Sasha Frere-Jones: Really?????

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

anthony should i not go to this movie btw

i just can't believe that there are already six saw movies.

i'm not anthony but i don't like movies like that so i say no

yeah but in this one evidently the villains are HMO dudes

also I only & exclusively like horror movies & dislike all the other movies so when there's one in the theaters I feel like I need to support the scene

the saw movies are creating a view askew universe for horror geeks w/poor taste

up until a couple years ago i never even noticed violence in movies and now i really hate it

i'm busy selling tapes. thus, i have all the time in the world. dude in my store is buying kool g rap, pharcyde, fight, omen, and sacrifice cassettes. sacrifice and kool g rap combo kinda awesome in my book.

i checked out of the series half-way through Saw IV when I learned I was supposed to remember the first and last names of characters from previous sequels. Would like to think they'd just drop the byzantine plot by now for torture traps nothing but torture traps but I can't say.

i did enjoy paranormal activity if you haven't seen that yet

i've only seen the first saw movie and i'm a huge horror fan. i'd better catch up. i liked the first one.

Would like to think they'd just drop the byzantine plot by now for torture traps nothing but torture traps but I can't say.

Apparently they are still mining backstory. Which, how much can there be.

I only saw lol SAW the first one, didn't really see a need to see any sequels before now but the ad campaign for the new one is getting to me. btw I spent most of this week listening to 4,5,6 that there is a solid album imo

dude in my store also bought vhs copies of jailbait babysitter and young einstein.

Was it Sasha Frere-Jones?

he might have been in disguise.

also bummed that despite making millions upon millions they've hired COSTAS MANDYLOR as the new jigsaw.

puttin on shoes and socks now but should I know who costas mandaylor is? you gotta admit as screen names go it's got a lot to recommend it

his main claim to fame was playing the cute bailiff on picket fences. kind of guy who does 5-week stints on CW dramas, should not be playing the chosen heir of a nefariously brutal vigilante.

at least if Saw VI is playing in 1,000s of screens. He'd be fine for the SyFy original movie, maybe

he's sort of a low-impact keanu

or chris noth with less going on upstairs

max u should listen to more gucci mane

although you should probably listen to dam-funk first, he has a ponytail

i kind of think the das racist response is 'more right' but also not entirely thought out & backhanded towards what its defending:
"Interstitial material, skits and even songs that are obviously recorded as filler do not have to be seen as less valid art but can be seen as part of the tradition (often enough, “filler” and skits contain truly avant-garde and surreal moments)."

filler is a part of the 'tradition of hip-hop'?? ahh yes & the 'truly avant-garde and surreal moments' of filler & skits .... not condescending at all.

More like identifying decent songs as filler is part of the tradition of rock crit, & sometimes filler is just filler

saw vi was dumb but I liked it anyway kind of because it was dumb & unambitious - kinda charming like a lot of late 80s horror flix, like "we have to make a movie but there's this nagging issue of a storyline so umm ok how about REVENGE for ok revenge for what SHITTY INSURANCE COMPANIES fuck yeah, that's awesome, now we're brainstorming right? cool, hey can we sort of shade the whole thing a sickly blue? always wanted to do that - why? idk just seems cool"

that is the update on saw vi

"filler is a part of the 'tradition of hip-hop'??"

well, to be fair, in the olden days you would have people put out albums with a single and 3 or 4 strong tracks and then, um, stuff to fill up two sides of a record. and then when everyone decided that they HAD to fill 79 minutes of a cd you saw the rise of skitdom. so....

disco could get around this problem by just having 4 ten minute songs make up an album.

yeah but thats more like 'tradition of making lps for major labels' -- the way he puts it -- esp in a race-conscious piece like this -- is that sfj is stepping on cultural norms or not being relativist enough or something

anyone who doesn't love "beats for the listeners" hates rap, full stop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7syRNvn4kF4

we're really not taking advantage of the real LOL here, which is that someone read a controversial statement about hip hop and thought "you know who needs to weigh in on this? Das Racist!"

ive lold @ delillo many times def - guy is hilarious - also the saw movies are great but have been steadily declining in quality since the 1st one - although 3 is prob better than 2 - so maybe not so steadily - and honesty i havent seen 5 or 6 yet - anyway saws 1-3 are pretty great - saws 5 and 6 are potentially great - saw 4 i feel like forgot what the whole "saw franchise" is all about - tho it did come through w/a good twist at the end which imo is what the saw franchise is all about - that and employing donnie wahlberg - must be somewhat disheartening to have the guy on tv satirizing you be doin better than you

we're really not taking advantage of the real LOL here, which is that someone read a controversial statement about hip hop and thought "you know who needs to weigh in on this? Das Racist!"

― wein blockas (some dude), Saturday, October 24, 2009 5:57 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

or the further LOL that i basically agreed with them

When we read Sasha Frere-Jones‘ recent piece on the death of hip-hop, we didn’t have a witty comeback. What we did have was one name on the brain: Das Racist. A favorite here at Flavorpill HQ thanks to their single “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,” the Brooklyn-based rap duo is one of the more exciting new acts on the scene. And as the New York Times recently said, “Das Racist’s lack of piety has become an aesthetic of its own, with songs that are as much commentary on hip-hop as rigorous practice of it.”

rigorous practice lol

SFJ follow-up posts:

For anybody who thought this week’s column on rap was just coconuts, this rebuttal from Victor Vazquez and Himanshu Suri of Das Racist will be a satisfying read. Theirs is a serious response, and, aside from dragging a relative I never knew into the fray, it advances the conversation instead of simply throwing it into the flames. And it’s nice to know we all like haikus.

“D.O.J.: When Jay-Z Was Good" ... “Kevin Casey Presents Live From New York: 1994-2001” ... Peanut Butter Wolf has a new mix CD called “Live 45,” which chooses most of my favorite early eighties rap records,...
These mixes are only three of many ways to curate hip-hop’s best years and regional triumphs. If you know of a mixtape that sums up your idea of hip-hop’s peak, send it to sfjcomme✧✧✧@gm✧✧✧.c✧✧. And by all means, if you think there is a “Best of 2009” mixtape that can make current hip-hop sound groundbreaking and world-cracking, bring it on. The arc of any genre is going to be contended, and the length of this particular arc won’t be agreed upon without a fair amount of dissent (and neither resolution nor consensus is necessary).

What bothers me most about this article is the automatic critical shorthand of "disco = white soulless music".

Makes me feel like mailing him Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes - Wake Up Everybody.

Which he will promptly tell me is not disco, but Philly Soul.

I see dabug feels the same way, one of the great tragedies of the late 1970s was the way disco was marketed.

Which is why I have to listen to "That Old Time Rock'n'Roll", 6 times a shift for the rest of my life.

In between the worst Chic songs, and the two or three Sister Sledge songs I'm bored of.

Basically Sasha's argument boils down to: "I want some blues and some funky old soul".