ask deej

deej,

sorry to keep bugging about anonymous nyc rappers, but is red cafe worth taking the time to check out?

I'm glad you don't see any value in Sun Ra's conceptual motifs tho, even tho they were basically the whole point of his career and had the most lasting impact on people. good for you.

i didnt make a shitty analogy it makes perfect sense dude

m@tt, not really, he has occasionally cool songs but most of what ive heard is just so so

did you ever listen to max b? if you can track it down i rlly like the 'gain greene' best of mix

I'm glad you don't see any value in Sun Ra's conceptual motifs tho, even tho they were basically the whole point of his career and had the most lasting impact on people. good for you.

― twat dust and ego overload (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, December 17, 2010 2:42 PM (55 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont think outkast listened to sun ra

well you are wrong

i think you're crediting 'sun ra' with 'huge sci fi pop culture detritus that everyone was exposed to'

did you ever listen to max b? if you can track it down i rlly like the 'gain greene' best of mix

yeah i dig what you've posted on the goon thread, real kinda sleazy charm i think, reminds me of a better version of what jim jones does...more sing-songy and drunk sounding...been meaning to check him out for while cuz you keep telling me to, i am gonna do that now!

"i didnt make a shitty analogy it makes perfect sense dude"

No it doesn't make any sense at all, you basically acknowledged it was flawed way up above.

oh look here's the Source namedropping Ra in reference to Outakst in 1998 re: Aquemini

http://www.thesource.com/articles/2538

xp

i think you're crediting 'sun ra' with 'huge sci fi pop culture detritus that everyone was exposed to'

what fucking ever. pre-Sun Ra there were no black people in outer space. He is ground zero for afro-futurism and stop pretending like that has no conceptual weight because the influence of that idea has gone far and wide.

Sun Ra is like the #1 artist that gets namedropped by people who it's never clear if they've ever listened to more than a small amount of his music or had it influence their music in any substantial way

deej, your thoughts on William Howard Taft?

let me know when li'l B comes up with something as massively deep and influential tho.

xp

oh wait that's not even Outkast namedropping him, that's just a generic critic pullquote about how they "conjure" his "spirit"! ooooh impressive stuff!

Sun Ra is like the #1 artist that gets namedropped by people who it's never clear if they've ever listened to more than a small amount of his music or had it influence their music in any substantial way

I AM NOT TALKING EXCLUSIVELY ABOUT HIS MUSIC GET ONE CLUE MR. HIP HOP IS ALL ABOUT PERSONAS

jesus christ

I need to back away and go get some lunch

"Sun Ra is like the #1 artist that gets namedropped by people who it's never clear if they've ever listened to more than a small amount of his music or had it influence their music in any substantial way"

Uh Erik Satie anyone?

arguing that lil b is a more important artist than gucci was, bcause rap is dead now but the long-running narrative of white ppl biting black forms is still going

I can't even parse this man sorry.

this was just a thread derail because you made a shitty analogy (Gucci = Ellington, lil B = Sun Ra), you got called on it, now yr throwing around all kinds of nonsense that isn't even worth responding to

― twat dust and ego overload (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, December 17, 2010 2:40 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what im saying is that ellington's impact on jazz as a whole is a bigger deal than sun ra's space suits supposedly influencing a bunch of rock groups and any artist that includes comic book or sci if themes. just bcuz jazz is a much diminished art form for contemporary artists doesnt mean its a less significant / more marginal art form in the grand scheme.

(than that constellation of groups you mentioned)

seriously the way rap & jazz are treated as feeder-inspiration for the 'real art' of rock & token approved outsiders like mf doom is ... ugh

"who cares if ellington was the most important jazz composer in history -- yo la tengo really liked sun ra!"

I AM NOT TALKING EXCLUSIVELY ABOUT HIS MUSIC GET ONE CLUE MR. HIP HOP IS ALL ABOUT PERSONAS

jesus christ

I need to back away and go get some lunch

― twat dust and ego overload (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, December 17, 2010 2:50 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im sorry that duke ellington's 'persona' wasnt wacky enough for you to bother understanding why his music might be worthwhile

The thing is, there is no need to downplay the significance of Sun Ra to make the point that Duke Ellington was more influential/important.

Like, everything Shakey is saying is basically true; the real issue is that Sun Ra did not wholesale invert/mold an entire genre in the same manner Duke Ellington did.

Sun Ra generated a niche and influenced a wide range of artists; Duke Ellington basically converted all of jazz music and the people who played it to his vision.

xp Isn't gonna stop deej from doing it anyway...

xp yeah but none of those artists were popular and only white critics care about that shit so hey let's all stop caring.

i think sun ra has had an influence! but it seems self-evident to me that ellington's towers over it in terms of 20th century music in the long view. this was why i made the comparison -- if id realized ppl here honestly believe sun ra is a bigger deal, i wouldnt have made the comparison for gucci vs. lil b!

i think 'marginal' outsider artists are important, have their place, should be celebrated. but they often are used, imo, to denigrate the importance of art forms like jazz or hip hop that have their own narratives & values that dont fit into the same ones that allowed, for example, my dad to think pfunk were cool but disco was trash, or that made sun ra a countercultural hero but sees duke as some old jazz guy. it doesnt acknowledge what these artists do that is so different because it doesnt recognize the values that jazz & hip hop frameworks are based around

xp Isn't gonna stop deej from doing it anyway...

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Friday, December 17, 2010 3:01 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

xp yeah but none of those artists were popular and only white critics care about that shit so hey let's all stop caring.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Friday, December 17, 2010 3:02 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you realize dan just contradicted you

ive been listening to sun ra since i was in high school & ive heard tons of his stuff ... im a legit huge fan & wrote my jr. year thesis on his music & influence! this argument could not be more lol right now

deej do you realize that you make little to no sense?

no

Thanks. That was my only question.

1. ellington is more influential than sun ra
2. ellington's influence on jazz is a bigger deal than sun ra's influence on the handful of artists shakey described
3. although ra obviously had influence on lots of artists, i think shakey overstates ra's influence on some of those artists

is the picture clear for you yet?

So concise. Why don't you post like that all the time?

Shakey isn't overstating anything IMO; he's understating Ellington's influence.

More actually I would say he's privileging a certain type of influence over another. Which is fine, I'd argue that deej is basically doing the same thing.

More accurately, ahem.

Yeah that is fairer. (Obv I have my own bias here)

i dunno, ive listened to some spiritualized back in my 'im getting int music crit!' days, and i dont remember hearing anything that sounded particularly sun ra esque. being 'inspired by the spirit' of sun ra like that is also diff than, like, mingus directly copying compositional techniques from ellington. there's influential, then there's 'sun ra wore costumes and mf doom does too'

*sigh* I don't know why I bother.

re: Spiritualized - see Cop Shoot Cop

I think you are pretty much entirely misrepresenting Shakey's argument, but I'll let him make it. As I noted above I'm not particularly invested in this (now if we were arguing Lee Perry vs. Coxsone Dodd I might be able to get a little more up for it.)

or No God, Only Religion. or their version of Amazing Grace etc etc

can we get back to emphasizing that calling Gucci the Ellington of rap is some total bullshit, if nothing else because Gucci is not shaping/developing an entire genre the way Ellington did. the real Ellington of hip hop would be someone like, I dunno, Dr. Dre maybe

Marley Marl.

Definitely. I think it was J Spaceman who turned me on to Sun Ra in the first place.

More actually I would say he's privileging a certain type of influence over another. Which is fine, I'd argue that deej is basically doing the same thing.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Friday, December 17, 2010 3:20 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah but imo critics already privilege shakey's definition of influence over mine; im not arguing that mine is the truth & the light & sun ra needs to be removed from the canon entirely -- id rather he be a big influence going forward than idk black flag or something -- but that influence *on the mainstream of a genre* is entirely underheralded by critics celebrating outsiders that supports their hobbyhorse crit-genres

Like, everything Shakey is saying is basically true; the real issue is that Sun Ra did not wholesale invert/mold an entire genre in the same manner Duke Ellington did.

Sun Ra generated a niche and influenced a wide range of artists; Duke Ellington basically converted all of jazz music and the people who played it to his vision.

this is succinctly put - thx Dan

*sigh* I don't know why I bother.

re: Spiritualized - see Cop Shoot Cop

― twat dust and ego overload (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, December 17, 2010 4:26 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's LONG and has some IMPROV and a SAXOPHONE omigod omigod the scales have fallen from my eyes

can we get back to emphasizing that calling Gucci the Ellington of rap is some total bullshit, if nothing else because Gucci is not shaping/developing an entire genre the way Ellington did. the real Ellington of hip hop would be someone like, I dunno, Dr. Dre maybe

― twat dust and ego overload (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, December 17, 2010 3:28 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

good lord dude -- i already explained i wasnt saying 'gucci: the ellington of rap!' i was just comparing relative importance & this is what max & co. upthread were clowning you for

xxxp I don't buy that at all, sorry. I guarantee you many more pages have been written on Ellington's influence on jazz than Sun Ra's influence on anything.

Of course I totally see why someone who has such a weird persecution complex as you might think that, but I don't think it's actually a representative view at all.