The Peculiar Case of Rollie Pemberton

what do you mean? acknowledging the existence of and quality within mainstream hip-hop?

Pitchfork's only competent hip-hop writer

are you forgetting or ignoring mullah omar?

ah, so that is what you meant by "sorry direction."

Sexist Camron-inspired views? Arthur, if you hate hip-hop, why don't you just say it?

"after I bust, I be like "Get the fuck off me bitch" / If she front, bruise her in the ribs / But you hugged her, you loved her, moved her in the crib / Hit by cupid, stupid, why'd you do it? Why be bother?"

This seems a testament to the indie mentality regarding rap: it has to be intelligent to be viable.

YEH MAN, FUCK THAT NIGGER SHIT!

Cockholster.

true... except 'intelligent' is a poor choice of words. I don't think that most 'conscious' rap or its practitioners are any smarter than the average rapper, it just takes an intellectual/politically correct stance, which is what the indie mentality responds to. which I've always thought is kind of silly - do they hold rock lyrics/lyricists to the same standards? if I listened to everything with an attitude of "this song has to completely reflect my own worldview for me to enjoy it", then I'd really have to cut down my music diet big time.

I don't think rap has to be intelligent to be viable. In fact, I like alot of "intelligent rap" (like Company Flow) that I don't even think is particularly intelligent, and I like a lot of rap that is pretty dumb, like say MOP fer instance. However, doesn't the sometimes poisonous level of misogyny ever bother you?....I remember going through this period where I could listen to NWA's Efil4zaggin because it just sort of got disheartening....same with Cam sometimes. I'm not bagging on your review or trying to change your opinion, I'm just curious as to how you reconcile these things (note: this bothers me alot with rap so I'm trying to reason it out myself)

I don't quite see as to how the negative views inherent in some music should cause you to dismiss them as a whole. If this were the case, I'd miss out on landmark releases because of my own personal feelings. I don't have to like an artist as a person to like their music. Like Nas may come off like an idiot in interviews, but his work redeems this. Of course, I'm extrapolating the situation, but the point stands.

On another note, I see that much like gold chains and braggadocio, misogyny is a part of rap's history, like it or not. I can accept it, however disturbing it can be. In this case, the music itself makes up for the negative content.

Maybe I just have a different level of tolerance for that sort of thing.

The beats are so fucked and juelz is really like I get this sense of youthful arrogance and looming disaster off him.

That, actually, appears to be the standard for Pitchfork's newfound acceptance- with the ascent of bland, vanilla ILM-bred scribes like Nitsuh Abebe and Scott Plagenhof, your critera for good writing seems to just demand the exclusion of any so-called "rockism", all handily catalogued on the ILM site. You lick your lips and gleefully post their names here, whenever someone dares slip up and reveal they mayactually prefer albums to singles, or consider Bob Dylan a better lyricist than Britney Spears. And, to boldly further the McCarthyist analogy, you snidely blacklist them from the ILM-run major critical press. Is it worse to be a good writer with sincere, maybe uninteresting taste, or a bad writer who knows the right names to drop for ILM's approval? In the latter group lay the awful Stylus (with whom Mr. Pemberton would fit right in), and when one has that I invariably know which side I will choose.

ILM tends to like - or not criticise too heavily - stuff one-time ILMers write. This is probably cos most ILMers value friendship over music taste.

(haha arthur weren't you the one who STARTED with the whole misogyny in hip-hop thing way up thread?)

(x-post: "Santana's Town" isn't funky? boo hoo! does it have to be funky to be a hot rap song?)

And I wish ILM controlled the media! Maybe then I'd have a bit more cheddar! You so crazy.

(I read PFM very infrequently these days so I don't know anything about Pemberton, Omar etc.)

No, that definitely wouldn't work.

Sterling - in the sense that I was raised on BBC Radio 4 and the pre-Thatcher Brit-bourgeois cultural ideas, yes, and I *do* feel that European social democracy is antithetical to all that Juelz Santana stands for (although it is also antithetical to all that Toby Keith stands for - this isn't a racial thing). certainly most other people my age I've come across know much less about any sort of non-pop-cultural territory than I do (their parents were younger, they only read tabloids ...) and the Juelz album sounds more European than other hip-hop tends to, surely; the sped-up female vocal samples just remind me of Scooter, and can be whipped up to some of the same level of (crucially, defunkified) hysteria.

This conversation is weird.

Do you really think Juelz is thinking "I'm sonically raping my enemies" when he uses a European-sounding samples?? I doubt he would know what you were talking about (nor would I, for that matter)....Also, I don't really think most of Juelz or 50's venom is aimed at the "icons of high bourgeois European culture"....it's usually other rappers, at least in the case of 50....I know Juelz has some rhymes comparing himself to Mohammad Atta and some of the other 9/11 hijackers but I always wrote that off to just badass posing, just for shock value just as he might compare himself to Al Pacino from scarface or something...

i like robins stuff on this thread. while i agree it could be considered overanalytical on the surface, and of course i dont think juelz was thinking along these lines, the subtext i can agree with. whether it is intentional on the part of the artist or not isnt so relevant to me, i am more interested in the fact that we can be at a point where records are made with that sound, which might have been difficult to imagine a few years ago. there is a certain monolithical, and almost fascistic, sound which does seem to be anti-funk. now, while i agree no one is thinking "lets sonically rape high culture euros", it is still surely a product of where to look for sound. and at one point this sound mightnt have been considered ripe for making, and now it is.

DipSET DipSET DipSET!

This is one of the most hilarious threads ever...Cam'ron is a fascist clearly.

Btw, I think Rollie Pemberton is one of the best things to happen to Pitchfork, even though I think he was unneccessarily hard on that Atmosphere album...that bonus track maaaaang!!!!!

Also, if scottpl is so mainstream-obsessed, why is he the one who thinks The Rapture released the album of the year? The fuck, did that shit even chart? Yeah, Scott, I really dig the top 10, Basement Jaxx you're dead-on about, but The Rapture? Its good, but its not great.

But yeah, I think Scott and Rollie are grrrrrreat writers. Go Pfork.

[Rollie Pemberton; January 26th, 2004]