No, but I think context is somewhat important, especially when discussing art.

Honestly I’m not excusing it, but I also don’t think that Lee Daniels Freestyle, which comes with a literal note saying, “I wrote this because I’m pissed about cultural stereotyping, and I want to show you how it feels when that happens,” is evidence of blanket homophobia.

Again, I do think that’s a shallow read.


Maybe people should stop pretending that rap is Un-Art and that complex messaging isn’t possible in the genre.

Ever seen, like, Kids? Or more recently mid90s? Disparaging, homophobic language abounds, but nobody’s accusing Jonah Hill of homophobia. And his movie didn’t even come with an explanation.

Anyway, whatever.


New JPEGMafia album is crazy, and honestly barely qualifies as rap music.

I love and despise Dr Dre's The Chronic. It's great music... The bass line to "the night the ____ took over" is pure genius. But god damn that misogyny. It's repulsive.

it is definitely a selective read on my part but I can’t get over the fact that making a track like that is espousing some degree of hatred, irrespective of intent. and especially when the audience for this stuff like it or not isn’t exclusively able to exercise that critical distance (considering this is very much in the lineage of ‘masc angst’ music).

no one is saying that rap isn’t art here, quite the contrary. I think art is held to certain moral standards and yeah it may be transgressive but I don’t think that excuses using a lexicon that is obscenely hurtful to certain groups. comparing it to film is something else entirely because those are character studies; jpegmafia is coming at it from a singular cis male perspective and regardless of his unarguable lack of privilege in other facets of his life for him to co-opt the difficulties of others is just a bit much.

it’s ovviously separate from Dre and his domestic violence anthems or kanye west just being a general misogynistic pig, but if we’re going to apply a critical lens to all music then rap should be subjected to the same scrutiny.

OK, that’s fair.

I honestly am turned off by the — what’s it called? “Incel”? — vibe and general tendency to troll like Pepe the fucking Frog in JPEG’s music. How great would it be if the endless culture-trolling and edgelord bullshit was just toned down a wee bit and the focus could be entirely on the music.
I have similar issues with Tyler the Creator and Kanye. Trolls, all of them. To their detriment.

But I guess I look past it if the music is engaging, and “Peggy” makes some pretty engaging music, so..

But yes, rap should be subject to the same scrutiny. And to be honest, looking at those lyrics again made me feel a little bleh.

I cannot listen to Dre.

I can’t listen to Eminem. Don’t care if he’s reformed. I’m a little shocked at my high-school self for listening to him at all, and letting shit slide.

Dr. Dre’s not just a misogynist either. Busted up his ex’s face until it needed to be fitted back into place. Fucking disgusting.

to be honest when I first heard jpegmafia I did think there was something interesting going on musically but you’re right, there’s something about that troll aesthetic that seems really popular at the moment that’s super off-putting. and for some reason I can’t look past that a good 90% of the time now, and I wouldn’t even attribute it solely to hip hop, the vast majority of noise repulses me at this point for being so far up its own arse too and falling into that trap of being perhaps performatively vitriolic? but as is well established here I’m a cynical cunt so grain of salt obviously

A great deal of today's culture is either performatively woke or performatively vitriolic. It's quite hard to escape

totally, I think it’s just a very cynical era we’re living in and it’s super pervasive, honestly I’m not sure that there’s all that many ways to get away from it

maybe you're just getting old, and can't keep up with the hipsters of today anymore :D
that's more or less what people said about Elvis Presley in the fifties and the Beatles and Stones in the early sixties, or punk in the seventies.


Look at this:
Elvis P. in 1957
Cardi B. in 2019


(this is not a personal attack to anyone of you, just saying, it's more or less my personal viewpoint on rap/hiphop/any other music of today that I don't like)

That isn't what people said

Yeah, I feel this.
And it’s not just hip-hop. There’s culture trolling in whatever passes for passable rock music in the mainstream, too (The 1975 for some reason?) and it’s all a bit much.
I mean, I’m a pretty cynical motherfucker too, and all my musical favorites have some degree of iconoclasm permanently lodged in their identities (Lou Reed to RDJ to SY to whoever), but being provocative and iconoclastic seems to, in the late 2010s, mean essentially being an edgelord button-pusher with no portion of authenticity to their “act.”

Like JPEG or Tyler or Lana Del Rey or whatever. So much of it is just “let me see how much I can fuck with people and how many horrible things I can get away with saying before people call me out”
And if you call them out, watch out, because “kids today” will eat your fucking face. Because it is now socially unacceptable in a lot of circles to take anything seriously.

I mean, it’s hard for an older fuck like me to reconcile my dislike of this stuff with my appreciation and respect for punk and the punk spirit. But this is different terrain, really.

Yep.

I wasn't aware at all! I've never heard this Charli person, ever. I thought you meant I was fixating on a reissue instead of a new album.

As I mentioned here once, a truly comprehensive Sign O The Times reissue would be such a sprawling thing you'd need to sell a fucking kidney to afford it. The original double album. The singles. The 12" mixes. The outtakes. The demos. The crazy experiments "unvaulted" (oh, you know they're there - this is Prince we're talking about). The Sign O The Times concert film, which has never seen the light of the laser in the U.S. More live stuff. And THEN, be careful what you ask for, because the set would be fundamentally incomplete without the THREE finished but shelved albums that spawned SOTT: Dream Factory, Camille and Crystal Ball, which amount to twelve (!) sides of vinyl right there. So cancel your silly iPhone orders and start saving NOW.

I don't know if JPEGMAFIA is intolerant or whatever because like 20 seconds in it just sounded like boring hip hop. I didn't get what was supposed to be special about it.

Did you listen last that 20 second mark?

Because honestly, whatever the guy is, boring hip-hop is not what he’s doing. He’s on some crazy sound collage shit, and the beat and style changes are almost non-stop.

Sure you’re listening to the right album?

https://bobdylan.lnk.to/travelinthruAN!0919

All I can say is I've had the Dylan/Cash sessions boot for... let's just say AGES now, and it's one of my very favorite unofficial numbers. (How could it not be; it's fuckin' awesome. Their take on "Big River" alone will floor you.) About time it got the treatment it deserves.

Heroes cornballs, first track is like jesus forgive me I'm a thot?

I skipped around through several tracks. I just heard 90s style hip hop. I didn't hear any sound collages.

Out now (virtual-only unless you find one of the 75 copies which sold out in nanoseconds): No Age - Score For The Day Before.




https://noage.bandcamp.com/album/sco...the-day-before

As you can see on that link, the cassette's artwork is considerably cooler than the picture above... Anyway, I also noticed there are at least two more No Age tapes that I hadn't paid attention to, both released last year:

Aquarium Behavior:



Spree Snare Cuts - Live in Germany 2018:

Out now: Patty Waters - Live




https://blankformseditions.bandcamp.com/album/live

Preview "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", "Lonely Woman" and "Wild Is The Wind" on The Wire's website.

pretty much this, loathe to use the term virtue signalling but it seems like that for so many artists. not sure why I'm not as reticent to engage with it as applies to older stuff (reed is a good example, a lot of industrial has a similar tendency) but I suppose it's a perceived authenticity on my end? like an implicit understanding that they were more genuine in their identity -- iconoclastic as you say -- but now it's simply a ploy.

I honestly think there’s a misunderstanding here somewhere.
There are only fleeting rap flows on the album, and few that last more than a few seconds. It’s all over the place. I think one of the last things I would associate it with is ‘90s hip-hop — like, Wu-Tang? Tupac? Tribe? — because none of it sounds anything like that to me.

It’s a bit like Death Grips meets Aphex Twin’s compositional habits circa “Ventolin” remixes, with a little R&B and boyband-type shit tossed in at random intervals and an awful lot of just disparate sounds chucked in here and there.

I mean honestly it’s an interesting listen. This is a guy who named a song after voting for Donald Trump after all, and he’s a massive troll, but sonically it’s pure insanity. The fact that it’s immensely popular is ... either incredible or suspect, I can’t quite decide which.

Veteran is more straight forward, and better as an album, but even that record sounds nothing like ‘90s hip-hop to me. *shrug*

You can attribute a lot of that popularity to The Needle Drop I suspect

I gave the first two tracks another listen straight through. I hear it now, it does have some interesting change ups. Still, it doesn't do anything for me. I don't like a lot of hip hop in general. I LOVE Tierra Whack and Themselves. The Yugen Blackrock album this year was interesting for its heady lyrics, but I only listened to it a few times. The Dis Fantasy EP this year is pretty good. Then I like some classics. Public Enemy's It Takes... is one of the best albums ever by any standard.

Heh?

I’ve honestly never seen the two mentioned together, but I know TND gave it an 8 after kind of talking a bunch of shit about it.

Veteran is better. Haven’t seen TND vid on that one.

Check out the Billy Woods album “Hiding Places” from this year. Sharp, good songwriting, intense — that one really is reminiscent of some NYC ‘90s hip-hop styles.

Little SIMZ has a surprisingly good debut. Tyler the Creator made a really strong dark-synth heavy soul-rap-dance hybrid album that is his first actual great release. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib released Bandana, which is good, though not great.

Other good shit too. Slauson Malone’s “A Quiet Farwell (sic): Twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen” is one of the best albums of the year. ... Made by Winston Marsalis’ son, who happens to be a really good abstract hip-hop producer with jazz fragments floating all over the place. Dreamy and spooky and surreal.

Thanks, I'll add it to the never-ending list.

One of my favorite albums of all time is Tha Fly Girlz - Da Brats From Da Ville. The story behind it is awesome. A member of Zs started an afterschool program for poor areas of Brooklyn. The first year was Zebrablood teaching rap to middle school kids. Only 5 girls were left by the end and they cut an LP.

Middle school girls rapping positive lyrics over Excepter beats. Do I really need to say more?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5Fq9rA6E4I

oh yeah!! The moment you've all been waiting for!!!


here it is: Head On (on first listen it is quite good, but don't listen to it another time :D )

and here's another song: Open Your Eyes (feat. James Williamson) (which is quite terrible)

ok, I'm sorry, the above post was a joke that I couldn't resit.


But this is no joke!!




Also no joke. I'm not really interested in this one myself, but possibly some of you are. Historically it is an important edition:

New Nick Cave album cover looks like something you see on Jehovah's witness pamphlets.

Looking forward to the vinyl of the new Blut Aus Nord album "Hallucinogen."

Mount Eerie and Julie Doiron - Lost Wisdom pt 2 on 11/8

John Chantler next month.

I highly recommend the new Jan St Werner for noise heads and those interested in automatic process music. Each track it's announced which frequencies are being used and they are left to feedback. Glorious harmonies and dissonance unfolds.

Out November 1: Cate Le Bon & Bradford Cox - Myths 004 EP




https://mexicansummer.bandcamp.com/album/myths-004

"Secretary": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5Y58JmlBpQ

From Under The Radar: "Le Bon had a furniture building residency during Marfa Myths 2019 and Mexican Summer has also released a new short documentary about this titled Have a Seat. Eli Welbourne directed the documentary, which also features Cox".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8o6pFynkYc

https://folkways.si.edu/news-and-pre...from-the-bardo

https://folkways.si.edu/songs-from-the-bardo

https://www.allmusic.com/album/songs...08416/releases

institute of sonology? deifinitely. I was checking out that record already in record store and I was tempted as fuck to get it. I will get on my next visit to record store.

Pop is the new punk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcNt-sNB4_s

https://monoofjapan.bandcamp.com/alb...ectrical-audio


unfortunately this EP only has three tracks, wouldn't have minded at all to hear a couple more oldies from their first two albums getting a rework job, A Speeding Car for instance ...

The new Lightning Bolt album is really good, it's definitely more 'pop' than a lot of their past records have been. That said, it's still forty-five minutes of super heavy, lightning-quick bass riffs with apeshit drums, so...if you like them, you'll like it.

Yeah, it’s decent. I like it.

Not the kind of thing I’m likely to put on in 5 years when I want to hear Lightning Bolt, but definitely blazing.

Weyes Blood - Rough Trade Session



https://weyesblood.bandcamp.com/albu...-trade-session