Sasha Frere-Jones: Really?????

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".

And thus it maps syncopation with intuition, and adds the racially flavored: black = intuitive, syncopated, soulful valuation into the mix. Which is a yawning chasm of a debate, one that I'm not interested in having.

Reminds me of all those Chicago kids dancing to EBM in 89. Or the hiphouse skot was talking about.

What's odd about Sasha's anti-disco take here is that he clearly knows the history-- Here's an excerpt of his from 2005 that I googled:

In 1977, the steely, intentionally robotic German electronic group Kraftwerk released “Trans-Europe Express,” a song that became a hit in black clubs in New York. In 1981, Kraftwerk released a song with an unusually heavy and thumping drum-machine beat called “Numbers,” which became an even bigger hit on black radio. The following year, a group from the Bronx called Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force released “Planet Rock,” a track that combined the music from “Trans-Europe Express” and “Numbers” with acrobatic ensemble rapping. “Planet Rock” moves at a hundred and twenty-eight beats a minute—a little quicker than your basic disco song—and its urgent sound inspired a genre in New York and London called “electro,” and a genre in Miami called “bass,” which is distinguished by lyrics that are exclusively sexual and occasionally pornographic.

He also knows Chic's "Good Times." I guess he's splitting hairs and saying that these current hiphop hits are using uh, current European disco beats, that he does not like versus the European and African-American ones he does like.

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

Is he applying these same criteria to other genres? Do his top albums and singles meet this criteria?

yeah thats called moving the goalposts

honestly if Tha Carter 3 is the standard he's holding up for "groundbreaking and world-cracking" it shouldn't be that hard to find something that measures up.

what level of entitlement/self-aggrandization do you have to reach to commend those who "advance the conversation" rather than "simply throwing" your provocative work "to the flames"?

"i just don't like what it says about our culture when people don't take my lazy link-bait seriously."

ya a bit weird to pat them on the head and not respond to anything they're saying haha

to be fair he did the same thing after the miscegenation piece. kept promising to respond, cherry-picked a few quotes from people who gave his piece the proper respect (though not that impudent carl wilson, obv) and left us with little beyond "good, good, inspiring thought and debate, twas the plan all along." wish that guy who asked ilx why black people don't want to rock used a similar tack.

wait a minute, i thought he replied to the Wilson piece directly, somewhere or other.

didn't see anything on his new yorker blog in response, and didn't hear about anything elsewhere

i could be mistaken, natch, but that was my impression. maybe he commented on the Slate article page itself (it was Slate, right)? i dunno.

slate doesn't have a comments box, just a password-only discussion forum. i'm guessing if sfj responded it'd be easy to find, considering it was the highest profile response he received (and since it made the da capo 2008 best music writing book, wilson's piece arguably has a higher profile than the original)

according to professional music critic sasha-frere jones, dance music has killed hip hop through years of calculated infiltration by way of assimilation. the overthrow was first set in motion by electro pioneer afrikaa bambataa in the 1980s who introduced the white, soulless throb of the german-born genre "techno" to hip hop beats. although it took over twenty years, white dance music consumed hip hop once and for all in 2009-an event marked by a distinct shift in beat-selection on jay-z's eleventh studio album "the blueprint 3."

what wikipedia entry are you adding that to

i dont think that sfj is actually dumb enough to think that disco is soulless

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

Ha ha, I'll probably never get around to reading this thread, but see my review here:

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=814

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

So could hip-hop, almost! First (and maybe only?) Treacherous Three album has six songs, checking in at 7:29, 5:36, 7:34, 7:39, 6:58, and 5:46. It's great!

ysi?

I have never heard of Das Racist before, but those two have a publicist? Someone gets paid to run media interference for hipsters?

sigh

i dont think that sfj is actually dumb enough to think that disco is soulless

― Bobby Wo (max), Monday, October 26, 2009 3:32 PM (3 days ago)

Neither do I, I think he's being facetious. I think he's dumbing down his opinions for his market.

I don't think much of the New Yorker's readership when it comes to their appreciation of Pop.

I'm sure they're very picky when it comes to chamber music.

its true because i read the new yorker and im very picky re: chamber music

I read the NYer and am also picky about chamber music. Pickier than the NYer, really.

i read the NEW POOPER and im picky about CHAMBER POTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I write critiques of the NEW POOPER's chamber pot criticism in my monthly column in SHIT FANCY.

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

Four-on-the-floor thump is European??!!??

That darned evil Moroder.

Hello?

http://funkmusic.co.cc/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/hamilton-bohannon-bohannon-1.jpg

He was doing four-on-the-floor thump when Moroder was doing Chicory Tip

you could make a lot of interesting points about the gradual loss of swing in hip hop production over the years and the move toward more rigidly quantized drums, but SFJ shoots straight past any of them to some really bizarre whole other imaginary argument

Correct me if I'm wrong here but 4X4 thump in 2009 really seems like more of an R&B trend which hip hop is exposed to by association (hence Black Eyed Peas, Timbaland etc). I haven't noticed a terribly large amount of recent rap on a 4X4 beat, but maybe I just haven't heard what Sasha's thinking of?

Certainly it's not the first time R&B has gone 4X4 before.

new orleans bounce drums are pretty fucking rigid.

ha yeah i raised an eyebrow at that

SFJ trying to rewrite his article? Or at least one sentence of it?

SFJ-October 26 from "“Wrapping Up – A genre ages out”
“If I had to pick a year for hip-hop’s demise, though, I would choose 2009, not 2006.”

SFJ -November 25-from "End Times" blog post
“Some people thought that my recent column about hip-hop was actually an assertion that hip-hop was dead. In fact, my argument was that hip-hop is not ending but rather going through a transitional moment and atomizing.” http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sashafrerejones/2009/11/end-times.html

Does "demise" mean "atomizing"? Not sure why he had the "demise" sentence if he meant that club beats and Freddie Gibbs were a sign of hiphop "atomizing"

this fucking guy

Conversely. the whole Pill/Freddie Gibbs/Juiceman axis is basically just the rap version of nitpicking over chillwave and glo-fi and, again, has little to no bearing on hip-hop at large.

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 27 November 2009 21:04 (Yesterday) Permalink

juiceman is nothing like pill/freddie gibbs and is yes "actually popular"

lol oops rong thread

What's weird is that of the probable hundreds of legit responses/critiques/counterblogs to the his article that he's gotten, he addresses a single vague response in his blog and asks for clarification, nothing more. This guy's the king of critical dialogue.

My uh, source, reports he's going to address part of this again "after the holidays"('somebody' e-mailed him his "demise" sentence from October and his "atomizing" sentence from November and asked him to explain)

Or maybe not.

December 15, 2009
I Cannot Stop Until I Get Enough
Posted by Sasha Frere-JonesI won’t be back in this space until May of 2010. I need to focus on writing a book, and the Internet is awfully distracting. You will see my byline in the magazine made of paper, and in relevant links placed here.