pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

*history

“Anti gatekeeper” is a good temporal stance when gatekeepers are choking the populist fun but a bad one when populist fun is gamed by Netflix and Activision

so listen to the music your friends make?

people should be rejecting this sort of assumption that the cream rises to the top

like the music mags i grew up reading were constantly prodding me with this shit, sometimes very explicitly. "you should be listening to better music than what you already know and enjoy", the assumption we should be rejecting imo is that we should only be listening to "the best" music because that attitude is harmful and divisive.

"populist fun" - the populace is perfectly capable of enjoying serious minded, avant garde art when it isn't roped off.

I didn’t say anything about “make”

Populist fun was singled out because that could tend to get overlooked by critics not bc ppl shouldn’t like avant garde or something

combines electronic and pop production touches, a classic rock song from the 80s, and that vaguely inspirational early 00s indie shit into this ikea type music

could be a description of the 1975

When I read this discussion about lazy consumers, hollowed-out products, and Machiavellian music technocracy, I don't really find one to blame over the others. It's chicken and egg and reinforces my conviction that if the means change and it's interesting to note how the system morphs, it's perpetual and there's no peak or final dystopian version to expect.

And it's not like anyone has a higher ground or can escape it. An ILXor, en enthusiast, a critic, an academic may have a more diverse taste, listen to albums, study the music as a complete object in its environment. But that's still based around the experience of consuming. A voracious, multi-headed, atypical music consumer who happens to have a lot of questions only him/herself can answer and that may one day provide a mini culture theory, but a consumer nonetheless.

I bet that kind of not-so-ideal critical consumer was not found in greater number at any time in history.

i feel like national and regional differences (not saying they don't still exist) are really being scrubbed out too, like how different does bad bunny feel from a US R&B/hip hop artist if he wasn't singing in another language

This is a tangent, but tbh there's always been tons of artists around the world who just wanna play Rock or Jazz or Hip-Hop in the American style, and it doesn't always result in that magical "hitting on something different by imitation" thing you get with Krautrock (or the British Invasion for that matter); most countries have traditional Rock bands that are super popular and revered but have no footprint in the US, because the mainstream wouldn't care and tastemakers want something more exotic. So if their 20's equivalents get a shot at scoring big in the US, well, I agree it's not as cool as actual sounds from those countries penetrating that market, but it's still cool, why *shouldn't* the next big American-style R&B star be from Venezuela or wherever.

I have a few friends (into music and in their 40s) who engage with new music by just waiting for the end of year albums list and plough through those. So I guess, people do engage with music criticism but on a more surface level than before perhaps. Sounds kinda boring for me even if I kind of do that with the ILM end of year polls although theres some context added to that at least and engagement with other posters too

xpost I have a friend that lived in Ghana for a year or so. I asked her about highlife music, and iirc she said she never encountered it anywhere, really, and that what she heard on the radio sounded like what she heard on the radio everywhere, even if the language was sometimes different.

What's that cool global radio station app, Radio Garden? That's a good way to hear what other people are hearing.

I'm not always so up on new music so I sometimes check out what being talking about on ILM to try to divine what's going to end up on the end of year poll results. Judging by board discussion I'm expecting to see Dinosaur Jr.- Where You Been in the top slot.

might get pipped by the Beatles

thanks for clarifying D-40 I basically agree with you in that case

someone smarter than me could say something about neoliberalism as a social engineering project to create a specific type of agent / subject / consumer and how we reflect or feed into or push back against this process in various ways (which are then themselves turned into signifiers of individual / group identity and ways to accumulate cultural capital) largely unwittingly

we should and (I hope) can stop all this somehow or maybe it will just derail itself eventually

fwiw the personal ILM lists are always so much more interesting than the aggregated results and there's something about aggregation that turns so many idiosyncrasies into something predictable and MOR - this my other argument against using scores in criticism

I don't know, man. The aggregated results are gonna crazy this year with Roisin Murphy out of the running. Who's going to join Jessie Ware, Caroline Polachek, Kelela, Carly Rae Jepson and Tinashe in the top 10?

I didn’t say anything about “make”

oh i know, i'm saying it in a Calvin Johnson-esque "decentralize the music industry" kind of way. since marketing plays such a big role in what we encounter. but also because a bunch of my very favorite music was made by friends of mine. i don't think the Beatles or Aphex Twin are "better" than my friends in any formal or critical sense, and certainly not in terms of the impact of their music on me personally.

i don't like lists for various reasons and can't shake the feeling that making a personal list is like constructing a monument to my own biases.

xp lol I love all of those albums (except the roisin which I don't need to hear) so I guess I'm the problem

if I do a list this year none of my weird picks will probably make it but those will so I guess the biggest intrigue will be which order they appear in. it's like old school rolling stone - will pet sounds or exile beat sgt pepper this time?

where is someone supposed to even hear Billy Woods and Veeze unless they were actively searching the internet or actively engaged in some sort of social media discussion? Think about how easy it was to discover, like, the Fugees or Goodie Mob in 1996.

― The SoyBoy West Coast (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, November 6, 2023 12:28 PM (yesterday)

this is just you being old lmao. sorry dude. contemporary rap music doesn't have a responsibility to make sure it's being found by 40 year olds.

the way people (his fans) discovered veeze is because he was hanging around w/ lil baby incessantly for several years while lil baby was the most popular rapper in the world. veeze was all over his IG, in his videos, he started hanging w/ x number of super famous rappers etc. he also collaborated heavily w/ michigan rappers as detroit & flint rap were becoming one of the most visible regional movements in rap. detroit and flint rap are huge on youtube -- this is music that is not hidden from a lot of rap fans.

in reality, there is an big element of veeze's rise that is a pretty old school tale of cosigns. it's just that the cosigns are happening as much or more on social media as they are on record. and the music is modern insofar as it is non-commercial in the traditional sense. yes discovering things is harder now than it was in 1996 but to act like people can't discover veeze... if you're actually actively paying attention to rap culture i would find that hard to believe, honestly.

another way i could put it is that you have your head up your own ass but think the rest of the world is looking at the inside of your intestines too. not the case!

using ILX to discover new music is a bit like using the Domesday Book to plan a holiday

^I had to look that up (and don't quite get it?), but I totally discover new music here! I'd be much more out of the loop without ILM.

in talking to people about how they discover music now, i've been pretty saddened to hear from people of all ages that they basically rely on spotify to deliver them a playlist of new music every week that they believe to be accurately curated to their tastes. i think this really stinks & that there is not a lot of critical thinking by most people about the implication of entering into a feedback loop w/ an algorithm as a method of discovering art, but of course most people don't want to think about art that much in general. there was a period where people went to new music friday, rap caviar etc and just pressed play to check out the new hits. the expectation now is that such experiences will be delivered directly to the one's lap.

anyone who has their own income tied to streaming data knows that editorial playlisting is basically over as a music discovery method because it's easier for both the streaming service and the user to cut out the middle man and have new music delivered automatically by a computer. i'm an apple user but from what i understand in talking to ppl about spotify, the functionality of the app is essentially geared entirely towards algorithmic discovery now -- personalized algorithmic playlists, algorithmic "radio" stations that kick in immediately after a selected song ends etc. the playlists on spotify are actually formatted now like tiktok, so you don't even see a list of music, you're just flicking/scrolling thru full screen videos. if you talk to kids about tik tok, you'll find that they treat "the algorithm" basically like it's the wizard of oz.

i also hear people say stuff a lot like "oh i have one of her songs in my favorites!" ... i think most younger people view music pretty strictly thru the lens of playlists & categorization ("oh this is great for my pre-game playlist!"). there's a handful of albums per year that cut thru and are received by the public on those terms (sza, taylor, kendrick etc) but most people are building up their own libraries of music song by song and just focusing on that. there *is* something very natural about the act of curating your own music collection, but the technology at our fingertips (pressing a heart that drops the song into a massive bucket of other songs) doesn't really engender long lasting associations w/ artists, albums etc. and i think that's a huge longterm problem that i'm not sure is going to change unless there is some really conscious attempt by institutions to change our relationships to the technology that delivers us music.

another way i could put it is that you have your head up your own ass but think the rest of the world is looking at the inside of your intestines too. not the case!

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, November 7, 2023 11:09 AM (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is some rich imagery

also good candidate for new borad description

People absolutely way overestimate both their own agency in interacting with spotify and similar platforms as well as the depth of the stuff that gets pushed to them. I've had to come up with various hacks in order to dig up the kinds of things I'm looking for without getting too stuck in the loop of having my own previous plays packaged back up for me.

my best friend almost never listens to entire albums front to back. all of her listening is usually playlists she made, or Spotify playlists based on her tastes, or the AI DJ and yet the weird thing is she is absolutely a serious music listener and very much an artist-driven music fan as opposed to track-focused. She just prefers not to listen to entire albums the majority of the time, only doing it on occasion. yet she'll go to concerts and know every note of every song and every word.

I think a lot of that is remnants of her pre-streaming listening, just like how albums that I listened to before I had enough money to consume music en masse, I remember better than albums that I've gotten into in the last 5 years, due to overplay.

even w/ metal, I find myself going on metal-archives.com and typing in a band I like and want more of and look at Related Artists to see who else is similar that I might not have heard, which is basically doing the same work as streaming without the automation.

I'm more or less the same way, I do still listen to full albums, but a much larger % of my listening is playlists. However, it's very important to me that they are my playlists and that I have full control over the songs that are on them. I very rarely like the lists that are pushed to me for a variety of reasons, although I won't say they are entirely devoid of value.

Artists similar to Veeze:

Babyfxce E
Los and Nutty
KrispyLife Kidd
Glokk40Spaz
2Sdxrt3all
Dc2trill
WTM Scoob

I think some of those are Whiney's intestines

most of those dudes have been discussed (well, mostly by me) in the rap thread

I think a big part of why I still rely on critics, tastemakers, and other human recommendations (including ILM) for new music is that I like to feel like the music I'm listening to is connected to something bigger than itself. I don't just want to discover music that is tailor-made to my personal tastes, I want to tap into a cultural conversation and try to understand what people hear in music I might not otherwise be drawn to and think about what it means. The Spotify algorithm can effectively serve me up a song I might like, but it feels sort of arbitrary and decontextualized.

J0rdan, I was saying all that value neutral, you dickhead

I mean, if finding out about new rap music means following a bunch of IG accounts and YouTube channels and social media accounts, then A) You can understand why guys like Kevin P0well (and me) find the act of "finding out about new rap" somewhat alien these days and B) My point stands somewhat because combing through 7,000 IG accounts still counts as more "work" than turning on Rap City and seeing the Busta video everyone else is seeing.

idk, if you are a fan of lil baby (one of the most popular artists in america) and follow him on spotify and instagram, there's a good chance you'd have heard of veeze. that's only one youtube sub/ig follow there. if you are a bit deeper into rap, maybe you like babyface ray or lucki, who collaborate with veeze all the time (that is two more ig follows/yt subs).

anyway, the point is that more people should listen to veeze

i will admit part of the reason my hip-hop listening cratered is how overwhelmed I got trying to keep up with the scene when the scene firmly moved away from an albums genre and became a mixtape genre.

used to love the goon threads but by the time I'd get around to liking shit everybody'd moved on to discussing Big Uzi Chronotrigga or whatever else was new.

had to remind myself 'it's ok to not know about things'

Rappers that my students talked about today: Veeze, Rio Da Yung Og, Autumn!, MAF Teeski, Peezy, AyooLii, Baby Smoove, Babyface Ray, BabyFxce E, BabyTron, Lil Double O, Young Nudy, GlockBoy BoBo, Heembeezy, Drilla, 22Gz, Juice WRLD, Young Dolph, Real Boston Richey, Young Pappy.

— Joshua Minsoo Kim (@misterminsoo) November 1, 2023

the first time I ever felt "get off my lawn" in my life is when I started listening to rap post Chief Keef, lecturing people about how Big L should have a statue and other boring opinions

xpost Glockin' on Bobo

the 'sounds like greek to me!' response is partly / largely old age BUT

the spotify algorithmic playlist silo way of thinking does tend to make the stupid poptimist vs. underground argument feel extremely obsolete... everyeone likes some stuff thats hugely popular and some stuff thats obscure now...being into 'underground music' (or rappers with <50,000 monthly listeners) is 100% democratized...even a 12CD person of the 90s will listen to some soundcloud artist now that could move an album in the CD era

that could NOT move an album in the CD era...

I mean, to Jordan's point, I'm a grown 44 year old and I'm not going to "follow" literally anyone on Spotify or even use IG or TikTok.

I did spin the Veeze tape tho

Jaymc OTM

jmk def teaches in chicago, right? probably skews it a bit towards drill, plus other midwest stuff

xps

Big L should absolutely have a statue

well, yeah

he does have a street named after him in harlem

as he should

i know this is the pitchfork is dumb thread

but "The Ones" column in Pitchfork is great for discovering new rap stuff

it's old fashioned you can read it and everything

I use Spotify all the time...but I never use playlists. The playlists I made I use for the beach or a BBQ or something.