Paul Barman Release?

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My head hurts. I see what you're getting at, mind you, it just seems to me to be an ultimately frustrating way to create art -- and more to the point, if as Momus was saying he is wondering why people are annoyed with him, your supposition of his approach should indicate that he knows damn well why they could be.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

there's still nothing on this thread which sez to me that barman is anything other than the ray stevens of hiphop. which is fine. let's just not call a novelty anything less than a novelty.

mark, i think comparing the "wanna battle" thread to barman is sorta spot on, except for the fact that we don't go so far as to make records. for which gods should be thanked.

chaki's points sound like precisely the ones i'd use to deride barman, so there you go. and the lyrics fall straight into tom's warning about quoting "clever" and/or "deep" lyrics.

barman strikes me as a practical joke gone too far at the expense of the audience. but not far enough to make us wonder if that's the point.

― jess, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

paul barman CANT be bling bling and he CANT be neo political all he CAN be is HIM. it's not a gag on anyone its just A KID RAPPING.

― chaki, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

also those lyrics chaki quoted are the same three examples i've read and heard about a million times before, which weren't that great to begin with but are now the most irritating rhymes i've ever seen. if he's so clever how come i never hear about anything better than a nerdy dick joke?

― ethan, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

also why is the nyu undergrad version of "clever" the gold standard? i realize that barman is a "guy" and not one of momuses entertainment puppets but that doesnt mean i have to find his personal vision (humorous or otherwise) anything less than obnoxious as hell. kinda the same way dmx songs bother my mom. wait, no, that's not right. she loves dmx.

― jess, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

jess your mom is clearly not smart and creative then!

― ethan, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

well, one look at me coulda told you that pal.

― jess, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I liked what little I heard of Barman. Then again, I like the HAWD GANKSTUH RAPPUHS too... whose detractors make Barman detractors seem like patronizing ol' grannies in comparison.

As far as having that same background and approach to hip hop, I prefer what artists on the Slabco label have done. Land of the Loops for instance... Peter hook base lines, Coldcut/Negativland style plundering, child-like female vocals, singing sad love poetry. Subtle but ultimately very catchy too.

― Brian MacDonald, Monday, 28 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Surely the one thing that makes MCPB irrevocably a novelty act is that there is very little reason to listen to any of his tracks more than once. Once you've heard and got the gags and wordplay, you don't actually need the song anymore. The fact that he happens to be rapping this stuff, rather than just writing it down, seems to add nothing to the content. When he attempts to modulate his voice and do anything with the flow other than just deliver the lyrics he simply sounds half-assed or irritating.

I think the Donne comparison is quite a good one, actually. He should jack in the hip hop and become some sort of modern Earl of Rochester - it'd be a better use of his talents...

― jacob, Wednesday, 30 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Barman's one of the best rhymers on the planet, as far as I'm concerned, but note that that is not the same as "lyric constructors." And he has like ZERO flow--I get no pleasure from his voice.

Eminem's verse on Biggie's "Dead Wrong" is more or less what I think Barman could be doing if he were willing to think beyond the immediate rhyme. ("There's several different levels to devil worshippin': horses' heads, human sacrifices, cannibalism; candles and exorcism, animals, havin' sex with 'em; camels, mammals and rabbits/But I don't get into that, I kicked the habit.")

― Douglas, Wednesday, 30 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

i am going to eat the curly wurly myself, because i'm afraid your description didn't excite me, momus. i have a strange vision of him as being a bit like a straight al yankovic. is this true.

hmm, this curly wurly tastes loovvely

― gareth, Wednesday, 30 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

eleven months pass...

i lied about the curly wurly

― gareth (gareth), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 17:51 (twenty-one years ago) link

Took you a YEAR to fess up.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 18:02 (twenty-one years ago) link

I guess a "curly wurly" isn't a pubic hair, then...

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 18:23 (twenty-one years ago) link

two years pass...

phlar

― phlar, Saturday, 23 April 2005 20:19 (eighteen years ago) link

eleven months pass...

Whatever happened to MC Paul Barman?

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 23 March 2006 23:11 (eighteen years ago) link

his album was pretty good. If he put out something else I'd give it a listen.

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 23 March 2006 23:18 (eighteen years ago) link

xpost. Someone shot him for writing the line "I'm iller than the Iliad".

― jimnaseum (jimnaseum), Thursday, 23 March 2006 23:20 (eighteen years ago) link

oh god, 2002 ;_;

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Thursday, 23 March 2006 23:21 (eighteen years ago) link

The PFork review of Paullelujah was so OTM.

― jimnaseum (jimnaseum), Thursday, 23 March 2006 23:25 (eighteen years ago) link

he's at the very least funnier than fucking Har Mar Superstar

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 23 March 2006 23:34 (eighteen years ago) link

that ain't sayin' much.

― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 23 March 2006 23:40 (eighteen years ago) link

I just don't get the hate - dood is harmless and occasionally funny. There are SO MANY worse "white dude appropriates black culture" musical acts out there who are painfully bad (Matisyahu anyone...?)

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 23 March 2006 23:50 (eighteen years ago) link

I couldn't really listen to his album after two spins, but I'll admit that a couple of his rhymes are permanently lodged in my brain. Like his throwaway answer - cited in an interview - to KRS-One's couplet "my English grammar comes down hard like a hammer": "My babble gavel scatters the pieces of your Travel Scrabble."

― joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Thursday, 23 March 2006 23:50 (eighteen years ago) link

I saw him ad-lib (er "freestyle) a bunch of "Cock Mobster" lines live once and that pretty much sold me on him. He was just taking celebrity names from the audience and coming up with filthy rhymes for each one... arrrgh I wish I could remember his Madeleine Albright line...

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 23 March 2006 23:54 (eighteen years ago) link

The first EP had some really great Prince Paul stuff I thought.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 23 March 2006 23:56 (eighteen years ago) link

but aside from the great Barman debate...what did happen to him? does he still do music?

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 23 March 2006 23:56 (eighteen years ago) link

i haven't listened to pallelujah! in a while, but i thought it was pretty funny and would probably still think so.

plus also, hating him seems so silly. and i'm 4 years late with this, but ...

I think any serious look at him has to reveal that he's essentially just pushing at the limits of exactly what kinds of content we expect from hip-hop, what we expect to be said.

... nitsuh otm.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Friday, 24 March 2006 00:08 (eighteen years ago) link

one month passes...

i was just listening to the mr. dead album 'metabolics vol 2: dawn of the dead', and paul barman appears on the track 'chemically imbalanced', which is a pretty goddamn great track until he shows up and ruins it.

― gear (gear), Monday, 8 May 2006 22:24 (seventeen years ago) link

ethan is just another one of those indie boys that like to tell the rest of us how hip hop should be. paul barman makes me laugh and raps good.

-- chaki (chak...)

^^^ CHAKI APPRECIATION THREAD

― -+-+-+++- (ooo), Monday, 8 May 2006 22:28 (seventeen years ago) link

can't believe that i actually listened to "cock mobster" all the way through the other day.

― that's so taylrr (ken taylrr), Monday, 8 May 2006 23:30 (seventeen years ago) link

lol @ me

― city of gyros (chaki), Monday, 8 May 2006 23:56 (seventeen years ago) link

four years pass...

phlar

― phlar

― buzza, Saturday, 29 January 2011 17:51 (thirteen years ago) link

curly wurly!

― smang a goon (get it on) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, 29 January 2011 18:40 (thirteen years ago) link

had no idea he put out another album

― just sayin, Sunday, 30 January 2011 12:07 (thirteen years ago) link

seven years pass...

phlar
― phlar, Saturday, April 23, 2005 4:19 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― fuck the NRA (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 5 December 2018 03:55 (five years ago) link

Push Barman to Open Old Wounds

― underqualified backing vocalist (morrisp), Wednesday, 5 December 2018 04:00 (five years ago) link

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