The All-New STYLUS.

i would've thought Danja and Terius replaced Timba and Neps auteur status for 'outsiders' altho they don't really have the hip-hop production background which may be a factor against. i think many of us were able to join the latter two as they crossed over into Pop production, re-shaping it as they saw fit.

Timba and Neptunes ballads for Aaliyah and Kelis were earlyish examples of the 'ballads don't usually sound as 'spacey' or electronic as this' thing that piqued my interest/excitement more. what i liked about that is that it enabled some of us to relate to the producer more than or in place of the vocalist, giving it that extra dimension that a lot of 90s RnB ballads didn't go for (but back then I think i dug some ballads on a retro tip e.g. Mary J Blige 'I'm Goin' Down' which is harder to square).

Apparently "It's much easier to make people cry than to make them laugh" is a Vivian Leigh quote.

Vivien.

i would've thought Danja and Terius replaced Timba and Neps auteur status for 'outsiders'

Dilla fits somewhere here too yeah?

what i liked about that is that it enabled some of us to relate to the producer more than or in place of the vocalist

why would you want to do this

when i listen to neu! i am mostly relating to conny planck

BECAUSE SOME OF US DON'T LISTEN TO OR INDEED GIVE A SHIT ABOUT LYRICS OR EFFING VOCALISTS!!!!!!11eleven

why would you want to do this

this isn't worth answering unless you're genuinely interested (but then i think you could imagine/answer yourself?) or willing to accept approaches to music other than your own.

it just seems like a wrong-headed approach to a genre where the focus is on the vocalist - like listening to basement jaxx for the lyrics

i mean, why aren't YOU accepting approaches to music other than your own when you listen to r&b?

^^^rich

'focus on the vocalist' has never been something that applies more to some genres than others in my book and never will be.

the sound of the vocalist the arrangement of the vocals the treatment of it that multi-layered cooing mulitple loops of the singer going round and round doubling back on themselves like a rift in the spacetime continuum yes yes yes yes yes gimme gimme more

what she's actually singing = who gives a shit? why would you care about that?

except barbershop xp

btw 'rock' is being stereotyped and reduced here maybe? not entering this argument tbh - some r&b is great and exciting (i recall being introduced to aaliyah and being all 'whoa great music') and some is stale and derivative - there are worlds within worlds - you can't group everything together

Where would you put it?

in a Tupperware.

If I can go back to S. Reynolds's complaint about the predictability of the top 20: I do think there are a lot of similarities between our list and Pitchfork (somewhat inevitable, as Nick admits), but I'm also pleased at some of the differences:

Burial, Untrue: #5 Stylus, #41 Pitchfork
Primal Scream, XTRMNTR: #10 Stylus, #142 Pitchfork
Ghostface Killah, Fishscale: #11 Stylus, #75 Pitchfork
Joanna Newsom, Ys: #14 Stylus, #82 Pitchfork
Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP: #16 Stylus, #119 Pitchfork
Bjork, Vespertine: #17 Stylus, #92 Pitchfork
PJ Harvey, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea: #18 Stylus, #124 Pitchfork

Not to mention the fact that nearly a third of the albums in the Stylus top 100 don't show up at all in Pitchfork's top 200, including 11 albums in the top 60:

24. Bob Dylan, "Love and Theft"
33. Miranda Lambert, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
36. Junior Boys, So This Is Goodbye
40. Studio, West Coast/Yearbook 1
45. Bark Psychosis, Codename:Dustsucker
46. Lindstrom, Where You Go I Go Too
49. Mountain Goats, We Shall All Be Healed
54. Britney Spears, Blackout
56. Booka Shade, Movements
57. Luomo, The Present Lover
59. Belle & Sebastian, Dear Catastrophe Waitress

Fishscale at number 11 is not a badge of honour imo

Right – it should rate higher.

I like it well enough but it doesn't deserve to be in the same 50 as any of Ghost's earlier albums.

to clarify previous posts, i just think one needs to be very specific here wrt RnB's common approach to vocals e.g. i don't think there's a greater empthasis on power in RnB (where it has been and remains common as you would expect) than there is elsewhere but there may be more empthasis on smoothness or technical 'correctness' generally than you get in Indie (would make sense if you regard the latter as Punk-derived). i dunno if i can define this properly tho, as my interest in/knowledge of singing (as opposed to sound) only goes so far.

http://www.oxygen.com/Press/Programming/TalkSex/images/SJ_Shoulder_Shrug.jpg

those are some high pants

They're not pants, she's springing out of a giant top hat.

interesting url

every place Fishscale rates over Supreme Clientele is a further demonstration of either "i don't fuck with rap" or "i am a lazy newjack".

Lazy dichotomies further demonstrate "I don't bother to read" or "I'm nearsighted."

Not touching the "who's a proper rap fan" argument but out of interest, why d'you rate Fishscale so high Alfred?

I love Ironman and Supreme Clientele, but i like how Fishscale sounds initially like a transitional effort, and an unusually rich one. The first half sticks to his tried-and-true, with beats to match, almost as if he's saying goodbye to the 36 chambers, then "Whip Me With a Strap" introduces the denser, harder, weirder second half, culminating in "Big Girl" and "Underwater" (I wish he'd make at least half an album with stuff that sounds like "Underwater"). I don't argue with others supporting SC or IM over this thing, but as a full-to-bursting miscellany Fishscale shows his strengths so flatteringly that the weaknesses aren't worth mentioning.

*Whip YOU With a Strap"

yeah that whole argument probably hinges on how you feel about the second half of fishscale--not crazy abt it myself

I guess I don't really feel that density much on Fishscale. To me it feels a lot frothier and poppier than the earlier work. And I've got nothing against pop or froth, but I don't really want it from Ghost? There are some straight bangers on the album but even the soul samples feel more obvious than usual to me. I've been back listening to it a fair bit this week to work out if my mind has changed but nah. Almost every full track stands up fine on its own terms but I just don't find the same magic or the same complexity that keeps me going back to SC.

I don't know you Alfred and I don't know what you think I should be reading, but that's my experience and my reaction to the placings on this list. Maybe I should have prettied it up with some "Barring convincing evidence to the contrary, in my experience someone who...." bullshit preamble if i'd known you were the kind of sniffy pedant who would respond to that with "lazy dichotomy".

Nothing particularly wrong with not fucking with rap or being a lazy newjack btw, unless, you know, you want to write about it for a living or something.

If you believe loving Fishscale more than the other Ghost albums is being a lazy newjack, I'll happily make you a T-shirt for you to wear that sez "Sniffy Pedant," sniffy pedant.

I mean, how the fuck do you know more than I do about hip-hop? and even if you did, who gives a shit?

Whip YOU With a Strap"

― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, January 14, 2010 5:59 PM (11 minutes ago)

zvookster u may want to understand that this is how ppl talk to each other on this forum.

Burial, Untrue: #5 Stylus, #41 Pitchfork
Ghostface Killah, Fishscale: #11 Stylus, #75 Pitchfork
Bjork, Vespertine: #17 Stylus, #92 Pitchfork
PJ Harvey, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea: #18 Stylus, #124 Pitchfork

Stylus got these right.

Primal Scream, XTRMNTR: #10 Stylus, #142 Pitchfork
Joanna Newsom, Ys: #14 Stylus, #82 Pitchfork
Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP: #16 Stylus, #119 Pitchfork

Pitchfork got these right.

Final score: Stylus 4, Pitchfork 3.

no.10 for xtrmntr is just embarassing

Maybe top 100 would be a fair compromise.

man i cant fucking stand that noah berlatsky article. he also wrote a super corny review of that ehhh brooke valentine record for the reader .... its this cheerleading for R&B bcuz of its GIRL POWER & THE COMPLEX MUSICAL BACKDROPS kind of shit that totally misses the point of the genre, like its more about his OPENMINDEDNESS to the idea of listening to R&B than it is about how R&B functions

Nothing wrong with that!

kind of curious what the "point" of R&B is

Yeah, when Berlatsky's piece first came out, I wrote this:

Something about the article as a whole bugs me, though: even though I understand that its premise is a defense of a genre that's probably maligned by much of the paper's readership, it sometimes reads like a persuasive essay for a freshman comp class. With pat formulations like "contemporary R&B does have something to offer" and "The best thing ... isn't the lyrics, though. It's the music," I half expected the article to conclude with the old high-school paper stand-by, "Try it, who knows you just might like it." As it stands, "And it's right on the Top 40 station of your choice" isn't much better. I'm not entirely sure what would've improved the piece, but I'm sort of left wondering where all this nervous protestation sprang from.

kind of curious what the "point" of R&B is

― living like the Na'vi will never happen (HI DERE), Thursday, January 14, 2010 3:34 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the 'point' is a constantly shifting framework that exists & can be appreciated on its own terms, that doesnt require occasional periods of 'musical complexity' or GIRL POWER self-help anthems to be worthwhile

berlatsky also writes dumb challopsy articles abt comic bks, guy is a total troll do not feed

my favorite elektric red track was 'bed rest' which wasnt my favorite bcuz it was 'girl power'-y -- if anything its one of the more submissive traxx -- & although I appreciate the smooth production style, its actually one of the more dated-sounding tracks, its lushness not exactly "progress" from like "rock the boat" (which is the song it sort of resembles in my mind, if not explicitly). so why do i like this song?

jaymc's right, there's something weirdly juvenile like hes trying to justify the genre by aspects of it that aren't really what necessarily makes it good -- i just have a feeling that i would probably highly distrust his taste in R&B as a result.

every place Fishscale rates over Supreme Clientele is a further demonstration of either "i don't fuck with rap" or "i am a lazy newjack".

― zvookster, Thursday, January 14, 2010 12:45 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

i think this is a really rude and ignorant thing to say. they're both two of the best rap albums of the decade, and each have plenty of advantages over the other. the production is way more lush and exciting (and modern) on fs, especially compared what are basically just 90's beats on sc. obviously the raps are way more complex and intricate on sc, but they also make fuck-all sense a lot of the time. ghostface on fishscale is a really likable and hilarious guy, and his personality pervades the whole album.

my favorite elektric red track was 'bed rest' which wasnt my favorite bcuz it was 'girl power'-y -- if anything its one of the more submissive traxx -- & although I appreciate the smooth production style, its actually one of the more dated-sounding tracks, its lushness not exactly "progress" from like "rock the boat" (which is the song it sort of resembles in my mind, if not explicitly). so why do i like this song?

that's my favourite too but i think it might be a bit busier than early 00s Timba - there's just a bit more melodic detail in Terius stuff generally and esp. on Bed Rest an enhanced lushness, no?