Simon Reynolds is a gobshite

i don't really consider metal, jazz and assorted skronk "pop" but can we just drop this?

Too bad hip-hop songs never break the pop charts or are played on pop radio. He really got you there, kevin.

Also, I've heard a lot of reasons why people don't listen to rap, but "no one pays me to" is by far and wide the stupidest

well that's why i don't listen to rap, fwiw

heres fifty cents

A-

a thousand xposts:

i actually made a prediction a loooooooong long time ago and i don't think it really came true. or if it did it came true in some less obvious way that i didn't pay attention to. in the 90's when indie/undie rap was gaining strength and listeners i thought this might translate into more of a worldwide movement of people making great native language sci-fi rap of all kinds. and maybe people did and i just never heard the albums. i just thought that mo wax/stones throw/co flow/etc would spur people on to make rap music that wasn't, you know, major label rap music. that it would inspire people to make rap in their own image. ( i was really probably just hoping that the japanese would do this since one of my biggest hip-hop influences in the 90's was my major force box set) again, maybe this happened somewhat and i missed out on it or didn't know about the great latvian underground rap explosion.

Scott have you heard the album 'Astromantic' by a band called M-flo? it is my favourite record of the 00s and it is the first thing i thought of reading "great native language sci-fi rap of all kinds" - they're a japanese rnb group with a floating cast of guest singers who make ridiculous overstuffed bi/trilingual pop and they had this one perfect album, in 2004, and... you might like it?

Gucci is a "populist rapper" only on Planet Deej, come the fuck on now

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 27, 2009 10:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

only in the whiney school of popular culture -- its funny how u basically have no understanding of popular culture tho -- how would you say he stands on the continuum of kevin smith -> chillwave??

Like he's been steadily on the rise for years, but he hasn't had a single even break Top 30 in Billboard. He's gonna be huge and everyone knows it, but dude has literally nothing to show so far except cosigns, guest spots, the MTV MCs circle jerk and sharing an XXL cover with three people.

That's not populist, that's cult hero.

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 27, 2009 10:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

its funny how u had to edit it to 'top 30' because he has had 'top 40' hits. um, & he's been the featured performer on hits that have done better than that. so do explain, how does one 'become' huge as measured by the charts w/out 'being' huge first. nothing to show for it? are billboard charts the only 'real' presence? planet deej? whiney, i recommend getting to know a single human being not on ilx it might do wonders for your perspective

And, yes, taking everyone of his shitty throwaway lines and deconstructing "OMG HE SAID PENGUIN" like it's fucking illmatic is as sad and pathetic as a what.cd message board slapfight about whether Memory Wave is better than Indian Tapes.

― eatin' spaghett' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 27, 2009 10:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah maybe i should spend my time writing one thousand twitter reviews of bands like memory wave & indian tapes u fucking clown

Pill/Freddie Gibbs/Juiceman axis

lollllll

whiney is basically the living embodiment of exactly what my problem is w/ mainstream critics now, altho at least he out & out admits that now that rap has no way to 'prove' its popularity on the charts it might as well be as popular as whatever crit bands he spends his time gchatting about.

lol @ breaking down ppl feeling gucci's lyrics to "omg he said penguin" -- it might help you to spend less time listening to brooklyn hipsters who discovered gucci thru the 'cold war series'

you're throwing up Kid Sister as a reason hip-hop was good in 09?

yes

goddamn this "argument" is annoying

I love it when hip hop is producing such unarguably brilliant singles and albums that any decent critic has to acknowledge them, without any need for special pleading.

it's much more probable that the drop in quality is to do with critics rather than hip-hop

i really hate the lazy "music must come to me" mindset that a ton of critics have - goddamn it is your job to get out there and hunt for music you love! the industry has changed and if you're going to sit back and wait for things to drop into your lap you'll miss 90% of all the best shit out there in whatever genre.

eg: the one consensus hip-hop album of the year, quik & kurupt - unreleased in the uk. barely a ripple of coverage in the uk mainstream press. and that sad state of affairs has nothing to do with blaqkout's lack of quality.

xpost. How do you work that one out? Critics are responsible for a drop in musical quality?

I appreciate we're coming at this from different angles. You obv think it's been a brilliant year whereas I've diligently followed up every track mentioned on this thread and liked only a handful. It's all very well saying look for the best shit but what about when you do look for it and it's just not (imo) that great?

Just read your last post - whole different issue there re: whether UK publications should start reviewing albums that aren't released over here on the assumption that people can hear them online regardless.

there are plenty of trends w/in hip hop i dont like or think are creatively zzz. A lot of rap that gets attention, incl raekwon/quik/etc. is not really a great indicator of active 'scenes' & more about nostalgia, sure -- i mean i think those records are great & have no illusions that they should be measures of hip hop's health as a genre. but SR's grand statements about the state of the genre when he's got such a poor understanding of what is actually going on is like thinking whiney's centimeter-deep knowledge of rap this year being indicative of anything more than critical lack of awareness.

it used to be easier to let rap just hit you thru osmosis, no question. but is the sudden need to actually be, like, a journalist about it a result of rap becoming less creatively vital, less broadly popular -- or is it about channels of access? Is it about the lack of an accurate measure of popularity? there's no soundscan on bootlegs & mixtapes, the industry has stopped releasing nearly as many rap records as it used to ... but does that mean less MUSIC is being made relative to other genres?

xpost. How do you work that one out? Critics are responsible for a drop in musical quality?

i meant critics have got worse, hip-hop hasn't

Considering how little interest you have in the history of criticism, I can't see on what basis you're making that judgement. I don't get the impression you've ever had a high opinion of critics except those who share your own tastes. It's daft to suggest that critics are significantly different from, say, 2003-4, when hip hop figured more highly on EOY lists.

hip-hop has def changed -- i think there are noticeable trends & arguments u can make about the direction the genre has headed in, related to things like charts & record labels disappearing, to top 40's move towards different styles, & the influence of media perspectives. but none of the articles or ilx posters claiming comprehensive knowledge of the genre's health actually have any real idea of what is known & what isnt, what WOULD be selling if there were a real market for it & what wouldnt. so they just assume its all a flat line. that the jacka is probably as popular as das racist or nite jewel.

the reason hip-hop seems very much alive to me, even beyond the amount of straight-up great records being made, is how varied the good stuff is - you've got the old guard like q&k and raekwon, jerk girls with homemade beats and dance crazes, surrealists and wordplay weirdos like gucci mane and nicki minaj, more traditional/emotional hip-hop from pill, hip-pop like kid sister...

for some perspective
http://www.datpiff.com/mixtapes-popular.php?filter=all&sort=listens

look at the # of listens for these mixtapes

gucci & clipse haven't even put out their '09 albums yet!

i mean, you cant exactly pull something scientific about popularity from this -- this is just one site, ppl get access to these tapes all sorts of places, or just listen to youtube streams, or imeem, or whatever else -- you arent forced to only buy CDs from a store, there are hundreds of points of entry for this stuff now. but like, half a million listens to a j hood mixtape?? hmmmmmm

i mean ive questioned RIAA's claims that downloads are "lost sales" for a long time but u cant help but wonder when a triple c's mixtape scoreds 800,000+ listens, that maybe this warned ppl off of buying the album impacted sales somehow

is jeezy putting anything out this year? been a quiet year for him

hes had a couple tracks out ... new album coming after the new year i think? hes the only established major southern rapper not in jail right now so its his chance if its ever been

i really hate the lazy "music must come to me" mindset that a ton of critics have - goddamn it is your job to get out there and hunt for music you love! the industry has changed and if you're going to sit back and wait for things to drop into your lap you'll miss 90% of all the best shit out there in whatever genre.

I was the other day thinking about the hoary old line about how writers for the pre-mid 90s music press used to go out see bands and proactively discover new acts and actively champion them. The ease of access to so much music should theoretically have made a return to those days easier, but in mainstream music press terms it just hasn't happened. Yeah okay there are individual bloggers doing that but by and large they lack the influence of an NME or whoever.

To Reynolds's credit he has done this in the past (Dizzee and early grime being the most obvious examples) but it's grounded in this counterproductive shoehorning of styles into his own narratives and more recently in this dreadful seemingly all-encompassing campaign of ennui and disappointment.

btw @ tpp
http://realtalkny.uproxx.com/2009/11/topic/topic/music/young-jeezy-ft-gucci-mane-trap-or-die-2/

4 the lex:

http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/4589/nickminaj.gif

hahaha that cover

not that this isn't anything that hasn't been covered in the lengthy thread on this forum dedicated to this dead genre but these are some tracks i have been banging on the regular this last few months:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANpephxhcEo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlcXutgYxeI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wxIp-C40eI

'glamorous lifestyle' fans should check out "paper non stop" also on youtube but not from the album

btw for those who want to remember last time we had this 'debate'
Platonic ILM Rap Bullshit thread

turn the volume right up on that chalie boy joint and then tell me rap is dead. well damn

I appreciate we're coming at this from different angles. You obv think it's been a brilliant year whereas I've diligently followed up every track mentioned on this thread and liked only a handful. It's all very well saying look for the best shit but what about when you do look for it and it's just not (imo) that great?

― Dorian (Dorianlynskey), Saturday, November 28, 2009 8:08 AM (1 hour ago)

the fact that you haven't actively sought this out already probably indicates you aren't in the target demographic, though! this is the problem, when non rap fans who happen to write at big papers stick their finger to gauge the wind once a year and declare "there's nothing here!" when they probably haven't bothered engaging with the music itself all year

Real talk, deej:

I've shown on this board and on my Twitter feed (yeah, lol, fuck you) that I've listened to a hell of a lot of hip-hop in 2009, and if you pull that whiteboy "lol rock critic doesn't REALLY know rap" card on me one more time, I'm gonna tell you to get your fucking shinebox, you piece of shit. Save that shit for the secret Pitchfork staff message board,which you're so proud to tell everyone you post on

i actually agree with this tho, save the subtle dig at me:

hip-hop has def changed -- i think there are noticeable trends & arguments u can make about the direction the genre has headed in, related to things like charts & record labels disappearing, to top 40's move towards different styles, & the influence of media perspectives. but none of the articles or ilx posters claiming comprehensive knowledge of the genre's health actually have any real idea of what is known & what isnt, what WOULD be selling if there were a real market for it & what wouldnt. so they just assume its all a flat line. that the jacka is probably as popular as das racist or nite jewel.

― ice cr?m hand job (deej), Saturday, November 28, 2009 8:14 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tbh, deej, i'd rather we come to a gentleman's disagreement than to keep zinging and sniping at each other.

@k3vin k - "non rap fans" is a misnomer because, like most people we're talking about here (eg Simon Reynolds and SFJ), I'm more of a lapsed fan with a ton of hip hop CDs who still wants to hear good stuff but doesn't like much of what's out there right now. I see your point about not following it closely this year - I've been writing a book so have been quite out of the loop generally - but you can't just say "oh, this guy doesn't like rap" as if that answers everything. I guess what I'm waiting to find out is whether I've just cooled on hip hop in recent years, or whether the right records could get me excited again, and obviously I hope it's the latter. Trying to divide people in this debate into "rap fans" and "non rap fans" isn't useful or accurate.

Bit of a guess here based on a lot of what's been said but: I suspect a lot of you (certainly not everyone) are where I was at seven, eight years back, feeling locked into a frustrating stasis when it comes to listening and active engagement. I don't think this is necessarily a function of age/where you are in life but it might have something to do with it -- there's no way out of that but through time.

it's not incumbent on anyone to be an actively engaged listener - do what u like! - but blaming the music when that happens to you is lame.

dorian out of interest, what didn't you like about gucci/nicki/pill/the others you checked out from this thread?

i meant critics have got worse

indeed, indeed.

xpost They just seem like straightforward, stolid club bangers - not bad, just not especially enticing. The beats and flow seem pretty obvious and there's no real lyrical world to enter, just a few clever lines. Not enough charisma, basically. I'm not someone who wants all MCs to Say Something Important but I like to feel the force of their personality - a sense that something's a little off, that their brain works in an interesting way, and a voice to match. What can I say? They don't thrill me. It's like when I asked you why you didn't like the Beatles and you said "their voices" - you can't argue with that kind of gut reaction.

I kind of wish I hadn't made vague generalisations upthread re: the state of hip hop. I was trying to work out where Simon was coming from rather than stating a strong case myself because I just haven't heard enough of these MCs to judge one way or another, which is why I wouldn't presume to write an article on the subject, so I'm going to keep checking out the songs people mention on the hip hop and EOY threads and hope to be thrilled by some of it.

the reason hip-hop seems very much alive to me, even beyond the amount of straight-up great records being made, is how varied the good stuff is - you've got the old guard like q&k and raekwon, jerk girls with homemade beats and dance crazes, surrealists and wordplay weirdos like gucci mane and nicki minaj, more traditional/emotional hip-hop from pill, hip-pop like kid sister...

― lex pretend, Saturday, November 28, 2009 8:16 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

otm

dorian have you heard 'shine blockas'? i think you'd like it. it sidesteps a lot of current hip hops trends for a classic soul-sample propelled southern beat kind of a la 'intl players anthem.'

for these last three or four years, rap has been a desperately unmemorable procession of cookie-cutter ballers – Jim Jones, Gucci Mane, Yung Doc, Soulja Boy

http://www.resimvadisi.com/data/media/320/bugs_bunny1.jpg

eh...what's Yung Doc?

hahaha

http://ugandaninsomniac.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/child-doctor.jpg

stay out of my flickr