OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

otoh I've heard more than once from students who don't get "old school rap."

who was it that shared the anecdote about students cracking up at "Fuck Tha Police"??

hey there were plenty of people in the late 80's who couldn't listen to any pre-1986 rap. it was dinosaur music.

otoh I've heard more than once from students who don't get "old school rap."

i mean took me forever to wrap my head about enter the wu tang in college but i did and i managed to never write a piece about it

the editors are basically holding this guy up as a pinata for potential clicks, it's more than a bit shameful
https://twitter.com/MTVNews/status/738743779734228992
^ he retweeted this!

"Fuck Tha Police" is hilarious though

spoonie gee would be like a young louis armstrong. de la would be like webster/blanton-era duke. the kids want ornette now. or maybe they want wynton, i dunno...

atc's "all around the world" is a classic tho

― dyl, Friday, June 3, 2016 2:15 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

YES. Now That's What I Call Music Vol. 2

if this piece wanted to accomplish making people mad then it succeeded but if it was an earnest attempt to examine expectations we have of critics and fans and the way canons can change then..... i would say they went about it the wrong way

otoh I've heard more than once from students who don't get "old school rap."

i mean took me forever to wrap my head about enter the wu tang in college but i did and i managed to never write a piece about it

― who is extremely unqualified to review this pop album (BradNelson

They get the Wu; it's pre-Chronic (LL, PE, Kool Moe Dee, Run-DMC) that for them is like reading Chaucer.

LOL-ing at Ned's link.

OH, WAIT. THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN. Floyd let go of Syd Barrett and his substantial ghost, they reassembled around their extraordinary core and they went on to make some of history’s most lasting music.

CITATION NEEDED

They get the Wu; it's pre-Chronic (LL, PE, Kool Moe Dee, Run-DMC) that for them is like reading Chaucer.

... even pe? whoa

Well daddy don't you know that things go in cycles, the way that Bobby Brown is just amping of which vertu engendred is the flour

i don't think anyone listens to public enemy anymore. maybe british people.

what did you all think of the piece from however many years back where a new/young critic listened to public enemy and was like "meh i like drake better"

the list of rap artists that not a lot of people listen to anymore is really really long though. when was the last time someone here listened to a notorious b.i.g. album? EXACTLY.

illmatic is 4ever though.

They get the Wu; it's pre-Chronic (LL, PE, Kool Moe Dee, Run-DMC) that for them is like reading Chaucer.

... even pe? whoa

― who is extremely unqualified to review this pop album (BradNelson)

yeah i mean pe basically sounds like "volunteers" these days.

literally just had an argument with a friend who's a year old than me bc he said "illmatic is boring. it was written forever" but also he's not a critic

idk i'm all for destabilizing canon and upsetting calcified orders but with actual care and context and fewer timestamps and vegan hot dogs. the headline also frames dude as a critic so he's not like...a student, or just a contemporary audience

anyway yeah this is content generated to make people angry

i like david but i dunno who that piece was for. this one just happened a few years ago!

http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2012/07/05/156327372/youve-never-heard-public-enemys-it-takes-a-nation-of-millions-to-hold-us-back

I will say that I would rather read this piece than a fawning appreciation of a critically acclaimed album (or whatever) that the writer has clearly never heard but knows is good via received wisdom

i would rather not read either

also lol i immediately remembered that npr series

iirc it was extremely well received and runs to this day

What gets more clicks, offensively bad articles or good articles?

i just can't imagine when i was his age writing like this about an album from the early '80s as if it was an ancient artifact i couldn't understand. i was devouring the catalogs of a lot of '70s acts by then. how do you write about music professionally with a snooty attitude towards the past!?

I dunno, I find the use of sampling far more creative on 3 Feet High... compared to many so-called "nu-school" rap/hip-hop albums. I generally find the productions on old school rap records more charming - less slick, more raw, and as a result, more exciting.

Ultimately, I have no regrets leaving It Takes A Nation on what is now an entirely metaphorical shelf. I'll gladly say thank-you, but given the choice, I'm going to blast Drake's infectiously triumphant mp3s every time.

..I loved The Chronic and Doggy Style (and Uncle Sam's Curse what year was that?) but the element of rap that was like mindblowing sheer sonics gave way to what were essentially rock records structurally - same rules as rock in terms of how you get to the vibe/effect. whereas that late 80s stuff was so Structures In Sound - but then again, Wu Tang is fully up on that when they come around, and they weren't "throwback" to me at that point, they were taking that vision to where it would have gone next if it had remained the dominant discourse, which it didn't.

not that all rap had been dense layers of Bomb Squad & not that there isn't plenty of trad song structure at play in Nation of Millions and shit but that's how I break it down to an extent, rap becoming more a new approach to songcraft than a new approach to sound.

― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, January 8, 2012 10:18 PM

i just can't imagine when i was his age writing like this about an album from the early '80s as if it was an ancient artifact i couldn't understand. i was devouring the catalogs of a lot of '70s acts by then. how do you write about music professionally with a snooty attitude towards the past!?

― some dude, Friday, June 3, 2016 3:36 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Pretending like you knew what you're talking about is a Gen X tic (see the first nine years of p4k), performatively writing about all the things you don't know is a millennial tic (see, like, everything now)

i don't care whether or not some young person likes 3 ft high*, but i'm half annoyed that he turned this in and his editors published it. dude has nothing to say about the album that couldn't be communicated in a sentence or two. why publish his catalog of tepid diet & exercise complaints?

tho whiney otm, that too is a millennial tic

It's interesting to explore the idea that 3 ft High has aged kind of poorly; you could probably make an argument that it has (when was the last time anybody itt listened to it in its entirety? I probably never will again to be honest.)

But yeah my problem with the piece is its predetermined outcome and refusal to engage with the music. There was no way the piece was going to run as "I Listened To 3 Feet High For The First Time and Really Loved It."

Also 3 Ft High seems like an odd target? Doesn't seem like the album is the sacred entity it was 10 or 20 years ago. This feels like a missed opportunity to explore why the LP isn't being passed down the way it used to be.

Well, I last listened to it about a year ago.

tbf there was a fair amount of performative garbage among gen x'ers too. (see: the first nine years of pitchfork.) but i never thought the "i'm a special snowflake and all my personal thoughts and feelings are valuable to share" style of performance would make me vague wistful for the "album review written as open letter to deceased president william howard taft" style of performance.

Pretending like you knew what you're talking about is a Gen X tic (see the first nine years of p4k), performatively writing about all the things you don't know is a millennial tic (see, like, everything now)

― queen elseq of ærendelle (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, June 3, 2016 4:10 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ths is true i think

infectiously triumphant

terrible adverb-adjective combinations is a bad writer's tic

I also would quibble that for most in the long term De La Soul is Dead became the "canonical" album...or I would have even been more curious to see what he thought of a relatively more modern one like Stakes is High or one of the AOI albums....or hell even the really weird one Buhloone Mindstate

BM is actually my favorite

I bet dude would like plenty of Mosaic Thump and Bionix

this is a good troll in theory because a lot of 80s hip hop sounds dumb as hell and it's a sacred cow to people who were young then and still refer to it like it was the mindblowingest shit to hear someone rap RIDIN ME LIKE A PONY/NO PHONY/I'M THE REAL MACARONI. but they fucked it up because 3 feet still holds up

yeah -- curiosity about the past isn't obeisance to the past.

btw it's always hip hop who gets reevaluated. The kids aren't going around saying, "Zep with those loud guitars and screaming and shit lol."

cos rock music hasn't changed in 30 years

Yeah, and rock fans are too easy/tired of a target to troll.

Buhloone Mindstate is a masterpiece and holds up amazingly btw. It's paced much more like an Internet-age rap album, too. That's the one I'd be most excited to see writers revisit, especially in the wake of Chance and Kendrick's last few LPs

Zep is a bad example cause their lyrics are nerd fantasy shit and a general whimsical vibe, and lots of kids since have found it corny

that goes for many rap lyrics!

Stakes is High holds up best in my mind but this is saying more about our individual tastes than it is the music i imagine.

and anyways 3 feet high is spectacular, was spectacular, will be spectacular and if you don't feel it you are welcome to have ALL the drake, be my guest

kids still love led zep. it's pathetic. get a life already.

i still can't believe that the violent femmes first album became the soundtrack to...how many generations now? my 13 year old totally digs it. masturbation never gets old.