Nathan Rabin RIP 1968-2007

^^^yeah very true

Yeah, when I read that my first thought was that that general worldview isn't unique to white 30-something dudes (although many of the specifics of Rabin's are), but I agree with most of the rest of what the author of that post has to say.

the picture and first graf are classic tho

it still amazes me that a thread titled "[semi-prominent music critic who doesn't post on ilx and is very much alive] RIP 1968-2007" has not produced the slightest bit of controversy, confusion or response from outside ilx in 5 years

other than the handful of confused initial responses itt, i mean

fwiw im obv much more sympathetic to alex's worldview when it comes to rap shit, i guess nathan just struck me as being completely predictable & maybe i should be more upset that his worldview is so 'normalized' but i feel like his perspective isn't really thought of as 'cool' so it doesn't have the weight it may have at one time. i mean, he even has to frame it as, 'so, i guess i'm completely missing the boat on everything that began after a decade ago, but....'

i guess it also seems like there are more pressing issues around rap discourse right now that strike me, although i'd have to think a bit about how to articulate what they are more specifically.

- definitely something about how daily blogging/filtering of massive amounts of content & rapid deadlines has made it hard to spend time really speaking to the shape of rap & spending time w/ music

- i know a lot of rap industry types are mad at 'hipster press' whereas ive been mad with both 'hipster press' & 'rap press' but find that hipster press has at least not abandoned criticism that is a little more nuanced than 'we are against this'/'we are in favor of this.' the rap press's uncritical 2chainz boosting vs. completely unconsidered lil b hating, for example. there's so much to talk about & unpack in this conversation b/c things are so much more complicated than the dichotomy suggests, tho -- cool chasing is something that happens on both sides.

- something about the authenticity chase, b/c for critics & readers, white & black, hip, otherwise, it really is about chasing authenticity of coverage -- people want to know that what they're reading about is 'real hip hop,' and that means for many white writers, for example, following noz's arguments & just basing your ability to drive conversation on a tremendous knowledge base. i feel like at some level, this must have a distorting effect; basically, imo, there aren't enough voices in the conversation, and a few random critics at the top end up driving discussions, because ppl look to those who speak authoritatively and many people are afraid to speak authoritatively about their experiences with rap, preferring it be left 'to the pros'

idk i need to work on articulating these ideas better

There might be a lot more value— more entertainment value, but also more actual enriching-the-critical discourse value— to a multipart series in which Nathan Rabin forces himself to strap up and listen to all the lauded post-’90s rap records he can’t get into

i think this is probably the thing i disagree with the most lol. i would rather not read nathan rabin do this. i mean, a lot of this is rhetorical since he hasn't written anything yet. & maybe i don't want to read anything he writes, or maybe he'll have something interesting to say about nice & smooth. i dunno! but, i feel like knowing his writing, an attempt to write about post-90s rap he can't get into would probably not be very good or interesting

idk it turned out pretty well when we did it with l0u1s jagg3r

lol touche

i do find the premise of the rabin thing to be self serving in a really egotistical way

I just realized I've been conflating Rabin and Patrin for years even though I've met the latter on multiple occasions.

well, dude's made his life writing about this stuff & has a bigger readership than you or i, why would i begrudge him writing something about what he cares about? i mean, im all in favor of making fun of it esp if it includes painfully un-self-aware clunkers like "Though I was and remain painfully white," ("We're so lame!" /homer voice) but the idea itself is only self serving if you dont realize that he's 'earned it,' to the extent that he's built a big audience that apparently cares what he thinks about rap music.

xp to jordan

yeah i get that -- it's no different than a memoir in that respect -- still kinda puts me off tho

i do find the premise of the rabin thing to be self serving in a really egotistical way

― fapper don (J0rdan S.), Saturday, June 2, 2012 4:17 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

$10 says rabin wrote the entire thing as an excuse to use the headline "hip-hop and you do stop"

i mean the thing abt the internet is that his piece isn't really taking up oxygen that could go somewhere else. if you can write & attract an audience, you can write & attract an audience. I mean, sure, the onion av club is paying him, but i think that w/ the onion av club, the audience & the writer at this point are in a fairly balanced symbiotic relationship -- no one on ilx could just get hired by the av club one day & present a project like this. he's got a loyal readership

now, if everyone starts linking to it all over or calling it the defining hip hop writing of a generation, thats something else

I've got my first piece of biographical writing ever coming out this month and I'm thinking of pulling the plug on it entirely just because the world doesnt need any more "white dude has life changed by rap" essays

^^^^this is stupid!!

yeah, i guess i can't get past my own biases in terms of viewing this thru the prism "he's got the audience, he earned it!" -- objectively that's right, but my eyes are still doing backflips in my head right now

i guess i'm put off by the fact that he's so willingly preaching to the choir -- i guess this is his wheelhouse subject but idk it's just feels very unchallenging from both the writer's and audience's perspective -- maybe that's bullshit tho

an attempt to write about post-90s rap he can't get into would probably not be very good or interesting

I stopped reading it after a while, but he had a series a while back where he intentionally tried to get into country, and there was some interest in seeing a total neophyte discover and appreciate a new genre. Obv that isn't the same thing since there is rap he likes, and iirc the AVclub also did a series where he (i think) listened to all the Now That's What I Call Music comps and that was often condescending and stupid.

I've got my first piece of biographical writing ever coming out this month and I'm thinking of pulling the plug on it entirely just because the world doesnt need any more "white dude has life changed by rap" essays

― rock the swagon and g.o.a.t. it (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, June 2, 2012 3:29 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^this is stupid!!

― littledotheyknow (D-40), Saturday, June 2, 2012 3:30 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to clarify, whether the writing is good or bad or illuminates the subject for readers is what matters. if you find you're talking to a white reading audience then it might be a bad idea, like, 'as a white guy, this is what i got out of it...' but if you're trying to shed new light on an artist through personal experience that's completely valid & valuable

whiney does have a point though that MCA's death kind of opened the floodgates for that stuff. i mean obviously beasties deserve their place in history and you can't take anything away from them but a huge % of remembrances about them are basically "they opened my eyes to a whole genre of music [that i have not explored much further beyond them]"

thankfully i've missed everyone talking about how ween changed their lives

i do find the premise of the rabin thing to be self serving in a really egotistical way

its also pretty appallingly written

Genre exploration often seems to be defined by the dumbest motherfuckers out there. How many people have had their view of metal permanently shaped by Chuck fucking Klosterman, after all? Also, Rabin's attempt to explore country was if possible even worse than the intro to this hip-hop thing. He got fixated on novelty acts and one-hit wonders, skipped over some towering figures in the genre, and the last few entries were about as phoned-in as it was possible to be without just being a bunch of Wikipedia block-quotes and YouTube embeds. (And there were a shit-ton of YouTube embeds.)

The Onion A/V Club is so wild. Like I'm sure even people like Ann Powers and Rob Harvilla and Maura Johnston and probably anyone this side of SF/J couldn't possibly get as many eyes on their writing as the A/V Club stuff gets. Like the big "important" Fennessey/Nitsuh/Keleffah articles we pass around here dont have a fraction of the comments/eyes they have on some of the most basic listicle ish

― Slag Surfin' (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, March 31, 2011 11:37 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I still think we should talk about this. The Onion A/V Club has probably the biggest audience for "music writing" outside of SFJ and their pieces never really "rank" in our circles

I’m guessing the AV Club’s editors wouldn’t green-light a series “exploring” how rock’s best years are behind it,

Hahahahahaha oh boy

doesn't AV Club publish way less music content than they used to? album reviews used to be as frequent as movie reviews, now they seem much more sporadic and perhaps even less varied. maybe even fewer musician interviews and music-themed features, although not as big a difference as w/ reviews.

Yes now they are about writing 2,000 word essays about every single episode of BJ & The Bear.

i couldn't get past the first paragraph of this so i don't have much to say (lol i do but i shouldn't), i'm just bothered that p much every hip hop article/review on AVC is written by rabin, he's basically their de facto hip hop writer, but he apparently doesn't like it anymore. and i've had way too many conversations w white doods talking about how hip hop used to be so 'important' and 'political' as opposed to what it is now, and why the hell did this need to be written? AVC is popular cause their writers never write anything remotely challenging to their base.

(let's also not lose sight of the important fact that his writing is dreadful, because it is)

i like rabin fine when he's doing something kind of fluffy that rewards his tendency towards levity like 'my year of flops' or whatever, but yeah on music he's basically ilm indie rap strawman incarnate

actually has he been enthusiastic about any rap in particular the last couple years? seems like most people w/ his disposition have shaken off the "no good new hip hop anymore" thing and embraced the new bloggy shit or at very least are satisfied that el-p or mos def or whoever is still making music, in a way rabin might be unique in not giving a shit

AVC is popular cause their writers never write anything remotely challenging to their base.

This is kind of silly. I see the site more along the lines of, I dunno, a debate club of otherwise likeminded people than as some flame-throwing perch. It's kind of the apotheosis (or an apotheosis) of geek culture and stuff, minus (to my sensibilities) the snobbery attendant to so many other collections of armchair and semi-pro experts (like Ilxor, bless us all!). In a lot of ways it reminds me a lot of early internet, when content was driven by enthusiasm rather than conflict.

Anyway, AVClub is and has always been far more comprehensive in scope than your average website, and if it tends to play it safe I think it does so in the pursuit of thoroughness. I don't know how much it rates as a music site, but its coverage of film, comics, television and the like is really strong, and on the personal front, some of their first-persony things are actually quite good (like the recent stroll through REM history, or the occasional debate over cultural blindspots).

yeah i mean it's a big site that puts out a ridiculous tonnage of content, it contains multitudes and there are as many things they do well as there are things we can gripe about.

but that 'scope' though. it's telling to me that they have so many writers covering so many different things but the actual range of opinions/personalities is so little that their hip hop writer is a guy that doesn't listen to hip hop.

and don't get me wrong, i check the site every day and i used to be a big fan, but now i just stick to the news feed (o'neal is the best writer they have) and the occasional inventory. the film/music reviews are so small they barely skim the surface of the material and mostly serve to explain the grade. the TV coverage has the opposite problem, and for some reason single 23 minute episodes warrant vanderwerff screeds 3 or 4x the length of the film/music stuff. that's just weird. having that huge a scope is a problem when the writing staff is being stretched out to cover every little piece of pop culture. it lowers the standard for everything.

i have to compare it to stylus, which was so surprisingly good with its film coverage. i imagine if they expanded into television and books and comics and then put up four additional articles a day, their standards would've lowered too.

My answer arrived in the form of the Depression-era cockney bootblack who tags along after me during my daily morning constitutional. "Mister, mister! When are you going to favor your readers with your impressions on the lesser, later films of Mister Paul Mazursky? That would be ever so delightful, Mr. Rabin, sir!" he inquired eagerly, his face covered in soot, his grubby little hands blacker than a landlord's soul.

"Soon enough, young man, soon enough," I confided gently with a twinkle in my eye. Admiring the young man's pluck, I flipped him a shiny Indian head nickel, then delivered a swift kick to the keister for annoying me during my pre-dawn ramble. I hereby dedicate this essay about 1991's Scenes From a Mall to that scruffy fictional street urchin. Here's looking at you, kid. Now get back to work.

this guy is SO TERRIBLE

His piece on Joe Eszterhas's Mel Gibson screed was great.

http://i.imgur.com/AePrTHU.png

it's not a 'humble brag' exactly... what is it...?

a brag

right up there with

http://i.imgur.com/6KIEVMi.png

on the shoulders of giants

Are these headlines excerpted from a website where hacks make unremarkable confessions?

Because I could totally get in on that.

"I once received death threats from Shed Seven."

How's that?

"I Invented Sex"
This goes out to the beautiful girls. Which one of y'all goin' home wit trigga?
By Trey Songz

"Garry Shandling blocked me on Twitter the night Steve Jobs died."

"I Petted a Bodega Cat Today"
By Forksclovetofu

"Garry Shandling blocked me on Twitter the night Steve Jobs died."

― socki (s1ocki)

lol i remember this

still blocked fyi