//////////////shawty got poll poll poll poll poll poll poll (part I: 2008 TRAX)\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

well, yeah

i for one look forward to dom's EMP proposal about why the lex is a tard

This is why I paused before writing that post, so let me clarify: I think in R&B, and I'm willing to take my lumps on this if so be, always places a barrier between the artist and the song, vis a vis: you admire the artist for their technical performance, and then you admire the song for its emotion. I'm especially thinking of the major players here, yr Careys, yr Beyonces, etc, it may be slightly different when we start moving from mainstream R&B down to neo-soul and the like, but a lot of R&B vocal performances always made me feel like hair metal guitar solos: powerful, impressive, but ultimately disconnected from the rest of the song. Put it this way: do you ever come away from an R&B track with that whole "man, they're really going through the wringer singing this"? I mean, even compared to a Kelly Clarkson or whoever.

xxxp

I know I may be saying "I don't find this emotionally affecting and therefore it isn't" and thus invalidating all my arguments upthread, but maybe not.

Christ you are inane.

haha

You're conflating good singers singing crappy songs with an entire genre being about privileging technical chops over performance. There are about a bazillion R&B tracks that have that type of emotional wringer moment; I mean I can't stand her but pretty much everything Keyshia Cole does rests squarely on this idea, as well as pretty much every single Whitney Houston song, most of Beyonce's ballads (particularly "Dangerously In Love" and "Flaws And All"), most of Mariah's ballads (particularly "Vision Of Love" and "Hero") etc etc etc.

I mean seriously, given the heavy gospel and blues influence behind R&B, saying it's about technical perfection over emotional performance is quite possibly the single most uninformed thing you could say about it; if you want to complain about how ProTooling away imperfection has caused recorded R&B to sound more distant, you've got a much more compelling starting point to talk from.

ok musically now please

i would hate to interrupt this discussion tho

Put it this way: do you ever come away from an R&B track with that whole "man, they're really going through the wringer singing this"?

With Beyonce in particular: absolutely. Although there's also the sense that I'm witnessing some extraordinary conjuring trick that she's playing on her own emotions; she's at once totally within the performance, and yet also somehow outside of it.

no please go ahead

10 - Young Jeezy Ft. Kanye West - Put On
174.5 points, 15 votes
22 in P&J, 67 in p4k

i'm kinda still trying to figure out why i like this song so much. even tho both of jeezy's verses are pretty great ("call me jeezy hamilton", "inside fish sticks/outside tartar sauce" [this whole inside/out thing is already played but i like this one] etc.) the song is still pretty rote as far as his songs go. im sure this well get me clowned from now until forever, but kanye's verse might be my favorite rap verse of the year. typical mix of great lines and shitty ones but the autotune works so well in this context for him. this one's been a real grower for me and might end up as one of my fav singles of the year and, along with some other verses that jeezy's spit this year (most notably completely murdering the "dey know" remix) kinda restored faith that he might have another good album left in him.
- J0rdan S

whoever said that Kanye's verse on this was 808's condensed to greatness was right.

With Beyonce in particular: absolutely. Although there's also the sense that I'm witnessing some extraordinary conjuring trick that she's playing on her own emotions; she's at once totally within the performance, and yet also somehow outside of it.

― mike t-diva, Friday, February 6, 2009 6:51 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not sure what this means tbh

"call me jeezy hamilton" is the wrong line to quote in the plus column

oh shit, here we go..

not sure what this means tbh

me neither but i am putting it down to me not really being that interested in the specifics of beyonce's vocal skills (hence me liking and caring far more about her bangers than her ballads)

This record is terrific and all and Kanye's verse SOUNDS great but at the same time so whiney and entitled and emotionally immature it reminds me why I've never been able to get more than two tracks into 808s.

i love 808s And Heartbreak but have steered clear of The Recession so far

there go all my hopes for house and techno sweeping the top ten ;)

"call me jeezy hamilton" is the wrong line to quote in the plus column

― some dude, Friday, February 6, 2009 12:01 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

i wrote that after listening to the song maybe three times - i still think it's a good line tho

you guys do realize that Dom and buddies are just bored shitless and trolling, right.

xps

naw i'm pretty sure no one here gets how dom operates.

tru dat

"bored shitless and trolling"

the board has a new description!!

good observations one and all

"jeezy hamilton" is definitely one of the more memorable lines, but it's still just one of those kind of eye-rollingly dumb non-punchlines that jeezy does that i sometimes like but usually tolerate. plus i hate they way he switches up at the last second to the clean/Charlene rhyme when every other line of the verse has a differend end-rhyme, it's the kinda lazy MC shit that really bothered me about his 2nd album that he'd mostly stopped doing on The Recession. that's totally just nitpicking, though, still a dope song.

9 - Wiley - Wearing My Rolex
187.5 points, 16 votes, 1 #1 vote
111 in P&J, 17 in p4k

yeah, the "is it not featuring" query/vibe seems key to this one. pleasing irony in the fact that he feels more like a proper hungry rapper on this than say, the tunnel vision best-of 2cd; you're more than happy to trade all of the smart lines in that, cosy in their wileyness, for "usually DRINK usually DANCE usually BUBBLE." usually! i love how between this and 'i'm going out' grime's still staking out a surly little realist conscience whilst making its tentative steps back towards the dancefloor.
― r|t|c

lower than expected?

btw if you are a fan of Wearing my Rolex then this mix of the sample source is a must-listen:

i feel like ilm consensus stuff is gonna get beat out by lurkers voting in bon iver

and im not using bon iver as a strawman either - im pretty sure every song from his album was nominated

is that in response to wearing my rolex? because this was a lock for the top 10 IMO

ya i figured it would be top 5, tho i guess that's only a matter of a few votes

I think Put On was why I was so disappointed with 808. I wanted 10 Put On's, that were hardcore beats but with kanye doing the autotune crazy on the top and instead it was just an album of soft, poppy beats that didn't have the same punch. Maybe I should give it another try.

comparing kanye's verse on "put on" to his stuff on 808s (except "i'm amazing" i guess) is a really misguided idea - what makes kanye's verse on "put on" great is how they build up to it as well as the dichotomy b/w jeezy's style and kanye's. they both go for the same emotiond - i wanna say hurt but resilient - but jeezy looks outward with chest-thumping - "i put on for my city" and kanye looks inward - "i feel like there's still niggas that owe me checks" - with autotuned emoness. you couldn't have a whole album of kanye rapping thru autotune over drumma boy beats.

I know, but misguided expectations yadda yadda, what i actually want yadda yadda, what actually happened etc.

8 - MGMT - Time To Pretend
203 points, 15 votes, 3 #1 votes
4 in P&J, 30 in p4k

Who knew corny indie rawkers could pack such a strong punch? The song reminds me of Eric Hoffer's terrific mid-70s essay on what adolescence means in the post-sixties world. He said that the sixties destroyed countless social axioms but that one of the few axioms it built to replace all the old ones it destroyed was that "the meaning of life is to have fun." Such a concept may as well be Rock N Roll's own campaign slogan and in "Time to Pretend" the idea of life being nothing more than a long carnival ride is lightly parodied. But people seem to be so latently ready to live for something other than their own hedonistic pleasures that a song that pokes fun at the lifestyle, however lightly, feels, to some people, to be nothing less than Swiftian. The empty calories from years of hedonism is the other side of the euphoria we saw at Obama rallies; people, especially young people, ready to dedicate their lives to something, anything, to give it greater meaning.

The other thing Hoffer mentioned was that being a kid in the post-sixties Western world meant that you were simultaneously and unprecedentedly sheltered AND jaded to the world's pleasures and sins. You had it easier and lived more of a care-free life than almost every previous generation in memory, and yet you were also growing up in a world where the institutions and concepts that shielded and comforted previous generations (like religion, the family unit, the community, social and sexual taboos, etc.) were constantly being eroded and wouldn't be there to protect you from the Big Bad World.

"Time to Pretend" works so well because it captures that dichotomy of living in a socially relaxed and technologically advanced age that seems to get more and more primitive and meaningless with every year. As it turns out the pampered and well-off children of the Western world were also victims of a world where disintegrating values left them out in the cold with nowhere to go but inwards, into the world of solipsism and status updates.
-cunga

So 'Kim & Jessie' is heading for a top five position? Nice!

Sorry to disappoint, but Kim & Jessie was #18

Ugh..

Poll would make more sense if "Time to Pretend" and "Kim and Jessie" were to switch positions.

My least favourite of the three mgmt tracks, but I like cunga's write-up

7 - Lil Wayne - A Milli
203.5 points, 19 votes, 1 #1 vote
5 in P&J, 14 in p4k

haw

interesting

the plot thickens.....

lol-vote top 5?

I have to say that "A Milli" is basically the only Lil Wayne joint I ever want to hear. It's fucking TOUGH.

so blind and american boy are left

and hi dere OTM