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t s plainly fucking obvious or obvious to me at least leaving me with no choice but to say it myself or go slightly mad with frustration rolling stone has just published its list of the 50 greatest hip hop songs of all time before moving on to the meat and potatoes of the whole thing let me quickly point out that it s one of those shitty cynically formatted click bait features that are becoming more and more common nowadays hi complex and which feel like part of a massive conspiracy to waste everyone s time but since people are no longer prepared to do anything so déclasse as oh i dunno support the creators of physical media for which they pay once and can then read at their leisure at no further cost then the subtext here would seem to be eat those data charges and stfu like sean price and so to the main event the judging panel for this glorious exercise consisted of a broad selection of the great and good from the rap game an assortment of hacks and a few randoms like tom morello and vernon reid all of whom were asked to pick their favourites right now elsewhere on teh internets there is probably some over earnest rap blogger twisting himself it s always a he into a blind rage over the exclusion of deadprez immortal technique or lupe fiasco whilst wondering how it s possible that talib kweli would attach himself to a greatest ever list that makes room for jay z twice kanye and missy as it happens i have few issues with the actual content itself taken as an arbitrary list of 50 great rap songs rather than the definitive 50 greatest of all time there s not an awful lot on there that i d argue against on the other hand the guiding principles behind it or what i imagine them to be are absolute fucking cocksnot cosy easily digestible rap nostalgia lazy list based journalism and rock crit values attempting to impose themselves on rap again to be honest i ve given up all hope of the rock press and its associated critical community ever managing to deal with rap on its own terms you may as well try juggling smoke here s what i mean take a random sample of english language music publications from the last 10 15 years possibly longer and i d bet large on at least half of them regularly defaulting to public enemy as the artistic yardstick whenever they cover hip hop rapper x channels the spirit of public enemy rapper y will have the listener yearning for some of public enemy s righteous anger et fucking cee it won t matter a tuppenny fuck who they re writing about and it s still happening now try to imagine almost every review of a rock record you ever read trying to tell you it wasn t as good as exile on main street for clarity s sake public enemy are responsible for some of the greatest most exciting music i ve ever heard but it s like this they haven t made a truly great album in over twenty years public enemy fell the fuck off ages ago people might not like hearing it and i don t particularly like saying it but it s true why should it matter though who cares about the collective opinion of a bunch of people who d probably insist that rap s been struggling against a long slide into irrelevance ever since pe failed to top fear of a black planet as they make yet another drearily obvious attempt to establish a canon to re order and re shape rap into what they think it ought to be instead of accepting it for what it is after all they can comfortably tell you where rap was at twenty or even thirty years ago but i wonder whether they d have too much of a clue about where it s at now i mean doesn t anyone else think it funny that all these people seem to agree that the definitive high water mark of the genre happens to be the exact point where the rock press finally declared that yes it might actually be possible for rap music to be more than just a craze perhaps even something that could exist on the same plane of artistic worth as rock and that that point was in 1982 which brings us to the rappers now i m not even remotely inclined to give them the same hard time i d give the hacks these are people who grew up on rap music who lived and breathed it and for the most part continue to live and breathe it anybody who follows dante ross or uesto on twitter can tell you that those two guys alone are on some super heavyweight rap nerd shit matter of fact the latter s preamble might be the most worthwhile and entertaining thing about this whole shitshow but i look at that list and factor in the age of all the rap dudes involved and balance that with the strong likelihood that certain of the songs have vast nostalgic appeal that perhaps outweighs the usual consensus notions of greatness and i still think really a bunch of rappers this bunch of rappers think juicy is better than hypnotize or that paid in full is better than i know you got soul and strictly business better than it s my thing they think and this is really fucking suspect the jay tune that ugk got on is better than any other ugk record or any other jay record for that matter although i doubt whether the symphony or the remix of flava in ya ear would be there at all without their input i find it extremely hard to believe that the pros wouldn t have broader taste than this nah this is something that has been skewed by a bunch of casual listeners who default to the same obvious choices every time and cannot fucking bear to deviate from the same rigid critical metric they ve been pushing for the last three decades the people who commission and occasionally write all those ridiculous x albums for people who don t know anything about hip hop pieces about a form of music that s existed on record for over 30 years just think about that for a minute imagine someone writing a piece called x albums for people who don t know anything about rock in 1986 seriously if you still need to be led by the hand through hip hop in 2012 then perhaps it isn t for you likewise when your value judgements suggest that you stopped seriously listening to rap about twenty years ago then you really need to fall back from any debate regarding what s what and leave the arguing to the people who still give an actual fuck about it you re welcome posted by paul at 23 09 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels gobshites hip hop jay z kanye west music questlove rap the biz thursday 5 july 2012 will he make it out alive it s long been a suspicion of mine that part of the reason more rappers and r b performers choose not to come out is the fear that there ll never again be a point certainly not in their professional lives where they won t be expected to discuss their sexuality it won t make a blind bit of difference whether their music is on some perpetual next shit or if it s landfill from now on for a significant part of the media who s frank ocean fucking is always going to be a bigger story than his music this is pretty depressing all the same this is a big deal whichever way you slice it added to which if your area of business is an idiom where generally speaking notions of masculinity are far from fluid then that s quite a risk you re taking there it ll be interesting to see how things are looking a couple of albums from now when we ll know the extent to which the current fuss has shaped frank ocean s career path right now as you d expect there s no shortage of people ready to declare that this news means they re no longer able to listen to his music seemingly without a thought for how irrational that might appear meanwhile chris brown andrew noz said something on twitter that i thought was insightful but for some reason he chose to delete it a couple of minutes later i wouldn t want it to get lost in all the noise though dude very carefully wrote about a complicated experience only to have it immediately reduced to a soundbite frank s tumblr post is a nice bit of writing after all apart from being something of a cultural watershed but that little observation from noz also raises the issue of what our reactions and those of the media might be saying about us i think it s perfectly possible to separate the art from the artist you just have to want to do it and unless frank ocean chooses to be gender specific i don t see where the issue is i don t remember anybody being too bothered by this and it s clear as fucking day what it s about now speaking of which isn t it funny who s turned out to be the first rap crew with an actively progressive attitude towards sexual orientation posted by paul at 23 51 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels controversy frank ocean music ofwgkta sexuality saturday 18 february 2012 unsolicted plug x mememe corner every now and again over the last couple of years i ve written the odd thing for the arts desk a really rather good arts criticism portal the most recent was a piece on whitney houston but the whole lot can be found here in one handy little spot posted by paul at 13 43 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels the arts desk the big i am sunday 5 february 2012 so guess who s gonna take the blame for my big mouth noel gallagher s political career in full suit c o paul smith champers c o the taxpayer if you re a working class kid made good the worst possible sin you can commit is to forget where you came from being seen to betray the values that made you the man woman you are today is simply not done indeed cross that particular nexus and it requires a very generous reservoir of public goodwill if you re ever to be welcomed back into the affections of an audience who no longer see you as one of them as the manifestation of their hopes dreams or ambitions i doubt noel gallagher has completely burned his bridges with his things were better under thatcher grumblings in a recent interview for the daily blackshirt s website but he probably hasn t done himself too many favours either generally speaking noel gallagher makes for an entertaining and often very funny interviewee i d certainly much rather read or hear what he has to say than listen to the last few oasis albums for example although don t believe the truth was alright now and again however his tendency to deal in absolutes has betrayed an unpleasant small c conservative streak his pronouncements on jay z at glastonbury were profoundly ignorant especially coming from someone who by his own admission never went as a regular punter and never strayed beyond the vip garrison when he was there as a performer here s a man who quite obviously doesn t trouble himself too much with actually knowing what he s talking about as was borne out when jay delivered a headlining performance significantly more dynamic than the each half of the band static on opposite sides of the stage and liam sat on the drum riser model that served oasis so well and now here he goes again peddling the line that hard times great art proving in the process what a witless piece of received wisdom that is particularly from the mouths of those too complacent to spend much time looking at the bigger picture under thatcher who ruled us with an iron rod he says great art was made amazing designers and musicians acid house was born very colourful and progressive that may well be true but how much of that was directly or actively encouraged by the tories very fucking little unsurprisingly as acid house was slowly beginning to take hold in the late 80s full grants for students in higher education were coming to an end this would be the last generation able to enjoy the absolute freedom to bum around at poly or uni while they figured out what they wanted to do with their lives spending their student years forming bands making films writing running club nights painting or dicking around with graphic design and fashion getting leathered and occasionally studying are the kind of luxuries no longer available to most kids from similar backgrounds to noel whose parents would invariably have to take a second job nowadays just to help pay for the books if they could find a second job in any event the tories saw little worth for business in the humanities or arts related courses generally so they were more or less doomed from the start in fact an education with no measurable practical value was considered little more than a frippery strike one therefore against thatcher for dealing a death blow to precisely the kind of academic and cultural environment that helped produce and nurture the beatles the stones the kinks the who etc etc difficult to believe you d seriously want to cosign that noel difficult to believe you d even have a fucking career without one half of those bands frankly what s that sooty what about all the kids who were politicised during a decade of war strikes riots civil disobedience and spending cuts you say and my how things change didn t they support and help produce exactly the kind of great art noel s talking about you ask well sooty let me answer your question with another question aren t they just examples of great art thriving in spite of the circumstances if you were to look at some of the places from where hip hop emerged during roughly the same period areas of incredible deprivation with block after derelict block burnt out and abandoned to the mercy of fuck knows what you wouldn t seriously call for a return to that just to give flo rida a bit of a reality check would you do a google image search for pictures of say the south bronx or bushwick during the 1970s or 1980s and you might be inclined to think we weren t that badly off in the uk at all relatively speaking certainly there wasn t anything like the same level of grinding poverty that many are facing now remember also that during the 80s we weren t yet looking at a mortally wounded welfare state rather one that was being ever so subtly run into the ground to the point where public confidence in things like healthcare education and transport would eventually decline to such a low that widespread privatisation and the freedom it purported to represent would be welcomed with open arms you could still just about get by on the dole as well although there were few greater folk devils in the eyes of the tories during the thatcher years than the dole scrounger except perhaps arthur scargill and maybe purple akie i ought to add at this point that i was never actually out of work under thatcher apart from when i was in further higher ed nice little irony there if you like that sort of thing anyway my point is that theoretically there still existed the freedom to indulge your nascent musical ambitions or get yourself an education without having to blow out band practice for jobstart meetings but this was only because the tories hadn t figured out a way to dismantle the welfare state any quicker than they were doing already it s funny to hear so many modern tories attempt to claim the resourcefulness people displayed during those straitened times as vindicati...