Criminal Criticism: the Best of the Worst, 2009

Here's a contender. Ok, it's not that awful, it's just college-fare. But still.
http://www.wirelessbollinger.com/content/view/1951/75/

how can someone so clueless have the confidence to wade in and write about something? or is it confidence?

yeah definitely not awful...just, from another planet!

Nice site logo, though.

Many people justifiably accuse the indie community of ‘rockism’ – that is, the favouring of albums prominently featuring guitars, bass, and drums.

sigh

Unfortunately for Circlesquare, Songs about Dancing and Drugs does not fare well in this context of raised standards.

he means raised expectations, right?

In Songs, Circlesquare has produced an inoffensive album whose target audience would most likely consist of opium den dwellers.

^the target audience is 70+ yr old cambodian men?

http://images.contentreserve.com/ImageType-100/1384-1/%7B05DD0014-7624-4A1E-93B5-EAC0006C9A6B%7DImg100.jpg

fish in barrel, it's true, but I still weep for the worldwide editing shortage that's been going around

I must admit to being perplexed that he gives the album a bad review for not being a dance club album, when the artist says that it isn't for dancing and the reviewer says that it sounds quite good when listened to in the intended manner. That's like me giving a Depeche Mode album a bad review because I couldn't head bang to it.

It is also the song on the album that most eschews the trappings of electronica and comes the closest to embodying a genuine groove a la The Beta Band.

i seriously don't even know where to begin with this sentence

title: Animal Collective: Overrated
2nd paragraph: I've heard most of the new album, and yeah, it's good. But not that good. Not Radiohead good, not Arcade Fire good, not TV on the Radio good. Ever since 2004's Sung Tongs people have been hyping this band, and the buzz around Merriweather Post Pavilion -- even if it is their best yet -- feels like the obligatory cluster-fuck before the inevitable hipster backlash (you knew about them first, did you?).

-- this (from local alt weekly) just struck me as written by someone devoid of a personality or original insight, but merely parroting the hierarchy of hype, while complaining about the same hype sources.

"the buzz around this album just sounds like buzz."

Fish in a barrel, indeed, which leaves me disinclined to unpack/attack in any great detail. But J3ff, exactly, what blew my mind was his unwillingness to let go of the fact that, despite the title, there was no dance-music to be had here. Good lord, don't let this guy ever get a hold of Plastikman's "Sheet One"... He'd probably wind up in the hospital with an entire CD insert and scattered bits of jewel case in his stomach, sober and full of righteous rage!

In all my years of consuming and appreciating pop music -- fancying myself as a mini-female version of Rob Gordon -- I have realized a number of things. But I want to focus specifically on an epiphany I had lately, listening to a certain increasingly popular single.

The realization is this: A bad pop song is like a one-night stand. It seems an innocuous, even great idea after you've been dancing and drinking heavily, but you wake up sober, revisit it as your head pounds and suddenly you realize you made a horrible, horrible mistake that you will regret for the rest of my relationship.

The song that forced this realization was a little ditty by Beyonce Knowles, aka Foxxy Cleopatra, aka Sasha Fierce. The song is called "Diva" and, though it might sound good while hammered at Tonic, it is completely devoid of any musical merit whatsoever. It has neither the charm and catchiness of "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)," nor the showcase of Beyonce's incredible vocal range as in "If I Were A Boy." No, this song falls flat all around with a half-hearted beat, monotone vocals and Knowles' repeated mantra, "A diva is a female version of a hustla, of a of a hustla."

The phrase itself is a bit nonsensical, a madlib of hip-hop buzzwords thrown together to make a hook. But what does it all even mean? And if what Beyonce says is true, is there a way to prove this? If we are given the postulate that line segment Beyonce is congruent to line segment Diva, can we prove by the transitive property that a diva is, in fact, a female version of a hustla?

The whole thing got me thinking about what sort of cultural legacy the artists of this generation will leave. Will our children and grandchildren know the genius of innovators like Radiohead or Animal Collective or Talib Kweli or will they be left with tracks like "Diva," cringing as we switch to the "classic pop and R&B" station while driving them to soccer practice? Will we be able to defend ourselves when they ask us how we managed to listen to this crap when we were young?

Some generations get lucky. Our grandparents got jazz and brilliant songwriters like George Gershwin. With the '60s and '70s came rock at perhaps its peak and the advent of punk, courtesy of The Clash and Iggy Pop.

It's the thought of ending up like the 1980s that concerns me. While there's plenty of quality jams from the era (Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper), the '80s tends to lend itself more to MC Hammer and one-hit wonders like "Tainted Love." But the larger legacy of '80s pop music, even the good stuff like The Smiths, reeks of self-indulgence and excess, still seen in the remains of the artists today. In the '80s, Public Enemy were a revolutionary, earth-shattering hip-hop group. In 2009, most fans' collective knowledge of Public Enemy likely stops at Flavor Flav and his reality TV antics. With Flav, the legacy loses its meaning.

But more and more artists -- the good ones -- are beginning to find new ways to ensure their legacy for future generations. The Flaming Lips sealed theirs when "Do You Realize??" became Oklahoma's official state rock song last week. But they couldn't have done it without the support of their fans, who voted in droves. So let this be a reminder that even as times are tough, support the artists that show off the best qualities of our generation, be they hip-hop, R&B, rock or Norwegian black metal, so our kids don't end up having the same unanswered questions about the relationship between "diva" and "a female version of a hustla."

idk i could find something worse by throwing a dart at any daily, weekly, or monthly publication in salt lake city.

it's a pretty generic lol college piece but still

ok i just read the whole thing, takes a pretty bad dive after line segments

THE GENIUS OF INNOVATORS LIKE TALIB KWELI makes me want to drop out of college

what in the world

the flaming lips are phish for people who look down on phish

i just

i hate college students - im like whiney with quads standing in for the market hotel

While there's plenty of quality jams from the era (Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper), the '80s tends to lend itself more to MC Hammer and one-hit wonders like "Tainted Love."

"U Can't Touch This" was 1990. :/

I love how the pronouns magically change from second to first person at the end of this part:

you wake up sober, revisit it as your head pounds and suddenly you realize you made a horrible, horrible mistake that you will regret for the rest of my relationship.

i kind of feel bad for posting this cuz this girl means 100% well irl but this piece represents so many awful things about 18-24 year olds who are "into music"

be thankful 4 what u got, i went to a cult university, creepy so many ways.. though i guess i was more likely to hear handel's messiah coming from someone's dorm room than ___, or contemporary christian music, which could have been interesting if i was more interesting then. probably not tho

like to hear someone justify their tastes on the basis of "uplifting lyrics" could be more interesting if more o_O than someone going for the "real, enduring" angle

maybe i just love music that is self-indulgent and excessive - not to mention that IT WAS BETTER BACK THEN STANDARD 'the white album' is as self-indulgent and excessive as anything in the history of music. which doesn't effect it negatively but to blindly say those two things are bad things in music is wrong

also i don't understand the point about PE at all

"But more and more artists -- the good ones -- are beginning to find new ways to ensure their legacy for future generations. The Flaming Lips sealed theirs when "Do You Realize??" became Oklahoma's official state rock song last week."

Such a "drummer for gay dad" moment.

idk, hate to sound mean, but she probably did have a bad one night stand and the whole piece is just her pulling stuff out of her ass, so to speak, in order to express how she feels about it

maybe i just love music that is self-indulgent and excessive

http://api.ning.com/files/9m0H35Rn9nJmVSCq*U9a2GuY1D1ELnmluMGKCKpBu-BA12GGsPfe6k9qeA*iaJFhOvL4HA6E-DMRFh7RRm4EFdatJ4uiXWfz/lil_boosie.jpg

http://i37.tinypic.com/fcim38.jpg

haha if I'd gone to college this would be totally the kind of awful crap I'd have written

i wrote this kind of awful crap for about two years in college, then i found ilm, and wrote an entirely different kind of crap after taht

word

my favourite bit of 'diva' is "when he pull up, wanna pop my hood up, bet he better have a 6 pack in the cooler". always pop my own hood up on that line, if wearing one

i always buy a 6 pack

Surely hood in that case is referring to her car?

he - he's pouring beer into her petrol tank?

tbh the one nite stand parallel isnt as bad as i thought at first -- its not about generic hating-on-'pop' its about a certain kind of dance music that sounds better when yr drunk & doesnt give much of a memorable or emotional attachment ... i think thats legit - i mean she's comparing 'diva' to 'single ladies' in that paragraph

/captain save a

matt p
i may review the new sonic youth album for SL city weekly and start reviewing for SLUG mag - loook out its gonna get even worse

i dunno, i find this review to be pretty shity. esp.; this passage ~

much of the record bears a striking resemblance to hardcore club music. It uses downbeat-heavy tracked percussion. The bandleader calls and responds to a wheezing synth. Aside from that, there ain’t much else going down except frenetic rhythms and emphatic chanting.

he/she obv knows nothing baot dabke

I had thought Minchin was the highlight. I saluted his brilliance while hating him for his genius. But then she came. The Dark Angel. Camille. Chanteuse.
Sweet, subtle, savage, sexual Camille. Dazzling, unobtainable Camille.
She materialized at the end of what I had thought of in my schedule as Ladies night, which had begun hours earlier in the refined confines of the Baptist Tabernacle, with the women of the Erocia trio, who did things to chamber music I didn’t think possible.
It led me through Darryn Harkness’s fittingly haunting live solo soundscape that accompanied the screening of Nosferatu, and while he wasn’t a woman, Ellen, the films forlorn female lead, who willingly makes the supreme sacrifice, certainly was.
But then, Camille.
She epitomised one of the best things about a festival, which is to create a self-satisfied divide between those who managed to be a part of the select group who are lucky enough to have witnessed those few, ephemeral moments of a performance so jaw-droppingly good, and those who haven’t.
We were the lucky few of the festival, a smug band of brothers, (including of course, our lady-brothers) who experienced her power.
We laughed, we cried, we clapped, we stood, and we clapped some more. She made us feel privileged. And we were. I fear I will not see her likes again. Magnifique.
And really, if you asked me what she did, I would smile, and simply say that all she did was sing cover songs.

he/she obv knows nothing baot dabke

Neither do I so this is sort of lost on me - is the passage quoted inaccurate in its comparison points or is it just that it betrays a lack of intimacy with the genre?

I will be impressed if this brilliant piece on the Darjeeling Three can be beat:

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2009-05-06/music/darjeeling-three-takes-the-road-most-traveled/1

Get a few mojitos into Lincecum, and he'll serve up a slice of what he dubs his "forbidden mind fruit"—that deep down, his passion is ska music. "But ska doesn't sell," reasons Lincecum. "So that's not a path Darjeeling Three is heading down."

...a surprise acoustic set from Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields.
"I walked up to him after the show, and knowing what I've read about his prickly personality, really didn't expect to vibe with him," says Lincecum. "But he was totally down to earth. We drank chartreuse together for hours. Maybe he thought I was cute or something, but I just thought he was cool. Plus he put '69' in one of his album titles, which is totally on our level."

I am going to swing blindly, several thousand miles away from Seattle, and say that this is a well-written satirical article about a made-up band

Considering Google searches turn up nothing beyond the article itself...

"forbidden mind fruit" is totally on my level

Ya, plus the guy wrote an article about spinal tap not too much earlier. Still, it's funny and it looks like it was published in the actual music pages.

note the band opening for them is dubbed "Orifice"

I learned about the urban experience by listening to Versus

Still, the days of hip-hop as a "dispatch from the ghetto" are over; no one is learning anything new about the urban experience by listening to Soulja Boy or Young Jeezy.

I mean, even rappers from other states and schoolteachers banning snowman shirts started talking about Atlanta trapping, so someone must have learned something somewhere

Honestly/seriously: I think hip-hop has already done a disproportionate amount of work in terms of people learning about black urban life through its particular lenses, and would kinda be all in favor of its ceasing to occupy that role and people perhaps learning something new about "the urban experience" through a different lens for once

broadway musicals!

Such as ? New Yorker articles, Tyler Perry movies, BET?

^ That's true, I have never heard a rap record about Dominicans singing and dancing and learning a little something about life and love, which when I lived uptown seemed like a pretty significant part of the urban experience

And I heard In the Heights is actually quite good

Curmudgeon quite obviously I believe suburban teenagers should learn about city life through careful study of Urban League reports

I was being sarcastic...

maybe Dominicans uptown are singing and rapping in Spanish unlike most of that Broadway show which I have heard is quite good as well

I'm sure there's great hip-hop styled music by and about Dominicans and everything -- I'm just not usually up this early and am having a hard time being serious. I am kind of serious, though, in terms of part of me responding to that statement by wondering how necessary or great it is for hip-hop to keep some "dispatch from the ghetto" status, when it seems to me that it can do just fine for itself as a kind of music loads of people enjoy a whole lot, and thus far it's been so disproportionally used as "information about black and/or ghetto life" that it's wound up having a slightly distorting effect on reality

Your question is a good one, though, curmudgeon, because it's not like people consume much else that's a window into certain communities

I understand your concerns about the disproportionate impact. I am just not sure how to replace it with something more realistic

twitter?

Obama

I mean, from coming the same point of Nabisco's "People should learn about urban life from things besides rap"... White magazine writers should realize that rap music has a lot more to offer than just rappers that document urban life

For instance, creative noises you can use to tell tricks that you're not particularly interested in their input.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm getting at -- like I don't know that "document ghetto life" really needs to be a main value of rap (or one that's always worked out super-great), so is it some great diminishing tragedy if that drops off a little? People who want to use hip-hop for the purpose still will; people who don't won't; hip-hop will do fine either way.

There could also be a special urban-focused director's cut of the So You Think You Can Dance audition round

I think the most important thing that rap can do is basically document how an individual sees the world, and if that's Ice Cube documenting the streets of South Central or Buck 65 talking about how he wishes the world was a fishin' hole, it's all good imo.

Jeezy talking about how he sees himself as a tortured drug-dealing antihero fighting his way out of the a recession is pretty interesting, but I doubt The Atlantic guys listened to the whole album.

I think the most important thing that rap can do is basically document how an individual sees the world
So rap is like Flickr?

you're writing lyrics for Chuck D.'s next comeback

i doubt the atlantic guy listened to a song

there's just a disconnect sometimes in the way that ppl who grew up on 80s and early 90s rap see the current state of rap - like one of the round table writers said that she liked the "put on" video for showing images of lower middle class struggle but that there was a disconnect between those images and the song, which for two verses is about jeezy being rich and having nice cars. but this person, and the one that i quoted above, don't realize that many people, including nearly all of jeezy's fans, don't see "put on" (to use just one example) as selfish self-boosterism, instead it's seen as boosterism of a culture, and it's seen as "jeezy got his money, i can get my money" and that's really important. in this sense "i put on for my city" as a chorus is pretty ham handed (it is jeezy of course) but that's exactly what he does, and people like to hear him talk about his exploits the way you would a son. and that goes for plenty of rap now, from soulja boy to jim jones on down. rap is still a very inspirational genre, and lots of 'critics' (though i'm not sure if these atlantic ppl are music critics) don't realize that.

here's the piece http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905u/hip-hop-roundtable

on the whole it's not horribly which is why i just posted that quote in here but i've summarized enough arguments that i should post it i think

In that article Hua Hsu writes,

While I was busy wishing hip-hop to be something positive or conscious or progressive or whatever, it grew into something completely different: the establishment.

I gather he's contrasting "positive or conscious or progressive" with "aspirational in a materialist way for one's self". This seems like a good point to me. Whatever it means to be progressive, it seems to me that being focused on getting yourself paid isn't it. Which isn't to say that I think artists should be performing progressive work: it's art, not politics. But it's not corny to dislike non-progressive art for its politics, either.

Which isn't to say that I think artists should be performing progressive work: it's art, not politics.

A sidepoint, but I think many people (myself included) believe that most art is intrinsically political.

I think the most important thing that rap can do is basically document how an individual sees the world
So rap is like Flickr?

― pshrbrn, Friday, May 22, 2009 12:31 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Rap is a like a good photograph and Mickey Factz is like Flickr

there's just a disconnect sometimes in the way that ppl who grew up on 80s and early 90s rap see the current state of rap

this is true -- i run into it a lot, because that's my peer group. and leaving aside all the people my age who somehow think hip-hop belongs to some younger generation (which drives me crazy because the whole first wave happened while we were in jr. high and high school), there are a lot of people who sort of think it began with run-dmc and ended with public enemy, or possibly tribe. especially among lefty-activist types, the idealization of p.e. and the native tongues groups can be really grating to me because it's overlooking that there was a lot of great, funny hip-hop of that era that wasn't remotely political (at least in the banner-waving sense).

really in terms of the criticism establishment, it goes back to everybody wetting themselves over "the message" -- which is great and all, but it's like hip-hop was only ever valid when it tallied neatly with (mostly white) liberal politics.

[I]t's like hip-hop was only ever valid when it tallied neatly with (mostly white) liberal politics.

What exactly do you mean by "valid"?

I'm of that generation but to me the dropoff didn't really happen until the early 00s or so when rap just became THE mainstream music force and pretty much everything interesting about it tended to evaporate - a stark divide between commercial "real" hip-hop and indie/backpacker "fake" hip hop came to the fore and really 99% of everything on both sides became terribly boring.

I dunno, I got 25 years of real love out of the genre and there's deep deep catalogs still to explore within that time period, I'm mostly just tired of it now - I don't give a shit about Young Jeezy or Lil Wayne but I don't really give a shit about MF Doom either. There's a handful of still-going guys from the 90s that I pay attention to, and occasionally someone new will have a novelty hit that I like or something (lolz My Lip Gloss) but that's about it

and all this has been hashed out endlessly on other hip hop threads already btw

yeah i know. the atlantic thing is just one more example of it.

(all that being said fwiw I think Alfred is correct when he says Ghostface has been the most consistently great album artist of the 00s of any genre)

there are a lot of people who sort of think it began with run-dmc and ended with public enemy, or possibly tribe. especially among lefty-activist types, the idealization of p.e. and the native tongues groups

I'm glad I don't know any of these people

I get the feeling sometimes that the folks who do a radio show on my local dc Pacifica public radio station believe that (and in case you're wondering, I think they're youngish and African-American). They do go for some Dilla-related stuff and other afro-bohemian backpackerish type stuff, but oh how they worship the Native Tongue groups.

hua hsu's last entry in that roundtable makes everyone else look pretty dumb i think

& in fact nabisco he pretty much says what yr saying here

i 'get' why ppl who peaked w/ public enemy in their rap listening might feel a certain way but it blows my mind that folks can think rap peaked w/ tribe just because they totally were not a political group at all -- it was basically just a bunch of 20 yr old kids rapping about the shit they knew. & no they werent g's, and they had a great ear for samples & hooks & were pretty nimble rappers, but its not like they were making in depth critiques of the state of the world, just inhabiting their own skins musically

I don't think hip-hop peaked with Tribe, but it may have peaked as a consistent "album art," for whatever that's worth. It's intriguing that Alfred apparently tapped Ghostface as the decade's most consistent album artist, and I think a case can really be made. But Ghost seems the exception rather than the rule. One of the last great hip-hop albums as such I've enjoyed substantively was Bubba Sparxxx's "Deliverance," but (as someone who grew up in the '80s) I must admit I've been wandering the wilderness more or less ever since. It's almost as if the older I get, the more of a youth movement it becomes. We're going in different directions.I guess I'm cool with that, because like Shakey I've got a lifetime of unqualified hip-hop enjoyment under my belt already.

It's intriguing that Alfred apparently tapped Ghostface as the decade's most consistent album artist, and I think a case can really be made.

I thought that was obvious. I've been saying for years that the only two artists who have been making consistently good albums worth getting exicited over since I've listened to them in high school are the Melvins and Ghostface

and that span is the last 11 years, so

there's just a disconnect sometimes in the way that ppl who grew up on 80s and early 90s rap see the current state of rap - like one of the round table writers said that she liked the "put on" video for showing images of lower middle class struggle but that there was a disconnect between those images and the song, which for two verses is about jeezy being rich and having nice cars. but this person, and the one that i quoted above, don't realize that many people, including nearly all of jeezy's fans, don't see "put on" (to use just one example) as selfish self-boosterism, instead it's seen as boosterism of a culture, and it's seen as "jeezy got his money, i can get my money" and that's really important.

Yeah the problem isn't that earlier rappers weren't materialistic braggarts, but that if you were raised on 80s and early 90s rap you might not be moved by hernia cases who declare themselves the new messiah over synth-pomp.

Wow, lookit what I missed.

Hsu's last bit:

But there's more to it than authenticity and protest. Sometimes that protest isn't literal—it's a protest of form (like Lil Wayne). Sometimes it's a strike against “community,” as with Wayne's unhinged, solitary “I Feel Like Dying” or DOOM's Born Like This.

I have to think about how Born Like This is a Strike Against Community. Is it because it's lyrically impenetrable?

I haven't studied the lyrics, but isn't DOOM a fugitive and a villain on Born Like This? There are moments where they are quarantining off streets to catch him, where he's talking about his villainy... that's pretty anti-Community, no?

Before his death William F. Buckley, Jr. spoke admiringly about DOOM to whoever would listen.

http://everetttrue.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/defending-the-indefensible-%E2%80%93-4-sigur-ros/

Chuck Eddy: First time I saw this song listed in Billboard, before I read that Drake is the future of rap music, I was really hoping it would be an r&b version of Gary Allan’s 2005 hit country version of Vertical Horizon’s 2001 rock hit.

music criticism is the art of pretend hopefulness

lol @ "pretend"

i might be picking on low hanging fruit here, but complex magazine has such bad crit for an established music/culture magazine. they are basically the kings of using tired & meaningless rap slang. sometimes it's offensive (when they put "pause" on a cover -- mad street cred for complex, yo), other times it's annoying, mostly tho it's just sad

i.e.

from their best of 09 list

The Complex Co-Sign: As our many favorite rappers linger in middle age territory, 20 year-old Fashawn’s stellar debut reminds us that rap is still a young man’s game. Exile laced the kid with heat rock production, and boy does he go in. We have a feeling mad people slept on this one, but we didn’t. Boy Meets World is one of the nicest LPs of the year and if he keeps it up, we might be looking at the new face of West Coast hip-hop.

Exile laced the kid with heat rock production, and boy does he go in. We have a feeling mad people slept on this one, but we didn’t.Exile laced the kid with heat rock production, and boy does he go in. We have a feeling mad people slept on this one, but we didn’t.Exile laced the kid with heat rock production, and boy does he go in. We have a feeling mad people slept on this one, but we didn’t.Exile laced the kid with heat rock production, and boy does he go in. We have a feeling mad people slept on this one, but we didn’t.Exile laced the kid with heat rock production, and boy does he go in. We have a feeling mad people slept on this one, but we didn’t.

i hope this was written by a photo intern or something

haha it really reads like a sample paragraph from a slang primer

I still weep for the worldwide editing shortage that's been going around

haha one of the reasons i quit writing abt music (10yrs ago) was too much editing