Erykah Badu: C /D, S&D

Ry4n W. Bradley should look up the first-week sales of Embryonic and Return of the Ankh.

no one looks good in this exchange, really sad badu is involved at all tbh

eh they debuted at #8 and she debuted at #4, it's not like they're not in the same basic bracket of success by almost any standard (xpost)

Sales, not chart position.

A funny thing to say, regardless.

yeah i mean they're 2 artists who have different enough fanbases that when one mentions the other half the people listening to "who?"

Ankh: 110K

Embryonic: 32K

Thank you for reviving Badu's career, Flaming Lips.

xpost

has badu retweeted you yet

i wonder if garry shandling still has s1ocki blocked for very gently mocking shandlings retweeting ppl complimenting him, which i still think is odd but apparently it's the present day equiv of an autograph or whatever. 'can i get a RT for my birthday' also creeps me out.

i mean in the 90s when there were just occasional musicians who were really accessible and participated in message boards and stuff, 16 year old me would get pretty geeked out about any guy from a band i listened to responding to an e-mail. and granted, going into a profession where those kinds of interactions are commonplace may have accelerated me becoming a little more blase about it, but yeah i don't know how the novelty of it all hasn't worn off for most people.

because it's still a novelty, man.

trying to be the king of meme music with all his FOUR DAY LONG SONGS FEATURING KE$HA WOAH DUDE

i feel you, but haven't they been doing this sort of thing all along (zareeka etc)? one person's creative high-concept release is another's crass gimmick (see also bjork).

the flaming lips are no bjork

when I get drunk I run like busta rhymes in that one vid and say bjork like the rza

tho when I do it I sound like schwarzenegger

trying to be the king of meme music with all his FOUR DAY LONG SONGS FEATURING KE$HA WOAH DUDE

i feel you, but haven't they been doing this sort of thing all along (zareeka etc)? one person's creative high-concept release is another's crass gimmick (see also bjork).

― 40oz of tears (Jordan), Wednesday, June 6, 2012 9:57 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah i totally see what he's doing now as consistent with the band's history, in terms of chasing some kind of fun new idea, it's just become kind of grotesque at some point. jack white's become very relentlessly meme-y over the years too.

I'm gonna throw up, ugggghh this guy.

what's ugly about it is his whole bangbus HAW HAW WE FUCKED THAT BITCH OVER attitude

Yeah, this has gotten a whole new level of ugly.

what looks like trying too hard to people who think about pop culture all day long just looks like success to people whose engagement isn't as deep-game

― decrepit but free (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, June 6, 2012 8:48 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

one of the most enlightening / enlightened things I've ever read on ilx tbh. very eloquently sums up my 'Hulk smash'-level rage when I see dudes on stage dancing for chicken and making bank doing it.

dancing...for...chicken...?

Chewing on the expression "dancing for chicken" xp

http://resurreccionepiscopal.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/dancing_chicken.gif

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

^absolute first thing that came to mind

I thought chicken-dance but nobody wants to see that

now i really hope If Assholes comes back and explains "dancing for chicken" because i'm so mystified by it. like the best guess is that it's kind of like some randomly specific variation on 'sing for your supper'?

I confess I googled it, thought I was behind on chicken-related slang

As a director I am unimpressed... As your fellow artist I am uninspired

i am really glad she went there with this. like it wasn't just exploitative, it was a really shitty video. they were doing they're usual 'omg kitschy AND challenging' thing, which is what it is (and it seemed to even be what she expected), but the execution/production was just embarrassing. so tasteless

the video would have been been perfect if they just did the blowfly version

http://open.spotify.com/track/3fxjEEwnvYWHmVkbOk3sXd

Jesus Christ you guys, do none of you remember this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkxvxV-S4wM

oh god those wayne coyne fan tweets making me more livid than anyone should be this early in the morning

ha i hadn't noticed whether badu was RTing her rallied masses as well. i want to be precious and suggest a distinction - between criticising, & then referencing your support, & being criticised, then relying on yr audience's reflexive defence - but i'm probably just being a badu fan here. the most reassuring thing about this def the sign that she isn't totally engaged w/the weak collaboration. she's making a record w/flying lotus, iirc, so that'll be nice.

Does anyone know anything beyond that Twitter back-and-forth? There's clearly quite a bit of backstory needed here. 'As a woman I feel violated' is kind of a heavy thing to throw out when we don't have any idea where or how exactly the communication breakdown occurred.

the most reassuring thing about this def the sign that she isn't totally engaged w/the weak collaboration.

What about last week, when she was enthusiastically RTing Coyne about it?

The whole thing could be some kind of set up, I guess.

What about last week, when she was enthusiastically RTing Coyne about it?

^^^

people are going to believe what they already had decided to believe in a situation like this: if you liked Eryka Badu & not the Flaming Lips, you're going to insist that she shares your estimation of them & did all along (even though her long piece insists that she digs their work, still). what actually went down here isn't something anybody not directly involved is actually going to know: Badu liked the idea and got buyer's remorse when she saw the video? Badu liked the idea and people in her camp hated it when they saw it and told her "put some distance between yourself & this," and she told the Lips "I'm going to need some plausible deniability on this"? Lots of complicated shit goes on between artists & management & publicists & handlers & friends-in-camp, etc., and if, when an artist speaks to the public, you ever think "he/she's shooting from the hip here," you're naive, unless the artist is somebody crazy like Britney. It's not "a set up," but the stuff people are responding to is just the outward resolve on something that nobody's actually going to know the details about. attributing lone-actor agency to a successful artist is some believing-in-the-Wizard shit imo

Wow you are totally off-base and historically incorrect there, aero.

That is, there are so many examples of regrettable, retractable A-list tweeting, it seems impossible to me that it could've come from anywhere but a single person with too much caffeine, alcohol. Furthermore I can't even imagine a world where Erykah's rant was precluded by a phone call with an e-mail from management saying "we've gotta burn this". She's tweeting rage at Wayne's wife for god's sake

Furthermore I can't even imagine a world where Erykah's rant was precluded by a phone call with an e-mail from management saying "we've gotta burn this".

you can't, really? you're right though that Twitter means you do get people just saying whatever comes to mind & putting it out there, but this whole thing smells like backstage stuff getting repackaged

If anything, in my experience in dealing with managers of A-to-F listers, there's a lack of agency in this regard. The attitude of most management is "stay off the internet / stop talking", definitely not "start beef with band X"

I gotta cede ground to the guy who knows more A-listers than me!

I was talking about my own management ;) I do agree that "we'll never know" but this is a woman who live-tweeted her birth, like, I can't even follow her

"buyer's remorse" sounds a bit like a defense lawyer in a date rape case

people tweet all kinds of things but in my experience managers have a lot to say about what business-specific stuff gets tweeted/tumbl'd/etc

"buyer's remorse" sounds a bit like a defense lawyer in a date rape case

yes, defense lawyers do use this, it's gross when they do. I don't see a lot of comparisons between "I don't look how I hoped I'd look in the video I agreed to be in, it's different from how it was pitched to me & the video sucks & that pisses me off" and rape, maybe you do idk

I don't deny that Erykah probably only realized the full extent of the video's tastelessness after its release, and I'm not even sure she didn't invent a few "facts" in that missive from yesterday. But I'm pretty sure it wasn't a movie orchestrated by anyone but Erykah herself.

And good on her for it.

which magical behind-the-scenes wizard told the GOOP girl to tweet the n-word

NO she didn't she DID? she DID

what is "GOOP"

xxpost

Is the video really 'tasteless', though? I mean, I agree with her assertion that it's pretty much just surface and no depth, but I wouldn't call the video itself tasteless. The way it was handled sounds a little tasteless, for sure.

D'you figure I'm correct in my understanding (as I don't think she really came out and said as much) that the core of her beef with the video itself is that it isn't made explicitly clear that the naughty bits aren't her own?

Gwyn probably fired an intern over that one xp

The attitude of most management is "stay off the internet / stop talking",

I could paraphrase so many fucking conversations about Corey Taylor right now but I won't.