It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

there are SO many 19 year olds who have listened to nothing but rap their whole lives and claim expert/obsessive status but would be even more arrogantly dismiss PE

be

You're gonna like abacab alfred!

I basically agree will all that jaymc wrote above--I think the piece is fine. I haven't read anything else in the series, but if someone at NPR gives him this assignment (not the specific album; he says he did a poll first), I think his only obligation is to write about his reaction to the album. He doesn't have to place the album in the context of hip-hop history, just his own, which he does. The key thing for me in a piece like this is, do I find the voice believable, or is someone trying to impress me with his audacity (and in the process has evidently impressed himself)? I don't get that at all--parts even seem a little self-deprecating. If it were an album that meant more to me personally, After the Gold Rush or something, I'd probably be less charitable.

Very different, I'll add, than when I was 19. The first Rolling Stone guide, Christgau's '70s book, Stranded, and Paul Gambaccini's Top 200 Albums book all came out around the same time--the canon was still kind of being formulated. So I had this great curiosity/compulsion to seek out Forever Changes and Otis Blue and Moby Grape and all sorts of other stuff. Even punk got me interested in the past, whether it wanted to or not: the Dolls, Stooges, MC5, etc. And I'm sure this guy will branch out soon enough, but I don't think he was required to do it in this piece.

i kept waiting for "so-and-so is also the intern for the drummer for gay dad" at the end of this

I mentioned this on FB: of everything I covered in my popular music course in the fall, "Night of the Living Baseheads" seemed to leave the students coldest. I don't think there was a single reference in the video that made sense to any of them.

Lol the "red alert" bulletin from DJ Red Alert easter egg isn't hitting the class of 2013?

Using words like "cartoonish" and "caricature" makes me wonder if he's not even conceiving of a "cartoon" that can be transcendent.

Yeah like has he even watched My Little Pony Friendship is Magic?!

Well, I wonder if genuinely does not realize that no one ever disputed their cartoonishness.

if he

it's hilarious to realize Public Enemy is as old today as Woodstock was in 1992.

telling kids to respect the PE logo is like telling a gen-xer to respect the peace symbol.

i agree w jaymc and clemenza: the piece's only real sin is dullness. kid writes well enough to pass boot camp muster, is seemingly honest and self-aware about his biases, and seems to have listened fairly carefully. though i don't share his taste, nothing he wrote really bothers me. it's so short that i didn't even have time to get pissed-off bored.

OTM.

does NPR have any interns that aren't bored and alienated by any music that doesn't precisely resemble the music they already listen to?

Dudes who listened to Bitches' Brew and Horses loved them.

i can't remember the last time i listened to an entire public enemy album. 20 years ago or more.

the intern thing is kind of a variation on the hilarious let's play heavy metal or whatever for old people youtube things. i don't like those either really. 19 and 89 year olds kinda equally clueless i guess.

"Night of the Living Baseheads" seemed to leave the students coldest.

(Admittedly, this could have just had something to do with how it was presented or the fact that it was the last class of the semester or...)

Clemenza, jaymc otm

I don't think there was a single reference in the video that made sense to any of them.

crack no longer relevant eh

I also don't understand who or what is being leveled with the charge of causing a "reinforcement of received wisdom" in lex's piece.

The canon is a conservative concept that has squatted, toad-like, on music criticism for as long as I can remember – not just in the form of "100 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die" space-filler lists, but in the reinforcement of received wisdom.

He means the canon, right? Though I always have to weigh Lex's principled canon-hate against the fact that he just doesn't like most of the albums in it, and when he does like a widely regarded album then he decides it isn't canon after all. I wonder how this piece would read if he actually liked Public Enemy, or if the NPR intern had got his hands on Aaliyah.

Not sure what i think about this canon business - had sorta assumed it had faded a bit as "a thing"

don't really think anyone should be particularly subscribing to it, even as a roadmap or whatever but otoh if you're an outsider to a genre feels kinda weird to avoid major names in its canon - like couldn't really imagine avoiding romica puceanu or toni iordache

xp haha imagine if it had been about a canon album i actively hate! or if the intern had been bigging up angel haze instead of Fucking Drake

i find the idea of objectively good music as annoying as the next man but everybody has their own personal canon and amongst whatever group there is received wisdom, it's how people have discussions. eg i can't discuss techno with a group of friends if half of them think that all techno is repetitive and boring rubbish, an opinion anyone is entitled to. every discussion you have is based on accepted or shared wisdom. often, to have a discussion, there has to be a certain amount of accepted wisdom amongst people. it just so happens there's a vaguely annoying shared wisdom that more people share.

i find the problem as a critic lambasting this idea of the canon (which is subjective in itself obviously) is that generally the critic wants people to listen to other things which they think are good, instead.

and those things are no more objectively good either.

once you start battling for objectivity vs the canon you might as well give up writing about music.

yes ronan we should all just give up writing about music

all of us

everyone knows it's completely pointless and anyone with a career in it should just face up to the fact that their entire life is a waste of time

now will you FUCK OFF

will you please stop being so virulently rude?

i'm discussing something i'm genuinely interested in, if you are incapable of not having a tantrum then don't join in.

erm implying that the careers of half this thread are pointless ISN'T rude?

never said that, you take the implications you want to allow you to tell someone to fuck off though.

oh you're so fucking disingenuous, fuck off for real

if anyone wants to discuss my post then that's why i posted it. i'd like if there's a hope of staying on topic.

ronan's post was good, lex needs to chill

it's the same shit you always post so you could probably look up the 94387449393493 other ronanbot whinges about the existence of arts journalism as a practice in the meantime

once you start battling for objectivity vs the canon you might as well give up writing about music.

fwiw... the point i was making here is that it's a pretty slippery road to go down, battling for objectivity is quite nihilistic by nature. if you actually really do believe some things are definitively better than others and want to make a career out of saying this, or be that type of critic, then maybe there's a different lawbook you should go by... a discussion of that is what i'm after.

i think the only real problem with the big C Canon is that the lazy assumptions that formed it still inform a lot of non-specialist music writing, so you're still gonna rub up against painful examples of it in the popular media every so often, in the same way that school literature classes cling on to ideas of criticism that most professionals have long moved on from.

so yeah we are all post-canon now except for whoever writes the blurb for BBC Breakfast or etc

or maybe what you're getting at LG is the idea of criticism as taste-making? which i'm not sure is a worthwhile endeavour but is maybe wrapped up in the whole idea of criticism

i think the only real problem with the big C Canon is that the lazy assumptions that formed it still inform a lot of non-specialist music writing, so you're still gonna rub up against painful examples of it in the popular media every so often, in the same way that school literature classes cling on to ideas of criticism that most professionals have long moved on from.

yeah its purpose as "history" is the most fucking annoying part for me. and the way you get that narrative like "and then x invented dance music" like it was penicillin or something (tho actually the invention of penicillin is just as stupidly credited to alexander fleming anyway, so maybe this is just a flaw of history itself.)

nah, it's usually a flaw of laziness and thickness trying to justify itself as explanation or introduction, the "all ideas shd be explainable simply to an attention-addled 5 year-old" argument

i guess there's a place for Dummies' Guides but i strongly resent all mass communication becoming one

I think a lot of people had a reaction like this to PE back in 1988 (minus the Drake and Maybach mentions)--they were too harsh, you couldn't dance to them, etc.

xpost

I would like to add that as a fan, not a professional critic, it's fun to talk in hyperbole. It's fun to say Kanye sucks and PE rules! I don't expect my opinions to taken as objective.

Critics and cannons have always served a purpose for me. If I see something placing high on a list that I haven't yet heard, I will at least check it out for myself.

The integrety of cannon/list makers going forward might seem suspect to some because there are sooo many professional critics today, and sooo much consensus in year end lists lately?

I don't know. I do know that tend to cynical about a lot of things.

Critics and cannons have always served a purpose for me.

http://content.scholastic.com/content/media/products/7X/043965467X_rgb8_xlg.jpg

lolz

"i think the only real problem with the big C Canon is that the lazy assumptions that formed it still inform a lot of non-specialist music writing, so you're still gonna rub up against painful examples of it in the popular media every so often, in the same way that school literature classes cling on to ideas of criticism that most professionals have long moved on from."

i agree!

has there always been such a huge agreement between rock critics before?

(I don't remember if we ever covered that aspect of theat in those huge post-GAPDY P&J conversations)

that Lester Bangs line "I can guarantee you one thing, we will never agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis" seems pertinent

xpost

"except for Tuneyards"

lol