The All-New STYLUS.

the new design is amazing and the writing is just getting better and better-- every feature is slam dunk it seems. it makes me wish i hadn't lost the small shred of writing spark i used to have. i wish i could contribute more than i have been this summer.

todd (along with nick and keenan, natch) is the hardest working man on the internet, and it's finally paying off big time. bravo.

I'm sorry you didn't like the Mercury piece, Marcello. I wasn't sure how it would turn out and it was done very quickly, more as an irreverent aside than anything else. Initially it was going to be a Pop Playground but ended up too long. Comparing it to "a BNP FAP in Welling" is a bit harsh though, I think.

Dom: There ’s that Brummie guy with the stupid name!

Dom: Kenko Soweto?

Swygart: Soweto Kinch.

Dom: That ’s the bugger.

Dom: What musical genre is he again?

Swygart: It ’s hip-hop. It ’s jazz. It ’s craziness.

Our two correspondents think it funny to laugh at black people's names and black music. Yes, all these jungle bunnies are crazy, aren't they?

Dom: I think Dizzee Rascal ’s fans put me off really.

Swygart: Dizzee is also going down the chart fairly slowly too, only dropped nine places this week.

Dom: They ’re all white guys with deliberately messy hair and stupid tee-shirts and dads who play golf.

Swygart: Well, the ones who write about him are, anyway.

Er, that includes me, and also by extension yourselves. So insult your colleagues into the bargain.

I took Stylus off my CoM links because of this article, and also K-Punk for similar sexist rubbish. Zero tolerance.

Just out of interest, why is it okay to overlook such attitudes in pop music you like (ie CoM's Dizzee review) and not in tossed-off pieces of glib web-writing? Why is Church of Me recommending Boy In Da Corner despite your argument that it also contains what you upthread call "sexist rubbish"? Why apply zero-tolerance to one field and not another?

I'm not being facetious, I'm interested in your reasoning for this.

(Hey, you can have that one for free Marcello)

1st point of issue - Soweto Kinch.

1) Dom couldn't remember his name. That is all.

2) I said what I said NOT because it's hip-hop and jazz, but because people are saying it's great because it's a fusion of hip-hop and jazz, like when people say Faithless are really clever and innovative because they have live instruments, or Jason Downs thought he was really clever because he was a country musician who had a rapper on his records, or The Red Hot Chilli Peppers think they're really clever because they fuse funk and rock and rap and, fuck it, I dunno, throat singing, because they're so fucking immensely fucking talented. Common thread between the three - they're shite, jsut like the Stereophonics, just like Starsailor, trading off their supposed 'talent' rather than the music they actually come out with. Maybe Mr Kinch bucks this trend, I have no idea. I may even listen to some of his music one day.

The Dizzee Rascal comments that I made, I do apologise for. Not racist, just rather flippant and ill-informed. Thing is, upon reading them again, they're eerily reminiscent of comments So Solid Crew made about him in their NME interview, about how he's not street because he hasn't gone top 10, and has probably never even seen a gun, comments that nearly propelled me to buy the album solely because they were that ignorant and ill-informed. Of course, though, I didn't, and I bought the Wildhearts and Mower instead. I also went public school, am a virgin, and am currently drinking a bottle of Fanta and eating a Mars Bar thus increasing the grip of the evil corporations on the world or whatever the fuck else you wanna fucking have a go at me about. I didn't go on the anti-war marches, there's one.

Truth be told, I can't fucking stand situations like this. This is why you're waiting on four album reviews from me, because I hate confrontation, I hate discussion, I hate upsetting people, and all the fucking time I'm pussyfooting around trying to avoid bullshit like this by not saying anything, which is probably why half the fucking top 40 review is filled with pictures, and the other half is basically me going 'Erm...' Alright? I can't fucking write about music, I can't fucking write about anything without sounding like a bloody simpleton, an arrogant prick, or just a fucking moron generally. And that ISN'T whinging, I am NOT having a go at you, I don't fucking know what I am doing, I'm meant to be writing some letter to uni about how exactly I want to go back there because otherwise I'm fucking stuck where I am right bloody now, but no, I'm writing this stream-of-consciousness bile-fuelled fuckerbucker 500 cack because I cannot handle anything.

Dom, you just missed Raul Malo on Des & Mel.

You see, that's the important thing here.

Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry sorry.

This, I think, is roughly what you're equating me with. Which I'm not very happy about.

If you're not even capable of undertaking that elementary level of homework, you should not be writing about music.

And no, maybe we shouldn't be.

(Xpost)

A) I wasn't a huge fan of that piece, largely b/c I thought the IM-ish thing was just sort of sloppy and hard to read. Nick and I tried to pull off a piece like this earlier and, well, it never ran. For good reason.

B) I think there's a difference between "racism" and "racial insensitivity". One is pretty much evil -- the other merely stupid. This seemed to clearly be flirting the latter -- a tossed-off, somewhat poorly thought-out attempt at glibness.

I would hope, Marcello, you wouldn't write off Stylus based on one isolated instance of something of this nature.