worst protest song/political song to place in the Pazz & Jop singles poll

legendary ko

self destruction 41 shots & free nelson mandela dont bother me rlly

"Mosh" is so bad

Mandela, Bitburg, Self Destruction and Geo. Bush are all great fucking songs that hold up

man it is hard not to vote for bright eyes

Mosh is so much worse than Bright Eyes and Bright Eyes is like the worst

Legendary K.O. and the Ramones are brilliant.

srsly. exactly what type of bullshit posturing are you doing when you say the Legendary KO track is the worst one, deej

the Legendary K.O. certainly is a legendarily great rapper, he didn't at all just play pop culture mad libs with a mixtape freestyle in a way that pushed the buttons of a lot of lefty rock critics, no sir, that's why he's had such a long and rewarding career outside of that song.

^^^^bullshit posturing

anyway i think i'm going to bed soon, have fun ruining my thread, you two

"same thing we do every night, pinky - try to take over the thread!"

― zvookster, Friday, January 21, 2011 8:41 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

lol yeah like this wasnt a controversial thread topic to begin with. i dont understand why al isnt ever lumped in w/ me & whiney in the 1st place

"now that ive made this thread & shitted on whiney, ill pass the beef off on deej"

dude if you can't handle jokes about you and whiney fighting you might wanna jump in the time machine and live the last 2 years of your life differently.

ahahahahahahahah DAMN

shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/8408/fifty.gif

2 years?? jesus. this is like past 5 months

regardless maybe u should stop talking shit about beef when u are worse than anyone w/ the provoking & shit stirring

i know, making such a "controversial" thread like this, i'm such an instigator.

"now that ive made this thread & shitted on whiney, ill pass the beef off on deej"

― challopian youtubes (deej), Monday, January 24, 2011 9:13 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

have you ever consciously tried to make a relationship hard on a person you loved

i love how if you read that sentence 100% literally, it sounds like ship ate some beef, took a shit on whiney and is now going to shit on deej

for the past week any time i post shit whiney starts in w/ ad homs & distortions & shit talking everyone immediately jumps in like OH SHIT DEEJ WHINEY BEEF stfu already

like how is this shit not stale at this pt

american skin prob in my springsteen POX

the whirlwind of beef, i drown whiney in it

have fun ruining al's thread, you two

we should use this thread to talk about how good american skin is

i do like that song pretty well

This thread is incomplete without all the year-end write-in blurbs defending these awful songs.

croooooss this bloody river

deej accusing people of "distortions" makes you sound like a cable news pundit fyi

how many rock artists released songs about oscar grant this year? its in the area of zero right

deej accusing people of "distortions" makes you sound like a cable news pundit fyi

― trv kvnt (some dude), Monday, January 24, 2011 9:28 PM (35 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

whiney trying to force running jokes about how im always talking about the Tunnel is on some fox new shit its true

idk yo -- he was pretty much calling you a rap elitist, which, i mean shit, it's a message board idk

you take whiney's bait EVERY TIME. just like you take my bait EVERY TIME. that, and your lack of sense of humor about it all, is what makes you the chump. EVERY. TIME.

i take him seriously because hes certainly not funny

is it a gun?

is it a knife?

is it a wallet?

this is your life

jesus is this you trying to 'use' people's 'words' against them 'cleverly'? please just stop.

if u want me to not take it at face value try bringing lols? idk what to tell you

xpost to deej, not iatee.

although "Land Of Hope And Dreams" >>>> "American Skin" imo

"Sun City" is a horrible song with horrible guest spots.

the ramones song is so fucking awesome. neg polls generally get negative and are shitty in my limited experience of not really paying attention to neg polls bc they suck

"We Are The World" is "A Change is Gonna Come" by comparison.

"Bonzo" is terrific, especially in the last verse.

zvookster negging a neg is NAGL

you take whiney's bait... LOSS. just like you take my bait... LOSS. your lack of sense of humor about it all, is what makes you the chump... LOSS

^^^im gonna neg your neg of his neg of your neg xp

okay i don't know what's going on there

I write in vote for Student Demonstration Time even tho it never placed in Pazz and Jop. why because it sound interesting

whiney do u feel like youve gotten something out of inanely baiting me in a way that ends up annoying the rest of the board? what are u getting from it exactly? its not like you're being at all clever or funny

meanwhile, back at the ranch...

and i mean, fine, im supposed to roll my eyes & take it like a joke, but its still dumb

anyone who votes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm7p-RLFg2I gets the gasface

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXGgWf2lacM

deej my point is that if his baiting wasn't so successful, people would only be annoyed at him and never you. that is clearly not the case, and constantly being stubbornly in denial of that just makes you look way more ridiculous than him.

^should have been included in poll/wry commentary on thread xp

i'm a board hero, i don't know what you guys are on

in one of the many times i've seen School of Rock i watched the part where bonzo plays thru a montage of dewey finn giving various AV rock images to the class pointing out specifics with a pointer and almost teared up for his vision of rock as an exciting world changing beauty.

i guess its my fault for assuming that hes a dude who wants to actually talk about & take this stuff seriously

who, the Legendary KO?

what's beef?
beef is when deej makes whiney start his jeep

if the legendary ko is trolling im certainly not the one who responded lol

bonzo goes to bitsburg then he goes for a cup of teaaeeaeea and as i watched it on tv somehow it really bothered me baaaaaahbahbahbah my brain is hangin, upsidedowhowhowwwwn

i guess its my fault for assuming that hes a dude who wants to actually talk about & take this stuff seriously

― challopian youtubes (deej), Monday, January 24, 2011 10:42 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

FYI, you're the one who never answered my legitimate question about your dislike of the song over "When The President Talks To God" and fucking "Mosh"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ4LJebvtB4

this is either Sun City or Bright Eyes

deej u have been noising up ILX lately w/ your 300 post argumentative idgi bullshit, cio

pretty sure the bright eyes song is actually the worst song of the last decade

n/j school of rock is one of my favourite movies of all time

in one of the many times i've seen School of Rock i watched the part where bonzo plays thru a montage of dewey finn giving various AV rock images to the class pointing out specifics with a pointer and almost teared up for his vision of rock as an exciting world changing beauty.

― zvookster, Tuesday, January 25, 2011 3:42 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

man

in one of the many times i've seen School of Rock i watched the part where bonzo plays thru a montage of dewey finn giving various AV rock images to the class pointing out specifics with a pointer and almost teared up for his vision of rock as an exciting world changing beauty.

Thanks. I was just about to mention "Bonzo"'s use in a film, but I couldn't quite remember where I'd seen it. Great scene.

Fuck that fucking bright eyes song forever

lol @ whiney riding for "the legendary KO"

I never play Sun City.

I'm sure the Bright Eyes is worse, but "Mosh" is the worst of these I've heard.

Bright Eyes song is terrible and was potent for about one week in early 2005 - it's like one of those clumsy early Dylan songs which he had the good sense to never officially release.

Free Nelson Mandela is great and joyous and specific and unexpected and I have no idea why it's on this list.

Can someone explain to me exactly why the Legendary KO record is so hated? Even leaving aside its timeliness, I love the wit and empathy in the lyric, the way the anger isn't overplayed, the way a recent hit is twisted in a way that makes complete sense and gives the track a defiant empathy rather than predictable I'm-being-serious-now gravitas. Sure, it was probably overpraised by the likes of Greil Marcus because of what it represented but I do not get why so many people (or maybe just a few very vocal people on ILX) think it's so awful.

the legendary ko track is just so corny and awkward. it's the wrong song to try to rework for starters, everything about "gold digger" is unserious and wry - it's a that's-just-how-life-is shrug about a stereotypically humorous situation that celebrates human foibles and couldn't be less aggressive or suitable for any kind of attack. shoving a ~serious message~ over the top both detracts from the message and leeches out the fun of the hook/beat.

what i hated was how pointlessly point-missing it was though. hey, legendary ko - "gold digger" was an amazing thing! kanye blurting out "george bush doesn't care about black people" on live tv was an amazing thing! YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO ADD ANYTHING TO THESE AMAZING THINGS.

"georgia bush" >>> legendary ko

Thanks Lex. OK, I think the message benefits from the fun of the beat rather leeching it - the tone isn't defeated or plain furious, it's defiant and humorous. And I don't think one blurted comment - which Kanye never followed up - obviated the need for any other commentary on something as big as Katrina. Remember, this was before Lil Wayne or Jay-Z or anyone else responded. I see it as like an old civil rights freedom song, where people would spontaneously rewrite a current hit (like, aptly, Ray Charles's Hit the Road Jack) to have topical, often witty lyrics.

the other reason i think it was pointless is from the political standpoint as well as the pop standpoint - as a political statement, it didn't come close to kanye's original outburst, despite (or because) kanye didn't follow it up. bush himself called kanye's comment the worst moment of his presidency. beyond a few rock critics, barely anyone noticed and certainly no one remembers the legendary ko's contribution to the discourse. it came off like the legendary ko was trying to make an awkward quasi-political act by kanye into a Proper Political Thing, but it had zero impact from that point of view.

The Legendary KO track isn't great but come on there are at least two songs on here that are worse, Mosh and the Bright Eyes one.

The Stop The Violence Movement - "Self Destruction" (#20, 1989)

Never heard this, any good?

When the president talks to God
Are the conversations brief or long?
Does he ask to rape our women’s rights
And send poor farm kids off to die?
Does God suggest an oil hike
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Are the consonants all hard or soft?
Is he resolute all down the line?
Is every issue black or white?
Does what God say ever change his mind
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Does he fake that drawl or merely nod?
Agree which convicts should be killed?
Where prisons should be built and filled?
Which voter fraud must be concealed
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
I wonder which one plays the better cop
We should find some jobs. the ghetto's broke
No, they're lazy, George, I say we don't
Just give 'em more liquor stores and dirty coke
That's what God recommends

When the president talks to God
Do they drink near beer and go play golf
While they pick which countries to invade
Which Muslim souls still can be saved?
I guess god just calls a spade a spade
When the president talks to God

When the president talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he's not?
That that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the president talks to God?

I doubt it

I doubt it

I mean, honestly.

oh yeah, the bright eyes one is definitely worse. bright eyes, generally, was the worst.

um, never heard it, but the lyrics aren't ... um...

I'd say "not awful", but

I dunno maybe the version of it is bad and you'd like it more if Jay-Z had done it.

That sounds 'wrong', I mean that thesedays people 'expect' political expression to sound like *this*, and not like *that*...

haha um reading the lyrics has made me remember how much i GENUINELY LIKE 'when the president talks to god'.

i was thinking 'yup that's one of those embarrassing political conor oberst songs that i don't even enjoy being embarrassed by' BUT NO

his little trembling voice! "I guess God just calls a spade a spade"!

also iirc it was an itunes-only thing at a time when that didn't feel like an official release.

mattdc, re: self destruction, no it's not much good, & i never want to listen to it. mc lyte kills it tho. the west coast equivalent that symsymsym posted upthread is far superior. followed it up with a heavily underrated post too imo :D

good work trying to troll aero into posting again by bashing the bright eyes #

Sometime (former?) ILX'er swoods and I have been trading off our Top 100s on Facebook; I had Legendary K.O. at #52, and put it at #2 on my 2005 year-end. In the annals of in-the-moment political outrage, I rank it with "Ohio," the Mothers' "Trouble Every Day," and not a whole lot else.

Perfectly valid to think it's a lousy record, but I've got to take issue with a couple of specific complaints raised above. I don't think it matters a bit whether Legendary K.O. had a "long and rewarding career"; to make that argument, you're essentially writing off Rob Base, ? & the Mysterians, and every other great one-shot ever. (I know, neither Base nor ? was technically a one-hit artist--you know what I mean.) Saying everything you ever had to say on one record and then having the good sense to disappear yourself can be a good thing.

Also: "beyond a few rock critics, barely anyone noticed and certainly no one remembers the legendary ko's contribution to the discourse." Is this true? I don't know--I remember "George Bush..." as being kind of an internet sensation ("viral," if you will) when it first appeared. Did George Bush take notice of it the way he did Kayne West's original comment? No--I'm quite sure he never heard Legendary K.O.'s record. Just like I'm quite sure Nixon never heard "Ambulance Blues" or "Smiling Faces Sometimes"--it doesn't make them any less brilliant in my eyes. I'm even tempted to make the opposite argument, that there's something especially inspiring about a voice-in-the-wilderness record that no one hears, but I won't go that route either. Ultimately, a song stands or falls on its own merits.

Kayne's aside about Bush was a fantastic, completely spontaneous moment. His actual statement was relatively measured; he accused Bush of indifference. By changing "doesn't care about" to "doesn't like," Legendary K.O. took West's charge into the realm of incendiary recklessness. Probably quite unfair, but it makes the record that much more compelling to me. I also think it's ingenious that they were able to use one of Kayne's own songs as their source material. Ditto managing to work "Connecticut" into the mix, which reminds me of Young MC's use of "opportunistic"--I think you've got to be pretty adroit to get by with such words. And best of all for me, "Five damn days, five long days/And at the end of the fifth, he walkin' in like 'Hey'."

I have no idea what Kayne West thought of "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People," but I don't recall any kind of legal injunctions or anything to get the record pulled. My guess is that he was okay with it, and maybe even thought it was as great as I do.

when another relatively unknown rapper did a politically minded mixtape version of another Kanye song the same year (Lupe Fiasco's blood diamond-themed version of "Diamonds"), Kanye had him guest on his album and helped launch the guy's mainstream career, so I'm guessing if Kanye was at all impressed by The Legendary K.O. we would've known by now.

I am working hard on learning to spell Kanye West's name correctly. I've got the "West" part down cold.

Just call him "west" from now on, that won't confuse people.

I sincerely don't believe I'm exaggerating at all when I saw that literally thousands of no-name MCs are rapping over beats from from popular songs and making tracks that are at least half the time as good or better than "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" every single day. there is absolutely nothing exceptional about that song except that if you were desperate for anti-Bush rap in 2005 you might've kidded yourself into thinking it's remotely as good as "Gold Digger."

er "say" not "saw"

xpost: I was just speculating on what West (thanks!) thought of the record. Trying to be consistent, it really doesn't affect my own feelings about the record one way or the other.

So I just kidded myself into liking the record? Man, I'm such a dupe. I didn't even realize I was desperate for anti-Bush rap at the time--hadn't consciously thought about such a thing once, but it must have there somewhere in the deeper recesses of my mind.

I don't know man, I just literally cannot fathom any other reason to hold this song in such high esteem beyond having a fist-pumping "right on!" reaction to the topic, which was the point of grouping these particular songs together for this thread.

i've always assumed people spelling his name as "kayne" must be doing it as some sort of joke, because i've seen it so much over the years

clemenza OTM. some dude's contempt is way OTT. I think in the days after Katrina it was acceptable to be looking for an anti-Bush rap and OK to enjoy one that's quick, witty and measured and it's incredibly obtuse not to accept that subject matter and circumstance can elevate a record above thousands of other no-name rappers freestyling over hit beats.

of course subject matter and circumstance can elevate a record; sometimes they also overshadow the actual music.

The guy is just dull as dishwater as a rapper and there's not a single hot line in the song imo. You say it's "perfectly valid to think it's a lousy record," but that all other conclusions I draw from that are too far; if such a lousy record gets that much praise why shouldn't I think aloud about why?

If you're saying #16 is too high on P&J, sure, I agree, and it's because of the phenomenon you're talking about, but I don't see why it's so worthless and terrible. Most of the other songs here have at least one line that makes me bite my fist with embarrassment - at worst this is solid.

Xpost Think it had more to do with lumping all who like it under an unflattering umbrella

For what it's worth, I don't think "George Bush don't like black people"; West's charge of indifference was much closer to the truth, I'd say. So I'm not sure that I exactly had what you call a fist-pumping, right-on reaction to the record. I found (and continue to find) it a compelling song. That 50 million rappers may have been out there trying to do the same thing with West's comment doesn't matter a bit to me. I haven't heard those records; if I ever hear one that's better than Legendary K.O.'s, I'll be happy.

I think the Kanye misspelling is just a case of "kay" being a natural thing for your fingers to want to type, and "kan" not being so natural.

Maybe an interesting question to pose re: the subject of the thread is, given that musical taste is subjective anyway, why shouldn't a listener enjoy a record in part for its political content? I mean, there are classic records I disagree with and awful ones I agree with, but most of the time it's not that simple. There's no doubt I like the Legendary KO record more than if the same rapper was rapping about something else over the same beat but so what? Don't all these factors feed into your enjoyment of a record?

It's this idea that "quality" is somehow sacrosanct and impervious to any other considerations, like when I hear people saying they don't care what race/class/gender a musician is as long as the music is good when race/class/gender may all play a part in whether it's good and what kind of good it is.

if such a lousy record gets that much praise why shouldn't I think aloud about why?

Sorry, missed that. I didn't mean it wasn't valid for you to voice your objections--I'd never say anything like that. I just meant I disagreed with the validity of your objections.

I ain't sayin' he's a gold-digger, but he ain't messin' with no broke niggas

cmon dude that's corny...what do those two lines have to do at all with what went on in New Orleans? How is the political content not clumsily superimposed onto the original 'Gold Digger' single?

Maybe an interesting question to pose re: the subject of the thread is, given that musical taste is subjective anyway, why shouldn't a listener enjoy a record in part for its political content? I mean, there are classic records I disagree with and awful ones I agree with, but most of the time it's not that simple. There's no doubt I like the Legendary KO record more than if the same rapper was rapping about something else over the same beat but so what? Don't all these factors feed into your enjoyment of a record?

It's this idea that "quality" is somehow sacrosanct and impervious to any other considerations, like when I hear people saying they don't care what race/class/gender a musician is as long as the music is good when race/class/gender may all play a part in whether it's good and what kind of good it is.

― I've been dancing since 9 and I'm tired and hungry (Dorianlynskey), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 8:53 AM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

obviously there will always be differences of opinion and quality isn't some kind of objectively measured criteria. but I believe there is a widespread impulse among music critics to inflate the enjoyability of a piece of music if it carries some kind of message or 'importance' that appeals to them or the artist's background is exciting to write about, and songs like the ones listed in this poll are ones that set off my bullshit detector for that kind of thing pretty hardcore.

saying "the political is clumsily superimposed onto 'Gold Digger'" is like arguing that the food content is clumsily superimposed into a Weird Al song

"Eat It is brilliant, my #2 song of 1984."

Yankovic labors over making the new lyrics fit the meter and rhyme scheme of the original way more than LKO or most other mixtape rappers using industry beats.

Someone in another EOY list thread talked about the "yearbook" aspect - you pick your favourite songs, sure, but also maybe a couple that represent the year to you and will remind you of it. Topical songs are bound to benefit from that. It's not bullshit unless you believe that it's possible for everyone to construct a list based on nothing except pure "enjoyability". I think other factors - cultural ubiquity, a dramatic back story, an aura of artistic "importance" - always enter into it.

haha i'm pretty sure i was the person that introduced the word 'yearbook' in that thread.

I wz trolling Whiney more than anything else dorian--sorry...

It's this idea that "quality" is somehow sacrosanct and impervious to any other considerations, like when I hear people saying they don't care what race/class/gender a musician is as long as the music is good when race/class/gender may all play a part in whether it's good and what kind of good it is.

― I've been dancing since 9 and I'm tired and hungry (Dorianlynskey), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 8:53 AM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i assume you dont mean this but this paragraph just reads as 'its good because hes black'

Sigh. If you honestly think it reads that way, then it's not even worth explaining what I mean.

i mean i get that your pt was 'why shouldnt politics enter into it' but that was just a weird example to use considering the circumstances. sorry if bringing that up complicates this argument it just struck me as weird

all that said its not a politically nuanced or interesting track, its just a straight retelling of what happened that day punctuated with 'george bush doesnt like black people' chorus. its the kind of condescending back-patting politics that puts me off from generalist critics trying to engage w/ rap music. 'why cant more rap be like legendary ko'

its the kind of condescending back-patting politics that puts me off from generalist critics trying to engage w/ rap music. 'why cant more rap be like legendary ko'

I'm at work and posting on the run, but now I'm a generalist critic trying to engage with rap music? I don't know why some of you guys always feel the need to start reading into why people like what they like.

not being able to spell Kanye was a tipoff

i thought it was understood that politics was the reason we liked this, then

xpost to deej. The idea of "quality" distinct from other considerations reminded of recent debates in the UK about the dominance of the affluent middle classes in rock and comedy - one response you always get if you raise this is "It doesn't matter as long as it's good," which ignores the fact that there are different kinds of good and that if an artform becomes too socially homogenous then you miss out on some of them. It's a related point - ie, sociopolitical factors do enter into how music is made and heard - but not the same as the specific Legendary KO point. Though for someone who often complains about having your arguments misread until they're ass-backwards, you're not allergic to it yourself.

You're always complaining about generalist critics. Well guess what? Hip hop isn't some arcane specialism, it's part of the general cultural conversation, and political hip hop has been given special treatment by critics since The Message so get over it. I also think it's weird to single out Legendary KO - a record that was specific, timely and recorded by people who were seeing Katrina refugees every day in shelters in Houston - as "condescending and backpatting". It's not Arrested fucking Development.

The only trend I do not like in rap right now is the message rap. I consider the message rap the equivalent of what strings were to rock 'n' roll in the late '50s - a capitulation to the adult norm who can't accept the music on its own terms. The people who considered "Sixty Minute Man" by Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "Annie Had a Baby" - as the pinnacles of '50s R&B now are super uptight over the - in quotes - hotel/motel lyrics of rap. Rap is definitely as true to the essence of rock 'n roll as anything that's out there today.

* Aaron Fuchs quoted by David Toop (1991). Rap Attack 2, p.120. New York: Serpent's Tail. ISBN 1852422432.

this is music that congratulates your existing political biases while engaging no novel aesthetic ones. and im not trying to erect some kind of gatekeeper bunker mentality around rap music, but encourage people who think legendary ko is great to engage w/ us about rap music more often & try to understand the critical framework we're using on the genre if theyre going to engage in rap crit (even if they plan on rejecting that framework ultimately)

I mean, i def agree 100% percent with deej that the long rock critic tradition of pandering to message-rap is NAGL of the highest order; but rap dudes has a tradition of completely dismissing the stuff which is also NAGL.

Like seriously I know it got the accolades that Stunts Blunts And Hip Hop prolly deserved, but the first Arrested Development album is dope and fuiud

Some dud: I misspell lots of words. Don't read too much into my typos and misspellings.

i know, couldn't resist the easy joke, sorry bro

xpost. Try making fewer condescending assumptions about what people listen to and know about. I don't know who you're referring to but I don't need any lessons in hip hop comprehension, thanks. I like that Toop quote a lot but for me it's not either/or - I like political lyrics and I like meaningless ones and I like bits of everything in between.

And again, I don't think you can say a record released less than a week after a major news event pandering to existing biases - it was a gut reaction. Would it have been more "novel" of them to write a song in praise of FEMA?

Also, I think the context of a topical message rap in 2005 is very different from the period Toop was referring to - there was a lot of weak, worthy stuff following Public Enemy but in 2005 there wasn't really a bandwagon to jump so Legendary KO did have the force of novelty.

its not a 'condescending assumption' i just never see you talking in any ilx rap threads so

based on evidence at hand

Do you know why? Because it's mainly you and Whiney bitching at each other and you playing hip hop gatekeeper.

BTW, I really don't want to quarrel with you - it is not a fun thing to do - but you make it very hard not to.

that really not what 99% of the rolling rap thread is
& im perfectly fine w/ arguing w/ people about music, sort of the point of ilx & part of why i like it. dont take it personally.

the stuff about me being a gatekeeper is imo way overblown. its a defensive maneuver not a policing one -- rap fans are used to having their genre be defined from outside & judged on aesthetic terms that miss the point. i mean u can look at how rap classics have fared on critics polls thru-out the years & see that -- im fine w/ arrested development these days, but where is diamond on the pazz n jop list exactly? im not arguing that stuff should be excluded nearly as often as im arguing that certain artists are being slept on despite their notable aesthetic contributions to the form

There's a difference between discussing a record and being driven to distraction by someone making false assumptions about your tastes and motives, and misreading every point.

I'm all for representing underrated records - it doesn't mean the more praised ones are shit. And doesn't every genre have that problem?

srsly, talk to the metal dudes sometime about being marginalized by rock critics

i think reading my generalizations about the songs appeal to 'critics' as being specifically about you is not something i should have to argue with. you can like whatever you like. what we're debating is the public sphere. if you think it stands up on its own then fine, it was your personal yearbook entry. i just cant conceive of how your reasoning justifies the intensity & broad spread of praise from the # of critics it did & will continue to feel justified in saying its overrated

srsly, talk to the metal dudes sometime about being marginalized by rock critics

― when the president talks to based god (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 10:32 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

the metal / rap equivalency is bullshit -- one of those genres is much more popular than the others & much more open to a broader spectrum of people

(may have been less bullshit in the 80s but now??)

I literally have no idea which one you think is more popular

try the one w/ hundreds of top 40 hits in the past decade

Or conversely look at the Billboard album charts?

I mean lets get real. Black Eyed Peas vs Metallica, can you really say one of these bands is "much more popular" than the other?

r we really gonna call BEP rap?

where is diamond on the pazz n jop list exactly?

i do hope deej is referring to diamond out of crime mob here. <3 her.

also talk to r&b fans about being marginalised from the crit world mmkay

the metal / rap equivalency is bullshit -- one of those genres is much more popular than the others & much more open to a broader spectrum of people

then why are you being so defensive about it? in one hand ur like "rap is so misunderstood!" (which I agree with) but then ur also like "rap will never be metal! metal deserves its marginalized status! rap is way more popular & only cloistered Satanists give a shit about metal!*" why does it have to be like that?

*(obv puttin words in ur mouth, but u get my point...?)

Just taken a cursory look and there are FIVE rap singles that came above the Legendary KO in that P&J poll, honestly this level of handwringing is just unbelievably dull.

wtf do R&B and metal even have to do w/ the point of this argument
talk about a red herring
its not like theres a world of critics out there writing about the metal that was actually-popular for the past decade -- its all the same generalists who vote for legendary ko. they are not comparable genres

then why are you being so defensive about it? in one hand ur like "rap is so misunderstood!" (which I agree with) but then ur also like "rap will never be metal! metal deserves its marginalized status! rap is way more popular & only cloistered Satanists give a shit about metal!*" why does it have to be like that?

*(obv puttin words in ur mouth, but u get my point...?)

― some hills are never seen (Drugs A. Money), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 10:44 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

we're talking about critics marginalizing it, not record buyers

Just taken a cursory look and there are FIVE rap singles that came above the Legendary KO in that P&J poll, honestly this level of handwringing is just unbelievably dull.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, January 25, 2011 10:45 AM (57 seconds ago) Bookmark

i know u mean this to sound damning of my argument but lol @ the idea that this is even near the 5th best rap song of that year

It's not, but it does undermine your point that mainstream rap was being critically marginalized at the time.

xpost. OK, you think it's overrated, I've given several reasons why I think it's not, and there we are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yo0B3kn1YI

That Legendary KO song was popular with critics - KAISER CHIEFS popular

wtf do R&B and metal even have to do w/ the point of this argument
talk about a red herring
its not like theres a world of critics out there writing about the metal that was actually-popular for the past decade -- its all the same generalists who vote for legendary ko. they are not comparable genres

Suggest Ban Permalink
― challopian youtubes (deej), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 11:45 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

you were pulling this shit in one of the other p&j threads...there's absolutely no reason to shit on metal on this board...

better contemporary anti-bush rap song, why didn't those bastards at the village voice vote for this (unless they actually did...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGTb6I-qqCw

"the west coast equivalent that symsymsym posted upthread is far superior. followed it up with a heavily underrated post too imo :D"

:)

It's not, but it does undermine your point that mainstream rap was being critically marginalized at the time.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, January 25, 2011 10:47 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

orly

you were pulling this shit in one of the other p&j threads...there's absolutely no reason to shit on metal on this board...

― some hills are never seen (Drugs A. Money), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 10:53 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im not shitting on metal, im just pointing out that bringing up metal in this thread as a pt of comparison w/ rap is total apples & oranges -- they have massively different audiences & approaches to success & critical discourses

but deej! Metallica is bigger than Black Eyed Peas! that parallel says it all, argument over!

But bringing up the terrible critical mistreatment of rap in a "which of these doofusy political songs is the most shitty" is just as pointless so

Xposts

critics liking shitty rap & justifying it on political grounds is v much part & parcel of that discussion actually

xp I do kind of get what deej is saying...if the "mainstream" critics who put this in the p&j had a better understanding of hip hop then they would not be so quick to be giving the song--a clumsy, corny mixtape rap with topical current-events appeal--any kind of legitimacy...

xp I do kind of get what deej is saying...if the "mainstream" critics who put this in the p&j had a better understanding of hip hop then they would not be so quick to be giving the song--a clumsy, corny mixtape rap with topical current-events appeal--any kind of legitimacy...

wow twice as redundant

it doesnt really bug me that legendary KO was on pazz and jop? because like pazz and jop? but its pretty funny that people are still riding for it thousands of years later

Also did you just talk about the primacy and overwhelming undeniable popularity of rap as grounds for a certain kind of critical coverage and then complain about diamond not placing in p&j within like 5 posts or

hey um, if i could go on-topic, which i guess is off-topic

but bonzo goes to bitburg is a pretty amazing song in my book. i like how the bells sort of recall back to the phil spector's production on "end of the century" but also the song is taking the ramones formula into 80s mainstream rock territory without compromising what's great about them.

i also like how, for a political song, joey intentionally makes the chorus non-political, my brain is hanging upside down i need something to slow me down...it makes it feel bigger and more universal, rather than just reagan sucks

also the way joey can't even fully articulate his feelings about what he's seeing:

bonzo goes to bitburg then goes out for a cup of tea
as i watch it on tv somehow it really bothered me"

there's something vaguely sad about the melody against the chord change for these lines...reminds me a bit of how the lines "send it off in a letter to yourself" function in "rikki don't lose that number" by steely dan, there's some sadness operating around the margins of the song, but you can't quite grasp it...

like joey kind of sees how things are going to go in the future, how imagery would eventually replace thought in politics, but he can't even explain it, even to himself....

it's even greater for the fact that any joey political stuff always has an element of the personal, after seeing the end of the century documentary and learning about all the strife between him and jonny, it's hard to read any ramones liberal politicals as anything but a partial shot at jonny, who i'm sure really looked up to reagan

i dunno, i've pretty much come full circle on the ramones to the way i thought when i first heard them at like 15...i just love them without reservations, but now it's better because i appreciate how much they could communicate with the simplest lyrics and musical gestures....

just one of the finest bands that ever existed, even in their declining years they'd still manage to tap in their ability to write the occaissional perfect pop song, and i think this is an example

Eh fuck this, I'm just annoyed because you keep dragging the "nobody listens to metal" argument into your deal.

also, the ramones' best stuff is so effortless that it made everyone think that anyone could do it, which is wrong, they literally could do no wrong for those first few albums, just came into the world perfectly formed -- the way they looked, their personas, the photographs, the music, the words, the songs, even the font and the logo....the whole band in my mind is a perfect piece of art.

Nice job capturing Bonzo there! Well said, and I think you got to the heart of it well.

yeah great posts ums

M@tt saves thread

who listens to metal is not relevent to me its just that it gets brought up all the time on some "well what about RACISM" when someone is discussing sexism, as to distract from the legitimacy of a point about sexism, its kind of a bullshit tactic.

the reason i bring up popularity at all is because is suspect sometimes when ppl bring up metal they do so knowing that in 2011 its a largely underground phenomena & they want to treat rap similarly

nice post m@tt

Great "Bonzo" post. You nail the two things I love most about the song: the inchoate anger--not really being able to articulate why you're angry--and the sadness. Ironically enough, my class is in the midst of watching School of Rock right now (we started before this thread went up).

I ain't sayin' he's a gold-digger, but he ain't messin' with no broke niggas

cmon dude that's corny...what do those two lines have to do at all with what went on in New Orleans? How is the political content not clumsily superimposed onto the original 'Gold Digger' single?

If you're saying that race and class had nothing to do with the federal response to the disaster, I'll only say that a lot of people disagree with you. They might be wrong, but that's a political disagreement, not an aesthetic one.

this is music that congratulates your existing political biases while engaging no novel aesthetic ones. and im not trying to erect some kind of gatekeeper bunker mentality around rap music, but encourage people who think legendary ko is great to engage w/ us about rap music more often & try to understand the critical framework we're using on the genre if theyre going to engage in rap crit (even if they plan on rejecting that framework ultimately)

Doesn't every song "congratulate" somebody's existing biases, political or romantic or otherwise, by giving them voice? I think the matter-of-fact-ness of the verses was powerful, the choice of "Gold Digger" clever, and the whole thing a better use of a good beat (and corny "sample") than the original, which I didn't like much then and still don't. And yeah, it spoke to its moment.

If you don't feel that way, cool, and I like the sociable way you go about fighting critical wars, but drawing "rap crit" battle lines here seems silly--I'm pretty sure it was a rap fiend who emailed it to me.

Yeah, the Ramones post nails it. I'm pretty sure that Joey voted for Reagan in 1980 and was having second thoughts by this stage, which explains the sense of unease and disappointment which is so much more interesting than 80s punk's standard fuck-Reaganisms.

Pete I was just saying that fitting the "gold digger" lines so that they talk about Bush was destined to be horrifically awkward at best...

I'm pretty sure that Joey voted for Reagan in 1980 and was having second thoughts by this stage

huh wow! i didn't know that...weird parallel w/neil young there

Wish I could remember my source for that to be 100% but I was researching something on them last year and came across it - Johnny was the Republican loyalist but some of the others were on the Reagan bus first time around.

lots of musicians voted for Reagan in '80...see also: Prince.

price does not surprise me really

lol

Speaking of which (unless somebody already did), why isn't "Sign O' The Times" part of this poll? "Bonzo" blows that one of the water. (I like the Specials song too, fwiw.)

Sign O' the Times is the opposite IMO - incoherent and embarrassing message-wise but a phenomenal piece of music.

It's so vague that it's almost hard to hear it as a song-with-a-mission like these numbers.

So, just not specific enough, protest-wise? Okay, I can see that.

I do think that critics goofily perceiving it as an "important message" song boosted its Pazz & Jop position, though (higher than other singles from the same album, for instance.) But that's also happened with plenty of other songs over the years (once in a while, even deservedly).

"Rockin' In The Free World" kinda belongs on this list - the Bush I references are pretty direct ("thousand points of light," "kinder, gentler") and it serves as the kind of year-after-election "the republican won, yargh" thing "Bonzo" and "President Talks To God" served.

^I was going to mention "Free World" at the beginning of the thread...

thinking Bonzo, Sign, and Free World need their own Reagan-remorse poll

I'm not really mad at "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg" out of all the songs on this list, but I grew up thinking of it as like the 26th-best song on Ramones Mania and it's pretty ridiculous that it's the only Ramones single to every place on P&J (although the singles poll didn't exist yet when they released their first few albums, granted).

I explained in the original post that this poll is limited to songs that weren't big pop hits -- "Sun City" was the only one that cracked the top 40, and that had to be here since it was so infamously and embarrassingly #1 on P&J. we could do a separate poll of actual hits or better known songs by the artist that are a bit preachy and probably benefited from that on P&J: "Sign O' The Times," "Rockin' In The Free World," "People Have The Power," etc.

I don't have Ramones Mania, and don't know the exact year that P&J singles started ('80 or '81?), but I'm guessing it's either their best single or very close to it during the lifespan of the singles poll. All the Ramones songs I like better myself would come from one of the first four albums.

arguments to the contrary: I Wanna Be Sedated, Rock'n'Roll High School, We Want The Airwaves, Pet Sematary, Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?, I Don't Want To Grow Up

so Creed's "In America" never made Pazz adn Jop then? man that'd be an all-out winner if it'd charted higher.

how many Creed songs made P&J?! I can't imagine more than 3 or 4

3 or 4 too many

good as wolf repellant tho

that fuchs quote is interesting but surely it's from the first edition i.e. circa 1985 re: the wave of singles in the wake of "the message" in a landscape before by any means necessary, before nation of millions, before radicalism and militancy generally speaking. it kind of looks like a 1991 quote up there which is different.

no Creed song ever placed in P&J

^see and you guys say there's no God

i once believed in God so much I removed a tritone from a song I wrote cuz I thought he'd be mad at me

that fuchs quote is interesting but surely it's from the first edition i.e. circa 1985 re: the wave of singles in the wake of "the message" in a landscape before by any means necessary, before nation of millions, before radicalism and militancy generally speaking. it kind of looks like a 1991 quote up there which is different.

― zvookster, Tuesday, January 25, 2011 4:27 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it is & doesnt apply here perfectly but i think in this instance its fair to say that this is the kind of song rap fans dont give 2 shits about

pet semetary is really awesome

kkk took my baby away

xp: Yeah, the Fuchs quote is from the 1984 first edition.

poll should've been for best not worst

Whoops. So, "rap fans" never cared about political rap songs? That's a big leap even from that quote, which is saying something else.

I like Dead Prez

Singles poll started in 1979 (post-"Sedated," which was 1978, unless it got reissued later), and I might agree with clemenza about "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" being their best single since then -- it's up there, anyway -- though I might actually vote for "Tomorrow She Goes Away" off Mondo Bizarro instead, if that was as single.

I remember loving a SPIN piece that said the problem with U2 is they'd never record a song called "Pet Cemetery."

Rock'n'Roll High School, We Want The Airwaves, Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?

On the other hand, these are all real good, too. (And "I'm Affected," if that was a single.)

wikipedia says "Sedated" wasn't released on a single until '79 and not in the U.S. until '80, although I'm not sure how well known it was before the 1988 video shot in support of Ramones Mania compared to after

Whoops. So, "rap fans" never cared about political rap songs? That's a big leap even from that quote, which is saying something else.

― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, January 25, 2011 4:45 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

rappers & rap fans kowtowing to critical norms from 'respectable' genres has been a blight on rap thru-out its history which is why i brought up that quote in relation to the legendary ko's wack song

i mean i love the message & so do most rap fans but did u know that its classic verses were actually not a part of 'the message' but another, non-'message' song?

some version of superrappin iirc?

http://palmgoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/the_more_you_know2.jpg

poll should've been for best not worst

― ex-heroin addict tricycle (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, January 25, 2011

yeah wld have preferred that as i said upthread but there's a lot of good stuff itt so idk

what rapper has ever kowtowed to "critics" about content

Not to turn this into a Ramones thread, but I was going to say that "I Wanna Be Sedated" is one of the first four albums, so maybe it qualifies (or maybe not, for the reasons cited above). I love "Pet Semetary" too, plus a few songs off of Pleasant Dreams and Subterranean Jungle. For me, knowing maybe two-thirds of their output post-Tommy, it would come down to "Bonzo" or "Pet Sematary." But, to get back to the subject at hand, I think "Bonzo" totally deserved however high it placed in P&J, and don't see whatever votes it got as being career-achievement votes, or people voting for a Ramones song just for the sake of voting for a Ramones song.

wikipedia says "Sedated" wasn't released on a single until '79 and not in the U.S. until '80

Interesting; I had no idea. Though it explains this 1980 P&J singles ballot, which I'd always wondered about.

LESTER BANGS: Au Pairs: "Diet"/"It's Obvious" (021 import); Teenage Jesus & the Jerks (Migraine EP); Mars (Lust Unlust EP); Mekons: "Snow" (Red Rhino); the Clash: "Bankrobber" (CBS import); Lipps Inc.: "Funkytown" (Casablanca); Ramones: "I Wanna Be Sedated" (RSO); Was (Not Was): "Wheel Me Out" (ZE/Antilles); Public Image Ltd.: "Memories"/"Another" (Virgin import); Bush Tetras: "Too Many Creeps" (99).

what rapper has ever kowtowed to "critics" about content

lol Chuck D

Jay-Z

xuxhk while you're here and kind of on the subject: did Bangs vote in '79, the year "Let It Blurt" placed in the poll? and what's up with that, was it like a bunch of his friends and contemporaries voting for a fellow crit's song?

political rap was awesome, i h8 white devils all that shit was great, black fist shit, a lot of ppl on this thread need to listen to poor righteous teachers and study their lessons

it's always been cool guy default ilx to be all like oh god all that self righteous stuff is soooo boring doncha know? omg it's really gauche...but a lot of it was dope and i wish more rappers would be political now, lots of anger and energy about actual stuff not just headbussing (which is cool too sometimes but that's all there is now) would be refreshing and fun....it's fun for kids to get angry about stuff they can't change, i loved every second of it.

build and destroy (ilx)

- rightstarter.

and i KNOW xhuckx classic shit is OH THE MESSAGE VERSES ARE SO MUCH MORE FASCINATING WHEN PLACED AMONG THE BACKDROP OF ALL THE YES Y'ALL AND WHO IS A SCORPIO AND MAKE MONEY MONEY OF THE ORIGINAL BECAUSE ITS SO TEXTUALLY FASCINATING ETC

but it it's better in the actual message and the weird creepy synths of the message is so much cooler than the third hand chic disco stuff

god this is like my all time ax to grind against ilx and i'm grinding it now

I don't remember anyone offering you a grindstone.

i got a grindstone by any means necessary

And the idea that '88 righteousness was the creation of white gatekeepers or whatever is an amazing fiction.

oh god

ppl get mad defensive abt rap on here!

lol @ the idea that i suggested '88 political rap was related to white gatekeepers

i posted that fuchs quote bcuz i think it applies to 'legendary ko' not every political rap ever

u effin nerds

jay-z kowtowed to barack obama not christgau

obama demanded anti autotune song

poll should've been for best not worst

― ex-heroin addict tricycle (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, January 25, 2011

yeah wld have preferred that as i said upthread but there's a lot of good stuff itt so idk

― zvookster, Tuesday, January 25, 2011 5:57 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

'best' thread would've had probably a very similar conversation and a much more predictable poll result, with this i really don't know where it's gonna go, which for me is the main criteria for making a thread a poll

obama demanded anti autotune song

― emma goldbond (San Te), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 8:12 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh so by "critics" we mean "rap fans" those notorious agents of change

its fair to say that this is the kind of song rap fans dont give 2 shits about

rappers & rap fans kowtowing to critical norms from 'respectable' genres has been a blight on rap thru-out its history

Not defensive, more just amazed in a baffled kind of way, and genuinely curious about the imagination and projection that would inspire these lines.

Ha, I'm not even sure I'd say "Superrappin" is better than "The Message" these days -- they're both pretty great.

did Bangs vote in '79, the year "Let It Blurt" placed in the poll? and what's up with that, was it like a bunch of his friends and contemporaries voting for a fellow crit's song?

I wasn't there, yet. But I could've sworn that, in his P&J essay that year, Xgau said something like "I feel compelled to mention that at least X votes for 'Let It Blurt' came from confidantes of Lester, and at least one came from Lester himself. I also feel compelled to mention that it's a pretty good record anyway." But looking at the essay on Xgau's website, I'm not finding any of that. (Did I dream it? Or maybe the web version edits the original print version, which I'll check the next time I did through the closet.) At any rate, Bangs definitely did vote that year; his album ballot is still on the website. Not positive he voted for the single, though.

"dig" through the closet, I meant.

Guess it's also possible Christgau wrote that somewhere other than his P&J essay, but I'm not sure where that would be.

Not defensive, more just amazed in a baffled kind of way, and genuinely curious about the imagination and projection that would inspire these lines.

― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, January 25, 2011 7:38 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ive never heard a non-pazz & jop generalist pop critic (who naturally being ~40 yrs old has been a 'rap fan' for longer than me blah blah blah) say anything ever about legendary ko

re: the 2nd quote, pete, what do u think the entire kanye debate is about? the celebration of latter-day jayz? there's a big underlying strain of thought in rap that it needs to be more respectable & less 'ghetto' & more bourgie

xp: I'm terrible with tone--I actually meant my last sentence. Like, I love that quote from the Toop book and sympathize with someone having a vision of how music should be and filtering everything else through it in a polemical way. I love that you care about audiences, too, deej. So I'm curious where these fantastical generalizations and self-identification some imagined audience come from. I filled in the racial stuff because that's the somewhat provable reality behind the code of "respectability" and "adult norms" or what-have-you, at least through the '80s.

xp: So from this slice of experience you've determined that "rap fans" don't like "this type of song."

I totally agree that the strains of thought you mention among critics exist and need to be challenged, but I think those biases are more complicated than being "respectable"--a lot of them go back to punk and the counterculture before that.

nah i mean that u have rap fans who like rap (& will defend 'classics' like cuban linx even if theyve got a bunch of drug talk on them) but they do crave mainstream critical respectability particularly with new records. think about bun b getting 5 mics from the source years after his best records, but shortly after his mainstream critical approval

like, i think there are different motives between the source critics & pazz n jop critics -- the pnj ones voting for KO are coming out of punk, the source ones are on some 'rap has gotten so much worse' tip. these dudes also tend to venerate 'legends' to a much greater degree than pnj critics -- who at least had that lester bangs thing about not paying deference to your idols or w/e. But they're coming at rap w/ their own biases, and rap criticism has its own tradition (more in the ego trip vein)

i should say i doubt there were many source critics into KO -- but the source critics do pay attention on other artists

I can only speak for myself, but the timeline was something like this: 1) Katrina happened; 2) about a week or 10 days later, I read about the Legendary K.O. record somewhere; 3) I found it, downloaded it, loved it; 4) within days, I played it on my radio show. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't even emptied out the Superdome of people yet--playing this record on air while the crisis was essentially still happening was thrilling. My point is, this all happened very fast--there wasn't a lot of deliberation that went into any of it. All of this analysis you're doing of people's relationship to the song, and rap in general, is interesting, and you're certainly entitled to do so, I just think you're missing the forest for the trees. (Or you're missing one very tall tree for the forest...or something. There's trees, and there's a forest, and I think you should be here, but you're over there.)

xp A ha! I didn't dream it; it just wasn't in Xgau's essay -- It was at the bottom of the actual singles list that ran in 1979. I was close!:

**The Poobahs feel impelled to point out that at least seven of those voting for this disc are intimates of Lester Bangs, and at least one is Lester Bangs himself. They also feel impelled to acknowledge that it's a pretty good record anyway.

i mean i love the message & so do most rap fans but did u know that its classic verses were actually not a part of 'the message' but another, non-'message' song?

So the only worthwhile verse in the whole song is the final Mel one? I mean, you're right as long as you ignore the first five minutes of the song but I don't think that's what most people do.

Also, deej, I think your argument that the Legendary KO were kowtowing to "respectable" norms is bullshit. It may have been warmly received by generalist critics but it was made for a hip hop audience at a racially charged moment in US history in an ad hoc mixtape style with a sense of humour. A record that kowtowed would have been far more worthy and solemn. You come dangerously close to suggesting that any kind of political thought in rap is insufficiently "ghetto" and only designed to appeal to 40+ white rock critics. I can understand the trend you object to, but you're backlashing against it so hard that you end up disparaging the motives of a whole bunch of MCs.

I'm pretty sure most rap fans are more likely to rep for "The Message" than "Superrappin'".

the premise of the poll samples is basically a question of whether all these particular tracks suited 40+ white rock critics, the KO is just one of them, and is one particular rap song. it seems like a very big error (to me) to extrapolate from that that some dude & deej are close to disparaging any kind of political thought in rap? & surely it's another one to separate ghetto reportage from the political in any case.

I meant deej, not some dude, but OK, maybe I read him wrong. deej's arguments can be hard to follow.

Good point about distinction between ghetto reportage and politics though The Message is more political, as in aware of the broader social context for the narrator's problems, than most examples.

I can only speak for myself

This is the forest.

Also, deej, I think your argument that the Legendary KO were kowtowing to "respectable" norms is bullshit. It may have been warmly received by generalist critics but it was made for a hip hop audience at a racially charged moment in US history in an ad hoc mixtape style with a sense of humour. A record that kowtowed would have been far more worthy and solemn. You come dangerously close to suggesting that any kind of political thought in rap is insufficiently "ghetto" and only designed to appeal to 40+ white rock critics. I can understand the trend you object to, but you're backlashing against it so hard that you end up disparaging the motives of a whole bunch of MCs.

― I've been dancing since 9 and I'm tired and hungry (Dorianlynskey), Wednesday, January 26, 2011 4:51 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im not talking about the artist im talking about the critics' reception of the song

clemenza, seems like you should put Kanye's outburst (hate to call it that) somewhere in yr timeline? Only reason I bring it up is that any kind of timeline involving Katrina is necessarily tricky imo. I seem to remember that the fed gov't took meaningful action five days after the shit hit the fan, but I think it actually took the general public about three days to come to full awareness of the magnitude of the disaster.

Katrina was real creeper, and when things went bad, I think the only person who was talking about it was my grandmother, whom I lived with and who was a real news junkie. Everybody else where I was didn't really register until 3 or 4 days later...

or "it didn't really register with anyone else I knew at the time (including me) until the third or fourth day after the flood..."

Might be useful vis a vis relating the song to the timeline - part of an interview I did with Legendary KO:

The news coverage started to get a lot of people. A couple of days after the storm we started seeing a lot of coverage about the extent of the damange but then the story started to focus on the people who didn’t leave. Basically saying that they were idiots for staying around, when a lot of people had legitimate reasons for why they couldn’t get out of the path of the storm. In the US the news cycle goes on 24 hours a day and you start to see the same images over and over and they used a lot of images that showed “poor people” stuck in their houses. One thing that got to me a few days into this was a lot of us started to realise that these people who are still stuck in New Orleans have no idea how they’re being portrayed in the news, and while they have cameras in their face they’re not even getting any help and a lot of them were cyring out for help.

Two or three days prior to doing the song each of us had done volunteer work at the shelters. When you talk to the people these are normal people like you or I – normal tax-paying citizens who unfortunately had a huge storm level their city. What they didn’t know was the media was portraying them like refugees – they’re nomadic people now, they’re poor. They don’t even have a chance to rebut what’s being said about them because they don’t have an outlet to tell their side of the story. Noone really granted them their own say in the matter. So I was at work one day and Mike called me and he said I’ve got an idea for a song. And I’m like OK. And he said, I think this one might hit close to home. So I said OK, just email it to me. I’ll be home in 15 minutes. And when I got home in my inbox was the first half of the song and I was like, wow, this is pretty interesting. We didn’t understand what type of impact it would make, we just thought it was a cool song because it actually discusses the events of the past week or so from the viewpoint of people who were affected by it. We threw in the Kanye reference because we’d been talking about it the entire weekend before. A lot of what we were saying on the verses was stuff we’d already been saying amongst ourselves. It was just a matter of putting into song format. When we did that song it was so easy to do because those feelings and what we needed to say were already on the surface.

A couple of days after the storm we started seeing a lot of coverage about the extent of the damange but then the story started to focus on the people who didn’t leave. Basically saying that they were idiots for staying around, when a lot of people had legitimate reasons for why they couldn’t get out of the path of the storm.

not to be all optics-obsessed, but this is hugely OTM and I think a major reason why the tragedy got such a false start i/r/t national attention. I'm not even sure how many news stories covered it this way, I just think that was the "common sense" public perception, that they were dumbasses who stuck around for a hurricane and now needed our help. It took a few days for those assumptions to be replaced by "oh shit, this is actually not good at all, is it?"

It's why I like the song - it's not from the POV of a concerned outsider, it's trying to put the arguments into the mouths of the people at the heart of the crisis, people who weren't being represented in very many places.

yeah I imagine that actually interviewing KO and getting a lot of his first-person experiences about Katrina would prolley deepen the song's meaning for you quite a bit...quite different than just heaping on the kneejerk acclaim for a rap song bcz of its "political relevance"...

I think a lot of threads are kindof informing each other atm, and I think that "Mosh" would prolley get my vote because to me it marks the end of Em's transformation into what some dude called "constant hectoring, repetitive irritant" on the top 77 tracks thread.

Ha, yes. I respect Eminem for stepping up and saying it but the style is so nagging and jabbing and unpleasurable. He makes it sound sour and dutiful instead of (a la PE) thrilling.

I of course should have added Kanye's original comments to my timeline of Katrina--that fits in between 1) and 2). One thing I pointed out on the Facebook countdown I mentioned earlier: Legendary K.O.'s record would seem to be emblematic of the lightning-fast rapidity in which something like Katrina can go from news event to widely-distributed mp3 in the internet age. But if you check the timeline for "Ohio," the gap between event and song isn't all that much larger--I think "Ohio" was on the radio about four or five weeks after the fact.

that's why it was a single wasn't it? to get it out that fast...

Mark Mothersbaugh was at Kent State at the time (in fact he mentions in a few places how the shootings were very much integral to the inspiration of the Devo concept); I think I remember him saying that the reaction around campus to "Ohio" was v. negative, and that the perception among them was that rich rock stars were trying to cash in on their tragedy...

I actually think I might've read that in Shakey (Neil Young bio) actually...

wow, 'actually' overdose lol

I read that Mothersbaugh quote too, so maybe it was Shakey. I gotta admit, I thought the idea that Neil was trying to cash in on what happened struck me as absurd. CSNY was already a money-making machine; putting out a song like "Ohio" (as opposed to, say, "Our House") would seem to me to put that in jeopardy, not solidify your commercial viability. It made it to #14 on Billboard. Knowing the way recording deals were structured in those days, I wonder what riches Neil cleared from a #14 single in 1970? At a gut level, though, I guess I understand how someone who went to Kent State at the time would resent "Ohio."

Geez--just noticed that "Our House," the follow-up to "Ohio," only made it to #30. So what do I know about commercial viability? Maybe "Ohio" was just a big cash cow after all.

^right, I get the impression that even back when it was released Crosby Stills and Nash kindof represented the hippie movement sticking its head up its own ass, contemplating agrarian idylls (Our House, Teach Your Children)...

Ohio prolley seemed to those sort of close to the tragedy as exploitative, soft-rock sell-outs using their showdown with The Man to bolster their countercultural cred...

prolley belongs in this poll.

(prolley not, i know, just joking...)

x-post yeah, whether it's a cash-in for $$$ or not, it could easily be seen as a co-option of a tragedy. It's not like CSNY were on the frontlines at this point.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

The '00s were awful.

in terms of '00s songs/albums where ppl do self-consciously "political" and "about" Bush + The War On Terror and stuff, I really like The Evening of My Best Day by Rickie Lee Jones, though that angle is pretty low key for the most part, and the song that's most in that vein is "Tell Somebody (Repeal the Patriot Act)" which is maybe my least favourite track on the album

The Specials - "Free Nelson Mandela" (#17, 1984) 3

WTF, 3 of you?!