Ying Yang Twins - Whisper In Your Ear

I've had a few drinks tonight, but looking this over I think I'll agree with it all when sober. I would like to see some other people acknowledge that sometimes, like jessica and julianne were saying, its not always important to be right. I'd like to be more effective.

(xp if that was the case, massive apologies to Alex!!!!)

also, and this is why WHERE miccio's piece matters at least as much as what it said, but even if the debate, the 'no free passes' only has it's impact within the circlejerk rockcritics that's still some impact, impact that if rockcritworld has any influence on popculture (for the sake of argument let's say it does)(humour me) could eventually translate into an actual impact on the music ("and thru that the world!" - c. martin) or at the very least the promotion of it, enough so say a glossy entertainment feature/interview with ______ where he was taken to task for his misogyny might be as routine as a glossy feature/interview with _______ where the subject isn't even broached (or if it is the subject is let off with ye olde 'i'm not referring to all women when i say 'bitches', i just mean some women, the bad ones' - do i even need to say what the racial analogue of this is?) is now.

re: the source, expecting critical reflexivity from it about *anything* is a joke these days, but yeah it does exemplify this panic-mongering w/r/t race while completely ignoring gender. i bought the issue on 50 recently to see what scoops it had on the recent drama, etc. where it did pull up interesting things in its neverending quest to fuck with em, and was taken aback/amused by the fawning profile of the ying yang twins in the same issue that didn't even seem to engage at ALL with sexism, etc.

but for the most part, in the larger world outside of benzino's reality distortion field, and extending all the way to mtv and vh-1 (if not usually BET) the basic outlines of the feminist critique of hip-hop and sexism are hardly unknown.

it also depends what you mean by "calling out" becuz saying "yeah, this is there, and it bothers me, and here's how i deal with it" is all the calling out that this really merits, i think (not least becuz anything more extreme than that gets rather ineffective fast) and it can be done without dominating a review, and if done right can even provide an organizing context for a review.

but i'd rather have ppl. talk about my very interesting points upthread about context in the use of the word "bitch."

(also it's absurd to drag chuck into this. the voice never tows just one critical line and by publishing tate and coates and emb and etc. he's done as much as anyone to give the smarter critiques of the state of hip-hop a place. i mean disagree w/ miccio all you want, great, but the pages of the voice are precisely where this exchange of views is SUPPOSED to happen. [just like in the blogosphere, the neighborhood barbershop, the school hallway, the break room at work, the morning talk-radio show hosted by the less shock-jocky djs (i.e. not just B96 but also WGCI), etc.] oh yeah, and the nice article the voice ran on dancehall and homophobia too, and its ongoing coverage of protests against hot 97, et fucking cetera.)

this counter-argument is not new, either; it is lazy; and, obviously, a 'better/braver' (writing reviews is not brave) critic might also be able to 'fess up to/examine' being repulsed by the same elements you find thrilling. and if they could do it without calling their oppos 'morons', even better. no new territory is discovered by finding that critics get off on offensive/whacked-out lyrics. it's common knowledge.

I will unhesitatingly fess up to how clumsy that phrase was. And I am sorry that my glibness and the wave-the-red-flag headline inspired such fury. What I was going for is that, by declaring all people who enjoy "Wait" to be scum, you're asking people to look at your own tastes in vulgar erotic content and see if you have any ground to stand on when declaring this song indefensible as a source of entertainment (this is the ironic thing - declaring something defensible doesn't mean its beyond critique, it means you feel it deserves critique and discussion as to its qualities. Something indefensible - perhaps like this "date rape song" we've been threatened with or "Black Korea" by Ice Cube - would overtly endorse a criminal act, there would be no room for interpretation).

and obv I'm not actually saying all songs that endorse criminal acts are necessarily indefensible.

i can't believe I'm just now reading this. lol wow.

(interest sparked cuz i just acquired the album this is on for two bucks, tho how could you miss the single when it came out).

so...uh...has anybody's minds changed?

lol reading this just cuz I've been listening to their music & remembering how popular they were when I was in college, and while honestly I think there's better songs on the album anyway ("Badd" and "Shake" are both better singles) the couple posts (poorly) attempting an analogy of what a "female response track'd" entail are super-headdesk

my basic issue with the beat is idk what it does that "Drop It Like It's Hot" doesn't do better, although I suppose it doesn't "pop" as much and that works in the context of the delivery

anyway party like it's 2005 man

"Shake" is a low key classic, nowadays it's the song i'm most likely to hear a rap DJ play by the Ying Yang Twins OR by Pitbull

yeah, Pitbull's opening verse is so great too

Funny thing about this song is how much my best friend in college's first gf / pretty much every girl there were mad into it, truly the (slightly more unnerving?) "Blurred Lines" of its day

I did not realize how old Mr. Collipark was btw, kinda cool

wow, wtf I had no idea. for context, dude is older than Grandmaster Flash! o___O

wait, he was over 40 when he decided to briefly go by Beat In Azz?

haha

Grandpa Collipark onthebeathoe

man I always think it's too late for me to try making beats as a hobby and this gives me hope, thank you DJ Smurf

BTW if y'all put the producer under Composer in iTunes what do you tag the names as? I used to just update to whatever their last alias is but I feel like tagging Collipark as Beat in the Azz/Mr. Collipark/DJ Smurf and sorting as Mr. Collipark is more respectful to his name game lol

I did not realize how old Mr. Collipark was btw, kinda cool

― nova, Tuesday, September 16, 2014 7:58 AM (15 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i didn't know this either and it's fantastic.

this album is good, but looking at old tracklists the first 5-6 songs on me and my brother are unstoppable

This album is pretty hard to f/w outside of "Bedroom Boom," a couple more maudlin numbers and a few "party" tracks that don't pop off like the best stuff, but I should give Me & My Brother a closer listen

how did it take me 9 years to buy it lol, everyone in college loved these guys

"Fuck the Ying Yang Twins" does nerd-revenge fantasy rap better than any nerd rappers & "Live Again" does "I understand what these strippers go through" better than Drake too lol

oh man i forgot about Adam Levine singing "oh, the life of a stripper"

lol yeah

man 2005, Adam Levine's year of being Chris Martin before it was all cruelly snatched away

Is Mr. Collipark the Timbaland to Lil Jon's Neptunes/Pharrell? Not a qualitative comparison either way mind, just a working thesis I thought of where Collipark does club shit while Lil Jon does club shit and/or "hard" shit that Collipark doesn't really

idk doesn't really matter lol they're (were?) both good

Timbaland's hard shit is harder than the Neptunes tho

Damn, when was the last time Lil Jon really did street rap tho? I miss that shit

Mustard is so consciously indebted to Lil Jon that i don't feel like i miss him as much as i did a few years ago. would be interesting to hear him be more engaged w/ rap's current wave than that new "Turn Down For What" knockoff single featuring Tyga, though.

Timbaland's hard shit is harder than the Neptunes tho

― The Reverend, Saturday, September 20, 2014 5:39 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nah honestly I think most of 'em are pretty bad but idk how many I'm thinking of. "3 A.M." being the one exception I'd agree with you on, shit's like a horror flick lol

dude at Ohword back in the mid-'00s had a post dissing the hell out of Timbaland during his JT/Nelly Furtado/Danjahandz resurgence and one of his main criticisms was that his catalogue's devoid of straight-up bangers. I disagreed at the time but he was onto something

Not that his "poppier"/typical old style in diff. eras style hasn't yielded tons of classics but it is a problem that disconnects him a bit from the core of the genre imo. Plus there's the fact that I just can't listen to Missy's albums straight through like that, although that is partially her fault, I don't think she's a very good rapper & the "goofiness" is not enough to make up for it

also Mustard may be indebted to Jon but I don't think he's anywhere near as good. though yeah not into "Turn Down for What" and lol don't know the other one you mentioned, fuck Tyga though

OK triple post my bad gonna chill heh

This song grosses me out. I don't like it when vox are recorded in a way that you can hear the saliva noises of the vocalists mouth...there's some Leonard Cohen songs I can't listen to for the same reason...this is my biggest pet peeve in all of music....this is maybe significant cuz it's the first rap song ever to do it. but it's still GROSS! yucky.
― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Friday, 29 April 2005 14:13 (sixteen years ago) link