"Should we be suspicious of hipsters’ newfound love of R&B?" or "Race and indie music, part 4762"

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_music_club/features/2012/music_club_2012_the_top_albums_and_songs_of_the_year/music_club_2012_why_frank_ocean_received_pop_culture_s_warm_embrace.html

(mods: if there's another thread where we discussed this article, just delete this thread.)

::sees "R&B" article with picture of Azealia Banks at the top, closes window::

someone heard lex:

There’s a lot to be said about hipsters’ “suspicious” newfound love for R&B. One aspect that concerns me is the implicitly racist conceit that suggests that R&B only becomes compelling when it takes on an indie-rock aesthetic (a form clearly dominated by whites, though not exclusively). That is to say, for some, contemporary R&B becomes worthy of attention only when it sounds self-consciously artsy, experimental, inwardly focused (“looking for myself”), psychedelic, or trippy, often drained of mirth. Given R&B’s long, rich, and diverse stylistic history, this “progressive R&B” supposition is in many ways a racial perversion of the form itself.

"There’s a lot to be said about hipsters’ “suspicious” newfound love for R&B"

thanks for trying, play again.

i think this whole article is totally asinine but i just wanted to see some of the bigger ILM guns trained at it. so take it away...

I'm exhausted, man *cues Jeremih playlist*

x-post--So you're with Will Hermes' response in that Slate.com discussion:

Why should the “blog-approved” success of Ocean and Miguel make us suspicious? Because it appears tokenistic? Shouldn’t the good stuff fire up as many imaginations/libidos as possible, especially those who don’t usually respond to mainstream R&B? I admit I’m frequently bored by its loverman clichés, soapy drama, and bottle-service grooves. But Channel Orange and Kaleidoscope Dream, both of which I adored, made me listen harder and dig deeper into the genre this year. I can only applaud if they do the same for others. Otherwise, it’s like the reverse of indie fans who get all sniffy when their favorites play Madison Square Garden.

how does one learn to groove so that one gets bottle service

indie or experimental R&B is officially the most overstated music trend of 2012, huh?

With its emphasis on melancholic confessionalism and interior concerns, so-called “progressive” R&B (far more so than most mainstream club-oriented R&B) delivered authentic blues feeling to a post-affluent culture suffering from collective disillusionment.

this is one of the false binaries (of many) that annoys me the most. if you look at Billboard's top R&B songs of the year, the biggest R&B songs were generally not very clubby, with a few exceptions (and fewer than usual):

http://www.billboard.com/charts-year-end#/charts-year-end/hot-r-b-hip-hop-songs?year=2012

I find almost every suggestion in these articles offensive: the implication that R&B is only just now experimenting, as if it's never been a forward-looking genre; the idea that "indie R&B" is pervasive trend when really there were only two albums that (very loosely) fit that bill that people heard or paid attention to; that suggestion that listeners have taken to two undeniably excellent albums only out of a sense of tokenism, etc, etc. It's all just horrible.

and Al is totally on the money. Critics are really misrepresenting contemporary R&B by making these acts seem like bigger outliers than they actually are

yeah i just said this on twitter but the annoying thing about "R&B was exciting THIS YEAR" is what it implies about last year and the year before (and how it lets people off the hook to move on next year) xp

xp Even the Miguel album, which sounds so awesome and distinct, had a lot of precedent in sounds that were playing on contemporary radio. It's not THAT big of a break or anything, he just too some in-vogue styles and stretched them into some really cool directions

the fact that Frank Ocean and The Weeknd (and also Kendrick) have been dominating urban radio for the last few months of the year, well after the acclaim, suggests that the critical accolades are helping them on a commercial level, so there's a whole chicken/egg thing

in that sense Miguel's unique because he blanketed the airwaves for a while before the critics came around

also because his first album was better anyway

*grabs coat*

haha @ at this comment:

Listening to certain people talk about "hipsters" is about as enlightening as listening to the people who accuse Obama of being a socialist.

Frank Ocean was successful this year because LOTS of people bought his record, not because some vague, nebulous pseudo-demographic bought it.

It's okay, you're old, I get it. So am I. But I'd like to point out it's just that much more pathetic when old people like us try to put our finger on the "disillusioned zeitgeist" as if we have any clue what the h@ll that even is anymore.

didn't we have this whole discussion on Janelle Monae a while ago and how horrible it was that she had so many white fans? is it not okay to dislike R&B in general but like some of the outliers?

as long as you don't get a Slate piece.

surprised to see this wasn't written by lex tbh

well apart from the love for Mars Volta lol

a racial perversion of the form itself

Bad luck Sly Stone and Prince. "Self-consciously artsy, experimental, inwardly focused (“looking for myself”), psychedelic, or trippy" makes you indie-rock.

guess this music isn't black enough for my white hipster ass, guess i'll have to go and listen to the steve harvey morning show to get the real goods

Bad luck Sly Stone and Prince.

see also Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Missy Elliot, P-Funk, etc etc

also stevie wonder which is the real groove channel orange is riding on

anyway whatever @ this article, but the will hermes paragraph is super terrible

a wellknowncritic and former spineditor got really pissed at this article on my facebook. i didn't think it was that bad. and actually pretty comprehensive as far as why we like frank ocean articles go:

http://www.spin.com/articles/trend-of-the-year-alt-rb-2012-frank-ocean-weeknd-miguel?page=0

any article that describes Santigold as alt-RnB is by definition terrible and embarrassing

and also unconsciously racist

Self-consciously artsy, experimental, inwardly focused (“looking for myself”), psychedelic, or trippy

poor Lauryn Hill :(

This is from a Grantland piece on songs of the year. Some of its misassumptions underscore a point Al made up-thread:

The song was released on February 22, peaking at no. 17 on the Billboard Top 100 but no. 1 in my heart. Usher sings in falsetto (which is fairly uncommon for him) over a Diplo-produced beat, and it only takes about 30 seconds to understand why this song was not more commercially successful. It has none of the David Guetta, dance-music influence that suffused "OMG" and "Without You," nor is it a derivative of the Dr. Luke and Max Martin Swedish School of Music (which I like, too!) that dominates the Top 40. Rather, it's more akin to Usher's R&B songs, like "There Goes My Baby" and "Moving Mountains" — two songs that also failed to crack the Top 10. "Climax" sounds like the song that the fictional Usher of my mind should be singing: It's the perfect song for the singer who has transitioned from teenager known for literally dropping his pants while performing to world-famous pop star who wants to remind everyone of how talented he remains. If my Spotify plays count for anything, I have no doubt that "Climax" would be competing with "Call Me Maybe" and "Gangnam Style" for the song of the year title.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8749345/from-frank-ocean-fiona-apple-grantland-staff-looks-back-most-notable-tracks-2012

inwardly focused (“looking for myself”),

does Rihanna qualify here?

he Dr. Luke and Max Martin Swedish School of Music (which I like, too!

he likes it! Send the hounds!

from the introduction:

finally the R&B singers were taking acid

I mean...? wau

go chambers brothers!

http://cdnl.complex.com/mp/620/400/80/0/bb/1/ffffff/6d32b8a7c422b646769365201c1fc1c3/images_/assets/CHANNEL_IMAGES/MUSIC/2012/01/george-clinton.jpg

so glad someone finally gave that guy some acid

should we be suspicious of hipsters writing about r&b...

I am suspicious of hipsters who have never done acid

mars volta 2012

on another note i'm sick of seeing this contrived interpretation of "call me maybe" as an ode to the simpler times when we spoke to each other and used phones

Okay so FWIW Jason King, who wrote the original post, just posted this in a FB comment chain in response to it:

I think Channel Orange and Kaleidoscope Dreams are to differing degrees solid musical statements. I also think there's a lot of other records this year that deserve as much or more attention but aren't getting it for reasons that are worth considering. My interest, with this post, at least was the return the conversation on music in 2012 in an explicit way to issues of identity. You can't really talk about the resurgent interest in R&B this year without talking about race, not to mention gender and class, etc. Birgitta - other than Kem's Xmas album, I don't think any of those artists had a new release this year...and the word count for these entries is very limited. While I think R&B is a very diverse and flexible category that doesn't need policing, with more space I certainly would have mentioned Keyshia Cole, Monica, Eric Benet and others that I thought put out solid albums. Joseph - I think Frank Ocean has come out without having to shoehorn himself into the traditional narrative of the closet (i.e. the you're either in or out dichotomy) and that may be more valuable in the long run. I don't think he is or wants to be a role model for any particular community.

Keyshia Cole, Monica, Eric Benet are very interesting picks to rep for. Dude either really listens to a TON of R&B, or he has absolutely no idea what the fuck he's talking about

Given what a turd the Monica album was, I'm tempted to take the more cynical read

so if a black artist make "Self-consciously artsy, experimental, inwardly focused (“looking for myself”), psychedelic, or trippy", is he unconsciously racist?

haha, wait, are we calling Jason King a racist now or am I misreading? cause if so, I have some news to break to you.

I heard Miguel's "Do You" for the first time yesterday, and for about half the song I assumed it was an indie band like JJ. Song is very similar in vibe to their track 'Ecstasy' - itself a riff on a Lil Wayne song.

I don't think there has to be anything inherently racist about this development unless you want it to be. It's a dialogue that's opened - Frank Ocean and the Weeknd appropriating 'chillwavey' sounds, indie acts appropriating r'n'b. These exchanges have and always will exist. Call it cultural appropriation if you will - cultural appropriation isn't always a bad thing, and I don't really see how it's all that different from how pop r'n'b and hiphop have moved towards trance and house sounds in recent years.

Being suspicious of "white people making black music" and vice versa is the dumbest thing ever, obviously. I'm just more concerned about everything turning into a big boring mush of a middle ground where all the tropes of either genre are in place without any of the bits that makes them interesting. Fusing indie and r'n'b sounds was maybe an interesting new thing when I first noticed it as a "thing" in 2009, but willowy Brooklyn girls in corduroy skirts doing their best to melismate their way out of their own meekness while sensitive LA boys who call themselves "singer-songwriters" put cassette rewinding noises and Coldplay samples over their own homebrewed confessionals - I'm not sure if this is a route that is leading anywhere exciting, at least not yet. Rather than getting affronted by a perceived race issue, or the bastardisation of one's favourite genre, people should be more concerned about whether these artists will manage break free of tokenism and derivativeness, whether something clearly unique will come out of this that doesn't appear to treat said generic tropes as a crutch or USP.

Overall, I can see this leading towards some really interesting stuff. There's something significant about this current battening down of tribal boundaries between supposed "white" indie music and "black" r'n'b - territories which have been marked out for too long IMO. So long as people aren't just doing the equivalent of wearing a Slayer t-shirt for the "rock-chic look", this could get more interesting. As it is, indie and r'n'b have finished making eyes at each other, they've started talking, but they've yet to reach first base.

Argh my eyes make it stop.

Bad luck Sly Stone and Prince. "Self-consciously artsy, experimental, inwardly focused (“looking for myself”), psychedelic, or trippy" makes you indie-rock.

otm. this describes gigantic swathes of the greatest music of all time.

^

Self-consciously artsy, experimental, inwardly focused (“looking for myself”), psychedelic, or trippy

actually a nice sentence, makes me want to put on "in a silent way".

I'm asking this because I don't really know, but is it fair to say that examples of cross-genre (or genreless) artists such as Sly and Prince became less ubiquitous throughout the '90s? I can only really think of a few examples, Outkast most prominently, who continued to carry the flame in a significant way beyond adding a bit of rock guitar to a track or whatever. Feels as though as the '90s and '00s wore on the boundaries between what was deemed "acceptable" in rock and r'n'b became increasingly more defined, which is maybe why there's suddenly a big hoo-hah in the media about this supposed radical new shift.

The article in the original post is so rambling and incoherent than I'm amazed Amateurist considered it a worthwhile base for launching into this tedious debate for the eight millionth time.

When you consider that classic soul is the single biggest component of both Kaleidoscope Dream and Channel Orange it's kind of amazing how little it gets mentioned in these arguments. Plus the lame notion that guitars and R&B are strangers to one another in the first place. No one embarks upon this kind of handwringing when listening to a Meshell Ndegeocello or Maxwell album.

worrying about who likes stuff you like is probably a cue to go and jump in the nearest stretch of deep water

along with worrying about why people like things or assuming you can guess.

truth

thinking we can probably trim about a third of the fat off ILM if we adopt this policy

fuck indie tho while i'm on

No one embarks upon this kind of handwringing when listening to a Meshell Ndegeocello or Maxwell album.

OTM. Nobody complains when Erykah Badu gets across-the-broad acclaim for much the same reasons as Frank Ocean, ie "Self-consciously artsy, experimental, inwardly focused," only without once sampling MGMT.

pitchfork really can't win, can they? if they like something it's because it's obv indie, and if they don't they are ignoring it because it's obv not.

xpost Is this exactly the same thing going on as Erykah Badu, Prince, Sly, Outkast etc though? Not saying it is or it isn't, but the Ocean/Weeknd school seem to be focusing on a very specific subset of sounds and tropes. They're not simply going for a "let's rock" thing or a multi-genre thing. And it seems, to me at least, that there's a sort of middle-ground being hinted at from both sides of the spectrum.

but is it fair to say that examples of cross-genre (or genreless) artists such as Sly and Prince became less ubiquitous throughout the '90s?

trajectory of lenny kravitz is actually an interesting case study here due to the heavy soul-rock connection (maybe tt d'arby also but to a lesser extent as he wasn't visible at all by the end of that decade). possibly kravitz was thought of and preferred as increasingly rock and other doors slowly became closed to him. the unexpected success of 'fly away' years later might support this, altho the same album it's on contains pre-emptive 80s-electro-pop-revival gambit 'black velveteen' which could've been a hit but wasn't.

When you consider that classic soul is the single biggest component of both Kaleidoscope Dream and Channel Orange it's kind of amazing how little it gets mentioned in these arguments. Plus the lame notion that guitars and R&B are strangers to one another in the first place. No one embarks upon this kind of handwringing when listening to a Meshell Ndegeocello or Maxwell album.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, December 19, 2012 6:07 AM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah otm. the Miguel album is so fucking soulful and well sung and aware of R&B conventions, and people manage to praise it for everything BUT that.

because that would be rockist (not a joke, i think this is about the backlash against a focus on pure musicianship in rock criticism which does go all the way back to the late 70s)

true. i also love how one of the best moments on the album is aging session dude Jerry Wonda popping slap bass.

There's something significant about this current battening down of tribal boundaries between supposed "white" indie music and "black" r'n'b - territories which have been marked out for too long IMO.

this has not been my experience

so you've never come across rockism? indie and r'n'b have always been one and the same?

I have never seen these tribal boundaries as intractable as the ones you've described.

"Rockists" were much more in touch with black music than indie kids were

Not that it matters a jot

xxpost Okay, there are always going to be exceptions - indie/r'nb is not a binary; but can you give any examples of the two genres feeding off each other in any significant way 1999-2009?

http://youtu.be/qNXxE-jwu1k

sampling coldplay isn't much different to all those '90s r'n'b acts who got into bed with Phil Collins and has arguably nothing to do with an r'n'b/indie axis.

Indie is not a genre!

for the sakes of this debate, it is, otherwise this whoel thread is null and void.

All the qualities that these writers think has been the provenance of "indie" R&B has already possessed in abundance.

"Rockists" were much more in touch with black music than indie kids were

― Tom D is secretly an important person (Tom D.), Wednesday, December 19, 2012 7:53 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not that it matters a jot

― Tom D is secretly an important person (Tom D.), Wednesday, December 19, 2012 7:54 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah the thing that's an aberration is the last decade or so of white musicians that WEREN'T drawing significant inspiration from black pop

xp Yes. It gives indie far too much credit and R&B too little to act as if all of these substantial artistic qualities are specific to the former.

My favourite music is probably 70s soul and that's what I hear in Frank Ocean - not a taboo-busting love of Grizzly Bear and Dirty Projectors.

dog latin, you're clearly going to disqualify the party music of indie people c. 2001-5 that involved mixing indie-lovers' classics with pop, hip-hop and r'n'b vocals/samples/acapellas, because that's not indie enough or r'n'b enough or girls in corduroy dresses enough.

would you let through cocorosie? that, for everything that's wrong with it, is the forerunner to the stuff you're talking about.

to the brooklyn girls of 2009, that is.

eah the thing that's an aberration is the last decade or so of white musicians that WEREN'T drawing significant inspiration from black pop

― some dude, Wednesday, 19 December 2012 13:12 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes. I'm talking as much about how a lot of indie acts are also appropriating r'n'b signifiers in a much more gestural and obvious way than Frank Ocean et al appropriating indie. And yet it feels as though they're somehow coming to meet each other in some cases - like there's one day going to be this point where you can't tell the difference. As I mentioned upthread, upon hearing the opening verse of "Do You", I had to check it wasn't an indie band "doing" r'n'b, and that's as much to do with what has been happening with acts like JJ, Dirty Projectors and Discovery in recent years as any trends in r'n'b.

and I just thought Miguel was just an R&B guy doing R&B.

would you let through cocorosie? that, for everything that's wrong with it, is the forerunner to the stuff you're talking about.

I've only heard one cocorosie album and it sounded like My Little Ponies braying in a haunted house, so I don't really know. I know about their ugly "Kill Whitey" stuff though, so I guess in its own horrible way it could have something to do with it. I'd like to think (or at least hope) that at least some of the indie acts taking influence from r'n'b are doing it out of a genuine love and respect for the music though.

I've never heard the guy but, being an indie hipster of sorts, I will definitely check him out! (xp)

and I just thought Miguel was just an R&B guy doing R&B.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 19 December 2012 13:27 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No one's arguing this. The caveat is that there are r'n'b musicians who are taking influence from current trends in other genres. There's currently a heavy exchange going on between white hipster music and black pop music, but the trade is of a very specific kind, and I think that's why critics are latching on to it.

So you've got "Do You" with all these dreamy chillwavey sounds. The music is warm and enveloping like a hot towel, except with this explicit-as-you-like reference to drugs - perhaps kind of shocking. It's uncomfortable to hear someone sing about drugs in this way, as this innocuous, romantic thing, as though they were no different from fine wine or Italian food. And yet the vocal has been muddied up with a lot of reverb and overextended syllables with very little vibrato, which has been a key trope in a lot of Pitchfork-type indie over the last 8 or 9 years. The effect covers up the word "drug" so that the consonants morph and move around, sometimes it sounds like "drugs", other times like "hugs" etc... This is very reminiscent of something (I'm gonna say it) Animal Collective would have done circa Feels, and something that has been taken and run with by a gamut of Pitchfork bands from Ariel Pink to Dirty Projectors to whoever else.

The floaty comedowny feeling and explicit drug references are very similar to this track by JJ from a year or two back:

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

JJ were prime suspects in this debate when it first kicked off. You can see why people found them irksome - hipsters taking a Lil Wayne song, changing the lyrics so they're about ecstasy; I dunno, I remember a lot of people on ILX considering them a bit of a joke at the time.

But I just think it's interesting that there's this exchange going on - Lil Wayne -> JJ -> Miguel. Whether the JJ and Miguel similarities are intentional or not, I don't know. It's likely he never heard the JJ song. Still, trying to deny that there is nothing going on (for better for worse) on either side of the spectrum (assuming there is a spectrum) seems to be missing the point.

I've only heard one cocorosie album and it sounded like My Little Ponies braying in a haunted house

lol

the difference between "Do You" and chillwave is well-placed vocal reverb on certain lines to enhance the performance, instead of over the whole song to mask the performance's shortcomings or de-emphasize the performance element of the vocal

Vocals with a lot of reverb and overextended syllables with very little vibrato have been R&B trademarks forever.

also all the reggae and drum'n'bass and whatnot (xp)

What I mean here is that it seems as though there are only certain sounds and ideas being used as cultural currency. A lot of hipsters will have grown up in the early-mid 90s listening to chart pop and r'n'b before "discovering" alternative music in their late teens and 20s, and then wanting to incorporate their music with the music they loved as kids. Similarly, some r'n'b acts, for whatever reason, maybe they just want a different angle to the music they're currently making, look to recent trends (like those dreamy reverby washes prevalent in Pitchforky music over the last few years) and put these kinds of layers over their sounds. There's also an influence from electronic and dance music affecting both which could be a factor.

difference between "Do You" and chillwave is well-placed vocal reverb on certain lines to enhance the performance, instead of over the whole song to mask the performance's shortcomings or de-emphasize the performance element of the vocal

― some dude, Wednesday, 19 December 2012 13:51 (45 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Probably why I much prefer it to the JJ song.

A lot of hipsters will have grown up in the early-mid 90s listening to chart pop and r'n'b

Chart pop yes, but I am not convinced they grew up listening to r'n'b

Unless it was on the pop charts then

there weren't any rnb acts charting in the 90s?

which it was xp

Babyface the decade's top producer: don't think you could have listened to nineties chart pop without stumbling on a Babyface number.

yeah chart pop pretty much WAS r&b in the 90s -- mariah, boyz ii men, tlc, even celine dion was on the r&b charts regularly back then

It's no different from hipsters using 80s pop tropes in the 2000s I suppose.

the list of big pop vocalists of the 90s who weren't also R&B is basically Madonna and a bunch of quasi-alternative Lilith Fair types (xp)

and even Madonna worked with Dallas Austin and Babyface

true

Thinking about it now, Madonna jumping on the Austin-Babyface train in '94 looked desperate then but now looks damn canny: she knew what was coming.

it always seemed kind of natural and not too over the top to me, compared to some of her other career reboots

What was that Pitchfork April Fools thing (years ago now, I barely remember) where they announced they'd only be covering chart pop and r'n'b from then on, citing specifically Mariah Carey?

As with the 80s thing, it started as an ironic touchstone; tongue-in-cheek - "Look at us, we're doing synth pop, look at our big shoulder pads and make up" before turning into an almost standard issue sound with very little irony - the continuum starting with Fischerspooner and ending with La Roux, I guess. The Cocorosie thing feels a bit like that, but it doesn't mean that others are also treating r'n'b pop with the same kind of unpleasant disregard.

(indie appropriation of black pop sounds, that is).

Is this the same situation as post-punk in the late seventies, with arty punk bands incorporating funk and reggae elements, until it formulated into a very specific sound of its own exemplified by Talking Heads and the Pop Group? Not sure..

So you've got "Do You" with all these dreamy chillwavey sounds. The music is warm and enveloping like a hot towel, except with this explicit-as-you-like reference to drugs - perhaps kind of shocking. It's uncomfortable to hear someone sing about drugs in this way, as this innocuous, romantic thing, as though they were no different from fine wine or Italian food. And yet the vocal has been muddied up with a lot of reverb and overextended syllables with very little vibrato, which has been a key trope in a lot of Pitchfork-type indie over the last 8 or 9 years. The effect covers up the word "drug" so that the consonants morph and move around, sometimes it sounds like "drugs", other times like "hugs" etc... This is very reminiscent of something (I'm gonna say it) Animal Collective would have done circa Feels, and something that has been taken and run with by a gamut of Pitchfork bands from Ariel Pink to Dirty Projectors to whoever else.

But I just think it's interesting that there's this exchange going on - Lil Wayne -> JJ -> Miguel. Whether the JJ and Miguel similarities are intentional or not, I don't know. It's likely he never heard the JJ song. Still, trying to deny that there is nothing going on (for better for worse) on either side of the spectrum (assuming there is a spectrum) seems to be missing the point.

http://www.chud.com/community/content/type/61/id/137973/width/350/height/700/flags/LL

I'm imagining that paragraph as part of a David Brooks monologue.

Paul Young invented chillwave and then Al B. Sure! ripped him off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEn6amCRQfI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IlHq3n3hy0

animated gifs, great.

Stepping back a bit and making sure I've got this straight -- so Jason King is among other things being zinged for apparently not knowing his Maxwell. Gonna go back in time to his stellar EMP presentation on said musician and be sure to let him know that. (Also like the Rev noted there's something else about Jason a few folks apparently have missed.)

The music is warm and enveloping like a hot towel

i like Slate's 'music club' thing but linking an individual entry w/o the context of the whole exchange usually doesn't work well as standalone reading

It's uncomfortable to hear someone sing about drugs in this way, as this innocuous, romantic thing, as though they were no different from fine wine or Italian food

it is?

you obviously don't get the artisan-grade tuscan ecstasy i do.

do you like ravioliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Seriously doglatin drawing all these tenuous connections between Miguel and chillwave or Animal Collective that are maybe there if you squint a lot is missing the point massively when there are overt and obvious references to the Zombies and Dylan and, y'know, 60S ROCK in there, that's where the exchange comes from not fucking JJ.

Do you believe in aioliiiiiiiii

What about cheese-wrapped prosciutto
angel hair pasta, stuffed cannolini
Rock, paper, scissors, wait best out of 3
Mama said Tuscan food just for me

I don't hear a smidgen of Zombies or Dylan in "Do You". Sorry.

Have you listened to the album?

he interpolates the Zombies on another track.

Haven't had a chance to listen to the whole album, but I'm talking about the song as an example for a lot of different things going on ATM. Maybe on other songs Miguel sounds like Care of Cell 44, but I'm not talking about those.

And I made it clear that it's maybe not that likely that Miguel has even heard the JJ song, but the correlation is there, even if its just a coincidence. I wouldn't put it past Miguel, Frank Ocean etc to be well aware of, and influenced by, what's going on in current alternative pop/rock though.

Have you heard the JJ song, Matt DC?

i wish i hadn't this morning

You're reminding me of the time SPIN in '98 or '99 actually devoted a small story to the alternative acts that R&B and rap acts loved. Why on earth would anyone be surprised Missy loves Bjork?

it's not surprising, that's my point.

so why mention it?

I have heard the JJ song and it has nothing to do with Do You other than the fact they both use a bit of reverb and there are black people involved somewhere along the line. But you're talking about an album you haven't actually listened to and getting it wrong - while as I said it's predominantly a soul album it's also steeped in 60s psychedelia. If there's any link between Miguel and Animal Collective it's that they have the same source material but you're approaching it from 45 years in the wrong direction.

both use a bit of reverb and there are black people involved somewhere along the line.

And both have explicit references to drugs in a VERY matter of fact way, but that's beside the point. Fine, have it your way - there is no correlation between current r'n'b and current indie. The two are completely different. The two sides are not listening to each other.

And again, I'm only comparing Do You and Ecstasy as examples of a whole load of things from the Weeknd to Frank Ocean to Dirty Projectors to Discovery to JJ, if only because that's immediately what I thought of when I heard the Miguel song. If he's going for a sixties aesthetic on other tracks, so be it.

the hits just keep comin!

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1699156/frank-ocean-miguel-rnb-comeback-genre-2012.jhtml

In other words, rhythm and blues was still just that thing Drake did when he was in his feelings, and the genre known to some detractors as Ribs & Barbecue was still on the ropes

In other words, rhythm and blues was still just that thing Drake did when he was in his feelings, and the genre known to some detractors as Ribs & Barbecue was still on the ropes.

In other words, rhythm and blues was still just that thing Drake did when he was in his feelings, and the genre known to some detractors as Ribs & Barbecue was still on the ropes.

holy

Today we are all Alex Macpherson

Ribs and...

Channel Orange, Kaleidoscope Dream and Trilogy rescued the art form from the monotony of "baby, baby please," as Ocean, Miguel and Weeknd casually re-created it in their own images. Proving you could sing about dreams and drugs, make songs for women and men, and as long as it rang true, they would come. For their mighty efforts, we've crowned R&B the Comeback Genre of the Year.

what the FUCK

what's this, pop stars are singing about drugs now?

It took Miguel's second project for him to learn what Frank had already begun to discover on his self-propelled 2011 project, Nostalgia, Ultra, namely that it's always best to do like that old Fleetwood Mac song says, and go your own way.

can't believe Frank Ocean doesn't do more songs about girls

people who act like Miguel's first album sounded like an Omarion record are so annoying

we should be suspicious of terrible writers and their poor thesis construction

can't believe Frank Ocean doesn't do more songs with Girls.

haha

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4-yBZr5goc4/TTwP48JUdBI/AAAAAAAABDA/bzxKqiwv9X0/s1600/Go+Your+Own+Way.jpg

- Bob Marley

Ribs & Barbecue & Bottle Service

the ribs & barbecue assertion is kind of genius because it appears to be impossible to verify/refute

I assumed everyone who was paying attention was into The-Dream in 2010. Also Frank was 2011. And The Weeknd album mentioned is a repackaging of 3 2011 mixtapes. And what about Beyonce's "4"? R&B hasn't gone anywhere.

As for Miguel, from my perspective he kinda broke-through this year, even though as mentioned earlier his 2010 LP is just as good.

funny how the comeback arguments always fail to mention that R.Kelly and Aaliyah.

the ribs & barbecue assertion is kind of genius because it appears to be impossible to verify/refute

― GIMME SOME REGGAE (DJP), Wednesday, December 19, 2012 12:51 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha yeah it's pretty googleproof

this is all making me nostalgic for the days when prince was the king of rock and boy george was the king of reggae and new order made some of the best latin freestyle and midnight star were a top-selling new wave act.

i definitely think there are old guard people who don't want their ideas of what r&b means to them to be messed with? just like the oldhead jazz people and oldhead rock people who stopped moving years ago. and they just look funnier and funnier in post-everything internet world. do the young people know their history and what r&b means within the context of the african american community, etc, etc. and the young people (black and white) grew up with shiny rap and undie rap and timbaland and fancy swedish euro-beats and indie rock and dubstep and the list goes on and on. its all fair game. and young r&b artists grew up with all that too! whats funny to me is that i have ALWAYS felt like music was a big melting pot ever since i was a little kid in the early 70s (thanks sly and hey thanks blood sweat and tears too while i'm at it) and the whole THING - or a big thing anyway - of the 70's was going anywhere and everywhere with your sound. and this is the stuff that the oldheads revere! so any "suspicion" about the intent of new artists is mighty suspicious to me. like you are trying to bring old arguments into a place where there really haven't been a lot of arguments. i thought the black eyed peas taught us something about life in the future but i guess not.

I want to hug you for that post, scott

I think this debate - like nearly every debate on ILM - keeps getting shifted back to the music and the artists when really it's about the framing of those things.

The problem isn't with Frank Ocean or Miguel (who are good-to-great and excellent respectively) but with listeners wanting to hype up a shift in their listening (in 2012, for a variety of reasons, these people started listening to more R&B again) as some kind of seismic shift in the music itself.

Yes there's always a melting pot, which is precisely why the fact that some people can ignore it for years until suddenly their noses are shoved in it again by critical opinion, and then they can act like it's all because of animal collective or something, is so >_<

R&B must be on its fifth or sixth generation of older fans who don't want their ideas of the genre to be messed with by now.

Channel Orange, Kaleidoscope Dream and Trilogy rescued the art form from the monotony of "baby, baby please," as Ocean, Miguel and Weeknd casually re-created it in their own images. Proving you could sing about dreams and drugs, make songs for women and men, and as long as it rang true, they would come. For their mighty efforts, we've crowned R&B the Comeback Genre of the Year.

DO YOU SEE WHY I FIGHT NOW

jesus fucking christ

1) i took an executive decision to skip every dog latin post in this thread
2) it's more telling who gets excluded from the hype than who benefits from it

thread is too fucking infra dig for me tbph but i just had to pop in and give a standing ovation to matt's perfect gifcraft

perhaps i am cynical but a large part of me feels like frank ocean is primarily referred to as 'alt' not because of his sound (which as many have noted is very traditional-leaning; i should note that i am also not that much of a fan) as much as his affiliation with the promoted-to-the-blog-heavens odd future collective, which is repped by the very plugged-in life or death pr. (the weeknd/drake affiliation is similar although not exactly so.) and i think this is what jason is getting to more than anything.

but then again i think we need to pull back the curtain on how soundalike acts are marketed to different demographics more often.

Frank Ocean is also referred to as "alt" because he told a story in his liner notes about how he had a crush on a guy

it's certainly noteworthy in my own life that my straight friends are more enthusiastic about an album by a purportedly bisexual man than I am.

its certainly noteworthy that the king of reggae, boy george, had 6 top ten hits in the u.s. and nobody even knew if he was a boy or a girl.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0wjd3W0JO1qf9xgfo1_500.jpg

i'm just glad this thread for some reason reminded me of culture club cuz now i want to dig out i'll tumble 4 ya long version 12 inch.

we miss her blind

hairy wrists in that pic are a bit of a giveaway scott

hairy wrists in that pic are a bit of a giveaway scott

oddly, this is the first thing I noticed too

sexist part imo

if boy george had been a girl she would have been called girl george ok?

i've been playing this sooooooo much lately. the whole 4-song arista thing is amazing, but this is the real deal. would play this in clubs every night if i were a deejay. one of the whitest bands on earth, right? vampire weekend couldn't do this kinda thing if you gave them a decade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR2IjhDs2FM

i remember the boy george debates in school! is she/he a he or a she? everyone loved him no matter what he was though.

okay I was pretty young when Culture Club was on the scene and I remember the confusion being "why is he dressing like that?", not "is that a boy or a girl?"

the latter argument was reserved for Poison

everyone on this thread should listen to the haircut thing. so cool.

would have had sex with Rikki Rocket if his name were, say, Rita Rocket

damn -- the bassline on that Haircut 100 track

Stepping back a bit and making sure I've got this straight -- so Jason King is among other things being zinged for apparently not knowing his Maxwell. Gonna go back in time to his stellar EMP presentation on said musician and be sure to let him know that. (Also like the Rev noted there's something else about Jason a few folks apparently have missed.)

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, December 19, 2012 6:48 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seriously! this whole thread is collapsing my brain.

that whole tangent started because someone took my dismissal of that SPIN article and applied it to a quote from the original article; I wouldn't really worry much about it

scott otm. suspicious about all this suspicion. it is no surprise that bad writers write badly about good music, but i don't perceive any great injustice in the embrace of this or that by these or those, even if it's just shallow-end dilettantism. everybody's gotta start somewhere.

maybe i'll try to see if i can get all the way through that frank ocean album again

haha scott, i listened the crap out of that haircut 100 song when i first discovered it

the thing that irritates me the most about the initial ramble posted is that the provocative headline covers maybe three paragraphs of what was actually written

also, ppl won't stop trying to make Azealia Banks happen

everybody should understand everything about the history of all music before writing anything

that's what i did, and look at me know.

i like the ann powers thing after jason's thing. on slate.

scott otm. suspicious about all this suspicion. it is no surprise that bad writers write badly about good music, but i don't perceive any great injustice in the embrace of this or that by these or those, even if it's just shallow-end dilettantism. everybody's gotta start somewhere.

― i know your nuts hurt! who's laughing? (contenderizer), Wednesday, 19 December 2012 22:01 (24 minutes ago) Permalink

Everybody does gotta start somewhere. Why can't they just admit that? Why can't people just be like "oh yeah I heard this Frank Ocean album was really great from Pitchfork and Fader and etc. and then I heard about the Miguel album too, and I checked them out and quite liked both of them, and that's two R&B albums I've liked this year, which is unusual for me because I don't really listen to the style much" rather than "R&B has been vapid and formulaic for some time now, but thankfully these two dudes have turned up to save black music from itself"

welcome to my heavy metal universe, tim.

why can't people who don't understand everything about the history of all music avoid making blanket statements like 'R&B has been vapid and formulaic for some time now'

xxp: because no one cares about someone's personal journey through music but everyone cares about identifying The Next Big Trend

tim also otm, but see bad writers writing badly

it just feels like some pulications are inventing reasons why they were ignoring RnB for so long.

xxp: because no one cares about someone's personal journey through music but everyone cares about identifying The Next Big Trend

― GIMME SOME REGGAE (DJP), Wednesday, 19 December 2012 10:35 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I guess the thing is, no way would any vaguely reputable publication (specifically pitchfork in my case but it would be the same anywhere else) ever give me the job of writing about Vampire Weekend or Grimes or any other indie-approved artist I continually disappoint Lex by happening to like, because only liking a handful of things in a particular style per year means that I rate below many other writers who could be relied upon not to imply that X artist had turned up to save indie from itself.

Whereas it feels like, once you move beyond that sphere, writers good or bad get given briefs to write about stuff that's really outside their area of knowledge or even understanding. And I have to conclude that this is because a lot of editors also basically agree with the worldview being espoused.

Ugh, first Jason King doesn't understand black people, now I got people on twitter saying he doesn't understand queer people. Is any unfamiliar author a straight white person?

http://www.urantiansojourn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/BBILL-1.jpg

"Is he a straight white person?"

only liking a handful of things in a particular style per year means that I rate below many other writers who could be relied upon not to imply that X artist had turned up to save indie from itself.

but it's really easy to write about, say, yeah yeah yeahs or santigold without asserting that they've saved or revitalised indie. and what's notable is how few frank ocean/miguel/weeknd boosters managed to do something similar - even when they wrote well about why they liked the music, there was almost always a dig or dismissive sweeping statement about r&b included too, or some unhelpful OTT praise about how they were changing music (i don't think it's ever, ever a good idea to write that anything is "changing" music)

but it's really easy to write about, say, yeah yeah yeahs or santigold without asserting that they've saved or revitalised indie.

i don't know about santigold, but the whole yeah yeah yeahs/strokes/interpol/white stripes etc was all about the RETURN OF ROCK etc etc, it was totally sold on those terms....also throw in the "revitalization" of NYC as a post punk rock mecca etc

i don't know much about RnB, is it true that Frank Ocean and Miguel are revolutions in the genre? because that is what it seems to be the critical consensus (esp. for Ocean), and it seems a bit huge.

especially when predicting what will change music ends up usually the most banal, least expected thing (e.g. Cher's "Believe").

xpost to lex

people write ludicrous crap about this or that band saving indie all the time, and no one particularly cares

i don't know about santigold, but the whole yeah yeah yeahs/strokes/interpol/white stripes etc was all about the RETURN OF ROCK etc etc, it was totally sold on those terms....also throw in the "revitalization" of NYC as a post punk rock mecca etc

― Andrew WKRP (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, December 19, 2012 4:56 PM (35 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thing is, there ARE concrete changes & things that can be discussed & described, but you have to be v v careful about using them in writing b/c so many people use the language of spotting actual musical trends as music marketing language

I guess the thing is, no way would any vaguely reputable publication (specifically pitchfork in my case but it would be the same anywhere else) ever give me the job of writing about Vampire Weekend or Grimes or any other indie-approved artist I continually disappoint Lex by happening to like, because only liking a handful of things in a particular style per year means that I rate below many other writers who could be relied upon not to imply that X artist had turned up to save indie from itself.

Whereas it feels like, once you move beyond that sphere, writers good or bad get given briefs to write about stuff that's really outside their area of knowledge or even understanding. And I have to conclude that this is because a lot of editors also basically agree with the worldview being espoused.

a couple of things:

- lolling that, by this metric, MTV is not a reputable publication on music based on the article linked in this thread (not because I think they are, mind you, but they should be)

- there's also the nebulous "editor is looking for 'a different opinion'" motivation where the belief is that unfamiliarity will bring an exciting new perspective that hopefully allows the author to say something no one else has; I don't know how widespread this motivation actually is though, given that most people to be saying the exact same things ("they have saved R&B!"/"wtf R&B doesn't need saving" rinse and repeat)

R&B must be on its fifth or sixth generation of older fans who don't want their ideas of the genre to be messed with by now.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, December 19, 2012 11:57 AM Bookmark

But R&B has historically been one of the genres with the least divide between what older and younger audiences listen to. Obviously there are a few artists and songs that are going to fall distinctly on one side of the line, but there's quite a bit of overlap between the r&b that gets played on an urban AC station and a youth-driven r&b/rap station, not to mention whatever older r&b the older generations introduce to the younger.

the whole yeah yeah yeahs/strokes/interpol/white stripes etc was all about the RETURN OF ROCK etc etc, it was totally sold on those terms....also throw in the "revitalization" of NYC as a post punk rock mecca etc

oh yeah i forgot about that era! i was thinking of latter-day YYYs

especially when predicting what will change music ends up usually the most banal, least expected thing (e.g. Cher's "Believe").

totally. the "THIS changed everything" moment in hindsight is never what you thought it was/would be (plus it's never usually a singular moment or individual genius but a sequence of maybe-unrelated events, various things stacking up incoherently around each other)

gotcha, ppl forget the yeah yeah yeahs were basically a garage punk band at first

i remember loving the YYYs back then DESPITE them ~saving rock music~

lex i think there's just a part of you, deep down, that just wants to rock out to some nasty riffs

i have never made any secret of the fact that a small but significant part of my life is spent enjoying exactly that!

who are you favorite rock acts? (not like kate bush who's nominally considered "rock" but you know like lunkhead dudes with guitars and shit?)

first couple YYYs EPs are great

YYYs
hole
pj harvey
ashlee simpson
kelly clarkson (not as much of a cheat as it sounds cuz i prefer her when she's scuzzy and rocky to when she's poppy)
queens of the stone age i guess? i don't know why i don't actually own any of their albums

- lolling that, by this metric, MTV is not a reputable publication on music based on the article linked in this thread (not because I think they are, mind you, but they should be)

no by "sphere" i was referring to indie, not "reputable publications" - my point was that even reputable publications will happily run BS about R&B, dance music etc from writers who don't know what they're talking about.

Now obviously reputable publications also publish BS about indie-rock too, but please find me an article published by Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Spin etc. even MTV in the last hundred years which was about indie-rock but appeared to be written by someone who listened to and knew of hardly any of it (like really, not just b/c they're too stupid to understand what they listen to).

i've been commissioned to write about pj harvey, laura marling and several others who are genre outliers...

about indie-rock but appeared to be written by someone who listened to and knew of hardly any of it (like really, not just b/c they're too stupid to understand what they listen to).

is Dylan indie rock

Ugh, first Jason King doesn't understand black people, now I got people on twitter saying he doesn't understand queer people. Is any unfamiliar author a straight white person?

Oh heavens no. They're straight white MALES.

I mean apart from contrarian slash "let's do this for the lol factor" antics like the guardian getting lex to write about the klaxons.

lex writing about female fronted rock doesn't count either.

eh i'll read anyone on anything if they're good at it. would love to read tim f. on un-tim.f music. doom metal roundup would be nice.

hey, speaking of writing about stuff that you know i really enjoyed reading philip's thing in spin:

http://www.spin.com/#articles/state-of-dance-music-2012-have-we-already-peaked

cuz i learned stuff. gonna listen to to his top trax of the year when i have a moment. and i want to hear that mix cd he talks about at the end of his thing.

and yeah this did make my eyes bug out a little:

"According to Forbes, the top DJs made money hand over fist; the magazine claimed that Skrillex, Swedish House Mafia, David Guetta, Steve Aoki, Deadmau5, Kaskade, and even Pauly D all earned $10 million or more a year apiece. Tiësto topped the list with an estimated $22 million salary"

(as someone who also wrote a year-end r&b omnibus, seriously if anything i write about genres music gets tokenistic PLEASE TELL ME, as i really try hard to not do that because i am so sick of indie hegemony) (and so sick of love songs, so sad and slow, etc)

(sorry not to make this all ME ME ME but oh well you know, exchange of ideas right? also i really just found the frank ocean record such a wash, although he certainly captured the imagination of a lot of people i know)

also, doing research on writers before you assume their backgrounds is probably a good rule of thumb!

Now obviously reputable publications also publish BS about indie-rock too, but please find me an article published by Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Spin etc. even MTV in the last hundred years which was about indie-rock but appeared to be written by someone who listened to and knew of hardly any of it (like really, not just b/c they're too stupid to understand what they listen to).

in terms of combatting this you either focus on making rock/punk/indie-centric publications less that (which is short-sighted), or focus on developing alternative but popular channels for criticism with no history of that particular centricity (evidently more difficult).

well obviously pitchfork, rs, and spin don't take r&b or edm or rap as seriously as they take animal collective, spin doctors, and green day or whatever their modern day counterparts would be. but spin getting people like philip or tim or others to write about that stuff is a good start. spin at least has a history of having good dance coverage. rs is a lost cause. and pitchfork has simon and tim and others so they at least make the attempt. they don't really even have to attempt. i'm glad they hire some writers i like.

what is the best online site for r&b and what is the best site for dance music? best writing, that is.

ILM.

Yeah I'm certainly not saying that the big publications never write well about R&B, rap, dance music etc!

Obviously they do, quite a lot. Which is a great thing! I just wish it was more reliably the case.

I think one thing I tend to do in my own writing - which I wouldn't advocate as a rule for anyone else - is to try to get as close to (what I perceive as) what the music is doing as possible, and to avoid using a wider lens unless I'm really really confident (and even then it'd probably be still a fairly honed lens like "how does this fit into broader uk funky trends or etc."), because what deej says here is super OTM:

thing is, there ARE concrete changes & things that can be discussed & described, but you have to be v v careful about using them in writing b/c so many people use the language of spotting actual musical trends as music marketing language

But the flipside of that is that it's that kind of airy worldbuilding that people engage in that probably makes it a lot easier for the novice reader to engage with a narrative w/r/t say an R&B record and find that narrative compelling enough to commit to checking out the music.

Like, writing about R&B in R&B terms is probably the number one way to guarantee that crowd will pass over. "Good riddance" you might say, but having the lowest hits per review on pitchfork isn't something I (or I expect anyone else) would actively strive for.

(as someone who also wrote a year-end r&b omnibus, seriously if anything i write about genres music gets tokenistic PLEASE TELL ME, as i really try hard to not do that because i am so sick of indie hegemony) (and so sick of love songs, so sad and slow, etc)

― maura, Wednesday, December 19, 2012 8:20 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

twiw i thought it was a good piece, esp because it looked beyond 3 artists (which seems to be becoming the maximum number of artists for a trendpiece rather than the minimum) and didn't really fall to the narrative traps being decried itt

cosign, your piece was great maura

know I mainly lurk but same, if I fuck up I'd love to know these things so I can try not to fuck up in the future

we do have critic-on-critic interventions around here, but they ain't pretty

I know just saying (and again, also, yeah, not to make EVERYTHING ABOUT ME ETC)

Music Critic Intervention would be an A+ program, all of us looking into the camera talking about That One Writer while said writer is taped thinking it's for a Kickstarter trailer about modern indie music...

katherine and maura are about the last writers who need any sort of guidance from us. figures they'd be the only ones who might conceive that they would.

Agreed.

like i was saying re keyshia on the 2012 eoy thread, from where i'm sitting the real shame with all this indie-crit fuckery is the way it ends up totally inhibiting discourse within r&b. traditional values become hugely exalted purely out of desperate reactionary entrenchment, saying "yeah but so what" takes on an sad air of betrayal, asking for something new something more becomes covalent with edgy distortion. and so we have to pretend like the last few years of r&b have been gravy purely for existing, new malign bogeymen have to be revealed and focused on take the blame

like it's not like jackin or funky (or even by virtue of its bubble, dancehall) where the crit is irrelevant and the beat happily healthily rudely goes on, r&b is an established genre with ebbs and flows that can and should bear discussion

idk ultimately i still strongly feel there is something so basic and essential about r&b that a great song will always rise to the top even now, i can't honestly sit here and point to swathes of terrific jams i think have been especially unjustly stiffed by the world

plus yknow fashion is fashion, it's nip and tuck, this is the fun of it, are we really all to stop reading the face every month and get blues &soul subscriptions instead

^^^otm posts

The Face ended at pretty much the same time "The Golden Age of R&B" did.

I wish there was a The Face that got the balance right though. The closest is prob. The Fader and, eh.

if Face EOY lists are anything to go by they got the balance right better than probably anyone. that said they were obviously always just cobbled together during an extended pub lunch.

the best way.

though i prefer to believe they blew cocaine over the flat stomachs of models and then read the results like tea leaves.

the fader covers everything and criticises nothing, as far as i can tell

yeah

hah yeah it feels so absurd to demand accountability from a style mag and yet the fader somehow just forces the irrational urge

well maybe not quite accountability but just a sense of "what barricades have you died on"

the idea that "hipsters"' love of R&B is "newfound" is really hilarious. everybody loves R&B because it is awesome, where's my thinkpiece money

otm, that's kind of the ultimate comedy of this whole thing

i mean last year's "people are repping a beyonce ALBUM, not just the singles" was a bit of a change of pace, but not a monumental one

“This album, I took a lot of risks this album, so expect it to be dynamic, expect it to showcase all my eccentricities. It really is a nod to the fact that R&B used to be an illustrious genre that actually really influenced, a lot of people forget that before this decade, or the last 15 years rather, R&B was, y’know, Funkadelic, it influenced Funkadelic, it influenced Jimi Hendrix, it put hip-hop on, it put rock on, so even bands or groups like Hall & Oates, they were R&B, they were a soul band, they were creative, all of them were different but experimental in their own ways. It’s true to the soul of R&B, but it’s still experimental and it showcases my personality.”

- Miguel on the Wendy Williams Show

lock thread

should we suspicious of this p.dumm article

“This album, I took a lot of risks this album, so expect it to be dynamic, expect it to showcase all my eccentricities. It really is a nod to the fact that R&B used to be an illustrious genre that actually really influenced, a lot of people forget that before this decade, or the last 15 years rather, R&B was, y’know, Funkadelic, it influenced Funkadelic, it influenced Jimi Hendrix, it put hip-hop on, it put rock on, so even bands or groups like Hall & Oates, they were R&B, they were a soul band, they were creative, all of them were different but experimental in their own ways. It’s true to the soul of R&B, but it’s still experimental and it showcases my personality. Also, Panda Bear."

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v617/WidowOfDestiny/Jiggle_Panda.gif

miguel and i see i to i. i've never heard miguel's music but i like him already.

scott! let his love adorn you!

is he great? i tried with frank ocean and i didn't get that far...

he is great and very different from frank ocean

i'll check him out. i wish there was a good radio station around here. they all suck. the pop ones just play katy perry and bruno mars over and over again. i like katy fine but jeez...

I think part of why the Frank Ocean album bores me is he hasn't figured out how to thread the needle from Hendrix to Hall & Oates.

I don't know if you get WJMN that far west but they've been playing "Adorn" to death

yo guys, i really like jj. should i check out this miguel guy???

Depends which era really; Rhythm Nation era or Damito Jo era?

ha

xxxxxpost "I mean apart from contrarian slash "let's do this for the lol factor" antics like the guardian getting lex to write about the klaxons."

Getting Lex to write about the Klaxons was not done for the lol factor. It was cos the Klaxons were being positioned by the indie press as a dance act, and they were talking that angle up about themselves. So I wanted someone who knew dance music to write about them on the terms they were suggesting applied to them. Hence the one star. If they had embraced the fact they were a shitty indie group, I'd never have commissioned Lex. (With his Dylan piece, I simply wanted to see if someone who had never given a shit about him could gain anything by coming to his new album cold, given it was getting five stars everywhere. That was the reasoning. It was not trolling.)

wait i wanna read the lex on dylan! where is this gem?

Okay that makes sense w/r/t the klaxons, it doesn't really change my basic thrust though given (in both examples) you're choosing the writer for very deliberate and, at some level, contrarian (vis a vis the rest of the music press - the klaxons being a dance act was something everyone said but no-one really believed). It's still kinda trolling, just high-level / thoughtful / sincere trolling: in both cases the decision is a meta-comment on the rules of engagement in the music crit world in re what can and cannot be said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/sep/13/bob-dylan-tempest-lyrics

Its a confused piece, can't really decide about what can unlock the piece of music: is it the turn of phrase conceived beforehand or specifically a performance...er, I guess its a combination of both, but it just zig-zags in between the two poles.

Not sure if its Lex's fault but the links don't help. His piece is linked to an article about Christopher Ricks, after saying that he is adored by the crowd that takes to the way the words appear on the page.

And the you see in the first para that Ricks owns nearly 2000 bootlegs...I would guess its about performance too.

A sharp yet untrained mind, that could naively tease out an insight that fans miss is an attarctive idea but you actually need to do some engagement and leg work otherwise it can easily come off all dashed off and forgotten in five seconds. But then why would you put yourself through that if the initial sound is unattractive to the ear in the first place.

"The best exist not in a dry textual vacuum but are inextricably connected to the nuanced vocal inflections, the rush of notes, the tempo shift. A line that appears banal on paper can be – not seem, be – profound in the mouth of a talented vocalist. Words that look like nonsense can sound intensely meaningful if delivered as though there's something important at stake. And music can breathe vitality into cliches"

probably no point in getting the lex to listen to 60's dylan where all this stuff he describes happens. i love dylan but you couldn't pay me to listen to the new album. well, maybe if you paid me...

i know the whole jason king thing has been cleared up BUT dude wrote the new liners for the voodoo vinyl reissue, i think he knows his shit (mentions frank in there btw, also 'full moon' in relation to 'voodoo' which i thought was really interesting but that's totally off topic)

2 things i'd like to add to this (aside from "smh dog latin")

- the idea of indie r&b as applied to frank ocean & miguel has been really weird... but it's sort of an unavoidable snowball at this point. that said "indie r&b" is not a made up construct... it's gonna be a prevalent thing in 2013 before it dies out. acts like inc. and autre ne veut and young & sick and alunageorge will all be putting out albums in 2013 and will be getting a lot of press and this conversation will continue to roll on, though it will be a bit more appropriate when applied to those bands.

- i've alluded to/mentioned this before but you can't overlook the angle of marketing wrt to miguel, and it goes for the other two major acts in this made up group as well (frank w/ odd future, weeknd with his aesthetic & beach house/siouxsie samples). with art dealer chic miguel specifically pushed the artiness of his image to the forefront in order to appeal to a "hipper" (if not hipster!) audience. he also decided to release free stuff to the internet for that reason as well. when they started rolling out kaleidoscope dream, they specifically targeted media outlets that catered to an audience that had only just started to approach him as oppose to sticking with the core r&b fanbase like trey songz or something would. it's a testament to the album that it all worked out so well for him but people often just latch onto what is pushed in front of them.

i think people overstate the normal-ness of miguel's initial public image, though. first time watching the "sure thing" video before the song caught on with me i was like 'this guy's pretty weird and hip, huh, might be too out there for me'

acts like inc. and autre ne veut and young & sick and alunageorge will all be putting out albums in 2013 and will be getting a lot of pressNEED TO FUCK OFF AND COMMIT HARAKIRI OR SOMETHING BECAUSE THEY ARE SO LACKING

is there really an act called "young & sick" though

if there is i might just seriously quit this entire industry, it's all over

miguel pretty much told me this entire thing was an exercise in grabbing the indie demographic. why not, it's the easiest demographic to market to

also i never write anything for the "lol" factor! i hate "lol"s, i hate fun, i hate ~light~ writing, surely everyone knows this by now. if you don't i am FOLDING MY ARMS at you

fmda

fuck my damn ass?

hahaha, folding my damn arms!

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOMqqI-kzHY

Lex believe me no-one could read you articles and think you're writing for the lol factor - OTOH commissioning you to do a klaxons review is trolling no matter how thoughtful the intention behind it.

okay one listen to miguel's do you song and its already better than any indie chillwave pitchfork shit i've ever heard.

not really a surprise though.

It's a really good song (not because of any initial ostensible parallels with shite chillwave acts I might have drawn upthread), def voting for it in EOY. Have heard the album through a few times now and would like to congratulate Matt DC on recognising Time Of The Season being referenced for a whole eight bars. Well done.

i'm all for talented r&b artists taking second-rate indie/chillwave ideas/sounds and effortlessly making them work/sound better. its like what the lex said in his dylan thing about turning cliches into gold. which is just another dumb way of saying i am all for talented people taking anything from anywhere and making it work.

Lex you being funny and you not wanting to be funny aren't mutually exclusive

Your slow, horrible realization that highway 61 revisited by PJ harvey is a dylan cover is one of my fav ilx lolz of all time

i'm all for talented r&b artists taking second-rate indie/chillwave ideas/sounds and effortlessly making them work/sound better

wanna break this down for us a bit more? what do you see as the first-rate indie/chillwave (if any)? also miguel sounds like a huge amount of effort went in but i know what you meant really it just bugs me when people think of something sounding effortless as a virtue by default

that was a dumb word to use. sorry. it sounds like a breeze. that miguel song i like. i obviously have no idea how much effort went into it. maybe a ton. whereas a lot of indie/chillwave sounds labored to me. not a breeze at all. its TRYING to sound breezy. but the air quotes areound the word breezy get in the way. hell even breezy is the wrong word. sorry. sunday morning. i'll think about it more. maybe. some people are just cooler than other people. and yeah i don't know what first-rate indie/chillwave would be.

sorry myself it's just all a bit false dichotomy for me as i don't hear any real or specific indie/chillwave influence or appropriation in miguel (to use the same example) as opposed to your perfect point upthread about the traditional mingling elements of rnb, soul and rock and the somehow lost sense of people from different backgrounds being able to cross into other zones successfully in people's minds.

well the song was produced by Jerry Wonda of noted chillwave group The Fugees

when was the first junior boys' record

feel like tht ws a watershed for hipsters' newfound love of R&B

xp must've been his idea to sample Enya that time. looking fwd to Miguel crooning about pussy over 'Caribbean Blue' in 2013.

"Should we be suspicious of R&B's newfound love of hipsterdom"

there are elements of miguel's do you song that remind me of...uh, i don't know, the kind of modern non-r&b internet stuff that i would check out after looking at a pitchfork end of the year list. nothing really specific. and mostly it just sounds kinda normal for lack of a better word. i'd have to listen to it again. maybe i never would have even thought of it though if i had just heard the song and didn't know there was a debate about indie r&b. who knows?

the one kinda first-rate indie thing i can think of - now that i've had more coffee - is that goth band that looks like klingons. i mean, if whoever is responsible for their sound worked with an r&b singer i think it could be amazing. or maybe it would be horrible. but honestly i don't know why people don't hook up with more often with some of the amazing edm people out there. fuck indie people. pay michael mayer to produce your album. that would be amazing.

that goth band that looks like klingons

really hope this is their actal name

i think a lot of those kinds of musicians would work with r&b style singers more if they really cared about that kind of singing enough. it's fine not to what with that being only one way of approaching it. i'm not half as frustrated by weak singing on indie stuff as i am by other excessive lo-fi values. some people would settle for average (or worse) vocals if the ideas behind them appeal anyway especially if they're not prevalent in styles of music where the singing is more important or focussed on. it does help to know exactly what artists are meant here tho rather than dismiss entire genres and ideas outright which R&B endures as much as anything.

'indie people' can mean anyone tho. plenty of great producers fit that bill but are often trying to do everything (write sing play engineer...) at the expense of at least one of those areas. that is one reason why they might be unfairly judged but hey occupational hazards i guess.

i'm all for talented r&b artists taking second-rate indie/chillwave ideas/sounds and effortlessly making them work/sound better

IF they're actually doing that in the first place. Like, one of the reasons it's getting the big eyeroll with reference to the Miguel album is that there isn't really any chillwave in there. There's no reason to assume that Miguel or his producers are drawing upon any of these shitty indie bands. There's no reason to assume they aren't either, but when you make the parallels so strong as to start mentioning actual subgenres like chillwave when there are a load of other influences in there as well it gets ridiculous. Talking about an R&B album with exclusive reference to a load of unrelated indie bands just smacks of assuming indie is the centre of the musical universe.

But it doesn't actually sound like any of this stuff, what it sounds like is both a sumptuously produced modern soul record AND a sumptuously produced modern rock record. And one that wears its influences on its sleeve. And some of those influences - 60s psychedelia, 80s pop rock, maybe even modern stadium rock, are present in lots of chillwave as well, but the treatment of them is sufficiently different to suggest that Miguel is getting them directly from the source rather than via pallid indie intermediaries.

fuck indie people. pay michael mayer to produce your album. that would be amazing

OTM.

i haven't even heard the whole miguel album yet. i think i'll buy it! i'm due for a cd. i bought two this year, i think. do they even make sumptuously produced modern rock records anymore? i would love to hear something sumptuous.

"Now, the Art Dealer Chic EPs don’t do anything as blatant as sampling Beach House or namechecking Coachella, but they do find Miguel — maybe cynically, maybe not — surfing the same sort of gloops of chiffon synth that are currently cool with the cool set."

http://stereogum.com/1041242/mixtape-of-the-week-miguel-art-dealer-chic-vol-1-3/franchises/mixtape-of-the-week/

Miguel's primary influences - which he's consistently talked about, btw - are Prince, Bowie, Stevie Wonder, and Jimi Hendrix. fuck a jj.

I think you'd dig the album, scott.

indie fans always complained about the wrong indie being over-venerated in the press. now r&b fans get to do the same. progress!

xxxxpost Jesus, Tim, it wasn't trolling. It wasn't done to provoke a reaction. It was done for wholly legitimate reasons. Why do you feel you can infer my reasons for commissioning it when I have already told you what the bloody reason was!

IIRC that Klaxons review was pretty much the first thing Lex wrote for the Guardian so pretty much no one who didn't actually know him would have inferred very much from that decision, he wasn't an established critic and it would have just looked like a negative review for 99% of the people reading it. It's hardly in sending Steven Wells to review Belle and Sebastian territory.

Also Wells was writing for the NME which had a clear direction. Not sure if that can be compared w/The Guardian at the time (was there a clear music policy then?)

more one-star reviews of more kinds of music please

It wasn't done to provoke a reaction. It was done for wholly legitimate reasons.

If it's not obvious, I was deploying a slightly expansive definition of "trolling" here which includes "having someone write a review in the knowledge that they are not actually the intended market for the music or its hype (even if there are air quote references to dance music in the PR) and that they will hate it and the resulting review will cut across the typical crit discourse."

This is b/c the reason I invoked the lex review in the first place was as an example of something that wasn't stupid decision-making by an editor when it comes to having the "wrong" critic review a record.

Sometimes trolling is for noble purposes. Music criticism needs judicious amounts of it.

Though this kind of trolling happens all the time when critics who don't like pop are assigned to review big pop records - but this has become such a familiar practice that it is mostly accepted as a done thing, and hence falls outside the definition.

"Now, the Art Dealer Chic EPs don’t do anything as blatant as sampling Beach House or namechecking Coachella, but they do find Miguel — maybe cynically, maybe not — surfing the same sort of gloops of chiffon synth that are currently cool with the cool set."

what an absolute disaster of a sentence on every conceivable level

tell me again how stereogum became influential? because idgi

the phrase "cool with the cool set" is just...someone typed that, and filed it, and published it

part of me wishes that guardian comments had existed back in the klaxons days

imagery wise he was definitely riffing on something post-weeknd... "arch & point" specifically, but that sentence is def a stretch... "gloops of chiffon synth" isn't a useful descriptor for the ADC eps at all

how the fuck is anything about arch & point "post-weeknd"? or was it actually the weeknd who invented purple rain all along

who the fuck even listens to the weeknd?

not saying the song is totally based off the weeknd but you'd be foolish to think that there is no weeknd influence there at all... did he mention the weeknd when you interviewed him? he did to me unprompted (not in relation to "arch & point" specifically)

who the fuck even listens to the weeknd?

― Jamie_ATP, Sunday, December 23, 2012 5:47 PM (9 seconds ago) Bookmark

well he did more in first week sales in the US than miguel, so

ouch

it's a horrible world we live in

lemme just say as an early-20something college grad: people my age loooooooooooooove the fuckin weeknd, like he's definitely seen as an example of "good music" in the way, like, mumford & sons is

By the same people?!

Will, I agree R&B is this year’s big aesthetic story. But I want to bring race into the conversation in a more explicit way. It’s been argued that the fantasy of becoming a post-racial nation helped to make Obama’s historic 2008 election possible. But the optimism of 2008 soon gave way to disillusionment as economic woes and increasingly entrenched class divisions came to the fore. It isn’t surprising that indie and indie-sounding R&B became cool again this year. With its emphasis on melancholic confessionalism and interior concerns, so-called “progressive” R&B (far more so than most mainstream club-oriented R&B) delivered authentic blues feeling to a post-affluent culture suffering from collective disillusionment.

sorry, i'm reading this for the first time

& almost certainly the last time

actually this isn't awful

Rev: on a couple of occasions, yes! People who are casually into music but into whatever "indie aesthetic," I guess

It does sort of make me happy that pop sort of ”won” in the respect that everything is now pop in a way, but this victory is making popists act like old school indie grumps

lol @ the idea that pop "won"

tell that to the guardian commenters on the day carly rae jepsen won our tracks poll

Maybe the commenters are angry because they 'lost'?

i do wonder if the slow-burn success of 'adorn' will result in KD selling more than that dreadful weeknd triple-header

indie fans always complained about the wrong indie being over-venerated in the press. now r&b fans get to do the same. progress!

This is one of the more OTM things in the thread.

Didn't realise music was about winning and losing.

^

Yeah it's not but p much everything lex writes has a sort of victim complex about pop suffering under the shackles of the critical establishment that prefers classic rock & indie, so shit like weeknd or I guess the ”wrong” ppl liking Miguel even ppl who - gasp - like mumford & sons is a betrayal

No

i do wonder if the slow-burn success of 'adorn' will result in KD selling more than that dreadful weeknd triple-header

― maura, Monday, December 24, 2012 5:13 AM Bookmark

KD has more total sales at this point, but then it's been out longer, too.

who the fuck even listens to the weeknd?

― Jamie_ATP, Sunday, December 23, 2012 3:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i do and think 'house of balloons' is a classic. the backlash on weeknd has been massive

ha speaking of Stereogum here's ONE MORE THINKPIECE YAY

http://stereogum.com/1225571/2012-in-review-the-new-wave-of-rb-comes-into-full-bloom/top-stories/

can someone please come round and physically stop me clicking on that

blog-powered underground

p much everything lex writes has a sort of victim complex about pop suffering under the shackles of the critical establishment that prefers classic rock & indie

otm, it's been what 8 years or something you've been writing/posting with this tone, please evolve

lol you don't even read half the stuff i write! stop being so presumptuous

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

So long as we're talking "truth" about Lex on Christmas I'd like to say that I approve of Lex's victim complex and find it endlessly entertaining and am always agreeing with his outlook whenever I read an English music magazine

<3

i agree with lex's outlook more often than not! that's why it pains me when he couches it in callow rhetorical devices.

Have yourself a joyous twelvetide, Lex. You're still in the top tier of posters imo.

can someone please come round and physically stop me clicking on that

― lex pretend, Tuesday, December 25, 2012 1:25 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark

dying

a weird thing about all these pieces is that THEEsatisfaction never get mentioned despite being one of the better "indie r&b acts" AND being on sub pop

Speaking as someone who came v v late to the DDM/Dawn Richard proceedings, but loves Armor On, is there really no chance that all this R&B cred will lead to Goldenheart becoming a major 2013 buzz album?

that stereogum thing isn't the worst piece i've ever read but it also starts from a base thesis (r&b is finally good!) that's totally weighs it down

Good line about Kaleidoscope Dream: It’s not a feel-good album so much as an album about feeling as good as possible at all times, and to its infinite credit, it never fails to make me feel incredible.

Bad line:

last year’s pleasantly pedestrian “Sure Thing"

also "genre cocktail" or w/e he said

Has anyone written a piece in which the writer, thanks to Miguel-Ocean-Weeknd or whatever, has gone back to older R&B and finally heard what he'd ignored? A much better essay than "Holy shit R&B is suddenly hot."

no

redressing sins vs writing generalizations

How much older rnb was written expressly for a demographic of emotionally estranged post-Internet ppl tho

i feel like a lot of people are really into romanticising that whole ~emotionally estranged post-internet feelings~ self-archetype and it makes me roll my eyes every time

i mean any sort of romanticising some archetype you see yourself as is par for the course when you're a teenager but people over the age of 22, c'mon

Pointer Sisters xpost

p much everything lex writes has a sort of victim complex about pop suffering under the shackles of the critical establishment that prefers classic rock & indie

lex i <3 you to pieces but this is very true of you. I can't say "pretty much everything you write," but your deal is very much a Pop Strikes Back!! deal imo. All genres go through a phase of this imo but you seem p attached to it, into describing the music you're into in terms of what it's "up against" etc.

It does sort of make me happy that pop sort of ”won” in the respect that everything is now pop in a way, but this victory is making popists act like old school indie grumps

fucking killer post imo

not the part about pop winning obv. Sunset Strip metal should still be huge THANKS PEARL JAM.

i've been reading people belittle/marginalize/condescend to/laugh at almost everything i have ever loved in music for decades. since the 70's! fuck everybody, in my opinion.

lord save me from people who read 2-3 articles i write in a year and on that basis profess to know what my deal is

i have some people accusing me of being secretly rockist because i make the outrageous assertion that PR strategies have an effect on artists' success, or because i'm not interested in covering shit just cuz it's ~on trend~
and on the other hand i have people apparently stuck in some sort of 2004 timewarp where they think i'm a shrieking pop harpy

alla y'all need to get out my face tbh and recognise that

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

shipz, aerosmith: you really need to go back and actually READ MOST OF WHAT I WRITE before you can say sweeping or dismissive shit about my work. i highly doubt either of you actually do that, so until you do GTFO

i don't think there's anything wrong w/ lex's tone and reverse-rockism is weird considering that rockism is still very much alive as evidenced by the entire discussion of r&b in the first place!

lex I have been posting on the same board as you for a long time. nobody's being "dismissive," a coupla people are telling you how you come off in their opinion. you can be childish and say "OH BULLSHIT READ MY ENTIRE CORPUS YOU DOLTS" or you can say "hmm, really, that's interesting, why would people who don't know me personally think I come off that way" it doesn't really matter I guess but "pop, the beleaguered genre, under assault from the evil forces of indie!" does seem like yr stance a lot of the time

indie is hardly rock, surely?

indie's just low-stakes-and-production values rock I think and certainly in the press I think they're essentially big-fish-smaller-fish-same-pond

otm

Lex you are pseudo-rockist though, given you believe some music is objectively better than other music. I don't think that's an accusation or slur though - surely you're fairly proud of that??

"pop, the beleaguered genre, under assault from the evil forces of indie!" does seem like yr stance a lot of the time

reducing my work to this isn't dismissive? it's pretty obvious you're heavily invested in not taking me seriously, which is fine, i'm not mad, but when you're flat-out inaccurate imma correct you. lol @ the idea that you can profess to know what my "deal" is better than me.

hmm, really, that's interesting, why would people who don't know me personally think I come off that way

because they don't actually know me and don't think troubling to find out anything more than how i posted in 2004 is necessary to make sweeping claims about me.

lex is so fascinating

Lex you are pseudo-rockist though, given you believe some music is objectively better than other music. I don't think that's an accusation or slur though - surely you're fairly proud of that??

i don't know if i believe that! sometimes i do! i don't actually care. i don't ~believe~ anything, i don't have a fucking manifesto written out or anything

No it's not a manifesto, more just how people relate to the world. And people's attitudes to music will tend to imply some basic assumptions whether or not they've been codified.

if ppl could stop making BASIC assumptions about how i relate to the world that would be appreciated

That's basically one of the things that makes writers interesting... Would an audience follow a writer whose tastes have no through line? Maybe but it seems unlikely to me.

lex i get a haughty 'stop generalizing about what i write/cover, you haven't seen 99% of it' feeling whenever people try to box me in so i sympathize, but i read yr shit and yeah the extent to which we were stereotyping your work was exaggerated, sorry. but i also don't tell people they need to read more of what i write before they talk about it because it just feels terrible to outright tell people that a) they need to read EVERYTHING i write and b) they can't say anything about me until they have.

I mean I assume you make basic assumptions about how I relate to the world (music wise) but maybe I'm mistaken?

anyway happy holidays i wish i could give you all big sloppy hipster kisses, god bless all us crazy fucks still talking about this shit on xmas, i'm gonna go put the kid to bed and drink some eggnog peace

they can't say anything about me until they have.

people can say things but if what they're saying is that my entire stance/deal is [this kinda silly and dumbly reductive one-note shriek] duh i'm gonna take offence

Getting a handle on how people think across a spectrum of stuff is one of my favourite things about ilm.

tbf you shriek a lot

like even the offense you take to these things is so shrill that it kind of encourages the perception of you that you're fighting against

I mean I assume you make basic assumptions about how I relate to the world (music wise) but maybe I'm mistaken?

not really!

if i knew what my favourite writers thought about any given music why would i need to read them? i like it when people are surprising for whatever reason, i like a certain illogic, because i find the idea of ~taste~ (music and otherwise) slightly illogical, or at least highly complex, too much so to reduce to a set of strict "beliefs"

all lex has in this world are his balls and his word

what is that a reference to, is it comedy -_-

scarface (the movie) by way of a bunch of rap music

Hi bros, I got pork and martinis, let's have a summit

give me a shrieky popist whose taste is divergent from my own over any even-handed fair-minded pretense-of-objectivity thing, please do

What point of comparison are you thinking of specifically.

i like it when people are surprising for whatever reason, i like a certain illogic, because i find the idea of ~taste~ (music and otherwise) slightly illogical, or at least highly complex, too much so to reduce to a set of strict "beliefs"

― lex pretend, Wednesday, December 26, 2012 1:07 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree with this, and if I have a strict belief it's the meta-belief that stands behind this, which is that taste is shaped by experience and is then expressed in concepts, rather than the the rules preceding the experience of the music (though in truth it's more of a snake eating its own tail kind of thing).

OTOH I think most of us like it when people are surprising within reason - taste may be a flag planted in sand but typically the sand doesn't shift that much from day to day (e.g. you thought Ciara was amazing yesterday and you'll probably think the same tomorrow). The fun part of surprises in people's taste is not random absolutist reversals, but how a change in opinion or a new avenue of enjoyment subtly reorders everything else, recasting it in a different light. Not absolute reversals, but a deepening of complexity and nuance.

And in this sense what I think is mostly objectionable is not people acting like you have a couple of familiar critical stances, but people acting like that complexity and nuance isn't present when clearly it is.

But really for me great critical interventions involve concocting or at least reframing particular ways of listening to records in a manner that requires a certain amount of consistency or repetition if only to get the point across. An example that is always present to mind for me is the way that spizzazzz (for me at least) changed the meaning of the word "real" (as in "realness") forever (e.g. defining mushy R&B balladry as a site of realness). A certain critical stance doesn't have to be narrowly ~ideological~ to achieve that kind of resonance for me but it does have to aspire to be a kind of toolbox or secret code, to offer a way of unlocking records that the reader can try to apply to other records. Absolute consistency - rigidity - spells out the code too easily, so the best secret codes have this kind of tension where you the reader feel that you have a partial handle on it but nevertheless can't exhaust it or define it absolutely.

tbh these days i forget "realness" ever meant anything else. the foremost purveyor of realness in pop right now is taylor swift, to me this is obvious.

but what i dislike about pinning down how anyone's taste operates is that there are's fundamental illogic in how i respond to music that i can't reconcile myself - kogan's boney joan rule is an example - so i don't really see how other people are claiming i constantly draw x flag in y sand.

And in this sense what I think is mostly objectionable is not people acting like you have a couple of familiar critical stances, but people acting like that complexity and nuance isn't present when clearly it is.

oh, this too, but REALLY all they do is reveal themselves to be incapable of reading that.

The boney joan rule speaks to complexity not contradiction though, I think. It's an injunction against turning metaphors into rules.

If we don't assume that there should be qualities that are either universally good or universally bad in music then it's not a particularly worrisome notion. But only very simplistic or rigid people hold to that idea.

What I mean by taste is more a mode of approach: a sense that someone is likely to hear the same things you hear in a given record, even if only within a limited sphere of overlap between what you like and what they like. And it's not so much the liking or not liking that is important; it's literally how they hear what they hear, what they point to first, what words they use to describe what's going on.

tbh these days i forget "realness" ever meant anything else. the foremost purveyor of realness in pop right now is taylor swift, to me this is obvious.

Yes, of course! But pre-spizzazzz the notion of framing things that way would never have occurred to me.

Boney Joan is actually a really good point of reference for this entire discussion; it's basically an illustration of the fact that we never have anything other than sand to plant our flags in. But it's pretty rare that anyone's writing - unless it's hopelessly equivocal - ever really acknowledges it.

hipsters' newfound love of R&B

"Newfound" in the sense that we're coming up on a mere century since Bix Beiderbecke?

(Don't mean to distract from the discussion, I know we need to do this every few years.)

Pls tell me Boney Joan is a Boney M/Joan Jett collaboration I didn't know about

http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/archive/2007/jul/12/the-rules-of-the-game-no-6-the-boney-joan-rule/

i have a rule about legitimate intellectual concepts with eye-rolling names, it's called the Kogan Groan Rule

that is a pretty awful name

Such fascinating and enlightening thoughts in response

im not getting involved in the argument either way just sayin

hey i said it was a legit concept, has usefulness, etc.

Michelle Myers bringing it:

http://theremixbaby.tumblr.com/post/39019851611/loverman-cliches-soapy-drama-and-bottle-service

Yeah, that's a great post, although the Trey Songz comment just make me think of:

I just had a mildly horrifying thought re: phrasing - Can you imagine how much less affecting these songs would be if instead of FO, it was my stronger-voiced mans Trey going all vibrato-monster on them?

― Cap'n Hug-a-Thug (The Reverend), Saturday, 29 September 2012 18:56 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol yeah i'm no FrankOphile but it's definitely nutty to say Trey Songz made a better album and/or could better serve FO's material.

Trey is increasingly interesting to me in that he's got a good combination of talent/taste/popularity/work ethic, isn't making dance pop moves, and is semi-consistent as a singles artist, but he'll never make a great album and in years like this year all his success seems very hollow and irrelevant.

"FrankOphile"!

I kinda find Trey interesting in that he's somehow become the default center of r&b as a genre that everything else exists merely in relation to.

for better or worse, obv

myers talking some goddamn sense. she was good in halloween too

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5pbz6VwBX1ryrcu2o1_500.jpg

hey remember king? did they go on to do anything

http://www.kanyetothe.com/forum/index.php?topic=176613.0

I think I asked them what they were up to on twitter once and they never replied.

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

on the album

I've been meaning to get around to that record all year :/

is good

That Myers bit = one of the most sensible things I've read about all this so far

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anybody driving faster is a maniac? – George Carlin

^^^^ I always think of this when I see "hipster" threads now

ha otm

anyone cooler than you is a hipster, anyone less cool is a square, makes sense

http://www.factmag.com/2013/03/04/vandross-prince-dangelo-theyre-saints-to-us-inc-talk-debut-album-no-world-and-stripping-the-blackness-out-of-rb/

You'd think the bros in The Inc. would know how to navigate these waters more delicately, but no, everything they say in this interview is a disaster

Do you think the term alt-R&B is actually a way of taking the blackness out of R&B?

AA: “Yeah, it’s just taking the struggle out. I mean, there’s been all kinds of struggle – there’s black struggle, there’s been some white struggle, there’s been struggle around the world, and when we make these, you know, tags… that’s struggle’s real, and we don’t want to keep perpetuating it. We’re not here to just jump in the ring.”

DA: “I think you’re right about taking the blackness out of it, and that’s the worst part about calling music that name. We make black music, you know, we’re not trying to say that we’re making something else. We’ve always been touched by that music and that’s what’s gotten us out of some places, that’s what’s liberated us and healed us. We’re making music for that same reason – we’re not making it to be played in a coffee shop where everyone’s all happy, this is not for that.”

AA: “We’ve never even said that we are R&B. We’re just making our music. R&B is pretty much dead, rock and roll is dead – the only thing that’s left from this stuff is spirit. So that’s how we see it, it’s like a spirit, and when we need to get in our zone we put on Reverend James Moore. They’re all like saints to us – Luther Vandross is like a saint, and Prince and D’Angelo.

“And then on the other side, the poetry side, I look at people like Billy Corgan and that white energy is powerful too.

And then on the other side, the poetry side, I look at people like Billy Corgan and that white energy is powerful too.

omg

You'd think the bros in The Inc. would know how to navigate these waters more delicately

lol why would you think this

their album is just so so so bad

the one based around the dodgy gulf war metaphor is probably the nadir

http://i.imgur.com/r1ZqMF7.gif

the white side, the poetry side, the corgan side

you'd really think they'd be on some blues hammer tip after all that and not just vapid simpering neutered twaddle like a sad can of flat coke zero half-heartedly handed to an anorexic model slipping into a fatal coma

vapid AND simpering

alt-r&b could kinda work as gulf war qua baudrillard/virilio come 2 think of it

young lamp n plax all feeling numb playing desert strike

CORGAN'S WHITE POWER MAJIK

anything can work if its done well.

The return of the Bald White Dude
Making sure whites groove

the album is actually pretty pleasant is the thing, in the most frightfully enervated way

matt and luke goss form spacek covers band was how i correctly basically broke it down to an extent iirc

And then on the other side, the poetry side, I look at people like Billy Corgan and that white energy is powerful too.

omg

― C: (crüt), Monday, March 4, 2013 1:47 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

literally had to rub my eyes and roll back away from the screen

so speechless at that part (the whole thing)

I spend all my time doing things that may be a bit tangential, but I think I'm going to go back to the core, the white music. Billy Corgan.

http://grungereport.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/billyhands.jpg

lol xp

i have to say it but saying "Billy Corgan and that white energy is powerful" is the only thing with a kernel of insight in the whole interview, the rest is incoherent if not contradictory

what clowns

i wdn't say "insight", i'd maybe go so far as "makes grammatical sense"

AA: “When Voodoo came out, if you read the reviews, people were like, ‘he’s mumbling’! You know, a good example is Terence Malick, the filmmaker. His movies to us are like divine breaths on film, but a lot of people really struggle with the lack of dialogue. Or Nirvana, that’s a great example – if you read the lyrics to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ it’s like, what did he say? None of the teenagers knew what the hell he was saying – it’s ultimately a feeling.

“But the lyrics are really fundamental.

Wow. These guys aren't the smartest are they? And that track on the link sounds like a first demo for something someone might be thinking of finishing off one day when they can be bothered.

i'll stick with the last Britney album. my kinda nu-r&b.

"Music today is tribal – not tribal as in an aesthetic, but like we’re all part of a tribe. "

whole interview reads like an onion article

otm

White power is energetic too

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/124/339500000_9bfce4ef90.jpg