Sasha Frere-Jones: Really?????

ESPECIALLY because i think sfj kind of ignores the way "swing" gets coded as black and "thump" gets coded as white vis-a-vis blues/jazz vs. euro dance music

SFJ is basically doing high-end google bait where "hits" equals "angry letters to the New Yorker"...but at least I don't have to keep building a straw man when I get all pissy about the myth of disco somehow being emblematic "white" music. Not that I plan on actually reading the SFJ bait so perhaps it's a moot point.

i don't know das racist but i like their thing! both things. even the haikus. might be the most interesting music-related thing i've read in a while! and i agree with them too. and my maria went to wesleyan and she is dope as hell! and so did santogold.

That part might be correct but other part I 'm not so sure about (says this white, college educated guy. Ha). And I did not like the SFJ premise or think it was well stated either.

But notice how SFJ then immediately undermines that credibility: while he could just say “Nas called it three years ago,” he instead claims that while Nas’s sentiment was correct, the proclamation was three years premature, as if to say “Nice try, Nas, but leave it to the professional (white, college-educated) music journalist to make sweeping statements about (black, ghetto-originated) music.”

How would they react to Greg Tate criticism?

well greg tates not white so the power dynamics are a a little bit different

That's kinda my point. Is SFJ not correct because of the combination of factors--white and college-educated and based at the New Yorker versus Nas and his background or versus Greg Tate --black, college-educated and at the V. Voice. I just think they should address SFJ's arguments rather than his power and authority and where it derives from.

but they do address his arguments--theyre just critiquing the power dynamics at play as well

i mean i agree that its the weaker part of the response but that sort of critique is (imo rightfully) par for the course with this kind of thing

on the one hand yeah agree w/this

I just think they should address SFJ's arguments rather than his power and authority and where it derives from.

but OTOH it's helpful & illuminating to raise race/power/class dynamics in these discussions, like I come from a pretty undergrad place with respect to that: always keep pointing out these things, there's not going to be a day when they're not important

but then back on the other hand the way people immediately go for the sneering gotcha! undergrad tone of voice when they engage stuff like this is just very wearying & depressing

if "stuff like this" means stances both intentionally provocative and poorly thought out, i get why immediate sneering would be wearying (i don't need to read 90 pieces on why rush limbaugh is a big fat idiot), but i don't know why its depressing (i get why people want to respond when he's poking them with a stick, and why should they be respectful).

in fairness tho da croupier you have a fondness for the sneering-undergrad tone rite - I know you'll take this as an attack but that's kind of what you're into, right: engagement with something caustic & aggro/"provocative"/"bold" to it - to me, it seems like if a matter's worth discussing, it's worth attempting to do in a productive manner instead of going for the political-blog run-up-the-score style

we have fundamental aesthetic/ethical disagreement on this issue tho I think

what was the issue again?

there are several

sorry, i'm a little slow.

i can see why you'd see it that way, john, but most of the time I just don't like going on about something without throwing in some humor. and when the thing i'm responding to is a rock critic saying "why isn't the arcade fire black like mick jagger?" or "blueprint 3 done and killed rap" i'm comfortable with letting that humor be sardonic. bad link-bait is also noogie-bait.

i used to think sasha was a bright guy. i don't know anymore. or maybe he's still a bright guy, but its not coming through in pieces like this last one. hoo boy. i swear i read stuff like that and all i hear is: "i liked the rap when it went like this. now it goes like this. and i don't like it." in dana carvey's old man character voice.

also john i know dang well you're not above flip dismissal

yeah I mean I think the main issues in these discourses are actually a little less race-oriented than they appear, both from the stance of the author (s/fj) & the designated responders (das racist) - I think issues of youth/maturity-age & control of discursive paradigms are heavily in play. i.e. scott's right: I think s/fj doesn't dig the state of play in rap, a genre which at one point he dug a lot, and for a lot of people, if you don't like the way something changes in art (also in business but that's a diff world), that codes as reactionary, as having aged past the right to comment - "if you don't like [x], it's clear that you don't get the whole deal" has been a popular strategy of dismissing critical claims on popular music for 30+ years, more if you look at jazz crit even in the early bop age. and this is partly the latest iteration of same: "gtfo grandpa, make room for new ways of thinking" which has validity to it, the calcification of a critical stance is just a fact of growth & trying to stay young!!! is a bit worse in my mind than accepting that the growth of your aesthetic will eventually mean actually arriving at an aesthetic, which, like any arrived-at thing, will age & become comfortable. but the hint of a reactionary stance near a question as racially loaded as white critics commenting on the state of play in rap, that's a quick ticket to some lovely unproductive and to-me-incredibly-boring fireworks.

xpost yeah I know anthony but I keep hoping I'll grow out of it & spotting how unproductive it looks in others is a part of that

I remember reading the piece when it first ran and goin "oh great, my Dad has a job writing for the Atlantic now, soon we'll hear how free verse has ruined poetry"

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Wednesday, October 21, 2009 12:25 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

xpost!

"my dad" isn't a random "I am young!" stand-in for "age" there, it's my actual dad the english professor who thinks free verse has ruined poetry

i put xpost in there to clarify i wasn't responding to your post above it, you know

i could have just has easily linked to the "fuck this guy" post

I think the bigger issue is that SASHA keeps on race-coding this shit in unproductive ways. "Rap isn't as good" is not the same thing as "rap isn't as BLACK." Well, as much as this paragraph could actually mean that (it's insinuated but not stated):

"The tempos and sonics of disco’s various children—techno, rave, whatever your particular neighborhood made of a four-on-the-floor thump—are slowly replacing hip-hop’s blues-based swing. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the rudimentary digital sound of New Orleans bounce or the crusty samples of New York hip-hop: this music wants to swing and syncopate. On major commercial releases, this impulse is giving way to a European pulse, simpler and faster and more explicitly designed for clubs."

But I do think there's a slight misreading of Sasha's thesis here, which seems to be more this:

"hip-hop is no longer the avant-garde, or even the timekeeper, for pop music. Hip-hop has relinquished the controls and splintered into a variety of forms. The top spot is not a particularly safe perch, and every vital genre eventually finds shelter lower down, with an organic audience, or moves horizontally into combination with other, sturdier forms."

I mean, I don't think this is 100% untrue, there's an impulse or something there, but he doesn't explore it in a very interesting or thoughtful way, starting with the second sentence. I guess he thinks "organic audience" means something self-evident that I'm not understanding (is this those STREETS that teh rappers are always going on about??), or why absorbing new styles is "horizontal" while finding a niche audience is "vertical," or why these things seem mutually exclusive, or or or...

also john, if your goal on sfj-hate threads is to have us respond productively, calling out the inconsistencies of haters is probably less effective in doing so than if you read the piece yourself and productively engaged with it - admitted flaws, pointed out what you liked, etc.

anthony you could always just say "john I refuse to let you post to this thread w/o being a total dick to you," it'd save you some effort

(I mean the real issue, I suspect, is that words like "avant-garde" and "time-keeper" are more useless than usual in pop at the moment; it's not something that's changed in hip-hop but something that's changed in, e.g., how pop music quantified, sold, etc. but then he'd be writing a boring "music is fragmenting!" think piece that not as many people would link to.)

wtg j0hn for shifting the power dynamics by using "undergrad" as an insult

anthony you could always just say "john I refuse to let you post to this thread w/o being a total dick to you," it'd save you some effort

not sure if it was my reaffirmation of the xpost or the acknowledgment that you don't actually talk much about the pieces themselves so much as the nature of people's complaints on these threads that brought this out, but it wasn't my intent to cross a line.

I think we're giving undergrads too much credit here, btw. The pejorative "grad student" would probably be better. xpost

i used to think sasha was a bright guy. i don't know anymore. or maybe he's still a bright guy, but its not coming through in pieces like this last one. hoo boy. i swear i read stuff like that and all i hear is: "i liked the rap when it went like this. now it goes like this. and i don't like it." in dana carvey's old man character voice.

― scott seward, Saturday, October 24, 2009 11:50 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cos3ve.gif

"The tempos and sonics of disco’s various children—techno, rave, whatever your particular neighborhood made of a four-on-the-floor thump—are slowly replacing hip-hop’s blues-based swing. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the rudimentary digital sound of New Orleans bounce or the crusty samples of New York hip-hop: this music wants to swing and syncopate. On major commercial releases, this impulse is giving way to a European pulse, simpler and faster and more explicitly designed for clubs."

to my non-musician ears, racial politics aside, this is a crock. hip-hop's blues-based swing????

(That Sasha piece is an A- by undergrad standards! Has a thesis and well-stated/organized evidence, but evidence doesn't seem to fully support thesis. It would just get a lot of comments in the margins and like a 2-page caveat response at the end talking about why he has to be careful on future papers.)

j0hn i'm sorry that we're dumping on a guy you know IRL to some degree, but honestly i had a lot of respect for him as a critic 5-10 years ago that has been substantially diminished mainly by the trifecta of the "DJ Shadow and minstrelsy" piece, the "Arcade Fire and miscegenation" piece, and now this one. if you'd like to put up a rigorous defense of any of those articles and why they're well thought out arguments and not at all easy to poke holes in, go for it, but if you're willing admit that they're extremely problematic maybe you should let those of us who don't know him have at it.

wtg j0hn for shifting the power dynamics by using "undergrad" as an insult

I'm glad somebody appreciates my work

(some dude: yeah no I mean seriously I'm not actually that into what he's saying, it's the weird timbre of the response that's interesting to me, and this is kind of always the case with "stuff like this" i.e. critics in high positions making broad claims - note that da croupier's xgau singles poll isn't "best" but "which is the WORST" - there's this to-me-really-odd kill-the-king impulse that I'd assume most people had grown out of. it's impossible to get anybody to accept that I'm interested in this as a music fan & reader of these pieces rather than as the recipient of a lovely press-kit-pullable new yorker article five years ago, but that's actually not where I'm coming from, but try telling that to da croupier, who has faithfully come at me every time I've joined an sfj clusterfuck thread since 2005.)

i think the problem with the internet is its easy to read a friar's roast as a teabagger's party. and i made that poll the worst because i was more curious what people's least favorite xgau quirk was than what people's most favorite old-school hip-hop joint was.

and since you went there, i'll just note that you were the one that "productively engaged" me on the subject back in 2005. my request for full disclosure was pretty clearly a defensive gesture if you go back.

one of the things i like about the kid sister album is how much euro-ness there is on it. it works perfectly next to the southern/u.s./chicago juke beats and sounds on it. (i'd love to play sasha some of my favorite nu-beat-derived hip-house and technorap tracks from the 80's. american stuff soaked in german and belgian flavors. guess he's not a big miami bass fan. there was some straight-up teutonic shit coming out of florida way back when. i mean was electro blues-based??? so weird. ain't nothing more american or funky or hip hop than european robots with bad accents.)

sorry to belabor a point but here's a helpful link to jess noting "john and mr. que's weird pile-up" on my ass for hating on the miscegenation piece. you're welcome, ilx drama fans.

I don't know if calling it a kill-the-king impulse is right -- people who care about music can be pretty savage when a great or important band makes a bad record, and even though among a lot of people on this board there might be issues of decorum or professional courtesy at stake, at its root I don't see why people who care about music criticism shouldn't be just as rough when a great or important critic writes a bad piece or takes a questionable position.

i didn't even think it was that rough! worst is just in all-caps to make clear i'm asking for "i'll be missing you" vs. "kim" than "that's the joint" vs. "rock box."

to-me-really-odd kill-the-king impulse

are you really shocked that when a particular critic gets a really well-regarded forum with a wide audience to write for and proceeds to make weird, lazy, and/or intellectually dishonest points people get pretty frustrated?

no, but you know me, kind of permanently naive, I am really shocked that the weapons chosen to combat these weird, lazy and/or intellectually dishonest points are themselves quite weird, lazy and/or intellectually dishonest

resisting urge to faithfully come at you

lol noted

The thing that strikes me odd about the Sasha Frere-Jones piece is he starts off with this seemingly well-thought out thesis about how he has seen the end and he will tell us of the mind fires that led him to this belief, but he ends up somewhere so muddled talking about Freddie Gibbs (who is righteous, so I'm a lot more willing to let SFJ ride this train than I would normally be), basically saying, in short, "Hip-hop is dead because this Jay-Z record is okay, oh but there's this Raekwon record, and this Freddie Gibbs dude, he is the real." Or, to appropriate John: Why The New Yorker Sometimes Reads Like an Undergrad's Blog.

xp i dunno i mean it just feels like we all agree--like other than that one thing the das racist guy said i'm not sure what you are objecting to

btw i just listened to that freddie gibbs mixtape and i'd say it's the slightest bit boring

at this point I'm just killing time until the saw vi showing tbh