BBC Radio 1 has been accused of encouraging knife and gun crime by Conservative leader David Cameron.

fucking indie kids are all racist.

i listen to 1xtra on the rare occasions i listen to the radio.

Prospective Prime Ministers be indie.

-- The Lex

Would you care to elaborate on that?

Good Housekeeping?? I thought it was all choux pastry and knitted dildo warmers.

i read that article properly and not only does cameron like the smiths, he also likes radiohead :oooo

i assume gordon was lying, if he wasn't i will have to withdraw my vague approval of him

(xposts)

That doesnt have anything to do with the fact lex says fucking indie kids are all racist.

Or, to put it another way:

*clears throat, all together now, 1-2-3-4...*

YOUR VOICE IS NOT YOUR OWN, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT OF A DISCOURSE!

i think it makes one (wilfully) ignorant of the genre, which some might link to a semi-conscious disdain or even fear of that genre's subcultural attachment. but as i say, this would be tantamount to cultural prejudice rather than racial. but i say that because i genuinely don't believe someone could claim that indie (as we know it) has maintained creative supremacy over other genres in the last 30 years (or possible evah).

Ignorant certainly but wilfully? Maybe. It is difficult to tell (hence brackets).

Yes yes yes BUT every three months you get to use it in relation to a new song!

Don't like Leafy Windbottoms new R&B smash?! RACIST MURDERER!

But they're both all around you in London, all you need to do is turn on a certain radio station or go out in the West End or nip into Pizza Express. RACIST.

and for the record modern NME type indie is shit IMO.

(Cameron's guilty of exactly the same thing Lex is, of course, ascribing massive political significance to other people's music tastes while barely thinking about his own.)

One can listen intently and comprehensively to modern R&B (as I do; living in South London it's unavoidable) and still come to an informed decision that nearly all of it is k-rub.

Of course. But one would hope for some decent reasoning with it, as ever. One would also expect this same sweeping judgement to be equally applicable to any other popular genre out there right now.

well i've ignored it for years on ILX by not commenting on it but today I got fed up with it.
In no way is it a personal attack against The Lex.
x-post

Tom OTM re Cameron.

(Unless you think the only good rnb diva is a dead rnb diva, I suppose)

ding ding ding.

all this "people who don't listen to r&b are *wilfully* ignoring it" stuff is a load of old rubbish.

It might do, it depends on the reasons you give for not liking it I think.

some people not listening to it or engaging with it in-depth may have chosen to do so without really giving it the same chance they've given other music though. why would that be?

of course it's going to be "culturally prejudiced". not liking *anything* will involve some form of cultural prejudice.

yes but when accusations like racism are involved i think it's particularly important/useful to explore why.

this would be Cameron expressing what i would call a 'wilful ignorance'

people be creatures of habit, i suppose. the lex doesn't give much of a chance to, say, the arctic monkeys, for the same kind of reason -- he doesn't like guitars (except when it's radiohead, or tori, bov).

Musically I can see no palpable progress from the Timbaland/Neptunes innovations which are now at least half a decade past their peak. If I am wrong, please provide me with examples which prove the contrary (and borrowing memes from schaffel, Bollywood, dubstep or electro in general does not count as "palpable progress").

Lyrically it would seem to live up to everything that Cameron and the Tories favour. I find it offensive because I'm sick and tired of its misogyny and homophobia and doubly sick of the presumed poverty/race free pass.

The Arctic Monkeys may not be everyone's cup of cyanide but at least they don't keep yelling in your ear about how much better they are than everybody else, how much money they've got, how many women they've fucked or how many people they've shot. If I wanted a celebration of capitalism I'd sit in Cactus Blue in the Fulham Road on Friday evenings. And if that's cultural prejudice then I'm happy to be counted in, because I don't consider it "culture" except in the worst possible meaning of the word, i.e. staphylococcus aureus which grows on a petri dish.

Is that decent enough?

multiple x-posts.

There's a thread somewhere where the lex goes off on one about how the Arctic Monkeys are the worst band in the world ever, typical of everything that is bad about indie. He ends this by saying matter-of-factly "I've never heard them", thereby destroying his argument there, here and pretty much everywhere else.

some people not listening to it or engaging with it in-depth may have chosen to do so without really giving it the same chance they've given other music though. why would that be?

Yes, but you've crossed the barrier between "all people" and "some people", and so are arguing a completely different line to the original quote.

altho the Arctic Monkeys thing smacks of 'better by default' which doesn't hold much truck surely.

You mean there wasn't even a big fat bald Dutch rapper? Poor show.

xxxpost

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/stylus-favorite-20-singles-of-2003.htm

1. OutKast – Hey Ya

"But it’s got nothing to do with hip hop!" cry the critics determined to see black music delineated down narrowly defined routes of progression; broadly speaking, spontaneity over deliberation, the visceral over the intellectual, the emotional over the mechanical, the spiritual over the psychedelic; essentially limiting black music to the age-old templates of jazz, soul, blues and gospel, the patterns we’re used to and feel safe with. This is to conveniently forget that Miles Davis scored orchestras, that Sly Stone dabbled in synaesthesia, that Chuck D has a brain, that Michael Jackson has always been about spectacle over substance. Despite hip hop’s complete and unassailable dominance of mainstream pop over the last few years it seems that some commentators are still unhappy to see it step out of the ghetto or away from the block party, much as Joseph Conrad admired the physiques but refused (or was unable) to perceive the characters of the inhabitants of the Congo that he observed in Heart Of Darkness 100 years ago. It seems some of us haven’t come that far in a century. Big Boi and Andre 3000 are having none of it though. Outkast have always demonstrated an intellect and artifice, not to mention an idiosyncratic aesthetic sense and musicality, which marked them out from their contemporaries, and with "Hey Ya" Dre in particular pushed it to the absolute limit. The tune itself might not be much more than an effervescent acoustic strum, but the accompanying ephemera cemented it’s absolute mastery. The intensifying digital effects, beatifically nonsensical lyrics ("what’s cooler than being cool? ICE COLD!", "shake it like a Polaroid picture"), the doppelganger/simulacra laden video-pastiche, handclaps, harmonious chorus, overt sexuality ("don’t want to meet your momma / just want to make you come-ah") and Technicolor groove added up to something very special, not to mention nigh-on irresistible. A future of music? Absolutely not; "Hey Ya" was a glorious, unifying, joy-filled present.

[Nick Southall]

So this seems to me to be saying that people (IE all people) who aren't big fans of r&b are wilfully etc etc. Which is another layer of bullshit because it means people can't just not like it, but wvs.

Which is another layer of bullshit because it means people can't just not like it

i really think 'i just don't like it' is the bigger bullshit tho. it's a cop out. understandable tho, as figuring out why you don't like something enough to be able to articulate it IS hard work - certainly harder than making sweeping generalisations, but lazy it is - and frustrating when it comes to this kind of discussion.

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/the-top-50-singles-2000-2005.htm

It beat it by ONE place - given that dozens of people voted I don't think you could surmise anything particularly culturally insightful from that.

Hey ya;
As far as I know, everyone in America save a few crabby music critics loves “Hey Ya”, and that means EVERYONE—my mom, your mom, your first love, your last hookup, your dentist, your senator, that glassy-eyed girl in your favorite porno clip. You still sing along when it comes on the radio, don’t act like you don’t ‘cause I’ve seen you in the car and I know by now you’ve memorized exactly how many “alrights” there are, even if you stopped shaking your Polaroids last March. You want the ultimate proof of how much “Hey Ya” meant to the first half of the first decade of the third millenia? Everyone from Eminem to R.E.M. to the Boss may have tried to tip the pre-election scales with over-earnest pop, but I still think “Hey Ya” is the only four minutes that could’ve made a difference had Dre released it on November 1, even if it meant no one turned up at the polls at all because they’d all decided they didn’t want to listen to the pundits anymore, they just wanted to dance.
[Josh Love]

BOB
Chasing the extremes of sound is a common ambition. Louder, faster rules and we’ve heard the loudest and fastest out there. What’s hard is pushing the envelope of pop while not leaving the planet entirely. That's where the money is. While those deeper into rap orthodoxy will understandably give the award to “Elevators” or “Rosa Parks”, “B.O.B.” was when a lot of us spit out our drinks and screamed “Christ, they’ve gone to PLAID!” at the TV. Most attempts at “next level” mission statements are burdened by the weight of naked ambition. This blitzkrieg of sonic pleasure and lyrical command is one of the few we’re still trying to catch up with.
[Anthony Miccio]

To my mind, BOB is better because it has an even more infectious beat, it rocks more, it has a better breakdown at the end (that chant!), the guitar in it is used more interestingly (I'm always gonna favour psychedelic solo over acoustic strum, however enervated, cos I just prefer the sound and texture), the beat is more insistent, the bass frequencies deeper and more physically pleasurable, plus it has the interaction of Dre and Big Boi which was an essential part of Outkast's alchemy.

Which I admit to.

It's not a cop out. I just can't articulate what I mean.
Some songs are bland and some aren't so I cant just generalise and say its "bland".
Thankfully others can and this makes for a better discussion.

I don't like much modern R&B and pop at hip hop at the moment, but three years ago I couldn't get enough. Why is this? I don't want to fathom, particularly - a lot of it is down to the research I've done regarding stuff like dynamic range compression, and the way in which I listen to music and what I listen for - but equally it's not just that. An old Public Enemy tune came on my iPod this afternoon and it was fuckign great!

what other genres do you share this feeling about?

there's a pervading notion that indie-rock is exempt from slumps, that it's reasonably constant in terms of qualitative output - at least compared to R&B/pop/hip-hop triumvirate.

they may dip and rise at different times though. so while it's possible that one is on the rise in terms of creativity, innovation or general excitement for whatever reason, and the other is dipping in these respects, i don't think this is really happening myself. i would say i think they'er both dipping (to varying levels of steepness) but then i'd be written off as a jaded cynic. and that would never do.

???? this is mental, the whole narrative of UK indie at the moment is that the Arctics et al have gloriously freed it from a several-year slump.

Saying that, part of my cycle is, obviously, down to ME and not the genres themselves. I'm listening to more jazz, more African music, more Patrick Wolf / Guillemots esque stuff than I was 3 years ago.

Who's the et al in that sentence Tom? Fall Out Boy?

xpost Libertines too.

thanks for not following up this observation with 'THE GULLIBLE NAIVE FOOLS'

not really, if there is maybe there shouldn't be. it's deliberately tipping the scales too far the other way rather than trying to just restore the balance. but that's 'affirmative action' for you.

yeah isn't it more that The Libertines saved British rock and the AMs just picked up the torch? Or is it wrong to tie them together in that way?

let's not forget The Strokes, and the rise of Coldplay, and the rehabiliation of U2 after 'electronica debacle', nor the even more inexplicable rehab of Oasis...

in my own head, r&b as indie (=poptimist) signifier of good pop intentions began with 'crazysexycool', which simon price and taylor parkes repped for in the maker. and the poptimists like ciara and amerie and milian don't they/you?

The acclaim for "Crazysexycool" wasn't really followed up with much else IIRC.

'No Scrubs' had an even wider impact than 'Waterfalls' tho didn't it?

Is there a word for hating ballads? Don't disappoint me ILX!

There are good threads on ballads around the place - the default dislike of ballads is a much more specific (and therefore interesting) question than windy debates about R'n'B, race etc.

if you seriously think that the bulk of criticisms directed at r&b-as-genre (as opposed to isolated r&b songs) in the mainstream music press AND a lot of indie fans AND a lot of so-called 'pop' fans (naming no names but a certain racistjustice website) don't contain a pretty fucking strong undercurrent of

a) snobbery ("urgh it's chav music!") AND/OR
b) misogyny ("r&b's only for silly girls!") AND/OR
c) racial prejudice ("get these n****s out of our pure english charts")

you are a bit deluded.

and no, so-called poptimists hate ciara (see: racist comments about her on pj forum).

Not true. Coldplay's Fierce Panda single? Publicity stunt, isn't it, standard practice. They were always signed to EMI and that NME-fanbase was cultivated as a false history. Oasis? Sony through Creation. Not indie bands. These are big fucking rock bands, not little cult things.

and no Lex it's more "get these people who keep SAYING "n*****" out of our pure English charts"!

x-posts

r&b ballads rule so much - the only r&b girl whose ballads are consistently not great is, oddly enough, beyoncé! (ashanti too but she is the odd r&b girl out in that, a couple of oddities aside, all her stuff is consistently not great.)

my problem with modern r'n'b is that the majority of it does not speak to me lyrically. woman going "woooooaaaahhhaahah i love you don'tcha know" is all very impressive, but it's hella boring.

charlie that's such a reductive way of looking at the lyrics! r&b lyrics are - within the genre formalism which makes them more, not less, interesting - far more nuanced and subtle than those in most other genres.

xp

such flippant, ill-thought-out dismissals won't convince Lex that he is wrong.

nb hip hop heads are usually the most guilty of this one

who got the charisma in the charts?

maybe - i was only being half wilfully ignorant and baiting. i'm not trying to be rockist here but when did anyone in recent years even attempt to match perhaps the political edge of "what's going on" or even the beauty of something off of "innervisions"? i'll freely admit that i'm ignorant of this genre but i've never been given an incentive to check it out, but i'll listen to hiphop and soul etc any time of the day. lex, can you give me an example of the subtlety and nuance you mentioned?

oh yeh and a lot of indie rock (nme style anyway) is fucking boring.

can you give me an example of the subtlety and nuance you mentioned?

yes would love to! when i am less busy, maybe later on

(xpost - Do Not Feed The Indie Troll)

I want this to dovetail into my "All Americans need to know about English music can be learned from watching the lsat three Will Young videos" theory, but that's another day.

it's no 1 r&b myth anyway - how can anyone with ears even think for half a second that aaliyah, mary j blige, teedra moses, mya and kelis have remotely similar voices? this is like in the 90s when people said that fiona apple was the new alanis morissette, apart from she sounded NOTHING LIKE HER!

Apologies if someone has already pointed this out but I got terribly bored with that whole indie vs. r'n'b thing upthread and may have skipped a few posts.

roflol @ someone waving the "racist indie kid" flag at someone w/the handle "p funk boy".

r&b singers don't sink so low as to do this through pratfalls and toilet humour - they make emotional fools of themselves all the time WHICH IS WHY THE BALLADS ARE INTERESTING!

i believe he is levelling all these charges at a 'Herman The Tosser'

I suppose this is why I (and, yeah, INDIE PEEPOLZ) are more prepared to give Aaliyah and Kelis a pass, because they have got CHARISMA. Kelis has it in spades, Aaliyah could at least fake it.

http://pub.tv2.no/multimedia/TV2/archive/00140/afp_r_kelly_140864a.jpg

(mind you i think R Kelly is a creep, but he sure ain't afraid to make a fool out of himself)

there's got to be a happy medium, there's got to be...

hello the entire of the survivor album?

it's more that they hated DC before that Soulwax 'vs Nirvana' bootleg.

But it's such a dull, placid evil. Which brings us back to Cameron.

I haven't enjoyed a strawman building contest this much in ages. (I think you're wrong here, btw)

hindsight distorts!

xxp

this is completely wrong!

aaliyah also far from passive.

that's the first song on the album. by the penultimate track she's threatening that "we'll burn you, we'll gut you, we'll kill you" because her man is jealous.

But surely part of the huge appeal of ballads is how overblown and cartoonish they are, how extreme-to-the-brink-of-absurd the emotions become, so that they drag you from your own controlled world into one where every heartbreak explodes in technicolour? I think I'm more manipulable (? is this a word?) when it comes to ballads because they're kind of silly, they're bombastic or dredged with please-cry-now signifiers, so you let your defences down and then are sudenly swamped with emotion.

So am I - the definitions of "indie as genre" and "rock as genre" got totally fucked-up along the way and I think that is part of the problem. Patrick Wolf and Oasis circa first album both as "indie"? Give me a break. What's the opening song on that Oasis album?!

A million Transformers: The Movie fans start crying into their pillows again.

What manner of bullshit is this?!

Mainstream rock ALWAYS borrows ideas from "the underground" though, that's how it lives, how it survives. Sounding a little (and only a little!) like Curve does not make you indie!

is my modus operandi now. i'm not particularly looking for music to say anything about my life.

'it says nothing to me about my life' is or can be a criticism fired from both sides (humour me re eternal conflict between indie-rock(ism) and 'black dance music'), but i think it's a pretty lame one once you actually grow up and accept a greater level of sympathy may be required to judge art effectively.

Which is why EVERY argument is rubbish because that can turn ANY music into something appreciable!

The Stone Roses in 1988 said they wanted to be "the first band to play on the moon". They were not indie either. That's world-straddling ROCK ambition. Indie bands don't write songs about being the resurrection.

Double fault! Fantastic! Now I can go home with my head held high!

My point is that thinking of The Stone Roses and Oasis and now Coldplay as "indie bands" is totally unhelpful if you're also thinking of Guillemots or Patrick Wolf in those terms. Yo La Tengo and Embrace are NOT the same genre, and it's really fucking unhelpful and reductive to think of them in that way.

You might as well argue that all genre names/pigeonholes are reductive and unhelpful.

I wasn't talking about you, I was talking about Cameron! And perhaps unwisely butting in in the middle of a heated debate.

Oh alright! In which case I really like about five of his tunes!

Or it IS or can be useful in that placing the tag on a wider range of artists who may sound and look and just culturally BE reasonably or relatively different from each other stems from identifying aspects they DO share...or attempting to redefine what the tag can now mean. Esp. useful in Indie's case I think as it's original meaning was practically DOA anyway.

Yes but Steve now indie means literally NOTHING and so people like Lex and yourself are very blinkeredly dismissing HUGE swathes of really really fucking great music because of some semantic misuse which lumps too much stuff together.

*or equivalent term.

Yes but Steve now indie means literally NOTHING and so people like Lex and yourself are very blinkeredly dismissing HUGE swathes of really really fucking great music because of some semantic misuse which lumps too much stuff together.

I see it more as an attitude now. I don't think of Coldplay now as Indie. Radiohead? Probably.

I'm not dismissing swathes of great music any more than you are. I'm thinking I hear as much indie-rock as you hear modern R&B pop (how much do we need to hear before we decide we dislike it generally tho?)

ihttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/summerlist.jpg

I think FWIW Lex you like rock a lot less than indie.

I put it on ILE because of David Cameron and I didnt think it would get many posts on ILM as it wasnt about music really.
I never realised it would turn into a ILM type thread. Although I suppose i should have.
I actually thought people would prefer to bash david cameron.
i was wrong!

this is very true - it's a very different kind of 'cartoonish' to what dom was talking about though. it's different to doing 'wacky', 'crazy' stuff to get attention.

Lex (I am asking this as to "lex that i kinda know" rather than lexbot so uh plz respond as such) - do you think a fair criticism of a genre could be "I like it musically but lyrically it says nothing to me about my life"? Could such a criticism be made, fairly, of r&b, by anyone? By anyone "indie"? What do other people think?

i would ask - what specifically does it not say? because r&b covers a pretty great swathe of subjects, lyrically - but for some reason it gets translated into many people's minds (like charlie upthread) as "wooooh i love you don'tcha know" or whatever.

Bashing Cameron so predictable and boring tho. It's like when you post those 'another crap list' threads on ILM. uh, no offence dude.

Double-x.

those reasons in full:

1. being cheated on
2. boo gets killed off
3. spark just plain gone out of relationship for some reason
4. wooooh i love you don'tcha know
5.

help

it's a combination of the two for me

"Good" cartoonish: Edith Piaf, Guns N Roses, Monkees, Ludacris, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
"Bad" cartoonish: Andy Williams in the 90s, Insane Clown Posse

Well! One obvious message that indie delivers very commonly and R&b delivers quite rarely (tho' not never obv - I remember a Mario Wynan track and cld probably think of a couple of others) is "Everyone including the girl I like and her boyfriend think I am an effeminate feeb" - it seems pretty incontravertible that dfrnt genres have evolved to say different things best!

Steve> I always wanted to start a thread on this poll
http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/mixmag.html#albums
But i'd be 10 years out of date. I still have that issue. Do you have it?

I like to think it's implied just by hearing Ray-J's voice.

my bruv bought it but long gone now i think.
i dunno if a thread on that list would get much beyond the usual gushing and one-upping tho!

But Lex you never have defined indie (apart from obvious joke)!

Jesu = Justin Broadrick ex of Godflesh and Techno Animal

Jesu
http://www.myspace.com/jesujesu

new track star sounds like a combo of Killing Joke and My Bloody Valentine

^__^__^

(x-post)

I think you'd be happier here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/talk/

It's got to be done though, before the Child Catcher wins the next election, so that he doesn't, er, win the next election, even though he probably will, because war war is stupeed and people are stupeed etc.

Anyway I can't be arsed to go through the 200 or so posts since last I visited this thread; anything interesting happened?

Shades of Cameron's choice there:

"Ultimately, I don't have very cast iron opinions on black music other than black modern music which I detest. I detest Stevie Wonder. I think Diana Ross is awful. I hate all those records in the Top 40 - Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston. I think they're vile in the extreme. In essence this music doesn't say anything whatsoever."

is this not because r&b is so female-dominated though? there's quite a bit of role-reversed abjection in it, still. i have never really thought about this as a problem because it's the one lyrical strain of indie which really pisses me off. that mario winans track is v interesting though. i like how p diddy turns it from this meditation on self-loathing and self-delusion into, um, a tabloid headline about him and j-lo.

And Interpol. And Smog. And Will Oldham. And Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia. And Blur's 13. And The Pixies. And The Arcade Fire. And...

i don't listen to any of these people regularly! i think the last time i listened to any of them was 2005! i listened to erykah badu, paul kalkbrenner, xtina and three 6 mafia on the bus this morning.

I don't like much modern R&B and hip hop in 2006 for the same reasons I didn't like much punk rock in 1980.

Anyway I can't be arsed to go through the 200 or so posts since last I visited this thread; anything interesting happened?

-- Marcello Carlin, June 8th, 2006.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's looking like the Childcatcher will be GAWN some time before the end of the year? Leaving us with Captain Lugubrious?
-- suzy, June 8th, 2006.

I'm confused - who's the childcatcher?

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail has printed a handy selection of lyrics so you can make up your own minds...
Couldn't they have done better than that?

Someone has countered with a Shakespeare quote...nice.

I've been a lot of places
Seen a lot of faces
Aw hell, I even fucked with different races
A white dude, his name was John
He had a Queen Bee Rules tattoo on his arm
He asked me if I'd be his date for the prom
And he'd buy me a horse, a Porsche and a farm
Dan, my nigga from Down South
Used to like me to spank him and cum in his mouth
And Tony, he was Italian
And he didn't give a fuck
That's what I liked about him
He ate my pussy from dark till the morning
Called his girl up and told her we was boning
Puerto Rican papi, he used to be Deacon
But now he be sucking me off on the weekend
And this black dude, I called him King Kong
He had a big-ass dick and a hurricane tongue

i think it is beautiful, nick!

get involve with a nigga, slob on a nigga
take all his dough then I dodge the nigga
cause I'm a nasty bitch, I leave a nigga dead broke
snatch up bread and cop a brand new coach
I'm the jazzy type
and I only let you eat it if you ask me right (my coochie mad tight)

well more juice than a grape when you peel the skin
but yo it ain't no fun if your tongue ain't in
this is where the madness stop
so nigga fuck me with your tongue until you lick my hop
I got a body like a coke bottle, watch me walk
so nigga work your mouth and don't talk
raw like yay, must say I don't sweat
no tired-ass nigga, I sign my own checks
I'm the diamond princess, duchess of all broads
pussy stay tighter and wetter than all yours

chorus:
you nasty bitch, you nasty (uh-huh)
you nasty bitch, you nasty (uh-huh)
you nasty bitch, you nasty (what, trina you so nasty)
you nasty bitch, you nasty (uh-huh)
you nasty bitch, you nasty (uh-huh)
you nasty bitch, you nasty (trina how you so dirty?)

Verse 2:
fat back with a real slim waist
can't talk with a pussy in your face then (uhuhuhuh)
keep me sprung with the tongue like (uhuhuhuh)
make me cum 'til I'm numb
oh yes, rub my chest, make me wet
doggystyle and do it just like a bet
and lick the sweat, it taste just so sweet
when I pop my cock and make you drop to the beat like (duh nuh nuh)

nasty bitch, make a nigga sell his dick just to buy me shit
just to keep me looking raw in all the finest shit
and if you with me girlfriend shake your hind to this
cause I'm raw like yay, must say I don't sweat
no tired ass nigga, I sign my own checks
I'm the diamond princess, duchess of all broads
pussy stay tighter and wetter than all yours

Chorus

broke-ass niggas can't roll with me
and even rich-ass niggas can't get a hold of me
never back up fuck game long and strong
pussy so good break up happy homes
cause I'm raw like yay, must say I don't sweat
no tired ass nigga, I sign my own checks
I'm the diamond priness, duchess of all broads
pussy stay tighter and wetter than all yours

Neil Conner
What a load of rubbish. I support the tory's but with comments like that - I seem less entitled to do so. The only things that encourage it are the people themselves. To be 'With It' or in a 'kool' group of people. Radio 1 rocks and they should leave you guys alone!

roffle.

So, Westwood is a bit silly, but is he responsible for kids carrying knives and guns, as David "call me Dave" Cameron appears to believe?
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1792186,00.html?=rss

Conservative leader David Cameron has claimed that BBC Radio 1 encourages knife and gun crime by playing music that glorifies violence.

Mr Cameron said the music Radio 1 plays on Saturday night - believed to be a reference to Tim Westwood's hip-hop show, which runs from 9pm-11pm - had contributed to the growing problem of knife and gun crime in the UK.

"I would say to Radio 1, do you realise that some of the stuff you play on Saturday nights encourages people to carry guns and knives?" he said last night in a speech to the British Society of Magazine Editors.

The Tory leader said his remarks were an example of how he wants people to have "the courage to speak up when you see something that is wrong", despite the fact that "you will get a lots of bricks thrown at you" for voicing unpopular opinions.

A spokesman for Radio 1 said the station took its responsibilities very seriously.

"We find it difficult to understand what he could be referring to," he said.

Mr Cameron's comments came in response to a question from June Walton, the deputy editor of Good Housekeeping, about how the Conservatives would tackle knife crime in the wake of a series of stabbings, including the murders of 29-year-old policewoman Nisha Patel-Nasri and 15-year-old schoolboy Kiyan Prince.

Speaking six months to the day after he was elected as Conservative leader, he also said media brands were more trusted by the public than politicians and had the ability to make more of a difference to people's lives.

He said Jamie Oliver's school dinners campaign through his Channel 4 series was able to do in a matter of weeks what government ministers and inquiries had failed to do over a much longer period because "he [Oliver] is a trusted brand in a way politicians aren't".

"Your brands," he told the assembled magazine editors, "are increasingly more trusted than a political brand."

Mr Cameron was also asked by Sarah Miller, the editor of Condé Nast Traveller, for his views on the Office of Fair Trading's recent draft recommendation to overhaul radically the newspaper and magazine distribution system, which has been met with opposition from the industry.

But he was forced to admit he did not know about the issue and asked Ms Miller to explain to him why she believed the OFT recommendation would favour supermarkets and put hundreds of small newsagents out of business.

"I will encourage Alan Duncan [ the shadow secretary for trade and industry] to looked into it," promised Mr Cameron. "We'll get Alan to talk to you and the industry and try and push things in the right direction."

But Ms Miller is unlikely to be holding her breath: she said that last time Tony Blair had addressed the society she had asked him what he would do about the situation and he too had promised to look into it "but did nothing".

And despite revealing that he was "uncomfortable" with some magazine content aimed at youngsters, Mr Cameron said he preferred "sensible debate", self-regulation and "leanings" rather than regulations, laws and bans, which he said was Labour's response to everything.

He praised the work of the Teenage Magazine Arbitration Panel in helping improve standards.

Mr Cameron's surprising attitude to buying British was also revealed during the evening.

When asked by the editor of Car magazine, Jason Barlow, why he did not drive a British-made Jaguar, his lengthy answer about the merits of "green performance" cars included the admission that "I'm a great believer in buying the car that's right for you. I try to buy British when I can, but if it's not right then I don't."

-- Neil Stewart (neil_stewart4...), June 8th, 2006.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,11710,876440,00.html

"Well, when I'm buying spoons, I try to buy environmentally friendly spoons, but the spoon has to be right for me"

NO Thug Rap

Only:

Daisy Age Rap
+
Comedy Rap such as Daz Simpson

You going, Marcello?

Politicists??

as far as creative bankrupty indie-rock/pop and R&B-based pop are about the same. but this level playing field is not really represenetd satisfactorily in the UK music media.(stevem)

Which I thought was a good point (except that yer actual rock, w/o the "indie" on the front isn't represented satisfactorily on the radio at least in the UK, despite its enduring popularity or so it seems to me. Zane Lowe playing an Iron Maiden or Judas Priest number once every six months notwithstanding)

But, it brought a couple of thoughts to mind:

indie & r&b pop both incredibly codified styles, based on what I hear in the radio, the distance one can step away from the trademark "sound" being somewhat/very limited, to my ears anyway. In theory,
"creativity comes from limitations" or it can, but after a couple of years have all the variations been wrung out?

r&b pop much more enjoyable to listen to on the radio driving in than indie rock (which usually just irritates me immensely) but I must admit I find it kind of boring/identikit outside that context. Possibly I like it more b/c it has hott singers, unlike indiepop, haha.

limitations of available influences, wellspring of musical inspiration - (blah blah expounds on this for 550wds/cut) - a problem in the uk at least? I've been meaning to start a thread on ilm abt the (IMO) scandalous & unreported culling of specialist shows on UK local radio throughout the '90's. Back in '92-'93 I could post out CDs of my music (self-release, tiny audience music scene/style) and get radio play on four (4) local stations. Now - nothing in the UK, it's all (stuff that played my music, stuff that played other non-mainstream music) been dropped in favour of "drivetime" - this mainly advertiser-led, & partly due to the consolidation of ownership of UK independent radio. In the last 15yrs, I've read one (1) article about this in the papers(in the Guardian, abt 10yrs ago) although there was that big kerfuffle about that London-only indie station getting bought out back in the '90's that MM/NME though was of national importance. Is this a problem? Is there a similar set of circumstances for R&B/pop? "this is what you are supposed to sound like" = "this is all you hear, for the most part" = creative bankrupcy in the medium-long term. Maybe.

Do any of the big commercial radio stations have specialist programs?
I remember Radio Clyde Had(dunno if they still do) a friday rock program just like R1 did with Tommy Vance.

But 2 hours a week isnt much compared to the blanket coverage other styles get.
Maybe the british public is just biased towards pop and the music press biased to rock is a reaction?(or the other way about?).

Of course you could say the same about free jazz and other styles of music that get ignored by radio.

If the music press did cover more than just Rock and the radio played more than just chartpop it would probably be better but no doubt listening/reading figures would drop as most people do prefer it the way it is.

At last someone's talking about my life - what magazine would this be?
And nobody say The Wire.

Encouraging baton related crime...

(I am a boring old fart and am wearing cardigan and slippers RIGHT NOW)

Funnily enough, the company I work for sponsors the "drivetime" show on one of the local radio stations. Maybe we should try to persuade them to play new local bands on it!

(one of our directors is a keen guitarist himself, so there is actually a chance I could persuade him to get onto them about it)

But there was a genuine (not artificial) eclecticism which seems to have been lost/drained out from the charts; it used to be the envy of American observers that things like "Chime" and "Dude Looks Like A Lady" could sit comfortably next to each other in our Top 40 without seeming jarring. With the decline in record sales you'd think that would open up the floodgates for a more eclectic blend, but usually the reverse has been proved.

Once this generation becomes older this approach could well become the central way in which bands/record companies reach the public. Even MTV could suffer if it doesn't adapt quickly to people watching videos online/on their mobile phones.

The idea that music blogging is killing the music press is very silly because it's still a minority pursuit.

I think pop IS worse at the moment, actually: or at least pop defined as 'what's in the charts / on radio 1' where with a few exceptions Koganesque teenpop is largely absent. I also think this was a predictable development, and I don't think it will necessarily last.

Reasons: more and more, increasingly narrow niche markets develop, with own systems of distribution, and critical forums. Hence the centre ground is evacuated and becomes full of lowest common denominator, allowing gatekeepers (BBC, mainly) who have learnt to adapt and ride the repetitions of the pop marketplace, to have a stranglehold. LCD at moment = indie; rock; some urban crossover, but not half as much as say 2000-3. The space for novelty records is still there, but they depend on Radio 1 approval e.g. Elton John and Leo Sayer revivals. There seems to be a strict rationing of how many banging trance / house hits get in the charts, presumably related to rationing of slots on various radio playlists.

Not sure why I think it won't last -- probably lingering belief in dialectics.

so last night newsnight put up lethal's manager against michael gove. anyhoo it was good to be reminded just what an evil cunt gove is. but oh my days lethal's manager was the most inarticulate interviewee imaginable. it was fucking embarrassing. i had to mute it, but no doubt gove won.

but what in hell is the fuss all about, other than cam'ron making nice with the base? is he proposing to ban rap music? thought not, so where's the beef? lethal should have just said 'and what?', but instead they've gotten into a ridiculous debate about the link between violent crime and music. it's a bit insincere to say rap and grime lyrics are a 'commentary' on violence -- like ardkore tracks were a 'commentary' on drug use. but still.

it would be nice to see someone step up with the actual proper arguments over why it's completely illogical and stupid to claim a causal link between violent music (even if it does actively promote violence) and actual crime.

he told the media

Cameron: "You don't like it get off my brand new diiiiiiiiick"

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/observer/archives/David_Cameron.jpg

"Running from the police, picture that
Nigga I'm too fat..."

Perhaps I read that here.

"FACKING SEND 'EM BACK!!"

As we all know by now, my highly-anticipated and critically-acclaimed debut album BLUE COLLAR sold about 15,000 copies during the first week. As it stands now in the mass-marketing, single-driven genre of Hip-Hop music, this is considered a flop or a failure. Or is it?

-Akon, the well-known R&B star, sold about 5,000 copies his first week. And now, he holds a platinum plaque for his debut album TROUBLE.
-Lyfe Jennings: 6,000 copies his first week; also platinum.
-Maroon 5: 3,000 copies their first week; now multi-platinum.

While none of these artists that I named are rappers, they all understood the ingredients for success:
1)good music,
2)touring & great stage shows,
3)humble attitudes (checking their ego at the door), and finally
4)never giving up.

I'm scheduled to travel to the UK in October in order to have this dialogue about Hip-Hop with Mr. Cameron in front of MTV and BBC cameras.

Doesn't exactly sound "totally private".

So much for humble attitudes, eh Rhymefest?

No gun and knife culture in Scotland, oh no sirree. Or Wales. Or Northern Ireland. That's the kind of educated voice we need to make a point to Cameron, oh yes.

Also if he doesn't think the pen is mightier than the sword, why is he putting himself forward as the chief proponent of the belief that music doesn't incite violence? Swords = teh answer, words do fuck all, er, oh hang on...