XXXTentacion - ?

who tf is paul ponzi

https://1109487268.rsc.cdn77.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Tyrannochromis_Nigriventer3.jpg

I don't remember any posters named cichlid.

who tf is paul ponzi

while usually I think the policing of who's who is cliquey bullshit this seems like a valid q on this thread

Hi - I'm Paul. I mostly post about electronic music and forgotten 90s indie rock and rap. I'm a fledgling DJ, occasional clickworker, and work in a boring office. I use ILX because I increasingly hate / am afraid of Facebook. I think XXXTentacion, based on his history of abuse, is someone we should ignore. Nice to meet you.

So glad you're here to post five times about how we should "ignore" someone with no radio play or record label or real media interviews or television appearances

errr

https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8260857/xxxtentacion-debuts-at-no-1-on-billboard-200-albums-chart

eh Whiney. he's on rap caviar & he's 64th in the world for monthly listeners. you seem to be saying he's obscure, that's not really fair to say I don't think.

A new Bon Jovi album was number one three weeks ago

it bumped iirc

but a bit weird that this thread has suddenly become about me for some reason, so I'm going back to lurking the rolling and bobbins threads. My bad, enjoy your XXXTentacion

Also, XXX isn't "obscure" by any means, but my tweets about 6ix9ine stands here, I think:

Not denying his wild popularity among teens on SoundCloud but actually it’s ... remarkably easy ... for anyone to ignore an artist with zero radio play, no record label, no publicist, no media features...

6ix9ine involves active engagement and buying into an outlier model. Calling him impossible to ignore is like calling Insane Clown Posse or Jake Paul or Jomny Sum or Pomplamoose or toy unboxing videos “impossible to ignore”

Par for the course when face tats are involved.

xp

also this song is terrible, what are you guys even talking about

― Paul Ponzi, Monday, March 26, 2018 6:29 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It’s terrible morally but you have to be willfully oblivious to think it’s not well executed version of what it is...I understand the urgency to marginalize this & am fine w it (believe in it) but I think anyone you’re trying to convince who’s heard this music & found something attractive about it is going to recognize the cynicism on display when we try to pretend this stuff isn’t ... not just musically effective,but stands out in its milieu (for reasons tied up in shit that is fundamentally fucked)

Agreeing that it’s compelling at some level is imo essential if you’re interested in pointing out that it’s evil & dangerous (in fact id contend it’s this “danger” we minimize when we try & argue it’s “not even good”)

music like this makes me realize there is really no imperative for me to listen to all the “good” music out there

otm i mean if this is supposed to be "good" ok sure if you say so .

I agree that 'Sad!' is compelling. The other couple of tracks from ? I just listened to brought home – a bit too conspicuously – why he lists Coldplay and Papa Roach among his influences.

you have to be willfully oblivious to think it’s not well executed version of what it is

Nah, this song is shit. And I say that as someone who has heard over a dozen Jandek albums. I say that as someone who has reviewed scores of nü-metal albums, and interviewed nü-metal bands. I've listened to dumb teenage shit for over 20 years, and this song is nursery-rhyme garbage with a beat that any rando could make in their sleep.

i mean if this is supposed to be "good" ok sure if you say so

This is music for teenagers - people who haven't heard enough music to be able to judge what's good or bad. They only know what they like. The real cynics are people like Jon Caramanica who have heard more than enough music in their lifetimes to recognize this as vapid garbage from a not-particularly-intelligent teenager and still cheerlead for it in the pages of the New York Times.

This guy's former manager is a creep too

https://pitchfork.com/news/no-jumper-podcastlabel-founder-adam-grandmaison-accused-of-rape-responds/

Nah, this song is shit. And I say that as someone who has heard over a dozen Jandek albums.

.... well in that case

decent board description

This is music for teenagers - people who haven't heard enough music to be able to judge what's good or bad. They only know what they like

this is otm to me . not to discount teenage taste in music completely but along with some good stuff i was very much into some crappy music that was popular among my friends and looking back was just shit.

this is gonna be a great thread

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Saturday, March 24, 2018 1:05 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Teenagers have the best taste.

Eh, lyrics aside, 'Sad!' strikes me as a bit more interesting than that. Can't vouch for his other stuff but the melody here is a suitably achey ear-worm, the booming kicks are effective throughout and the almost cimbalom-like synth introduced in the second half of the song gives it more replay value than the average contemporary pop track.

I could see “i dont even speak spanish” being a moderate hit in latinamerica if pushed.

Which is btw a weird song in this album... uncredited features and XXXtentacion is only there for a verse in the song and doesn’t sound like anything else in the album.

I like that song BUT the title makes me hate him more than ever.

As if you needed more reasons to hate this scumbag

will grown-ups ever grow out of insisting that teenagers have the best taste, it's such a weird and frankly pervy look

I mean it's gross to completely discount the opinions & experience of the young don't get me wrong, this is not me saying "teenagers have the worst taste!" either but

if you're jocking for "teenagers! their taste is the best!" after thirty

idk man that's a bizarre fucking look. I know d-40 might feel targeted by this post but please trust it's not just about you, this has been a systemic problem in pop/rock/rap?? crit since forever, this wordsworth/blake garbage where the zeal of the teen is elevated to some projected ideal critical stance

weird fuckin shit imo

like you don't really see people goin "wacky wafers! this is way better than actually good chocolate!" because guess what your palate develops and you come to understand that your frame of reference, having grown broader, is now actually much more attenuated to nuance & fine points

why do grown-up pop-oriented dudes resist that so strenuously, it's not like you'll be even a day younger by copping this stance nor will any young dudes be fooled

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opinion/sunday/favorite-songs.html

i don't think people's taste in chocolate gets calcified w age though, or that there's a steady evolution of chocolate being offered generationally

all i saw was a short reactive quip about teenagers having the best taste, this doesn't need to be blown up into a thing, at least itt. what makes music compelling to teenagers can be talked about separately from how "good" or "bad" taste correlates w age or w/e, which frankly in this context just seems like a boring convo to me

your palate develops and you come to understand that your frame of reference, having grown broader, is now actually much more attenuated to nuance & fine points...why do grown-up pop-oriented dudes resist that so strenuously, it's not like you'll be even a day younger by copping this stance nor will any young dudes be fooled

This is the part that I'm baffled by too. You can say "I understand why a teenager would like this" without feeling compelled to make the leap to "The teenager is right! This is great!"

Fwiw I don’t feel targeted by that bc it very doesn’t reflect my attitude—see the kitty pryde thread

I do find “incurious revelry” (copyright r|t|c) re the music of teens on ilx specifically a bit frustrating but that’s a difft issue

That doesn’t exactly apply in this case... idk I think Jordan summed up why it makes sense this stuff is popular even as it sucks that it’s popular

It’s not the music that’s terrible in this instance methinks.

I mean, the music embodies terrible but it’s not poorly made

So PWR BTTM might still have a career if only they'd worked a little harder at convincing us in their music that they were "authentically" incredibly fucked up people

lol ok

― Paul Ponzi, Monday, March 26, 2018 7:29 AM (fourteen hours ago) Bookmark

i guess this guy left the thread but aside from the self-policing of queer spaces that got pwr bttm nuked off the planet, the reaction against them was so strong because (assuming the allegations were true) they were revealed to be frauds. hypocrites as people yes but more to the point the music, given what it was about, couldn't help but come off as cynical in a way that my have been really rotten. i dunno if artists whose music touches politics or morality can really "work to convince" people that their art actually represents who they are... pwr bttm tried to do that work just in the opposite direction (working to convince us they were queer heroes) and eventually the lie was found out. for whatever you want to say about xxx's music, it represents that he's a shitty person.

I can’t believe you dignified that with a response

i like to reach the people

I'm sure you guys only did what was necessary but I always feel kind of bad when a person is bullied off a thread

I really don't see why it's so surprising that kids think he was framed, plenty of people did and still do defend Chris Brown. (you can't pin it on teenagers, either, given the legions of grown adults who rush to defend even the worst of the worst people accused in the news)

anyway I haven't listened to this guy's music, it does not seem remotely like my thing even if none of the news existed as a counterbalance, but at a certain point I think ignoring it just becomes counterproductive. it's not like all of his teenage fans are going to disappear because The New York Times (hypothetical example, chosen specifically because they did cover him) nobly did not write an article

at a certain point I think ignoring it just becomes counterproductive

When you say "counterproductive," counterproductive to what? "The discourse"? This is a serious question. Why do you think music critics should pay attention to this particular artist? Why is it OK to ignore all the other stuff that your average busy music writer ignores every single day, but not this?

it's not like all of his teenage fans are going to disappear because The New York Times (hypothetical example, chosen specifically because they did cover him) nobly did not write an article

No, but it's not like anyone who's not a teenager is obliged to care. I feel like literally the only angle the Times should take on this guy is "here's what your kids are listening to; maybe sit them down for a talk."

well if your job is to write about popular music -- which is to say, it's your job to think about/analyze why things are popular and translate that to your audience -- and you choose to ignore someone who might be one of the ~10 most popular artists in the country (ignore not just in what you publish but in your thinking) then i think that can be counterproductive to fulfilling the responsibility of your job. if you view him as part of an ecosystem of artists that you're responsible for covering, then i'm not sure you can just isolate him out and ignore him. the reasons for his popularity certainly have implications for popular music at large. and if popular music is driven in part by what teenagers like, then caring about their tastes is also part of the job too.

if your job isn't to write or care about popular music then sure who cares

maybe sit them down for a talk

lol

well if your job is to write about popular music -- which is to say, it's your job to think about/analyze why things are popular and translate that to your audience -- and you choose to ignore someone who might be one of the ~10 most popular artists in the country

^^^

When you say "counterproductive," counterproductive to what? "The discourse"? This is a serious question. Why do you think music critics should pay attention to this particular artist? Why is it OK to ignore all the other stuff that your average busy music writer ignores every single day, but not this?

The other stuff that your average busy music writer ignores is not being supported by the music industry to the extent that this guy is. Even without getting into covert/secret/unreported label stuff (because it's hard to tell the difference between legit and conspiracy theory), Spotify actively supports him as mentioned above; at one point he had a (reported) $6 million record deal with Capitol; he was on a damn Noah Cyrus song. There is no reason to think that even the most horrifying allegations will stop any of this, given the entertainment industry and fans' long history of not giving a shit unless the fans do. the rest, Jordan said better than I could

every single piece of art anybody makes tells me something about that person no matter how hard they may try to make it otherwise

Yeah, but so does the persona they've created in which to make that art, is what I'm saying. There's always that layer in between. And the persona is part of the art, but to deny that there's a persona at all is BS.

To pick a specific example, Jim Osterberg is not Iggy Pop. But it tells you a lot about Jim Osterberg that he came up with "Iggy Pop." And you can sort of track, album by album, the process by which "Iggy Pop" took over, to the point that there's a whole category of what I call "The Adventures of Iggy" songs on his albums, particularly those from the 1990s and after.

It seems to me that "all art is self-expression" is only trivially true, in the sense that (more or less) all art is made by someone, and most someones have some interiority, so it's reasonable to assume that an artist's interiority somehow enters into the explanation for the art they made, if only fractionally. But plenty of art can be understood perfectly well without knowing a thing about the inner life of whoever made it, or without coming to understand the artist through the art.

Anyway I don't actually know where the conversation in this thread is headed but I've been reading A.C. Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, and I have been having thoughts, which means I have to post something.

This is old hat, no doubt about it, but I've yet to be convinced that the opposite paradigm is any more applicable and useful.

xp

I would like to subscribe to all of youse's newsletters

Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Thank God I know about Maud Gonne and Georgie Hyde Lees or I'd find little meaning in those lines.

MG iirc the dying animal

Hemiotics

But plenty of art can be understood perfectly well without knowing a thing about the inner life of whoever made it, or without coming to understand the artist through the art.

I know a lot of this is asked-and-answered for a lot of people, it was for me at one point too. but I've come think that when you know somebody's art, you understand something -- probably a big something -- about the person who made it. you don't know, like, where they live or what they had for breakfast necessarily, but the "me" you get from a person's art is probably more the "actual" person than the usually pretty tailored and practiced thing you get from talking to somebody. or living with somebody. this doesn't mean "if a guy sings about murder all the time he probably kills people" -- absurd, right -- but it's just as absurd to say that, say, Cannibal Corpse just happens to be singing about murder all the time. you have a good idea about what drives & inspires & fascinates & obsesses an artist from their themes, from the phrases & storylines & images they return to or avoid, etc etc. I don't think the art's separable from the person, nor is the persona, all that's a feint. that plenty of artists buy into the feint is interesting but in the end the personae you wear aren't external to you, they're just a version of you imo

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

it's never a bad time to paraphrase Wilde (and Yeats): the wearing of a mask is a way of telling the truth.

good post JCLC

I mostly think that authenticity is a sham: once you look closely, it evaporates away. But I do wonder if, rather than being a locatable thing in itself, it's just (one) another name for the thing that makes something (subjectively) better than something else. We all look for reasons, and language to fit those reasons, for why something leaves a wound in us, and authenticity is one name or one concept/strategy for making sense of that.

It's Romantic in the sense that it's a process of (probably false) enchantment, but (to paraphrase Elizabeth Bishop) it seems a reasonably coherent way of sorting through the things that pass us as we float through.

you have a good idea about what drives & inspires & fascinates & obsesses an artist from their themes, from the phrases & storylines & images they return to or avoid, etc etc.

does this pov require there to be an 'auteur' creating the artwork, whose interiority can be discerned through the artwork? like, if you're a jobbing director directing an episode of a long running tv show does this still apply? or a piece of art/media that is created by committee rather than by one person with complete creative control? in those cases maybe some of an individual's own obsessions and interiority creep in around the edges, but in a more diluted form? but even in a case where you have an auteur with complete control their 'self-expression' is still diluted by all kinds of things

'all art is authentic' doesn't seem that different in practise from 'no art is authentic', either way there's no point in trying to distinguish authentic from non-authentic art, or uses 'authenticity' as a concept to understand or analyse a piece of art?

A reductive story

There are communities of artists in Chicago who create music which is, through the obscuring effects of power differentials — access to PR, a weakened local press, a vacuum of investment, etc — largely invisible to the outside world.

One artist breaks out and because this stuff has been isolated from a broader mainstream, it’s culture is distinct and stands apart; outside, people want access to this experience of radical difference; they want to appreciate it, to profit from it, to enjoy it, to argue about it, to love it, to use it as a political football.

The lack of infrastructure means the demand is higher than these local artists ability to create supply, and there’s an entire system elsewhere built up to reproduce the aesthetic choices that made this local phenomenon interesting to the outside world, and the potential profits that make it worth time. And a much stronger ability to market it.

The local artists, seeing their sound or ideas replicated, respond differently: some are proud, some are angry, some are practical, take advantage of this new cachet to make further industry connections. None of the above are making much money from the thing they created; some might start calling outsider versions, which lack certain nuances or subtleties of the local culture, “fake” — aka inauthentic

Does that mean they think culture shouldn’t travel ? Does that mean they think it should be fenced in, or that they’d trade their newfound cultural cachet for obscurity? Or is it a simple economic argument, that isn’t arguing abt the illegitimacy of anyone else’s work as much as it is for the legitimacy and Real World Capital to match the much more ephemeral cultural capital they’ve earned? An appeal to the moral or ethical sense of an audience to consider the realities that what music they’ve been sold is mediated through a massive system which has not rewarded their creative endeavors but has benefitted from them?

I think in this sense, references to “authenticity” serve a very real purpose

It of course becomes more extreme when the things co opted are ie gang culture; that slang abt bloods starts getting used by corporate twitter accounts & there’s some really jarring shit where ppl are in jail & family members are dead & it’s a punchline to a guy running a social media account

I am not critiquing this as “appropriation” but just from the general POV of, like, empathy and respect for national tragedies...

Unperson: “there is no such thing as authentic blood culture so when Staples tweets ‘welcome to baples bitches’ it’s completely fine”

Yawn TLDR thread

Boring boring move it to ile

Y’all need a hot pocket instead of hot takes 24-7

Good post D-40, like exactly it

Um if I kicked off this rather droning tangent about "separating art from artist, can it be done? what is authenticity" it wasn't my intention

I was just saying that a considerable portion of rap listeners want their rappers to appear hard, and a history of criminality is an asset in this regard, my mom knows how many times 50 Cent was shot etc.

this is what spin is now

https://i.ibb.co/3rsMSkb/Screen-Shot-2019-06-06-at-3-56-34-PM.png