Simon Reynolds - C or D

It has nothing to do with being a Reynolds/Stelfox fan (I'm not) and everything to do with you being an idiot.

The ironing.

(2ND BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR IN uncut)

...like he's arsed.

lol
what did i say that was idiotic apart from my stelfox comment? nothing. but its ok, carry on ignoring everything else i said and keep taking affront to one pithy comment you stupid fucking cock snuggler.

I don't see the difference between "feel so good" by Mase and an old Marley produced track for Biz with T.J Swann on the hook or "around the way girl" by L.L, personally. The difference is what exactly..?

It's utter nonsense that Marley stopped producing when Bad Boy hit it's stride : he produced more then than he produced after he left the Juice Crew in the early 90s (all the Intelligent Hoodlum and Lords Of The Underground Marley was credited with producing he now admits were ghost-produced by K. Def) as he produced numerous cuts for Kamakazee and Screwball in the late 90s, a cut on Sauce Money's album, that terrible beat generation lp he put out on BBE in 2001 or '02 and tons of promo tracks and remixes he's played on his show and released on promo singles like "haters" by L.L Cool J, "funk shit" by Common, his remixes of Nas cuts like "one mic" and "bridging the gap" etc.

Damn, Clinton..judging by the dancehall comments too it looks like yer talkin' outta yer ass every which way but loose here.

marley marl didnt stop producing but he said in the interview something to the effect that puffy made him want to stop producing.

"Feel so good" = Kool & The Gang sample + sung hook.

"Around the way girl" = Keni Burke sample + sung hook.

No difference whatsover. I'd certainly rather listen to "life after death" and Puffy joints like "benjamins" and "victory" from '97 than 60% of the atrocious "wu-tang forever" or offbeat underground stuff from around the same time like Company Flow.

Thoughts?

"there aren't all that many resources for low-income people to seek out "underground" music."

how did hip hop rise through the bronx, philadelphia and all those other places then? ditto blues, R&B, etc etc? they didnt exactly come pre-packaged through clear channel and MTV did they?

as for this theory - "Feel so good" = Kool & The Gang sample + sung hook/"Around the way girl" = Keni Burke sample + sung hook."

its stupid. yes on paper you can say 'hey kool and the gang sample and sung hook, its the same two songs' but if you hear them, its obvious theres a world of difference.

i suspect people got their backs up re: clinton's comments for the same reason white rap fans and white soul fans get reynolds' back up (according to the comments here).

as for the marley marl comment, clinton got the source wrong - it was in scratch magazine, not XXL. and marley did say that he quit making music for a while during puffy's reign. still, i dont expect ILMers to care about such arguments that much, i think the post-96 period of hip hop is more loved here than any of the previous eras.

I won't defend my theory to the death, but I will say that it seems pretty obvious that radio and 'black music' has changed a lot since those days. When it was all on the local level, underground as far as white America was concerned, there weren't alternative strains because it was grass roots. It was the alternative. Now you have five different radio stations with the same shit in rotation, and rap music/R&B have largely crossed over and are big business. When I moved to Oakland a few years ago, I was excited because I thought everything was going to be Blackalicious, Heiroglyphics, and Jurassic 5. I was surprised to see that those shows were just as white as any of the rock/metal shows I've been to. The stuff on the radio was tinny-sounding synth beats and Ludacris, and Lil' Jon, Snoop, and Black Rob, and shit like that (and Eminem, too!) I guess it got me wondering why, with all this quality stuff, in one of the blackest cities in the country, these rappers were spreading a positive and intelligent message about mainly black issues to a bunch of white kids with khaki cargo pants and dreads/crewcuts. It's kind of an awkward experience, really. I guess I can't really think of a better reason than Clear Channel and Viacom. I'm open to other theories.

I'm trying to judge the level of seriousness of your statement here.

there's a lot more underground than, uh, overground mainstream radio.

How does that negate anything I said? As far as I can tell, most of the underground stuff is supported by a predominantly white audience (in the states at least). What do you have... the backpacker crap, the groups (People Under the Stairs - last time I heard them anyways)who still think it's the early 90s, the Ill Bill/Necro crap, the conscious spreading-the-knowledge battlerap Blackalicious stuff, Grime, "house hop" ... am I missing anything significant? (please don't say anything about Juggalos) I'm not trying to be some kind of an expert on hip-hop, so please correct me if I'm wrong. Are all those scenes not predominantly white? Is any of it on the radio?

deej 100% otm.

xpost- yeah, but it's not on the big radio stations, either. It must be actively sought out.

not particularly, criticism-wise. his recent "free folk" piece in the voice was fucking terrible, no surprise. he seems like a nice enough dude otherwise, though. i wouldn't mind reading his new book.

Do you ever listen to KMEL? Where the fuck are you from? Yeah, yeah, yeah, "synth beats" blah blah blah. Frontline & Balance. Keak Da Sneak. Turf Talk. E-40. Mac Dre RIP. Too $hort. etc, etc...the political issue is too deep for me to get into right now, but you may have a point on the corporate tip. After all, Davey D got bumped from KMEL for talking too much shit, but still.

metal shows

See, that's your problem right there. Why don't you come cruise the E14 with me so we can pretend we're black together. Then we'll go to Sweet Jimmy's and get stomped in the parking lot.

Get Stoopid

At least we stopped obsessing over Simon Reynolds.

its stupid. yes on paper you can say 'hey kool and the gang sample and sung hook, its the same two songs' but if you hear them, its obvious theres a world of difference.

Why is it stupid?

Both are sampled from old cuts the 70s and 80s hip hop d.j's (from Flash to Kid Capri) used to play and both are on Ultimate Breaks & Beats compilations. Both Mase and L.L were smooth rappers (no homo !!!) making cuts for the ladies but which still bumped enough for guys to be able to appreciate them. "Feel so good", like "around the way girl", is a straight loop of a classic hip hop break with Mase talking slick over the top and a sung hook. There is no "world of difference" whatsoever.

if you think ll's rapping style or lyrics are anywhere near the same as mase's lazy mush mouth blabberings, or think that marley marl's beat on around the way girl is like the paper thin, blanded out to the point of funkless-ness of mase's song, that's nice for you. feel so good makes around the way girl sound positivly hardcore.

by the way, i dont think around the way girl does sample kool and the gang - always thought it was keni burke and mary jane girls.

seriously, i get what youre saying - both have sung hooks, both R&B flavoured, but feel so good was fluffy pop stuff compared to around the way girl IMHO. around the way was still soulful and funky, feel so good sounded bland as anything when it came out.

Never ceases to amaze me how these corny white rap fans and backpackers like tracks like "around the way girl" by LL and the smooth jams people like Grand Puba or Pete Rock & C.L Smooth made but somehow convince themselves that tracks like "one more chance" remix and "mo' money mo' problems" by Biggie or "feel so good" by Mase are some "flossy glossy sellout rap".

Hilarious.