N*E*R*D* :: Lapdance

Yeah, them Neptunes boys bite from themselves a couple times on the NERD album, which kind of kills it for me.

"After putting their signature on so many other artists' records, The Neptunes sound like they're jumping their own bandwagon."

I think that sums up my views on the record. It's still a good album, however.

http://www.o-h-j.com/musicreviews/nerd-in_search_of.html

Whut? Speak for yourself! Furthermore, I disagree with just about every parapgraph. Plus I prefer the original version of the album...

I don't know if it's right for me to defend my reviewers claim here, but whatever. But for a younger generation that Gavin and I belong to I think it was the Lauryn Hill record that helped make legitimate hip hop as art form in white people's eyes. When was the first time you found a hip hop record creeping up into a large majority of critics favorites records at the end of the years? I'm betting it's Lauryn Hill. As much as you want to say when it become a legitimate art form in your eyes here, I think what Gavin was trying to get at was the mainstream public's eyes, through the guidance of stodgy old rock critics.

I'm probably way off here, but I hope to at least initiate some discussion about this.

Fair enough, but fuck 'em. Why even bring them up as a comparison point when it's more to the point just to talk about the record as such?

I really don't think the mainstream is guided by stodgy old rock critics -- or any form of professional critic, for that matter.

Rap music made by black people has appealed to large groups of white people prior to L. Hill. See Run DMC, LL Cool J, De La Soul, and -- as much as it pains me to say this, as it's more in the name of novelty -- Young MC, MC Hammer, and Tone Loc. Perhaps not to superdupermultiplatinum degrees with the non-novelty types, but the appeal has been there for quite some time.

but i do see a lot larger portion of those women buy lauryn hill's record.

maybe this discussion belies a bit of a generation gap between us. i'm a newfangled youngster, i spose.

but i do see a lot larger portion of those women buy lauryn hill's record.

I might be going out on a limb here, but I would wager that 90% of the 40-year-old women who would buy Public Enemy already bought it back when they were in their late 20s, so you wouldn't have had an opportunity to see them buy it. And anyway, focusing on PE sidesteps the whole MC Hammer/Fresh Prince/Vanilla Ice axis of pop-friendly hip-hop from the late 80s/early 90s.

Laugh if you want to, Mr. Raggett, but "Pumps And A Bump" is a deeply underrated single.

You know, there's a question -- whatever happened to Arrested Development (more accurately the people in the band after it broke up), and is the reason why they didn't last anything to do with the fact that they were from the South but not the Dirty South, as it were?