Monday, December 03, 2018

Your Monday Essay Question: Is This Complete Crap or What?

First -- read this thumbsucker from Sunday's NY Times about the guy from Migos....


... over HERE.

And then watch this song by him...



...and then tell me that he has anything more than, at best, a teaspoon of talent.

I've said this before, but the big problem with taking pop culture seriously is that if you do, you've got to take ALL of it seriously. Including this transparent horse hockey.

Discuss.

5 comments:

Blue Ash Fan said...

I guess this stuff isn't really meant to be grokked by the superannuated among us, including yours truly. I think your "teaspoon" comment is actually generous, and I just don't understand why people don't demand better. Of course, I'll never understand how the music press takes this swill seriously. Read Rolling Stone lately? Their reviews trigger my gag reflex.

Now I have to go shoo the kids off my front lawn.

Anonymous said...

It's another world musically that I don't feel qualified to comment on. So...of course I will comment!

Welcome to the 21st century's music! If we're still around in 20 years imagine how even more alien modern music will potentially sound to us. And how natural it will sound to that generation's music fans.

Did I hear auto-tuning on the vocals on the Saturday Night Live segment? Seems so but I'm not sure. If so, auto-tune is this generation's wah-wah pedal.

Captain Al

Mark said...

As Offset himself says in the NYT piece, "A lot of people really don't know Offset," which I take to mean if we just took the time to learn about Offset, we'd learn a lot about Offset and Migos, Offset and Cardi B, contemporary Hip-Hop and Rap, and lots of other elements of pop culture.

I would, but I'm a very busy guy. Especially this week. I've got a niece's wedding in Florida this weekend and a renovation to oversee in Queens, NY. And while I do think it's important to listen to pop music in all its forms - as elements of culture - I got the point forty ... no, fifty ... years ago that pop music is about entertainment, most of it is disposable, and that careers in music require more substance than flash, even if the substance may not be visible early on. And while I doubt that Offset will be in it for the long haul, maybe he will. But in either case I've got other things to worry about, other things to do, and other types of music to enjoy. And who ever said you had to have talent to be a pop star? Conversely, talent is no guarantee of being successful.

And as far as power pop as a musical style goes, if power pop (which I love) were a geographical location, it would be pre-apartheid Johannesburg, so in my own hyper-critical way, I like seeing articles like the one you refer to, Steve, and especially such articles in the New York Times. I'd also like to see the new Spottiswoode and His Enemies CD, Lost In The City, and the new album by Acid, The In Part Of The Out Crowd, reviewed in the NY Times - both are really REALLY good - but Offset is a bit better known.

Another thing that I've been paying attention to is that pop is less a pejorative term in the music press these days than it was as recently as five years ago.

And in my case, I'm closer to Onset than Offset.

Mark said...

... make that apartheid-era J'burg ...

Anonymous said...

Another thought about auto-tune.

If John Lennon was recording the vocals for "Tomorrow Never Knows" today would Geoff Emerick have suggested auto-tune instead of the leslie cabinet?

Captain Al