tumblr rapper kitty pryde

no, it but it does make it "bad rap" according to whatever evaluation criteria they're using.

the novelty argument is only tangentially related. "good rap" could be novel too, though likely in other ways.

Thanks very insightful way to say nothing

i don't see any reason for this conversation to be prosecuted in such a belligerent manner. it's exhausting and depressing.

it seems to me that KP's music has certain merits of its own, independent of whether it succeeds or fails as rap music (as evaluated by rap experts). the fact that it's "bad rap" isn't even a particularly damning criticism, so long as those other merits are sufficiently substantial. it struck me very strongly when first listening to this music that those "other merits", to the extent that they exist, are probably not best evaluated by grown-up music fanatic dudes. especially not when their response is limited to sneering dismissal.

that's not a slam, and it's certainly not directed at anyone itt

i think the most garbage-y thing about this is that the music doesn't really do anything - there is a rhythm to her lyrics/delivery but the backing music is seriously lacking in that department.

she's got like one original production, the rest is her finding beats and rapping over them. we'll see what happen now that people are going to work with her.

"justin bieber's initials on all my winter clothes" is definitely a phrase for me right now

This shit about "rap experts" is super condescending btw, imo this fails as good music pt blank, not nec by "rap standards". As if ppl who like rap are.so tunnel-vision that they couldn't possibly see the world in an unblinkered manner

fwiw, i was only talking about the relationship of KP to "good rap music" because others in the thread framed the conversation that way. makes more sense to me to talk about it simply as "music" in a general sense.

i guess i disagree that this stuff "fails as good music" mostly because that seems like such a strange claim. it should suffice to say that you don't like it. i'm not a fan, but i think she does certain things reasonably well. for one thing, she tells a good story. she communicates time, place, character, attitude and culture effectively. she's at least half capable of riding the beat, though she's not spinning my head with the technique or anything. as a rapper, she establishes and maintains a narrative identity and point of view, one that seems authentic and is delivered with a measure of wit and self-awareness. this doesn't make her great, but given the momentary novelty of her voice and persona, i can sort of see the appeal.

whether or not her voice & style sound nice is the big make or break, and that's where i excuse myself from consideration. they don't work for me, but rather than write her off, i wonder whether teenage girls are better able to relate...

vahid's attitude itt = "u guys had your fun with this 'popism' lark but we all know serious dude music is the only type that can be taken seriously and all this girly stuff is OBVIOUSLY dogshit RIGHT" and as such a million times more reprehensible than kitty pryde

lex you are not a woman

this thing you do where you co-opt the rage women feel at the fact that female musicians are usually dismissed as artists to defend whatever random pop song you're into this week is nagl

that isn't what i do, here or elsewhere

but if you're fine with the "OBVIOUSLY this is horseshit and we don't even need to argue why because it's OBVIOUS" line being peddled by vahid itt i guess that's ok?

That's not a good look either. And also not my point. My point is that the way you rep for female artists verges on feminist rage puppetry sometimes.

i think that's really inaccurate and given how little our paths cross on ilx i'd also hazard a guess you don't really know what you're talking about w/r/t me. i rep for artists i enjoy.

The fact that you rep for artists you enjoy in this particular way is exactly the issue here. I'm really tired of seeing you (and yes, I have seen you frequently) using this line of argument with people like Kitty Pryde when it's not something that you can actually be invested in the way I am or any other woman is. If your issue is that you think Kitty Pryde has quality that's being dismissed, then talk about that quality. You, as a man, really shouldn't be using this "she's being dismissed for being a girl" reasoning unless someone is being blatantly sexist about her. It's otherwise up to her female fans to call out sexism, frankly. Otherwise it reads like you are using the politics and rage of issues that don't belong to you to defend your taste.

telling anyone not to call out sexism because it's not an issue which "belongs to them" is the thing that's really not a good look imo

vahid's attitude itt = "u guys had your fun with this 'popism' lark but we all know serious dude music is the only type that can be taken seriously and all this girly stuff is OBVIOUSLY dogshit RIGHT" and as such a million times more reprehensible than kitty pryde

― liberté, égalité, beyoncé (lex pretend), Sunday, May 13, 2012 10:33 AM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I control-f'd for examples of this but couldn't find??

well people didn't literally say that

This seemed pretty true to me albeit hardly truth-bomb true:

think it's okay to criticize music made by teenagers for being teenage, i think it's pretty clear that there's stuff "for kids" that reflects themes adults can relate to (finding nemo) and stuff "for kids" that's just bullshit for small minds (gi joe), similarly i think there's stuff by teenagers that has depth and stuff that doesn't

the idea that teenagers shouldn't be judged by adult standards is just ... teenage

― the late great, Sunday, May 13, 2012 12:08 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Of course I am an adult who relates to themes expressed in the teenage-era music of Ashlee Simpson, Taylor Swift et. al. Maybe vahid would say I've gotten him wrong? I don't know what he thinks about teenpop.

who am i to say my dog shouldn't eat his own poop? after all, he has radically different criteria than me.

― the late great, Sunday, May 13, 2012 12:16 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what did churchill say?

"if you're young and rockist you don't have a heart, if you're old and popist you don't have a brain"

― the late great, Sunday, May 13, 2012 12:19 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh i didn't realise you were counting empty trolling.

if i didn't count empty trolling why would i even talk about vahid

I think the first comment makes more sense in context though.

It's right to say that teenpop (and other teen-made popular music) that succeeds does so on the basis of the same kind of criteria as anything else. It cannot be excused or dismissed on the basis that teenagers' brains are different.

I simply don't buy that adults can't relate to the experience of being a teenager. Sure, a lot of them don't want to, but that's a different thing.

I don't think it's fundamentally different to the way a lot of people talk about rom-coms. The role of age as some kind of cultural barrier is way overrated.

I don't understand how contenderizer can't see that his "this is by and for teenage girl culture" argument falls apart with "1,600 twitter followers"

if someone just started becoming famous literally less than a week ago then pulling up "statistics" that "prove" who their audience is or how big it is or will be is pretty ridiculous

1,701 followers now ;)

^famous

i still don't quite understand why understanding something's importance to "teen culture" and still thinking it's water-weak bullshit are incompatible ideas to hold at the same time.

ftr i have no real aesthetic or sociological opinion about tumblr rapper kitty pryde.

this whoel thing is very much https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7zFFmk80w4

caramanica always throws off the hype cycle

god damn i love Atom. he did one of my favourite shows ever back in the day. can we just turn this thread into an Atom youtubes one please? ok

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynFEQdh9hpg&feature=related

i interview atom and the package for a friends zine once

meanwhile the "cracker might be the police" has been intermittently stuck in my head for the past 24 hrs.

― sarahell, Saturday, May 12, 2012 11:14 PM (Yesterday)

the best is when you can employ the phrase irl

you know lex, that's not what i'm saying at all, and i'm sorry if i offended you by casually using you as an example, it was insensitive and to be honest it was not even about you. that said, i recall your advocacy of the paris hilton album on ILM as the point that i started to not be on board w/ popism anymore and i really started to feel like supporting particular stuff just to make a populist critical statement was actually a thing, not that i'm saying i have proof that's what you were up to, but just that i started to suspect that this might be lurking just under the surface of the nylpm "everything is great!" stance.

though i could just as easily have picked, for example, the village voice crew and their advocacy of certain country acts as a thing too. or, more to the point, i could have picked myself, because i used to give a big pass to a wide swath of rather crappy commercial dance hits on more or less the same grounds (though i still stand by some of those choices).

and to be really really clear, the dogshit line has nothing to do with comparing music by girls to dogshit, or even kitty pryde's music. to be honest, i haven't even listened to a single kitty pryde track, and if you scan through here i haven't even said anything about her music. i'm just saying that the argument that "oh, well other people have different criteria than you so you can't judge" is a lame argument that can easily be taken to stupid extremes.

i could just as easily have said something like "oh well, skrewdriver fans have their own criteria, only racist skinheads can truly judge its merit" but as we all know bringing up nazis is rather overdone and anyway i spent most of yesterday playing with my dog so it was on my mind.

well, that's not true, i've looked at some of the typed-up lyrics and gone "UH"

but that's not something i do only with female teenage rappers

nyt is really ahead of the curve this year

i mean i realize that i get your goat a lot lex so how about i just lean on other posters who don't to explain what i've been trying to get at

i still don't quite understand why understanding something's importance to "teen culture" and still thinking it's water-weak bullshit are incompatible ideas to hold at the same time.

ftr i have no real aesthetic or sociological opinion about tumblr rapper kitty pryde - strongo

and

It's right to say that teenpop (and other teen-made popular music) that succeeds does so on the basis of the same kind of criteria as anything else. It cannot be excused or dismissed on the basis that teenagers' brains are different - tim

and something deej said upthread about not overly romanticizing the mystical qualities of being a teenager

if you're curious tim, as far as teen-pop goes i'm not sure i like anything that only teens and particularly daring critics like so i don't really know what teen-pop means. as whiney astutely pointed out, teen-pop in america is as likely to mean screamo or glam metal as it does the r&b-type stuff that a lot of ilm posters are into. i really like lady gaga and destiny's child but i'm not sure those count, can't say i'm much into yr disney channel stuff like miley cyrus and selena gomez

"so i don't really know" should be "and i don't really know"

as far as my trolling on this thread goes i think its an appropriate corrective to the "use big words" and "act really cerebral and condescending" strategy

i'll admit that the genres i do like are dominated by serious dudes, but much like the field i work in (math and science education) i don't think women are under-represented in those fields because there's something about those fields that is intrinsically opposed to women

or to look at it another way, looking at a field where women are over-represented in higher education (national literatures), i don't think you can say it's because national literatures represent the interests of women more than science and engineering

i think that line of argument often gets pushed w/r/t music and i think it's dumb

I simply don't buy that adults can't relate to the experience of being a teenager. Sure, a lot of them don't want to, but that's a different thing.

this is otm, and my approach itt has reflected the fact that i personally can't relate - along with my realization that what keeps me out is precisely the convincingly articulated teen-girl-ness that's so obviously KP's initial hook point as a tumblr-blip novelty act. the tone of voice, cadence, subject matter, attitude and language repel me not because they're "bad" (they aren't), but because they're irritating to me in same way that actual teenagers are. my initial response was outright dismissal: "what the fuck is this bullshit?"

after rejecting KP, i was brought up short by the "tommy cantwell" lines that johnny crunch posted (and the lyrics of "justin beiber" on rapgenius). they aren't brilliant by any means, but they're more clever and self-aware than i'd initially assumed. this realization didn't incline me to become a kitty pryde fan, but it did make me think about the fact that we often use the language of "quality" to describe cultural affinities and oppositions. this can seem to make sense when we and the artists in question seem to share cultural values, when the playing field is mutually understood, but it doesn't work anywhere near so well when the cultural gaps are large. rockism fails because not all music can or should be evaluated by a single set of standards.

i guess i'm more interested in saying how art does or doesn't work (and according to what standards) than in simply passing judgment: "this is shit" vs "this is great" or w/e.

We let fashion magazines run rap media & let fashion labels distribute rap LPs, then act shocked when skinny white girls are the hot new rappers

And caucasian women who CAN actually rap [youtube.com/watch?v=FxZbpb…] get NO ATTENTION because they don't look like American Apparel models

― thommys got bendz (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, May 10, 2012 1:21 PM (3 days ago)

i suspect that a lot of KP-hate arises from exactly this kind of thinking, from assumptions about the reasons behind her momentary small-pond "celebrity". i don't fault those assumptions, necessarily. it seems to me that whiney's making a valid point, even as he deliberately sidesteps the things that might be interesting about KP as an individual and an instance. note, however, that his criticism has little to do with KP herself. instead it focuses mostly how she's supposedly perceived by others.

if someone just started becoming famous literally less than a week ago then pulling up "statistics" that "prove" who their audience is or how big it is or will be is pretty ridiculous

― some dude, Sunday, May 13, 2012 7:01 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but isnt this exactly the problem, how she's becoming famous

at a certain tipping point, exposure = famous

I have more followers than kittypryde, if anyone wants to interview me about subverting the dominant paradigm of hip hop my just hit me up via ilx mail

but isnt this exactly the problem, how she's becoming famous

at a certain tipping point, exposure = famous

― man down (D-40), Sunday, May 13, 2012 2:58 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

that has nothing to do with what my post was actually about, but sure ok

well, i was saying that's why it makes sense to bring up 1600 twitter followers, im calling into question its newsworthiness

whiney's assertion was that the statement of "this is by and for teenage girl culture" is negated by her having only 1600 followers and not more, i thought that was silly, you're on some other shit and i'm not interested, go on without me.

i'd still think it was of and for teens even if no one but kitty pryde ever heard it. that's just my take though.

note, however, that his criticism has little to do with KP herself. instead it focuses mostly how she's supposedly perceived by others.

This is pretty much all Whiney ever does, at least on ILM (I don't read Spin - a magazine that puts Waka Flocka Flame on the cover is not courting me as a reader). I'm not even sure he's actually capable of listening to a record and forming his own opinions about it anymore, if he ever was; his obsession with zinging others for having the "wrong" opinions (especially when those others are pretty much demographically identical to him) has withered any critical faculties he might once have possessed.

mc kitty barman