Article Response: Ja Rule

Here's the real link. That one just goes to my secret dog porn collection.

i liked it, especially the parts that weren't about ja rule. actually i'm a bit miffed that you wrote about indie-rock white guys only listening to mainstream rap because of the blippy-bloopy techno shit. that was going to be MY article! definitely one of the best things i've read on ft in a while.

Thought it was a great article; I question to what degree criticizing albums is good/useful in hip-hop, though. I think hip-hop is much closer to dance than rock in its singles-vs-album priorities. So it's probably fairer to judge Ja Rule by "6 Feet Underground" (which admittedly I don't much like) rather than the album, which I haven't heard but I'm sure contains plenty of filler.

But I get the feeling that you weren't really writing that review to review the album, but more to sum up your feelings about hip-hop and current critical approaches towards it, which like Ethan I found more interesting than the Ja Rule observations.

Shame, I had high hopes for the album. On the other hand, I actually like "Between Me & You" and "Ecstacy" so perhaps there's still hope. It's the "thuggish boor goes tender" angle that appeals to me actually, perhaps because it's so unlikely. Ja Rule would have been maybe the last rapper I'd have expected to go down that route.

As for hip hop generally, I think that, as "Southern Hospitality" proves, it's dangerous to assume that nothing worthwhile is happening just because you haven't heard it. I'm actually hearing heaps of new directions and ideas in hip hop at the moment: house and techno obviously (and *importantly* in a variety of totally different ways, which I reckon non-dance fans will perhaps fail to notice), but also increasing dub and reggae influences, which are never a bad thing in any genre.

Rap, like 2-step, strikes me as a style where separate songs can harbour an amazingly broad range of influences and stylistic allusions, but because in both the rhythmic matrix is so automatically identifiable and interesting itself, the inventiveness of the music is overlooked or undervalued as being de rigeur. However I think the expectation that a scene be either 99% amazing or clearly unworthy is the largest flaw in something like Reynolds' theory of "vibe migration".

In Review (media items want to be) has some of my thoughts on the single: here< /A>.

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 26 February 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Great article apart from the implication that your interest in street rap increases or declines depending on whether or not you're living in a city - if that's true, how would I have become interested in it at the same time as becoming interested in Common Ground (when, a year ago, I despised street rap and would have sneered at CG)?

Apart from that, superb writing from Tom.