Well...
While I’m all for killing the previous generations’ idols I just feel like the “Intern listens to old critically acclaimed record and is like LOL WUT IDK” genre in general is done in bad faith. I know this icked-out response is coming from the part of my brain that was molded by Sitemeter and Chartbeat and all that, but I really do feel like pieces like the PE one aren’t written so much as they are assembled—take provocative headline A, add in challop B (come on, the Drake thing), add more words, stir, let the dough proof via social-media reactions, then bake it in a knock-down, drag-out comment section. Wait a day or so and poof, you’ve got an outrage loaf. The content itself, or the effort that went into it, is secondary. That’s what bothers me more than anything—the obvious lack of encouragement to actually use this huge platform (which, again, is a privilege!) as a springboard for reflection or anything deeper at all.
I thought the piece was OK content-wise: dude likes current stuff, listens to old stuff, finds it isn’t the same/doesn’t do it for him, explains what turns him off about it, politely declines to go much further. I think if it was pure challopsy trolling he’d have taken a much more hardline Lex-ish “FUCK OFF GRANDPA” approach. It’s not Best Music Writing 2012, obviously, it’s a better-than-average college newspaper piece dropped into a big website (as you say, there are issues w/that in itself).
And yes, I think there are three levels you can get cross about it on:
1. He didn’t like a record I like.
2. He didn’t respect a classic record.
3. His piece is trolling for hits and comments and is part of what’s wrong w/music writing today.
I think - hope! - we can all agree that #1 is a dumb objection, it’s a gut emotional reaction for some fans but nothing to build an argument around (so they disguise it as #2). #3 is doubtless true but it’s a critique you can make of almost anything - most of music writing has always been reactive not reflective, and Hilburn or DeRo-esque pieces trotting through why Nation Of Millions is a great record are just as much looking for comfy hits as anything mildly challopsy is. The landscape of music writing is gross, but it’s gross for the pieces which turn out OK as well as the ones which don’t - it feels like too broad a cannon to aim at this one particular piece.
So you’re left with #2, which is where I think honestly interesting lines can be and are being fought over: with everything available at what point does the canon get too big to be useful? How good a listening strategy is respect? Are Gen Xers ageing gracefully? What should we expect from new listeners? Is a record ever too good to dislike? (I remember Paul Do Noyer in Mojo arguing that Beatles haters should be called “resenters”)
(And also with THIS record and this argument there’s another layer around how Nation of Millions WITHIN the canon - or the Rolling Stone endorsed version of it - acts as a stick to beat hip-hop with, which is what makes this such a good/cynical nerve to tweak…)
Again, yes. And if there’s any bad faith here, it would seem to be on the part of the (paid, experienced) editors who should have more context for both the album itself and the accusations of trolling that were bound to follow. It is the job of 21-year-olds to write spirited but ill-informed stuff that shows a (in my mind refreshing) lack of reverence to the previous generation’s idols; it is the job of editors to decide whether those pieces are worthy of publishing at NPR and, if they are, make them good enough to appear alongside the writing of critics like Ann Powers. I’m all for asking questions about whether NPR is doing their interns and readers a disservice, but about 90% of the vitriol I’ve seen is very nasty ad hominem stuff directed at this one college guy and his refusal to genuflect before Public Enemy (a group that, by the way, has done a whole lot more to screw up its legacy than this kid ever could).
What I find worthwhile in the piece is the reminder that albums can actually sound different to people of different generations — in large part because so many other musicians have since spent decades building on what they did and trying to take it further. When I was a freshman in high school, I heard Never Mind the Bollocks for the first time after a few years of listening to Nirvana and Hole and Mudhoney and was surprised (and a bit disappointed) at how tame the Sex Pistols sounded in comparison with my favorite bands, and in contrast with everything I’d read about how revolutionary they were in the ’70s. I ultimately came to like the album, and obviously I respect its place in history, but I was expecting it to change my life and it didn’t.
(Source: elmattic)
