MIA

you guys are blowing my fucking mind here

if a wack rapper drops a song on a hot beat, ill say "nice beat, but the rapping is trash." I think the clash sample is a good one. but the song is not a good one, because MIA is adding basically nothing to it as far as im concerned. her personality is paper-thin, shes a stand-in for a bunch of unconvincing & ham-fisted signifiers.

i totally criticize rappers for this kind of shit all the time!! its mindblowing to me that this far on after we had the discussion this point is still missing you guys

and ive fukkin spun 'rump shaker' while djing before (albeit not in a few years) i think i probably subconsciously recognized it but while im sure lots of people (although apparently not everyone, including dudes keyed into this stuff like shakey) acknowledged it, it doesnt take a barely-there interpolation ("all i wanna do is" -- was that 'soak up the sun' song a rump shaker interpolation too???) to make a song a hit. theres a reason 'galang' from that car commercial that was exposed to half the world & didnt become a hit, while this song did, and its all about the musicality of the sample.

and yo guys -- im not saying "her music is bad because its a one track jack," im even bringing this up as a reaction to ppl who ride her 'popularity' as a confirmation of her doing something vital/relevant. the only reason that most ppl know who she is is a clash sample. same way most ppl only know vanilla ice because of a queen sample

""I'm pretty sure when "Paper Planes" was getting tons of play on the rap/r&b station in my town, more people hearing it on that station were going "oh, a 'Rump Shaker' reference!" than going "oh, a Clash sample!""

and for the last fucking time, i never said it was a hit because people were like "hey i recognize the clash." it was a hit because the sample is CATCHY. i understand that as a music board of critics you guys often have the worst taste on earth & arent keyed into what other human beings enjoy about music but cmon

you do realize that as a matter of course, people (and not just a board full of music critics) like different things about music, even the same pieces of music, yeah?

you are acting as if every non-ilm person who has heard that song is getting the exact same thing out of it, when obviously people are going to have a wide range of reactions

I really have no idea why I'm arguing with the biggest hardhead short of Geir on this board

i dont know why im arguing w/ an MIA stan but here we are

and for what its worth rev i think theres something to be gained from observing why people seem to like some things in big numbers and not others, as long as you acknowledge that the generalizations you are making are just that

but your observation is just conjecture

...based on your own response, which is completely fine if you just hold it out there as your own response to the song, but it gets really stupid when you start projecting it onto everyone else

i dunno i think everyone asserting that this is a hit because she barely quoted 'rump shaker' is being ridiculous & this is a much more defensible position but then i think MIA as a whole is a crock of whatever so i guess i should expect this response in her thread

that said, if miccio mentions that i like rap music one more time as if that means anything, i just dont know

the idea of it having anything to do w/ "rump shaker" is pretty retarded imo, but i think it's equally retarded for you to str8 up ignore the chorus of the song, esp cuz in my experience, that's the part that ppl dig the most

i never argued what ppl 'dig the most' i argued what made it a hit

i dont know why im arguing w/ an MIA stan but here we are

― Gifted Unlimited Display Names Universal (deej), Tuesday, May 11, 2010 11:04 PM Suggest Ban Permalink
Bookmark

half the beats on Kala are some tedious shit

― BIG HOOS was the drummer for the rock band Gay Mom (The Reverend), Sunday, Suggest Ban Permalink
November 29, 2009 9:38 PM Bookmark

About a third of Kala is sludgy and tedious and barely listenable. And Arular had better songs and production, some stuff on Kala seems undersketched and the whole album sounds dry and brittle where Arular sounded warm and colorful.

― suggestbannn/the lorax below (The Reverend), Thursday, October 1, 2009 10:50 AM

but I guess liking anything by her makes me a slobbering "stan" with no critical faculties when talking about anything she's done

xp I said this before but what made it a hit was it got used in two popular movies at the same time

j0rdan, you are smarter than this, how the hell does it not have anything to do with "Rump Shaker"?

deej, you really need to stop acting as if you have some greater insight into "regular people" than anyone else here. that shit is mad tedious and presumptuous

xp I said this before but what made it a hit was it got used in two popular movies at the same time

― GayQuil (The Reverend), Wednesday, May 12, 2010 1:18 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark

galang was on a nationally broad cast commercial but it didnt become a hit. generally speaking, songs dont become hits unless people like them

m.i.a. arguments were more fun when they were about tamil tigers.

okay, and those are very different songs in a lot of ways other than "one has a clash sample and one doesn't", so your point is?

catchy musical samples are more likely to make hits when the artist is unlikely to have hits

catchy musical samples are more likely to make hits when the artist is unlikely to have hits

I think more people have been arguing that she quoted "Rump Shaker" than that quoting "Rump Shaker" made it a hit. but please feel free to continue railing against a strawman that doesn't even bolster your argument.

I'm just saying that when she quoted Rump Shaker, it was a metaphor.

i'm going to mention again that deej is using the same half-assed criticisms ("amusical" "dependent on a catchy sample for a hit") to dismiss MIA that have been used against hip-hop artists since the genre was born (though yes, he's consistent about only using the half-assed criticisms when he doesn't like the artist). I'm mentioning it because I want to know what he doesn't know.

when you repeat the lazy criticisms of your genre of choice, at the very least it means you need to try harder.

This morning's NME:

http://www.nme.com/layout/magImage.php

Time to work on that false identity, deej.

the clash song wasn't suffering from a lack of exposure. and it's never been anything close to a US hit - not in its day, and not anytime since. it's not like a "straight to hell" jack was a guaranteed smash for anyone clever enough to pull it. the MIA song succeeds not simply because it contains the sample, but because it does something with it, adds something to it, makes it pop. and though this is only my opinion, i think the chorus is a huge part of that. the verse is catchy and gets your head nodding, but the chorus is memorable, funny and fun to sing along with. in my mind, there's no single "it's popular because of THIS" component to the song. like all good pop, it's recombinant. the sample is catchy, but so's the chorus, and maya's voice over the beats & sample creates a vastly different effect than joe strummer's.

hold the fuck on

just let's pause here for a second

and collect our thoughts

BRANDON FLOWERS GAVE AN INTERVIEW BY HIMSELF NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I am pretty sure Lex's face will melt if we turn this into a Killers/Brandon Flowers thread

is that really his name?

please god let me win the helicopter ride

I assume the bit about the new Blur album is a threat.

gotta say, if those NME headlines can't sell a music paper, what could

how come nobody's talking about the suicide sample in "born free"?
or did you already? sorry, i can't wade through this whole thread, the rumpshaker arguments give me a headache

how come nobody's talking about the suicide sample in "born free"?

'paper planes' is a jam and 'born free' isn't

we did already, a bit
xp

also "Born Free" is totally a jam

and this is her new Rumpshaker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvaQKtVQzk4

not even kidding actually - they're both totally deliberate references

"Win VIP tickets + helicopter ride"! With Brandon Flowers?

Maybe it's an offer to help pitch him out.

You guys, the Clash or Rump Shaker sampling isn't what made it a hit, it was the gunshot & cash register samples! OBVIOUSLY!!!

We should all be trying to figure out which Dirty Harry movie they're taken from.

lol @ how boring u all are. when u win the argument will u really feel more fulfilled?

like its not even an argument its just

person1:opinion
person2:opinion
person1:u mad!
person2:u mad and u strawmanning me!

(repead AD FUCKING NAUSEUM)

an argument is more than just restating a fucking opinion over and over again.

Can't stop won't stop:

http://pitchfork.com/news/38777-echo-chamber-mia-vs-justin-bieber/

"I find the new Justin Bieber video more violent and more of an assault to my eyes and senses than what I've made."