Simon Reynolds is a gobshite

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

!?

doctor joke?

ie that is me, on my first day of school

u were sliding into 3rd base around then iirc

in slo mo

this thread is hilarious, btw, i wish Whiney and Deej could get Weird Science computers to create living embodiments of their respective constant stubborn talking points so that they could go out and eat ice cream and play video games while Talking Points Whinebot and Talking Points Deejbot battle it out

Reynoldsbot and Frere-Jonesbot would still get paid more $$ for their regurgitations though of course

lol i was thinking earlier about how this thread is basically posts very much in character 24/7

When people were saying "omg lol dance music is dead" back in 2001 a lot of similar critical moves were busted out: "All our old heroes - you know, the ones that put out big albums, have big live tours, well-known guests vocalists preferably from UK rock, and generally embraced by a mainstream indie-rock readership - are getting old and uninspired and relatively less successful, while everything else is rote filter-house and trance-pop or hopelessly obscure stuff that will never amount to anything."

Of course by 2004 dance music was in rude good health again, with its new creative and commercial success rooted in a combination of chartwise moves and the background of all that stuff dismissed as "hopelessly obscure" a few scant years before. You could say the story of 2004's success started (if it started anywhere) in 2001 - Discovery, electroclash, German house and techno...

so - if not "omg lol dance music is dead" - would you have agreed with the weak version in 2001? "ooh eck dance music's a bit boring right now unless you're deeply into it like"

No 2001 was a great year for dance music actually. Just not the kind that critics who only listen to a little bit of dance music (and then, like, The Chemical Bros et. al.) would think is a great year I guess, because The Chemical Bros, Underworld, Fatboy Slim et. al. weren't ruling the charts.

Basically the journalistic narrative hadn't caught up with what was actually going on, and when that happens, oddly, what is new is actually mistaken for same ol' same ol', in the same way (but oppositely) to the way in which commonly what is actually familiar and unshocking can be mistaken for being new.

hip-hop on the guillotine
because music like you
makes critics like Simon Reynolds feel so tired
when will you die? when will you die? when will you die?

2001-2004 now feel like a golden age for dance music. If anything house and techno is a bit uninspired now.

<3333 "go out and eat ice cream" btw. adorable

Dance music in that period is a best-case scenario for a genre really. The end of one era - superclubs and big crossover live acts - coinciding with the growth of fantastically potent and fertile new sub-genres. Very much the death of one version of dance music but, in retrospect, for the best.

If you told me 5 years ago that every hyped indie rock band in 2009 would sound like Ariel Pink, I would have said you were crazy

Sounds like paradise. Which bands are you talking about here?

that change in dance music was mostly the genre adjusting to the internet...prob a lucky time for a facelift

this thread is hilarious, btw, i wish Whiney and Deej could get Weird Science computers to create living embodiments of their respective constant stubborn talking points so that they could go out and eat ice cream and play video games while Talking Points Whinebot and Talking Points Deejbot battle it out

― henry man see u (some dude), Saturday, November 28, 2009 9:43 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what 'talking points' does whiney have? as far as i can tell hes consistently burt_stanton-ing w/ constantly misguided cultural mis-observation

well a lot of the time they are just deej^(-1)

yo dog...thanks 4 dat shineblockas tip

trakk iz bangin'

none of your medical mumbo-jumbo dr., just give it to me straight

you have 3 months to live...until you are suggest banned

The lack of "narrative" or "big new important thing happening" is different from there not being any good rap music. Obviously there's plenty of good rap music out there, and obviously there's a lack of any big new important thing happening in rap. The latter is Simon's real beef, because his best writing about the BNITH in popular music. He says there's good shit, but no narrative. There's plenty to listen to, but not as much to read about and write about and think about, at least nothing substantially different from what's come before. This is why all the hip hop mags are dead/dying, and why no one pays anyone to write about hip hop. Unless you are SR or SFJ.

i think things are happening but that its more difficult to tell exactly what those things are w/out the charts to orient yourself around -- it was easy to create a narrative when it was, like, "hmm these neptunes sure are popular."

pretty sure hip hop mags being dead/dying has nothing to do w/ whether or not there are existing narratives

the state of popular rap in 2009

Funnily enought, the company behind Zero Books is a wacky new-age crystals'n'meditation outfit. But I do think the imprint is a Good Thing (despite having a few issues with the whole k-Punk archipelago). I'm looking forward to N Power's One-Dimensional Woman.

― Stevie T, Monday, September 7, 2009 11:40 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

crystals'n'meditation'n'outspoken-anti-semitism outfit now

expand on that

publishing gilad atzmon