A Year In Pop: 32

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The UK's Number! One! Pop! Stars! Kleerup (and some Swedish mate of theirs) did quite well last week. This week there's the return of Kanye West with his Daft Punk sample, and some other stuff including the first top 40 hit for sophisticindie croonster Richard Hawley. Why not spend your elevenses ticking?

[Poll #1038904]

(All year in pop polls are open until the end of the year. Your investments may go down as well as up.)

Comments

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I agree entirely about crunk, although it's starting to make strange circles in the strange indie world of strange welsh town Aberystwyth. This is by no means demonstrative of The Student World, however and since it's entirely based on Girl Talk's slightly rubbish but quite endearing remix album of every crunk record of the last three years reduced into manageable, 30-second slots, it is probably an even more minor issue. The worst thing is actually the NME talking about crunk, if you've ever seen it do it- it decided it was a good thing before it knew what it was and now it doesn't even know what it's doing but it wants to talk about it for some reason, which I suppose is vaguely admirable, as the NME's ambitions generally go but you would have thought they could find someone who knew something about it to try and have a go. Then again, that would be intimidating to the reader, I suppose. Hrmm. Actually technically the NME may have given up on crunk since I haven't read it for quite some time but it did try, once and I think its success rate was similar to that of yr average white student trying to listen to it.

On the other hand, I do know a lot of white students who like UK hip hop. I have a bit of a thing for Low Life records and also wish I knew more people to talk to me about Grime-or-whatever-you-call-it, because I like the genre but I don't know where to go to look for good stuff, etc. My ex was also v. keen on rap and totally obsessed by Rhymesayers, which I suppose is US rap for middle class white people. Which brings in what you and him were saying about it simply not speaking to white students, which it doesn't. As Lex said, we [white students] don't deal with the issues or use the vocabulary in most hip hop and so it can't appeal without some funny race/class issues getting in, cus I could only ever appreciate it as something v. foreign. Part of the problem is that the currents of US rap are too hard to possibly follow instantly (I wouldn't know the difference between east coast and west coast if you smacked me with them) and so people can't *talk* about it which means no one gets any further with the genre, really because there's a paralysis of discovery. Also we do technically have degrees to do and I'm not going to sit around researching hip hop unless I've got something really meaty to procrastinate about.

Crunk ought to be the middle ground, because it's party music and students of course do a lot of that or whatever but it bores me interminably. It doesn't sound at all crazy or drunk to me, it sounds lazy and woozy which isn't necessarily a bad thing but the lyrics don't grip me enough to listen to it as that.

Kanye West has somehow become acceptably white enough to be bought by people. :( I don't like him but he has been accepted as a 'canon good' rapper

Missy Elliot and similar party rappers (sorry this is probably the wrong way to describe it but that's how I'd think of her, much as I like her) are still popular but a lot of them haven't done anything for awhile. The Timbaland School Of Good Records is also interesting, cus his presence in poppier areas has probably prevented many people wanting to go elsewhere for a slightly urban fix.

Actually, I think the problem is canon rappers. The UK is scared, post-50 Cent, of picking a rapper they aren't absolutely sure is suitable for polite company.

I should probably read all that through but instead I have to go to work so if it's incoherent bobbins I can't fix it.