Lana Del Rey

why do people keep calling her "gangsta"?

adjective performed well in the focus groups

her producer also produced this http://t.co/MZykcyLW

Nice production.

xp She called herself the "gangsta Nancy Sinatra" despite being considerably less "gangsta" than Nancy Sinatra.

that's all it takes?
okay, i'm the "gangsta david byrne".
did she rob a bank? shoot somebody? does she sell drugs? own a gun? do words have no meaning? wtf?

it's all contextual, like within her social group of people in the connecticut suburbs, she was the gangsta

Translation: "I enjoy both the music of Nancy Sinatra and hip hop and I thought this would be a cute, quotable phrase. I regret to say I have never actually committed a felony and apologise for any confusion."

okay, i guess those both kind of make sense, but why do other people use that?

also, yeah, calling yourself the "gangsta nancy sinatra" is like calling yourself the "jewish woody allen"...

caramanica, as i said on twitter, is the dude who gifted us a PRRs profile piece in the NYT. RIP music journalism

tbf that was more a piece of fiction than journalism

i want a buzza profile in the nyt tbh

how many times in this thread has the phrase "most photographed barn in america" been used

where was it that she called herself "gangsta Nancy sinatra" again? wasn't it on some Facebook page? could it be possible that she herself had nothing to do with that tagline?

she has it etched on her gun

What I find disingenuous about the NYT "review" is that like most US critics he's made up his mind to bury her but he holds the likes of HRO at arm's length as if he's not basically saying the same thing. I'd respect him a lot more if he included himself in the tally of hypocrites in the last paragraph.

"it's all contextual, like within her social group of people in the connecticut suburbs, she was the gangsta"

OMG, so was i!

nancy sinatra kinda lost some gangsta cred after she started hanging out with morrissey. despite his skinhead affiliations.

"it's all contextual, like within her social group of people in the connecticut suburbs, she was the gangsta"

OMG, so was i!

― scott seward, Wednesday, January 25, 2012 2:54 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

step 2 - spend the next 5 yrs in name negotiations w/ attys
step 3 - profit

Scotti La Rue - Born To Cry

she's from lake placid, ny, but please continue.

my aunt and uncle live in tupper lake! we are practically family. my aunt was a pretty gangsta paddle tennis player in her day.

i haven't spent much time in northern new york state. it's practically canada to me. my NYS is the hudson valley, woodstock, and the southern tier.

she went to a prep school in CT, the Kent School.

lmao i love that ppl know her entire biography & can post about it

"her 7th grade spanish teacher was ms. fernandez"

, ms. fernandez was known as the 'gangsta' professor at the kent school'

"ms fernandez was not her real name; her government name was carol snipes but her 9 months in guatemala in 1987 inspired her to embrace a new moniker and a new life. ms murphy-fernandez was not a native speaker."

oops i failed that joke by not changing murphy to snipes
oh well

"how many times in this thread has the phrase "most photographed barn in america" been used"

none but it was obliquely reference in an article posted upthread.

We're the most photographed barn in america (Whoa-oh!)
We're the most photographed barn in america (Whoa-oh!)
Everybody live for the music,
Video gaaaaaames

thats gangsta

Can't tell if this NYT piece is meant to be a review of the album or not but if so then he might want to try discussing the music for more than a couple of paragraphs, fun though talking about memes and quoting Brian Williams doubtless is.

sans brian william reference, this is basically my response to every music review ever.

setting aside the redundancy of "gangsta nancy sinatra" (idk maybe she should've gone with the gangsta lesley gore), the phrase makes sense in the context of hearing the entire album.

when I say "gangsta" I'm thinking in macro-genre terms here. not only gangsta but gangster too (i.e. all 3 scarfaces). a pop culture icon celebrating the pursuit of status, power, and money, with an undercurrent of existential sadness - hurtling towards doom, prison or the grave. dark side of the american dream stuff.

she's not toting a gun, but LDR is shamelessly obsessed with fame and status and power and money and kicks, as openly avaricious as any scarface, but with the same noirish tone that acknowledges where the fast times will end up - heartbreak, solitude, addiction, death. she's exploiting a femme mirror of gangsterism where her gun is her body, and she will use her talents, natural or un, to get what she wants, surrendering to suffer in whatever psychic trap that path leads her to. and that's not me doing the NYT thing and reading extramusical cues, this is what she puts out there lyrically.

money is the reason we exist / everybody knows it / it's a fact / kiss kiss

plus she does in fact utter the words "how do ya like me now?"

as I said above, when this stance is implicit it works really well for her, but when it's explicit the material falls flat. frustrating cause you can see the target that was being shot at, I kind of wish she had nailed it.

that line is so so bad

there are so many bad lines on this album

it is hard to imagine a line worse than that line

there's a potentially unique and interesting vision at play here, but the aesthetic chops required to pull it off are not present

xps o gimme a minute

money is the reason we exist / everybody knows it / it's a fact / kiss kiss

ha you can sing that to the "heaven is a place on Earth" part of the chorus to "Video Games"

how bout this

carmen carmen
staying up til mornin'
only 17 but she walks the streets so mean

it's alarming truly
how disarming we can be
eating soft ice cream
coney island queen

only 17 but she walks the streets so mean, I mean, c'mon

think that's a lou reed lyric tbh

All the colored girls
The colored girls sing
Video gaaaaaames

lol

'money is the reason we exist / everybody knows it / it's a fact / kiss kiss"

this reminds me of the Countess' song "money can't buy you class" from real housewives of NYC

ladies and gentlemen, this is the countess

elegance is learned
learned my friend
video gaaaaaames

all these bad lyrics are rendered in lush folds of dreamy technicolor pop, that swooning shit can make any kind of pap pop in a 16 yo's bedroom, this album will be widely quoted in high school yearbooks

(do they still print yearbooks? or is it all on fb now?)

what sets LDR apart is her shamelessness - it's the kind of shamelessness that makes pop stars

"all the terrible things you think about me are true, because I told you all about them"

^ not an LDR lyric, but I will license it to her for a small fee

then you'll have Morrissey coming after you

did I just unconsciously quote moz