radioactive wasn't actually as bad as people like to make out it was
i mean, not great, but i'd take it over several other albums that get handwaved through without half the criticism
― lex pretend, Friday, 3 January 2014 20:39 (ten years ago) link
it has its fair share of good tracks but pretty regrettable from a conceptual standpoint
― le goon (J0rdan S.), Friday, 3 January 2014 20:44 (ten years ago) link
with angel haze i think the conceptual aspect of the album is less disappointing/surprising because she never really made it a secret that she was gonna try and pull off some corny shit ("i most want to collaborate with jason mraz" etc)
― le goon (J0rdan S.), Friday, 3 January 2014 20:45 (ten years ago) link
yeah i think everyone had trepidation over that stuff - which was there from the start - and actually we might have got off lightly (ie, no actual collaboration with jason mraz)
i think with both, i can imagine major labels thinking these artists can ~transcend the rap fanbase (not that that's where they had the biggest support in the first place, i guess) but getting the ways in which that could happen a bit confused - like, thinking you have to be corny/on-trend to appeal to pop fans rather than just carrying on with what actually made them special
― lex pretend, Friday, 3 January 2014 20:51 (ten years ago) link
and in both cases their lyricism hasn't so much gone away as just been...buried a bit
― lex pretend, Friday, 3 January 2014 20:52 (ten years ago) link
What kind of audience did the label expect her to have? Serious question. That this (so far) sounds undercooked is a testament to a label's willingness to dilute an artist's personality for the sake of non-existent mainstream attention even in 2014.
― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 3 January 2014 20:55 (ten years ago) link
This is a dumb point but her name elicits blank stares whenever I mention her to young rap fans, so this project seems doubly depressing.
― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 3 January 2014 20:56 (ten years ago) link
did the hip-hop community ever really support her though?
― lex pretend, Friday, 3 January 2014 20:58 (ten years ago) link
yeah i have no idea what her fanbase is
― le goon (J0rdan S.), Friday, 3 January 2014 21:02 (ten years ago) link
ILM and forty other critics, I'd imagine.
― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 3 January 2014 21:04 (ten years ago) link
the one time i've seen her live it seemed like a really mixed fanbase, though a really enthusiastic one. lots of lesbians but really not a homogenous group at all. assorted waifs and strays with troubled backgrounds who would have had livejournals ten years ago, maybe.
― lex pretend, Friday, 3 January 2014 21:04 (ten years ago) link
xp nahhhh look at her twitter followers etc, she does have a proper fanbase, and it's a cultish and devoted one. but it's not one that really screams commercial smashes
― lex pretend, Friday, 3 January 2014 21:05 (ten years ago) link
That this (so far) sounds undercooked is a testament to a label's willingness to dilute an artist's personality for the sake of non-existent mainstream attention even in 2014.
do you mean the label has diluted her sound? bc i don't know about that, angel's insistence to put the album out in 2013 seems more like this is the kind of music she really wanted to make but her label were more hesitant
like lex i don't want to abandon her just yet because i thought reservation was really, really special but yeah initially i'm disappointed by this, particularly the languid second half
― mums go off when i enter the building (monotony), Friday, 3 January 2014 21:31 (ten years ago) link
angel has a legit nyc fanbase but it's not trad hiphop fans afaik
― Strangers look on with a discernible, barely contained ‘wow’. (forksclovetofu), Friday, 3 January 2014 22:52 (ten years ago) link
not - predominantly - trad hiphop fans i mean
― Strangers look on with a discernible, barely contained ‘wow’. (forksclovetofu), Friday, 3 January 2014 22:53 (ten years ago) link
angel haze and yelawolf also share an overemphasis on technical frippery at the behest of musicality
― rap steve gadd (D-40), Saturday, 4 January 2014 21:07 (ten years ago) link
behest totally the wrong word there. what is the word i'm thinking of? I think just "expense."
sorry havent gotten much sleep
― rap steve gadd (D-40), Saturday, 4 January 2014 21:09 (ten years ago) link
Ugh, "Angels and Airwaves" stuck in my head all day. This is one of those albums where the more a song sticks in your head the shittier that song is
― Evan R, Sunday, 5 January 2014 21:50 (ten years ago) link
On the first song, I thought to myself "who told her 'sad Nicki Minaj' would be the way to go here?"
On the second song, I thought to myself "actually 'sad Nicki Minaj' is working pretty well, I shouldn't prejudge"
Then she started doing a spoken word about how she doesn't connect to things tied to her ethnicity and that people shouldn't expect it to be in her music over tribal chanting and I thought "okay, I'm gonna be late for my dinner reservation if I keep listening to this bullshit" then I died of irony over the word "reservation"
― SHAUN (DJP), Sunday, 5 January 2014 23:29 (ten years ago) link
I always thought Nicki Minaj had a terrible sense of humor, but now I understand that any sense of humor is better than no sense of humor
― Evan R, Sunday, 5 January 2014 23:36 (ten years ago) link
It's funny (ironic) when all the things that people are coming out with to comedy dis a record with are exactly the things that make me think "I should check this out, this is probably a pretty powerful record."
― Branwell Bell, Monday, 6 January 2014 08:35 (ten years ago) link
Got a feeling this is basically meaningless even without the word 'behest'.
― Matt DC, Monday, 6 January 2014 09:47 (ten years ago) link
you would be wrong
― rap steve gadd (D-40), Monday, 6 January 2014 17:54 (ten years ago) link
angel haze and yelawolf are too concerned w technical pyrotechnics to pay attention to the ways in which that overemphasis on technique obscures interesting musical ideas
You are essentially saying "their musicianship obscures their musicianship" as far as I can tell, which is not particularly edifying
― SHAUN (DJP), Monday, 6 January 2014 17:57 (ten years ago) link
i don't mind that you feel that way deej but the way you phrase it as a gospel truth rather than opinion is a little exhausting and definitively inaccurate.
― this harmless group of nerds and the women that love them (forksclovetofu), Monday, 6 January 2014 18:09 (ten years ago) link
it's just a sentence, calm down
― j., Monday, 6 January 2014 18:10 (ten years ago) link
i'm so calm
― this harmless group of nerds and the women that love them (forksclovetofu), Monday, 6 January 2014 18:13 (ten years ago) link
i would like more use of the word frippery on ilx tho
― this harmless group of nerds and the women that love them (forksclovetofu), Monday, 6 January 2014 18:14 (ten years ago) link
― this harmless group of nerds and the women that love them (forksclovetofu), Monday, 6 January 2014 18:09 (14 minutes ago) Permalink
Does everyone have to add an unnecessary "IMO" or "I think that..." to every post?
― Murgatroid, Monday, 6 January 2014 18:25 (ten years ago) link
― SHAUN (DJP), Monday, January 6, 2014 11:57 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
this is not what i am saying. musicality =/= musicianship
― rap steve gadd (D-40), Monday, 6 January 2014 18:59 (ten years ago) link
when studying jazz, a lot of novice horn players will attempt to fill bars with lots of notes, running through technically complex patterns. They tend not to incorporate ideas like: space. Or concern themselves much with phrasing—why bother with variety when you can impress through speed? etc.
― rap steve gadd (D-40), Monday, 6 January 2014 19:01 (ten years ago) link
Fair point. (truth be told, I was trolling for a more fleshed-out response)
― SHAUN (DJP), Monday, 6 January 2014 19:26 (ten years ago) link
Does anyone else have an overwhelming urge to sing "YOU SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND, BABY/RIGHT ROUND/WHEN YOU GO DOWN/WHEN YOU GO DOWN, DOWN" over the beginning of "A Tribe Called Red"?
I don't think I'm in a frame of mind to give this a fair listen.
― SHAUN (DJP), Monday, 6 January 2014 21:05 (ten years ago) link
Deej's point makes perfect sense, except that I would say what I loved about each artist's big pre-signing mixtape was the effortless sounding combination of musicality with technical proficiency.
Sometimes the deflating thing about this kind of artist is the gradual realisation that what you thought was absolute mastery was at least in part just really good, fleeting luck.
― Tim F, Monday, 6 January 2014 21:20 (ten years ago) link
Azealia Banks burned out as ignominiously too 'cept she didn't make a long statement as beautiful as Reservation.
― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 6 January 2014 21:23 (ten years ago) link
lol come on now, Azealia Banks was never on Angel Haze's level of substance/talent
― SHAUN (DJP), Monday, 6 January 2014 21:26 (ten years ago) link
"212" was good enough that I couldn't wait for the album
― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 6 January 2014 21:28 (ten years ago) link
Azealia occasionally offers glimmers of hope - her glastonbury performance last year was pretty terrific, for instance. But 212 was nearly 2.5 years ago, and that + all the vile beefs means most people are now not interested.
― mums go off when i enter the building (monotony), Monday, 6 January 2014 21:50 (ten years ago) link
when studying jazz, a lot of novice horn players will attempt to fill bars with lots of notes, running through technically complex patterns. They tend not to incorporate ideas like: space. Or concern themselves much with phrasing—why bother with variety when you can impress through speed? etc
All this is just the usual virtuosity/feeling false dichotomy though, a lot of great musicians in eg classical music will have both. Both Angel Haze and Yelawolf clearly understand phrasing, they know how to slow down, the problem with both is that the songwriting went off a cliff between the mixtape and the debut.
― Matt DC, Tuesday, 7 January 2014 08:49 (ten years ago) link
technical proficiency is not what makes either album disappointing, indeed it's what partially redeems them
i mean, deej made the same accusation about angel haze and yelawolf BEFORE their albums, ie about their great material, so...i'm disregarding it
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 7 January 2014 10:05 (ten years ago) link
the problem with both is that the songwriting went off a cliff between the mixtape and the debut
yeah
― Tim F, Tuesday, 7 January 2014 12:54 (ten years ago) link
Lol at deem edifying us with a jazz 101 lecture
― ilx snitch (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 7 January 2014 13:56 (ten years ago) link
surprised everyone resisted a hemiola zing
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 7 January 2014 13:58 (ten years ago) link
"Slowly, we perceive that our task is to learn the proper way of freeing ourselves, to develop technique.... Technique was then, as today, the key to creative freedom"
- Ralph Ellison, Living With Music
― ilx snitch (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 7 January 2014 14:02 (ten years ago) link
― Tim F, Tuesday, January 7, 2014 7:54 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
right. so far with this album its not that any artistic direction sort of choice she made is something that in theory shouldn't work, or would in theory make me enjoy the album less. its just that she made these various choices about artistic direction and also it so happens that the album isn't very exciting.
― lollercoaster of rove (s.clover), Tuesday, 7 January 2014 14:56 (ten years ago) link
― ilx snitch (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, January 7, 2014 7:56 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I studied jazz for eight years. LOL!!
― rap steve gadd (D-40), Tuesday, 7 January 2014 15:15 (ten years ago) link
― ilx snitch (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, January 7, 2014 8:02 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I like plenty of highly technical rappers ... way to completely misinterpret me though
― rap steve gadd (D-40), Tuesday, 7 January 2014 15:16 (ten years ago) link
― Matt DC, Tuesday, January 7, 2014 2:49 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
see what I said to the other M@tt ... there are plenty of artists who are masters of technique but don't sacrifice clarity and purpose
― rap steve gadd (D-40), Tuesday, 7 January 2014 15:19 (ten years ago) link
i wasn't saying you don't know anything about jazz i'm saying you were talking some really cliched basic shit that's been said like 8 zillion times on ILM (ie jazz 101) and acted like you were educating us
in the case of Yelawolf i think he had great phrasing as Matt DC said
― ilx snitch (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 7 January 2014 15:34 (ten years ago) link