greg tate on bob dylan in village voice

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http://www.villagevoice.com/pazzandjop06/0706,tate,75740,22.html

― kieran reynolds (kieran reynolds), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:04 (eighteen years ago)

Point being, in the same way I think Cate Blanchett (soon to be seen playing Dylan) would be the perfect big-screen Miles Davis (CGI-blackface willing) because she's that gangsta-mack with her craft

*backs away slowly*

― vita susicivus (blueski), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:09 (eighteen years ago)

Wow. I'm sure there's someone better qualified than me to say this but: Does anyone else find the suggestion that Cate Blanchett should play Miles Davis in blackface, and that Bob Dylan can teach Jay-Z about his own craft slightly... I don't know... disturbing?

― Mordechai Shinefield (Mordy), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:09 (eighteen years ago)

i dont think greg tate would advocate blackface

― kieran reynolds (kieran reynolds), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:10 (eighteen years ago)

i like the idea of bob dylan helping jay-z with some new ideas interesting though

― kieran reynolds (kieran reynolds), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:11 (eighteen years ago)

I think this Mr. Tate was in... uhhh.. an "altered" state when he wrote that.

― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:20 (eighteen years ago)

arent all his pieces in 'altered state'. i dont know what the fuck hes on about half the time.

― kieran reynolds (kieran reynolds), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:23 (eighteen years ago)

That Cate Blanchett thing makes little to no sense, but the rest of this article is pretty clear, I think (even if I don't necessarily agree with the premise of it.)

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:28 (eighteen years ago)

What's not to understand about the Cate Blanchett comparison? Tate is taking the Dylan/hiphop comparison to the next phase because she's that gangsta-mack with her craft like Dylan writing in Chronicle "Soutine was the Jimmy Reed of the art world."

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:39 (eighteen years ago)

The idea that Cate Blanchett is gangsta-mack with her craft is the part I'm having trouble with, but different strokes for different folks I guess.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:40 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.gonemovies.com/WWW/WanadooFilms/ScienceFiction/LordOfTheRingsGaladriel2.jpg

― roger goodell (gear), Wednesday, 7 February 2007 23:43 (eighteen years ago)

Because as we watch Nas and Jay-Z try to figure out how you sustain a pure artist's stance in today's asscrackbootyslap iPod-disposable hiphop...

doesn't anyone have a killfile i could somehow attach to my eyes?

― the original hauntology blogging crew (Enrique), Thursday, 8 February 2007 14:00 (eighteen years ago)

if you deleted jay-z from that sentence i wouldnt have a problem with it.

greg does slightly overdo the hepcat amiri-baraka-bukowski-bangs-dr funkenstein writing style at times though....

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Thursday, 8 February 2007 14:03 (eighteen years ago)

this is what i'm talking about.

― the original hauntology blogging crew (Enrique), Thursday, 8 February 2007 14:04 (eighteen years ago)

where's that worst music writing of 07 thread?

― antidote against poisoning (lex pretend), Thursday, 8 February 2007 14:05 (eighteen years ago)

Haha, Blanchett was already wearing CGI blackface in that stupid scene in LotR.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 8 February 2007 14:05 (eighteen years ago)

Whoops, Gear already posted that.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 8 February 2007 14:08 (eighteen years ago)

The only real issue with this piece is that it doesn't have that much of a point -- I think he slips into heavy Tate style mostly because the whole thing's just a blurt of praise, not so much an argument. His reviews are fantastic, though, and he's terrific at making pointed and convincing arguments about what music has to do with culture. (I really enjoyed the Everything But the Burden book he edited, too, especially this one woman's unexpected turnaround essay about fetishizing Asian culture -- the whole thing's about white appropriation of black culture, and then suddenly she's offered up this really modest personal essay about the same thing pointing in other directions, too.)

Anyway I'm borderline bothered by the "altered state" comment, since Tate's style tends to be really precise, considered, and clearly style, not "altered state" key-banging. (I'd be more offended if I thought everyone here knew who Tate was; as it is, ILM spends more and more time picking on pieces of writing without any lick of context about writer or audience, so it seems less important.) And I'm not sure how much anyone can jump on the "asscrackbootyslap" line without doing some serious work to back it up, because one of the great things about Tate is that he's able to get at the stuff he doesn't like about hip-hop from within a framework of really loving and caring about hip-hop -- not just by liking "conscious" groups and ragging on the charts, either, but by taking it all seriously as a populist art form and making keen distinctions about what's praiseworthy and what's not.

He's one of very few writers I've seen outside of the specific hip-hop press who have that level of engagement, like beyond consider-everything analytical criticism, beyond "well hip-hop is supposed to be fun" boosterism -- he really believes in it as a potent and important art form, and does great things with judging it that way. (It kinda means he can't write about that many different things, cause that mode of analysis isn't going to tell you much about run-of-the-mill weekly releases, especially of the asscrackbootyslap variety -- but when I see he has something in the Voice, I'm always keen to read it.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 8 February 2007 17:37 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah Tate is one of the guys (for better or worse) who I'll read no matter what he's writing about, but this essay isn't one of his best by any means. I'd love to read an interesting essay in praise of Dylan, but this seems to fall back too hard on the "Dylan-aging-gracefully/Dylan-great-lyricist" stuff which I feel like I've read six zillion times.

― max (maxreax), Thursday, 8 February 2007 17:58 (eighteen years ago)

Great great essay, especially this closing paragraph, very very OTM about Dylan's last few records.

Point being, you go see Rolling Stones, P-Funk, EWF, Lou Reed, Bowie, Chaka, or whoever because you want to be reminded how good the good old days really were, and because, let's be real, you want to check in and see how the staunch gray guardians of your dusty glory are holding up. But, and this is the crucial difference, when you put that new Dylan on it's to hear what he's up for today.

― Mr. Que (Mr.Que), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:05 (eighteen years ago)

xpost

And the way he styles his voice gets in the way a lot more when it's not in the service of some interesting argument (e.g., Mobb Deep went soft, the Jamie Foxx album is great, etc.). I think they might have him writing too many obituaries lately!

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:07 (eighteen years ago)

i like greg tate a lot. hes one of my favourite music writers. shame he isnt better known. i still think he could mayeb sometimes do with a bit of 'discipline' in his writing (he is a bit meandering, even rickey vincent admits that!), but thats just his style, im used to it. and i loved his hip hop turning 30 piece in the VV, which i know a lot of people hated, and got all defensive about, as if greg was being a self righteous bore to suggest hip hop should be anything more than asscrackbootyslap.

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:11 (eighteen years ago)

making keen distinctions about what's praiseworthy and what's not.

still doesn't explain why he voted for the Massacre in PnJ last year

― deej.. (deej..), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:13 (eighteen years ago)

his taste seems to have gotten worse year by year. one year he voted eves evolution in his top ten albums.

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:16 (eighteen years ago)

I think lots of people get caught up in evaluating the content of hip-hop based on whether it's "acceptable" or "right" or something -- is a song misogynistic, homophobic, does it glorify violence, etc. Whereas I get the sense that what Tate's really looking for is just that it's not dead, like morally or aesthetically. That's more obvious in the case of the asscrackbootyslap -- his problem is less that it's inappropriate or degrading toward women, it's that it cruises toward becoming rote and mindless and soul-deadening. So yeah, I think people are often mistaking him for being moralistic (and sometimes he is legitimately moralistic, which is a fine thing) even when the thing he's calling for is just for rappers to be aesethically/morally serious, to talk in a way that's meaningful and challenging.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:21 (eighteen years ago)

yeah, true enough. his love of mobb deep and 50 would make it pretty clear hes not a puritan.

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:29 (eighteen years ago)

i think my statement still stands

― deej.. (deej..), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:32 (eighteen years ago)

maybe he just REALLY liked ski mask way

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:33 (eighteen years ago)

It is hands-down the most diabolically sensous collection of baby-making gangsta music since Pac's All Eyez.

― deej.. (deej..), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:38 (eighteen years ago)

well he does have more than the occasional WTF moment, like when i think he liked the last jamie foxx album.

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:39 (eighteen years ago)

Tate will take you to the Candy Shop

the review is actually really good when he's not talking about the music (which is at least half of it)
http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0511,tate1,62025,22.html

― deej.. (deej..), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:40 (eighteen years ago)

its funny because the last paragraph seems to totally imply he had feigned interest in the album to begin with and couldn't bother pretending to care about it by the end.

― deej.. (deej..), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:41 (eighteen years ago)

i dont think he should really review hip hop albums anymore. stick to the topical essays about hip hop instead. i still like his other pieces though, like about luther for example.

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:42 (eighteen years ago)

i think he views hiphop from a really weird perspective -perhaps its shared by most folks reading village voice tho.

― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:55 (eighteen years ago)

i doubt that

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Thursday, 8 February 2007 18:56 (eighteen years ago)

yeah the whole Massacre thing kinda underlines why I've developed kind of a distaste for Tate's stuff; I haven't seen his older stuff, so all I know is that he only seems to come down the mountain to review a new rap album if it's some big budget Interscope thing, usually well after the topic's been pretty exhausted by other writers/outlets that cover a wider scope of hip hop. plus I tend to be turned off by hyper-stylized rap crit that tries to speak in the same slang as the lyrics, but i'll tolerate more from an older dude like him that i can give the benefit of the doubt for having a more historical perspective.

― Alex in Baltimore (Alex in Baltimore), Thursday, 8 February 2007 19:07 (eighteen years ago)

his taste seems to have gotten worse year by year. one year he voted eves evolution in his top ten albums.

That's actually one of the finest rap albums of the last five years.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 8 February 2007 19:08 (eighteen years ago)

"That's actually one of the finest rap albums of the last five years."

ok.

― titchyschneider (titchyschneider), Thursday, 8 February 2007 19:13 (eighteen years ago)

Tate's style + slang point back to way before rap, I think: the Amiri Baraka reference way upthread seems way more appropriate to me. If anyone's rapping in that style today, I will happily send you $ for MP3.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 8 February 2007 19:50 (eighteen years ago)

well yeah, in general you're right. but while you probably won't hear anyone say "gangsta-mack" or "catch wreck" on any recent mixtapes, they're not exactly pre-hip hop phrases, either.

― Alex in Baltimore (Alex in Baltimore), Thursday, 8 February 2007 20:05 (eighteen years ago)

plus I tend to be turned off by hyper-stylized rap crit that tries to speak in the same slang as the lyrics, but i'll tolerate more from an older dude like him that i can give the benefit of the doubt for having a more historical perspective.

The problem with this statement is that Greg isn't really "trying to speak in the same slang as the lyrics" at all, as nabisco points out. That's his actual voice, his real personality, it isn't a put on or an act. Criticize Tom Breihan for co-opting slang, not Greg Tate. Give me a break.

― Hatch (Hatch), Thursday, 8 February 2007 20:30 (eighteen years ago)

Another vote for the Asian-fetishizing essay in Burden that Nabisco mentions, easily my favorite thing in the book. (Second: Tate and Vernon Reid's dialogue about Steely Dan.)

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Thursday, 8 February 2007 20:38 (eighteen years ago)

ugh, sorry I mentioned it, admittedly Tate isn't as guilty of this as a lot of people and is kind of a fringe variation on a larger trend that I was referring to, but I also don't think I'm totally wrong there. either way, forget I said anything, no need to pile on about it.

― Alex in Baltimore (Alex in Baltimore), Thursday, 8 February 2007 20:43 (eighteen years ago)

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