Year-End Critics' Polls '08

I'm implying that, as with Living Colour, TV On The Radio are a fundamentally very average and non-innovative rock group who are getting a free "alternative" critical pass on the grounds of colour-related guilt.

Just as it was more convenient to like the easily absorbable Living Colour in 1987 than more problematic characters such as Public Enemy or Schoolly-D, so it is much more comforting to flee to the shelter of TVOTR rather than grasp with the panoply/explosion of creative black music in 2008, from Giggs to Ludacris.

And as for the presumed influence on Body Count, Rage Against The Machine, System of a Down and Sevendust - well, would we really have been any poorer without any of these?

OK, now I want to move from Suggest Ban to killfile.

The "more problematic" PE won the polls, not Living Colour.

The 1988 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll

Albums

1. Public Enemy: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (Def Jam) 1011 (79)
2. Sonic Youth: Daydream Nation (Blast First/Enigma) 716 (58)
3. Tracy Chapman: Tracy Chapman (Elektra) 685 (59)
4. Midnight Oil: Diesel and Dust (Columbia) 308 (27) *
5. Michelle Shocked: Short Sharp Shocked (Mercury) 296 (31)
6. Was (Not Was): What Up, Dog? (Chrysalis) 273 (23)
7. Pere Ubu: The Tenement Year (Enigma) 264 (26)
8. Keith Richards: Talk Is Cheap (Virgin) 264 (25)
9. Traveling Wilburys: Volume One (Wilbury) 263 (26)
10. Randy Newman: Land of Dreams (Warner Bros.) 261 (25)
11. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man (Columbia) 254 (23)
12. Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson (Sire) 248 (24)
13. Ornette Coleman and Prime Time: Virgin Beauty (Portrait) 234 (21)
14. Richard Thompson: Amnesia (Capitol) 219 (22)
15. Cowboy Junkies: The Trinity Sessions (RCA) 217 (20)
16. Lucinda Williams: Lucinda Williams (Rough Trade) 214 (20)
17. Prince: Lovesexy (Paisley Park) 211 (26)
18. John Hiatt: Slow Turning (A&M) 209 (21)
19. Womack & Womack: Conscience (Island) 207 (19)
20. Prince: The Black Album (bootleg) 203 (21)
21. U2: Rattle and Hum (Island) 203 (15)
22. George Michael: Faith (Columbia) 199 (17) *
23. Living Colour: Vivid (Epic) 196 (19)

You might have a point if your bullshit theory wasn't full of holes big enough to drive a dumptruck through.

(ha - xpost)

Also, if you think the Ludacris album is better than the TVOTR album you have way bigger problems than quasiracist dickwipism

LC was 5th place in the 1990 poll, fyi (not that it gives any weight to what Marcello's saying)

Terrible list, that 1988 one.

Rarely has a poster been so aptly named as Whiney!

3. Tracy Chapman: Tracy Chapman (Elektra) 685 (59)

Ludacris is in no way more innovative or less prone to mediocrity than TV On The Radio (tho it may well be their albums are roughly equal in quality, know rap albums won't beat rock albums in these polls and get over it)

19. Womack & Womack: Conscience (Island) 207 (19)

How dare TVOTR sound insufficently black! Why, they don't even try rapping! Perhaps Marcello can sit them down and explain what real blackness is all about.

(More people voted for Talk Is Cheap than I'm Your Man?)

3, 19

xpost

Incorrect. It's a question of changing things, not getting over things. Better to demolish cancers than "get over" them.

Ludacris hasn't been substantially innovative for about half a decade.

i have no idea what you are all talking about but i do take issue with:

know rap albums won't beat rock albums in these polls and get over it

ughhh no, why should we get over this?

Unfortunately TV On The Radio fail to transcend their ghosted promise. They have to realise that their voices are not their own, that they are the product of a discourse.

Also, Battles do this sort of thing infinitely better.

It's the usual ILM malaise, Lex; white kids clinging on to the rotting deadwood of the old world instead of sailing into the new one.

Clinging onto Elbow nurse for fear of something worse.

http://mjau.weretree.com/rnd/just-keep-digging.jpg

Also, Battles do this sort of thing infinitely better.

What "sort of thing" is that, exactly?

Battles don't sound anything like TVOTR. They do, however, feature black folk playing rock, so I guess that'll do.

Which is more than can be said for "an album that boldly took the guitar where no record had gone before" which is now officially the most ridiculous assertion ever published in the Grauniad not written by Richard Gott.

http://www.errorloading.net/uploads/backhoe.jpg

Good call on Womack & Womack, Reverend. Why up so early?

Fell asleep at 8.

Much like the artist himself did while making it.

ughhh no, why should we get over this?

because it's The Guardian, a newspaper of certain cultural position in a country where rock music is generally more popular (whether it's 'innovative' or not).

if Badu and Wayne's albums - which seem insincerely elevated in these lists - experience a significant sales bump or profile rise as a result of being in their top 10 then i'd be surprised.

The Badu album means more to me than album of this decade, imo. Insincerely, my behind.

I'd question whether rock is actually more popular in Britain than rap and/or dance and/or R&B.

It's certainly written about more for obvious historical/demographic reasons but that doesn't in itself make it more popular.

But the disease through most of the polls we've had so far is the same - stick to the dying embers of whiteboy indie instead of embracing the life of the future, and thus concluding that '08's been a crap/average year and thus saving 50-year-old Fifty Quid Man much inconvenient time and expenditure investigating actual new music.

Guys, there's really no rap album that came out in 2008 that's worthy of being the No. 1 album of the year. But I understand where you're coming from, lex et al

And how many 2008 rap albums have you listened to, exactly?

Have we met?

And, how many 2008 rap albums have you listened to, exactly?

Marcello, please keep talking to people who listen to a lot more rap than you as if they never listen to rap.

yeah, whip it out, Whiney, show us your list. don't let the size of Marcello's Paper Trail thread intimidate you.

look out, this british guy is challenging your rap cred

Why should they have been "insincerely elevated", blueski? Especially when I assume the Lex voted for Badu as his favourite album and I know a few others (myself included) who had it in their top five. There's no reason to believe it wasn't placed exactly according to the votes it got. Same goes for Lil Wayne.

This attitude just suggests that if a hip hop album DID get the top spot - if this list had been running in 2003 or 2004 then Outkast and Kanye might both have done so - it would no doubt also be dismissed as insincere posturing/tokenism/hip hop for white people/blah blah blah.

Nobody listens to more rap than Marcello. Don't you know he started this gangsta shit and this is the motherfuckin' thanks he gets?

I really can't find a way to respond to him without sounding like an arrogant "whippin out my music dick" prick or a total .xls aspie nerd, so can we all just agree that I listen to a whole fucking shit-ton of rap

because it's The Guardian, a newspaper of certain cultural position in a country where rock music is generally more popular (whether it's 'innovative' or not).

ok i) i don't believe this, ii) if rock is more popular then it shouldn't be - and the media should be the ones transmitting this.

The Badu album means more to me than album of this decade, imo. Insincerely, my behind.

^^^this.

Guys, there's really no rap album that came out in 2008 that's worthy of being the No. 1 album of the year.

my no 1 is erykah, but young jeezy, wiley* and nappy roots made really outstanding albums; lil' wayne, t.i. and trina made inconsistent ones but with amazingly high highs; will also rep for gucci mane, bun b and tinchy stryder too (they're certainly better than tv on the radio, at any rate).

*grime wave, not see clear now. obv.

nah, you're just hangin' out on the ringtone thread talking the talk while marcello's out in the real world walking the walk

xpost

For the record, Marcello, if you wanna to talk #s, 41. And I agree with Whiney.

And how many 2008 rap albums have you listened to exactly?

Oh my god.

I have to work today you fucking boner, so I don't have time to count all the piles of promos and downloads, so can we say somewhere around 100?

Maybe more, I don't know.

I guarantee I've heard every rap record that you're heard that isn't some oi oi oi bullshit with someone talking about smoking weed over a PlayStation

about 30 nat'l releases for me (if you count mixtapes and local releases, then triple that #), and I also agree with Whiney.

Why should they have been "insincerely elevated", blueski? Especially when I assume the Lex voted for Badu as his favourite album and I know a few others (myself included) who had it in their top five. There's no reason to believe it wasn't placed exactly according to the votes it got. Same goes for Lil Wayne.

fair dos i was being overly cynical. i just can't imagine a non-rock album being voted #1 but then am half-thinking 'well that's probably fair enough when you look at who's voting in these things and how everything is slanted against 'other' and why shouldn't one ethos dominate if that's an honest reflection of things etc.