Pitchfork: The Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s: 20-01

theres no wanky love song shit, its about going clubbing & meeting girls & when that life meets with "real life situations" & about growing up, in a specific geographic place& time, semi-autobiographical, piece of ATL nightlife/life in general, universal but local, basically a perfect split point between experimental artiness - i.e. the spoken word approach, the extended length - and the more traditional concepts & styles & sounds theyd worked with before .... awesome track that showed them first starting to really upend shit

so perfect for this era, where ppl are overrating the crap out of conservative faux-UGK rappers, that suddenly dudes want to HONOR THE FIRE of trad earlier Outkast where they "rap their asses off" (c. tom breihan) & have totally 180'd on the worthiness of the way outkast actually made a name for themselves as one of the greatest rap groups ever by playing w/ song form & experimenting musically.

imo aquemini is their best record (and spottieottie one of the album's highlights) for exactly this reason -- it was the pt at which they actually started to really emerge as, like, multidemensional musical minds but kept it anchored in the past & w/ a strong sense of personal identity, the tension & chemistry really taking shape

ha, sorry if this has already been pointed out, but "Gold Soundz" won the Crooked Rain poll too.

CROOKED RAIN CROOKED POLL

posted this in the aquemini thread:

I think part of what makes "Spottieottiedopalicious" hit so hard is how in both Dre & Big Boi's verses, they start out as these surrealistic descriptions of chemically-enhanced nightclubbing experiences, but by the end of each verse shit has gotten too real in a very sobering way.

― grin and ˁ˚ᴥ˚ˀ it (The Reverend), Friday, June 25, 2010 7:10 PM Bookmark

^^^good post

Every time I listen to "Spottie" I promise myself to pay attention the lyrics but the horn charts and the rhythm distract me.

*TO the lyrics

deej all the way otmed up

also, it's not just funk, it's DUB too

yeah deej that was an excellent post, wish I could 'like' it

or 'upvote' or something

deej you can rockcrit this shit all you want but if you ask your average outkast fan to name five kast songs from the 90s this woouldn't be one

uhhh yr bringin' a lot of conceptual baggage into this with the "average outkast fan" -- like, has the "average outkast fan" listened to aquemini? if not, which albums have they listened to? or do they just know the singles/hits? and if so, when did they start paying attention? etc etc

"revolution no. 9 by the beatles is representative of the beatles because it's a DETOUR IN A CAREER FULL OF DETOURS WHOOOAaaaoaooaaahttp://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/chri7stopher/scanners.gif!"

― assface johnson (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, September 15, 2010 3:47 PM (Yesterday)

i'm just saying this post is otm - i just doubt that people who were buying outkast albums around this time (among whom i can't count myself admittedly - i was like seven) are gonna be like ohhh yeah you know what i think when i think outkast? that seven minute horn song with almost no rapping! (to paraphrase whiney again)

i mean we all agree the song is pretty rad tho

maybe it's not the "average outkast fan"'s pick (whoever they may be), but it won the aquemini poll on ILX, and considering that's the biggest of their 90s album, it being the critics pick from aquemini doesn't seem that scanners.

it's also on that big boi and dre presents comp, which suggests its not exactly a deep album cut

can't we just accept that Pitchfork took some critical/fan favorites whose esteem has raised over time (whether everyone realized it) over the obvious pop hits?

NO

see if Pitchfork had just opened the list up to more than one song per artist then this discussion needn't have happened...

I would like to request an argument over DJ Shadow's Midnight in a Perfect World, which has been badly neglected itt.

whatever happened to that guy

I'm guessing "grad school"

argument: DJ Shadow's Midnight in a Perfect World does not exist.

according to wikipedia he's an avatar on DJ Hero, working on a new album and playing shows in Antwerp. Good for him!

You missed the "DJ Shadow sneaks his own records into shops in Hungary" story then I take it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcESmqxS4kI

Allegedly his latest track

Samples from Gary Numan?

Tuomas, it tells you on the page

About the Artist
Mickey Hart, best known for his work with The Grateful Dead, has collected and performed on many unusual percussion instruments found throughout the world. He has put both traditional and little-known instruments to new and unexpected uses in his own compositions. At the same time, he has worked diligently to preserve the wisdom of ancient musical cultures through his recordings of indigenous artists. His research into the ritualistic roots of percussion is chronicled in his 1990 book, 'Drumming at the Edge of Magic'. In 1969, Henry Wolff and Nancy Hennings traveled to India and Nepal where they studied with the Kagyu branch of Tibetan Buddhism and discovered the transcendent music of the Tibetan bells. In 1972, they became the first Western artists to make use of the then unknown Asian instruments in a 20th century Western idiom. The resulting album, Tibetan Bells, led to a succession of recordings featuring these instruments.

I assume you have heard the grateful dead?

oops wrong thread hehe

btw these arguments still going?

even the P&J arguments dont last this long. Pitchfork must be really special to posters on ILM

deej you can rockcrit this shit all you want but if you ask your average outkast fan to name five kast songs from the 90s this woouldn't be one

― k3vin k., Thursday, September 16, 2010 12:45 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

bulllllshit

i still hear this one at clubs btw -- awesome 'end of the night' jam (i think i posted this somewhere)

way more than i hear rosa parks

deej has been otm itt

iet

yeah, def the 90s outkast jam i hear out the most. not sure kevin is old enough to go to clubs tho, so won't hold that point against him.

lol

the zinged becomes the zinger

i have never heard this song outside of me playing my own copy of aquemini, so ¯\(°_°)/¯

we're talking about strip clubs, right?

Midnight In A Perfect World is gorgeous, it's one of the few tracks on Endtroducing that's aged well.

^^^

played it about an hour ago and i can't remember how it went. as with weezer and pavement and belle and sebastian, totally unremarkable piece of music.

you're dumb.