NOZ SPEAKS THE TRUTH

Bsides

I just wanna give fellow strutter noz some props for his latest blog that finally exposes CTI rap for what it is. Thank you for putting these setiments into words way better than i ever could. Peep game. The Good Die Mostly Over Bullshit Post-Rap Side ProjectsGnarls Barkley Ruins Hip Hop, Signs To CTIAgainst my better judgement I went and downloaded the much anticipated (by somebody) Gnarls Barkley record St. Elsewhere. It???s not a rap record. It ranges from innocuous car commercial music to indulgent car commercial music to music that would be best suited for a car commercial. Don???t let the featherweight gospel or electro flourishes fool you, it???s basically a shitty alternative rock record backed my Moby-esque beats. It???s the type of ???music??? that exists more as an idea than as a finished product and by the time people hear the record they???re so enamored with the concept that the quality of music doesn???t really even matter any more.As such, I first have to first commend the marketing team behind the Gnarls record. They???ve done an incredible job of playing the internet blog meme card, perhaps the best since MIA went MIA (zing!). Their Myspace page, a seizure inducing orgy of neon butterflies, hearts and guns (a pretty accurate representation of this mess of an album), and, unlike other hipster favorites, it seems that their 23,000 ???friends??? aren???t playing - the lead single ???Crazy??? already went to number 1 in Britain.* The page features a few unique marketing schemes. Fans can custom design their own flyers for a chance to enter the groups coveted Top 8. And every so often a new picture is released with Lo & Danger Mouse dressed ironically like characters from cult films like Clockwork Orange and Freddie vs. Jason. The press release name drops Lester Bangs, Bob from Twin Peaks and a bunch of other shit that people who aren???t very smart can pat themselves on the back and feel smart for recognizing.In the time that it takes you to read this at least one forward thinking 17 year old white kid who wears tight Mars Volta t-shirts will have probably sent a friend a message along the lines of ???OMG Did you see the one where they dressed up like characters from Napoleon Dynamite? We quote that movie all the time. And the name, Gnarls Barkley, is so clever, get it? Remember Charles Barkley? He played basketball. I???m not sure what Gnarls means, but those guys are so funny. Did you see that there???s a song called ???Go-Go Gadget Gospel??? - remember Inspector Gadget? That???s soo funny that they remember it too. I sure do like the way they reference something or someone that that I remember but haven???t thought about in a little while, and then they put a twist on it. ??? Gnarls Barkley kills it with the lame non-sequitor pop culture references like a ???rap??? Seth McFarlane**.Gnarls is exactly the sort of oppressively post modern project gimmick you???d expect from producer Danger Mouse, an artist who made a name for himself by turning one bad gimmick into an even worse album while simultaneously helping to spark an internationally obnoxious buzzword/phenomenon. He is a grown man who dresses up like a giant mouse for publicity photos and in the last year has released not one, but two albums with prominent vocals from cartoon characters. He also has a rather shameful history of making crummy electronic music.It???s the other half of Gnarls who should know better. As a member (But, despite what some might say not the ???front man???) of one of the greatest rap groups of all time, Cee-Lo helped put together two near perfect hip hop albums. Soul Food and Still Standing were paranoid and dark treatises on the american class and race struggle, backed by the soulful production of organized noize and a spiritual and optimistic bent. Along with Outkast and the Dungeon Family they pretty much set the gold standard for pre-crunk, pre-snap Atlanta rap. Their third record World Party wasn???t as good, but we like to pretend that it doesn???t exist.Gnarls doesn???t come as a complete surprise, Lo was hinting at a move like this with his last two solo records, but there the sappy sentimental non-rapping bullshit like ???Gettin??? Grown??? was tempered with harder straight forward rap tracks like ???Big Ole Words??? and ???Glockapella.??? And those bad happy songs just seemed to be more a product of $150,000 Santana checks (or perhaps prozac) . And for all their faults, both albums seemed to be natural for Lo. Gnarls Barkley is a highly calculated hipster wet dream. What???s even more disturbing about is how much Cee-Lo has deteriorated as a writer (or, more likely, he just got lazy and let the PR department handle the rest). How dude goes from the poignant lyricism of the goodie records to the sub-grunge rock musings of ???I???ve tried everything but suicide??? and ???my girlfriend bugs me all the time, but the irony is that she loves me all the time??? (I am not paraphrasing, those are actual quotes from the record) is baffling. Plus he clocks with just under a minute of actual rapping. And I don???t even want to talk about the fake Monster Mash track.Cee-Lo isn???t the only ???conscious??? rapper to grow too conscious for ???traditional??? hip hop. There???s Common???s Electric Circus, Andre 300???s Love Below, Q-Tip???s unreleased Kamaal The Abstract, Mos Def???s The New Danger, The Neptunes??? despicable NERD record and the oft overlooked OG of the genre - Divine Styler???s Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light.You may have been fooled into thinking that these are experimental rap records but that???s a misnomer if there ever was one. Of course, there???s not a lot of rapping going on with most of these albums, but they???re also not very experimental. They implements the techniques and standards of old genres and make rap more palatable for those outsiders. What we have here is bad fusion, CTI Rap for people who were too timid for the real thing. It???s more regressive than progressive.Non rap listeners*** and critics eat this garbage up because they???ve just been waiting for a project from a rapper that would prove that they are not narrow-minded, but isn???t so rappy. These people are the worst types of music listeners in the world and need to just own up to being square ass square butts (or racists) who can???t fuck with rap already. They are no doubt very impressed that a rapper was able to have such wide lense musical perspective to not only know, but to cover a Violent Femmes song, as Gnarls Barkley does. Odds are these are that people lack the perspective to realize that there is a reason that nobody remembers any Violent Femmes, except for that one song.At the risk of over intellectualizing, actual experimental rap happens all the time. You just weren???t paying attention (probably because you were partying/nodding your head/rapping along/stoned/drunk). It???s experimental when Timbaland gets a party started with a hiccuping baby or when Cam???ron/Posdnous/Project Pat/E-40 toys with language. It???s in the stark minimalism of snap music or the arhythmical stutter of Pharoahe Monch. Whether they know it or not, most hip hop producers refining and expanding upon techniques that were created by by dorks in labcoats. And the best rappers are constantly breaking all the rules of literary and poetic convention. This is why, for all it???s success, rap is an intensely insular movement. This is why ???Rappers Delight??? (a fifteen minute song with no singing and no chorus that still got radio play) was so polarizing 35 years ago and why today TI can sell a million records in a month, have a hit movie out and still remain completely unknown by the bulk of the American public. Because all rap flies in the face of hundreds of years of musical conventions. It???s just so damn weird.Inversely, most rap fans, having spent their life in this insular rap world where these experiments are the norm, often have too nar
row a perspective on music to realize that Andre 3000 and Mos Def aren???t ???experimenting,??? they???re just channeling Prince and Bad Brains, respectively. And this is the same reason that Post-rappers are so deluded as to think that they???re actually doing something innovative with these awful records, merely because they just discovered Radiohead.Back to Cee-Lo. The Gnarls Barkley press refers to him as the ???once and future goodie mob member,??? but I???d say the likelihood of an actual Goodie reunion looks pretty slim when Lo???s got a number one record (even in a country that doesn???t matter) and a Kool Keith-esque string of indulgent and pointless projects on the horizon - including a ???electrotechnofunkrock group??? (not my words) called Lovestink (Hi, Andre!) and a ???for da clubs??? (my words) album with the worlds most annoying producer Jazze Pha. On the other hand Khujo???s new record looks to be only available on myspace and Gipp is making a shallow, desperate grasp for commercial success by making an album with not-Nelly (is Ali the one who wears a mask? No Kellsmo / No Doomo).But their non reunion is probably for the better. Does a soulmachinegnarls Cee-Lo even fit into the Goodie Mob formula these days? Gipp and Lo both have a superstar demeanor, but for whatever reason, haven???t actually been able to make very popular music**** and I think part of the problem with World Party was that these divergent personalities were constantly vying for attention. Would the reunion see the return of the more restrained Lo from ten years ago? Or would he come out sounding like the male macy gray (who was at one time was the female Cee-Lo)?

Swayze

u mad nozzie?

complaining about what's "ruining hip-hop" is so 1997. cee-lo fell off. dangermouse is annoying. it's not the end of the world. lots of complete bullshit sells a ton.

frayser boy won an oscar. e-40 has a hit single (and an album that would've gone platinum if it had more than five good songs on it). "great googly moogly" and "what you know" both came out this year. freeway just put out a new tape. hip-hop will be fine.

Aser

The press release name drops Lester Bangs, Bob from Twin Peaks and a bunch of other shit that people who aren???t very smart can pat themselves on the back and feel smart for recognizing.

aren't you guilty of said crime with this very statement? Oh the circular nature of cynicism.

I do not celebrate dangermouse's catalogue so I'll stay out of this one.

Bsides

u mad nozzie?

complaining about what's "ruining hip-hop" is so 1997. cee-lo fell off. dangermouse is annoying. it's not the end of the world. lots of complete bullshit sells a ton.

frayser boy won an oscar. e-40 has a hit single (and an album that would've gone platinum if it had more than five good songs on it). "great googly moogly" and "what you know" both came out this year. freeway just put out a new tape. hip-hop will be fine.

I think noz actually believes they are ruining anything, its just to say that they are really shitty.

contortionist

These discussions just become redundant after a while. That article by Noz was just too bitter to come across as on-point. Granted, i won't be buying the Gnarls Barkley album either but i don't think it is entirely the work of evil marketing geniuses in a ploy to help hipsters take over the world. The constant hatred of hipsters is just becoming a waste of energy. Does every album have to be analysed to the nth degree and assessed according to its hipster potential. Maybe, just maybe, Cee Lo and Dangermouse enjoyed making the album and were happy with the finished result. Or maybe Noz is right and i'm just bitter because i felt really really smart and superior when i picked up on the Twin peaks reference.

Bsides

These discussions just become redundant after a while. That article by Noz was just too bitter to come across as on-point. Granted, i won't be buying the Gnarls Barkley album either but i don't think it is entirely the work of evil marketing geniuses in a ploy to help hipsters take over the world. The constant hatred of hipsters is just becoming a waste of energy. Does every album have to be analysed to the nth degree and assessed according to its hipster potential. Maybe, just maybe, Cee Lo and Dangermouse enjoyed making the album and were happy with the finished result. Or maybe Noz is right and i'm just bitter because i felt really really smart and superior when i picked up on the Twin peaks reference.

Im pretty sure noz is right, and you just mad.

Swayze

These discussions just become redundant after a while. That article by Noz was just too bitter to come across as on-point. Granted, i won't be buying the Gnarls Barkley album either but i don't think it is entirely the work of evil marketing geniuses in a ploy to help hipsters take over the world. The constant hatred of hipsters is just becoming a waste of energy. Does every album have to be analysed to the nth degree and assessed according to its hipster potential. Maybe, just maybe, Cee Lo and Dangermouse enjoyed making the album and were happy with the finished result. Or maybe Noz is right and i'm just bitter because i felt really really smart and superior when i picked up on the Twin peaks reference.

Im pretty sure noz is right, and you just mad.

I'm pretty sure you and noz are posing for promo pix dressed up as characters from our favorite old movies as we speak.

jaymack

too bitter

LamarTinson

there is a reason that nobody remembers any Violent Femmes, except for that one song.

Incorrect. Their entire debut is classic.

Soulhawk

A colorful & entertaining piece of writing.

more than a touch of 'Dylan goes electric' Judas-calling for sure.

the underlying belief that hip-hop is the be-all & end-all of music is charmingly naive.



and now a word from the future savior of raps...

kitchenknight

Actually thought he was dead on...He's calling a novelty a novelty, while most people are calling it 'groundbreaking/innovative/earth shaking'. He points out that 1) people have been making records like this for a decade, and 2) its not that good.

I think he's dead on in pointing out a lot of the innovations in hip hop, especially those that people take for granted as 'just rapping'. An album like Gnarls is easy for a critic to rap his head around, and he can easily say, "this is a great leap forward for hip hop," without having to think too much about it. Meanwhile, that critic wouldn't know Pharoah Monche if it was his cell-phone ring...Albums like this give critics a chance to judge hip hop (especially the 'non-innovative' hip hop that is just beats and rapping, that doesn't have guitars and cartoon characters) without actually listening to it.

contortionist

Actually thought he was dead on...He's calling a novelty a novelty, while most people are calling it 'groundbreaking/innovative/earth shaking'. He points out that 1) people have been making records like this for a decade, and 2) its not that good.

I think he's dead on in pointing out a lot of the innovations in hip hop, especially those that people take for granted as 'just rapping'. An album like Gnarls is easy for a critic to rap his head around, and he can easily say, "this is a great leap forward for hip hop," without having to think too much about it. Meanwhile, that critic wouldn't know Pharoah Monche if it was his cell-phone ring...Albums like this give critics a chance to judge hip hop (especially the 'non-innovative' hip hop that is just beats and rapping, that doesn't have guitars and cartoon characters) without actually listening to it.

Isn't that more a fault of critics rather than Gnarls Barkley.

Reynaldo

See, even Cee-Lo can get bored with hip hop.

catchdubs

frayser boy won an oscar. e-40 has a hit single (and an album that would've gone platinum if it had more than five good songs on it). "great googly moogly" and "what you know" both came out this year. freeway just put out a new tape. hip-hop will be fine. [/b]

DJAck

when did goodie mob achieve "one of the greatest rap groups of all time" status?

Bsides

SHit is kinda surprising me that some of yall would even cosign this nonsense.

faux_rillz

You dudes sound like some ass-hurt hipsters.

Hating on this Gnarls Barkley bullschitt is clearly not redundant or unnecessary, judging by the number of people even on this board that are jocking it.

mcdee

i only have one complaint about the article, not enough hattin on danger mouse beats. if it wasnt for 'crazy' that dude would have deserved bottom 10 status.

kitchenknight

Actually thought he was dead on...He's calling a novelty a novelty, while most people are calling it 'groundbreaking/innovative/earth shaking'. He points out that 1) people have been making records like this for a decade, and 2) its not that good.

I think he's dead on in pointing out a lot of the innovations in hip hop, especially those that people take for granted as 'just rapping'. An album like Gnarls is easy for a critic to rap his head around, and he can easily say, "this is a great leap forward for hip hop," without having to think too much about it. Meanwhile, that critic wouldn't know Pharoah Monche if it was his cell-phone ring...Albums like this give critics a chance to judge hip hop (especially the 'non-innovative' hip hop that is just beats and rapping, that doesn't have guitars and cartoon characters) without actually listening to it.

Isn't that more a fault of critics rather than Gnarls Barkley.

Yes, what I wrote is more an implication of critics. But, I was trying to speak to the tendency to laud these sorts of albums regardless of the actual quality on the album. Wanna be a critical darling? Make a rap album...with a guitar!

Bsides

You dudes sound like some ass-hurt hipsters.

Hating on this Gnarls Barkley bullschitt is clearly not redundant or unnecessary, judging by the number of people even on this board that are jocking it.

I would just like to add that for the first time, in a true faux rillz fashion, i feel completely comfortable hating on this crap without ever having heard 1 song on it.

Im just positive its as bad or worse then i can imagine.

soulmarcosa

"Crazy" and "Smiley Faces" are dope songs IMO, period.

And I made that judgment call solely from someone posting MP3s here. Not from their Myspace page, not from their PR hype, not from their ironic photos, not from their hipster quotient, and not from someone telling me how great they are despite my not really previously caring about either Dangermouse or Cee Lo in the first place.

Just on the basis of the music.

That's why I couldn't be bothered to do more than skim Noz's blog entry. He may be completely correct in his assessments such as

It???s the type of ???music??? that exists more as an idea than as a finished product and by the time people hear the record they???re so enamored with the concept that the quality of music doesn???t really even matter any more.

But dude, it's 2006. Who fucking cares. I can't even count how many OTHER records could be described this way, and fail miserably at the attempt. At least this one has two good songs on it.

I guess I don't see the reason to wave the "I'm way too smart to buy into this premanufactured bullshit" flag when you can spend your time big-upping the music you DO like.

And Bsides - homie - you do realize how amusing it is for you to go from praising Swizz Beats and the new Lil Romeo joint to decrying the death of hip hop at the hands Gnarls Barkley, right? I think you do - I just wanted to make sure.

sticky_dojah

I also like "crazy", but please just in doses...this is a song that can be really annoying after a while and you should check yourself latest when u go and use "I remember when" as a joke line with your hipster friends when talking about the past...but it is a strong song, mos definitely....

Bsides

And Bsides - homie - you do realize how amusing it is for you to go from praising Swizz Beats and the new Lil Romeo joint to decrying the death of hip hop at the hands Gnarls Barkley, right? I think you do - I just wanted to make sure.

Yeah, lol, pretty much. Just having fun on the internets.

noz

i genuinely expect gnarls barkley to ruin hip hop forever and then go on to sign a lucrative contract with creed taylor.

faux_rillz

And Bsides - homie - you do realize how amusing it is for you to go from praising Swizz Beats and the new Lil Romeo joint to decrying the death of hip hop at the hands Gnarls Barkley, right? I think you do - I just wanted to make sure.

A straw man if I've ever seen one.

I don't think noz, bsides or anyone else has advanced any broader a postulate than "This Gnarls Barkly schitt is annoying trash" in this thread... nobody has said anything about "the death of hip-hop," much less that Gnarls Barkley is sufficiently important to bring it about.

And again, why are you guys acting so ass-hurt? Noz's is the first critical voice to be directed at the schitt within either the blogosphere or the print media--his piece isn't superfluous, isn't gratuitous and isn't unnecessary. Why are you dudes so upset that one person is making these points?

soulmarcosa

his piece isn't superfluous, isn't gratuitous and isn't unnecessary.

Actually it is quite gratuitous, which is why I think it's getting a cold reception here. But 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

canonical

If you're going to hatt on noz's post, at least try to write as well as him. Regardless of content, that post was a good READ,

bull_ox

I guess I don't see the reason to wave the "I'm way too smart to buy into this premanufactured bullshit" flag when you can spend your time big-upping the music you DO like.

Possibly because he seems to be the lone voice of dissent in the critical realm thus far...

33thirdcom

I whole heartedly agree with Noz on this. Shit is just bad. Possibly a good career move for Cee-Lo, but the music itself is just bad.

And when did Dangermouse become the go-to producer of the year? He has yet to make a beat that is 1/2 way decent.

Imperial_Mao

Actually thought he was dead on...He's calling a novelty a novelty, while most people are calling it 'groundbreaking/innovative/earth shaking'. He points out that 1) people have been making records like this for a decade, and 2) its not that good.

Sooo true, most people I know thought the track was by Moby when they first heard it surely the definition of

faux_rillz

his piece isn't superfluous, isn't gratuitous and isn't unnecessary.

Actually it is quite gratuitous, which is why I think it's getting a cold reception here. But 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

What's gratuitous about it?

He's offering a counterperspective to overwhelming critical/bloggeur dickriding.

It's getting a 'cold reception' here because dudes are poptarts that don't actually like rap and who are overly susceptible to diaper rash. Just saying. I want to see actual counterarguments rather than asshurtedness over the fact that Noz would dare to make the argument.