KILL THE NOVELTY

For him not to sound like a constipated cockatoo? Same problem I have w/the beastie boys...

Am I the only one who doesn't see why Timbaland or Missy have to be particularly good at rapping? The Missy album is a rap album mostly by record shop categorisation, and what she does vocally works for it, even if she doesn't have the "rhyme skills" or whatever.

As for the actual qn, yeah, 'despite yourself' is a better way of putting it than 'guilty pleasure'. Belle And Sebastian is my obvious and public answer.

I should have clarified with Beastie Boys; it was Ad-rock's voice that I find to have that same screechy nasal quality that grates on the nerves.

I have noticed a certain intolerance among Eminem defenders; not against gays & women that some of the more banal critics would imagine, but instead against the notion of people simply not loving him. It's as if the act of disliking him is some sort of hate crime for which there is no defense. Still, I can't deny the fact that his voice irritates the hell out of me. Sorry.

Jesus: this is gobbledygook, mark s. Will now go away and come back when *I've* remembered minimal mic technique!! Above = true, but not in English yet...

Which still doesn't do much to help the screechy nasality of his voice. Which was my point. ;-)

It is possible to think someone has a lot of good abilities and still NOT LIKE THEM, you know.

Really, the only Eminem song I truly like - no, LOVE - is The Way I Am, and the reason why that one resonates with me where the others don't is because he's dropped the vocal jestering and isn't whining. It's a nice change of pace and if he rapped in that somewhat threatening voice all the time, I'd be 100% down with Eminem.

(Though as Mark sensibly suggests it's a lot more complicated than that.)

So I suppose it's the either-rap-or-production idea which I see in Ethan's post that I object to. You can do without both and the track can still somehow work.

herb made a good (and annoying) point back in my rakim thread when he compared r's flow to prog rock, as technical virtuoso to be admired but not loved. eminem (and rakim, geez) goes beyond that, though, because of sheer SOUL (yeah i know, whatever). em isn't just lyrically riffing epmd-style about his copious skills, he's saying shit that is IMPORTANT to him and important to modern music, and saying it creatively. but i still listen to epmd way more.

I think we can all agree that music whose only appeal is in the technical virtuosity of its players isn't very appealing. On the other hand, I find that in sorting through the millions of songs out there, if I know of the artist and know that they're very good (example being Eminem), I will actively seek out their music, and sometimes even listen to it repeatedly if I don't like it initially. For example, take OK Computer, an album I initially disliked. It's now one of my favourites, and I'm glad I put the time in to get to know it. On the other hand, I'm not going to listen to a record by Missy more than once if I don't like it initially. The fact is that she can't rap very well, and given that, it's not very likely that her album is a complex work whose many layers will reveal themselves on subsequent listening - it's more likely just not very interesting. This is not to say that I hate Missy, but I'm not going to listen to Get Ur Freak On fifteen times no matter how much I liked "The Rain". Odds are whatever I'm looking for just isn't there.

So while virtuosity isn't an end in itself, I respect someone who has it enough to put a little more effort into understanding their vision. There should be room in this music not just for the immediate, but also for the more rich and satisfying work of somebody who has put a lot of effort into developing their skills as a musician.

We can?

Technique is also a means to, well, Busk until Inspiration Maybe Strikes — and hope only the *really* learned will notice and judge; also a to weld the work tight-shut against unexpected stuff which might surprise or unhinge the performer him/ herself.

What I guess I'm saying is I *distrust* Dave's trust as a continued — as opposed to discardable — proposition. Which is not to say I don't use it, all the time: for example, in flamewars, where you find you side with the unjerky, graceful, literate, grammatically able, self-deprecating, amusing, nicer of the combatants, instead of the insane intruder — as if all this weren't utterly manipulable material. Sometimes (OK, only sometimes) the total jerk has the more valuable argument, but not the means to sustain or even reach it. Skills are as double-edged as everything: not just a Power that Can be Used For Evil (= extreme case), but a power that can be used to nudge something new and odd away from the breakthrough it might be.

Can a person "like something ironically"? It seems that some here say it's not possible. Bollocks! You can know that something is aesthetically worthless, but still appreciate it, just like you can know a McFlurry is nutricionally valueless, but still want to eat it.

An example of a band that I liked first "ironically" then later grew to actually genuinely love and appreciate: Guns N Roses.

At first I started to play them a lot, because they genuinely *pissed off* my pretentious art school mates. There was nothing that quite got up their noses, so I used to play Appetite For Destruction to annoy them when their narrow-minded, forced artiness bothered me. It became a mode of attacking their most cherished preconceptions about "art" and "the dark side" and all that rubbish. I'd ask them questions like "So why is it 'art' when the Velvets sing about 'Heroin' but not when GNR sing about 'Mr. Brownstone'? Why is it an 'exploration of the dark side of human nature' when the Rolling Stones sing about mysogeny and racism, but not when GNR sing about it?"

Pretty soon, instead of offended, I found myself intrigued by the subject matter, and my own reactions to it. And the music was a pretty kick-ass assimilation of metal, glam and punk, too. ;-)

I wonder, sometimes, if this is the same effect that maybe Eminem is supposed to have. But, oh well, I just don't find Eminem interesting on any sort of musical or personality level.

Liking something ironically though is possible, it's just a way of playing with yours and others tastes, its fun - but it's quite a poor quality was of playing with those tastes as opposed to sincerely trying to think yourself into liking/disliking something - it's the difference between method acting and putting on a silly accent/walk maybe.

Let the record show I am manifestly unimpressed by Mr. Mathers' abilities -- he may have them, but the results, as DG noted and I agree with, bore me fucking senseless. If I wanted to see him jerk off in public, I'd ask.

As for the original question -- nothing really leaps to mind. Stuff like most of what's on _Golden Throats_ or the, ahem, oeuvre of those lovely boys in RYL can only be enjoyed ironically because I refuse to treat the creators seriously in the least. ;-)