Pitchfork Reviews Reviews

"hes" "really" "quite" "normal" "in person"

Seems like everyone, pro or con, can agree that PRR's most distinctive quality is how much he reveals his own neuroses. Whether you find his writing successful or not--grammar aside--seems to lie in whether you see this as the point or as an obstacle to some other point.

Great point about the point.

like if you are a teenage mercenary in mogadishu or a stickup kid in the City of God or a college student getting yourself pumped up for a recreational basketball game in italy, or borat, or a swiss girl at a party in new york, and your reference points in American rap are Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac and maybe jay-z or 50 Cent, kanye and wayne might strike you as really skilled homosexual gangsta rap parodists

the aforementioned "worst paragraph of all time." now I'm willing to guess that pretty much everyone itt knows what point PRR is trying to make here, but I'm also willing to bet that 95% would agree that this probably the worst possible way to illustrate said point.

to get a sense of the broader context:

it would take like six hours to explain Wayne to someone who isn’t from America, i think, because people from other countries have different senses of humor and understandings of irony and meaning and visions of american gangsterism. like remember when Kanye West and 50 Cent both put their records out on September 11th a few years ago and 50 Cent said he would retire if Kanye outsold him and then Kanye outsold him by a lot in America but then 50 Cent sold more records worldwide so he didn’t retire?

50 Cent is a gangster cartoon and Kanye is a self-conscious weirdo who details his mixed feelings about fame and success, which wayne is and does too, and i think if you’re not familiar with the American version of Self, 50 Cent might make a lot more sense to you than Kanye. and i guess that Wayne, at his alien best and his kurt cobain worst and most places in between those, lands closer to Kanye than 50 Cent

like if you are a teenage mercenary in mogadishu or a stickup kid in the City of God or a college student getting yourself pumped up for a recreational basketball game in italy, or borat, or a swiss girl at a party in new york, and your reference points in American rap are Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac and maybe jay-z or 50 Cent, kanye and wayne might strike you as really skilled homosexual gangsta rap parodists

am I missing something or is he just saying their voices sound gay?

you're missing something, but that's okay, so is he

everything up to the conclusion was really rather salient, but the conclusion is obv insane

The success of that, er, entry depends on your tolerance for faux-casual writing.

my last post was meant as a joke but doesn't actually make sense. sorry.

but no, I think he's talking about deeper/broader self-presentation stuff. the one problem with this is that someone coming from the foreign contexts he's talking about is less likely to even pick up those self-presentation distinctions in the first place.

if you are a teenage mercenary in mogadishu
or a stickup kid in the City of God or
a college student getting
yourself pumped up for a recreational basketball game in italy,
or borat,
or a swiss girl at a party in new york,
and your reference points in American rap
are Notorious B.I.G.
and Tupac
and maybe jay-z or 50 Cent,
kanye and wayne
might strike you

as really skilled homosexual gangsta rap parodists

like I know he's dancing around some assumed idea of people from other countries being unfamiliar with the "American Sense Of Self" (Curtis and Graduation have sold about the same internationally, actually) but the idea that they'd be perceived as a "homosexual parody" of gangsta rap kinda nullifies any other point he's trying to make.

dammit -- Europeans should have kept their colonies.

Coming from the rich tradition of homosexual rap parodies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KTalft2T9k

really skilled homosexual gangsta rap parodists

ok that is funny

this guy is a media savant, you'll all be working for him someday

― (e_3) (Edward III), Monday, September 27, 2010 5:08 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

^ I take this back, you are already all working for him

already, all of you are working for him

he sounds like he'd be a chill boss

chatty

His memo's sentences would start with "like" and he'd tell you what he told his shrink about Avey Tare

this thread is like reliving the moment music lovers everywhere figured out fred durst was going to become successful and popular

why the hell did I even try to read that Lil Wayne piece

straight up, five bucks if you make this the ilm board description

would offer more, but times are tough

I am okay with making ILM all about Geir

I am not at all okay with making ILM all about PRR

I keep reading PRR as "PBR." Or maybe I just can't wait to leave the office.

see, even anonymous aerosmith albums in an empty room is working for him now

this kid is like a bodysnatcher

would offer more, but times are tough

it's okay, i think i ruined this thread :(

it was ruined before I created it

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/ronaldinhopeep.jpg

see, even anonymous aerosmith albums in an empty room is working for him now

this is a genius ref btw Edward III and I don't want you to think I missed it

I think it's disingenuous to argue "he's not a music critic". What is his writing about Lil' Wayne, or the meaning of Vampire Weekend's class allusions, if not straight-up music crit (leaving aside whether it's good or bad music crit, which for me seems to swing wildly on a sentence by sentence basis).

Contenderiser, you were complaining about not having been directed towards all the good music crit that you should have been reading.

Have you read Tom Ewing's Popular series? When it comes to writing about both:

a) a personal relationship with given pieces of music; and

b) how music functions differently for different people "out there"...

...Tom demolishes PRR. But that's not a fair comparison because Tom demolishes nearly everyone on these grounds.

When it comes to music critics who have emerged over the last ten years or so with a "distinctive voice", I really can't think of a better candidate.

To build on this (and to give it a point beyond gratuitously repping for Tom), I would say that what Tom does which PRR doesn't (apart from being an immensely superior stylist and self-editor) is to ask interesting

questions

I agree with the basic argument that PRR can sometimes come up with some interesting insights, or at least correct ones - his Vampire Weekend analysis is sound, for example - but he strikes me as struggling to say something interesting from within the defined, delimited and over-determined aesthetic viewpoint of the stereotypical pitchfork reader. As good as his answers occasionally are, his questions seem kinda generic and undeconstructed.

Which is not a massive slight because I think that's true of most music critics tbh.

Obv that "questions" wasn't meant to be quoted like that.

i thought it was a nice stylistic choice

i know, parts of this thread are really

interesting

I don't know Tim - there are a shit-ton of people on the internet who write on blogs and offer their opinions on music, but I'm leery of calling them "music critics." (And for the record, I'm leery of calling MYSELF a music critic, since I've always been just a schmoe with a blog up until getting my 33 1/3 deal.) I don't mean to be a snob about it or foist some special meaning on the phrase, but there is a lot that goes into being a real music critic which I have too much respect for to just label anyone with an opinion and a tumblr a "critic." Maybe I'm just splitting hairs but I don't think I'm being disingenuous.

I feel the same ambiguity, as the market has dried up and I've had to rely increasingly on blog-only stuff. In 2010 I don't what makes anyone with intelligent opinions about music a critic. What IS a critic in 2010? On the other hand, maybe we deluded ourselves ten years ago -- writing to and for the same community of a few hundred people. I don't like to think so: I was inspired by the same community ten years ago.

hey scott i just found out what your 33.3 book is and i'm super super psyched!

it's just overproduction. and i don't even mean that in a "it was better when there used to be standards and cultural gatekeepers" kinda way either. (i certainly wouldn't be getting paid to write about music without blogs.) i don't think the majority of people doing it ten or even twenty years ago were really practicing "criticism" in the kael/christgau/whoever you'd like to add sense, either. (i certainly don't think *i'm* doing it, as much because of a lack of ability as a lack of venues.) i think they were just "writing about music." (see tim's "his questions seem kinda generic and undeconstructed.") there's nothing *wrong* with that, but i think, especially now since so many more people are doing it, you've got to be a pretty good (or at least distinctive) stylist to cut through it, which is one reason (again, distinctive rather than good) that people are talking about the prr kid.

plus also it's just easier than ever to get sucked into your own little corner of the internet and those 10 or 20 or (god love you) 30 people you can keep up with are your critical voices, even if they're not particularly critical or haven't developed much in the way of a voice, and harder than ever to attract an audience outside of that circle. and i think there generally *are* usually some real-deal critics in those individual circles, the only reason we're even discussing prr kid at all is that he's leeched himself onto an established brand and begun to branch out into other publications--he's found a way to game the system, through accident or design, at a time when it's very hard to do so.

Have you read Tom Ewing's Popular series?

...When it comes to music critics who have emerged over the last ten years or so with a "distinctive voice", I really can't think of a better candidate.

― Tim F, Wednesday, September 29, 2010 4:30 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

have to confess that i haven't read much tom ewing, tim. now have his freaky trigger "popular" stuff loaded up on another page, preparing to dig in. and thanks for taking that request (more that than a complaint, i hope?) seriously. thanks too to lex for the same. we rarely see eye to eye, but i've always enjoyed reading your analysis.

it's funny, when i was a kid, i read tons of crit and "reviews". was particularly fond of greil marcus, byron coley, pauline kael, and older lester bangs stuff, but took in almost anything i could get my hands on. music, movie & art magazines, newspapers, fanzines, whatever. as i've gotten older, however, i've almost completely stopped reading real criticism. i keep up with a few clearinghouses for brief reviews of stuff i know might be up my alley (termbo, mosurak @ dusted), occasionally drop in on pitchfork just to see what's going in the world outside, comb through encyclopedia metallum user reviews, but that's about it. partly it's ILX, which seems to serve all my needs in that regard, and partly it's that i'm old and jaded and rarely read anything that really breaks down doors for me.

would like to feel a little less boxed in and lazy, though, so any/all suggestions for outside reading appreciated.

didn't Robin Carmody used to dissect old top 20 lists?

prr dude is compelling in the same way that woody allen is compelling. pretty sure he realizes what he sounds like. don't see why solipsism is an issue. lots of people make careers off that. if anything, his navel gazing is his strength.

i just have no idea what separates and elevates him from like a million other bloggers, except i guess that he has successfully "done meta"

wait, so like a bunch of people are actually paying attention to this guy?

...

http://eclecticboogaloo.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/whatever.jpg

lol @ que

he's definitely gained some degree of notice in an obscenely cloistered, tiny section of the American indie music crit world

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/128298508615001250urtheoryhasme.jpg

:-D

y'all know I love ILX until the end of time, but as far as cloisters go, this board is one that's unusually good at being unimpressed with stuff, so the "wait, people actually read this?" reaction is mildly humorous

I am 100% down with that opinionated skepticism, it is awesome, but occasionally it approaches a point of seeming really baffled by things that are not all that incredibly baffling

baffled vs horrified incredulity

this board is one that's unusually good at being unimpressed with stuff, so the "wait, people actually read this?" reaction is mildly humorous

yeah, i posted that for that reason