a few weeks ago, on godspeed you! black emperor's website:
"between now and the live-dates, there'll be rivers of noise and distraction. and the internet is a petty tyrannical monster. please remember that really all that matters is the keep on keeping on. and all that really matters is the shows. and physical engagement in the world."
right on cue, at the forkle:
a river of noise and distraction
Friday, April 23, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
total nudge-fest
everyone needs to understand that behavioral economics is total crap -- a bunch of "writers" who make a lot of waves and a lot of money by finding elaborate and confusing ways to describe perfectly ordinary shit.
take Predictably Irrational, a book that spends about two hundred and fifty pages exploring the idea that people can be tricked into paying more for something than they should. you can find this book and an example of its thesis for $25.95 in the "No Shit" section of border's.
here's a gem: "Relativity is (relatively) easy to understand. But there's one aspect of relativity that consistently trips us up. It's that we not only tend to compare things with one another but also tend to focus on comparing things that are easily comparable -- and avoid comparing things that cannot be compared easily." did you catch that? we tend to compare things that are easily comparable, and we tend to avoid comparing things that are difficult to compare. this trips us up. the quote is from page 8, because tautology is always where these books start. we compare things that are comparable for the same reason we eat "breakfast" in the morning.
from this foundation (that A is A), such a book will reliably proceed to conduct a long series of bizarre experiments (in this book, many of the experiments are conducted on the author's "students"). one gets the feeling that these are all scribbled in one of those jackson pollick looking composition notebooks, frayed at the edges, cocaine residue covering every inch. anyway, check out this doozy (i'm quoting the whole thing, because nobody's reading this shit anyway, and reading the author's own words is the best way to absorb the creepiness):
Imagine that you're taking part in an experiment to test the efficacy of a new painkiller called Veladone-Rx. (The actual experiment involved about 100 adult Bostonians, but for now, we'll let you take their place.)
You arrive at the MIT Media Lab in the morning. Taya Leary, a young woman wearing a crisp business suit (this is in stark contrast to the usual attire of the students and faculty at MIT), greets you warmly, with a hint of a Russian accent. A photo ID identifies Taya as a representative for Vel Pharmaceuticals. She invites you to spend a moment reading a brochure about Veladone-Rx. Glancing around, you note that the room looks like a medical office: stale copies of Time and Newsweek are scattered around; brochures for Veladone Rx are spread out on the table; and nearby is a cup of pens, with the drug's handsome logo. "Veladone is an exciting new medication in the opioid family," you read. "Clinical studies show that over 92 percent of patients receiving Veladone in double-blind controlled studies reported significant pain relief within only 10 minutes, and that pain relief lasted up to eight hours" And how much does it cost? According to the brochure, $2.50 for a single dose.
Once you finish reading the brochure, Taya calls in Rebecca Waber and leaves the room. Rebecca, wearing the white coat of a lab technician, with a stethoscope hanging from her neck, asks you a set of questions about your medical condition and your family's medical history. She listens to your heart and measures your blood pressure. Then she hooks you up to a complicated-looking machine. The electrodes running from the machine, greased with a green electrode gel, encircle your wrists. This is an electrical shock generator, she explains, and it is how we will test your perception and tolerance of pain.
With her hand on the switch, Rebecca sends a series of electrical shocks through the wires and into the electrodes. The initial shocks are merely annoying. Then they become painful, more painful, and finally so painful that your eyes fly open and your heart begins to race. She records your reactions. Now she starts delivering a new set of electrical shocks. This time she administers a set of charges that fluctuate randomly in intensity: some are very painful and some merely irritating. Following each one, you are asked to record, using the computer in front of you, the amount of pain you felt. You use the mouse to click on the line that ranges from "no pain at all" to "the worst pain imaginable" (this is called a "visual pain analog").
When this part of the torture ends, you look up. Rebecca is standing before you with a Veladone capsule in one hand and a cup of water in the other. "It will take about 15 minutes for the drug to reach its maximal effect," she says. You gulp it down, and then move to a chair in the corner, where you look at the old copies of Time and Newsweek until the pill takes effect.
Fifteen minutes later Rebecca, smearing the electrodes with the same green electrode gel, cheerfully asks, "Ready for the next step?" You say nervously, "As ready as I can be." You're hooked up to the machine again, and the shocks begin. As before, you record the intensity of the pain after each shock. But this time it's different. It must be the Veladone-Rx! The pain doesn't feel nearly as bad. You leave with a pretty high opinion of Veladone. In fact, you hope to see it in the neighborhood drugstore before long.
Indeed, that's what most of our participants found. Almost all of them reported less pain when they experienced the electrical shocks under the influence of Veladone. Very interesting -- considering that Veladone was just a capsule of vitamin C.
the experiment is then repeated, only this time the pill's cost is 10 cents per dose; the placebo effect is halved. the conclusion: "When it comes to medicines, then, we learned that you get what you pay for. Price can change the experience."
so the perceived effect of a placebo is anchored to the price of the drug. this is something that drug dealers, for one, have known for decades: your heroin can be 90 percent baking soda, and as long as you charge heroin prices the addicts still want it. people have been pulling this stunt forever: you have something you don't want; you give it a high price and a flashy pitch; people pay you for it.
the intricate torture scenario is not necessary to prove a banal and widely accepted hypothesis. obviously people are not perfectly rational economic actors. just as obviously, this irrationality can be manipulated. it's called being a con-man. throwing in a "complicated-looking machine" that causes great pain, however, is called being an economist, an academic.
there's a lot of this sort of thing going around these days. from the widely-read Freakenomics series (and blog), to malcolm gladwell's annual inside look into how stuff happens, to Nudge by obama cabinet member cass sunstein. Predictably Irrational is an especially odious example of this trend, as it's sole focus throughout seems to be on how to trick people into giving you their money (holding a man upside down and shaking him apparently being out of style).
but there is a little more depth to this "discipline". it isn't all creepy, sadistic marketing experiments. what behavioral economists like to focus on is social policy, how to shift government policy toward more rational aims. sunstein in particular has recently been demonized by some on the right wing, which is returning to its modern roots of scouring the land, trying to ruin the careers of any "marxists" it can find.
that marx is tied to this fad of fusing state-capitalism and modern behavioral psychology is yet another sign of our resounding national ignorance. the mandate of marxism is global economic justice; the mandate of behavioral economics, by contrast, is efficiency (ever an urgent concern for capital). these guys are about as marxist as ayn rand.
of course, a lot of communists have been super-crazy, plus the berlin wall fell. when in rome, and all that.
so how does this affect the commodity nearest to my heart, music? pitchfork is there to fill the gap. after spending a breezy two paragraphs on how just-plain-creepy behavioral economics is, tom ewing hits us with this: "[I]n a low-trust and low-money environment, behavioral economics is politically irresistible: It's simple, it's barely noticeable, and it's cheap. More, it promises a kind of psychological judo. We could batter ourselves senseless and penniless against people's irrationality and selfishness while trying to change their behavior. Or we could use those very traits to 'nudge' them in a desired direction. No wonder business people, as well as politicians, like it so much-- it seems to offer solutions to all kinds of sticky behavioral problems." how quickly this shit always turns into tiny fascism, obsessed with "solving" all sorts of "sticky behavioral problems". (problems such as, "why don't people give me more money?")
seriously, though, the issue ewing addresses is: is there any way to trick people into paying for music even though they don't like to. he cites the example of mflow, an internet community that has come up with an elaborate system to re-attach a cash transmission to the distribution of music. the method employed by mflow reads like something cribbed from one of those cocaine-smudged composition books i talked about before: "You share 'flows'-- songs or albums-- with [your followers], and they do the same for you. When you see one you like, you can buy it, and 20% of what you pay goes to whoever shared it with you in the first place." kind of clever, no? can such an idea succeed? probably, for a little while. but success in this environment is not only hard to come by, it's usually short-lived. remember, the napster kid once made a lot of money selling his shit to BMG, and now it's swallowed up in rhapsody, which no one on earth uses.
of course, the success or failure of any one venture capitalist start-up isn't really important. at all. to anyone, really. what sucks is that all the ideas thrown out in the article are inexorably tied to "social networking". now i'll admit that people are communicating through their electronic dealies in droves these days. but the notion that, like the steam engine and the automobile, social networks will define human interaction for the foreseeable future? well, sure it's plausible. but it's also depressing as hell.
people who consume creativity primarily through their computers are abstracted from the vast amount of work that goes into the creation of every single piece of art. the audience has always been necessarily removed from the labors of creativity to some degree, but the fact that music now comes wirelessly from the air around us has vastly increased that distance. as long as the works lack context (beyond categorization), consumers by and large will not want to pay for them. mixing in the trivialities of social networking, replete with "friends", "badges", and "groups", doesn't accomplish much besides making the whole thing seem even more repulsive.
remarkably, tom ewing ends up agreeing. "Real life games are attractive to marketers because they impose objectives onto behavior, which makes it easier to change and to predict. But like most social media, they also bring people's networks out into the open and turn them into something you can make money off when you can't make it out out of fans themselves so easily. In this case, I can't help feeling that the social relations we form around music and fandom are better off uncommoditized." so that's his argument against. do you notice something missing here? i sure do. where the hell are the musicians?!
and, to go back to the fake opioid experiment from before, this is the problem with behavioral economics: it encourages you to see things from the perspective of capital ("marketers") and of consumers ("fans themselves"), while completely ignoring the needs of labor. in each of the solutions that tom ewing presents (or those offered up by almost anyone else when they address this issue), the role of the musician is similar to the role of the test subjects in the Veladone-Rx experiment: he goes through excruciating pain repeatedly, but the last time he's tricked into thinking it doesn't hurt.
music is something people make with their hands and listen to with their ears. (we began with tautology and we'll end there, damnit!) the best way to move forward is to throw out the complicated-looking machines and be done with the byzantine petty fascism of behavioral economics.
take Predictably Irrational, a book that spends about two hundred and fifty pages exploring the idea that people can be tricked into paying more for something than they should. you can find this book and an example of its thesis for $25.95 in the "No Shit" section of border's.
here's a gem: "Relativity is (relatively) easy to understand. But there's one aspect of relativity that consistently trips us up. It's that we not only tend to compare things with one another but also tend to focus on comparing things that are easily comparable -- and avoid comparing things that cannot be compared easily." did you catch that? we tend to compare things that are easily comparable, and we tend to avoid comparing things that are difficult to compare. this trips us up. the quote is from page 8, because tautology is always where these books start. we compare things that are comparable for the same reason we eat "breakfast" in the morning.
from this foundation (that A is A), such a book will reliably proceed to conduct a long series of bizarre experiments (in this book, many of the experiments are conducted on the author's "students"). one gets the feeling that these are all scribbled in one of those jackson pollick looking composition notebooks, frayed at the edges, cocaine residue covering every inch. anyway, check out this doozy (i'm quoting the whole thing, because nobody's reading this shit anyway, and reading the author's own words is the best way to absorb the creepiness):
Imagine that you're taking part in an experiment to test the efficacy of a new painkiller called Veladone-Rx. (The actual experiment involved about 100 adult Bostonians, but for now, we'll let you take their place.)
You arrive at the MIT Media Lab in the morning. Taya Leary, a young woman wearing a crisp business suit (this is in stark contrast to the usual attire of the students and faculty at MIT), greets you warmly, with a hint of a Russian accent. A photo ID identifies Taya as a representative for Vel Pharmaceuticals. She invites you to spend a moment reading a brochure about Veladone-Rx. Glancing around, you note that the room looks like a medical office: stale copies of Time and Newsweek are scattered around; brochures for Veladone Rx are spread out on the table; and nearby is a cup of pens, with the drug's handsome logo. "Veladone is an exciting new medication in the opioid family," you read. "Clinical studies show that over 92 percent of patients receiving Veladone in double-blind controlled studies reported significant pain relief within only 10 minutes, and that pain relief lasted up to eight hours" And how much does it cost? According to the brochure, $2.50 for a single dose.
Once you finish reading the brochure, Taya calls in Rebecca Waber and leaves the room. Rebecca, wearing the white coat of a lab technician, with a stethoscope hanging from her neck, asks you a set of questions about your medical condition and your family's medical history. She listens to your heart and measures your blood pressure. Then she hooks you up to a complicated-looking machine. The electrodes running from the machine, greased with a green electrode gel, encircle your wrists. This is an electrical shock generator, she explains, and it is how we will test your perception and tolerance of pain.
With her hand on the switch, Rebecca sends a series of electrical shocks through the wires and into the electrodes. The initial shocks are merely annoying. Then they become painful, more painful, and finally so painful that your eyes fly open and your heart begins to race. She records your reactions. Now she starts delivering a new set of electrical shocks. This time she administers a set of charges that fluctuate randomly in intensity: some are very painful and some merely irritating. Following each one, you are asked to record, using the computer in front of you, the amount of pain you felt. You use the mouse to click on the line that ranges from "no pain at all" to "the worst pain imaginable" (this is called a "visual pain analog").
When this part of the torture ends, you look up. Rebecca is standing before you with a Veladone capsule in one hand and a cup of water in the other. "It will take about 15 minutes for the drug to reach its maximal effect," she says. You gulp it down, and then move to a chair in the corner, where you look at the old copies of Time and Newsweek until the pill takes effect.
Fifteen minutes later Rebecca, smearing the electrodes with the same green electrode gel, cheerfully asks, "Ready for the next step?" You say nervously, "As ready as I can be." You're hooked up to the machine again, and the shocks begin. As before, you record the intensity of the pain after each shock. But this time it's different. It must be the Veladone-Rx! The pain doesn't feel nearly as bad. You leave with a pretty high opinion of Veladone. In fact, you hope to see it in the neighborhood drugstore before long.
Indeed, that's what most of our participants found. Almost all of them reported less pain when they experienced the electrical shocks under the influence of Veladone. Very interesting -- considering that Veladone was just a capsule of vitamin C.
the experiment is then repeated, only this time the pill's cost is 10 cents per dose; the placebo effect is halved. the conclusion: "When it comes to medicines, then, we learned that you get what you pay for. Price can change the experience."
so the perceived effect of a placebo is anchored to the price of the drug. this is something that drug dealers, for one, have known for decades: your heroin can be 90 percent baking soda, and as long as you charge heroin prices the addicts still want it. people have been pulling this stunt forever: you have something you don't want; you give it a high price and a flashy pitch; people pay you for it.
the intricate torture scenario is not necessary to prove a banal and widely accepted hypothesis. obviously people are not perfectly rational economic actors. just as obviously, this irrationality can be manipulated. it's called being a con-man. throwing in a "complicated-looking machine" that causes great pain, however, is called being an economist, an academic.
there's a lot of this sort of thing going around these days. from the widely-read Freakenomics series (and blog), to malcolm gladwell's annual inside look into how stuff happens, to Nudge by obama cabinet member cass sunstein. Predictably Irrational is an especially odious example of this trend, as it's sole focus throughout seems to be on how to trick people into giving you their money (holding a man upside down and shaking him apparently being out of style).
but there is a little more depth to this "discipline". it isn't all creepy, sadistic marketing experiments. what behavioral economists like to focus on is social policy, how to shift government policy toward more rational aims. sunstein in particular has recently been demonized by some on the right wing, which is returning to its modern roots of scouring the land, trying to ruin the careers of any "marxists" it can find.
that marx is tied to this fad of fusing state-capitalism and modern behavioral psychology is yet another sign of our resounding national ignorance. the mandate of marxism is global economic justice; the mandate of behavioral economics, by contrast, is efficiency (ever an urgent concern for capital). these guys are about as marxist as ayn rand.
of course, a lot of communists have been super-crazy, plus the berlin wall fell. when in rome, and all that.
so how does this affect the commodity nearest to my heart, music? pitchfork is there to fill the gap. after spending a breezy two paragraphs on how just-plain-creepy behavioral economics is, tom ewing hits us with this: "[I]n a low-trust and low-money environment, behavioral economics is politically irresistible: It's simple, it's barely noticeable, and it's cheap. More, it promises a kind of psychological judo. We could batter ourselves senseless and penniless against people's irrationality and selfishness while trying to change their behavior. Or we could use those very traits to 'nudge' them in a desired direction. No wonder business people, as well as politicians, like it so much-- it seems to offer solutions to all kinds of sticky behavioral problems." how quickly this shit always turns into tiny fascism, obsessed with "solving" all sorts of "sticky behavioral problems". (problems such as, "why don't people give me more money?")
seriously, though, the issue ewing addresses is: is there any way to trick people into paying for music even though they don't like to. he cites the example of mflow, an internet community that has come up with an elaborate system to re-attach a cash transmission to the distribution of music. the method employed by mflow reads like something cribbed from one of those cocaine-smudged composition books i talked about before: "You share 'flows'-- songs or albums-- with [your followers], and they do the same for you. When you see one you like, you can buy it, and 20% of what you pay goes to whoever shared it with you in the first place." kind of clever, no? can such an idea succeed? probably, for a little while. but success in this environment is not only hard to come by, it's usually short-lived. remember, the napster kid once made a lot of money selling his shit to BMG, and now it's swallowed up in rhapsody, which no one on earth uses.
of course, the success or failure of any one venture capitalist start-up isn't really important. at all. to anyone, really. what sucks is that all the ideas thrown out in the article are inexorably tied to "social networking". now i'll admit that people are communicating through their electronic dealies in droves these days. but the notion that, like the steam engine and the automobile, social networks will define human interaction for the foreseeable future? well, sure it's plausible. but it's also depressing as hell.
people who consume creativity primarily through their computers are abstracted from the vast amount of work that goes into the creation of every single piece of art. the audience has always been necessarily removed from the labors of creativity to some degree, but the fact that music now comes wirelessly from the air around us has vastly increased that distance. as long as the works lack context (beyond categorization), consumers by and large will not want to pay for them. mixing in the trivialities of social networking, replete with "friends", "badges", and "groups", doesn't accomplish much besides making the whole thing seem even more repulsive.
remarkably, tom ewing ends up agreeing. "Real life games are attractive to marketers because they impose objectives onto behavior, which makes it easier to change and to predict. But like most social media, they also bring people's networks out into the open and turn them into something you can make money off when you can't make it out out of fans themselves so easily. In this case, I can't help feeling that the social relations we form around music and fandom are better off uncommoditized." so that's his argument against. do you notice something missing here? i sure do. where the hell are the musicians?!
and, to go back to the fake opioid experiment from before, this is the problem with behavioral economics: it encourages you to see things from the perspective of capital ("marketers") and of consumers ("fans themselves"), while completely ignoring the needs of labor. in each of the solutions that tom ewing presents (or those offered up by almost anyone else when they address this issue), the role of the musician is similar to the role of the test subjects in the Veladone-Rx experiment: he goes through excruciating pain repeatedly, but the last time he's tricked into thinking it doesn't hurt.
music is something people make with their hands and listen to with their ears. (we began with tautology and we'll end there, damnit!) the best way to move forward is to throw out the complicated-looking machines and be done with the byzantine petty fascism of behavioral economics.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
phutball sunday: draft edition
i don't wanna write about music.
sam bradford is ridiculously good. his accuracy is insane. unfortunately, early last season the mormon army of BYU smashed his part-native american shoulder. about a month and a half later, he came back and promptly fell on the same shoulder, and missed the rest of the season. if he goes to a team with a shit offensive line like the rams, he might not last. if he does, he's golden. but the hit that caused that second injury really wasn't much of a hit.
jimmy claussen -- i guess he's okay. but just look at what he did to the irish: they lost to crap teams like syracuse and navy all the time, and the only thing everyone ever talked about was how good claussen was. charlie weiss turned that whole team into an extended pro day for his adopted, substantially less chubby son, and claussen ate it up. what a douche. brady quin, anyone?
dez bryant is an absurdly talented player who's receiving a crash course in The Man and How To Get Fucked by Him. last year the NCAA suspended him for eating dinner at deion sanders' house without a permission slip. they suspended him FOR THE ENTIRE SEASON! and now if anyone talks about him, it's only to mention his "off-the-field issues" and "character problems". dez bryant is from poor-as-fuck lufkin, texas; 18.8% of lufkiners live below the poverty line, including 26.4% of those under 18. apparently, in his adolescence, no one took time out from grooming him for the NFL to tell him that you can't just say yes when primetime calls and invites you to dinner (who was most likely telling him: "you're six months away from becoming the richest motherfucker to ever come out of lufkin. don't fuck it up."). Now he might drop out of the top ten picks, and maybe even out of the top twenty, costing him tens of millions of dollars. what a crock. for a good time, watch this sweet youtube of him demolishing his competition in high school. whoever ends up "taking a chance" on this "character-issue" laden superman will be very lucky.
sean witherspoon, the linebacker from missouri is very good. also dexter mccluster, who seems to be destined from the third round in spite of stuff like this. toby gerhardt is truly the great white hope (let's go, white hope). terrence cody, nose tackle from alabama, he weighs 350 pounds; fuckin awesome. tim tebow will be great because jesus, and jordan shipley is the next wes welker. i'm out.
sam bradford is ridiculously good. his accuracy is insane. unfortunately, early last season the mormon army of BYU smashed his part-native american shoulder. about a month and a half later, he came back and promptly fell on the same shoulder, and missed the rest of the season. if he goes to a team with a shit offensive line like the rams, he might not last. if he does, he's golden. but the hit that caused that second injury really wasn't much of a hit.
jimmy claussen -- i guess he's okay. but just look at what he did to the irish: they lost to crap teams like syracuse and navy all the time, and the only thing everyone ever talked about was how good claussen was. charlie weiss turned that whole team into an extended pro day for his adopted, substantially less chubby son, and claussen ate it up. what a douche. brady quin, anyone?
dez bryant is an absurdly talented player who's receiving a crash course in The Man and How To Get Fucked by Him. last year the NCAA suspended him for eating dinner at deion sanders' house without a permission slip. they suspended him FOR THE ENTIRE SEASON! and now if anyone talks about him, it's only to mention his "off-the-field issues" and "character problems". dez bryant is from poor-as-fuck lufkin, texas; 18.8% of lufkiners live below the poverty line, including 26.4% of those under 18. apparently, in his adolescence, no one took time out from grooming him for the NFL to tell him that you can't just say yes when primetime calls and invites you to dinner (who was most likely telling him: "you're six months away from becoming the richest motherfucker to ever come out of lufkin. don't fuck it up."). Now he might drop out of the top ten picks, and maybe even out of the top twenty, costing him tens of millions of dollars. what a crock. for a good time, watch this sweet youtube of him demolishing his competition in high school. whoever ends up "taking a chance" on this "character-issue" laden superman will be very lucky.
sean witherspoon, the linebacker from missouri is very good. also dexter mccluster, who seems to be destined from the third round in spite of stuff like this. toby gerhardt is truly the great white hope (let's go, white hope). terrence cody, nose tackle from alabama, he weighs 350 pounds; fuckin awesome. tim tebow will be great because jesus, and jordan shipley is the next wes welker. i'm out.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
one word that music critics use way too much
ethereal.
the word isn't being used wrong; on the contrary, it's usually all too appropriate: delicate, airy, pertaining to the upper regions of space...
the word isn't being used wrong; on the contrary, it's usually all too appropriate: delicate, airy, pertaining to the upper regions of space...
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Gawker.com Provides the Most Ill-Informed Article Concerning Capitalism and Rap EVER
Why Hamilton Nolan, why? You write for Gawker, which is a liberal semi-trashy gossip/NYC update website. Why would you out of the blue write an article telling people how to feel about Jay Z? Why is it important that people not look up to Jay Z?
"Yes, Jay-Z is a cool black guy who has nice flows and a famous, pretty wife and knows CEOs and other fun things, and white internet people have embraced him orgasmically just like they bizarrely embraced janky coke rap a couple years ago. But Jay-Z represents one thing: money. And you, cool kids, always aspire to be about more than that. Let's have good idols instead of empty ones that are all shiny."
Hmmm...let's talk about hip hop and money, shall we? What was one of the first hits of the mid-1980's? Erik B. and Rakim's "Paid in Full." And album cover that features the artists holding money with one hundred dollar bills as the backdrop. Run D.M.C. created a fantastic track entitled "My Adidas." That track helped sell a LOT of shoes, even to this day.
Now let's flash forward to the early nineties. The Wu Tang Clan help sell Tommy Hilfiger clothing, Gucci products and write a track entitled "C.R.E.a.M." What is the hook to that track?
"Cash Rules Everything Around Me
C.R.E.A.M.
Get the money
Dollar, dollar bill y'all"
Any track from 2pac or Biggie. Nas raps, "I'm out for Dead Presidents to represent me," on his track "Dead Presidents."
Oh, what's that Hamilton Nolan? You have thoughts concerning Nas as well?
"GOD DAMN KIDS TODAY DON'T EVEN APPRECIATE Illmatic. Sorry. Had to get that off my chest."
Nas is good but Jay Z is bad. And the basis is that Nas doesn't rap about money or capitalism? Nas, who writes a track called "Money is my Bitch" is somehow above Jigga because he's above capitalism? Consider this point rendered wholly moot.
And that's the problem. The basis of the entire article relies on the flawed argument that because Jay Z raps about money, he should not be treated as talented artist.
Hamilton Nolan, you have revealed yourself as not fit to write about hip hop. At all. The end. But you went to a Dead Prez concert and talked to them backstage?
"But I just got back from the Harvest of Hope Festival, a huge three-day music festival in Florida, where I got the chance to interview Dead Prez, the single most non-hypocritical rap group in America, the closest thing to a modern-day Public Enemy."
They told you that Jay Z represents all that is wrong in the business and that is that? You see, Hamilton, you've played right into their hands. You think they're not businessmen too? AND HOW CAN YOU CALL THEM THE MOST NON-HYPOCRITICAL RAP GROUP?!? On what basis are you judging hip hop artists? What makes a group more non-hypocritical than the next? You don't know, BECAUSE YOU'RE COMPLETELY BIASED.
Fact: Dead Prez rely on capitalism as much as the next group. Do you know who the biggest fans of Dead Prez are? WHITE PEOPLE WHO THINK THEY ARE COOL! These white people spend their discretionary income on Dead Prez records. Oh, you have something to say to cool white people too?
"So, yea. Hey cool kids, you can't idolize Jay-Z and Dead Prez at the same time."
Now I assume this is a joke at this point. Mr. Nolan has written an article meant to stir up as many page hits and nasty feedback as possible. Mission accomplished. However, I don't think this opinion piece belongs anywhere on Gawker. Just because you go see your favorite hip hop group and interview them does not make you a cultural critic of hip hop.
Jay Z is not my favorite rapper. Not by a long shot. I find it necessary to defend him from a moronic writer who sees the fault of an entire genre of music in only one artist. Hamilton Nolan, please go back to writing about anything other than music. Thanks.
"Yes, Jay-Z is a cool black guy who has nice flows and a famous, pretty wife and knows CEOs and other fun things, and white internet people have embraced him orgasmically just like they bizarrely embraced janky coke rap a couple years ago. But Jay-Z represents one thing: money. And you, cool kids, always aspire to be about more than that. Let's have good idols instead of empty ones that are all shiny."
Hmmm...let's talk about hip hop and money, shall we? What was one of the first hits of the mid-1980's? Erik B. and Rakim's "Paid in Full." And album cover that features the artists holding money with one hundred dollar bills as the backdrop. Run D.M.C. created a fantastic track entitled "My Adidas." That track helped sell a LOT of shoes, even to this day.
Now let's flash forward to the early nineties. The Wu Tang Clan help sell Tommy Hilfiger clothing, Gucci products and write a track entitled "C.R.E.a.M." What is the hook to that track?
"Cash Rules Everything Around Me
C.R.E.A.M.
Get the money
Dollar, dollar bill y'all"
Any track from 2pac or Biggie. Nas raps, "I'm out for Dead Presidents to represent me," on his track "Dead Presidents."
Oh, what's that Hamilton Nolan? You have thoughts concerning Nas as well?
"GOD DAMN KIDS TODAY DON'T EVEN APPRECIATE Illmatic. Sorry. Had to get that off my chest."
Nas is good but Jay Z is bad. And the basis is that Nas doesn't rap about money or capitalism? Nas, who writes a track called "Money is my Bitch" is somehow above Jigga because he's above capitalism? Consider this point rendered wholly moot.
And that's the problem. The basis of the entire article relies on the flawed argument that because Jay Z raps about money, he should not be treated as talented artist.
Hamilton Nolan, you have revealed yourself as not fit to write about hip hop. At all. The end. But you went to a Dead Prez concert and talked to them backstage?
"But I just got back from the Harvest of Hope Festival, a huge three-day music festival in Florida, where I got the chance to interview Dead Prez, the single most non-hypocritical rap group in America, the closest thing to a modern-day Public Enemy."
They told you that Jay Z represents all that is wrong in the business and that is that? You see, Hamilton, you've played right into their hands. You think they're not businessmen too? AND HOW CAN YOU CALL THEM THE MOST NON-HYPOCRITICAL RAP GROUP?!? On what basis are you judging hip hop artists? What makes a group more non-hypocritical than the next? You don't know, BECAUSE YOU'RE COMPLETELY BIASED.
Fact: Dead Prez rely on capitalism as much as the next group. Do you know who the biggest fans of Dead Prez are? WHITE PEOPLE WHO THINK THEY ARE COOL! These white people spend their discretionary income on Dead Prez records. Oh, you have something to say to cool white people too?
"So, yea. Hey cool kids, you can't idolize Jay-Z and Dead Prez at the same time."
Now I assume this is a joke at this point. Mr. Nolan has written an article meant to stir up as many page hits and nasty feedback as possible. Mission accomplished. However, I don't think this opinion piece belongs anywhere on Gawker. Just because you go see your favorite hip hop group and interview them does not make you a cultural critic of hip hop.
Jay Z is not my favorite rapper. Not by a long shot. I find it necessary to defend him from a moronic writer who sees the fault of an entire genre of music in only one artist. Hamilton Nolan, please go back to writing about anything other than music. Thanks.
Friday, March 5, 2010
i know why the nicolas cage bird sings
it's been almost thirty years since "fast times at ridgemont high", but major hollywood's love affair with nicolas cage is showing no signs of slowing down. they took out my wisdom teeth yesterday morning and i decided to pass the night watching, among other things, last year's flop "knowing" (which is what you get when no one is willing to call out m. night shyamalan). pseudo-religious, pseudo-sci-fi apocalypse crap. i won't get into specifics aside from saying that vicodin works.
anyway, i got to thinking, "man that nick cage fellow has made some odd career choices recently." let's have a look at the last few years. a pretty bad remake of "bad lieutenant", the above mentioned "knowing", a really horrible remake of "bangkok dangerous", "national treasure 2: national treasurer", "next", and "ghost rider". i've omitted his voice acting in "g-force" and "astro boy" along with his cameo in "grindhouse". every movie i listed above is really really really shitty.
but you know what's good about starring in crappy big-budget movies that no one with a drop of reputation would go anywhere near? they'll put your name in super big letters on the poster, every single time. they'll probably even put your face on the DVD jacket, too.
so let's all raise a glass to oscar winner nicolas cage. his golden days have surely passed (the rock, con air, and face/off were released in succession), but he's still out there getting paid millions of dollars to fight the good fight. hey, someone has to star in "ghost rider 2".
anyway, i got to thinking, "man that nick cage fellow has made some odd career choices recently." let's have a look at the last few years. a pretty bad remake of "bad lieutenant", the above mentioned "knowing", a really horrible remake of "bangkok dangerous", "national treasure 2: national treasurer", "next", and "ghost rider". i've omitted his voice acting in "g-force" and "astro boy" along with his cameo in "grindhouse". every movie i listed above is really really really shitty.
but you know what's good about starring in crappy big-budget movies that no one with a drop of reputation would go anywhere near? they'll put your name in super big letters on the poster, every single time. they'll probably even put your face on the DVD jacket, too.
so let's all raise a glass to oscar winner nicolas cage. his golden days have surely passed (the rock, con air, and face/off were released in succession), but he's still out there getting paid millions of dollars to fight the good fight. hey, someone has to star in "ghost rider 2".
back to the future
here's a little peek at the freakish dystopia that exists in tom ewing's head (he's one of my favorite fork-compensated retards). what tom is imagining is the year 2021, when CD-Rs make a comeback. it's historical fiction that takes place in the future, which is terra firma for The Onion, but quite the adventure for the fork.
i've tried several times now to write something in depth about how stupid this is, but it kind of felt like writing an extensive essay on the blueness of the sky. i'll try to boil my reaction down to the essentials.
nevermind that CD's represent the motherfucking inception of digital culture. nevermind that every major music-seller has already vanished (in ewing's imagination, "Britain's high street stores stopped stocking CDs five years ago"). and nevermind that a guy who writes many thousands of words elaborating on a made-up future for hipsters has clearly run out of shit to say.
instead, ignore the glaring idiocy, and embrace this style as the logical next step for pitchfork writers: having exhausted the past, they can now go on to writing about tomorrow's nostalgia today.
one short post-script: if hipsters really wanted to rebel against digital culture, they'd stop being dilettante collectors, and they'd start actually supporting musicians by paying to watch them perform.
i've tried several times now to write something in depth about how stupid this is, but it kind of felt like writing an extensive essay on the blueness of the sky. i'll try to boil my reaction down to the essentials.
nevermind that CD's represent the motherfucking inception of digital culture. nevermind that every major music-seller has already vanished (in ewing's imagination, "Britain's high street stores stopped stocking CDs five years ago"). and nevermind that a guy who writes many thousands of words elaborating on a made-up future for hipsters has clearly run out of shit to say.
instead, ignore the glaring idiocy, and embrace this style as the logical next step for pitchfork writers: having exhausted the past, they can now go on to writing about tomorrow's nostalgia today.
one short post-script: if hipsters really wanted to rebel against digital culture, they'd stop being dilettante collectors, and they'd start actually supporting musicians by paying to watch them perform.
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