when the argument appears to be "we are all entitled, miserable assholes and Drake is our spokesman" you kind of want to give them a cynical out.

I guess critics didn't have to write "we are all rick springfield" back in the day because there were enough worthwhile, successful-enough artists to not bother with corporate rock the way they do now with corporate rap. Unless they did! I wasn't there.

honestly although there's always going to be some hivemind stuff going on with a lot of critics, i don't think it's fair at all to say anyone is toeing the line to keep their job. i mean unless you work for Rolling Stone and are trying to pan the new Springsteen or are at some irrelevant little site or local paper that only prints positive reviews, nobody's writing raves to avoid getting fired.

haha yeah i know, its usually more of a "drinking the kool-aid because we like the taste of kool-aid" thing than "drinking the kool-aid because otherwise my editor will shoot me" thing. it's just...wow, this kool-aid.

http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/2009/7/68%20oh%20yeah.jpg

what did you think of the record, forks? since this is now the drake thread i guess

et tu, juzwiak? http://fourfour.typepad.com/fourfour/2010/06/the-evolved-male.html

still haven't cracked it; I'm behind on my listening by about a month. Should I go ahead and youtube listen and get it out of the way you figure?