News Surprising and Unsurprising

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Unsurprising: I did not bother to write to the Guardian.

Surprising: Popjustice sez, in an aside, that Gasolina is the single of the summer! Have we maligned them??

Comments

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

I think there's a very definite subsection of the "young person's urban music" that PJ doesn't like, which is often incorrectly broadened to encompass ALL "young person's urban music".

I think it's a mild form of Geirism, actually. Let's be honest, a lot of this stuff is drab and tuneless. Gasolina, even though I hate it, is certainly neither of those two things.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

which particular "young person's urban music" songs are drab and tuneless though? OK, tuneless, but that's a Geirist argument anyway. But even the laziest Fiddy cut is by no means drab - the production is so shiny and sleek!

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

God, I'm a bit rubbish in that I can't cite examples. I can give lots of examples of ones that have a tune and are interesting but I still don't like them, which means that I can't think quite of a massively popular yet shite "young person's urban music" song that fits the bill really well hrrrrrrrn I give up.

That Common single'd be a good example, possibly. What's to like about that sort of mediocre tosh?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

But Common's whole schtick is to be boring!

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

Oh, so Common is to rap what indie is to pop?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

4 years of circular ILM arguments to thread!

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

Haha yes, I'm being a flip twat, here, a bit.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was gonna say before my boss came back into the room, Common is a) not popular and b) more indie than urban! 'Conscious' hip hop doesn't count as 'young person's urban music', they imply very different things ('bad' vs 'good' for one of them).

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

This is a vocabulary question that I've never really got - what does sleek and shiny mean in this context, and how do they not apply to, say, a Killers single (if this is something you're claiming)?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

in the context of fiddy, 'sleek and shiny' means...super-produced, I guess. the beats are sharp, metallic, treated to within an inch of their lives with the deliberate aim of getting rid of any roughness or lumpiness. like...fiddy beats : music :: batman outfit : clothes.

killers may well be super-produced too, I don't listen to them closely enough to be able to tell, but if they are they're doing it in a way which magnifies the roughness because as we all know that's more authentic or whatever.