Kanye West's new 2018 album

seems to me like your argument boils down to this piece of work being important because the person who made it has already been assigned important in the broader culture - which is m/l a rehash of that shitty tinymixtapes "review"

importance

more important to music history than the actual musical content, then

wait, so functionality is now linked to "importance to music history"?

No

I did not say that

Read my posts. Savour them even

got to love a discussion about the arts where words like utility, function, and importance are used without defining what they mean

I definitely argue that films and books are single-usage in comparison to music-- you don't rewatch a film or re-read a book until you've had sufficient time for your brain to have become unfamiliar with it

this is by your own description still literally multiple usage

if movies or works of music lasted as long as it takes to read even a fairly short novel then people would listen to them less imo

is ILE single usage

you called MMM "essentially non-functional", which I disagree with.

you responded with "If you can't agree with me that MMM is a good example of an album where its legend, and the subsequent discourse around it, is more important to music history than the actual musical content, then.. I don't really know how further to argue this point"

which doesn't have anything to do with what I said, which is why I asked why you were conflating the two points - functionality vs. importance to music history

xp

and I've read Paul Bowles twice.

the very definition of single usage

i think i kinda sorta see what you’re driving at but you need to slow down and savour your terms

some work is less important for the experience of actually digesting the content it presents to you and more important for the discourse that it has created

and this is the point I *really* disagree with, because thinking like this is how music criticism (and to some extent the broader music industry - certainly the mainstream industry) arrived at the sorry state it's in today, where the "narrative" of an artist's career is more important/of more interest than the work itself. Celebrity becomes everything, telling (and discussing and responding to and judging) the larger meta-story about the celebrity's life transcends the work itself. Which, I have to say as both a musician and a fan, I very much resent and hate, because it devalues the work itself, the actual content/creation that is supposed to be performing that function of engaging and absorbing the listener. With great works, I forget p much everything about the creator and myself and get immersed in it, it's like a little world to walk into, a comprehensive experience. But artists will be less inclined to even shoot for that goal if their primary concern isn't creating something good, it's just *being* interesting themselves.

xp

*chews thoughtfully*

@ Οὖτις

That's a very interesting thought and I totally agree. You're basically saying "I don't like it when musicians become solipsistic" and yep it's terrible

Re: definitions

Functionality: does it bang?
If it bangs, then it is functional, and immediately and obviously useful.
If it doesn't bang, then it is non-functional, and possibly not useful.
But wait! sometimes non-functional music has a use. It might not bang but it might do something else.

Relevance-to-music-history is determined over time and is in no way meant to reflect my own thoughts and feelings on "a piece of music", or "relevance" and whether or not it's worth talking about

MMM is an amazing noise album ymmv but ime reading/hearing about the circumstances & its context were merely a way to get me to check it out. I agree that focus on narrative/discourse at the expense of the work itself really sucks. That’s all window dressing, it can be fine, but a work of art should function successfully w/o any information outside of the text itself.

You're basically saying "I don't like it when musicians become solipsistic"

well, that's sort of part of it. I can think of lots of self-obsessed, monomaniacal artists that made great work, from Oscar Wilde to James Brown, in my opinion the crux of the problem is when the artist assumes a preeminent position over the art, and this is a phenomenon that is produced not just by the artist, but by the audience, the critical community, the broader culture. As soon as we have a majority of people thinking that what makes a work interesting is the creator's relationship to it, or the creator's state of mind when making it, or how it fits into the creator's overall life and lifestyle - that's when I start gnashing my teeth and rolling my eyes.

in terms of Kanye, there's no doubt in my mind that he feels his celebrity, his *image* is more important than his work - and this is being borne out in his work! This theme is literally front and center in his work. And the work suffers for it.

MMM is an amazing noise album ymmv but ime reading/hearing about the circumstances & its context were merely a way to get me to check it out. I agree that focus on narrative/discourse at the expense of the work itself really sucks. That’s all window dressing, it can be fine, but a work of art should function successfully w/o any information outside of the text itself.

― flappy bird, Thursday, June 7, 2018 12:30 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no

ymmv

in my opinion the crux of the problem is when the artist assumes a preeminent position over the art, and this is a phenomenon that is produced not just by the artist, but by the audience, the critical community, the broader culture.

I mean, this sentence could easily be used to describe John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band.

nah

I mean, this sentence could easily be used to describe John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band.

― paul mccartney & whinge (voodoo chili)

display name checks out

those are great songs. "Mother", for example, is very autobiographical but at the same time it is also universal and general enough that anyone who's had a fraught relationship with their parents can relate to it, it's sentiments are not specific and unique to John Lennon, and it's not the autobiographical nature of the song that gives it its weight - it's the delivery, the economical construction, the sparse production, and of course it has a great, catchy, winding melody.

xp

again, I'm not saying that autobiographical or self-involved material is de facto bad. There's tons of that kind of work that is great (including Plastic Ono Band and loads of rap albums). What's bad is when the work is valued or validated based not on the work itself, but how it relates to the artist and their lives. Like, what makes Plastic Ono Band a great record is *not* that it's his very first solo album that he recorded really quickly with Yoko Ono after moving to LA and undergoing primal scream therapy - it's that the songs are actually, y'know, good. It's a great sounding record, the songs are well constructed, the playing is great, the listener can connect to it.

right, i think i might have misunderstood your point.

the surrounding chaos has always been a factor when discussing kanye's music, but i think this time around it's harder to argue that the music is good enough to distract from the bullshit. so people talk about the bullshit instead.

Was really put off by this album during the streaming listening party thing. Came back to it today and I think I actually like it?

It occupies a really weird headspace, in its way even more "off" than Yeezus or Pablo. Those albums seem very premeditated and thought out, even when the looseness threatened to overwhelm.

This album feels like being in Kanye's head. There are chunks of beautiful soul music floating by, lyrical mental wanderings, sloppy samples and ugly guitar solos. Vocals that sound like gibberish placeholders that were accidentally left in. I initially dismissed this as post mid-life crisis therapy music which now feels kind of shitty. It is DEFINITELY post mid-life crisis therapy music and that is why it is sort of fascinating. It feels unbalanced and clumsy. It kind of reminds me of Skip Spence's Oar.

you don't rewatch a film or re-read a book until you've had sufficient time for your brain to have become unfamiliar with it
or the exact opposite, you rewatch movies and reread books until you become familiar with them

omg that's so fucking slanderous to Oar

anyways isn't the kid cudi thing out today?

presumably streaming the same time as ye last friday

Kids See Ghosts on Tidal right now

so far better than Ye
in a way that it's kinda interesting to hear once but I can't imagine really going back to this
Kanye's verses are probably better than anything the did on Ye or the Push album? Incredibly low bar but still

probably won't be as think piece friendly as Ye, I dunno, I really don't know why any of the music exists

not at good as Pusha, just because Pusha was basically just a street rap album with a little quirkier production than usual but Pusha is what he is and I like what he does

found the Pusha album kinda disappointing tbh, felt forced to me, but if you like his style he's doing his thing

i like the kanye verse on daytona. cudi sucks so bad lol

kid cudi aka the day'n'nite guy

i have never heard any of his songs since that one which was, googles quickly, 10 years ago

I don’t believe for a minute none of you don’t know “pursuit of happiness” specially the aoki remix which was pretty much played in every party and club for years.

i don't go to those type of club nights

The Kid Cudi mixtape was really good, especially the one with the Band of Horses sample, don't @ me...

everyone knows 'pursuit of happiness' moka, they just think it sucks ass

also it's also 10 almost years old so i'm not sure what the point even is

It was mostly directed at jim who said he had no idea who Cudi was.

But yeah he manages to suck somehow more than Kanye.

I don't know "Pursuit of Happiness" let me pull up the youtube
lol feat MGMT
lol Drake is in this a lot
this is not good

The popular one is the steve aoki remix

https://youtu.be/ZO-jQjEdK9w

kids see ghosts album is killer

this mismatching of song titles to song across all the msps is also bizarre and really fascinating under fantasy pretext that it was all intentional
imagine being able to easily discuss a new album that is near obligatory listening for your demographic, but the pretext of having commonalities like song titles is totally out the window - you have a lot of people singing verses or humming to get their point across. this obviously isnt the case. but makes me think of how interesting public interaction with a work would be if it was impossible to have a structure conversation about it dont @ me

this happened with the fall out boy record too, don’t think it’s that high concept

with that record everyone just panned it while listening to it the wrong way, which, people would've probably done that anyway but it still frustrates me that my tracklist corrections for mania took five months to be accepted on rym (ik, wrong thread, but basically xp i imagine that conversation would just be frustrating)

i mean, bit of a different scenario but frustrating nonetheless

*in this fantasy pretext; anyway

imagine being able to easily discuss a new album that is near obligatory listening for your demographic, but the pretext of having commonalities like song titles is totally out the window - you have a lot of people singing verses or humming to get their point across. this obviously isnt the case. but makes me think of how interesting public interaction with a work would be if it was impossible to have a structure conversation about it dont @ me

― 57mg/20floz

is this album as good as hairway to steven y/n

in 2018 bad metadata is just performance art