Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty (2010)

Rap traditionalism is totally what's hot w critics right now tho - wow this sounds jusy like ugk!! - another prob w the avant garde theory

― blap...tremendo (deej), Friday, 9 July 2010 18:49 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is totally different to critic rap traditionalism though because ugk&hindsight&southern revisionism.

Bands like Oneida and The Oh Sees who just make good album after good album deserve more shine than Memory Tapes

― Attention all Whiney fans! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, July 9, 2010 10:51 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, oneida deserved much more than a blip of curiosity for rated O. one of the best psych records of the last few years.

what thread was this again?

i mean, god, when we look back at chillwave it's gonna make grime look like Elvis on Sullivan

grime was pretty important

By yr theory why has kool keith maintained his critical respect?

well, i mean Ultramagnetic and Critical Beatdown are core NYC rap canon, so he has support based on that, not just Black Elvis and shit

Oneida rules.

also michael franti sucks and has always sucked

i don't think grime really fits into this theory either because most of the producers actively switched up their sound to something more populist. the avant-garde music you could call 'grime' (and not dubstep or funky or something else) did for the most part just stop. critics lost interest because there was nothing to be interested about.

boundary pushing in a way that's similar to tracy chapman, TTD'arby. loved by many critics upon release, looked at askance a few years down the road.

I've been defending poor TTD for years!

'more populist' is actually not the right words since there was a few years where grime was actually avant-garde and massively populist. but you know what i mean

ttd was never seen as avant garde. neither was tracy chapman. critics kinda loved and hated each in equal measure if i remember right. but they changed their minds really quick with ttd, maybe cos they wanted to see him put back in his place. now hes seen as an embarassment. and neither fish nor flesh - which was incredible - is seen as an utter failure.

if anything, i think stank/tlb-era outkast will be seen a bit more like idk, PE? praised as the future/innovative/progressive etc at the time, but as non-rap critics saw little merit in anything else about their music (they arent going to be getting hyped about a dope verse, esp if its laced with questionable content) they will find it hard to really see/remember what good it is after the moment has passed. its only real worth is that its 'new' and has amazing of the time/future sonics etc. whereas rock will be praised long after the moment as its deemed to be more timeless and has things like songwriting/lyrical worth going for it. obv with PE theyre praised and always will be for being political but thats always with reservations cos of griff/homophobia/sexism etc etc, its the sonics that is most indisputable about them. 'black music' is often left to languish purely in the pop culture moment. i mean, you read about R&B and hip hop and its always the futurism and the shock of the new that is talked about - which is cool, everyone can see that part of its appeal. but thats pretty transient stuff.

black music' is often left to languish purely in the pop culture moment. i mean, you read about R&B and hip hop and its always the futurism and the shock of the new that is talked about - which is cool, everyone can see that part of its appeal. but thats pretty transient stuff.

― titchy (titchyschneiderMk2), Friday, July 9, 2010 12:29 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

that sounds true, but the same thing happens to most music of every sort. it exists in its moment, but then fades to make room for whatever comes along next. and the appeal of futurism seems to have waned in recent years, at least in terms of how mainstream american critics discuss rap/R&B.

i guess i'm out of the loop somewhat, in that i still rate outkast and PE as highly as i ever did. i never heard the bomb squad as future music, though, i just thought it sounded good.

well yeah, the 'futuristic' R&B and rap that hit the pop charts in the late 90s and early 00s will prob be canonised in years to come. p4k and spin roundups seem to include it. i suppose what i was saying in a slightly roundabout way was just repeating that this music is praised for those qualities first (and yes current-recent stuff isnt praised for that, as its not - cos not much of it is really doing anything as dramatically diff/new as before - eg the big boi album doesnt have that same wtf is this feel of stankonia to it), which is maybe justified, as that is what half the producers are going for too. theyre not really thinking about 'let me write the most amazing song', theyre thinking about beats.

anyway this album is pretty fucking great

Yeah, this album is fucking fantastic. This week I bought this and the two E-40 albums, all three immediately catapulted to the top of my very short list of great 2010 rap albums.

so many great lines on those 40 records

need to pick up those E-40s

That titcy post is actually totally right on imo. Black music and rap in particular has always had to stand out and v little respect is given to something for being typical but really well done ... its why quik languished critically for so long. While like indie by nature every record is 'new' bcuz that's sorta what defines it as indie. And he's otm about the pe/kast comparison.

the e-40 records are great. there's a thread THAT'S LIGHTWEIGHT JAMMIN' but discussion on it has kinda spread out across ilm as u can see

Probably the problem with Whiney's theory is that the category he terms "avant garde" really should be "not gangsta rap".

And I think he's conflating the audience reactions, as if the critics who rush to praise The Love Below are the same critics who now say "lol so corny". Undoubtedly some are, but I think the majority of critics probably feel the same way about the album now as they did at the time (and for TLB you can substitute the other albums on the list).

But I think the real issue is that critical reactions to black music are tidal: the tide rushes in following the release of something like The Love Below and lots of critics who never talk about rap (or indeed much black music at all) normally declare it to be a classic for its iconoclastic sound, then (as critics do) move on, and the tide goes out.

The people who never thought The Love Below was particularly amazing are more likely to be the people having ongoing discussions about hip hop and so they get a bigger role in defining its rep longterm than they did when the tide was in.

If I asked all the indie guys who worked at the arthouse cinema I worked at in 2003 whether they still think The Love Below is amazing, they'll probably say yes. But they're too busy listening to Phoenix again to join the dialogue. Likewise the older critics who embraced the album are busy wringing their hands over Liz Phair.

So it's like turning up to a second vote on an issue, and in the first vote the majority was massively with you, but then in the second all the guys in your faction forgot to turn up and now the opposition have the numbers.

Those guys I worked with almost never check black music so it's not that surprising that the tide usually never comes back in. They're not punishing Andre 3000 exactly - after all, they've paid him greater regard than they have most other black music.

Not surprisingly, the "avant garde" black music that is actually liked across the board - Prince, early Timbaland and Missy Elliot, A Tribe Called Quest, to name just three examples - doesn't tend to suffer these humiliating reversals of fortune.

Which is not to say any album in his category actually deserves this fate, but I think it's a bit more complicated than it's being described.

cutty, tell us about doing your verse on shutterbugg

he kept it playa while some chose to play it safe

loving "daddy fat sax" more and more every time

Listened to this three times now and it keeps knocking me out. Great tune after great tune, I don't think there's a note of it I dislike.

all about hustle blood today

gonna sound a bit anal here and i know kast have always worked a lot with singers but several of the hooks on this record arent that memorable imo. never bad but not really on par with what outkast usually do. theyre a mite predictable. id like it if big boi didnt rest so hard on guests (esp singers) all the time. unless the guest is killer mike or backbone, obv.

listened to this a couple times on a road trip this weekend, the only track i skip is the janelle monae one. too repetitive, not enough big boi, and her vocal sounds like it goes with a different track.

yeah I'm not a fan of that one either. It has a nice melody and production but it's too repetitive and she sounds cold and empty.

This album got a lot of play this weekend. So, so good.

It's a good album to play while hanging with bros.

In my case, bros being a gender neutral term. Twas a dance party at our place Saturday night.

love Big Rube goin in at the end of General Patton

we can end the vicious cycle affecting our youth today if we just stop lying... if we just stop lying... stop lying... ... lying

In my case, bros being a gender neutral term. Twas a dance party at our place Saturday night.

― Official Cheese-Filled Snack of NASCAR since 2002 (B.L.A.M.), Monday, July 12, 2010 12:10 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

braggin

finally got this--it's rock solid tho i don't think i'm in love with it. not crazy about: vonegutt, the endless janelle chorus, the yelawolf verses (unfortunately!). pretty crazy about: tangerine, shutterbugg, a good lil jon production! not seeing the blaqkout comparison--that was way more one dude's crazy vision and frankly it's much weirder than this.

also the ad for antwan's pit bull kennel in the cd booklet is pretty o_0

yeah thats the other thing about all the big boi defending - for all the stuff about him dre3000s equal, the reason people just dont get as excited is that hes always the more down to earth, regular kind of guy compared to dres weirdness/adventurousness. you can see why they need each other. big boi on his own is very capable and solid and consistent and everything, but he lacks that extra something that would make these tracks more interesting/'different'. dre3000 on his own meanwhile is left to indulge all his bad ideas of wackiness unchecked and while more 'brilliant' needs someone like big boi to make things more fully formed. kinda why this album, though good, and with about 4-5 standouts/virtual big boi/kast classics, isnt really much more than solid. hard to really fall in love with it, hard as big boi tries, not least cos hes so dependent on outside guests.

these songs don't need to be wackier.

If I didn't read ILX, I don't think I'd ever have realised The Love Below was so reviled. I feel like the last person here who actually rates it. I'm not sure whether, according to Whiney's theory, this makes me not racist or a particularly stubborn racist. It's confusing.

xpost - i didnt say wacky.

dorian it obviously means youre a racist in denial.

Cool. Just checking.

you are all of the varied many types of racist. your racism contains multitudes.

agree with call all destroyer's take 100%.

and to expand on "you ain't no dj" - absolutely LOVE the beat. been listening to lots of old IDM records lately and this track hits me in the same pleasure zone. rigid, funky, TOUGH. would fit right in on a gescom record.

but the first yelawolf verse just sounds so... leaden? doesn't sink the track but eh.

did not realize lil jon produced "hustle blood" until just now. crazy.

yelawolf's flow on that track is kinda weird and threw me off at first but clicked on successive listens

i don't get why ppl are so amazed that lil jon did "hustle blood". he's been doing shit that sounds like that forever.

^^^yeah doesn't strike me as an unusual production for him either

xpost

yeah, I'm not ruling the dude out. hopefully the same thing happens for me.

just a little bit of a bummer since it's easily one of my fave beats on the album.

can't say I've followed lil jon closely but I haven't heard anything that delicate from him that I can recall

yelawolf's flow on that track is kinda weird and threw me off at first but clicked on successive listens

― Mister AOR (The Reverend), Tuesday, July 13, 2010 1:11 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah it is a weird flow, kinda breaks up the momentum of the track, but i kinda dig it

i'm not sure if i like it, but it seems pretty ballsy to leave that much space in a verse on a big boi track, when he just eats up those 16th notes (although i guess that's what andre 3k does to some extent, he's just way better at it)

it hasn't really clicked w/ me either. my reaction was basically that he'd blown a big opportunity; but then i figured big boi must hear something in it that i don't.

just to add to the chorus, this is really really really good

I kind of think yelawolf just didn't wanna outshine big boi on his own track