Pazz and Jop.

To be clear I don’t agree with unperson. Lol

The song sucks bc it’s the same basic uncrearive derivative bs New York gets behind every year and everyone forgets about one year later

They took a beloved celeb & had her do the 30th no flocking freestyle over Asap ferg “work” beat & gave it a million dollar rollout which is more than they’d invest in any female artist famous for u know creativity or style or innovation or anything beyond charisma & the masses of lames who get their rap marching orders from rap caviar decided it was the best female rap record ever made or something. Boring

I don’t even think the song itself “sucks” really, it’s effective and well executed, it’s “fine,” but it’s fine in such a boring way & the hyperbolic overreactions are 👎🏻

I really wish more ppl had heard the Rapsody album

also agreed W D40 that NYC's thirsty trend hopping is really sad and pathetic, like one suspects Cardi, Desiigner ABoogie wouldn't even make a dent without the industry push off people wanting wanting someone who's nominally a "New York rapper" to pop.

not surprisingly, since the city is so moribund the only good rap is 40ish year (Griselda crew being younger as the exception) old practitioners of the lost art, but basically taking the Sean P (RIP Decepticon Sean)/MF Doom mode of doubling down on commerically unviable 90s styles, but pushing them even farther into dark back alleys, lost in multisyllabic rhyme scheme gun talk hall of mirrors, cooking down the most cryptic and morbid elements of The Infamous and Cuban Links into Spartan nearly drumless heartbeats (Ka and Roc Marci especially), scraping together enough dough through moderately attended club dates and 5k guest verses on songs by lyrical nobodies in the Midwest. If hip hop is dead, they are the Templar knights forced to guard the cup of Herc for all eternity

booming posts deej

I really wish more ppl had heard the Rapsody album

Seconded.

To be clear I don’t agree with unperson. Lol

This has been crystal clear as long as we've both been on ILX, don't worry. Merry Christmas!

got my login sorted out, now time to figure out if any of the songs I liked this year were singles.

'hyperbolic overreactions' where? here? i am one of like three users on ilm that i have seen admit to having a positive impression of the song, and i have yet to see anyone gush over it (the way lex probably would if he still posted here). if you mean elsewhere/the year-end lists then sure i guess.

it's the pretending that it's so much more than that just because it's coming from a Latinx woman

i actually want to respond to this in more detail instead of just being flippant and mean about it as i was above, because i think(/hope) there may have been some point intended that is more nuanced than what was actually communicated.

obviously, cardi's persona and what we as an audience know and don't know about her are inseparable from what we think the song ~means~ when we hear it. a line about not needing to strip might come across as condescending unless we believed that to be part of cardi's past (as it is); braggadocious rapping often feels more viscerally thrilling when it's delivered by someone who's emerging from hardship or obscurity*, etc. etc. anyone with any sense of how opportunity structure tends to bend along the lines of race/class/gender (i.e. any american who is honest with herself) will naturally tend to read more into the lines cardi delivers based on her identity as black, latinx, and a woman, sure. but to suggest that these aspects of her identity have shielded the song from criticism (they certainly haven't here!) or somehow put it on the Canonization Fast Track is, uh... well, it's an argument i'd sooner expect to see on /mu/ than on ilm.

(* side-note, i don't buy deej's contention that cardi b was a celeb before this song -- social media celeb, maybe, but even today that means nothing in the grand scheme of things. and maybe i'm just naïvely buying into pr stories here, but fancy video aside, i'm not even sure if this song's launch was actually aggressive by major label standards? it didn't even seem like her team was sure if it would be 'the hit'.)

(i don't think it even got an adds date at radio which is not exactly indicative of an aggressive, million-dollar rollout lol)

if you mean elsewhere/the year-end lists then sure i guess.

this is, i think, obviously what they mean

(* side-note, i don't buy deej's contention that cardi b was a celeb before this song -- social media celeb, maybe, but even today that means nothing in the grand scheme of things. and maybe i'm just naïvely buying into pr stories here, but fancy video aside, i'm not even sure if this song's launch was actually aggressive by major label standards? it didn't even seem like her team was sure if it would be 'the hit'.)

― dyl, Monday, December 25, 2017 5:40 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You’re wrong about this. She’s been hugely famous before she had a recording career. Was the obvious breakout star on love & hip hop & iirc appeared on fader before she’d even recorded a mixtape. She was a significant instagram celeb before reality tv.

(i don't think it even got an adds date at radio which is not exactly indicative of an aggressive, million-dollar rollout lol)

― dyl, Monday, December 25, 2017 5:45 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

She got a million dollar deal at Atlantic when no other female rappers are getting deals at that level, because she was a proven star

And again I don’t agree w unperson’s line of argument

Radio isn’t really the vector for hits any more, labels are very good at manufacturing “organic” marketing via social media personalities, apps, youtube, etc

To be clear lots of songs I like are broke that way & I have no issue with marketing being marketing, but it’s unquestionable that labels thought she was a better bet than literally any other rapper bc she was already a proven public personality

oops my post about adds date is wrong (not that it matters). it did get an adds date for radio but it was already well into the top 40 on the hot 100 based on early play + (largely apple music) streams by then.

*any other female rapper

Yes streams are driven by playlisting & social media marketing now, which is expensive

i hope it didn't seem like i was suggesting you agreed with what unperson said/what i responded to, deej. i just mentioned that as a side-note about how i perceived her level of celebrity-or-obscurity when the song got on my radar, the larger point being that her star being on the rise definitely helped sell the song as ~authentic~/meaningful/whatever. i got the impression that she was somewhat obscure, as i'd never heard of her before the song. given the magnitude of the deal and other things you've mentioned it seems safe to say i was mistaken! but my larger points, which were directed to unperson, remain, as does my impression of the song.

(i'm sorry, i had trouble responding to that side of things when this song was discussed elsewhere too. you obviously are much more aware of what's going on in rap music/the industry than i am.)

i didn’t hear bodak yellow on pop radio here until the week it was no. 2. and it wasn’t because i was tuning in at the wrong times

labels are even more into signing people with already existing celebrity these days even if it’s more “notoriety” than anything else. the whole “let the police reports act as the one sheets” wave, bhad bhabie, etc. i know i know pia zadora put out albums too but there’s something much more craven about this edition of it

My friend's nine-year-old daughter treated me to many verses from Bhad Bhabie and Bodak Yellow last night. Very enlightening.

Not surprisingly, since the city is so moribund the only good rap is 40ish year (Griselda crew being younger as the exception) old practitioners of the lost art, but basically taking the Sean P (RIP Decepticon Sean)/MF Doom mode of doubling down on commerically unviable 90s styles, but pushing them even farther into dark back alleys, lost in multisyllabic rhyme scheme gun talk hall of mirrors, cooking down the most cryptic and morbid elements of The Infamous and Cuban Links into Spartan nearly drumless heartbeats (Ka and Roc Marci especially), scraping together enough dough through moderately attended club dates and 5k guest verses on songs by lyrical nobodies in the Midwest. If hip hop is dead, they are the Templar knights forced to guard the cup of Herc for all eternity

― Joan Digimon (upper mississippi sh@kedown) Compelling description!! Almost makes me want to start reading comic books again and the movies made of them and catch up with this radically reactionary sound of de trop---hope to manage some of this last.

or maybe just try the Dr. Yen Lo album or Honor Killed the Samurai; they're both great.

yeah i'd start w/dr. yen lo or honor, also marcburg by roc marciano and sean p's jesus price superstar and conway the machine's reject 2

i guess marcburg is kind of a landmark album at this point, and sean price kind of pioneered the whole "brokest rapper you know" lane but he is [was :( ] def more gregarious and "fun" than the others

The Night's Gambit was also pretty great

first time voter, anything i should keep in mind in my picks/points/comments? was thinking about writing a short little essay about what i feel ties all my choices together, but i also don't know how much people read those.

I'd read it!

When I used to write squibs, I'd alternate one- and two-sentence zingers with paragraph-length observations.

Write whatever you want to write, austin, however you want to write it, then post it somewhere, on a blog or somewhere. That's really what year-end polls have been for me since the early '90s; an organizing reason/excuse to write about my favourite songs each year (more than ever the past three or four years, now that P&J basically stopped printing random comments).

alright, just went for it! https://medium.com/@abrown512/pazz-and-jop-2017-and-my-year-in-music-e07393ce889c

My login isn't working. I emailed them. Hope they fix it tomorrow... :(

(xpost) Good job. If they print your comments and not mine, though, I take it all back.

clemenza, I just sent you a Facebook friend request. Would like to see about fixing my P&J issues.

Thanks!

Didn't get it--in any event, I'm just a voter and don't have anything to do with the Voice or the poll. You're supposed to e-mail them directly, no? They must keep regular hours today. I didn't have any trouble with my own code.

Sorry, I thought you were more involved. Never mind.

I'm about as less-involved as it gets.

I emailed them wrt my log-in issues just a few days ago and they had me straightened out in a matter of a few hours.

*fingers crossed*

error here, just emailed them

evol j - did they just say "try again" or did they tell you to do something different, like, idk, "type your number, don't copy/paste it" or something like that?

they gave me a new ID number.

Now that I read this thread, I think they are sending out new ID numbers although I have an apostrophe in my name which often fouls up internet forms such as this.

Yeah, a new ID did the trick. Go me.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSjRCkTWkAI4bE0.jpg:large

my ID doesn't work either -- hopefully it isn't too late to get it fixed

i wrote them like 3 hours ago and got it fixed, you'll be fine

yeah, they just emailed back

(six minutes ago)

Sorry, I thought you were more involved. Never mind.

you guys could still be friends tho

Well, my friend request was still there.

No pressure though.

I emailed on Xmas evening, got a response the next morning.