Finally Rich - Chief Keef

oh dear god the context makes it WORSE

xp: lol deej

track 8 should have been a Rihanna cover, just for maximum lols

shit I said I wasn't liveblogging this

okay I'm done

playing Miguel now

fuck I forgot to turn off scrobbling

lol

btw dan did you know that on wiz khalifa says "i'm the shit, literally" on his album? dumbest rap line i've heard maybe ever

― lex pretend, Thursday, January 3, 2013 11:33 AM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

someone was trying to justify that line to me a month ago. there is no justifying that line.

part of me has been trying to give Wiz Khalifa a pass for a while now but that may be over now

how do you even start justifying it?!

I didn't mind "Black and Yellow" and it sort of reminded me of my father-in-law, who is a massive Steelers fan

no i mean ren's friend

"black & yellow" is great, wiz is...not

i like "roll up"

i mean i get the wiz dislike but i unabashedly love taylor allderdice

btw did people get far enough into the Derogatis review to notice that he interprets "I'm laughing at these lames like..." as "I'm laughing at the slave's life..."?

you've heard a few of his songs, right? is that micro ahead of the beat thing a constant, or is that something applicable here only? i def get the feeling like he's either ahead or behind of the beat pretty regularly, like he's laying in some kind of weird pocket that makes it feel 'off'

― D-40, Wednesday, January 2, 2013 6:55 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, he's usually not in the pocket in the traditional sense and almost always rushes/falls ahead of the beat. but it's within a certain threshold where you can still call it 'feel' and it sounds cool, or at least creates an effect. the vocal on the big lean track is just on another planet though, rhythmically speaking.

I wanted to like Wiz Khalifa because I like the name "Wiz Khalifa"

Wiz has a great flow and I like his basic slacker persona. But he has been struggling throughout 2012, partly because the reception of his debut album seems to have confused him and partly because his already narrow range of subject matter has become even narrower after he got a girlfriend. But most of his projects are at least decent.

imo wiz khalifa needs to write more extensively about marijuana use

one of the most interesting flows on finally rich for me is "no tomorrow," where during the verses keef starts his bars before the 1 and finishes before the 2 hits and his next bar before the 3 starts and finishes before the 4 hits... really odd pocket he's in, makes it feel like he can't get his lines out fast enough, there's quite literally "no tomorrow" for him, he's gotta get his raps out asap fuck a beat

out of idle curiosity I decided to listen to this track and I don't hear anything rhythmically interesting or new about this at all; he is completely on the beat the entire time and basically doing a stupid version of something Q-Tip did about 70% of the time, only Tip managed to do so without endlessly rhyming the same word with itself.

I wanted to like Wiz Khalifa because I like the name "Wiz Khalifa"

otm. also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipnTUMv3770

out of idle curiosity I decided to listen to this track and I don't hear anything rhythmically interesting or new about this at all; he is completely on the beat the entire time and basically doing a stupid version of something Q-Tip did about 70% of the time, only Tip managed to do so without endlessly rhyming the same word with itself.

― Angel Haze is my hero (DJP), Friday, January 4, 2013 3:04 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if only all of keef's fans knew about q-tip, they'd listen to tribe instead

yes, that's the takeaway there

tbf jordan has never heard q-tip

get a q-tip. listen to q-tip. these are all valid takeaways

tbf jordan has never heard q-tip

― some dude, Friday, January 4, 2013 6:02 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

-_-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hhW0OWsGNs

i like this

nm this is old i'm an idiot

It's a trendlet or something

http://www.tnr.com/article/111702/chief-keef-finally-rich-review-debate-race-critics

damn had no idea about the "stop writing about MY culture" tirade. Handled well though, IMO.

you've gotta be fucking shitting me... the new republic??

Yup!

nm that's a p good piece

never forget that b dot posted this: http://rapradar.com/2013/01/07/12-underrated-albums-1-macklemore-ryan-lewis-the-heist/

This idea that "white people love chief keef because he is the Chief of Nothing and only poses a threat to other blacks in down-trodden neighborhoods" is so weird to me. Most white critics LOVED Public Enemy and the political rap of the late eightie/early nineties, partly because it was easy to legitimize as important music. And the idea that we are merely into aesthetics is wrong too I think. We do tend to get a kick out of whatever we can classify as "authentic" though - and I think that line of thought is discernible in both Deej's and J0rdan's approaches: Chief Keef can be legitimized because he is NOT a blog darling but a product of the streets of Chicago and so forth. Also, he's so young! Such perceived authenticity tends to fire up our aesthetic imagination, for better or worse.

the thing about being a white guy who listens to hip hop, which i generally don't complain about because it's obviously nothing compared to how actual minorities are treated within actual power structures of society, is that there's no right way to do it -- literally any position or taste you have can pretty easily be interpreted as, if not racist, than privileged, outsider, etc. if you like no rap, you don't like black people; if you mainly like conscious/political rap, you're out of touch with what real rap fans are listening to; if you mainly like gangsta rap, you're a voyeur celebrating violence and poverty; if you like all rap, you're just obsessed with blackness in a creepy way; and so on and so on. as a critic, you at least have the option of trying to explain why you like music and why you think it's good, but of course you have to be aware of how what you say can be used against you in these kinds of accusations.

This idea that "white people love chief keef because he is the Chief of Nothing and only poses a threat to other blacks in down-trodden neighborhoods" is so weird to me. Most white critics LOVED Public Enemy and the political rap of the late eightie/early nineties, partly because it was easy to legitimize as important music.

that was 20+ years ago and a lot has gone on in criticism since then. I think it's fair and true to say that white rap critics get excited about depictions of violence in black communities that generally won't affect them, that isn't a description of their life experience in any way - that tnr piece points out that this isn't a new phenomenon in white people engaging black art, rap is just the current space in which this dynamic is taking place.

I think it's weird that there's no debate about whether wealthy white record executives can sell thousands and thousands of Chief Keef records to middle class white suburban teens, just about whether a tiny handful of white hipsters can say they enjoy it on the Internet

I mean, I guess that argument was more popular in the 90s too, but i cant exactly blame J0rdan and N0z for treating Keef like any pop artist when he's running the same major label money gauntlet of Best Buy exclusives and 50
Cent guest appearances as, like, Dev.

that was 20+ years ago and a lot has gone on in criticism since then. I think it's fair and true to say that white rap critics get excited about depictions of violence in black communities that generally won't affect them, that isn't a description of their life experience in any way - that tnr piece points out that this isn't a new phenomenon in white people engaging black art, rap is just the current space in which this dynamic is taking place.

― too many encores (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, January 8, 2013 1:07 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yet why do white critics get excited about depictions of violence in black communities that generally won't affect them? Is it because they're racist or context-blind aesthetes who rise above the fray or is it because they see it as some sort of authentic manifestation of something that is larger and realer than themselves and that they can only take part in through art and shed light on through criticism, compensating for their status as outsiders by emphasizing aestehtics, language, thoughtful criticism, etc? I don't think any white critic wants to legitimize the violence, but many of us would say that the violence in the art is indicative of larger problems that the art allows one to address - preferably without mistaking the messenger for the problem itself, etc. And that acknowledging the pleasure that art gives us is not a retreat from reality but a way of acknowledging that a song about killing is still a work of art and not the killing itself.

My point is that this line of thinking does not posit a strict break with the reception of PE 20 years ago - but as the music has changed, so have the strategies for coping with it.

(ship otm, btw.)

It's not like some gross 50s hipster jerking off to field recordings, it's professional pop critics listening to one of the few rap albums in 2013 that has promotion behind it. If the problem is white people celebrating nihilism, start by blaming Jimmy Iovene

(it had promotion behind it?)

And the question people should be asking, of course, is why there are not more (great) professional black critics. That is pretty bewildering, actually.

It's not like some gross 50s hipster jerking off to field recordings,

And the question people should be asking, of course, is why there are not more (great) professional black critics. That is pretty bewildering, actually.

lol, no it isn't

Why not?

there ARE many great black critics writing about rap (although to make a list feels i dunno wrong?). thing is, one of them is/was Elliott Wilson, who is B.Dot's boss and doesn't really seem to be interested in using their site for serious longform criticism, which makes the whole catalyst of this controversy a little ridiculous.

"son/daughter, we are spending most of our savings and taking out massive loans for your college degree! What are you going to do with this fantastic opportunity? BTW if your answer is not 'become a doctor/lawyer/banker' I will smack all the black off of you"

haha can you imagine Theo telling Cliff he was gonna go write for The Source

I'm sure Theo Huxtable would have been a great rap critic but as long as people do become other things than lawyers, doctors and bankers and some even have a talent for writing I should think there would be room for a few critics as well?

i do think plenty of rap critics would love depictions of violence in neighborhoods closer to them too, look at odd future

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaah DJP