worst protest song/political song to place in the Pazz & Jop singles poll

pet semetary is really awesome

kkk took my baby away

xp: Yeah, the Fuchs quote is from the 1984 first edition.

poll should've been for best not worst

Whoops. So, "rap fans" never cared about political rap songs? That's a big leap even from that quote, which is saying something else.

I like Dead Prez

Singles poll started in 1979 (post-"Sedated," which was 1978, unless it got reissued later), and I might agree with clemenza about "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg" being their best single since then -- it's up there, anyway -- though I might actually vote for "Tomorrow She Goes Away" off Mondo Bizarro instead, if that was as single.

I remember loving a SPIN piece that said the problem with U2 is they'd never record a song called "Pet Cemetery."

Rock'n'Roll High School, We Want The Airwaves, Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?

On the other hand, these are all real good, too. (And "I'm Affected," if that was a single.)

wikipedia says "Sedated" wasn't released on a single until '79 and not in the U.S. until '80, although I'm not sure how well known it was before the 1988 video shot in support of Ramones Mania compared to after

Whoops. So, "rap fans" never cared about political rap songs? That's a big leap even from that quote, which is saying something else.

― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, January 25, 2011 4:45 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

rappers & rap fans kowtowing to critical norms from 'respectable' genres has been a blight on rap thru-out its history which is why i brought up that quote in relation to the legendary ko's wack song

i mean i love the message & so do most rap fans but did u know that its classic verses were actually not a part of 'the message' but another, non-'message' song?

some version of superrappin iirc?

http://palmgoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/the_more_you_know2.jpg

poll should've been for best not worst

― ex-heroin addict tricycle (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, January 25, 2011

yeah wld have preferred that as i said upthread but there's a lot of good stuff itt so idk

what rapper has ever kowtowed to "critics" about content

Not to turn this into a Ramones thread, but I was going to say that "I Wanna Be Sedated" is one of the first four albums, so maybe it qualifies (or maybe not, for the reasons cited above). I love "Pet Semetary" too, plus a few songs off of Pleasant Dreams and Subterranean Jungle. For me, knowing maybe two-thirds of their output post-Tommy, it would come down to "Bonzo" or "Pet Sematary." But, to get back to the subject at hand, I think "Bonzo" totally deserved however high it placed in P&J, and don't see whatever votes it got as being career-achievement votes, or people voting for a Ramones song just for the sake of voting for a Ramones song.

wikipedia says "Sedated" wasn't released on a single until '79 and not in the U.S. until '80

Interesting; I had no idea. Though it explains this 1980 P&J singles ballot, which I'd always wondered about.

LESTER BANGS: Au Pairs: "Diet"/"It's Obvious" (021 import); Teenage Jesus & the Jerks (Migraine EP); Mars (Lust Unlust EP); Mekons: "Snow" (Red Rhino); the Clash: "Bankrobber" (CBS import); Lipps Inc.: "Funkytown" (Casablanca); Ramones: "I Wanna Be Sedated" (RSO); Was (Not Was): "Wheel Me Out" (ZE/Antilles); Public Image Ltd.: "Memories"/"Another" (Virgin import); Bush Tetras: "Too Many Creeps" (99).

what rapper has ever kowtowed to "critics" about content

lol Chuck D

Jay-Z

xuxhk while you're here and kind of on the subject: did Bangs vote in '79, the year "Let It Blurt" placed in the poll? and what's up with that, was it like a bunch of his friends and contemporaries voting for a fellow crit's song?

political rap was awesome, i h8 white devils all that shit was great, black fist shit, a lot of ppl on this thread need to listen to poor righteous teachers and study their lessons

it's always been cool guy default ilx to be all like oh god all that self righteous stuff is soooo boring doncha know? omg it's really gauche...but a lot of it was dope and i wish more rappers would be political now, lots of anger and energy about actual stuff not just headbussing (which is cool too sometimes but that's all there is now) would be refreshing and fun....it's fun for kids to get angry about stuff they can't change, i loved every second of it.

build and destroy (ilx)

- rightstarter.

and i KNOW xhuckx classic shit is OH THE MESSAGE VERSES ARE SO MUCH MORE FASCINATING WHEN PLACED AMONG THE BACKDROP OF ALL THE YES Y'ALL AND WHO IS A SCORPIO AND MAKE MONEY MONEY OF THE ORIGINAL BECAUSE ITS SO TEXTUALLY FASCINATING ETC

but it it's better in the actual message and the weird creepy synths of the message is so much cooler than the third hand chic disco stuff

god this is like my all time ax to grind against ilx and i'm grinding it now

I don't remember anyone offering you a grindstone.

i got a grindstone by any means necessary

And the idea that '88 righteousness was the creation of white gatekeepers or whatever is an amazing fiction.

oh god

ppl get mad defensive abt rap on here!

lol @ the idea that i suggested '88 political rap was related to white gatekeepers

i posted that fuchs quote bcuz i think it applies to 'legendary ko' not every political rap ever

u effin nerds

jay-z kowtowed to barack obama not christgau

obama demanded anti autotune song

poll should've been for best not worst

― ex-heroin addict tricycle (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, January 25, 2011

yeah wld have preferred that as i said upthread but there's a lot of good stuff itt so idk

― zvookster, Tuesday, January 25, 2011 5:57 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

'best' thread would've had probably a very similar conversation and a much more predictable poll result, with this i really don't know where it's gonna go, which for me is the main criteria for making a thread a poll

obama demanded anti autotune song

― emma goldbond (San Te), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 8:12 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh so by "critics" we mean "rap fans" those notorious agents of change

its fair to say that this is the kind of song rap fans dont give 2 shits about

rappers & rap fans kowtowing to critical norms from 'respectable' genres has been a blight on rap thru-out its history

Not defensive, more just amazed in a baffled kind of way, and genuinely curious about the imagination and projection that would inspire these lines.

Ha, I'm not even sure I'd say "Superrappin" is better than "The Message" these days -- they're both pretty great.

did Bangs vote in '79, the year "Let It Blurt" placed in the poll? and what's up with that, was it like a bunch of his friends and contemporaries voting for a fellow crit's song?

I wasn't there, yet. But I could've sworn that, in his P&J essay that year, Xgau said something like "I feel compelled to mention that at least X votes for 'Let It Blurt' came from confidantes of Lester, and at least one came from Lester himself. I also feel compelled to mention that it's a pretty good record anyway." But looking at the essay on Xgau's website, I'm not finding any of that. (Did I dream it? Or maybe the web version edits the original print version, which I'll check the next time I did through the closet.) At any rate, Bangs definitely did vote that year; his album ballot is still on the website. Not positive he voted for the single, though.

"dig" through the closet, I meant.

Guess it's also possible Christgau wrote that somewhere other than his P&J essay, but I'm not sure where that would be.

Not defensive, more just amazed in a baffled kind of way, and genuinely curious about the imagination and projection that would inspire these lines.

― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, January 25, 2011 7:38 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ive never heard a non-pazz & jop generalist pop critic (who naturally being ~40 yrs old has been a 'rap fan' for longer than me blah blah blah) say anything ever about legendary ko

re: the 2nd quote, pete, what do u think the entire kanye debate is about? the celebration of latter-day jayz? there's a big underlying strain of thought in rap that it needs to be more respectable & less 'ghetto' & more bourgie

xp: I'm terrible with tone--I actually meant my last sentence. Like, I love that quote from the Toop book and sympathize with someone having a vision of how music should be and filtering everything else through it in a polemical way. I love that you care about audiences, too, deej. So I'm curious where these fantastical generalizations and self-identification some imagined audience come from. I filled in the racial stuff because that's the somewhat provable reality behind the code of "respectability" and "adult norms" or what-have-you, at least through the '80s.

xp: So from this slice of experience you've determined that "rap fans" don't like "this type of song."

I totally agree that the strains of thought you mention among critics exist and need to be challenged, but I think those biases are more complicated than being "respectable"--a lot of them go back to punk and the counterculture before that.

nah i mean that u have rap fans who like rap (& will defend 'classics' like cuban linx even if theyve got a bunch of drug talk on them) but they do crave mainstream critical respectability particularly with new records. think about bun b getting 5 mics from the source years after his best records, but shortly after his mainstream critical approval

like, i think there are different motives between the source critics & pazz n jop critics -- the pnj ones voting for KO are coming out of punk, the source ones are on some 'rap has gotten so much worse' tip. these dudes also tend to venerate 'legends' to a much greater degree than pnj critics -- who at least had that lester bangs thing about not paying deference to your idols or w/e. But they're coming at rap w/ their own biases, and rap criticism has its own tradition (more in the ego trip vein)

i should say i doubt there were many source critics into KO -- but the source critics do pay attention on other artists

I can only speak for myself, but the timeline was something like this: 1) Katrina happened; 2) about a week or 10 days later, I read about the Legendary K.O. record somewhere; 3) I found it, downloaded it, loved it; 4) within days, I played it on my radio show. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't even emptied out the Superdome of people yet--playing this record on air while the crisis was essentially still happening was thrilling. My point is, this all happened very fast--there wasn't a lot of deliberation that went into any of it. All of this analysis you're doing of people's relationship to the song, and rap in general, is interesting, and you're certainly entitled to do so, I just think you're missing the forest for the trees. (Or you're missing one very tall tree for the forest...or something. There's trees, and there's a forest, and I think you should be here, but you're over there.)

xp A ha! I didn't dream it; it just wasn't in Xgau's essay -- It was at the bottom of the actual singles list that ran in 1979. I was close!:

**The Poobahs feel impelled to point out that at least seven of those voting for this disc are intimates of Lester Bangs, and at least one is Lester Bangs himself. They also feel impelled to acknowledge that it's a pretty good record anyway.

i mean i love the message & so do most rap fans but did u know that its classic verses were actually not a part of 'the message' but another, non-'message' song?

So the only worthwhile verse in the whole song is the final Mel one? I mean, you're right as long as you ignore the first five minutes of the song but I don't think that's what most people do.

Also, deej, I think your argument that the Legendary KO were kowtowing to "respectable" norms is bullshit. It may have been warmly received by generalist critics but it was made for a hip hop audience at a racially charged moment in US history in an ad hoc mixtape style with a sense of humour. A record that kowtowed would have been far more worthy and solemn. You come dangerously close to suggesting that any kind of political thought in rap is insufficiently "ghetto" and only designed to appeal to 40+ white rock critics. I can understand the trend you object to, but you're backlashing against it so hard that you end up disparaging the motives of a whole bunch of MCs.

I'm pretty sure most rap fans are more likely to rep for "The Message" than "Superrappin'".

the premise of the poll samples is basically a question of whether all these particular tracks suited 40+ white rock critics, the KO is just one of them, and is one particular rap song. it seems like a very big error (to me) to extrapolate from that that some dude & deej are close to disparaging any kind of political thought in rap? & surely it's another one to separate ghetto reportage from the political in any case.