ILM's Top 77 Tracks of 2014

early on, i commented in passing that i don't personally have much use for "candy-glossed, pseudo romantic dance pop" and thus really couldn't evaluate the shift k3y track, and instantly got flagged for the "worst opinion" J0rdan had ever read.

hyperbole, by j0rdan s.

i think the Indie Likers are just not as present or vocal on the tracks poll for reasons that have been mentioned a bunch

ILM has previous.
Indie Guilt: C/D

lol tho i mean

― lag∞n, Friday, January 23, 2015 12:57 PM

Rap that's in a less popular style than what's dominated over the last 5-10 years is not rap? I feel like you're trying to make me look like I'm dismissing an entire sector of popular music just because I think it's currently in a creative lull. Keep your goon head high, though, friend.

rtj is the hateful platonic ideal of i dont listen to rap but

lol not true

― Johnny Fever, Friday, January 23, 2015 12:20 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

u may listen to other rap but it is very much true

― lag∞n, Friday, January 23, 2015 9:56 AM (2 minutes ago)

how do you measure that?

― deliberately clunky, needlessly arty, (contenderizer), Friday, January 23, 2015 1:02 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you can measure it with the P&J results. Run The Jewels got more points there than the next 5 highest rap albums (ABanks, YG, Freddie Gibbs, Rich Gang, and Nicki) combined. and only 5 of the 20 most 'similar albums' in the voter stats are rap albums:
http://furia.com/pjs/artist_9399.html

also as the person who posted one of the supposedly "venomous" anti-indie things mentioned above ("indie snob cadre loves this hot garbage lol"), that was a direct response to someone (idk probably imago) making fun of the 'pop snob cadre' for being unable to appreciate some indie thing

The reason people say mean things about Future Islands is because they're fucking terrible. One band being fucking terrible isn't by definition a blanket condemnation of a genre, otherwise this entire board would be made up of siloed Raccoon Tanukis.

― Let me help you out Charlie XCX fan (DJP), Friday, January 23, 2015 1:46 PM (14 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a lot of indie haters came out in favor of future islands who own btw itt, war on drugs was the much more universally negative reaction amongst the anti indie faction

In that case I take it back; ILX is currently made up of people who are deaf and/or brain-damaged and as such should never be taken seriously, even when their tastes/interests seem to align with you

screw the indie wars, this "Beep Dee" track is dope as fuck and should have made the countdown

i regret not voting for beep dee pretty hard

the future islands song isn't one i'm a fan of, feels pretty bland, but it's got something about it that makes me want to investigate the album.

not saying they're as good as Destroyer let alone 'kaputt' but still

i like the future islands
that guy seems posi
he reminds me of a cool summer camp counselor

Rap that's in a less popular style than what's dominated over the last 5-10 years is not rap? I feel like you're trying to make me look like I'm dismissing an entire sector of popular music just because I think it's currently in a creative lull. Keep your goon head high, though, friend.

― Johnny Fever, Friday, January 23, 2015 1:47 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

rap is so good right now, and the type of rap u referenced liking peaked 20 years ago not 5 or 10, also being into complex layers not simple ass production is a pretty sus way to talk abt rap which has always been a strongly minimalist form

Once the Fine Young Cannibals and Elton John seeds were planted in my head re: Future Islands, I liked it a lot more than the previous time I heard it.

i feel like there are only a couple really proper "indie" songs on this poll though, if we're talking about indie in the classic sense. alvvays and maybe another one.

these threads should be closed immediately after #1 is posted and then anyone who mentions anything about them again are banned

what is indie even jk

qualx for ILX sitemod

kaputt crushing the albums poll was a weird & great moment

the type of rap u referenced liking peaked 20 years ago not 5 or 10, also being into complex layers not simple ass production is a pretty sus way to talk abt rap which has always been a strongly minimalist form

Haha what? Rap has been incredibly maximalist over the decades and really only took a minimalist turn when Miami bass led to trap led to the Neptunes. Shit used to be so THICK with samples you'd spend a month picking them all out. And it hasn't even been that long since sample-heavy rap was the steering force of the genre, so you're willfully ignoring a whole lot of music just to make me look dumb. Have fun.

early on, i commented in passing that i don't personally have much use for "candy-glossed, pseudo romantic dance pop" and thus really couldn't evaluate the shift k3y track, and instantly got flagged for the "worst opinion" J0rdan had ever read.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c7/Nico-Vinz-Am-I-Wrong.png

it's hard to judge on the whole because it's been both minimal and maximal and also legal & financial issues wrt to sample clearance fundamentally changed the course of the music

you can measure it with the P&J results. Run The Jewels got more points there than the next 5 highest rap albums (ABanks, YG, Freddie Gibbs, Rich Gang, and Nicki) combined. and only 5 of the 20 most 'similar albums' in the voter stats are rap albums:
http://furia.com/pjs/artist_9399.html

― diddybops 67 (120.2)(source field mix) (some dude), Friday, January 23, 2015 10:48 AM Bookmark

For comparison, Freddie Gibbs & Madlib, which isn't trap rap either and shares way more in common with RTJ than Rich Gang, has 16/20 rap albums in its most similar.

Haha what? Rap has been incredibly maximalist over the decades and really only took a minimalist turn when Miami bass led to trap led to the Neptunes. Shit used to be so THICK with samples you'd spend a month picking them all out. And it hasn't even been that long since sample-heavy rap was the steering force of the genre, so you're willfully ignoring a whole lot of music just to make me look dumb. Have fun.

― Johnny Fever, Friday, January 23, 2015 1:56 PM (23 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

songs with a ton of samples in one song were always the exception even for the scene and time that was popular which represents only one slice in raps history, also not trying to make u look dumb im trying to talk about something, i apologize if i was too personal, like its not bad to be a non rap listener lol

it's just that the 'indie' music that tends to place in these things is usually pretty boring, safe stuff that seems to be placing for no reason other than the fact that lots of other magazines have put it on their eoy lists -- it's hard to even locate where the enthusiasm for it on ilm is even coming from. like that war on drugs song had virtually no one explaining why they actually liked it when it showed up.

― dyl, Friday, January 23, 2015 10:44 AM (57 seconds ago)

oh come on, everything that placed this year would be called "boring, safe stuff" by someone, somewhere. that's not a meaningful evaluation, it's simple condescension. very little of what wound up in the countdown strikes me as truly thrilling (subjective) and exactly none of it seems dangerous, but i don't care because i'm not invested in sneering at the sheeple. speaking of that, why on earth would you assume that anything placed because "lots of other magazines have put it on their eoy lists"? it's an absurdly presumptuous and, again, condescending suggestion. while it's true that there wasn't much vocal, in-thread support for stuff like alvvays and the war on drugs, there could be any number of reasons for that. among them a perception of hostility maybe?

not to mention that songs we a ton of samples can still be over all minimal

loves the Alvvays. really need to get the War on Drugs album, it's good from what I've heard the past couple days (vv late to the party there.) Spoon is whatever. there were not even half a dozen indie songs in this countdown tbh. i don't think dawson is indie at all. nor st vincent or owen pallett or whoever.

Haha what? Rap has been incredibly maximalist over the decades and really only took a minimalist turn when Miami bass led to trap led to the Neptunes. Shit used to be so THICK with samples you'd spend a month picking them all out. And it hasn't even been that long since sample-heavy rap was the steering force of the genre, so you're willfully ignoring a whole lot of music just to make me look dumb. Have fun.

― Johnny Fever, Friday, January 23, 2015 10:56 AM Bookmark

The whole maximalist "so THICK with samples" thing was true for like three years circa 1990. That period is an outlier in the genre's history, not the rule. A few years earlier it was stripped down Run-DMC/Schooly D beats, a few years later it was one-track jacks.

lol i'm so condescending. (ftr i was one of the ppl defending that alvvays song!)

is "from above" the beep dee track y'all are on? cuz yeah, this is great.

It's cool, lagoon. Let's hug.

[hug u]

Beep Dee was my #13, a song powerful & insane enough to unite lex & i

http://courtmerrigan.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/boxing-kiss-o.gif

It brings the club funk AND the heartbreaking melodic composition, rly wish it had placed

that gif works for both preceding posts lol

voted beep dee #1 hoping it would make it

Also, even the street rap that placed here covers a bunch of different production styles from dark horror music to floaty, new age cloud rap to what's practically a smooth jazz instrumental.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LicbZ3jYc-4

Haha what? Rap has been incredibly maximalist over the decades and really only took a minimalist turn when Miami bass led to trap led to the Neptunes. Shit used to be so THICK with samples you'd spend a month picking them all out. And it hasn't even been that long since sample-heavy rap was the steering force of the genre, so you're willfully ignoring a whole lot of music just to make me look dumb. Have fun.

― Johnny Fever, Friday, January 23, 2015 10:56 AM Bookmark

The whole maximalist "so THICK with samples" thing was true for like three years circa 1990. That period is an outlier in the genre's history, not the rule. A few years earlier it was stripped down Run-DMC/Schooly D beats, a few years later it was one-track jacks.

― The Reverend, Friday, January 23, 2015 1:03 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think rev is right in broad terms, i mean if you take "sucker mcs" as the first song of the new school rap era it couldn't really be MORE minimal by definition, just 2 voices and a drum machine

that said, as i pointed out upthread, that period of 3 feet high/nation of millions/paul's boutique heavy sample stuff didn't really die a naturual death either due to sample clearance so you can't say 100 percent how things would have turned out had biz markie not sample gilbert o'sullivan (though i'm sure some other case would have happened anyway)

The whole maximalist "so THICK with samples" thing was true for like three years circa 1990. That period is an outlier in the genre's history, not the rule. A few years earlier it was stripped down Run-DMC/Schooly D beats, a few years later it was one-track jacks.

― The Reverend, Friday, January 23, 2015 2:03 PM

Even when Run DMC and Schooly D beats were predominant and less maximalist than what N.W.A. and P.E. would do a few years later, not to mention all the jazz-hop that would bubble up at about the same time, the way a team of rappers would play off of each other in the verses was a whole lot more fluid and loose and—for lack of a better word—exhilarating than listening to a bunch of marble mouthed guys with thin voices take turns talking about how cunnilingus is the most reprehensible thing in the world. Whatever. It still comes down to preferences I guess, and RTJ2 was my #2 album of 2014 for the very reason that it trafficks in the same kind of maximalism and dynamism that are the hallmarks of the rap I've always liked most.

Freddie Gibbs & Madlib

This album is fucking great and it's a shame more people who like RTJ didn't ride for it.

3 feet high/nation of millions/paul's boutique is not a period more like represents the the majority of albums that fit the description

(plz dont be pedantic abt "majority" thank you)

Gotta say I find the trap style a lot more satisfying than the Madlib and RTJ albums. Those records sound dated to me, like things I'd have been very excited to here in 2001. RTJ is insufferable bollocks frankly.

xpost
well ok i won't list other ones but my point stands that that style became out of reach

and i agree that rap is in general has been more minimal than maximal

it's just that the 'indie' music that tends to place in these things is usually pretty boring, safe stuff that seems to be placing for no reason other than the fact that lots of other magazines have put it on their eoy lists -- it's hard to even locate where the enthusiasm for it on ilm is even coming from. like that war on drugs song had virtually no one explaining why they actually liked it when it showed up.

― dyl, Friday, January 23, 2015 10:44 AM (57 seconds ago)

Anyone could easily say it's just that the 'pop' music that tends to place in these things is usually pretty boring, safe stuff that seems to be placing for no reason other than the fact that lots of other magazines have put it on their covers' and what not. It would be wrong, obviously. Just as it is wrong for The War on Drugs. It's fine to dislike music, but making assumptions why some users like this and that, for any genre, it's NAGL.

that said, as i pointed out upthread, that period of 3 feet high/nation of millions/paul's boutique heavy sample stuff didn't really die a naturual death either due to sample clearance so you can't say 100 percent how things would have turned out had biz markie not sample gilbert o'sullivan (though i'm sure some other case would have happened anyway)

― Wu-Tang Clannad (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 23, 2015 11:13 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I elided that but true.

Same time I could stand to hear the next development in hip hop. I've been hearing variations on these 808 rhythms on EOY for years now and as a dilettante I can't help wanting a bit of a change

Xp to myslef

well ok i won't list other ones but my point stands that that style became out of reach

and i agree that rap is in general has been more minimal than maximal

― Wu-Tang Clannad (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, January 23, 2015 2:18 PM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like there were tons of songs that used samples but it was usually just a couple few at a time

a bunch of marble mouthed guys with thin voices take turns talking about how cunnilingus is the most reprehensible thing in the world

fwiw, another Young Thug song starts with the line "I'mma pull up, eat on that pussy, and dip"