Pain in the Annual: Might as well mention the Clipse as well [w/ bonus riff on criticism]
I'm putting the Clipse album on my-year end wrap-up series mainly because it got released. I probably fall dangerously close to some variant of the grotesque hipster template, midwest strain, that is rumored to be the primary component of the 70,000 or so folks that chose to buy this album within the first week of it being freed from it's long-term POW camp. A rough sketch of the characteristics of this lowly beast of turdin', as pertinent to this discussion:
Since I don't fuck w/ leaks and have only had a few days to dig, it would be stupid of me to put it super high on my "awesome!" list. It is certainly not a total jump-out-and-blow-my-mind-immediately affair, but has all the makings of a potential grower, so I'm keeping it back here at December 7th status. And that officially puts me above quota for hip-hop on the list.
As a bonus tie-in best-of thinger, since I was too busy stuffing my face and downing port on some corporate dime last night to keep you fed with my advent calendar-like streak, Status Ain't Hood posted a bit on critical acclaim doing it's thang to push some of these Clipse records out, and Idolator has been doing a fair amount of discussion about where music criticism is at these days. A common point that's been brought up on both is that there's ome kinda threshold where the constant web-hype helps acts that are gonna sell below some value x, and isn't gonna matter with artists that sell above y. They didn't exactly seem puzzled by this fact, but didn't really get into the possible why of it. I figure it's that most of our nature is like cultural ground chuck that us chosen few can self-righteously form into delicious rare patties and gnash at with condescending bicu-lture-spids, but that's just my kickass chosen-one outlook.
Well, long-tail more-buying-fewer-is-better bullshit stats aside, my second addition to the list this post 'round is the sea change of the music industry, as witnessed from my awfully myopic perspective, this year. I'm having a hell of a time keeping up with the limited-run art-edition "beardo" stuff with no commercial aspirations because too much awesome stuff in that field is coming out too quickly. It's a financial Black Death for dudes like me, and I love it. Even on the higher-distribution end of the IndieCorp spectrum, I think if I squint just right I see a little drop off in the overlap that seemed to be what last year's critical consensus trafficked in. Don't get me wrong, blog servers must have some raw dicks yet from the critical circle jerk crowding their bandwidth, but I think perhaps splinter cells are sprouting up, miraculously reducing the chaffing. Fuck, I'm sorry about typing that.
What I'm getting at is some folks are actually talking about the obvious change in every aspect of the music industry. People are kind of worried that maybe music doesn't matter anymore. Nobody buys it or whatever. The overarching blandness of most levels of music coming out these days drove this fella to the subcultural depths that I generally trawl these days (stay tuned on this list, fuckers! Obscure masturbation promised!) and I really doubt I'm the only one. I don't know if there's some metaphor for that in the overarching cultural landscape of our nation. The number of pre-beaten white ballcaps I often bear witness to casts some doubt. But whatever, some shit is changing and I've heard stasis is where death lurks.
- Feels obligated to include at least one semi-arbitrary (based on critical acclaim) rap album on their best-of lists
- For the past few years, that's probably gonna be "crack rap"
Since I don't fuck w/ leaks and have only had a few days to dig, it would be stupid of me to put it super high on my "awesome!" list. It is certainly not a total jump-out-and-blow-my-mind-immediately affair, but has all the makings of a potential grower, so I'm keeping it back here at December 7th status. And that officially puts me above quota for hip-hop on the list.
As a bonus tie-in best-of thinger, since I was too busy stuffing my face and downing port on some corporate dime last night to keep you fed with my advent calendar-like streak, Status Ain't Hood posted a bit on critical acclaim doing it's thang to push some of these Clipse records out, and Idolator has been doing a fair amount of discussion about where music criticism is at these days. A common point that's been brought up on both is that there's ome kinda threshold where the constant web-hype helps acts that are gonna sell below some value x, and isn't gonna matter with artists that sell above y. They didn't exactly seem puzzled by this fact, but didn't really get into the possible why of it. I figure it's that most of our nature is like cultural ground chuck that us chosen few can self-righteously form into delicious rare patties and gnash at with condescending bicu-lture-spids, but that's just my kickass chosen-one outlook.
Well, long-tail more-buying-fewer-is-better bullshit stats aside, my second addition to the list this post 'round is the sea change of the music industry, as witnessed from my awfully myopic perspective, this year. I'm having a hell of a time keeping up with the limited-run art-edition "beardo" stuff with no commercial aspirations because too much awesome stuff in that field is coming out too quickly. It's a financial Black Death for dudes like me, and I love it. Even on the higher-distribution end of the IndieCorp spectrum, I think if I squint just right I see a little drop off in the overlap that seemed to be what last year's critical consensus trafficked in. Don't get me wrong, blog servers must have some raw dicks yet from the critical circle jerk crowding their bandwidth, but I think perhaps splinter cells are sprouting up, miraculously reducing the chaffing. Fuck, I'm sorry about typing that.
What I'm getting at is some folks are actually talking about the obvious change in every aspect of the music industry. People are kind of worried that maybe music doesn't matter anymore. Nobody buys it or whatever. The overarching blandness of most levels of music coming out these days drove this fella to the subcultural depths that I generally trawl these days (stay tuned on this list, fuckers! Obscure masturbation promised!) and I really doubt I'm the only one. I don't know if there's some metaphor for that in the overarching cultural landscape of our nation. The number of pre-beaten white ballcaps I often bear witness to casts some doubt. But whatever, some shit is changing and I've heard stasis is where death lurks.
posted by Quincy Hoist at 4:02 PM
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