Lust for Life for family vacation resort, Heroes for computers and Fortunate Son for jeans. Last week, I heard a condo ad riffing on Mercy Mercy Me for the building's address and namesake, Mercer. In the past, maybe I went pffft at the rest, but my stomach ran cold when I heard them do this.
I agree, it's easy to judge one way or another on this side of the keyboard, but can we also agree that just becasue you can, it doesn't mean you should.
edit - if it's all fair game in the name of making money...or surviving....and where's the line? then how will anything be meaningful?
Customarily, with an ad like that, the advertiser is paying extra for a spread that crosses the gutter (TDT) as well as for the space where they encroach upon the text.
Yeah, the whole encroaching-on-the-text thing must be fairly new and a great example of advertising gone awry.
Back when I was working for GamePro--around 2005 or so--we used to run ads from Truth, that anti-smoking campaign. They would draw this orange string across pages--including across editorial content--to connect their ads together. I thought it was pretty obnoxious, but not insidious or anything like that. Same thing with these Ford ads. It's just the nature of the beast. What I do have a big problem with, though, is when advertisers dictate editorial content or essentially get to use editorial space as their own, which is why that Madlib/Doom/Egon article was so shameful (compounded by the fact that having Egon write it was a severe conflict of interest).
The funny thing is that I'm guessing WaxPo didn't get THAT much extra money for letting Ford draw black lines all over they pages.
F16, what type of $$ are we talking about for this type of advertising leeway?
I'm not familiar with the Waxpo ad rates so I can't say. In a daily newspaper, including color it added a few thousand bucks to the price of the ad.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
bassie said:
Lust for Life for family vacation resort, Heroes for computers and Fortunate Son for jeans. Last week, I heard a condo ad riffing on Mercy Mercy Me for the building's address and namesake, Mercer. In the past, maybe I went pffft at the rest, but my stomach ran cold when I heard them do this.
I agree, it's easy to judge one way or another on this side of the keyboard, but can we also agree that just becasue you can, it doesn't mean you should.
edit - if it's all fair game in the name of making money...or surviving....and where's the line? then how will anything be meaningful?
This puts me in mind of the uproar when Dylan did that Victoria's Secret ad, or Keith Richards featured in a Louis Vuitton print campaign. People started acting like this was enough to invalidate their entire body of work (that fucking Hicks quote again). I swear, some people would have been less pissed off if they'd killed a kitten. Whilst you can certainly argue that there was no pressing need for either of those guys to do an ad, it's nonetheless my belief that the only people entitled to get precious about the integrity of Bob Dylan or Keith Richards' music are Bob Dylan or Keith Richards. After all, these are songs, not sacred texts. If they want to advertise high-end underwear or PC operating systems with them, that's their business, literally. I heard Arthur Russell in an ad for a mobile phone network a few years ago. A couple of years earlier than that, the same company used Vashti Bunyan in a similar campaign. I know for a fact that, for all the kudos the patronage of Devendra Banhart and them may have brought her, it didn't pay as well as that ad. After decades in obscurity - including those years following the reissue of Just Another Diamond Day, when she had yet to be "discovered" - I can't in all honesty resent her having a decent payday, just because I might happen to place a greater value upon my own notions of artistic integrity than I do upon Vashti Bunyan's ability to pay her gas bill.
When people talk about how hearing a song they love featured in an ad diminishes its meaning, that makes no sense to me at all. It's not all that different from the kind of resentment some people display when an act breaks through to the mainstream, and they lose their secret society appeal - if your relationship with that band is based on something as flimsy as that, to the extent that you'd consider abandoning them if you were see their albums on sale in a supermarket...I dunno, I'm not suggesting you're saying anything like that, bassie, and maybe it's just me, but I like to think something like an ad or a spike in popularity isn't going to affect how I feel about a piece of music all that much. When I was a teenager, I fucking loved The Clash. Still do. I didn't give a shit when Should I Stay Or Should I Go turned up in a Levi's ad. Still don't. I gave even less of a shit about it when I learned later that they took a massive knock on the royalties for Sandinista! so it could retail at the same price as a double album. Principles come in many forms, and they're a matter for the individual, but I do know they don't pay your bills or put food on your table.
is this a generational thing? i couldn't care less about that ad from the looks of it. as Enki, mentioned, advertorial is a WAAAAAAAY bigger issue for me. it seems obvious why also.
TBH... I swore I would never touch that magazine again when they gave John Klemmer a spread.
haha I think that may have been the last issue I bought, unless the Parliament issue came later ... but even though it wasn't some outraged conscious decision, I definitely didn't feel the need to drop another $9 on it ever again after the painful experience of reading 4,000 words on John Klemmer. oof.
the Gary McFarland one was pretty sad, too. maybe that came after the Klemmer and was the final straw?
I know after those 2 articles I was starting to think the magazine wasn't really in-tune with my taste anymore.
is this a generational thing? i couldn't care less about that ad from the looks of it. as Enki, mentioned, advertorial is a WAAAAAAAY bigger issue for me. it seems obvious why also.
i'm 25 and work for a music magazine, btw.
Dudes, have you actually seen the article?
The issue is not that lines from the advertisement extend into the text.
The issue is that it is the second Ford Fiesta ad they have run masquerading as an article.
TBH... I swore I would never touch that magazine again when they gave John Klemmer a spread.
haha I think that may have been the last issue I bought, unless the Parliament issue came later ... but even though it wasn't some outraged conscious decision, I definitely didn't feel the need to drop another $9 on it ever again after the painful experience of reading 4,000 words on John Klemmer. oof.
the Gary McFarland one was pretty sad, too. maybe that came after the Klemmer and was the final straw?
I know after those 2 articles I was starting to think the magazine wasn't really in-tune with my taste anymore.
Let's do a Jazz issue -- let's put John Coltrane on the cover...and then not have ANY editorial content about John Coltrane. I mean, not even a word.
Let's stop running Joe Allen's Academic Archives...too smart/black/controversial for us.
Let's run that two page Ford Fiesta ad with the map and the lines all over the content in the second page and act like it's just part of our magazine.
This kind of crap is annoying. Unfortunately, my magazine consumption patterns are like my political participation patterns. I am frustrated and almost entirely dissatisfied, but I have nowhere else to go. Reading blogs on the toilet is NAGL.
For a moment, let's put aside the Ford Fiesta ad. So what's the content shortcomings here? Was the 7 page spread on Melvin Bliss shoddy? Did folks have a problem with the 11 page spread on Barry White? Didn't like the oral history of the wah wah pedal?
I've been following this mag since Issue #1 and while it may not be my 100% ideal publication, overall, I think it does a pretty good job in terms of content. Does it knock it out the park every time? Probably not. But name me a single publication that ever did or does?
As a music nerd, I just have a hard time fathoming how WP has fucked up that badly over the years. People make it seem like trash and maybe I'm biased, but I actually think, issue to issue, they have pretty good content. Doesn't put them above criticism of course, but I like giving some credit where it's due and I think they're due a lot of credit.
Second thought: The Fiesta ad is wack. Crass. Inexcusable. I'm not going to burn my subscription to the magazine over it (and yes, I actually pay for a subscription) but it depresses me. I think one can RATIONALIZE the financial benefit of crossing over editorial and advertising (my local paper, the LA Times, is king of that shit and frankly, the Grey Lady is not above this either, though it tends more to be their web-version, not print). That doesn't JUSTIFY it as "no big deal." The kindest one can say is "it's a necessary evil" though I'm not sure how necessary it is unless the mag paid for their entire production budget on that one ad alone.
Had I written that piece, it would have bothered me. I would have also apologized to Bob Powers for turning his interview/profile into an ad for an ugly ass Ford.
But that aside, on the spectrum of "being compromised by advertisers" I think WP ranks rather low but of course, I'm comparing this with most of the rap mags I've known/written for and the influence of labels on those pubs was far far greater than any heat WP takes.
For a moment, let's put aside the Ford Fiesta ad. So what's the content shortcomings here? Was the 7 page spread on Melvin Bliss shoddy? Did folks have a problem with the 11 page spread on Barry White? Didn't like the oral history of the wah wah pedal?
I've been following this mag since Issue #1 and while it may not be my 100% ideal publication, overall, I think it does a pretty good job in terms of content. Does it knock it out the park every time? Probably not. But name me a single publication that ever did or does?
As a music nerd, I just have a hard time fathoming how WP has fucked up that badly over the years. People make it seem like trash and maybe I'm biased, but I actually think, issue to issue, they have pretty good content. Doesn't put them above criticism of course, but I like giving some credit where it's due and I think they're due a lot of credit.
Second thought: The Fiesta ad is wack. Crass. Inexcusable. I'm not going to burn my subscription to the magazine over it (and yes, I actually pay for a subscription) but it depresses me. I think one can RATIONALIZE the financial benefit of crossing over editorial and advertising (my local paper, the LA Times, is king of that shit and frankly, the Grey Lady is not above this either, though it tends more to be their web-version, not print). That doesn't JUSTIFY it as "no big deal." The kindest one can say is "it's a necessary evil" though I'm not sure how necessary it is unless the mag paid for their entire production budget on that one ad alone.
Had I written that piece, it would have bothered me. I would have also apologized to Bob Powers for turning his interview/profile into an ad for an ugly ass Ford.
But that aside, on the spectrum of "being compromised by advertisers" I think WP ranks rather low but of course, I'm comparing this with most of the rap mags I've known/written for and the influence of labels on those pubs was far far greater than any heat WP takes.
I think 42 was pretty good. D****l's critique of the Editor's Letter above struck a chord with me -- I gain nothing at all from those letters, and this was no exception.
Bilal, Bamboos and Kings Go Forth featurette/reviews struck me as more traditional promo puff pieces. I like all these artists, and I enjoyed those pieces well enough, but I value Wax Poetics most when it is not reviewing current releases. The reviews/features on current artists are also an area that ad/edit bullying and ethical weakness can rear its head. The Madvillain piece by Egon was the ultimate violation in this area; they've scaled away from the flagrant fouls since, but I still wonder.
I liked the Record Rundown -- a great recurring feature. The Studio Rundown was marred by the offensive Ford ad, but then the content from Melvin Bliss through to the end was all pretty good. It struck me as strange that they had two pieces by the same author, and it was also a little weird that the D'Angelo article seemed to be based on an interview from 1998 or so. (Don't have the issue in front of me now, so don't remember specifically the date -- might have been the Badu article, but I don't think so.) I liked the article alright, but it had a staleness to it.
I've been following this mag since Issue #1 and while it may not be my 100% ideal publication, overall, I think it does a pretty good job in terms of content. Does it knock it out the park every time? Probably not. But name me a single publication that ever did or does?
As a music nerd, I just have a hard time fathoming how WP has fucked up that badly over the years. People make it seem like trash and maybe I'm biased, but I actually think, issue to issue, they have pretty good content. Doesn't put them above criticism of course, but I like giving some credit where it's due and I think they're due a lot of credit.
I hear this. I've got every issue and am not tempted to get rid of any of them. They do a pretty good job, and they've been publishing for almost 10 years now. I buy every issue on the newsstand, which is as much credit as I can give to any magazine. But the increased frequency of publication combined with the increase in advertising space and the increased space dedicated to reviews of current artists has diluted the magazine's focus considerably. That's where it hurts this music nerd.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
Wax Poetics makes over-jocking old foagie musicians and liking modern hippity-hop that does nothing more than over-jock old foagie musicians seem too normal, all at the expense of the music of today.
It's that same Gang Starr syndrome moved into merely a slightly different area, where we have pretty much the same dudes who jumped ship on rap 10-15 years ago masquerading as if they are now onto something new i.e. back in the day, we beat to death how great DJ Premier was...now let's beat to death how great all the artists that DJ Premier sampled were.
I know that's basically the stated mission...but still.
Wax Poetics makes over-jocking old foagie musicians and liking modern hippity-hop that does nothing more than over-jock old foagie musicians seem too normal, all at the expense of the music of today.
What is the "music of today" that you think should be featured in Wax Poetics? And how does it suffer from the fringe-normalizing that Wax Poetics seeks to accomplish in your view?
Wax Poetics makes over-jocking old foagie musicians and liking modern hippity-hop that does nothing more than over-jock old foagie musicians seem too normal, all at the expense of the music of today.
What is the "music of today" that you think should be featured in Wax Poetics? And how does it suffer from the fringe-normalizing that Wax Poetics seeks to accomplish in your view?
And it's "fogey"
I would not purport to speak for the one Shied, but I would really prefer that the magazine not cover current music at all--there are enough other outlets for that, and WP has never done it well.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
JRoot said:
HarveyCanal said:
Wax Poetics makes over-jocking old foagie musicians and liking modern hippity-hop that does nothing more than over-jock old foagie musicians seem too normal, all at the expense of the music of today.
What is the "music of today" that you think should be featured in Wax Poetics? And how does it suffer from the fringe-normalizing that Wax Poetics seeks to accomplish in your view?
And it's "fogey"
Even if not addressing rap producers of the actual TODAY, features on the heroes of the music of today, like say a Pimp C or a Mannie Fresh, could very well fit within the format that Wax Poetics specializes in.
It's not so much Waxpo's approach that is bothersome as much as how narrowly they apply that approach that is bothersome.
And let's see, I'd say much of Waxpo's readership agrees with its implied message that if you aren't somehow tied to boom-bap styled sampling, or you're not a band doing live cover versions of old foagie breakbeats...then you aren't worthy.
Such a small man sentiment is out there enough already and thus it needs correcting, not coddling.
Wax Poetics makes over-jocking old foagie musicians and liking modern hippity-hop that does nothing more than over-jock old foagie musicians seem too normal, all at the expense of the music of today.
What is the "music of today" that you think should be featured in Wax Poetics? And how does it suffer from the fringe-normalizing that Wax Poetics seeks to accomplish in your view?
And it's "fogey"
I would not purport to speak for the one Shied, but I would really prefer that the magazine not cover current music at all--there are enough other outlets for that, and WP has never done it well.
And here I thought Harvey was one of your eliases.
it was also a little weird that the D'Angelo article seemed to be based on an interview from 1998 or so.
See, I liked this feature and thought it was a good example of what the magazine should be doing. I'm much more interested in hearing the details of how D'Angelo's first album came together than in reading a hype piece on how he's back in the studio and recording new music. That said, it did strike me that maybe Michael Gonzales--who I don't think has ever published a piece in WP before--may have prepared the piece for another publication several years ago, which declined to run it for whatever reason.
it was also a little weird that the D'Angelo article seemed to be based on an interview from 1998 or so.
See, I liked this feature and thought it was a good example of what the magazine should be doing. I'm much more interested in hearing the details of how D'Angelo's first album came together than in reading a hype piece on how he's back in the studio and recording new music. That said, it did strike me that maybe Michael Gonzales--who I don't think has ever published a piece in WP before--may have prepared the piece for another publication several years ago, which declined to run it for whatever reason.
I liked the D'Angelo piece, too, but I would have liked it equally well at any point in the last decade. It could have overcome that sense of staleness with current interviews about the same subject -- not about what dude is up to these days, but about that record. Instead, it relied on this old interview. Still a good read.
Harvey -- Not sure I see a piece in Wax Poetics about Pimp C or Mannie Fresh any time soon. If the complaint is that those artists are underappreciated or underexposed, I don't see that exposure in Wax Poetics would necessarily be the place to start; or even that it would help them that much. I doubt that they need or even want the Wax Poetics validation. I suspect that current rap artists like those you mention are at least as successful as the current artists that Wax Poetics does feature -- it's just that they occupy a different market niche.
I get what you're saying though about the Wax Poetics stamp of approval only occupying a narrow band of music, though. It generally happens to coincide with my preferences, which makes it a worthwhile read for me.
Harvey -- Not sure I see a piece in Wax Poetics about Pimp C or Mannie Fresh any time soon. If the complaint is that those artists are underappreciated or underexposed, I don't see that exposure in Wax Poetics would necessarily be the place to start; or even that it would help them that much. I doubt that they need or even want the Wax Poetics validation. I suspect that current rap artists like those you mention are at least as successful as the current artists that Wax Poetics does feature -- it's just that they occupy a different market niche.
Actually, I think those would be very good WP subjects--neither is really a current artist, and both have contributed nearly two decades worth of music. It would be interesting to read a piece that delved into their musical history more deeply than, say, XXL typically does. They're not necessarily underexposed, but aspects of their careers definitely are, like Mannie's membership in pioneering N.O. rap crew New York Incorporated, or Pimp C's relationship with Leo Nocentelli of the Meters.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
JRoot said:
Harvey -- Not sure I see a piece in Wax Poetics about Pimp C or Mannie Fresh any time soon. If the complaint is that those artists are underappreciated or underexposed, I don't see that exposure in Wax Poetics would necessarily be the place to start; or even that it would help them that much. I doubt that they need or even want the Wax Poetics validation. I suspect that current rap artists like those you mention are at least as successful as the current artists that Wax Poetics does feature -- it's just that they occupy a different market niche.
I get what you're saying though about the Wax Poetics stamp of approval only occupying a narrow band of music, though. It generally happens to coincide with my preferences, which makes it a worthwhile read for me.
Used to be liking Too $hort and De La Soul in the same breath was what was normal. But now paying homage to Ice Cube AND Pimp C is somehow too much of a reach??? That's why I only look at the pictures in Waxpo...no longer interested in what the 1994-in-perpetuity crowd has to say.
Faux makes a good point about those artists above -- I'm not that familiar with their work, but an article like that would be nice.
But now I'm confused -- I thought we were talking about the music of today, which I took to mean contemporary releases?
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
JRoot said:
Faux makes a good point about those artists above -- I'm not that familiar with their work, but an article like that would be nice.
But now I'm confused -- I thought we were talking about the music of today, which I took to mean contemporary releases?
Okay, sit down with Big Krit then. There are even samples down dare in dat briar patch.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
And JRoot, I'll go as far to say that one of the reasons why so many like yourself who are into boom-bap but not modern artists even when they make music that approximates boom-bap is that you've been steered away from it by gatekeepers such as Waxpo.
Within said circles, it's never been cool to like Pimp C...so why even bother knowing anything about him or his music beyond the surface? Y'all would drive 1,500 miles to dig through Stanley Turrentine's nephew's girlfriend's trash to come up with some obscure nugget of what y'all would call knowledge...but how dare someone actually read the liner notes of a classic UGK cd?
Comments
I agree, it's easy to judge one way or another on this side of the keyboard, but can we also agree that just becasue you can, it doesn't mean you should.
edit - if it's all fair game in the name of making money...or surviving....and where's the line? then how will anything be meaningful?
Back when I was working for GamePro--around 2005 or so--we used to run ads from Truth, that anti-smoking campaign. They would draw this orange string across pages--including across editorial content--to connect their ads together. I thought it was pretty obnoxious, but not insidious or anything like that. Same thing with these Ford ads. It's just the nature of the beast. What I do have a big problem with, though, is when advertisers dictate editorial content or essentially get to use editorial space as their own, which is why that Madlib/Doom/Egon article was so shameful (compounded by the fact that having Egon write it was a severe conflict of interest).
I'm not familiar with the Waxpo ad rates so I can't say. In a daily newspaper, including color it added a few thousand bucks to the price of the ad.
This puts me in mind of the uproar when Dylan did that Victoria's Secret ad, or Keith Richards featured in a Louis Vuitton print campaign. People started acting like this was enough to invalidate their entire body of work (that fucking Hicks quote again). I swear, some people would have been less pissed off if they'd killed a kitten. Whilst you can certainly argue that there was no pressing need for either of those guys to do an ad, it's nonetheless my belief that the only people entitled to get precious about the integrity of Bob Dylan or Keith Richards' music are Bob Dylan or Keith Richards. After all, these are songs, not sacred texts. If they want to advertise high-end underwear or PC operating systems with them, that's their business, literally. I heard Arthur Russell in an ad for a mobile phone network a few years ago. A couple of years earlier than that, the same company used Vashti Bunyan in a similar campaign. I know for a fact that, for all the kudos the patronage of Devendra Banhart and them may have brought her, it didn't pay as well as that ad. After decades in obscurity - including those years following the reissue of Just Another Diamond Day, when she had yet to be "discovered" - I can't in all honesty resent her having a decent payday, just because I might happen to place a greater value upon my own notions of artistic integrity than I do upon Vashti Bunyan's ability to pay her gas bill.
When people talk about how hearing a song they love featured in an ad diminishes its meaning, that makes no sense to me at all. It's not all that different from the kind of resentment some people display when an act breaks through to the mainstream, and they lose their secret society appeal - if your relationship with that band is based on something as flimsy as that, to the extent that you'd consider abandoning them if you were see their albums on sale in a supermarket...I dunno, I'm not suggesting you're saying anything like that, bassie, and maybe it's just me, but I like to think something like an ad or a spike in popularity isn't going to affect how I feel about a piece of music all that much. When I was a teenager, I fucking loved The Clash. Still do. I didn't give a shit when Should I Stay Or Should I Go turned up in a Levi's ad. Still don't. I gave even less of a shit about it when I learned later that they took a massive knock on the royalties for Sandinista! so it could retail at the same price as a double album. Principles come in many forms, and they're a matter for the individual, but I do know they don't pay your bills or put food on your table.
i'm 25 and work for a music magazine, btw.
haha I think that may have been the last issue I bought, unless the Parliament issue came later ... but even though it wasn't some outraged conscious decision, I definitely didn't feel the need to drop another $9 on it ever again after the painful experience of reading 4,000 words on John Klemmer. oof.
the Gary McFarland one was pretty sad, too. maybe that came after the Klemmer and was the final straw?
I know after those 2 articles I was starting to think the magazine wasn't really in-tune with my taste anymore.
Dudes, have you actually seen the article?
The issue is not that lines from the advertisement extend into the text.
The issue is that it is the second Ford Fiesta ad they have run masquerading as an article.
Coming soon: CTI cover spread
Way too much "We are just doin' our thang. Following our vision. Keepin' it true to the underground. We don't stop like M.C. Escher infinite loops."
Uh, okay. How about flexing a little editorial integrity, then.
Wait, that was a real feature.
Let's do a Jazz issue -- let's put John Coltrane on the cover...and then not have ANY editorial content about John Coltrane. I mean, not even a word.
Let's stop running Joe Allen's Academic Archives...too smart/black/controversial for us.
Let's run that two page Ford Fiesta ad with the map and the lines all over the content in the second page and act like it's just part of our magazine.
This kind of crap is annoying. Unfortunately, my magazine consumption patterns are like my political participation patterns. I am frustrated and almost entirely dissatisfied, but I have nowhere else to go. Reading blogs on the toilet is NAGL.
Let's start with this. I'm looking at Issue #42 right now. Go through the table of contents. Here's, take a look yourself: http://soul-sides.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/photo.jpg
For a moment, let's put aside the Ford Fiesta ad. So what's the content shortcomings here? Was the 7 page spread on Melvin Bliss shoddy? Did folks have a problem with the 11 page spread on Barry White? Didn't like the oral history of the wah wah pedal?
I've been following this mag since Issue #1 and while it may not be my 100% ideal publication, overall, I think it does a pretty good job in terms of content. Does it knock it out the park every time? Probably not. But name me a single publication that ever did or does?
As a music nerd, I just have a hard time fathoming how WP has fucked up that badly over the years. People make it seem like trash and maybe I'm biased, but I actually think, issue to issue, they have pretty good content. Doesn't put them above criticism of course, but I like giving some credit where it's due and I think they're due a lot of credit.
Second thought: The Fiesta ad is wack. Crass. Inexcusable. I'm not going to burn my subscription to the magazine over it (and yes, I actually pay for a subscription) but it depresses me. I think one can RATIONALIZE the financial benefit of crossing over editorial and advertising (my local paper, the LA Times, is king of that shit and frankly, the Grey Lady is not above this either, though it tends more to be their web-version, not print). That doesn't JUSTIFY it as "no big deal." The kindest one can say is "it's a necessary evil" though I'm not sure how necessary it is unless the mag paid for their entire production budget on that one ad alone.
Had I written that piece, it would have bothered me. I would have also apologized to Bob Powers for turning his interview/profile into an ad for an ugly ass Ford.
But that aside, on the spectrum of "being compromised by advertisers" I think WP ranks rather low but of course, I'm comparing this with most of the rap mags I've known/written for and the influence of labels on those pubs was far far greater than any heat WP takes.
I think 42 was pretty good. D****l's critique of the Editor's Letter above struck a chord with me -- I gain nothing at all from those letters, and this was no exception.
Bilal, Bamboos and Kings Go Forth featurette/reviews struck me as more traditional promo puff pieces. I like all these artists, and I enjoyed those pieces well enough, but I value Wax Poetics most when it is not reviewing current releases. The reviews/features on current artists are also an area that ad/edit bullying and ethical weakness can rear its head. The Madvillain piece by Egon was the ultimate violation in this area; they've scaled away from the flagrant fouls since, but I still wonder.
I liked the Record Rundown -- a great recurring feature. The Studio Rundown was marred by the offensive Ford ad, but then the content from Melvin Bliss through to the end was all pretty good. It struck me as strange that they had two pieces by the same author, and it was also a little weird that the D'Angelo article seemed to be based on an interview from 1998 or so. (Don't have the issue in front of me now, so don't remember specifically the date -- might have been the Badu article, but I don't think so.) I liked the article alright, but it had a staleness to it.
I hear this. I've got every issue and am not tempted to get rid of any of them. They do a pretty good job, and they've been publishing for almost 10 years now. I buy every issue on the newsstand, which is as much credit as I can give to any magazine. But the increased frequency of publication combined with the increase in advertising space and the increased space dedicated to reviews of current artists has diluted the magazine's focus considerably. That's where it hurts this music nerd.
Highly focused.
JRoot
PS I am not looking forward to the reggae issue.
It's that same Gang Starr syndrome moved into merely a slightly different area, where we have pretty much the same dudes who jumped ship on rap 10-15 years ago masquerading as if they are now onto something new i.e. back in the day, we beat to death how great DJ Premier was...now let's beat to death how great all the artists that DJ Premier sampled were.
I know that's basically the stated mission...but still.
What is the "music of today" that you think should be featured in Wax Poetics? And how does it suffer from the fringe-normalizing that Wax Poetics seeks to accomplish in your view?
And it's "fogey"
I would not purport to speak for the one Shied, but I would really prefer that the magazine not cover current music at all--there are enough other outlets for that, and WP has never done it well.
Even if not addressing rap producers of the actual TODAY, features on the heroes of the music of today, like say a Pimp C or a Mannie Fresh, could very well fit within the format that Wax Poetics specializes in.
It's not so much Waxpo's approach that is bothersome as much as how narrowly they apply that approach that is bothersome.
And let's see, I'd say much of Waxpo's readership agrees with its implied message that if you aren't somehow tied to boom-bap styled sampling, or you're not a band doing live cover versions of old foagie breakbeats...then you aren't worthy.
Such a small man sentiment is out there enough already and thus it needs correcting, not coddling.
And here I thought Harvey was one of your eliases.
See, I liked this feature and thought it was a good example of what the magazine should be doing. I'm much more interested in hearing the details of how D'Angelo's first album came together than in reading a hype piece on how he's back in the studio and recording new music. That said, it did strike me that maybe Michael Gonzales--who I don't think has ever published a piece in WP before--may have prepared the piece for another publication several years ago, which declined to run it for whatever reason.
I liked the D'Angelo piece, too, but I would have liked it equally well at any point in the last decade. It could have overcome that sense of staleness with current interviews about the same subject -- not about what dude is up to these days, but about that record. Instead, it relied on this old interview. Still a good read.
Harvey -- Not sure I see a piece in Wax Poetics about Pimp C or Mannie Fresh any time soon. If the complaint is that those artists are underappreciated or underexposed, I don't see that exposure in Wax Poetics would necessarily be the place to start; or even that it would help them that much. I doubt that they need or even want the Wax Poetics validation. I suspect that current rap artists like those you mention are at least as successful as the current artists that Wax Poetics does feature -- it's just that they occupy a different market niche.
I get what you're saying though about the Wax Poetics stamp of approval only occupying a narrow band of music, though. It generally happens to coincide with my preferences, which makes it a worthwhile read for me.
Actually, I think those would be very good WP subjects--neither is really a current artist, and both have contributed nearly two decades worth of music. It would be interesting to read a piece that delved into their musical history more deeply than, say, XXL typically does. They're not necessarily underexposed, but aspects of their careers definitely are, like Mannie's membership in pioneering N.O. rap crew New York Incorporated, or Pimp C's relationship with Leo Nocentelli of the Meters.
Used to be liking Too $hort and De La Soul in the same breath was what was normal. But now paying homage to Ice Cube AND Pimp C is somehow too much of a reach??? That's why I only look at the pictures in Waxpo...no longer interested in what the 1994-in-perpetuity crowd has to say.
But now I'm confused -- I thought we were talking about the music of today, which I took to mean contemporary releases?
Okay, sit down with Big Krit then. There are even samples down dare in dat briar patch.
Within said circles, it's never been cool to like Pimp C...so why even bother knowing anything about him or his music beyond the surface? Y'all would drive 1,500 miles to dig through Stanley Turrentine's nephew's girlfriend's trash to come up with some obscure nugget of what y'all would call knowledge...but how dare someone actually read the liner notes of a classic UGK cd?