Sasha Frere-Jones on OutKast

also "jump-cut" is misused since in film it means cutting forward in essentially the same shot/scene not cutting between scenes which is simply a "cut".

What are feet in this context?

i.e. is there a different, simpler, formula for analysis of this stuff which looks at meter as distinct from syllables?

As for blood and Hummers: Are they not more available in songs and videos than whatever we call "real life"? Maybe blood and Corollas are realistic subject matter, but there's already a debate about the over-emphasis of violence in the hood trope. I wouldn't suggest there's an answer anyway, as songs that work still work, even if they're about murderous Toledo and everyone's actually at the movies in Toledo. The slippage there doesn't much change my point, I don't think. Or if it does, I'm not bothered.

When my old ass went to school and made a film, my teacher called them both "jump cuts," so that's how I do things. She was a nutball avant, so she could have been wrong.

Feet = unit of measurement in poetry.

i mean there are those groups that throw these things around like confetti, but i don't really think anybody thinks of them as realistic, perhaps the artists themselves included.

i mean in a sense these are all debates which opened themselves up in the harlem arts community from 1920-40. i'm reading a book right now which deals with the influence of the communist party's pop-front culture policies on that stuff, and its real striking how similar and conflicted the debates were at the time. over the cp's pop-front period in the u.s. there was actually a striking move from proletkult to a more resonant "just telling it like it is and only the liberals want to pretend these problems don't exist" perspective, coincident with a number of high-profile govt investigatory hearings into the conditions of harlem which the CP played a big role in (and the NAACP abstained from).

the other interesting part is how the opening of the pop-front policy in harlem EARLIER than nationwide provided this room for transformation, but as it became subordinated to a nationwide strategy things closed up again.

(i think the question about metrics on rap is interesting in part coz it does inspire wanting to find another way to look at it. the key, i suspect is in recognizing syllable cramming etc. and thus moving between meters as a feature rather than some sort of abberation. in part moving from "time signature" to bpm as a unit of measurement?)

Rrright. I think that was my point, or if it wasn't, I blame my new iron lung and polyvinyl fingers.

Re CP--sure, that's why I quoted Reverend Hill. The social impact of art is a conversation not likely to end, and it often puts political enemies into the same yurt quick fast. I sure as hell wouldn't mind seeing Jadakiss stumble across a new theme.

There are oodles of choices, but lots of them are in the "Nobody Cares" bin. And maybe I'm just too calcified in my tastes, but Outkast seems a pretty good fulfillment of Afro-Futurism, a trope that feels underplayed to me. But I can't listen to lots of allegedly A-F techno, so what the fuck do I know.

The internal rhythm clumps seem to lead back to samples and their own accidental, but repeating, patterns. Or it could be some people just swing like wrecking balls.

As for over-emphasis, D-Block, G-Unit and whatever that retarded crew of Camron's is called all brandish steel about 12 times a minute on recent mixtapes I've snoozed through. But point taken--the top 10 is unbloody right now.

*actually, I think afro-futurism is a kinda outdated concept in that there aren't really any acts around with such sci-fi approach as those that were creating the music this term was invented to describe; even Kool Keith the afro-futurist mufucka around spends 75% of his time breaking down the ways he's gonna make love to ladies

(wow lotsa x-posting)

in part afro-futurism is an ESCAPE from confronting the problem of race, in that it concedes the gangsta tropes as the best way of defining the black experience, so instead it sings about other things, like the cupid experience or the aliens experience or the batman experience. it defines itself out of the possibility of challenging the hegemony of dominant cultural values, prices itself as a novelty product.

(and sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it's really good but hell i'm generalizing here)

Right, and there I'd hedge my bets on OK as A-F. I think they both are a little too concrete to believe salvation is a space shuttle or an aqua boogie away. Another kinda extra-curricular point (but I just got an angry email saying I was "as stoned as Outkast") that seems relevant: Andre is a teetotaler and Big Boi is pretty collected, at least he has been in the past. Compare this to the narcotic mayhem of 70s P-Funk and draw whatever conclusions to want, but being straight may take the sheen of Pedro Bell-style ideation.

also, I like Big Boi ok as a lyricist, he has a very understated wit, but as an MC i just can't rate him, he jumbles syllables too much and it usually sounds like a mess, and don't tell me it's a southern thing, there are plenty of guys down there who know how to enunciate without rejecting their native accents.

Re: The Fray: Kinda like a Googler throwdown, yes?

i haven't heard the new outkast yet, but i did hear the new erykah badu and that's afro-futurism to me

also re the overemphasis on violence, i think it's more nihilism than violence that informs the music ie in da club is nothing if not nihilistic even if it's (or because it is) about partying

Ya hear that Sasha?

Yeah, I have the same problem that Al has with this, and I thought when I read it that Sasha had condensed his thought into too few words and ended up implying something he didn't mean: that hip-hop these days is narrowing its palette. And his explanation here about samples doesn't speak to the point, since fewer samples doesn't mean a smaller range of sounds. And what truly confuses me is that, when you parse the sentence, it seems to be saying that the beats are rejecting sounds and samples that refer to anything outside of hip-hop itself, which doesn't make sense. My experience is that hip-hop and r&b these days will turn any sound or texture into percussion. Maybe the rhythm doesn't range as far and wide, but in the last week I've heard crunk and bounce that practically wave signs saying "techno," "freestyle," "electro," "dancehall," "house." And as for the overall sound, not only do you get the almost ubiquitous Asian (not to mention Asian by way of Italian [Morricone] by way of Jamaican motifs) but also an ever-increasing amount of portentous northern Euroromanticism (maybe crunk will someday outdo dark metal at this) - not to mention a smattering of kids's songs, Andrews Sisters, etc. The rule seems to be that so long as you do something - rhythm, raps, soul singing - that signifies hip-hop and r&b, then anything else is fair game. (Just heard an r&b track by Ms. Dynamite that does a standard attack on the G-Sex thing for killing the community [and she asks us to think about the Africans who died for our diamonds], while the accompaniment includes what seems to be a Greek accordion, which isn't meant as a signifier, it's just there 'cause someone likes the sound, business as usual.) My guess is that what Sasha was aiming for was actually this: OutKast are willing to do tracks that have nothing that signifies hip-hop or r&b. It doesn't mean that their palette is wider - which it isn't, I don't think, though I haven't heard much of the new one - but that they're willing to put themselves at odds with the hip-hop symbol system. And this goes right along with their putting themselves at odds with the heteromale thing, which I think is the comparison that Sasha intended to make.

trife certainly associates "not hip-hop" with sucking, somehow, or at least thinks he can win the former argument but doesn't have the tools for the latter. there's also the question of the extent to which "not-hip-hop" then gets singled out for PRAISE or like trife put it "some racist plot to get rid of affirmative action and turn rap into the flaming lips".

(haha by just saying what trife thinks i'm totally dodging my own opinion which is totally unformed. in eddy-speak "i haven't decided whether or not to like the album" or even HOW to like or dislike it)

This puts aside two points, one that Big Boi works an amazingly diverse set of sounds into a quote-unquote standard hip hop set. Two, that there are obvious commercial benefits to keeping the Outkast brand name.

this is sticky territory to get into because once a hip hop group both adopts rock signifiers like live instrumentation and "difficult" double albums, and gets accepted (albeit with token-status) by rock fans, they're praised for ''transcending" their genre by some, and resented for "abandoning" it by others. so you end up with this big divide, which is so inevitable that it even pops up in places like ILM where there aren't a lot of actual rock vs. rap genre warriors.

personally, my allegiance to hip hop or any other genre is never any greater than my interest in music in general, so if I was going to praise or pan the record, I'd do it first on the grounds of it being plain good or bad, and not rap or not-rap. that said, I can kind of put on that hat and listen to it in that context and judge it by those standards, and when I do, the Outkast record is not flattered. i mean, even in the rare moments when they do conform to current dirty south vogue, it's just awkward - "Last Call" is easily the weakest track Lil Jon's been involved in all year (although I can pin that on them not letting Jon do the beat). but even if I take off that hat and listen to as just music, or at least with the same hat that I listen to stuff that I wouldn't even try to guess what genre it belongs in, most of it kind of falls flat, for me.

Signification is the key concept here I think. How much of the distinction between evaluations of, say, Trina's beats, and evaluations of Outkast's, rest on the fact that Trina makes damn well sure that she surrounds her beats with hip hop signifiers? Perhaps even more relevantly: is Outkast more or less hip hop than Jay-Z rapping over Panjabi MC? At what point does the music's veering away from self-referential beats begin to stress and strain the definition? Or will it *always* be hip hop as long as Jay-Z or Trina or whoever are deploying enough hip hop signifiers over the top?

Is there a logical end-point to what hip hop signifiers can do? Sean Paul's music may as well be hip hop (when you consider how dancehall-ish hip hop is at the moment) and his look and song-content are pretty rap too. Is he hip hop, or does his patois counteract that? Is his patois more or less un- or anti-rap than Andre's singing?

"Greatest rock band" headline is their choice; I only made it the punchline. It was a v. conscious light-fuse, stand-back thing, a lil juvenile of me. I hoped a few readers would say "What is rock, anyway?" *before* calling for my head. (We took it out and then put it back in knowing what would happen, and now I get hate mail from peopel defending the E Street band and White Stripes.) We could present some obvious briefs for it being true--miscegenation, brisk tempos, a little style, the ability to start arguments in the first place--but it's equally fine with me if it's wrong. The piece doesn't hang on it.

More juicy is the whole ontology of hip-hop thing, though I fear a Yankees vs. Red Sox (BWAH!), fun vs. fun breakdown, and big flag-planting, i.e. people tired of Rolling Stone headlines want new themes, new heroes. But I gotta take the kids to school. And these kids are arguing like bananas, but not about Lil Jon's goblet.

Hip hop goes Ren Fest? Huzzah!

Look hard at the universe of hip-hop since 1978 and you won't find a lot of records that say "I'm sorry." So, when OutKast released the 2000 hit "Ms. Jackson"—in which they apologized to Everymama for making her daughter cry—it was as unexpected as John Grisham spinning on his head.

I've always found critics praising "Ms. Jackson" for it's apologetic lyrics weird, since the content in that song is far more complicated than what's in the chorus. Do these critics only listen to the chorus? Did they miss this verse:

Uh, uh, yeah
"Look at the way he treats me"
Shit, look at the way you treat me
You see your little nosy-ass homegirls
done got your ass sent up the creek G
Without a paddle, you left to straddle
and ride this thing on out
Now you and your girl ain't speakin no more
cause my dick all in her mouth
Knahm'talkinbout? Jealousy, infidelity, envy
Cheating to beating, envy and to the G they be the same thing
So who you placin the blame on, you keep on singin the same song
Let bygones be bygones, you can go on and get the hell on
You and your mama

Also, besides "Ms. Jackson" Stankonia has that little song called "We Luv Theez Hoez"...

This is, I think, why some folks take up the "Beats By The Pound did this ten years ago!" line, and others explain to me, patiently, the good souls, that rock bands play instruments, oops, wait, so do OutKast, wait, now I'm defending the playing of instruments, wait, small bumper car is stuck in corner, fuck. Must...separate...aestehtics...from...technology...from...intentionality...from...how much I want to play this song and put on my old flowered creepers and do the Huckle Buck.

It's also the same kind sandbar I think Andre is jumping up and down on re: Being Good. That, and the heteromale duck and cover stuff, felt most important. Hence discussion of torso. Andre knows exactly how important bad-assness is in ALL male-identified pop, and he's poking that beast mercilessly with his diamond-tipped cane.

Re Frank's reading: is v. good and I can't improve it only to say that hiphop 03 is hipphop 93 is rock 78: everybody settles, for a year or two, on a set of constraints and then throws themsleves against them until they buckle and everybody sets off looking for new constraints. So we're looking at a high-output system that pits "freedom" against "rules," and the pleasures of exhausting a tight footprint. Same reason sports are exciting: If you could actually punch the fuck out of Kobe Bryant and then score, there'd be no metric to push against and it would be hard to televise. The palette is huge *within* hip-hop's 2003 syntax. Sounds are very shiny, rich, the rhythmic urge is the point, the prick, the stab, and the innovation works within that. You don't hear a lot of dirt, or stiff rhyming, or upright bass anymore etc unto infinity of small differences jai alai festival. Jingoism is half about samples, half about a fear of falling out of genre and even when somebody samples Bollywood now, the first reference will be Tim & Quik, not Bollywood films you've seen or not seen, so it falls within genre. But OutKast viz a viz all this isn't why I love them. I just do, helplessly, deeply, and that's a fairly boring critical drive to take. Yet, OK are doing a take on hiphop very consciously. *they* are definitely having these arguments in their heads.

I guess I should've figured that the "rock band" headline was an ed.'s choice and not yours, Sasha. still, it is a weird party line, no matter who's choosing it. it all looks the aftermath of some hypothetical argument that goes like

Rock fan: "wow, finally, a great rap record!"
Rap fan: "you only like it because it's not really rap!"
Rock fan: "oh...ok, fine, then it's a great rock record!"

which is I guess good because people should like what they like no matter what they call it, but it's still an interesting switcheroo to pull.

Pose is fine by me, since I don't claim to be able to know why anyone does anything they do. I'd venture a guess that C-Bo enjoys his syrup and gun paradigm, Andre likes Paul Smith and both sets of intentions are beyond my ken. "Miss Jackson" was a huge hit, OutKast is selling like hotcakes, and Andre's poses are *in the bloodstream* now, high dosages. Calculated life's work or momentary urge--couldn't say, don't need to.

But let's stop this crazy thing, Jane: I prefer talk of love to talk of guns, so shoot me, even if Jadakiss is a much better writer than Erykah Badu. I'm just handicapped like that. Gotta miss out on something. And complexity of Miss J's verses = not going to fit in the VW beetle of the piece = classik ILM brawl = "You didn't write MY ideas into YOUR piece!" The search for the Western edge or unclaimed land = blogmania! No one will stop your masterplan now...

"that outkast article would have to be the dumbest article about a band since your last article about at band. how can you proclaim outkast as the "greatest american rock band?!" let me emphasize how completely misguided you are with an example:

radiohead is the uk's best hiphop act.
marvin gaye was america's greatest punk rocker...ever.
Master P is the greatest jazz musician of modern times.

is anything wrong with these sweeping statements? could it be the COMPLETE MISIDENTIFICATION of GENRE? that article was, by far, the most indulgent piece of garbage that i have ever read on the internet....and trust me, that is awful.

as a music fan, i think you do great injustices to a great american rock band like, say, the white stripes...by crowning a gimmick-laiden hip hop band as the king of a genre it has no business being associated with. thanks for the laugh, though."

How badly do we want to read Jon Savage's "Marvin Gaye, Up Yours!" 3-part series in Mojo? How badly do we want the Ice Cream Man Sessions box set? (And Ui were undoutedly the world's worst barbershop quartet, but we're reuniting for hstencil's wedding and that will be off the HOTPLATE!)

'yeah man that dude was
just hairpie-ing the ball out
of the park that day!')

so sasha would this
be a clear victory for
musical discourse

or necessary
runoff from epatez-ing
le rock bourgeoisie?

(has there ever been a vegetarian president? will there ever be one?)

No, and no (Dennis Kucinich, a vegan, has no chance of getting elected).

Um. I think you're taking me task for laziness, which I dig. Um. Um. Epatez the kinda people who post to the Fray? I'm down with that. But let me be clear: I stand by firecrackers, but I don't pretend it means a lot to light them.

PS: 4 beats in last line of haiku 1.

So, Haikunym I
cannnot condone the fighting
just because it sells.

but we are human
and not always our best selves,
and people just suck.

and no I wasn't
accusing you, just asking,
and you just answered

outkast as rock band
is a chuck eddy statement,
boom! there does the room!

but it must ring true
to both shock the Fraysters and
pacify the nerds

I don't think you suck
in fact now I think I want
to buy your album!

who is this david
lehman person you speak of?
no I am not him

Can you please run for president next year?

Your friend,
Jeanne

Your support is appreciated. You will be receiving both the s/fj tote bag and our Songs Of Old Manhattan compilation CD within 4-6 weeks.

I am filling out the Halliburton Presents Presidentiality! 2004 entry form right now, and I cannot find a box to check off for "Corny Old-School Pragmatist." I will probably run simply as a member of the Asshats. Already 23 candidates listed!

Your ally in Washington,
Sasha

I heard the new Ying Yang Twins album and I felt the world shift. I think most people won't hear it as a shift, but that doesn't mean they won't shift with it. It doesn't signify "SHIFT."

The major social issue in hip-hop is whether to lick or not to lick; lots of people seem conflicted. The Ying Yangs take both positions, naturally. (Heh, heh. He said "positions.") Whereas if Dre and Big Boi have resolved the issue in favor of licking - and calling before you come, etc. - this might make me more comfortable with them, but it also means that they're shunning a really potent metaphor to use to explore their feelings of power/powerlessness.

This has nothing to do with the discussion, but in 1984 it was rumored that the Republicans were going to draft Vanessa Williams to replace Bush as their candidate for vice president, since they felt that she could lick Geraldine Ferrarro.

Stankonia may have expanded hip-hop's palette. It didn't expand my palette (though I didn't really give it a chance to; bear in mind that, according to Chuck Eddy, I'm the one critic in the world who underrates Funkadelic). And Stankonia didn't expand into what were, to me, new colors, whereas other hip-hop does, every day. Not that OutKast is at all required to expand into new colors in order to be good. But what I'm thinking is that, when OutKast wins P&J, it's in part for wearing "our" colors. And this is fine (except other people deserve to win more). Why shouldn't voters go for the music that speaks to them? It's just that what signifies as "innovative and flamboyant" [liner notes to their hits CD] sounds awfully familiar to me. But then OutKast fan Hillis over in the Throwdown thread says that it takes him a while to adjust to André's wildness, and from the reports here about the Fray thread, I think that OutKast really could expand a lot of people's ideas.

So the piece's title is fine. OutKast draws on a lot more of rock than Radiohead or the White Stripes do. And they rock harder than the White Stripes, too. (I haven't heard enough recent Radiohead to make the comparison there, but I might make a wager.) And OutKast is closer to being the world's best rock group than to being the world's best hip-hop group. (Bear in mind... etc.) Which isn't to imply that they're nearly as good as the Gore Gore Girls or the Clone Defects (or to Montgomery Gentry, or to LeAnn Rimes, if you want to call her "dance-oriented rock," which I sometimes do). But from reading Yancey's and Haikunym's comments, maybe this thread does need to have something like the Fray discussion. I mean, if your music is saturated in Beatles, Sly, Hendrix, Zappa, Funkadelic, etc., then it's not altogether stupid to call you a rock band, even you're also a hip-hop band. Whereas if you're Radiohead and your music (I'm guessing) doesn't seem to know the existence of Bambaataa or Flash or Dre or Mannie or Timbaland, then it doesn't make sense to call you a hip-hop band.

I get the feeling OutKast slip faster into the "allegiance" tray than other acts. If I gauge ability to create absolutely delirious happy-to-be-aliveness, they rank high, but not as high this year as a few others. If I scan the last 10 years, "B.O.B." maybe pushes my buttons more relenetlessy than any other single. And they're hardly alone in the White Man Approved! hip-hop canon, if you want to see that as their entry. If somebody brings that Lyrics Born CD over to my house, they're going to have to stand in the corner and be very...very...quiet. THAT CD conjures an ideology where someone is trying to pretend the world simply isn't there. And a good Maze album stomps that Zoom! nonsense.

Why does this thread need a Fray-alike? Other than for critical latitude and bruises?

(Listening to new Westside Connection. Wish I could say it upsets my whole gyroscope, but it's just gross. And flat-footed! Lil Jon sounds like juju next to this funeral funk. WAIT--self-consciousness ruins the theory: a song called "Get Ignant"! Foiled!)

Oh--must bust mini-verse:

My new Cyclotron
arrived at the heliport
and we plugged it in.

The best rock band now,
from available data,
is A Frames or M.A.S.S.

But we would like to
give honorable mention
to the School of Rock.

The movie didn't work,
because children confused them
but the last scene worked.

if he ran against
The Terminator or Bush,
but the new CD

makes us feel like
our regular teacher is
out sick, and heeere's Tom!

(this is said out loud
inwardly I'm scared you're right
but I soldier on)

LB knows his steez,
realizes who he is:
hiphop hippie nerd

I might just love him,
but I fear my calcified
tastes and habits, so.