It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

I can't believe Ethan likes Death in Vegas though haha

OK, so I am no hip-hop-fan, and all that, but I still think I have the obvious answer:

Because Public Enemy was rapping about boring stuff such as politics, anti-misoginy, even anti-violence to some extent. At the same time, NWA came along, and they came up with a lot more interesting themes for most average youngster, that is, crime, bitches, drugs, violence. A lot of kewl things that all kewl kids loved to piss off parents and teachers with.

I love this album, but I also love what Chuck called it: It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Make Us Multi-Platinum.

(Forgive me for completely talking out of my ass here; I'm drunk)

In spite of this, their debut album is still one of those hip-hop albums that are part of the "canon".

Oh, shit, I just invoked Zach De La Rocha!

And you hip-hop fans accuse us Britpop/trad rock/pop fans of being "derivative"? :-)

I don't know if I'd say Chuck's lyrics are abstract (at least not compared, to Fugazi's allegedly profound lyrics), but the CNN allusion indeed isn't very evocative. Hell, he's closer to a bizarro-world Fox News.

Btw Alex yr supposed to write that ""getting it"".

*whimpers* MUST you invoke Satan like that.

And yes, Ned, as long as Satan shrilly screams "YOU CALL THIS JUSTICE???" and then hops up and down angrily, I shalt invoke he! Blargh!

I think PE's sonic attack is pretty much unreplicated and probably unreplicatable. On the other hand, I've read testimonials to PE from all sorts of people, from gangstas to Def Jux types -- just because they don't sound like "Black Steel" doesn't mean they didn't get juiced by PE at some point in their life. But PE was never mainstream hip-hop -- most significantly, they weren't particularly funky. They were the noisiest, rockiest great hip-hop band ever. They just happened to be amazing, which made them stand out way out of proportion to their place in the hip-hop spectrum. They were an anomaly, a branch off the main trunk, and they defined that branch so completely that it's no surprise not many other people have climbed out on it.

That said, my favorite PE story is from when I was in college. I was home at Christmas break, and my conservative (in all respects) grandma was visiting. I had "Nation of Millions" on in the background while I was doing dishes or something, and my grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table doing a crossword table. I noticed she was tapping her feet, and at a certain point she looked up and said, "They sure do have rhythm, don't they?" Taking into account the obvious racism of the comment (and the irony of the racism in that context), I still had to give a big nod to the Bomb Squad -- they reached my grandma.

I don't think their sonics were unreplicatable as much as you got the definite impression that basically no African-American hip hoppers (over or underground) seemed interested in following PE's lead. And the question which no one seems to be able to answer here (and no one really seems to want to try) is WHY?!?! What was it about a) their particular strand of Black Nationalism that fell out of favor and b) the idea of making in your face uncompromising radical music (whether they did or not isn't the question) that virtually no subsequent black hip hop act has even tried to follow in those footsteps?

There is an amazing interview with Chuck D and Hank Shocklee in the latest issue of Stay Free about their sampling method and why they gave it up. It's the first interview I've ever seen where they bring any of this shit up, and I can't believe this interview hasn't made more waves...

But to the other questions, I think those things were never exactly in favor or fashion, before or after PE. It's just that there was one great radical Black Nationalist sonically visionary hip-hop band, and they were it.

It's true that many producers have made a point of recording/engineering their own sounds and then sampling/arranging them. this is basically what timbaland's doing, first level sound design. but it's a different thing.

I dunno, those records sounded like doom when they came out and I couldn't believe they were popular, alex your basic point does ring true in that people could still be making ragingly dense wall-of-noise hip hop with other means, but they aren't, mainly because... people like their pop music easy going and pretty. we won't be seeing records quite like those early pe records anytime soon.

More like they were the one great radical Black Nationalist sonically visionary hip-hop band to find a large audience.

-- jess

i'm assuming you're talking about the studio primier works in?

Okay so yeah the beats are totally four down as opposed to yr. standard hip-hop swing, and even when they keep the emphasis in the right place there's a sort of quantization going on, with the pauses trimmed, and reinforced by the other samples overlayed on the drums and the emphasis with snare on hitting the the third beat rather than the first. But more than that you have to confront Chuck D's flow which is equally chunky. I never read SFJ's magnum opus on shifts in flow in hip-hop (& I'm dying to if someone knows where I can get it) but there's a definite transition in rythmic and rhyme patterns of MCs which I'm going to take a stab at.

Chuck D took the classic Run-DMC flow about as far as it could go, but he kept the opening syllables of his lines -- four at least -- hard and solid to the beat, as well as the couple of closing ones so if you concieve of the line as four parts (each half a bar -- the doubling of the spoken line to the beat was pretty unique to PE), there's only room for play in the third (better yet the time between the first and second snare hit on the downbeat in each two bar set). And Chuck pretty much kept his discursive unit complete in each line. All of which was formed a complex which didn't have anywhere else to go except more intensity, faster beats, harder sounds, etc. since disruption of any element would throw off the whole complex. And Nation of Millions is maybe about as far as it could go without losing the audience.

The vocal innovation of G-Funk (and Golden Age -- > underground too) was in lines which didn't just punch the beginning and end but rolled into one another, lines which necessitated a different rhythmic basis, one significantly more flexible. Bomb Squad Productions on the other had you could pretty much lay any drum track under any other PE track, match the beats, and the song would still sound pretty much the same.

Compare with the "rock" imports carried out by Jay-Z, Em, and Freeway lately in rhythmic composition.

Also PE always seemed to me to fall in the afro-futurist tradition, re-imagining the present in dystopian sci-fi terms rather than projecting it outwards to space. I like Jesse's quip about "a band imitating a social movement" in that regards. And for various reasons, its worth noting, there's never been a continuity between afro-futurist artists -- its a tradition of outliers.

and even when they keep the emphasis in the right place there's a sort of quantization going on, with the pauses trimmed, and reinforced by the other samples overlayed on the drums and the emphasis with snare on hitting the the third beat rather than the first

What kind of mumbo-jumbo are you trying to sell here Sterling? I like your writing in general, but "quantization"? Like the Bomb Squad were using Pro-Tools? And if you are talking about general breakbeat samples - the snare hits are on the two and the four. So as a listener I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Also, this : better yet the time between the first and second snare hit on the downbeat in each two bar set. Dude, snare hits are on the upbeats. Christ.

And for various reasons, its worth noting, there's never been a continuity between afro-futurist artists -- its a tradition of outliers.

Sun Ra, Lee Perry, George Clinton - nothing in common? (cf. John Corbett's Extended Play bk)

And how fucking dumb do you have to be to read "no continuity" as "nothing in common"?

(ps i'm mainly pissed here coz yr. fucking with my man st for no good fucking reason)

Sterling, again, no offense intended but yr post is problematic that's all. No big deal, I do it all the time. You say Chuck D took the classic Run-DMC flow about as far as it could go (disagree - Beasties advanced it more on Paul's Boutique if anything; *gasp* white people shockah) then go on to say the doubling of the spoken line to the beat was pretty unique to PE: that was Run-DMC whole fucking thing!

Anyway I would like to contribute more myself, and I'm certainly not trying to come off like some expert on this shit. Specifically I really wanted to go back and listen to my X-Clan and Brand Nubian cds to directly address the political/lyrical bent of this thread, but i just haven't had time tonight.

I think the real headfuck really was Fear of a Black Planet, and thinking of that, I think this thread gets it.

Also, "She Watch Channel Zero" - nice conceit for the white kids (er, white critics) but why? Why is this cut on this record?

And that race baiting about the beasties is just petty. I find their stuff dull for the most part, and don't have any albums to refer to but all I know is that if they took it further then they forgot again by their later stuff.

I'll get back to you on the run-DMC stuff later (I actually sold my albums to a dj friend since she wanted the vinyl & i never rebought the cds, so I haven't listened properly in a while)

okay here's a question which i was talking about with alex last night...

so PE, along with Eric B, Pete Rock, Premier, BDP to some extent on the later stuff - just listing the Big Names now, mind - is hailed as being among the first hip-hop acts to link the genre with "soul" or "funk" mostly through the sampled breaks, supposedly engendering some sort of continuity between "Black Music" which wasn't there before (total bullshit of course, since it's mostly just that classical black musicians didn't want to be linked with guys shouting and out of tune drum machines going off, so they didn't - even begrudgingly acknowledge hip-hop - until you could drop a sax sample over a gently swining break recorded 25 years earlier.) but PE sounds so ANTI-soul now, mostly because of time and influence: the pounding looped breaks and squealing sirens/brass being turned into ahuman rave, techno-rock, whatever. PE NEVER sounded "funky" to me (one of the things i liked/hated most about "fear..." at age 12 was trying to play it to my mother - who is a big funk/soul/disco fan - and saying "look ma, they're talking about respecting women...hip-hop isnt all bad!" and her just not being able to get past the harshness of the production.) but could their "Datedness" also stem from the fact that the looped-break-and-Maceo-sample aesthetic mr. diamond talks about above has actually been revealed on only be a blip in the history of hip-hop rather than the Way, The Light, The Truth (cf. Sugarhill disco, early Def Jam drum machine rock, electro, booty, bass, bounce, the dancehall influence, right up to today with tim and the neptunes, etc etc.)

so can we move on to my old question as to why people think this is the greatest hip-hop album of all time? cuz, y'know, it's not.

You've got Chuck's politically / socially / historically conscious lyrics, bolstered by samples of black-power-themed oration; you've got the chopped and shredded and layered JB, funk and soul samples pushing the boundaries of the SP1200 as a compositional tool (and, as noted above, an explicit connection to a source-body of music that had fallen into relative obscurity at that point); plus there was Flav clowing on the sterotypes and realities of black performance simultaneously--his persona as complementary and contradictory to Chuck's kinda sealed the breadth complexity of what PE represented.

All these things were percolating in hip-hip at the time, and with Nation of Millions are presented at arguably the most fully-realized, well-formed degree up until then. I'm not suprised that the result wasn't emulated too much--who else could assemble such a complex package by design? Who would want to? PE were a group that was canonical not because they created a model or template for others to work with, but because they created something (of which music was just a part) that perfectly expressed and tied together what was happening at a particular moment in time.

Whether their work holds up for you now, particularly if you weren't following them back when Nation was released, is a different matter--but I think it still validates their inclusion in some kind of canon.

Greatest hip-hop album all time argument more to do with history than the music (not to say I still won't put Nations and 3 Feet High 1-2 on my list)

(didn't read any posts since Jess's but I will now)

Because people, musicians, especially hip-hop musicians, want to BE THEMSELVES.

Yeah, well I recall that was for MC's--PE's rating as a total package has to be higher cause there was no love for Eric B.'s turntable skills back in those days (and probaly even less since!)

i dunno really know what my favorite is. in a pinch it'd be fear..., but it might actually be illmatic or 36 chambers.

oops, what do you disagree with? I'm curious.

*the one-MC-with-a-lot-to-say/another-hype-guy-rowdy-MC dynamic
*among the first to use disonance and harsh overtones in their beats
*"conspiracy theory" obsessed lyrics

oops fairly OTM there. Stankonia is Outkast's 'on top of the world' album though.

The "funny" thing about Professor Griff is that his solo album was produced by a white friend of mine.

Has anyone responded to this claim from the original post yet? I'm not sure I agree...supporting evidence?

I was thinking of *intentionally* comic jester figures...

For those who lack
The odds are stacked
The one who makes the money is white not black
You might not believe it but it is like that

The first thing you noticed about the song was that no one had ever said things like that in a rap. The second thing was how instantly addictive the phrasing was. The first three lines could be Run-DMC or the Beasties. The fourth line is pure jazz.

It's that combo that makes Chuck swings so hard--much harder than the "great MCs" in my opinion. My first reaction to Nation was that it was too noisy to hear the drums. But then I realized Chuck was the drum.

In fact, I think the fall-off on Black Planet isn't the Bomb Squad but Chuck. Even on the last classic single, the remix of "Brothers Gonna Work It Out," he kinda sounds like he's catching up with the sonics rather than dominating them. "Refuse to lose" is the great exception. I knew a guy who went around repeating that opening over and over again...

Anyone have a copy of this in electronic form?

issue 20 not yet online, but I thoroughly recommend buying a copy. even if just for this article, there are so few shocklee/chuck interviews where they talk about their work method anyway

stay free is amazing

Anyone got a scanner?

"They were a poor, black gang of kids from the New York ghetto, but through a shared love of those crazy negro rhythms, and unimpeachable social consciences, they moved the hearts and minds of millions of white college kids."

NWA (ie, Dre) totally ripped the Bomb Squad production for ZAGGIN4EFIL and the "100 miles and running" EP. Gawd, remembering some of these songs in my head makes me realize just how bad Dre was as a rapper. I'm not sold on his legacy as a producer either tho...

For no reason I want to mention "Jackin' For Beats" by Ice Cube.

-- Matos W.K. (michaelangelomato...), March 25th, 2004 8:55 PM. (M Matos) (later)

point of order - it WAS!!!

It Takes a Nation of Interns to Troll Us Back

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2012/07/05/156327372/youve-never-heard-public-enemys-it-takes-a-nation-of-millions-to-hold-us-back

Ultimately, I have no regrets leaving It Takes A Nation on what is now an entirely metaphorical shelf. I'll gladly say thank-you, but given the choice, I'm going to blast Drake's infectiously triumphant mp3s every time.

ha ha, one of the pitfalls of free will. some will choose death over life every time.

"I hesitate to use the word influence, but the question really has to be asked: other than their perenial place on critic's polls what was Public Enemy's lasting effect on hip hop?"

yeah, I sometimes wonder why more writers choose not to write like Nabakov, or why more running backs choose not to run like Barry Sanders?

It's the ones who write like Sanders and run like Nabokov that concern me.

the lex responded

where?

Publishing this on NPR is definitely trollbait, but I don't have an issue with the kid preferring Drake to Public Enemy. Among all of the comments sputtering with outrage, there was a smart one, I thought, that said something to the effect of "Hey, based on your tastes in current hip-hop, Public Enemy probably wasn't the best recommendation. I bet you'd be more into Tribe or De La Soul."

That was Questlove!

Lex's response, which I thought was pretty great:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/jul/17/public-enemy-classic-albums?newsfeed=true

lol NPR really running with this music-troll thing

That was Questlove!

Quest's comment was also good, but this was a different one.

I don't have a problem with the piece really. he listened to it and responded to it critically, and divorced as he is from it's context he doesn't find anything sonically engaging about it. that's fair.

of course if you really want to understand hip-hop's history as a genre you kind of have to know this record, but that's a different thing from enjoying listening to it

Exactly.

Publishing this on NPR is definitely trollbait, but I don't have an issue with the kid preferring Drake to Public Enemy. Among all of the comments sputtering with outrage, there was a smart one, I thought, that said something to the effect of "Hey, based on your tastes in current hip-hop, Public Enemy probably wasn't the best recommendation. I bet you'd be more into Tribe or De La Soul."

― Never translate Dutch (jaymc), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 3:44 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

whether the guy is allowed to have his opinion, or whether it's an understandable preference for someone his age, is like the 80th most pressing aspect of all this though

literally laughed out loud at lex's headline "Surely such youthful individuality should be applauded?"

What's the most pressing aspect of all this?

i don't care if he likes PE bigger problem is that he seems pretty inarticulate about the CURRENT hip hop he likes other than the fact that he likes it

also if you can write this sentence and not think "man i'm gonna get clowned for this" you're pretty fucking dense, i mean c'mon

I remember the first time I really cared about a rap song. It was the spring of 2010 and "Over" by Drake had just come out.

literally laughed out loud at lex's headline "Surely such youthful individuality should be applauded?"

― Barack 2 Chainz Obama (some dude), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 3:00 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the individuality of liking one of the top 4 or 5 the most popular artist among young people instead of liking an old rap group no young ppl like??

Maybe every half-formed thought that comes into an intern's tiny developing mind doesn't need to be blasted out to the worlds largest public radio audience

Quest's comment was also good, but this was a different one.

― Never translate Dutch (jaymc), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 12:53 PM Bookmark

oh, my bad. I should have doublechecked.

my main takeaway is that NPR really, really hates its interns

he's so brave tho whiney

surviving the halls of his high school hounded by mobs of burly teen christgaus beating him about the head with used CD copies of apocalypse 91

Sounds like the sequel to Streets of Fire right there.

19 year old acts like 19 year old, thirtysomethings respond like thirtysomethings

DJP OTM this is like an exercise in soliciting public ridicule

thirtysomethings?

19 year old acts like 19 year old,

most 19 year olds don't have a national in which to air their views!

national platform that is

npr has given a lot of adults play talking about what college rock and teen pop is good, only fair to let a teen in college speak

get a tumblr, 19 year olds

sure they'll have someone on npr talking about whatever young band reminds them of the 90s soon enough

maybe they should let the teen speak about music they actually like tho, rather then hectoring them into listening to some arcane artifact they're unlikely to understand

altho tbh I find his "listen to something made 3 years before I was born!? that's crazy!" schtick sort of weird. this is hardly a universal sentiment among teenagers ime.

Yeah, I really liked lex's resopnse and appreciated his main thrust, but, this...

the individuality of liking one of the top 4 or 5 the most popular artist among young people instead of liking an old rap group no young ppl like??

is exactly what I was thinking.

if this kid had said Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was trash NPR would've had to fire and publicly admonish him

i just think it's hilarious when guys who looooove to be irreverent are all pissed at this whippersnapper getting the mic

"let's tear down the canon! which canon? let's start with the most popular genre we cover the least" (xpost)

who's pissed?

it's trollbait, but no one seems pissed

you

i really sincerely do hope this all results in this kid having a one-on-one debate/interview with whiney

"brother intern, in order to shatter the canon first you must memorize it"

like i'll totally give him a pass on being as venomous as he wants to be since this is the album he literally wrote the book on (xpost)

i'm having a happy day i'm not pissed

also i do think lex's thing was pretty good but that line is just funny because it's soooo indicative of lex's own personal persecution complex about the burden of Liking Super Popular Pop Music But In A Smart Way Not The Regular Way

altho tbh I find his "listen to something made 3 years before I was born!? that's crazy!" schtick sort of weird. this is hardly a universal sentiment among teenagers ime.

― the alternate vision continues his vision quest! (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 1:15 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, the other day I was talking to a girl around the same age who insisted everything made after the 70s ("...maaaaaybe the 80s") was trash. I felt way more sad for her than this kid.

it's soooo indicative of lex's own personal persecution complex about the burden of Liking Super Popular Pop Music But In A Smart Way Not The Regular Way

very OTM

nah 60s/70s fetishists, while misguided, have way more good music to be smug about than Clams Casino stans (xpost)

I felt way more sad for her than this kid.

yeah this has been my reaction too when I've encountered this sentiment. it's not an either/or proposition! You can like it all! except for clams casino.

that guy is a fucking moron

i work with a lot of people around 10 years younger than me and am consistently surprised at the degree to which there is almost no generation gap and how many of them listen to music that was either popular more from my college years or stuff that was popular before BOTH of our times

you can like it all, but you don't have to

She seemed to have no idea that modern music exists beyond the top 40, tho. Also she asked me if I was familiar with the White Stripes as if they were an obscure act. xps

the funny thing is the NPR writer's completely right about the way PE sound -- chuck's rapping is harsh and 'strange' in a way that most contemporary rap isn't, the sampling is often weird and jarring, and they're often very funny (or, as the guy puts it, 'i find myself more inclined to laugh than dance'). personally, i find myself drawn to those sounds and i hate dancing in public, but it doesn't surprise me that someone who uses 'perfect for post-club comedowns' as praise wouldn't like PE. (his co-workers pointed him toward the wrong album, too -- he'd probably enjoy 'fear of a black planet' more.)

in a way, i'm kind of impressed that a 19-year-old is so articulate and confident about the kind of music he likes -- i sure as hell wasn't, which is probably why i wasted all that money on neil young albums and other shit i never actually enjoyed.

She seemed to have no idea that modern music exists beyond the top 40, tho. Also she asked me if I was familiar with the White Stripes as if they were an obscure act. xps

haha okay, people like that are among those whom I fondly think of as "the worst"

infectiously triumphant mp3s

i work with a lot of people around 10 years younger than me and am consistently surprised at the degree to which there is almost no generation gap and how many of them listen to music that was either popular more from my college years or stuff that was popular before BOTH of our times

i'd love it if this was a boss saying "man, my employees LOVE that my iPod plays through the office."

PE are very danceable tho!

Or at least were when they were good.

if you have problems dancing to "Bring the Noise" or "Don't Believe the Hype", you can't dance

(I stopped there because I don't really need to list every track on Millions and also "Black Steel..." is much more danceable form in Tricky's cover of it)

btw i do think this kid's a tool and that it's hilarious some NPR staffer is squeezing Onion pieces out of the interns, but eh what music nerd at 19 wouldn't have said something ridiculous and flip about a classic if given the shot.

so points to questlove for fighting a candle and lol to web trolls who curse the intern's darkness

oh man, if I'd reviewed a Dylan album at 19...

lol i mean lighting a candle xpost

lol @ fighting a candle

what a disappointing GIS

literally laughed out loud at lex's headline "Surely such youthful individuality should be applauded?"

― Barack 2 Chainz Obama (some dude), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 8:00 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh come on i shouldn't have to point out to you of all people that writers don't do the headlines and standfirsts

looking forward to intern takedowns of 36 Chambers and Loveless tbh

oh come on i shouldn't have to point out to you of all people that writers don't do the headlines and standfirsts

― bitch I'm on the 242 (lex pretend), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 4:31 PM (53 seconds ago) Bookmark

fair enough, i should have said the headline to your article instead of your headline, but still hilarious

Back to candlefighting please.

you want youtube, Dan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tKKg0b64ok

i bet like half the late 20s/early 30s successful web scribes could have pumped out a "Run-DMC? Bah, give me dipset" a decade ago.

i really sincerely do hope this all results in this kid having a one-on-one debate/interview with whiney

― Barack 2 Chainz Obama (some dude), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 4:18 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

YES PLZ

i bet like half the late 20s/early 30s successful web scribes could have pumped out a "Run-DMC? Bah, give me dipset" a decade ago.

as i said in my piece, i actually DID write a "bah public enemy are nowhere near as great as trina" piece back in the day

lost to posterity obv but i stand by every word

also look i've not heard my fair share of classic albums (rap albums even! check my involvement in the 1994 albums poll) BUT i feel extremely comfortable saying that one of the world's most read music outlets shouldn't be out here propping up rap criticism by someone who by his own admission only first loved a rap song two years ago. even an intern! there are plenty of interns NPR could hire that could've done this piece in a way that wasn't like the thoughts of a puppy examining a new chew toy.

looking forward to intern takedowns of 36 Chambers and Loveless tbh

Actually they already did Loveless:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2009/12/youve_never_heard_loveless_1.html

i work with a lot of people around 10 years younger than me and am consistently surprised at the degree to which there is almost no generation gap and how many of them listen to music that was either popular more from my college years or stuff that was popular before BOTH of our times

i'd love it if this was a boss saying "man, my employees LOVE that my iPod plays through the office."

― da croupier, Wednesday, July 18, 2012 3:26 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol fuck no dogg i got an office....no but srsly one guy wears nothing but classic rock shirts like CCR, skynyrd, zz top, etc...another dude is all into testament, anthrax, megadeth (and some newer bands like amon amarth etc)

"Maybe every half-formed thought that comes into an intern's tiny developing mind doesn't need to be blasted out to the worlds largest public radio audience"

i didn't think this exactly when i read the npr thing but i did think damn what a missed opportunity to show people what you can do. it wss poorly written. and the guy even says that he had weeks to think about it/write it.

The only thing I knew was that My Bloody Valentine was one of the pioneers of shoegazer music.

the joke is that these pieces don't get edited right?

i don't think the piece was great (though i'm not into tearing down 19-yr-old writers really) and obv i think the kid has absolutely dreadful taste in what he does like, BUT i'm not gonna get outraged that NPR published it when there are ACRES AND ACRES of awful, awful music writing shat out every week by professional adult journalists that are way more necessary to take down

there are plenty of interns NPR could hire that could've done this piece in a way that wasn't like the thoughts of a puppy examining a new chew toy.

oh i don't doubt plenty of earnest teens would have loved to just regurgitate old reviews "put me in, coach!" book report style

though I bet we'd shred apart some noble-hearted scrubs "chuck d was a prophet" piece too

also look i've not heard my fair share of classic albums (rap albums even! check my involvement in the 1994 albums poll) BUT i feel extremely comfortable saying that one of the world's most read music outlets shouldn't be out here propping up rap criticism by someone who by his own admission only first loved a rap song two years ago. even an intern! there are plenty of interns NPR could hire that could've done this piece in a way that wasn't like the thoughts of a puppy examining a new chew toy.

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, July 18, 2012 4:37 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

no lie what the tone of the NPR piece reminded me of more than anything was
http://www.ithaca.edu/rhp/ithacan/articles/0308/28/accent/2back_beat.htm

will admit i was thinking of the purpology people when i made my dipset comment

dude should have worked harder at it. there are all kinds of interesting things you could say about now -vs- then. i don't care if he's 19.

don't mock them. just call them cultured. (xpost)

does NPR have any interns that aren't bored and alienated by any music that doesn't precisely resemble the music they already listen to?

nope!

if they have any smart interns they're figuring out ways to work on pieces that don't have the word "intern" in the byline

in today's "ask an intern" piece, a 19 year old thoughtfully considers what joni mitchell means to their parents, and how it compares to the fanship of fiona apple.

yeah no this isn't a school recital, gimme TROLL

and i liked lex's thing. i'm all for killing any and all idols. for all the anarchy of the internet its funny how the moldy oldie canon stuff just gets reinforced over and over again. everything is being reappraised and reappreciated over and over. EVERYTHING ever made is underrated. apparently.

dude should have worked harder at it. there are all kinds of interesting things you could say about now -vs- then. i don't care if he's 19.

to be fair to him a majority of professional critics are guilty of saying uninteresting things and parroting lazy thinking most of the time too, and they have less excuse

haha okay now that I've read that piece I understand exactly why the Internet hates that dude, it's because he's a hateable fuck

being on some "rap must be smooth in order to be good" bullshit basically earns nothing but scorn and derision for me and it makes complete and total sense that he would think Drake is the epitome of hip-hop, basically I just want to hold this kid down and play Waka and Death Grips at him until his head explodes

if they have any smart interns they're figuring out ways to work on pieces that don't have the word "intern" in the byline

this is so OTM

yeah but i'm talking about this piece specifically. when you have that kind of audience and the opportunity to write something really good that you know a lot of people will see and you write what he wrote...i dunno, he should have gone for the gold. it was sloppy.

x-post

I mean fuck, "A Milli" would probably make him cry

I don't think it'd make a bit of difference if the kid had written a thoughtful, reflective, careful analysis of why Millions doesn't really sound so amazing to him/her really tho, the same olds who got their lives changed by that record, me included, would be all "You are dumb!! This amazing record" etc etc & they/we'd sound just like fuckin baby boomers only w/rap. The piece is really stupid but there's a fair bit in the response to it that's going unexamined imo

has anyone read any of the many 'you've never heard?' pieces before this?

http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=126330958

lol, they've been doing these since 2009! guessing it just wasn't on anyone's radar until that emily white/lowery kerfluffle

"I don't think it'd make a bit of difference if the kid had written a thoughtful, reflective, careful analysis of why Millions doesn't really sound so amazing to him/her really tho"

it would have made a difference to me. i might have enjoyed reading it. i don't like cringing when i read stuff. i don't like to cringe.

from the loveless one (from '09) posted upthread

The guitars on Loveless, which for many are the most compelling element of the album, were hit-and-miss for me; I love the quality but not the quantity. The thick distortion, bends and subtle tremolo make for a truly mind-blowing sound. It's obvious that the guitars are what make the album. But I'm a big fan of space in music, and how what isn't played is just as important as what is. So for me, the constant barrage of guitar haze is too confining. Also, without some of that space, the music tends to blend together with only repetitive, and often grating, synth hooks to distinguish between songs. The ones that did stand out to me are the opener "Only Shallow" and "Come in Alone." I think I would like all of the songs a lot more outside of the context of the album as a whole, where they (and I) have more room to breathe.

that's just cuz yr old scott. kids these days LOVE cringe

i was 18 when i started writing for large-ish outlets and continued to do so as a college student, and i sure as hell had more gaps in my knowledge then and COULD have exposed my naivete or played up my youth but i was more interested in coming across as an adult who had an idea of what he was talking about it.

that loveless one reads fine! maybe everyone hates this PE review because it's poorly written!

stop shouting, mad guy

no lie what the tone of the NPR piece reminded me of more than anything was
http://www.ithaca.edu/rhp/ithacan/articles/0308/28/accent/2back_beat.htm

Haha me too.

"The dashikis, baggy pants, giant clocks that hang around your neck, throwback jerseys — they’re all vibrant and different and fun."

vs.

"His hook over that yappy guitar, the service-academy beat that drops shortly afterwards, the bells on the top-end — it's all so viscerally pleasing."

stop shouting, mad guy

lol u don't know how to read!

I don't think it'd make a bit of difference if the kid had written a thoughtful, reflective, careful analysis of why Millions doesn't really sound so amazing to him/her really tho, the same olds who got their lives changed by that record, me included, would be all "You are dumb!! This amazing record" etc etc & they/we'd sound just like fuckin baby boomers only w/rap. The piece is really stupid but there's a fair bit in the response to it that's going unexamined imo

there is some truth to this but I ultimately disagree, because this idiot is a total dickbag who thinks hip-hop sucks unless it sounds like Drake

like, there is literally NO context within the hip-hop sphere for him to engage with what Public Enemy is doing, and furthermore instead of using that disconnect as the foundation of the piece he basically whines that the album isn't very smooth and then throws the interesting bits about the evolution of hip-hop in as a half-assed aside at the end, mixed in with a comment about he's "evolved" as a music fan

I mean, I read the Loveless one; that writer didn't "get" the album either, but somehow managed to write about it in a manner that didn't make it sound like everyone who DID get the album or who grew up with it or whatever must have deluded themselves into liking it because they didn't have the benefit of someone amazing like 30 Seconds To Mars to enjoy

no lie what the tone of the NPR piece reminded me of more than anything was
http://www.ithaca.edu/rhp/ithacan/articles/0308/28/accent/2back_beat.htm

hahahaha yesssssss

being on some "rap must be smooth in order to be good" bullshit

I don't think he ever said that, though -- he just suggested that the smooth stuff was more appealing to him. I mean, you can't fault the dude for expressing a subjective opinion.

Now just because I appreciate and respect the culture, doesn’t mean I falsely (and lamely) try to emulate it. It has its place

wau

que you haven't seemed mad itt once so yeah i have no idea what croup's talking about unless he's joking

you can't fault the dude for expressing a subjective opinion.

lol, pretty sure this is 86% of ilm on any given thread

yeah i think he's joking, i am joking about him not being able to read as well, i am fairly certain he knows how to read. (i think.)

I think croup was joking due to Que's use of exclamation points

It takes a million of us to turn whitey black.

Stylus used to do an "On First Listen" column that was similar to this NPR intern exercise:
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Astylusmagazine.com%2Farticles%2Fon_first_listen

quite a few of which I remember fondly while others I'll leave for enterprising young NPR interns to look for as influences.

yeah, i did an On First Listen about MC5. The problem with these kind of pieces is that it's pretty damn rare you hear some canonical thing for the first time and a light shines down on you.

especially if you're listening to it for the sole purpose of writing a critical appraisal

I don't think he ever said that, though -- he just suggested that the smooth stuff was more appealing to him. I mean, you can't fault the dude for expressing a subjective opinion.

dude said "I don't really know much about hip-hop but I love Rustie and Clams Casino" and then went on to blame Public Enemy for not fitting into that context, ending with "in summation, Drake rules"

the On Second Thought columns were more fun and required more thought: you had to at least demonstrate that you have an ear.

i didn't even like when the npr intern was like i haven't heard paid in full, etc either. you could have listened to it in the weeks you had to write this damn thing!

lil Kerouac ripping first drafts from his typewriter

dude said "I don't really know much about hip-hop but I love Rustie and Clams Casino" and then went on to blame Public Enemy for not fitting into that context, ending with "in summation, Drake rules"

He didn't "blame" Public Enemy, he just described his reaction to Millions. He said it left him "perplexed" but that he was glad he gave it a shot.

this board has countless threads devoted to ripping on revered albums, generational differences, not understanding stuff on the first listen, and while there's as much argument as can be expected in those threads there's probably not as much judgment or annoyance because people were just making conversation, not writing columns for a high profile media outlet, i really think the NPR intern angle is much more potent than just the content of what he's saying, which is occasionally lol but not especially aggressive or outrageous.

reading a bunch of these just made me say "ok yeah why am i reading what a 19 year old has to say again?"

someone needs to do a variation of this that says "NPR INTERNS ARE RUINING MUSIC"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/bc/Home_taping_is_killing_music.png/220px-Home_taping_is_killing_music.png

also the "high profile" claim people are making is funny in that they've been running this series for 3 years and i'd be impressed if 2 of us knew it before this

true, true, that was news to me

serious question: how many of us read NPR's music stuff on our own? I don't unless it's linked.

they should make these interns listen to obscurities instead. world needs more Son of Bazerk reviews!

I avoid NPR like the plague but my wife gets her news from it in the car

there are a few people on there that i know and/or check for their stuff, don't go on the NPR site all the time but here and there. and my wife always has it on in her car also lol.

I listen to All Things Considered in bits to and fro work but that's it

He didn't "blame" Public Enemy, he just described his reaction to Millions. He said it left him "perplexed" but that he was glad he gave it a shot.

he said he was getting a harsh tank when he was expecting a Bentley and called various elements of the songs "thin", "cartoonish", "caricature" and "alarmingly dated"

then, rather than using that gap between expectation and reality to spend some time talking about how things have changed since Millions was released and to examine where his preconceptions of what the album would be like came from, he instead decides to complain that the whole album isn't ambient soundscapes and throws the more interesting question out as an aside at the end

tbf Chuck D does sound like a tank

I hope it's clear my annoyance is not with dude disliking Millions, it's with him acting like rap music should be passive-sounding in order to for him to enjoy it

sounds like he'd like the last couple PE albums

hahahaha

he said he was getting a harsh tank when he was expecting a Bentley

But this is a perfect example of how he explicitly lays his personal biases/expectations on the table. He doesn't say "The only good hip-hop is the kind that's lush and luxurious-sounding. Public Enemy is not like that, therefore it's bad." He says "I like hip-hop that's lush and luxurious-sounding. When I listen to a hip-hop record, that's what I want to hear. Public Enemy is not like that, so it's not my cup of tea."

called various elements of the songs "thin", "cartoonish", "caricature" and "alarmingly dated"

Again, I think he couches these descriptions pretty well as subjective opinions:

Chuck D.'s unvarnished vocals sit front and center in the mix, accompanied only by percussion that, to me, sounds thin and funk guitar samples that, frankly, I find cartoonish. To me, Chuck D.'s legendary flow also comes across like a caricature.

But Public Enemy and I are on the same page only briefly: immediately following "Show 'Em" is the alarmingly dated rap-rock fusion of "She Watch Channel Zero?!" I simply cannot get past the bizarre, jolting juxtaposition of bludgeoning, Metallica-style guitar riffs and Flavor Flav's ebullient rhymes. I find myself more inclined to laugh than dance.

I hope it's clear my annoyance is not with dude disliking Millions, it's with him acting like rap music should be passive-sounding in order to for him to enjoy it

But ... what if that's true?

He doesn't say "The only good hip-hop is the kind that's lush and luxurious-sounding. Public Enemy is not like that, therefore it's bad." He says "I like hip-hop that's lush and luxurious-sounding. When I listen to a hip-hop record, that's what I want to hear. Public Enemy is not like that, so it's not my cup of tea."

but, jay, the way he writes means these two thoughts are indistinguishable

he phrases his thoughts in such a way that "only" is the inevitable adverb

I know way too many people here right now that didn't listen to rap last year, who the fuck are y'all?

then, rather than using that gap between expectation and reality to spend some time talking about how things have changed since Millions was released and to examine where his preconceptions of what the album would be like came from, he instead decides to complain that the whole album isn't ambient soundscapes and throws the more interesting question out as an aside at the end

I don't disagree that this would make for a more interesting piece of writing, but it doesn't seem like that's his/NPR's aim.

he doesn't bother examining other possibilities for hip-hop

but, jay, the way he writes means these two thoughts are indistinguishable

Sorry, I don't get that sense at all.

xp Is that his responsibility? It's an exercise in listening and responding to music.

then you are reading the piece incorrectly

haha a cousin, selecting a Kenny Chesney song, chastised me on Memorial Day weekend for being "way too old" to listen to hip-hop.

Is that his responsibility? It's an exercise in listening and responding to music

I think it kinda is! You're a writer, you have an audience -- how can you expect you won't get questioned on your premises? You have to anticipate them.

then you are reading the piece incorrectly

Man, I feel like the dude goes far out of his way to underscore that this is merely his opinion, informed by his personal taste and his social context. I mean, I could write a similar piece about Bob Dylan -- listen to Blonde and Blonde, jot down some impressions -- and I wouldn't intend it to mean that Dylan is worthless, even if those impressions were largely negative. That's not to say that it would be a particularly interesting piece, but neither is the Public Enemy one.

I think I'm gonna listen to Genesis' Abacab for the first time tonight.

But ... what if that's true?

then it's my opinion that he doesn't actually like hip-hop

tbf this guy is a lot less adamant that he loves or understands hip hop than a lot of kids taking similar stances would be

right now, I'm a little too deep into a Death Grips-fueled rage to be very fair

there are SO many 19 year olds who have listened to nothing but rap their whole lives and claim expert/obsessive status but would be even more arrogantly dismiss PE

be

You're gonna like abacab alfred!

I basically agree will all that jaymc wrote above--I think the piece is fine. I haven't read anything else in the series, but if someone at NPR gives him this assignment (not the specific album; he says he did a poll first), I think his only obligation is to write about his reaction to the album. He doesn't have to place the album in the context of hip-hop history, just his own, which he does. The key thing for me in a piece like this is, do I find the voice believable, or is someone trying to impress me with his audacity (and in the process has evidently impressed himself)? I don't get that at all--parts even seem a little self-deprecating. If it were an album that meant more to me personally, After the Gold Rush or something, I'd probably be less charitable.

Very different, I'll add, than when I was 19. The first Rolling Stone guide, Christgau's '70s book, Stranded, and Paul Gambaccini's Top 200 Albums book all came out around the same time--the canon was still kind of being formulated. So I had this great curiosity/compulsion to seek out Forever Changes and Otis Blue and Moby Grape and all sorts of other stuff. Even punk got me interested in the past, whether it wanted to or not: the Dolls, Stooges, MC5, etc. And I'm sure this guy will branch out soon enough, but I don't think he was required to do it in this piece.

i kept waiting for "so-and-so is also the intern for the drummer for gay dad" at the end of this

I mentioned this on FB: of everything I covered in my popular music course in the fall, "Night of the Living Baseheads" seemed to leave the students coldest. I don't think there was a single reference in the video that made sense to any of them.

Lol the "red alert" bulletin from DJ Red Alert easter egg isn't hitting the class of 2013?

Using words like "cartoonish" and "caricature" makes me wonder if he's not even conceiving of a "cartoon" that can be transcendent.

Yeah like has he even watched My Little Pony Friendship is Magic?!

Well, I wonder if genuinely does not realize that no one ever disputed their cartoonishness.

if he

it's hilarious to realize Public Enemy is as old today as Woodstock was in 1992.

telling kids to respect the PE logo is like telling a gen-xer to respect the peace symbol.

i agree w jaymc and clemenza: the piece's only real sin is dullness. kid writes well enough to pass boot camp muster, is seemingly honest and self-aware about his biases, and seems to have listened fairly carefully. though i don't share his taste, nothing he wrote really bothers me. it's so short that i didn't even have time to get pissed-off bored.

OTM.

does NPR have any interns that aren't bored and alienated by any music that doesn't precisely resemble the music they already listen to?

Dudes who listened to Bitches' Brew and Horses loved them.

i can't remember the last time i listened to an entire public enemy album. 20 years ago or more.

the intern thing is kind of a variation on the hilarious let's play heavy metal or whatever for old people youtube things. i don't like those either really. 19 and 89 year olds kinda equally clueless i guess.

"Night of the Living Baseheads" seemed to leave the students coldest.

(Admittedly, this could have just had something to do with how it was presented or the fact that it was the last class of the semester or...)

Clemenza, jaymc otm

I don't think there was a single reference in the video that made sense to any of them.

crack no longer relevant eh

I also don't understand who or what is being leveled with the charge of causing a "reinforcement of received wisdom" in lex's piece.

The canon is a conservative concept that has squatted, toad-like, on music criticism for as long as I can remember – not just in the form of "100 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die" space-filler lists, but in the reinforcement of received wisdom.

He means the canon, right? Though I always have to weigh Lex's principled canon-hate against the fact that he just doesn't like most of the albums in it, and when he does like a widely regarded album then he decides it isn't canon after all. I wonder how this piece would read if he actually liked Public Enemy, or if the NPR intern had got his hands on Aaliyah.

Not sure what i think about this canon business - had sorta assumed it had faded a bit as "a thing"

don't really think anyone should be particularly subscribing to it, even as a roadmap or whatever but otoh if you're an outsider to a genre feels kinda weird to avoid major names in its canon - like couldn't really imagine avoiding romica puceanu or toni iordache

xp haha imagine if it had been about a canon album i actively hate! or if the intern had been bigging up angel haze instead of Fucking Drake

i find the idea of objectively good music as annoying as the next man but everybody has their own personal canon and amongst whatever group there is received wisdom, it's how people have discussions. eg i can't discuss techno with a group of friends if half of them think that all techno is repetitive and boring rubbish, an opinion anyone is entitled to. every discussion you have is based on accepted or shared wisdom. often, to have a discussion, there has to be a certain amount of accepted wisdom amongst people. it just so happens there's a vaguely annoying shared wisdom that more people share.

i find the problem as a critic lambasting this idea of the canon (which is subjective in itself obviously) is that generally the critic wants people to listen to other things which they think are good, instead.

and those things are no more objectively good either.

once you start battling for objectivity vs the canon you might as well give up writing about music.

yes ronan we should all just give up writing about music

all of us

everyone knows it's completely pointless and anyone with a career in it should just face up to the fact that their entire life is a waste of time

now will you FUCK OFF

will you please stop being so virulently rude?

i'm discussing something i'm genuinely interested in, if you are incapable of not having a tantrum then don't join in.

erm implying that the careers of half this thread are pointless ISN'T rude?

never said that, you take the implications you want to allow you to tell someone to fuck off though.

oh you're so fucking disingenuous, fuck off for real

if anyone wants to discuss my post then that's why i posted it. i'd like if there's a hope of staying on topic.

ronan's post was good, lex needs to chill

it's the same shit you always post so you could probably look up the 94387449393493 other ronanbot whinges about the existence of arts journalism as a practice in the meantime

once you start battling for objectivity vs the canon you might as well give up writing about music.

fwiw... the point i was making here is that it's a pretty slippery road to go down, battling for objectivity is quite nihilistic by nature. if you actually really do believe some things are definitively better than others and want to make a career out of saying this, or be that type of critic, then maybe there's a different lawbook you should go by... a discussion of that is what i'm after.

i think the only real problem with the big C Canon is that the lazy assumptions that formed it still inform a lot of non-specialist music writing, so you're still gonna rub up against painful examples of it in the popular media every so often, in the same way that school literature classes cling on to ideas of criticism that most professionals have long moved on from.

so yeah we are all post-canon now except for whoever writes the blurb for BBC Breakfast or etc

or maybe what you're getting at LG is the idea of criticism as taste-making? which i'm not sure is a worthwhile endeavour but is maybe wrapped up in the whole idea of criticism

i think the only real problem with the big C Canon is that the lazy assumptions that formed it still inform a lot of non-specialist music writing, so you're still gonna rub up against painful examples of it in the popular media every so often, in the same way that school literature classes cling on to ideas of criticism that most professionals have long moved on from.

yeah its purpose as "history" is the most fucking annoying part for me. and the way you get that narrative like "and then x invented dance music" like it was penicillin or something (tho actually the invention of penicillin is just as stupidly credited to alexander fleming anyway, so maybe this is just a flaw of history itself.)

nah, it's usually a flaw of laziness and thickness trying to justify itself as explanation or introduction, the "all ideas shd be explainable simply to an attention-addled 5 year-old" argument

i guess there's a place for Dummies' Guides but i strongly resent all mass communication becoming one

I think a lot of people had a reaction like this to PE back in 1988 (minus the Drake and Maybach mentions)--they were too harsh, you couldn't dance to them, etc.

xpost

I would like to add that as a fan, not a professional critic, it's fun to talk in hyperbole. It's fun to say Kanye sucks and PE rules! I don't expect my opinions to taken as objective.

Critics and cannons have always served a purpose for me. If I see something placing high on a list that I haven't yet heard, I will at least check it out for myself.

The integrety of cannon/list makers going forward might seem suspect to some because there are sooo many professional critics today, and sooo much consensus in year end lists lately?

I don't know. I do know that tend to cynical about a lot of things.

Critics and cannons have always served a purpose for me.

http://content.scholastic.com/content/media/products/7X/043965467X_rgb8_xlg.jpg

lolz

"i think the only real problem with the big C Canon is that the lazy assumptions that formed it still inform a lot of non-specialist music writing, so you're still gonna rub up against painful examples of it in the popular media every so often, in the same way that school literature classes cling on to ideas of criticism that most professionals have long moved on from."

i agree!

has there always been such a huge agreement between rock critics before?

(I don't remember if we ever covered that aspect of theat in those huge post-GAPDY P&J conversations)

that Lester Bangs line "I can guarantee you one thing, we will never agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis" seems pertinent

xpost

"except for Tuneyards"

lol

i can't remember if i'm a rock critic anymore, but i don't agree on lots of things that critics agree on. i think the history of pop music crit is pretty dismal though. like, i'm way more apt to read and agree with a 50 year old lit crit book or film crit book than i am an old book about rock or pop or whatever. bangs and all them, they were really entertaining and i like their love of language, but they were so friggin' dismissive of so much music. and i kinda can't take them seriously about music because of that. and while i'd like to think that people have broader horizons now, i'm not so sure if that's true. i think most criticism is the pits nowadays.

so true

i guess for all the old lit and film crit had an element of exclusion it was centred on close reading which is never completely useless. the history of music crit feels more centrally concerned with praising one thing at the expense of a lot of others, maybe because there's a lot less close reading going on.

Not sure Bangs is the best example there--his single most famous piece was a passionate defense of garage bands that people dismissed or had forgotten about at the time. (xxpost)

he may have been soft on garage bands but dude definitely was happy to dismiss large swaths of music

i mean i love bangs, but yeah he's a great example of someone saying culture is worthless for pretty solipsistic reasons

I just think Bangs and Marcus and the rest praised what they loved and dismissed what they didn't, like anybody else. Sometimes, like Marcus with the Velvet Underground, they'd experience a turnaround years later.

Sorry--old guy defends older/dead guys. Habit of mine.

music is just a very different medium from lit or film and is a lot more resistant to consensus or universal standards that transcend cultural differences. for one thing a lot more happens much more quickly, other artforms don't have much of an analog to new songs being released and discussed literally every minute of every day, even pre-internet. a lot of good and interesting stuff can be done with music crit but canon-building and asserting values, narratives tends to be kind of a mug's game imo.

i'd argue it's a mug's game with other artforms too but i get your point

Not sure what i think about this canon business - had sorta assumed it had faded a bit as "a thing"

― coal, Friday, July 20, 2012 2:30 AM (4 hours ago)

music is just a very different medium from lit or film and is a lot more resistant to consensus or universal standards that transcend cultural differences.

― Barack 2 Chainz Obama (some dude), Friday, July 20, 2012 7:24 AM (2 minutes ago)

"it holds"

those "Acclaimed Music" lists are nothing to go by really tho cos they're the work of a tiny fraction of music listeners with a specific kind of bias?

if those wretched fucking "acclaimed music" top lists that someone keeps polling are any indication, then the canon is alive and well and hasn't shifted much in the last couple decades. the consensus is strong, it was established early, and at holds. btw, rock albums by white guys are the best.

― contenderizer, Friday, July 20, 2012 10:36 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

the consensus is weak vs. other mediums though, is my point. i don't know if a mainstream list of the best films or books from a given year would prompt dozens/hundreds of alternative suggestions like an album list would. music is still a much more personal/subjective experience in terms of people happily putting their favorites up against the known classics.

lol contendo I was just going to bring those up. Yeah, the canon exists, but considering how inordinately pissed those polls make you, maybe we'd be better to go on acting like it didn't :)

btw, rock albums by white guys are the best.

― contenderizer, Friday, July 20, 2012 10:36 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

kinda racist, but you have a point

i mean zz top and all

was contend making a point or just expressing the same taste he always does there

canons are more a product of mass consensus than elite management.

canons are more a product of mass consensus than elite management.

I agree, which is why canon-building always strikes me as a futile exercise

i don't buy that, tho yr elite might be a pretty big group. sure we've been here before anyway, disconnect between biggest sellers in various artforms and yr actual Canon is usually clear

but again, in the case of literature or movies you can absolutely point to a handful of critics who play a big role in shaping the canons

canons are pretty interesting

'the canon' is pretty interesting

no one ever espoused cultural relativism and meant it

npr is not "the worlds largest public radio audience", gtfo american

"no one" is pushing it

xpost

yeah it's that tim westwood guy i think

no one ever espoused an unmotivated cultural relativism and meant it

a motivated cultural relativism is not actually cultural relativism

ergo, no one ever ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums

How many of these albums regularly appear on "all-time greatest" lists?
How many of these albums contain songs that regularly appear on "all-time greatest" lists?

The disconnects can be explained by the albums/songs in question being too recent to be properly canonized as easily as them not being approved by the tastemakers

My main point here, and I think this ties into some dude's point about the mass production and saturation point of music, is that the distance between "the canon" and "the popular" isn't nearly as large as one would think. Obviously there are canonized acts who are not megasellers, I'm not trying to argue there aren't, but you can't handwave the influence of popularity on what strains of music people start with when coming up with canonized lists.

maybe cultural relativism is an unexamined way of thinking for a lot of people who don't think about criticism?

well if i had to put numbers on it i'd say it's 70/30 "what everyone enjoys and plays voluntarily"/"what critics want to talk about"

critics meaning the whole range of deep-interest folks, ie anyone on ILM, etc. "everyone" is a highly divided thing, too, by genre and identity.

critics are stereotypically known for trying legislate in the unpopular-but-worthy; their most important bad function is masking or ignoring things that are absolutely canonical (in the sense that further listener experience and artist work can't help but be informed by x artwork), but that's a well-known class and media-access story about what is discussed seriously.

he may have been soft on garage bands but dude definitely was happy to dismiss large swaths of music

― da croupier, Friday, July 20, 2012 7:18 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean i love bangs, but yeah he's a great example of someone saying culture is worthless for pretty solipsistic reasons

― da croupier, Friday, July 20, 2012 7:20 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Which swaths did he dismiss? Disco?

And I'm not sure how his criticisms of things were more solipsistic than others.

others' criticisms, I mean

so sick of Shania and Celine and Whitney and AC/DC clogging up critics' all time greatest lists

n.v. i think 'unexamined ways of thinking' are probably the majority of cases of what i'm calling 'not meaning it'. also did you see that q feature on the making of the dirty dancing soundtrack because man what a snooze

bangs thought 1979 was the worst year for music ever. all those guys kinda gave up on everything shortly after doors debut.

truly they were the Youtube commenters of their era

it is funny to me how so many older critics seem to hold a candle for The Doors considering that they're probably the LEAST revered big band of that era among critics now

Yeah, but the question would be about what they missed and how much that would affect your perspective on their careers. It would have been cool if Bangs had stuck up for Off the Wall - sure.

For the 1981 Village Voice Pazz and Jop Critics' Poll, Lester Bangs turned in a blank ballot, protesting the worthless state of rock and roll. "New Wave has terminated in thudding hollow Xeroxes of poses that aren't even annoying anymore," he wrote. "Rap is nothing, or not enough. Jazz does not exist as a musical form with anything new to say. And the rest of rock is recycling various formulae forever. I don't know what I'm going to write about - music is the only thing in the world I really care about - but I simply cannot pretend to find anything compelling in the choice between pap and mud."

i think 'inability to have critical perspective on own burnout' is this whole other thing y'know

is that the year he interviewed captain beefheart about retiring

thanks for finding the paragraph i was gonna paraphrase, scott

also bangs admitted to wailing the stones were dead and resurrected within a single night in 1965. Scott's point is that he's tired of boomer rock critics who didn't hesitate to dismiss anything that didn't fit their limitied view, and damn right that Bangs is stellar example (even if I don't begrudge the fact as much).

see the sad thing is when i finally outlive the last baby boomer i'll have to read long articles about the legacy of wilco written by generation x people. and i might not outlive all of generation x!

no you won't, unless you want to

haha i meant "reading long articles about wilco" not "surviving gen x" but i guess that's true too

Did rap constitute a "swath" of music in 1981, though? How much do you fault the guy for a quote like this:

"I wrote in another publication: 'What I did (in 1981) was what almost everyone else...did: listened to old music, when I listened at all'. So I get a letter from one kid berating me for listing Beck, Bogert, and Appice as a listening preference over, say, X or Joy Division: 'How can you be so nostalgic? Don't you know there are all kinds of great new groups like the Fall, Fad Gadget, the Dickies, Clock DVA, and Orange Juice?'"

you know, you're still allowed to think bangs was a smart, observant rock critic and still accept that other people will not be wrong find his perspective heavy on the emotion and short on perspective

haha woops at the double "perspective" but c'mon is it really hard to grasp someone having this complaint about bangs even if had a good fad gadget zing and liked half japanese

No, I have the same complaint but he was good and I thought the "dismiss large swaths of music" and "saying culture is worthless for pretty solipsistic reasons" comments were overstated.

if we're going to chalk his dismissal of 1981 up to critical burnout I'd say you've standing on small semantic ground

tbh i'm not entirely sure what relevance bangs had to the wider conversation or how we ended up talking about him

we were talking about rock critics in a thread about rock criticism, scott said he was sick of all the old rock critics for being so dismissive of stuff outside their purview and some folks went "SURELY you don't mean BANGS" etc...

scott said he was sick of all the old rock critics for being so dismissive of stuff outside their purview and some folks went "SURELY you don't mean BANGS" piled on the hyperbole.

bangs's dismissal of the-culture-as-is wasn't a matter of reverence for the canon, though. i don't know, i have now reached the point where it's so long since i read them i can't remember which bits are bangs and which meltzer: who had the rather facepalm bit re: MAYBE THE CLASH ARE ENOUGH TO GIVE US HOPE

Bangs was preoccupied with both novelty and music-as-transgression, values which I don't find particularly relevant. good writer though.

Fwiw, Scott also said, "i kinda can't take them seriously about music" and I just don't happen to feel the same about the guy who wrote, say, the liner notes to the Them reissue (Bangs) or parts or The Aesthetics of Rock. Because I don't know how many music critics I take more seriously than those guys.

meltzer wrote BOC lyrics so he is the greatest rock writer ever

I think Bangs' '81 ballot, or thoughts about 1979, needs to be placed in the context of his life. Just about everyone who writes about pop music for a long time (Christgau being the obvious exception, and even he has his moments) hits a point where disengagement/frustration starts to creep in. Generally, re-engagement happens soon enough. The timeline is different for everybody. My guess is that Bangs' '81 ballot was just a stop along the way, and had he lived, he would have found lots to enthuse about soon enough.

was contend making a point or just expressing the same taste he always does there

― Barack 2 Chainz Obama (some dude), Friday, July 20, 2012 8:56 AM (1 hour ago)

well, i was trying to make the point that canon, in its current, informal incarnation, remains both solid and influential. this seems to be true despite big changes in tastes, values and media over the past few decades, and despite the fact that the established canon and its promoters have been subject to aggressive interrogation. i don't accept that canon is weaker in relation to music than to film and literature. it's different, sure, but the landscape in question is no less well mapped out. while popular taste may be as big a part of what establishes canon as critical opinion, one of the principal features of canon is durability. once enshrined, songs, albums and artists tend to stay stuck there for a good, long while. i love exile on main street, but i have to believe that its continued elevation in the rock canon is as much a product of its canonization as anything else.

i don't think i'm making a big or controversial point here, but that was the essence of my argument. i also spun out into pointless griping about the retrograde features of the late 20th century pop canon, but only cuz that's what i do.

i was just joking around dude cause you never seem to provide much evidence that your taste contradicts the "rock albums by white guys are the best" philosophy you mocked

this was not written by an intern.

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/11/the_ten_bands_i_will_be_forced_to_listen_to_in_hell_salpart//

does anyone still read salon? i have no idea.

haha a good chunk of that piece is clearly mitigated by the author proclaiming himself to be a total asshole who is going to hell

While it’s true that one man’s hell band may be another man’s rockin’ ceiling poster, I think we can all agree that that this whiny, falsely poetic, utterly self-satisfied unit, slated to ruin every wedding from now until the name “Duritz” is struck from the connubial lexicon by writ of post-apocalyptic parliament, is an obvious candidate for The Dark Prince’s most damned playlist. They are melody made torment, choruses made grief, hooks of despondency and woe, a steamy squirt of maudlin pandering.

And I thought I was verbose.

this guy is the voltron that forms when 5 middle-aged ilxors unite

Honour the hellfire.

terry adams from nrbq is in my store right now and he just told me that he hasn't heard a bob dylan album since blonde on blonde came out. he's got bangs and meltzer beat by a mile!

xp Well, that article is hits # 3 and 4 of only 83 for "fauxllectual" so there's that.

i was just joking around dude cause you never seem to provide much evidence that your taste contradicts the "rock albums by white guys are the best" philosophy you mocked

lol, yeah, it doesn't

i don't object to people liking whatever, though. do object to the crushing over-representation of certain voices in the canon-building process.

that's good. you should still walk the walk and listen to more, though.

but i like blue oyster cult a lot. i mean a lot a lot. you don't understand.

i can't argue with that.

salon piece is so OTT hyperbolic it doesn't really bother. even when he misrepresents the Beach Boys.

one of the principal features of canon is durability. once enshrined, songs, albums and artists tend to stay stuck there for a good, long while. i love exile on main street, but i have to believe that its continued elevation in the rock canon is as much a product of its canonization as anything else.

Is the argument, then, that its reinforcement through the years as canon material has been partly obligatory?

i'm listening to nas right now

i don't know if i'm enforcing or upsetting the canon

is that actually any good...?

perhaps incorrectly assuming you were listening to the new one...

um kinda? it's something! nas is insane. it's super overblown and odd in a way i can't articulate.

but i guess he's been crazy for a long time.

i mean it's not as good as his best ones.

Is the argument, then, that its reinforcement through the years as canon material has been partly obligatory?

― timellison, Friday, July 20, 2012 12:50 PM (23 minutes ago)

i'd probably say both necessary and self-perpetuating. obligatory in the sense that, once granted, canon doesn't rescind its esteem quickly. again, i'm not trying to make any novel argument about the nature of canon, just saying the canon of pop significance constructed between the 60s and 90s still seems to be quite influential. the best anyone can do is to glue new bits onto its existing body, perhaps at the same rate that time and indifference pry others loose (the way punk and new wave seemed to replace elvis and the icons of the early rock & roll era). this canon, "the canon", is not easily replaced or subverted, and it doesn't seem to have been rendered irrelevant by digital democratization.

doh, i should say the 90s seemed to occasion/accompany a gradual diminishment in the importance attached to the early rock era. rap, boy bands, indie rock, grunge: wasn't much connection from the present back. punk & new wave folks were obviously very closely connected to early rockers, the 50s in general.

But you were talking specifically about Exile on Main Street and I didn't know if you were speculating about its continued canon presence as an example of obligatory deference as opposed to genuine current taste.

It's #11 on the Pitchfork '70s list.

I kind of see most early punk as more connected to non-hippie 60s rock (e.g. girl groups, garage bands) than to 50s rock and roll, actually.

xpost

oh, i don't know that there's a difference. or rather, i wasn't intending to make a distinction. the two are interlinked, in that taste shapes canon just as canon shapes taste.

the most visible and codified aspects of canon are often out of step with actual popular and/or critical taste (the rock and roll hall of fame is an example of this), while our understanding of canon typically lags behind its actual formation.

that was xp to tim. this to sund4r:

yeah, that's probably fair. still, i do think that the likes of chuck berry and elvis loomed large over the punk/new wave era, either as direct or as odious posterity. beyond musical influence, many aspects of late 70s and early-mid 80s culture seemed like a deliberate response to images and ideals of midcentury modernity.

"...either as direct influences or as odious posterity."

I think Bangs' '81 ballot, or thoughts about 1979, needs to be placed in the context of his life. Just about everyone who writes about pop music for a long time (Christgau being the obvious exception, and even he has his moments) hits a point where disengagement/frustration starts to creep in. Generally, re-engagement happens soon enough. The timeline is different for everybody. My guess is that Bangs' '81 ballot was just a stop along the way, and had he lived, he would have found lots to enthuse about soon enough.

Respectfully disagree on this point, Clemenza. Bangs's alienation from it all, in the last couple years of his life especially, seemed pretty deep-rooted and consistent. It was a theme he returned to often (comes out even more in some of the interviews he gave at the time), and a few pet artists aside, he really did seem disgusted with the direction the culture in general was headed in (his oft-repeated refrain was that everything had turned into People magazine). It's all (useless) conjecture, of course, but given the ferocity with which he made such claims, again and again, I kind of doubt his feelings on this would have been reversible. Though sure, there likely would always have been a band or two around that he was interested in (but enough to compel him to remain a "rock critic"? I doubt it). Worth remembering, maybe, that there were a lot of first-generation critics around this time, less vocal perhaps in their alienation than Bangs or Meltzer, who dropped off the scene somewhere around this time also, i.e., probably half the contributors in Stranded.

My main point: I don't think Bangs's '81 ballot (which at the time was the funniest thing I'd ever read in my life up to that point) was any kind of aberration, or a "stop along the way."

Ah I think Bangs wouldve probably cone back around to hardcore after SST started getting weird/ambitious; I'm sure he'd have been an avid Meat Puppets/Butthole Surfers fan...

Hell, he probably wouldve been a fan of Public Enemy had he lived

Well played, Levitt, well played.

All conjecture, yes. Bangs had just turned 33 when he put together his '81 ballot. Let me throw this out to anyone who's, say, 38 or older (33 + five extra years): a) how many of you reached a point where you felt like you weren't as enthusiastic about music as you used to be, or that you were losing touch with newer stuff, or that you'd lapsed into a kind of get-off-my-lawn pessimism about music in general, and b) if that's true, how many of you found your way back to some degree?--some new band or album (or maybe even one you'd missed somewhere along the way) came out of nowhere and surprised you, you turned on the radio one day and was surprised to hear a bunch of stuff you liked, etc. My guess is that the first would be true of many (it happens to me every now and again), the second true of almost as many. I realize the '81 ballot caught Bangs at a moment of intense pessimism, but I still think that would have abated over time.

Is that true about the Stranded contributors? I know many stopped writing about music for a living, but didn't many just go on to other kinds of writing--e.g., Maslin, Tosches, Carson--or into teaching, like Winner? I bet music is still a pretty big part of all their lives, and wouldn't be surprised if they keep up reasonably well on their own time.

I get the usual exhaustion and cynicism around this time of year but the best way out of this slough, I've found, is more work. Reviewing 10 to 12 putative pop singles a week is great exercise.

about to turn 38 btw

I guess I believe there's a difference between the -- awkward trying to phrase this -- the objects, or artifacts, of music, and music as a totality (to employ a Meltzerism here, though I think I'm using it differently than he does). Or between "continuing to listen to and enjoy music" (which everyone to some degree does, including Meltzer) and living-breathing the stuff or viewing the world through that particular prism, etc. (which, granted, NO one does entirely; it just becomes less possible to do so as you reach a certain age, though Christgau probably comes closer than anyone). This division is hardly definitive (I'm not even sure where I would place myself, truth be told), but I think to some degree it does exist, and I still see Bangs as coming out on the side of person-who-can-never-entirely-let-go-of-it but nothing at all like person-who-still-organizes-his-life-around-it. He would've been caught up by various bands and records. I have a harder time believing he would've felt like he was really part of it in any significant way.

My point re: Stranded is that many of those contributors, for whatever reason(s), made a conscious decision in the late '70s or early '80s to no longer devote their lives to writing about music. I can't say why or what many of them have chosen to do instead. To me, that fact in and of itself still kind of ties in with what I'm saying about the "totality." Maybe?

Let me throw this out to anyone who's, say, 38 or older (33 + five extra years): a) how many of you reached a point where you felt like you weren't as enthusiastic about music as you used to be, or that you were losing touch with newer stuff, or that you'd lapsed into a kind of get-off-my-lawn pessimism about music in general, and b) if that's true, how many of you found your way back to some degree?--some new band or album (or maybe even one you'd missed somewhere along the way) came out of nowhere and surprised you, you turned on the radio one day and was surprised to hear a bunch of stuff you liked, etc.

I'm 40. I definitely reached a point quite a while ago where I felt completely alienated from chart pop (a category which, for me, encompasses R&B and the vast majority of hip-hop as well as Katy Perry, Carly Rae Jepsen, et al.). Not only did I not think it was "speaking to me," but I found what it was conveying to be actively offensive and pernicious. I felt like pop music was making people stupider, because I felt stupider when I listened to it. So I stopped paying attention to it; just cut it completely out of my life to the greatest extent possible. I don't listen to the radio, ever; I don't have cable so I don't watch MTV; I ignore reviews of hip-hop, R&B and pop albums; etc., etc. I started focusing on the stuff that still excited me - mostly metal, jazz, and old hard rock from the late '60s and early '70s. That stuff inspires me, so that's what I listen to, think about, and write about. That, and Japanese and Korean pop, which is musically fun and lyrically incomprehensible to me, so ignorable on that score.

Funny -- I'm the opposite. I've tried to like K-pop and apart from a few glorious moments it's come up short.

i still live and breathe music but not so much new music. i just don't seek it out as much. i don't have cable. i don't drive that much and that's usually where i'll hear new pop music. i'll check out stuff on youtube. but new cds and records are just too expensive to buy all the time and they don't really make singles anymore. so i end up buying old stuff. but i still live and breathe music.

but uh i don't write about music that much and i don't make a living doing it! so maybe i should shut up. i think about it all the time though.

In case anyone's wondering how Public Enemy gave way to Lester Bangs, you've got to scroll back about a hundred posts--there's an NPR intern in there somewhere, and it went from there.

What we need to resolve the Bangs question is for the dead Lester to interview...the dead Lester, like he did with Hendrix. I know what Levitt means about the all-consuming dividing line, but I just have to believe that Bangs was inevitably going to find his way back to the other side, although I'm not sure in what form. (He was in the process of setting out to write his first novel, right?) He was an obsessive--he seemed like such a different creature than Maslin and most of the other Stranded contributors. One development that seemed made-to-order for Bangs was file-sharing. He wrote that one thing once about wanting to own every record ever made--"catacombs" of them, I think he said. Depending upon how attached to the physical object he was--he did say he wanted to be surrounded by all these records, so maybe the digital equivalent was a non-starter--file-sharing would have been about the best chance he'd ever get.

I'm 50. Still cling to the old records, still hear a decent enough amount of new stuff that excites me to keep me semi-engaged. I try really hard to avoid concluding that the stupid pop music of today is any stupider than the stupid pop music I loved in 1972 or 1987. Not hearing too too much of it probably helps in that regard.

yeah i should say that my love for pop and rap and r&b and stuff like that on the radio hasn't diminished at all. i love lots of new stuff i've heard i just don't listen to it a LOT. whereas i will listen to hundreds and hundreds of old records (that i've never heard)every year.

i think writing about music every week or month for years though...yeah, i couldn't do it i don't think. not full-time. i would get burnt. i'm sure of it.

unless you are a he-man like charles nelson eddy.

that really should be his middle name...

my new neighbors' Wifi network is called Fear of a Black Planet

it takes a WPA2 password to hold us back

I don't write for a living, for better or worse. But an undeniable, welcome consequence of aging is I don't want to own every record or single ever produced; that appetite wanes every year. I'll still get jags though: on Thursday night I wanted to d/l every old Siouxsie album.

scott and clem, if you want to hear and write about new music without buying it I'd love to see you both contribute to the Singles Jukebox.

With few exceptions I have been behind the times my whole life on music, although digging backwards all the time I sometimes end up with a surprising affinity for the present. Mostly I'm out of it, and would make a befuddled, easily ridiculed current-music-reviewer.

Thanks, Alfred--Kogan mentioned the same about a year back. But, echoing Vic's post above, my out-of-touchness would be a problem. Even in my year-end ballot last year, I wrote something about some Canadian band being ninth-generation Beastie Boys that could only have been written by someone not paying close enough attention to realize they were in fact day-old LMFAO. Still love the song I was writing about, but six months later the botched comparison makes me roll my eyes.

Whenever I start thinking about this subject (not PE but current pop) I always end up asking myself the same question: how important is originality anymore?

on Seattle's KEXP tomorrow, streaming on KEXP.org, 12 hours of deconstructing Nation Of Millions: every song sampled, interviews with Chuck and Hank, commentary from Ish of Shabazz Palaces & Digable Planets, further commentary from Professor Daudi Abe.

Dave Segal at the Stranger:

Millions is a mind-boggling agglomeration of funk, rock, soul, old-school hiphop, impassioned passages from speeches (by Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, Khalid Abdul Muhammad), mantric vocal loops, and motherfuckin' Slayer on "She Watch Channel Zero." People who dismiss sampling as "cheating" or not "real music"—these types still exist in 2018—need to understand that what the Bomb Squad did here is just as artful as any other approach to music-making.

The arranging and rhythmic skills that went into Millions are impressively intricate, and the Bomb Squad's action-packed tapestries involve much more than just looping beats and letting them run unaltered throughout entire tracks. Rather, they created mosaics of crate-diggers' secret (and not-so-secret) weapons that blossomed into catalytic jams that doubled as party-starters and sociopolitical manifestos. The Bomb Squad—along with Chuck D and Flavor Flav's penetrating lyrics, of course—optimized these disparate atoms of sound/noise into careening vehicles of excitement. We shan't hear its like again—mainly because of the punitive legal consequences of such prolific sampling, but also due to diminishing ambitions.

David Schmader cogently summarized Millions in these pages back in 2006: "It was terrifying. Over what would become the band's signature audio hurricane—compressing the wildest exertions of free jazz into harsh layered beats to create the densest, most intense racket ever made in the name of pop music—Chuck D laid out his explicitly political call to revolutionary action, with a righteous fury that, to this white American, felt inevitable and historic."

(from 6am, Pacific time: https://www.kexp.org/publicenemy30/ )

PE's outrage feels more relevant than ever

otm, sadly

five hours in, seven to go, up to Caught, Can I Get A Witness