OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

lol Halfway

woof: https://www.spin.com/2023/12/album-of-the-year-killer-mike-michael/

Layers upon layers of stink in there.

Michael is for Killer Mike's given name

whoa

oh my god what the fuck is that

what blathering dreck!

lmao that suuuucks

That's sad.

tempted to start a poll for everyone's favourite line in this piece

1st reaction was OK dad, 2nd reaction was this is overwrought and underwritten at the same time how is this dude a publisher, then he dissed the pitchfork person and things got exciting for a minute but he denies us a decent rant and just gestures at the bootstraps party line of his class which is honestly a bit of a letdown, he clearly sees Mike as a fellow capitalist striver

he definitely writes like the kind of guy who inherited his dad's porn empire and published nude pics of teenagers to sell his own magazine while also sexually harassing his employees

https://ximage.c-spanvideo.org/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJwaWN0dXJlcy5jLXNwYW52aWRlby5vcmciLCJrZXkiOiJGaWxlc1wvZGJhXC8xNjQyNC0xNTI1OC0xLmpwZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciIsImhlaWdodCI6MjAwLCJ3aWR0aCI6MjAwfX19

"I’m not a fan of most rap, and of what I do like I prefer old school to new."

well, fuck, that didn't work out the way I wanted it to

I think Omni Magazine was his passion project, not Spin. In it’s 80s-90s heyday Spin was essential reading

I like getting a peek behind the curtain and seeing the failupwardsons that run everything now and how little they bring to the table in terms of ideas and how their one ideological move is always meritocracy which is refuted by their own existence

Last September, the rapper Killer Mike was DJing hip-hop classics like Snoop Dogg’s Ain’t No Fun at a music festival afterparty in Louisville, Kentucky. “The inspiration for the night’s set is freedom of speech, so say what the fuck you want!” he told a crowd of hundreds. Killer Mike, half of the duo Run the Jewels, is known for speaking out against police brutality and racial injustice, as well as campaigning for Bernie Sanders.

But this night’s set was co-sponsored by Stand Together Music, an organization backed by the libertarian billionaire Charles Koch, who made his fortune in fossil fuels. Other sponsors of the party included the free-speech group Fire (which has received millions of dollars in contributions from the Charles G Koch charitable foundation), as well as the music outlet Spin, an official partner of Stand Together Music.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/07/koch-family-stand-together-music

lmao that suuuucks

I feel bad for the section editor, who presumably / hopefully cringed the whole way through that process, starting when Bob messaged one day and was like "This is the best rap record in decades, I'll write about it for album of the year!" ... and from that point there was no stopping it.

Maybe it didn't go that way, but you can picture it.

Banging Left posts

Enthusiasts of this style may appreciate Charles Lyons-Burt, who "covers the government contracting industry by day and culture by night." Certainly his eye-watering takes on contemporary hip-hop and rap albums capture the vibe and hustle of government contracting.
https://www.slantmagazine.com/author/clyonsburt/

I'm putting this Zachary Lipez essay about Pitchfork here because, while he makes some decent if obvious points, his prose style fills me with an unquenchable thirst for blood. I haaaaate this style of 21st century knowitall in-joke rockwritin', because it presumes an audience that gets all the references while bemoaning the fact that nobody reads this shit. I mean, maybe there's a connection between those two things?

You mean stuff like this:

At the end of January, overnight, with only eight years of buildup, Pitchfork went from being “The Most Trusted Voice in Music” to being as trusted as a big butt and a smile; with a reduced staff of Jeremy Larson +1 sharing a basement cubicle with Graydon Carter’s wig, the desiccated mummy of the last Details coverboy, and a spec script for a Ghostbusters remake where Bill Murray plays all the characters and is in a May/December relationship with a Japanese girlfriend.

^ i didn't understand a word of that fwiw

AI prompt: Try too hard to be clever. Humorous hip artsy movie voice narration.

in-joke rockwritin', because it presumes an audience that gets all the references while bemoaning the fact that nobody reads this shit. I mean, maybe there's a connection between those two things?

completely agree with you here -- relying on references to communicate a point is (at least part of) why no one wants to read music writing. i don't necessarily think it's a 21st c thing but it's def a music writing thing. not a fan!!

Only so much can be gleaned from chatter picked up by hanging out at the Fishbone “Party at Ground Zero” Mall which stands across the street from P4K headquarters like a giant memorial food court. And there are limits to how much fruit a holiday text from one of Ryan Schreiber’s ex coke dealers might bear. But even an observer as disconnected as this writer received emails containing theories. These theories ranged from site-appropriate conspiracies of an inside job—with the role of the Mossad being played by ex-Fader types bearing grudges—to the possibility of Pitchfork being hurt by a refusal to give special preference to artists/publicists important to other Condé Nast publications. The occasional middling review of Eurovision pablum and diaristic nepo-babies may seem like no big deal to peasants like you or I, but managers and publicists act on their own peculiar morality. Ron Laffitte has been indie rock’s monied whipping boy for twenty-five long years and maybe a 6.2 for Gracie Abrams was the final straw. Theory mongering, in this case, bears the pellucidity of old Pavement lyrics.

As well the theories should. For most analysts’ purposes, a love for Demolition Plot J-7 was enough. You don’t bring tequila to an Irish wake.

maybe he's going for early p4k style?

i hate that writing not just because it presupposes the reader gets the references but also because it seems like a cover for saying nothing new whatsoever, and just trying to say it with style and not even a good style.

pretty funny that he positions himself as someone who might not otherwise be told theories about what's going on in the music writing world. feel like that is not really the case

I like it, but I've been accused of doing hipster Dennis Miller schtick on this very site, so ymmv

Also, it's a Substack

Lester Bangs was a malign influence

lol people pay for this insight, then

Also, it's a Substack

No, no; our boy has moral objections to Substack. He publishes on Ghost.

I was just gonna say - that stuff reads like Knock-Off Whiney to me. (Whiney's works, imo. ZL's doesn't.)

i like some of the music he digs up, but his tweets are at least half eye-rolls

that's like someone's blog. that doesn't count for me. you can write anything on your own space.

jeez louise no fair bringing whiney into this. he's a real riter.

i couldn't really read much of that thing above though. i think i'm just getting old.

i went looking for some old thing on google last night and i saw the very first rock review i ever wrote (for the VV) and it came out 25 years ago this month!! i felt like graydon carter's dessicated mummy or whatever. where does the time go.....

xpost i know, but Lipez is a real writer, too. i'm not just comparing Whiney to a guy with a blog ... although yes, he wrote this on his blog, or newsletter, or whatever it is.

Yeah, Lipez writes for zombie Creem. Which I haven't read, but I hope he's got someone reining him in a little bit more over there.

The phrase "hipper-than-thou" was coined for this sort of prose voice...

And there are limits to how much fruit a holiday text from one of Ryan Schreiber’s ex coke dealers might bear.

srsly our whiney would never. this is very bad. the guy is bad with prepositions, doesn't know the requirements of metaphor, actually writes "pellucidity."

Men like deBoer tend to be glib about aspects of culture which are fascinating when taken seriously and they tend to be humorless about the absurd.

this is a good line

I think I got two paragraphs in and then had to tap out.

(And, yes, I got the references! But this writing style is insufferable.)

<q>And there are limits to how much fruit a holiday text from one of Ryan Schreiber’s ex coke dealers might bear

srsly our whiney would never. this is very bad. the guy is bad with prepositions, doesn't know the requirements of metaphor, actually writes "pellucidity."<q/>

argh!

was gonna say, dude also seems to think that coke grows on trees....

he calls out coke snorting like a homophobe does gay sex

he's good re deBoer

The 'Ex-Fader as Mossad' dig seems to be directed to Will Welch, the GQ EIC. That's all I got lol

I understand the hate, but I enjoyed the piece, despite his reliance on coke jokes. It was a funny, ranty, know-it-all blog post and in that sense it Made me feel nostalgic lol

I was just like “Dennis Miller has a music blog now?”

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/1JoAAOSwQjFlNDpe/s-l960.jpg