aaron wrote:Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant shit to me you see
Straight up racist that sucker was
Simple and plain
Motherfuck him and John Wayne

http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/presley1.asp




Oh and Kim Gordon has moments of greatness and moments of awfulness but overall I like her.

"'Cross the Breeze" is my favoritest song ever...i like her singing overall less than Lee and Thurston's...but i like it...and her playing is mighty mighty fine...an easy not crap for me...

Bradley R. Weissenberger wrote:So I will see you in Hell, Steve Albini. Will you be kind enough to wait around until I get there?

I will have a center table, Bradley. I will save you a seat. I'm sure we will have many friends there, and we will all have a high old time.

And the floor show will be incredible, as will the baseball.

Salut! A high old time in Hell!

Wait a second. Hold on just a second, now.

First off, Kim Gordon can keep putting out the junk that her band has been putting out for the last nearly 20 years and she'll still be NC because of the single song Halloween. This is a great song. It is about the best Sonic Youth song there is and creepier than anything by Darkthrone.

AND DO NOT FUCK WITH KOOL MOE DEE. KMD did a lot of bad stuff, but like Kim, he has a signature song that has lasted over 2 decades and still is awesome - I Go To Work.

What a fantastic song. Jaw droppingly fast rhymes, that at that point, were unmatched in commercial rap (with the exception of the aforementioned Chuck D and maybe Rakim). (Maybe.) Stop what you're doing and go get a tatoo of Kool on your chest, delivering the punch line to the song:

"You wanna know my occupation?
I get paid to rock the nation."

That's better than Rick Sims.

This record was called "How Ya Like Me Now?", which is a great name for a record.


I don't have to defend PE. White Burger has a bunch of impassioned posts that do that just fine.

What's the matter with you people? Disrespecting Kool Moe Dee? He was a member of the Trecherous Three! Man, you guys have it bad.

= Justin

Kim Gordon = NOT CRAP. I really like her vocals on the Nurse song "Kim Gordon and the Handcream Blah Blah Blah Whatever." And that last song on Daydream Nation where it sounds like she's having the sex.

As for Public Enemy, I'm with Steve. Hip-hop music tends to age poorly, and most PE songs just sound like the Fresh Prince theme to me.

The Kid wrote:I half remember a war of words between Kool Moe Dee and LL Cool J. It's telling that he'd be bothered with a trifling chump like LL.

_radio_, _mama said knock you out_, and quite a bit of _walking with a panther_ are great. esp. _mama said knock you out_.

he's made a lot of bad records, sure. but making a lot of bad records seems to be a prerequisite among long-lived hiphop acts.

steve wrote:I am not in either of its target demographics, neither : A) urban black youngsters searching for outside recognition of their condition, nor B) sub-urban white youngsters with anthropological curiosity about group A. While this is not for sure the only way to "get" it, I am prevented from to "get it" the easy way.

the easy way to get it, outside of being in one of these sucker-bait subgroups you mention, is probably to listen to it without being terribly hung up on one's position as a 'white man' in the world

or public enemy's positions as 'black men' for that matter

not to mention the possible breakdown of the rest of their audience

at least i have found this way of getting it to be about as hard as fallin' off a log

no one made records like the bomb squad before the bomb squad did it. most tellingly, no one has made records like that since then, and very few people have even tried, despite the large number of people who've absorbed those albums as completely as anyone can absorb music. i think that speaks to the technical difficulty of making it work. i have no doubt that many people would love to be able to rip them off.

kool moe dee was ok. i never got into him much, though i liked the treacherous three. the kmd/llcj rivalry seems cute in the post-tupac/b.i.g./suge knight era.

tmidgett wrote:no one made records like the bomb squad before the bomb squad did it. most tellingly, no one has made records like that since then, and very few people have even tried, despite the large number of people who've absorbed those albums as completely as anyone can absorb music. i think that speaks to the technical difficulty of making it work.

In addition to this technical difficulty (and the fact that most rap producers lacked the Bomb Squad's expansive musical vocabulary), there is a practical impediment to making a Bomb Squad-style record. That impediment is the current structure for samples/licenses fees in the record industry.

Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad discusses the issue here.

tmidgett wrote:kool moe dee was ok.

The best thing that Kool Moe Dee helped create was LL Cool J's "Jack The Ripper".

You know. By providing the subject matter.

That's a great song.

tmidgett wrote:the easy way to get it, outside of being in one of these sucker-bait subgroups you mention, is probably to listen to it without being terribly hung up on one's position as a 'white man' in the world

or public enemy's positions as 'black men' for that matter

I could (okay I will!) make the case that ignoring their position as "black men" is to reduce their music to a sound without meaning. Okay, this sound -- this collection of other people's records and sound effects meant to induce dread like the T-Rex footfalls in Jurassic Park -- is uneffective as a sound. It sounds like your average party record with a siren.

not to mention the possible breakdown of the rest of their audience

I can no more divorce hip hop music from its audience (much less its "keep it real" self-satisfaction, general tone of self-absorbed materialism, comic-book political grasp and other nonsense) than I can divorce Christian music from its audience. That is, to like this music in spite of its cultural milieu requires exceptional music, exceptional ideas and a presentation that exceeds the obvious traps of genre. I have yet to hear it.

I think all genre music suffers from this, to greater and lesser degees, but hip hop is particularly victim of it because it is so formally simple and so hide-bound by a small number of very specific stylistic expectations (which extend beyond the music into the subject matter, "personality" and even word count).

Someone will surely mount a defense of the sort that equates hip hop music to country music or other genre musics, and I grant equivocation on some points. But rapping is by far more limited by its genre (partly oweing to short developmental history, but mostly by what defines it) than these other genres, with the possible exception of surf music.

And okay, I like surf music better.

Kim Gordon? She's good.

steve wrote:I could (okay I will!) make the case that ignoring their position as "black men" is to reduce their music to a sound without meaning. Okay, this sound -- this collection of other people's records and sound effects meant to induce dread like the T-Rex footfalls in Jurassic Park -- is uneffective as a sound. It sounds like your average party record with a siren.

having listened to 'high period' PE (_nation of millions_ and _black planet_) a lot, i can say that i honestly think that racial politics are about as important to that portion of PE's music as the state of mid-70s britain was to the sex pistols.

the context is of note sociologically, to someone, in that the sociopolitical 'scene' in question informed almost everything either one of those bands ever did. but musically, the circumstances under which the music was made are, if not irrelevant, certainly not crucial to its success as music.

I can no more divorce hip hop music from its audience (much less its "keep it real" self-satisfaction, general tone of self-absorbed materialism, comic-book political grasp and other nonsense) than I can divorce Christian music from its audience. That is, to like this music in spite of its cultural milieu requires exceptional music, exceptional ideas and a presentation that exceeds the obvious traps of genre.

i find it real easy to divorce public enemy from all of the above, much i find it easy to divorce the sex pistols from their scattershot hatred, general tone of self-absorbed nihilism, comic-book political grasp and other nonsense.

i prefer the sex pistols to public enemy, as i prefer punk rock to hiphop. but i think the evidence (certainly _nation of millions_ and _black planet_) suggests very strongly that public enemy and the bomb squad were innovators on the level of the first punk bands.

if you don't hear that, then sure, i think everything you say is internally consistent

I think all genre music suffers from this, to greater and lesser degees, but hip hop is particularly victim of it because it is so formally simple and so hide-bound by a small number of very specific stylistic expectations (which extend beyond the music into the subject matter, "personality" and even word count).

Someone will surely mount a defense of the sort that equates hip hop music to country music or other genre musics, and I grant equivocation on some points. But rapping is by far more limited by its genre (partly oweing to short developmental history, but mostly by what defines it) than these other genres, with the possible exception of surf music.

i love much country music, but you don't get more formally simple and hidebound than that

anyway, i'm not going to make a case for hiphop as a genre. i don't think it needs my help, and i'm not well-versed enough in it to handle the job.

but to call public enemy in particular 'formally simple'....those lyrical structures, those beats, those arrangements, those 'sound effects,' to use a somewhat accurate term nonperjoratively....i mean, i just think that speaks to a deaf spot on your part more than anything else. if you've even heard much of it to begin with. not liking it is not liking it, but as a formal achievement, at the very least, i think it should be more difficult to deny than that.

i cant comprehend ever wanting to listen to the Sex Pistols over PE. the punk/hiphop comparison is pretty lame though, i cant imagine two forms of music more different in terms of their overall form & 'work ethic'.