Is it possible that fake reggaeton and dancehall are better than real reggaeton and dancehall?

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I think it might be. Lisa M was definitely way better than El General, who was doing reggaeton before reggaeton had a name. Yolanda Perez is better than Daddy Yankee, Tego Calderon, and Ivy Queen (all of whom are pretty good) combined. And M.I.A. is better than just about everybody who came out of Jamaica since "Under Me Sleng Teng" if not "Uptown Top Ranking", as were Midi Maxi and Efti. Obviously I may well have my categories confused; I mean, what the hell, they're confusing categories, you know? But in general I would say that the real stuff's insistence on sounding really tough and macho and stuff, as often as not (i.e. on maybe three-quarters of Daddy Yankee's most recent album, for instance) kinda bogs it down. At least compared to the fake stuff (if not necessarily compared to anything else - I haven't decided yet. I do like the real stuff a lot, don't get me wrong. And there is obviously tons of stuff that I have never heard, and probably never will, much of which some people on this board are experts about. So if I'm wrong, I wanna know. But I don't think I am.)

― chuck, Monday, 31 January 2005 23:53 (twenty years ago)

is this gonna be the intro to the next Eddytor's Dozen, Chuck?

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Monday, 31 January 2005 23:57 (twenty years ago)

Nah, not the next one. I've been way too much on a psychedelic drone kick lately. But I might use it five months from now, who knows...

― chuck, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 00:00 (twenty years ago)

Reggaeton sounds so cute when it's trying to be tough, but maybe that's just because I've never been beaten up by a Puerto Rican gang. (Not that I've been beaten up by any other type of gang either.)

chuck, I'm tempted to say, "But you always say that [that the fake version is better than the real version of anything]" but I'm afraid you'll give me ten thousand examples of times when you haven't take that position. I really haven't heard enough of it to know. I still don't like it that much, but it's okay.

― RS £aRue (rockist_scientist), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 00:12 (twenty years ago)

>But you always say that [that the fake version is better than the real version of anything]"<

Yeah, actually, that totally occurred to me - That maybe it's just me. (Which is why I want to get other people's opinions on this -- people who know way more about reggaeton and dancehall than I do.) (On the other hand, I could give you a thousand examples of times etc etc etc.)

― chuck, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 00:15 (twenty years ago)

Hmm well I don't like MIA nearly as much as a lot of the dancehall I've heard, but comparing an entire genre to a single artist doesn't really count does it? I donno I'd still rather hear Vybz Kartel than MIA and I like MIA ok.

― djdee2005 (djdee2005), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 00:49 (twenty years ago)

I'll have to think about how to appropriately verbalize why I feel this way, though.

― djdee2005 (djdee2005), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 00:50 (twenty years ago)

I don't think any MIA song reaches me the way Tanya Stephens' "Can't Breathe" does - the hook for that song is like "In Those Jeans" by Ginuwine to me, in that it's so sublime that repetition only inhances its charms.

― djdee2005 (djdee2005), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 00:52 (twenty years ago)

what makes it fake again? That they're not from jamaica/da' p.r.?

― ben welsh (benwelsh), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 01:00 (twenty years ago)

Did y'all see M.I.A.'s excursion on her playlist:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/arts/music/30play.html
or if that don't work, just go to the homepage and click on arts 'til you see the hed: Reggae Riddims and the Sound of London Grit

― don, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 01:02 (twenty years ago)

I am just waiting for Dave Stelfox to put up. This thread could get very amusing then.

The idea that M.I.A. is better than ANYTHING that has come out of Jamaica since "Under Mi Sleng Teng" is pretty absurb though, but I love dancehall a lot.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 04:58 (twenty years ago)

I am just waiting for Dave Stelfox to put up. This thread could get very amusing then.

hahaha thats exactly what I was thinking.

― djdee2005 (djdee2005), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 06:00 (twenty years ago)

yeah i love mia and nina sky and pitbull like crazy and am weirdly hopeful that next year we'll get another charttopping amerivariation of some 2004 riddim but i can pretend theres any consistency in my preferences - "move your body"'s on any 2004 besto' of mine but it's below "hot like we", and at the same time the lumidee's my fave diwali so yeah. i am really looking forward to this year's american charttopper version of 2004 riddim but not in the sense of 'it'll be better' or 'they'll get it right', just as another option/version which is probably my third reason for liking dancehall in the first place. do many people (outside jamaica at least) really differ between the two that much? radio doesn't so much, i know my little sister and her friends don't really - xpost: o yeah! stelfox! he probably does.

― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 06:03 (twenty years ago)

i can't pretend rather

― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 06:03 (twenty years ago)

chuck do you like bubblecrunk more than, um, real crunk?

― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 06:04 (twenty years ago)

Chuck do you like I Can't Believe It's Not Butter more than butter?

― djdee2005 (djdee2005), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 06:07 (twenty years ago)

Isn't all the popular dancehall (the stuff we talk about most here) to some extent "fake" dancehall? It's all so hopelessly impure, and that's a huge part of the attraction eg. T.O.K.'s "Sex On My Mind" sounding like an R&B boyband doing the Charlston.

Blount's paragraph upthread is OTM. I think the point is that it's not just a case of a white hot genre core which then cools down as you get further out/watered down/diluted by other genres (this even if you accept the idea that a genre even has a real center - eg. I'd hesitate to say that Ivy Queen's hardness is somehow "authentic" when it's probably partly a Lil Kim thing). "Move Ya Body" is great, but I think it's a mistake to try and construct a heirarchy of genre attributes to explain why; better to think of it as a nodal point, a meeting place of different flows of intensity whose value lies in the uniqueness of all these intersecting moments (eg. the different currents) and what they do to eachother. But then you have to step back and see that this is happening in all the "real" genre music as well.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 14:22 (twenty years ago)

I don't think any MIA song reaches me the way Tanya Stephens' "Can't Breathe" does

Yeah but don't you think that that song and that album are kind of fake dancehall anyway? (Yes I know she's "really" from Jamaica, but she also has interned doing pop in Germany.) (And the album was in my top 5 for 2004, so you KNOW I'm a fan.)

― The Obligatory Sourpuss (Begs2Differ), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 14:58 (twenty years ago)

I'm not sure I necessarily believe this, but just to throw it out there, is it possible that "real" dancehall, being real, gets put out regardless of merit, whereas fake dancehall has to sort of justify its fakeness with quality and therefore we're only exposed to the cream of the crop?

― Eppy (Eppy), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 15:59 (twenty years ago)

You just hurt my head.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 16:01 (twenty years ago)

no it's not possible at all.

― stelfox, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 16:11 (twenty years ago)

actually, that's bullshit. it is possible, at least in the sense that *anything* is possible. however, that's a pretty facile line of reasoning so i'm standing by the assertion that it generally isn't. i can only really think of one example where the "fake" versh has been better than anything offered up by the root scene and that's mover yr body on the coolie dance, which i loved (for the record, i liked lumidee well enough, too.
this statement is pretty crazy to me

And M.I.A. is better than just about everybody who came out of Jamaica since "Under Me Sleng Teng"

considering that sleng teng was the 1st digital dancehall rhythm and all that. MIA, in the space of just a few singles, renders more than two decades of *hugely* prolific JA production meaningless? come on chuck, please...
this one is pretty wrong, too

the real stuff's insistence on sounding really tough and macho and stuff, as often as not (i.e. on maybe three-quarters of Daddy Yankee's most recent album, for instance) kinda bogs it down.

some of the most innovative and sonically arresting dancehall tracks are often its most morally retrograde ones and i can also point to a vast amount of examples of artists better known for their shooting and fucking tracks turning out really touching, heartfelt stuff, too.
but hell, i'm not giving too much away for free any more. if anyone wants my opinions they can pay me to write them.

― stelfox, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 16:25 (twenty years ago)

dancehall really can do what it wants. if gentleman can be seen as real dancehall, then does anyone mind telling me what is fake? and it was sweden, not germany.

― stelfox, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 16:29 (twenty years ago)

three weeks pass...

revive.

did no one argue with me because i was the only one talking any sense here, or were you all on vacation?

― stelfox, Tuesday, 22 February 2005 11:50 (twenty years ago)

i'm not sure - you're talking sense but i'm not sure who here's really not talking sense other than maybe chuck but he never really goes into detail about which real dancehall tracks are worse than which fake dancehall tracks and why. it's interesting that (in the states at least) fake dancehall has hardly trumped real dancehall in terms of airplay or hits, nowhere near as much as say bubblecrunk vs. real crunk. it'd be interesting to see what chuck thinks of the new will smith, which is, um, real fake dancehall meaning while all them other fake dancehall hits use real riddims (one reason it's a bit absurd to me to blanket prefer the fake to the real since sonically there's gee quite a bit in common) will smith comes up with his own halfassed variation on diwali.

― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, 22 February 2005 14:59 (twenty years ago)

eh i think everyone was confused by chuck.

― djdee2005 (djdee2005), Tuesday, 22 February 2005 15:06 (twenty years ago)

four years pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMq5dLOjl5A

― hey trader joe's! i've got the new steely dan. (Jordan), Wednesday, 30 December 2009 20:35 (fifteen years ago)

brbrbrbrbr grim reapaaahhh

― THE DESHARTED directed by Fartin Gocrasy (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, 30 December 2009 22:11 (fifteen years ago)

lol whiney

― art crut (The Reverend), Wednesday, 30 December 2009 22:24 (fifteen years ago)

Real; feels fake; made my Pazz & Jop singles list this year; still not as good as "Bad Bad Boys" by Midi Maxi and Efti though:

http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=1712

― xhuxk, Wednesday, 30 December 2009 23:13 (fifteen years ago)

love the bonham fill in this song

― hey trader joe's! i've got the new steely dan. (Jordan), Wednesday, 30 December 2009 23:34 (fifteen years ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT5c5zB7dEM

― hey trader joe's! i've got the new steely dan. (Jordan), Wednesday, 30 December 2009 23:37 (fifteen years ago)

love the bonham fill in this song
Maybe they went over to the Polar Studios vault and got an outtake.

― the embed's too big without you (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 31 December 2009 13:15 (fifteen years ago)

This song has been stuck in my head all day.

― the embed's too big without you (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 31 December 2009 18:17 (fifteen years ago)

Maybe they went over to the Polar Studios vault and got an outtake.

good connect, i had no idea led zep recorded in sweden

― hey trader joe's! i've got the new steely dan. (Jordan), Thursday, 31 December 2009 18:55 (fifteen years ago)

Beavis and Butthead should be part of the singles jukebox. Great find Jordan.

― curmudgeon, Thursday, 31 December 2009 19:06 (fifteen years ago)

^^^I would totally be down with this

― art crut (The Reverend), Thursday, 31 December 2009 19:35 (fifteen years ago)

three years pass...

http://wayneandwax.com/?p=7658

― curmudgeon, Thursday, 17 October 2013 18:32 (twelve years ago)

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