No thread on the Girl Talk album, surely some mistake

OTM

unusual or unexpected juxtaposition can definitely create a humorous element in art but I think "jokey" implies a disdain or mockery on the part of the artist that I don't detect

jaymc and n/a both otm

right, exactly, sure. we can all agree that girl talk is shitty music on its own merits

Yeah, I'm not denying that he's exploiting, to some extent, the funny resonances that naturally result from mixing hip-hop and rock, but he strikes me as being very passionate about all sorts of pop music, and I think that's a big part of his widespread appeal as well.

In general I think most indie rock fans, as far as they can be generalized, are very open to hip hop. We're talking about people in their 20s-40s, the majority of which have been around hip hop (on the radio, on TV, etc) their entire lives and are actively interested in music and culture. It's not a foreign thing to them.

The furthest I would go would be to say that maybe to some Girl Talk fans, the hip hop elements are a shortcut for them to explore and hear new hip hop. Maybe they could work harder to seek out the original songs on their own, maybe they're not up to date on all the new songs, but I don't think they hear the hip hop elements of Girl Talk songs as a joke or something that's being made fun of.

part of it is an attempt to make hip-hop more palatable to those do like it by filling more of the sonic space that a lot of the music in its original form intentionally allows for. that's simply a matter of preference - how you might prefer hip-hop to sound musically, potentially. on that basis GT's problems for me revolve around his frequently corny or uninteresting choices (e.g. using classic US rock as a new backdrop for Luda) which i wouldn't wanna do myself - but there are still numerous occasions where he's doing just what i would but more effectively. the other problem is committing to the album format in this way, squeezing and condensing stuff to the point where's got to use enough vocal snippets to fill the space and that means resorting to tired old acapellas like skee-lo 'i wish' and whatnot.

think this album is great

+ if there's anything on this more annoying than will.i.am/nicki 'check it out' i'll be surprised tbh

to most folks, parties suck when they hear tunes they don't know.

The furthest I would go would be to say that maybe to some Girl Talk fans, the hip hop elements are a shortcut for them to explore and hear new hip hop.

i would like to just point out that i think this is pretty insane -- i don't think you have any ppl w/ decemberists posters on their walls going "i wonder what the other cali swag district singles are like" or "hey i should check out that first fabolous album!" because of good rap parts on girl talk albums

no but they'll be slightly better off when that scary caddy drives by and they recognize the rich boy blaring.

part of it is an attempt to make hip-hop more palatable to those do like it by filling more of the sonic space that a lot of the music in its original form intentionally allows for. that's simply a matter of preference - how you might prefer hip-hop to sound musically, potentially

"More palatable" feels strong, but I do think there's something to Girl Talk simply having fun exploring the potential of different contexts and backdrops for rapping. Especially when mainstream hip-hop's sonic aesthetic can be -- these days, at least -- fairly homogeneous.

i would like to just point out that i think this is pretty insane -- i don't think you have any ppl w/ decemberists posters on their walls going "i wonder what the other cali swag district singles are like" or "hey i should check out that first fabolous album!" because of good rap parts on girl talk albums

― thomas smangalter (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 3:36 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'm not necessarily saying they're going to go out and download every hip hop song that Girl Talk samples (though I don't really think that would be "insane" either, there's a reason that people go to the effort of dissecting all his songs to identify the samples). I'm just saying that there are probably plenty of indie/Girl Talk fans who enjoy hip hop but don't make an effort to follow every single new artist or hear every new single. For them, maybe the hip hop verses on the Girl Talk album help give them an idea of what's new and worth listening to - maybe he's serving as an assessor and editor for these listeners? That might be a stretch, but I'm going to stick with my main thesis that the vast majority of people who listen to Girl Talk, while not necessarily well-informed and up-to-date on all new hip hop, have respect for the music and are interested in it.

spoken as if u even looked up other cali swag district singles j0rdan :P

i listened to the second cali swag single, it sucks

I feel like a lot of the issues are based on the idea of a theoretical Girl Talk fan as an indie rock listener who is disdainful of or willfully uninformed about hip hop until Girl Talk makes it "acceptable" and/or "funny" by mixing hip hop with indie rock/classic rock, which seems like a very outdated concept.

I don't really have an opinion on Girl Talk or their fans but I don't think tendencies like the above become outdated simply because they're around and have been identified for a while. The form of this kind of attitude constantly reproduces itself, it's just the specific examples of music to which it applies that change.

At least based on my own experiences I'd say that if anything the dismissive attitude towards rap amongst broad swathes of listeners is stronger than it was 5 years ago.

unsurprisingly i agree w/ tim

i mean for christsake

Especially when mainstream hip-hop's sonic aesthetic can be -- these days, at least -- fairly homogeneous.

― jaymc, Tuesday, November 16, 2010 3:45 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

do u even rep for any mainstream/major label rap albums this year besides flockavelli?

xp Do you disagree with that, deej? It's not meant as a condemnation.

I just feel like 5 or 6 years ago, I could turn on the radio and hear a broader range of musical styles than I do now, from stark minimalist musique-concrete stuff like "Drop It Like It's Hot" to songs with big orchestral soul samples like "Hate It or Love It." Now you occasionally get something like "Empire State of Mind," with its glitzy showtune aesthetic, but otherwise I just a hear a lot of warmed-over electro. I dunno, like I said, I don't listen to a whole lot of hip-hop that's not on the radio, so I can't speak to the overall diversity of the genre, I just wish I was more enthusiastic about what's on B96.

And I even remember being excited when the electro aesthetic was ascendant a few years ago! I'm just kind of weary of it now and get nostalgic for R&B/hip-hop songs with jazzy guitar licks ca. 2003-04

I love Curren$y, though. I'd be stoked if that kind of style became dominant.

At least based on my own experiences I'd say that if anything the dismissive attitude towards rap amongst broad swathes of listeners is stronger than it was 5 years ago.

― Tim F, Tuesday, November 16, 2010 4:55 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I don't really know how to argue against your experiences except to say that my experiences have been different. This isn't meant to be a dick question, but you're British, right?

Australian, so even less reliable. Except insofar as I'm thinking of the kind of people I know who would be likely to be aware of and possibly into Girl Talk et. al. (being people informed by Pitchfork, Fader etc. rather than local coverage) as opposed to just "what do Australians think of rap."

Even the actual local music press over here basically slavishly follows the US rock/alt press and then the UK rock/alt press to a lesser extent, so, with the caveat that they're not gonna hear much mainstream US rap on the radio unless it's, like, Jay-Z or TI, people here tend to adopt a filter-down perspective on rap based on whatever the US press is saying, maybe about 12 months after the fact.

I like that this came out the week after John Oswald's vinyl re-release / re-edit of 'Plexure' - http://www.pfony.com/

That's what I like

n/a you & jaymc are contradicting each other here

xp Do you disagree with that, deej? It's not meant as a condemnation.

― Domingo Halliburton (jaymc), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 5:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes & no. no in the sense that arent all of these girl talk songs rap songs that were on the radio?
yes in the sense that while rap remains incredibly sonically diverse (particularly when compared w/ the alt rock im sure is being used on this tape) the pop charts these days tend to be dominated by either lo-fi southern rap or popelectro rap in a BEP vein

i was just using you as an example against n/a's point

this is going to be hilarious for the autogoon cru to hear me say (or possibly annoying) but jaymc, you should really try listening to the bay area rap that ive been pushing lately -- its huge & pop-sounding, even tho its objectively not popular at all outside of cali. one two three

i think its probably tru that a lot of indie listeners feel disconnected from rap now & get the feeling like rap radio right now is not the mainstream of rap now like the overlap that existed in the early 00s, and probably appreciate girl talk for having a pop ear & staying up on stuff they dont. & it also enables them to continue w/out trying to follow rap as a genre. which obv is up to whoever but imo sucks

Say Jaymc is correct and commercial rap is less engaging or exciting than it was 5 or 6 years ago - this in itself would lend weight to the notion that, for instance, Salem remixes of Gucci Mane may be finding an audience with people who are not following rap as much or as closely as they did back then (with the caveat that probably that audience is several orders of magnitude smaller than the audience for Girl Talk let alone the audience for Gucci Mane himself).

In particular the ongoing rise of what i might (for lack of a better phrase) call "lifestyle music journalism" over niche or genre music journalism (and by extension the kind of discourse that involves people who never even read Pitchfork, Fader et. al.) allows people to engage with particular instances of rap or stuff that draws on rap while being largely oblivious to the genre-as-genre in its contemporary form. The way in which lifestyle music journalism (and its discourse) increasingly appears to float free of any originating genre affiliations (e.g. pitchfork vis a vis indie rock) helps to disguise this somewhat.

It's tempting to assume that the argument "there are people who listen to Girl Talk who don't listen to much contemporary hip hop..." inevitably leads to "...and they are wrong and bad because contemporary hip hop is awesome while Girl Talk is awful" - but these are two separate propositions whose truth or falsity or independent of one another (notwithstanding that many people will either agree or disagree with both).

jaymc i think you'd really like yung humma

I'm biased against FTA because I'd heard that Steinski comp a few weeks earlier.

So far this is giving me as much of a headache as FTA.

jaymc i think you'd really like yung humma

― thomas smangalter (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, November 16, 2010 7:05 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm

whoops, I accidentally read this thread.

ha ha

so far this is giving me a headache

but (even tho i dug night ripper) maybe this just isn't my thing, as i'm the kind of guy who will walk out of the club if the DJ is playing mash-ups

Would Girl Talk be more or less annoying to people if the samples he was using were more obscure (on the rock/indie side of the equation, I mean)?

I remember getting so excited when I watched the Jay-Z documentary and he's in the studio with Rick Rubin and Rubin throws on a sample and says "check this out" and it's a deep Fugazi cut ("Closed Captioned" off End Hits, I think), and Jay-Z runs with it. I was just like "shit, I love both of these things" and it made me automatically happy.

Cool.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xevqon_jay-rick-rubin-in-the-studio-99p-ft_webcam

more annoying xp - I think the reason I like girl talk is nailed by jaymc:

but he strikes me as being very passionate about all sorts of pop music

I mean, I think his foremost agenda is just to recast pop music in new ways that just sound good - I don't really worry about hidden agenda-pushing or hiding-vegetables-in-your-waffles handwaving

apparently GT has "copied" a 'Sure Shot/Lust For Life' mash-up i did in 2002 on this? lol points deduction...

Btw, I just listened to Yung Humma's "Lemme Smang It" and "Fried or Fertilized."

He's a little too jokey for me, but I do like the sounds, esp. on "Lemme Smang It," with its little pizzicato koto or whatever in the verse and then the luxurious synths in the chorus. (Synths like that are a big part of what I like about Ryan Leslie's Transition.)

guys this is really awful imo

ok but iirc you're the kind of guy who will walk out of the club if the DJ is playing mash-ups

haha

i used to like this stuff

it wd lead me to suspect that some ppl need things mediated thru acceptable social channels.

yeah no shit?

completely unfair imo to use girl talk as a tool to dismiss ppl who aren't really music fans to begin with--i don't even have any of the guy's records but imo the fact that they are lovingly crafted is evident and they should be more enjoyable (or at least enjoyable in a different way) to pan-genre music dorks like a lot of the ppl who post here than they are to non-music fans.

but isn't being a dork on the internet arguing about trick daddy just another mediated channel for you to come into contact with the music of trick daddy, etc, etc

people who love Girl Talk records but don't know most of the samples are like kids who laugh at every classic movie reference on the Simpsons without having seen the movies