pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

I feel like that's been changing lately, which is kind of nice -- there used to be a lot more "new video from X, involves horses, good one!," but more of them lately have packed interesting thoughts or bits of micro-criticism into those few sentences.

kudos to nicki for the benzezez/yenzezez/lenzezez/sensitive/tentative rhymes

^^def official

nabisco you're probably right about the (non-)condescension - but mostly my beef is w/ the fact that the video is just presented as is. i think that's an appropriate thing to do when fleet foxes or fever ray videos are being posted, but with gucci mane the non-post post (aside from having its facts wrong like deej says) is just pointless and disappointing. there are plenty of interesting things to say about gucci, and i wish this post would've just said something.

Yeah, sure, that's fair. Haha I'm sure you'll be totally looking forward to an LP review on the site

& was the biggest rap artist of the year last year

By what measure?

buzz, # of tracks released, amount of actual rapping on his records (sorry kanye)

Yeah, that struck me as weird, too, Jay. I've never had anyone irl talk to me about Gucci or heard anyone irl play his music.

I'm sorry, didn't both Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy exist last year?

haha yeah guys you're gonna have to get used to jordan & deej's gucci mane tunnel vision. although i am actually hearing about him up north more now and radio is actually playing the OJ Da Juiceman single, but still lol.

i don't agree with deej totally - because wayne, jeezy etc yeah - but gucci really was huge last year as long as you were paying attention to the 'right' places. it's hard to quantify in numbers because he didn't release an album or even a single, but no one was more eponymous on mixtapes last year - and more importantly imo no one was more bootlegged (not even wayne) - than gucci. dude has tons of underground 'buzz' in the truest sense of the word, and if he wasn't locked up in jail right now i think he'd be readying a pretty big push for an album.

there were a lot of mixtapes named gucci mane?

let me be clear (agaIn) that i think deej and i don't see eye-to-eye re gucci's stature - deej lives in a big city, knows ppl irl who like rap, etc etc - but we're pretty close. gucci was inescapable this year if you paid attention to non-album southern rap at all. it's how careers are built

this year last year same thing

massive lols, s1ocki

there were, yes

Lil Wayne (red), Gucci Mane (blue)
http://www.google.com/trends/viz?q=%22gucci+mane%22,+%22lil+wayne%22&date=all&geo=all&graph=weekly_img&sort=0&sa=N

No data available

i for one am shocked that the biggest pop star in the world is more trendy on google than gucci mane

jaymc the notion that google search volume is a reliable measure is suspect when lil wayne is getting on katie couric etc

how much music did lil wayne actually release in '08?? the one studio record right? maybe a mixtape or two? id argue that w/in a general rap fanbase gucci was a much bigger rapper last year. wayne was barely rapping on it too

jeezy, you could argue he was bigger but itd be debatable

cursory google searches aren't turning up that many mixtapes named "Gucci Mane" although he does appear to be on a shit-ton

Jeezy, Gucci

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22gucci+mane%22%2C+%22young+jeezy%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

http://www.google.com/trends/viz?q=%22gucci+mane%22,+%22young+jeezy%22&date=all&geo=all&graph=weekly_img&sort=0&sa=N

obv when i was saying that im making some challops about lil wayne's career have peaked earlier than '08 with most rap fans even if you define that group pretty broadly

would love to know how many of the search queries at the peaks on that graph also contain the words 'megaupload rapidshare sendspace'

cursory google searches aren't turning up that many mixtapes named "Gucci Mane" although he does appear to be on a shit-ton

― Wes HI DEREson (HI DERE), Tuesday, March 3, 2009 5:36 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

there arent any mixtapes named Gucci Mane

Anyway, "biggest rap artist of the year" to me means "most popular artist who happens to be a rapper" (in which case Wayne being on Katie Couric proves my point exactly) rather than "most ubiquitous rapper within the rap community" or whatever -- I couldn't even tell you anything about the "rap community," so I'll cede to you there.

make up yr mind, dude

(not you, jaymc, J0rdan)

Oh no, I know. :)

lol j0rdan & his critic words

yup

pitchfork is dumb (#4357385639):

Finally, out to everyone asking about my Pitchfork "Month in dubstep and grime" columns. The situation is that they've asked all the specialist writers not to contribute columns for Jan and Feb. I offered to write it for free - trust me, I've not been doing it for the money - but this didn't help. So, we'll see.

try and imagine a month without grime

rather, imagine a world where monthly dubstep and grime coverage is supplanted by "The Month in Being in the Band the Pains of Being Pure at Heart"

OH NO PITCHFORK IS WRITING ABOUT THE MUSIC THAT'S PUT MONEY INTO THEIR POCKETS THROUGH THE LAST TEN FUCKING YEARS, THEY REALLY SHOULD SWITCH TO WRITING ABOUT SOME BULLSHIT NOBODY CARES ABOUT LIKE DUBSTEP SO I CAN POST A SNIFFY MESSAGE TO ILX ABOUT SOME MINOR FACTUAL INNACURACY IN THEIR REVIEW OF A FUCKING RUSKO ITUNES ONLY EP.

The Month In Nebulous 'Nuum Beats

Young, Dumb and Full Of 'Nuum.

the connection between pitchfork and music hype came to yet another embarrassing pick with the new (and mediocre) Wavves record review

are you saying the review or the record is mediocre

ha..no, the record itself.
i understand the logic behind the connection ive mentioned, but arent there any limits?
are pitchfork capable of writing,for example, a bad review for a record that otherwise gets hype+good reviews everywhere else?

i have no idea but right now it's pretty obvious that they are, at an editorial level, going in hard on noisy/lo-fi/vaguely "pop" stuff from both coasts. they're jumping a trend and we're just gonna have to see how it plays out.

it will play out like most trends in music history.

bloodily

if they start going in harder on noisy/lo-fi/vaguely "pop" stuff from one coast than the other, we could be looking at another deadly east/west beef

drummer from no age and avey tare = next pac and big

"Reggae is vile."

xp hahaha yeah but instead of them ending up dead one of them is gonna get butthurt over their blog being hacked or some shit

lol yes sign me up for some delay pedal grunge songs about how animal collective are wack

I saw the video and wanted to post something quick about it in the time I had. I definitely try to work bigger points into posts where possible, all in some vain effort to make Forkcast into something more critical than the usual "here's this video it's AWSOME" blog thing, but as you pointed out there are guys on staff like Tom who would probably have a lot more to say about Gucci Mane than I do, when the time is right. (Oddly enough, Pitchfork has barely written about him.)

big ups, thx for the response