"Should we be suspicious of hipsters’ newfound love of R&B?" or "Race and indie music, part 4762"

Music Critic Intervention would be an A+ program, all of us looking into the camera talking about That One Writer while said writer is taped thinking it's for a Kickstarter trailer about modern indie music...

katherine and maura are about the last writers who need any sort of guidance from us. figures they'd be the only ones who might conceive that they would.

Agreed.

like i was saying re keyshia on the 2012 eoy thread, from where i'm sitting the real shame with all this indie-crit fuckery is the way it ends up totally inhibiting discourse within r&b. traditional values become hugely exalted purely out of desperate reactionary entrenchment, saying "yeah but so what" takes on an sad air of betrayal, asking for something new something more becomes covalent with edgy distortion. and so we have to pretend like the last few years of r&b have been gravy purely for existing, new malign bogeymen have to be revealed and focused on take the blame

like it's not like jackin or funky (or even by virtue of its bubble, dancehall) where the crit is irrelevant and the beat happily healthily rudely goes on, r&b is an established genre with ebbs and flows that can and should bear discussion

idk ultimately i still strongly feel there is something so basic and essential about r&b that a great song will always rise to the top even now, i can't honestly sit here and point to swathes of terrific jams i think have been especially unjustly stiffed by the world

plus yknow fashion is fashion, it's nip and tuck, this is the fun of it, are we really all to stop reading the face every month and get blues &soul subscriptions instead

^^^otm posts

The Face ended at pretty much the same time "The Golden Age of R&B" did.

I wish there was a The Face that got the balance right though. The closest is prob. The Fader and, eh.

if Face EOY lists are anything to go by they got the balance right better than probably anyone. that said they were obviously always just cobbled together during an extended pub lunch.

the best way.

though i prefer to believe they blew cocaine over the flat stomachs of models and then read the results like tea leaves.

the fader covers everything and criticises nothing, as far as i can tell

yeah

hah yeah it feels so absurd to demand accountability from a style mag and yet the fader somehow just forces the irrational urge

well maybe not quite accountability but just a sense of "what barricades have you died on"

the idea that "hipsters"' love of R&B is "newfound" is really hilarious. everybody loves R&B because it is awesome, where's my thinkpiece money

otm, that's kind of the ultimate comedy of this whole thing

i mean last year's "people are repping a beyonce ALBUM, not just the singles" was a bit of a change of pace, but not a monumental one

“This album, I took a lot of risks this album, so expect it to be dynamic, expect it to showcase all my eccentricities. It really is a nod to the fact that R&B used to be an illustrious genre that actually really influenced, a lot of people forget that before this decade, or the last 15 years rather, R&B was, y’know, Funkadelic, it influenced Funkadelic, it influenced Jimi Hendrix, it put hip-hop on, it put rock on, so even bands or groups like Hall & Oates, they were R&B, they were a soul band, they were creative, all of them were different but experimental in their own ways. It’s true to the soul of R&B, but it’s still experimental and it showcases my personality.”

- Miguel on the Wendy Williams Show

lock thread

should we suspicious of this p.dumm article

“This album, I took a lot of risks this album, so expect it to be dynamic, expect it to showcase all my eccentricities. It really is a nod to the fact that R&B used to be an illustrious genre that actually really influenced, a lot of people forget that before this decade, or the last 15 years rather, R&B was, y’know, Funkadelic, it influenced Funkadelic, it influenced Jimi Hendrix, it put hip-hop on, it put rock on, so even bands or groups like Hall & Oates, they were R&B, they were a soul band, they were creative, all of them were different but experimental in their own ways. It’s true to the soul of R&B, but it’s still experimental and it showcases my personality. Also, Panda Bear."

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v617/WidowOfDestiny/Jiggle_Panda.gif

miguel and i see i to i. i've never heard miguel's music but i like him already.

scott! let his love adorn you!

is he great? i tried with frank ocean and i didn't get that far...

he is great and very different from frank ocean

i'll check him out. i wish there was a good radio station around here. they all suck. the pop ones just play katy perry and bruno mars over and over again. i like katy fine but jeez...

I think part of why the Frank Ocean album bores me is he hasn't figured out how to thread the needle from Hendrix to Hall & Oates.

I don't know if you get WJMN that far west but they've been playing "Adorn" to death

yo guys, i really like jj. should i check out this miguel guy???

Depends which era really; Rhythm Nation era or Damito Jo era?

ha

xxxxxpost "I mean apart from contrarian slash "let's do this for the lol factor" antics like the guardian getting lex to write about the klaxons."

Getting Lex to write about the Klaxons was not done for the lol factor. It was cos the Klaxons were being positioned by the indie press as a dance act, and they were talking that angle up about themselves. So I wanted someone who knew dance music to write about them on the terms they were suggesting applied to them. Hence the one star. If they had embraced the fact they were a shitty indie group, I'd never have commissioned Lex. (With his Dylan piece, I simply wanted to see if someone who had never given a shit about him could gain anything by coming to his new album cold, given it was getting five stars everywhere. That was the reasoning. It was not trolling.)

wait i wanna read the lex on dylan! where is this gem?

Okay that makes sense w/r/t the klaxons, it doesn't really change my basic thrust though given (in both examples) you're choosing the writer for very deliberate and, at some level, contrarian (vis a vis the rest of the music press - the klaxons being a dance act was something everyone said but no-one really believed). It's still kinda trolling, just high-level / thoughtful / sincere trolling: in both cases the decision is a meta-comment on the rules of engagement in the music crit world in re what can and cannot be said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/sep/13/bob-dylan-tempest-lyrics

Its a confused piece, can't really decide about what can unlock the piece of music: is it the turn of phrase conceived beforehand or specifically a performance...er, I guess its a combination of both, but it just zig-zags in between the two poles.

Not sure if its Lex's fault but the links don't help. His piece is linked to an article about Christopher Ricks, after saying that he is adored by the crowd that takes to the way the words appear on the page.

And the you see in the first para that Ricks owns nearly 2000 bootlegs...I would guess its about performance too.

A sharp yet untrained mind, that could naively tease out an insight that fans miss is an attarctive idea but you actually need to do some engagement and leg work otherwise it can easily come off all dashed off and forgotten in five seconds. But then why would you put yourself through that if the initial sound is unattractive to the ear in the first place.

"The best exist not in a dry textual vacuum but are inextricably connected to the nuanced vocal inflections, the rush of notes, the tempo shift. A line that appears banal on paper can be – not seem, be – profound in the mouth of a talented vocalist. Words that look like nonsense can sound intensely meaningful if delivered as though there's something important at stake. And music can breathe vitality into cliches"

probably no point in getting the lex to listen to 60's dylan where all this stuff he describes happens. i love dylan but you couldn't pay me to listen to the new album. well, maybe if you paid me...

i know the whole jason king thing has been cleared up BUT dude wrote the new liners for the voodoo vinyl reissue, i think he knows his shit (mentions frank in there btw, also 'full moon' in relation to 'voodoo' which i thought was really interesting but that's totally off topic)

2 things i'd like to add to this (aside from "smh dog latin")

- the idea of indie r&b as applied to frank ocean & miguel has been really weird... but it's sort of an unavoidable snowball at this point. that said "indie r&b" is not a made up construct... it's gonna be a prevalent thing in 2013 before it dies out. acts like inc. and autre ne veut and young & sick and alunageorge will all be putting out albums in 2013 and will be getting a lot of press and this conversation will continue to roll on, though it will be a bit more appropriate when applied to those bands.

- i've alluded to/mentioned this before but you can't overlook the angle of marketing wrt to miguel, and it goes for the other two major acts in this made up group as well (frank w/ odd future, weeknd with his aesthetic & beach house/siouxsie samples). with art dealer chic miguel specifically pushed the artiness of his image to the forefront in order to appeal to a "hipper" (if not hipster!) audience. he also decided to release free stuff to the internet for that reason as well. when they started rolling out kaleidoscope dream, they specifically targeted media outlets that catered to an audience that had only just started to approach him as oppose to sticking with the core r&b fanbase like trey songz or something would. it's a testament to the album that it all worked out so well for him but people often just latch onto what is pushed in front of them.

i think people overstate the normal-ness of miguel's initial public image, though. first time watching the "sure thing" video before the song caught on with me i was like 'this guy's pretty weird and hip, huh, might be too out there for me'

acts like inc. and autre ne veut and young & sick and alunageorge will all be putting out albums in 2013 and will be getting a lot of pressNEED TO FUCK OFF AND COMMIT HARAKIRI OR SOMETHING BECAUSE THEY ARE SO LACKING

is there really an act called "young & sick" though

if there is i might just seriously quit this entire industry, it's all over

miguel pretty much told me this entire thing was an exercise in grabbing the indie demographic. why not, it's the easiest demographic to market to

also i never write anything for the "lol" factor! i hate "lol"s, i hate fun, i hate ~light~ writing, surely everyone knows this by now. if you don't i am FOLDING MY ARMS at you

fmda

fuck my damn ass?

hahaha, folding my damn arms!

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOMqqI-kzHY

Lex believe me no-one could read you articles and think you're writing for the lol factor - OTOH commissioning you to do a klaxons review is trolling no matter how thoughtful the intention behind it.