pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

the baconing of Michael Bolton is some bottom-tier kitsch barrel scraping imo. dude forever belongs as a punch line in an 80s Weird Al song.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, March 8, 2017 5:30 PM (fifty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ten years ago you could easily have said the same thing about Blink 182, Bruce Hornsby, Janet Jackson, George Benson, and Wilson Philips, all of whom have since been canonized thanks to millennial garage punkers, Bon Iver, poptimist critics, stoned balearic djs, and corny Haim people, respectively

sunrise, sunset bro

xp also I rep hard for Biggie but tbh that was a pretty compelling case, especially the comparisons to Scarface / Missy etc, both of whom have aged far better imo

I will rep for 60s George Benson tbh

Yeah of course, me too, he's flat-out amazing on records like Freddie Hubbard's Straight Life, to name just one I really love. I meant "Breezin'" era

yeah I can't go there

I mean maybe if a bunch of people yelled at me on the internet to TRY HARDER I... nah I still wouldn't do it

god can we threadban shakey here i need a safe space from these opinions

i never yelled, ill have you know.

I remember now how much you hate(d) diddy. makes sense his association w big would leave you cold. fair enough.

haha no worries yeah I was conflating yr requests w Matt's mock-yelling

Best way to understand Biggie is via stuff not on the two records: "Party and Bullshit," "Bust a Nut, "Who Shot Ya," the "Dolly My Baby" remix, the "Flava In Ya Ear" remix, the Funk Flex/2Pac freestyle, the final Wake Up Show freestyle, etc

i agree with adam and karl re: bolton, the worst kind of baconing is the "omg it's become self-aware" kind of baconing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP158nfO3jA

^^^

Equally applicable to the Americans thread on ILE

Best way to understand Biggie is via stuff not on the two records

Cool, guess i can stick w my "they all suck" position re: the records then

Not sure what I don't "understand" about Biggie tbh. I get why he's a big deal in the history of the genre, doesn't mean I have to enjoy his music.

also, you can't really "get" phish by listening to their albums or listening to live shows. you actually have to go to a show.

so you need to smell the audience

I'm just saying, the reasons you dislike the albums are mostly absent on those tracks and may be a better gateway.

Best way to understand Biggie is via stuff not on the two records

Cool, guess i can stick w my "they all suck" position re: the records then

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, March 8, 2017 9:44 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Whiney's wrong btw both the albums are stacked so UR STILL WRONG

en years ago you could easily have said the same thing about Blink 182, Bruce Hornsby, Janet Jackson, George Benson, and Wilson Philips, all of whom have since been canonized thanks to millennial garage punkers, Bon Iver, poptimist critics, stoned balearic djs, and corny Haim people, respectively

sunrise, sunset bro

― Wimmels, Wednesday, 8 March 2017 23:36 (

this is untrue of Janet Jackson and you know it

I don't remember the 6000-word AV Club piece arguing for the merits of Wilson Phillips either.

no way you can compare Janet Jackson to Michael Bolton, that's insane

cunt renaissance

NABISCO ON THE MONEY:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/09/magazine/25-songs-that-tell-us-where-music-is-going.html?smid=tw-nytmag&smtyp=cur&_r=0#/migos-bad-and-boujee

i didn't read all that yet. looks like some stuff worth reading though. i love that whole song playing while reading feature. it's like the future!

This is what we talk about now, the music-makers and the music-listeners both. Not the fine details of genre and style — everyone, allegedly, listens to everything now — but the networks of identity that float within them. Maybe decades ago you could aim your songs at a mass market, but music does not really have one of those anymore. Artists have to figure out whom they’re speaking to and where they’re speaking from. The rest of us do the same. For better or worse, it’s all identity now. ♦

^good shit

I never really liked Biggie or Pac, tbh. I remember when my first kid was born, back in 2004 (!), she was still an infant and I was giving "Ready to Die" another shot, and my wife went in and basically said "don't play that shit around the kid." And weirdly, like Shakey, that's more or less where I got off the contemporary hip-hop train (with exceptions), the point where I didn't even feel comfortable playing it around a baby. And yeah, I'm old, and yeah, there's always good new stuff, but fortunately there is more than enough old stuff to go around, too. What can you do?

otoh I thought of BIG while reading Dr. Seuss to my toddler, especially the line "Come now. Come now. You don't have to be so dumb now..."

sorry about your family, Josh

autoplay is a scourge

can't be said enough

xpost Yeah, scarred for life!

"being able to play it around a baby" is an odd metric for rap music

I wasn't being literal about that. I just meant my wife found it so objectionable that it grossed her out to have it on around my Lil' Daughter. And as my daughter and her sister have gotten older, let alone now well old enough to understand everything, including words and things they have been taught their entire life never to say, it has not been easier to play stuff like that around them, not least because my wife doesn't want to hear it, either. See also: lots of music, unfortunately. The two things that get gonged here are the abrasive (metal, experimental noise stuff) and the egregiously profane (which knocks out lots of hip-hop). Again, what can you do? Fair enough, her objections.

(This is probably a different discussion.)

Biggie has some pretty foul lines in ostensibly huge pop songs

Allow me to lace these lyrical douches in your bushes

autoplay is a scourge

― the raindrops and drop tops of lived, earned experience (BradNelson), Thursday, March 9, 2017 10:01 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

can't be said enough

― removed from the rain drops and drop tops of experience (ulysses), Thursday, March 9, 2017 10:04 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ a million times

shakes i think you'll find that biggie was a pretty good rapper but i personally like his R&B singing a bit better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHcc6mv2KLc

i am definitely a bad boy hater. seeing "featuring puff daddy" on something is as bad as seeing "featuring krs-one" or "featuring jello biafra" on something. but i can dig why people dig biggie. or tupac for that matter. not my style is all. reading something about how good biggie was is kinda like reading about how good ella fitzgerald was. just a snooze to me. i think big l was my biggie. r.i.p. big l. that's the 90's new york i love to listen to. big l, lord finesse, diamond d, showbiz & a.g. oh loads of people. d.i.t.c. people. (i've been listening to that group home album like a maniac lately. i love that thing. kinda my fave premier thing. no guru. oops. don't hate me. r.i.p. guru...)

Biggie was that exact same school of rapping tho, Diddy just laced him with glossier beats

I dunno, Biggie always had a conceptual bent those metaphor-crazed / battle rap DITC guys never had. Even from the beginning, Biggie was writing entire rhymes about the R&B divas he wanted to bone and sht. That would have been like one line in a Lord Finesse verse

I guess show and Ag are the outlier, because of "T.R.O.Y." and stuff, but AG is no one on Earth's favorite MC

well, yeah, it is partially an aesthetic thing. musically. i probably have the same problem with dash/roc-a-fella too. i would have to go back and listen to really old roc-a-fella records to remember correctly though. but that's part of it for me. i listened to the group home album last week. that stuff stays on rotation. old jay-z and biggie records do not. (i'm not a huge jay fan either. also has to do with voice. just not a big fan of biggie and jay voice-wise. personality? whatever. we can't like everything. my problem with kanye too. can't listen to a whole album. not the voice for me.)

can listen to this every day of the week though. like mantra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAqfftTSU1k

Is it a cliche at this point to say that there has never been a great MC as ill-served by his beats as Finesse?

See also: Madskillz, Jeru on everything after the debut, Big L most of the time...

shakes i think you'll find that biggie was a pretty good rapper but i personally like his R&B singing a bit better

thank you for this excruciating reminder of how shitty this album is

I can see they've almost won you over; you're almost there. Would you admit that the album covers have competent graphic design?

biggie had really great sweaters, one of the great sweater wearers in music history second only to keith jarrett

one of the great sweater wearers in music history second only to keith jarrett

Cecil would like a word.

http://cdn.albumoftheyear.org/album/61412-in-florescence.jpg

Is it a cliche at this point to say that there has never been a great MC as ill-served by his beats as Finesse?

Rakim imo although I know that is a fairly heretical opinion. as discussed here: Is Rakim possibly the best rapper - ever?

You have the dumbest dogshit opinions on rap music

not to call out Cecil Taylor, but I believe that is polar fleece