Nathan Rabin RIP 1968-2007

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

I detected a distinct AV Club influence in Pitchfork's unedited LCD Soundsystem data dump this week.

Though I'd assume people are coming for the comment-box afterparty in the AV Club rather than the blather above it

AV Club articles are getting to be like the SEMINARS at a gathering of the juggalos nowadays

the aesthetic range on offer in their CURRENT REVIEWS section is p "..."

i had no idea that the a/v club was a big thing... weird.

there does need to be some kind of juggalo-like term for people whose defining trait is knowing every line of dialogue ever spoken by Milhouse Van Houten (xpost)

Haha OTM.

I detected a distinct AV Club influence in Pitchfork's unedited LCD Soundsystem data dump this week.

― da croupier, Thursday, March 31, 2011 12:16 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's otm

their music writing is inessential but the interviews are great

Rabin's interview with Ghostface was one of the most hilarious disastsers I have ever seen. iirc it went mostly like this

Onion AV Club: so what are some of your favorite old soul artists
Ghost: [silence]

there does need to be some kind of juggalo-like term for people whose defining trait is knowing every line of dialogue ever spoken by Milhouse Van Houten (xpost)

THRILLHO

hahahaha

AVC: What do you think is the biggest problem with hip-hop today?

GK: A lack of originality, that's it. Everybody's coming out the same.

AVC: Do you think that's changing? Is there anyone coming along right now that you're excited about?

GK: No, fuck hip-hop. I ain't feeling that shit right now. I don't even listen to hip-hop. I just do this shit because I gotta feed my family.

AVC: What do you listen to?

GK: I listen to shit. I listen to old music, man.

AVC: Like soul music?

GK: Yeah, soul music.

AVC: Who are some of your favorite soul artists?

GK: [No answer.]

Ugh, Nathan Rabin.

Pretty sure that dude edits his own Wikipedia page.

You know, I think what the AV Club has been good at catering to is an audience of middlebrow pop-culture fans whose sensibility coalesced in the 1990s (around the period when the Onion itself seemed mega-smart and amazing) -- they've really stuck with that audience and sensibility, so I'm never surprised by the size of the readership. I don't mean it as an insult when I say it has that precise thirtysomething mildly-geeky thing down, like married guys in big-city suburbs in their offices IMing each other about Pixar movies and the Flaming Lips. The same audience as the Independent Film Channel, which currently runs loads of 90s sketch comedy, Portlandia, and the Onion's news show. (I say "guys" because there's something very 90s college guy about it.) It's like if Richard Roeper / Ben Mankeiwicz types, Stiller/Garafalo types, Nick Hornby, and a few Pitchfork types all rolled together into one thing, sensibility-wise, and attracted America's soon-to-be equivalent of 50 Quid Man.

oh those poor dears, they'll live and die never knowing about the avalanches

yeah IFC's been very shrewd about buying up basically every TV show that had anything to do with Judd Apatow from 1992 to 2002 and rerunning those around the clock

ugh just about everything rabin does is awful, hip-hop or no

he's going thru every simpsons episode, writes three humorless paragraphs of summary offering no insight

he's going thru every now! that's what i call music (american) cd and it's shit, not as bad as the new "this was pop" (i think) feature tho

not sure why he has the biggest profile of the avc writers

he is the textbook definition of "monkeycheese"

My Year of Flops rules pretty much across the board.

Yes the comment section is abysmal, but which comment section isn't? If I had a blog or newspaper or something, very first thing I would do is shut off comments. Who cares what some anonymous fuck thinks about an article.

(love ilx tho, but this is a message board, totally different)

Oh and the music reviews are definitely bad, but I sort of prefer them tacitly admitting "hey we're kind of boring and probably going to be way into the next National album" instead of Pitchfork pretending like they're ahead of the curve or something when really they are just psyched on the new National album. I do like the film reviews which seem to be pretty generic and fair and usually helpful.

AV Club's music arm has always felt like an afterthought compared to the film/TV stuff. The writing's average at best and their tastes make NPR look cutting-edge.

just reading his piece on julia phillips http://www.avclub.com/articles/silly-lil-show-biz-book-club-3-is-julia-phillips-h,9397/. he strikes me as having some seriously unpleasant issues with women.

That last Nabisco post is so OTM.

definitely. i'm impressed that they've managed to make it work, financially. but it feels hermetic in a not-very-healthy way.

That last Nabisco post is so OTM.

― jaymc, Monday, August 1, 2011 7:09 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I know. I kind of what to start a thread of like "100 things in every Onion A/V Club commenter's home"

1. Muppets box set

2. Hipster Puppies book

(sorry)

3. Nathan Rabin - The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought To You By Pop Culture

Just kidding. Nobody bought this.

err, I did (kindle edition, even) and I recognize myself way too much in Nabisco's description :-(

I wouldn't frowny-face about that -- I'm guessing a lot of why the description rings true is that I'm basically describing friends of mine after college!

am i being super contrarian to think that its really not a big deal that dude wants to write about his experiences w/ 90s rap & that this is a little of an overreaction?

http://100hundredthousandmillion.tumblr.com/post/24214720622/boy-the-earth-used-to-talk-to

i know this is somewhat ironic considering how i arrived @ this board by arguing w/ a personal list ned made, but the fact is you'd only want to read nathan rabin's rap thoughts if you're already in the cult of nathan rabin's writing, anyway.

i also have a problem w/ the way race is used here, as if there aren't plenty of black ppl who are like "hip hop died in 1999" as well. whiteness comes into play more imo in trying to make objective, state-of-the-art claims that argue about the accuracy of your vision of history over others, less so in the simple fact of speaking to your tastes

not that rabin's piece doesn't have some wince-worthy lines about being white or w/e but, idk, maybe im getting old but i feel more like a live & let live sort of thing -- like, i feel like we already 'won' the battle & mainstream & street oriented rap is considered worthy of coverage, to the extent that rabin felt the need to come at this from a pretty clearly personal angle

no shots at rabin, but between MCA dying and Ween breaking up, I'm really enormously burnt on reading white dudes' experiences with everything right now.

i also have a problem w/ the way race is used here, as if there aren't plenty of black ppl who are like "hip hop died in 1999" as well. whiteness comes into play more imo in trying to make objective, state-of-the-art claims that argue about the accuracy of your vision of history over others, less so in the simple fact of speaking to your tastes

yeah..."lol white ppl" is Tumblr's favorite "I get to opt out of unpacking what I disagree with" trope these days. which is kinda cool with me insofar as you really can't have too much of white ppl being made more aware of how their privilege informs their thoughts/opinions/tastes, but less cool with me in how I think it gets used a lot, i.e., by other white ppl looking to score playground points

^^^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!!