My hatas blue in the face like Gonzo

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Bone to pick with this dude for quite some time but haven't said anything: YOU DON'T GET TO DECIDE WHAT THE KIDS THINK IS COOL. If they wanna get down to ninnies, as Simon Reynolds calls 'em, then that means that NINNIES ARE COOL. I'm perfectly OK with this.

And it is with this qualifying rant that I link to:

V.I.C. - "Wobble"

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Also: V.I.C. says his prayers! Talk about flouting authority!

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

This brings us, inevitably, to the problem with hip-hop today. A genre whirled out of the grist of urban pain and worn as a low-slung hat and baggy jeans has somehow slipped on clown shoes and taken up night classes in pantomime.

Hang on, what happened to all the "hip hop was the music of street parties and liberation, it was all about positivity, then those nasty gangsters came and ruined it with their guns and drugs and bitches" arguments?

I don't know, these people are never happy!

(Doesn't surprise me tho, Salon is not really the spot for cutting-edge music reviews)

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I just realised what's wrong with the new Was (Not Was) album. It sounds too much like the last Was (Not Was) album and not enough like V.I.C.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

That article is so textbook it's beyond parody. I particular "love" the contrast between the "Look, I'm not some square old rocker" disclaimer and the clunkingly po-faced bit about handing the kids a tape recorder and a 20-year old mixtape. Also, as ever with these "no really, hip hop is dead" pieces, stupid sloppy generalisations, fudges and outright lies/mistakes are needed to make it work. This, for example:

Webbie, Lil' Phat and Lil Boosie sometimes don't know what else to say, so they literally start spelling words

...is just nonsense. The chorus spells out a word. There are also proper rapped verses, and they are pretty great, in both construction and subject matter. Why link to a YouTube that demonstrates how badly you're misrepresenting the song in question? I guess self-awareness is not going to be an issue once you've already invoked Puffy (once object of scorn in 1,000 articles like this in the 90s) as an example of the good old days...

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Salon is not really the spot for cutting-edge music reviews

The elephant in the room, perhaps. But I do want to publicly assert somewhere that I think V.I.C. is cool.

[koganbot]

Hip-hop has sought commercial viability since the mid-'90s.

Took 'em long enough.

You keep on and on and on and on/Like hot butter on say what, the popcorn

[koganbot]

You say
One for the trouble
Two for the time
Come on, y'all, let's rock the -

[whistle]

Yes, yes, y'all
A-freak, freak, y'all
A-funky beats, y'all
Then you rock and roll
Then you roll and rock
And then you rockin to the beat that just don't want you to stop
Cause I'm the S to the p double-o n y
The one MC who you can't deny
'Cause I'm the baby-maker, I'm the woman-taker
I'm the cold-crushin' lover, the heartbreaker
So come on, fly girls, and please don't stop
Cause I'm MC Spoonie Gee, wanna hit the top
And young ladies, rock on

And this is (1) from 1979 and (2) my favorite single ever (not just favorite my favorite hip-hop single). (He couldn't make up his mind how to spell his name, and neither could the label, which called him "Spoonin' Gee.")

(Btw, I have nothing in principle against someone saying why he doesn't like some new form in comparison to some old form, but he's got to be aware enough to know when the reasons he's giving are ignorant and imbecilic, e.g. needs to be aware that the thing he's giving as an example of the degradation of the genre is actually something that's been embedded in the genre from the get-go.)

[koganbot]

I also wonder who in the world is supposed to be doing better beats than Collipark.

[koganbot]

Of course, in regard to cool, see "The Death Of The Cool," where among other things I recount the argument I made to Xgau in '87:

I could no longer discern a "cool" path to knowledge, a cool area on the musical map or a functional way to grace under pressure, and the music that was moving me and teaching me was being made by smart screw-ups like Spoonie Gee and Michael Jackson and by open-hearted nitwits like Teena Marie, people who were desperately and passionately involved (that's a phrase I nicked from a piece on the Shangri-Las by Richard Goldstein back in 1965). So the performers who were reaching me didn't have a stylish way to insight - more like they were bumbling their way around.

A problem I might have with V.I.C. and Soulja Boy Tell'Em is that they are a bit cool, are at ease with the beats and nothing fazes them, carrying a style that lets them slide right beyond the haters and the world's insanity.* Which is admirable, but it doesn't move me as much as the stuff that struggles with the insanity.**

*Insanity would be a world in which a paid journalist gets away with insisting that what a white college basketball coach can master can't be cool. "He is old, he's white, and he should have nothing to do with pop-cultural relevance." Yes, why should old people be relevant, especially ones whose job is to give instruction and encouragement to nineteen-year-old boys? What insight into life and music and culture could we possibly want such an old person to have, after all? (Sorry for the rant; I'm attacking an easy target, but bigotry is bigotry and I'm astonished at how blithely unaware this guy is in displaying it. I should be used to this.)

**Actually, stuff of the moment like "Disturbia" that I'm rating higher doesn't struggle with insanity either, even if it name checks the insanity. It's more the piercing, delirious sound of "Disturbia" that gets me. I do like "Wobble" more than "Get Silly."

[koganbot]

YOU DON'T GET TO DECIDE WHAT THE KIDS THINK IS COOL.

Well, one gets to decide for oneself what's cool or not (regardless of the kids). My answer is still "No," meaning I don't think anything is cool.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I'm just suggesting that by his own framework, questionable for its own reasons, he has basically relinquished the authority as arbiter of taste in hip-hop -- he's clearly defining "cool" demographic terms, in opposition to white basketball coaches and...y'know, himself. Yet in this case, he has no problem passing that judgment.

The real problem, I think, is that his basic argument isn't really about coolness, it's about quality, i.e., he doesn't think this music is any GOOD, and "cool" is just the first or easiest justification he's thought of. He's wrong -- the music is pretty good -- but clarifying that would have prevented this essay from being written, which would have been nice.

[koganbot]

Good points. He really doesn't say why hip-hop was ever something cool to know about, or what cool is or why it might be desirable, but as you say instead he simply makes unstated assumptions that make cool the attribute of various demographics - and coolness is an attribute of himself only if he's the first in his demographic to get to it. If the wrong people get to it before he does - Bo Riley and Mike Gravel - then he's shit out of luck.

Poor guy.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Article is a disgrace.

Song is a BEACON OF HOPE.

I get to decide what I think is cool :D