On a four-song ep they thought was a demo, the three Long Islanders who comprise Northern State are everything you want underground hip-hop to be, everything you want white hip-hop to be and everything you want female hip-hop to be[/b]. They're DIY as all get-out without hinting at underground puritanism, and they front musicians who know their beats. They honor their black elders while referencing a culture that also includes Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, softball, eggplant skinning and Beverly Hills 90210. They're pro-choice and say so, but they also boast about keeping their lips together and their teeth apart. DJ Sprout, Guinea Love and the angular-voiced Hesta Prynn rap with LL Cool J clarity over well-conceived beats and samples that will gain complexity after a record company throws money. Their meters will get trickier, too. There are no sure shots anymore, and maybe they'll prove too smart for the marketers. But they're certain to get their run.
No doubt Xgau is smart and his writing is utterly skilled and clever.
But I think its weird that the DEAN OF ROCK CRIT's main claim to fame was these pithy slams, esp since its so imitated, everyone trying to out-clever each other (Tara Henley bite). And his taste is suspect to me, and has been since I started listening to music.
I don't dislike him or most of his writing, though. Its just funny to hear a 64 year old talk about crunk on NPR though, insightful as it may be.
I loathe him.
thank you..
iam drunk right now, but let me say, i have always found christgau to be a pompous, uptight prig... king of the meaningless review, and for a dude who is the DON of music critics, it's clear he knows NOTHING about actual music theory and terminology...
plus, when you read Richard Meltzer's book, he makes it clear the Christgau was a huge dick to him and got him cut off from the V.V.... meanwhile Meltzer is 10X the critic that Xgau is....
seriously, give me Meltzer, Toches, Bangs, Marcus, etc anyday.... Christgau can't shine their shoes... dude is a pedantic prick with no mind of his own....
for a dude who is the DON of music critics, it's clear he knows NOTHING about actual music theory and terminology...
I'm pretty sure that applies to a lot of music critics. With the exception of classical music critics, most pop critics aren't that studied up on music theory and terminology since frankly, most of that would never come into play in the kind of criticism they write. Call me crazy but I don't think Bangs or Marcus ever dabbled much in music theory in their writing and they've never suffered for that absence.
As for your other criticism, hey, no one said Xgau was universally beloved and I respect the fact that a lot of folks don't like his writing. "Pedantic prick" is an interesting way to come at him - have you actually ever met him or dealt with him in person? "Pedantic" and "prick" are not words that normally would come to mind.
Just so we're clear here: I'm not trying to be a one-man defender of Xgau here but I also didn't post up his NPR piece as a way to invite ridicule. Criticism, sure, but there's a thin line between critiquing someone's writing vs. attacking them personally when you don't fucking know them.
Personally, my favorite writing by Xgau was his '70s rock album reviews as part as his consumer guide series. It was what economical criticism should strive for instead of the snarky soundbites that passes in Blender and their clones. I certainly don't always agree with his opinions and he's not my favorite music writer - though I've learned never to underestimate his insights. But dude's earned his stripes and didn't do it by coasting on luck or bullshit.
More importantly, as far as I'm concerned, in an era where who Bangs described as the "white noise supremacists" were posting up at newspapers and magazines everywhere, Christgau was one of the first of the old school of rock critics to genuinely support, recruit and promote critics of color, especially women, especially to write on hip-hop. You look at the first generations of rap critics who emerged out of NYC in the 1980s and early '90s and almost all of them passed through the Village Voice at some point, almost all of them thanks to Xgau's dedication to nurturing young talent. Maybe he did shit-can Meltzer's career at the Voice - I don't know - but I know dozens of writers, many Black and women, who helped get hip-hop criticism off the ground who'd smash people in the face for suggesting that Xgau ever let his ego get in the way of supporting new writers. Personally, he was never one of my mentors - I never came up through the NY route - but the people I respect, respect him and in my dealings with him, he's always been professional and helpful as an editor.
Like I said, you don't have to like his criticism at all but dead this ad hominem bullshit.
for a dude who is the DON of music critics, it's clear he knows NOTHING about actual music theory and terminology...
I'm pretty sure that applies to a lot of music critics. With the exception of classical music critics, most pop critics aren't that studied up on music theory and terminology since frankly, most of that would never come into play in the kind of criticism they write. Call me crazy but I don't think Bangs or Marcus ever dabbled much in music theory in their writing and they've never suffered for that absence.
the difference is, XGau occasionally will ACT like we knows music theory and it's embarrising...
As for your other criticism, hey, no one said Xgau was universally beloved and I respect the fact that a lot of folks don't like his writing. "Pedantic prick" is an interesting way to come at him - have you actually ever met him or dealt with him in person? "Pedantic" and "prick" are not words that normally would come to mind.
of course i am speaking of my impression of his literary voice, i don't know him anymore than i "know" Jay Z or Bukowski... he just always seems very uptight and, as much as he plays it off, actually into his role as "the Dean of Critics", which is, to me at least, definitely the actions of a pedantic prick...
that was interesting, dunno how fun it was, as Xgau is kinda a slog to read thru, but definitely cool to hear his side of the story...
Just so we're clear here: I'm not trying to be a one-man defender of Xgau here but I also didn't post up his NPR piece as a way to invite ridicule. Criticism, sure, but there's a thin line between critiquing someone's writing vs. attacking them personally when you don't fucking know them.
interesting to hear a critic defended with this argument!
Personally, my favorite writing by Xgau was his '70s rock album reviews as part as his consumer guide series. It was what economical criticism should strive for instead of the snarky soundbites that passes in Blender and their clones. I certainly don't always agree with his opinions and he's not my favorite music writer - though I've learned never to underestimate his insights. But dude's earned his stripes and didn't do it by coasting on luck or bullshit.
i guess this is a agree to disagree thing, as reading those 70's album blurbs are what turned me off to Xgau! that whole smarmy shit of giving back handed compliments, or saying something nasty and then giving it an "A" (or vice versa, praising a record and then giving it a "C") just seemed so childish and, yes, pedantic... basically, i blame Xgau for that whole ironic criticism thing... i don't know, to me it actually feels like he is the father of the Blender snarky soundbite! i'd rather read a Greil Markus footnote collection of a L. Bangs drug rant anyday...
More importantly, as far as I'm concerned, in an era where who Bangs described as the "white noise supremacists" were posting up at newspapers and magazines everywhere, Christgau was one of the first of the old school of rock critics to genuinely support, recruit and promote critics of color, especially women, especially to write on hip-hop. You look at the first generations of rap critics who emerged out of NYC in the 1980s and early '90s and almost all of them passed through the Village Voice at some point, almost all of them thanks to Xgau's dedication to nurturing young talent. Maybe he did shit-can Meltzer's career at the Voice - I don't know - but I know dozens of writers, many Black and women, who helped get hip-hop criticism off the ground who'd smash people in the face for suggesting that Xgau ever let his ego get in the way of supporting new writers. Personally, he was never one of my mentors - I never came up through the NY route - but the people I respect, respect him and in my dealings with him, he's always been professional and helpful as an editor.
Like I said, you don't have to like his criticism at all but dead this ad hominem bullshit.
that's cool, but think about how fucking terrible the V.V. music section has been for the last 10 years... with the exception of a few Greg Tate pieces, i can't think of much worthwhile... and this is supposed to be THE forum... (and obviously, "the Dean" is going to relate differently Melzer (as he admits in that piece) to a young kid he can mentor...)
Christgau's comment on Northern State was something like "Everything you hoped and dreamed white female rappers would sound like"--all other complaints aside, the fact that dude sits at home hoping and dreaming about white female rappers is enough to make me never take anything that he says about music seriously.
I don't care if he did have the prescience to realize that rap was worth writing about before the rest of rock's critical establishment; that fact is more an indictment of the establishment than it is an indication of anything praiseworthy on Christgau's part, and he has never had the sensitivity to realize that he is himself totally unsuited to the subject matter.
I don't care if he did have the prescience to realize that rap was worth writing about before the rest of rock's critical establishment; that fact is more an indictment of the establishment than it is an indication of anything praiseworthy on Christgau's part, and he has never had the sensitivity to realize that he is himself totally unsuited to the subject matter.
With all due respect (and I'm not being sarcastic for once), I don't think it's an either/or. I very much agree: mainstream rock criticism was remarkably skeptical/hostile to hip-hop (still is in many ways) but that doesn't discount the contribution Bob made - not simply by recognizing that this was a music worth writing about but really by mentoring a generation of writers who write on it. That just does not happen very often in this business - most editors are content with putting on people they know or who are like them in background or perspective...which is one major reason why the aforementioned white noise supremacists beget other ones like them or why you can look at major newspapers and alt weeklies over the years and, in most cases, you see the same kind of writers being churned out over the years.
So maybe Christgau was only doing what he was SUPPOSED to be doing - developing new writers capable of tackling music from a different, important perspective. But I'd like to see it as both an act of foresight worthy of recognition AS WELL AS a reflection of how myopic and parochial the world of music criticism can be.
I don't care if he did have the prescience to realize that rap was worth writing about before the rest of rock's critical establishment; that fact is more an indictment of the establishment than it is an indication of anything praiseworthy on Christgau's part, and he has never had the sensitivity to realize that he is himself totally unsuited to the subject matter.
With all due respect (and I'm not being sarcastic for once), I don't think it's an either/or. I very much agree: mainstream rock criticism was remarkably skeptical/hostile to hip-hop (still is in many ways) but that doesn't discount the contribution Bob made
...or the contribution that Spin magazine made. For maybe the first nine or ten years that they were in business, Spin documented hip-hop pretty thoroughly, back when it was still considered East Coast novelty music and the only mags taking it seriously were teenybopper rags like Word Up!. They seldom put rap acts on the cover, but read any issue between '85-'94, that mag was pretty well-integrated. Hell, they rode Public Enemy's jock pretty hard during the (first) Bush administration. Sometime during the early '90s grunge era, they slowly went "white" and basically left the rap coverage to all the newer mags coming up like the Source, but there was a decade or so where they basically had the field to themselves.
man I don't know nothing about this dude and I don't give a fuck about a 64 year old man listening to crunk hits. what bothers me is that dude says he needs some angst driven music and he goes out and listen to that pussy ass compilation full of weak ass raps.
someone needs to give this softhands some real tear the club up shit, if you want to be angry be angry as fuck.
iam drunk right now, but let me say, i have always found christgau to be a pompous, uptight prig... king of the meaningless review
i cant stand him either, but he is sort of a guilty pleasure. every now and then ill go on his website and ill read old "Christgau Consumer Guides" (he has all of them online, dating back to '69 when it started) and be amused, even when i dont agree with him, which is 50% of the time. and for a stuffed-shirt kind of guy, his putdowns are surprisingly sharp.
seriously, give me Meltzer
he's interesting, but hes too damn hard to follow when he goes off on them tangents. i know that was the POINT, but that kind of gonzo, first-draft, free-association writing gets old (specially after reading one of his BOOKS...a solitary article is one thing, but MAN!)
Toches, Bangs
now these were my guys. they had the knowledge, and they could be tongue-in-cheek when they wanted to be, but you still understood their point
Marcus
just another middle-aged college professor masquerading as a rock writer, in my eyes...nothing he's ever done really stood out 2 me
man I don't know nothing about this dude and I don't give a fuck about a 64 year old man listening to crunk hits. what bothers me is that dude says he needs some angst driven music and he goes out and listen to that pussy ass compilation full of weak ass raps.
someone needs to give this softhands some real tear the club up shit, if you want to be angry be angry as fuck.
he's interesting, but hes too damn hard to follow when he goes off on them tangents. i know that was the POINT, but that kind of gonzo, first-draft, free-association writing gets old (specially after reading one of his BOOKS...a solitary article is one thing, but MAN!)
Toches, Bangs
now these were my guys. they had the knowledge, and they could be tongue-in-cheek when they wanted to be, but you still understood their point
Marcus
just another middle-aged college professor masquerading as a rock writer, in my eyes...nothing he's ever done really stood out 2 me
see, i LIKE when Meltzer and Marcus use music writing as a stepping stone for something else...
Meltzer, i read his "A Whore Like the Rest" like 10 times... not all of his stuff is that weird gonzo jazz-jizz thing, that's only one of his styles, actually some of his JAZZ writing is remarkably ego free and straight forward...
Marcus, he's just such a nut... b/c he CARES about the Mekons or Dylan as much as he cares about Dada... if Melzter or Bangs are eternal adolescents, Marcus is an eternal college freshman!
but, he turned me onto "Quartermass and the Pit" and for that i will be eternally thankful!
...or the contribution that Spin magazine made. For maybe the first nine or ten years that they were in business, Spin documented hip-hop pretty thoroughly, back when it was still considered East Coast novelty music and the only mags taking it seriously were teenybopper rags like Word Up!. They seldom put rap acts on the cover, but read any issue between '85-'94, that mag was pretty well-integrated. Hell, they rode Public Enemy's jock pretty hard during the (first) Bush administration. Sometime during the early '90s grunge era, they slowly went "white" and basically left the rap coverage to all the newer mags coming up like the Source, but there was a decade or so where they basically had the field to themselves.
Co-sign. I have good memories of Spin's hip-hop coverage in the 80s b/c it really conveyed how exciting the music was, how quickly it was developing, every Rick Rubin or Marley Marl production topping the last one etc. Despite PE shitting on John Leland on "Don't Believe the Hype" (if I remember correctly for an uncharacteristically misguided article JL wrote for the Voice, ironically enough; he & Chuck made up later) Leland & Spin were holding it down bigtime for a minute.
Comments
thank you..
iam drunk right now, but let me say, i have always found christgau to be a pompous, uptight prig... king of the meaningless review, and for a dude who is the DON of music critics, it's clear he knows NOTHING about actual music theory and terminology...
plus, when you read Richard Meltzer's book, he makes it clear the Christgau was a huge dick to him and got him cut off from the V.V.... meanwhile Meltzer is 10X the critic that Xgau is....
seriously, give me Meltzer, Toches, Bangs, Marcus, etc anyday.... Christgau can't shine their shoes... dude is a pedantic prick with no mind of his own....
I'm pretty sure that applies to a lot of music critics. With the exception of classical music critics, most pop critics aren't that studied up on music theory and terminology since frankly, most of that would never come into play in the kind of criticism they write. Call me crazy but I don't think Bangs or Marcus ever dabbled much in music theory in their writing and they've never suffered for that absence.
As for your other criticism, hey, no one said Xgau was universally beloved and I respect the fact that a lot of folks don't like his writing. "Pedantic prick" is an interesting way to come at him - have you actually ever met him or dealt with him in person? "Pedantic" and "prick" are not words that normally would come to mind.
As for Meltzer, this was a fun read: http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/rock/noiseboy-00.php
Just so we're clear here: I'm not trying to be a one-man defender of Xgau here but I also didn't post up his NPR piece as a way to invite ridicule. Criticism, sure, but there's a thin line between critiquing someone's writing vs. attacking them personally when you don't fucking know them.
Personally, my favorite writing by Xgau was his '70s rock album reviews as part as his consumer guide series. It was what economical criticism should strive for instead of the snarky soundbites that passes in Blender and their clones. I certainly don't always agree with his opinions and he's not my favorite music writer - though I've learned never to underestimate his insights. But dude's earned his stripes and didn't do it by coasting on luck or bullshit.
More importantly, as far as I'm concerned, in an era where who Bangs described as the "white noise supremacists" were posting up at newspapers and magazines everywhere, Christgau was one of the first of the old school of rock critics to genuinely support, recruit and promote critics of color, especially women, especially to write on hip-hop. You look at the first generations of rap critics who emerged out of NYC in the 1980s and early '90s and almost all of them passed through the Village Voice at some point, almost all of them thanks to Xgau's dedication to nurturing young talent. Maybe he did shit-can Meltzer's career at the Voice - I don't know - but I know dozens of writers, many Black and women, who helped get hip-hop criticism off the ground who'd smash people in the face for suggesting that Xgau ever let his ego get in the way of supporting new writers. Personally, he was never one of my mentors - I never came up through the NY route - but the people I respect, respect him and in my dealings with him, he's always been professional and helpful as an editor.
Like I said, you don't have to like his criticism at all but dead this ad hominem bullshit.
10000 photoshop points to whoever pulls it off.
I can't get the npr audio to work.
the difference is, XGau occasionally will ACT like we knows music theory and it's embarrising...
of course i am speaking of my impression of his literary voice, i don't know him anymore than i "know" Jay Z or Bukowski... he just always seems very uptight and, as much as he plays it off, actually into his role as "the Dean of Critics", which is, to me at least, definitely the actions of a pedantic prick...
that was interesting, dunno how fun it was, as Xgau is kinda a slog to read thru, but definitely cool to hear his side of the story...
interesting to hear a critic defended with this argument!
i guess this is a agree to disagree thing, as reading those 70's album blurbs are what turned me off to Xgau! that whole smarmy shit of giving back handed compliments, or saying something nasty and then giving it an "A" (or vice versa, praising a record and then giving it a "C") just seemed so childish and, yes, pedantic... basically, i blame Xgau for that whole ironic criticism thing...
i don't know, to me it actually feels like he is the father of the Blender snarky soundbite! i'd rather read a Greil Markus footnote collection of a L. Bangs drug rant anyday...
that's cool, but think about how fucking terrible the V.V. music section has been for the last 10 years... with the exception of a few Greg Tate pieces, i can't think of much worthwhile... and this is supposed to be THE forum... (and obviously, "the Dean" is going to relate differently Melzer (as he admits in that piece) to a young kid he can mentor...)
I don't care if he did have the prescience to realize that rap was worth writing about before the rest of rock's critical establishment; that fact is more an indictment of the establishment than it is an indication of anything praiseworthy on Christgau's part, and he has never had the sensitivity to realize that he is himself totally unsuited to the subject matter.
With all due respect (and I'm not being sarcastic for once), I don't think it's an either/or. I very much agree: mainstream rock criticism was remarkably skeptical/hostile to hip-hop (still is in many ways) but that doesn't discount the contribution Bob made - not simply by recognizing that this was a music worth writing about but really by mentoring a generation of writers who write on it. That just does not happen very often in this business - most editors are content with putting on people they know or who are like them in background or perspective...which is one major reason why the aforementioned white noise supremacists beget other ones like them or why you can look at major newspapers and alt weeklies over the years and, in most cases, you see the same kind of writers being churned out over the years.
So maybe Christgau was only doing what he was SUPPOSED to be doing - developing new writers capable of tackling music from a different, important perspective. But I'd like to see it as both an act of foresight worthy of recognition AS WELL AS a reflection of how myopic and parochial the world of music criticism can be.
...or the contribution that Spin magazine made. For maybe the first nine or ten years that they were in business, Spin documented hip-hop pretty thoroughly, back when it was still considered East Coast novelty music and the only mags taking it seriously were teenybopper rags like Word Up!. They seldom put rap acts on the cover, but read any issue between '85-'94, that mag was pretty well-integrated. Hell, they rode Public Enemy's jock pretty hard during the (first) Bush administration. Sometime during the early '90s grunge era, they slowly went "white" and basically left the rap coverage to all the newer mags coming up like the Source, but there was a decade or so where they basically had the field to themselves.
someone needs to give this softhands some real tear the club up shit, if you want to be angry be angry as fuck.
i cant stand him either, but he is sort of a guilty pleasure. every now and then ill go on his website and ill read old "Christgau Consumer Guides" (he has all of them online, dating back to '69 when it started) and be amused, even when i dont agree with him, which is 50% of the time. and for a stuffed-shirt kind of guy, his putdowns are surprisingly sharp.
he's interesting, but hes too damn hard to follow when he goes off on them tangents. i know that was the POINT, but that kind of gonzo, first-draft, free-association writing gets old (specially after reading one of his BOOKS...a solitary article is one thing, but MAN!)
now these were my guys. they had the knowledge, and they could be tongue-in-cheek when they wanted to be, but you still understood their point
just another middle-aged college professor masquerading as a rock writer, in my eyes...nothing he's ever done really stood out 2 me
Now this is some real talk.
see, i LIKE when Meltzer and Marcus use music writing as a stepping stone for something else...
Meltzer, i read his "A Whore Like the Rest" like 10 times... not all of his stuff is that weird gonzo jazz-jizz thing, that's only one of his styles, actually some of his JAZZ writing is remarkably ego free and straight forward...
Marcus, he's just such a nut... b/c he CARES about the Mekons or Dylan as much as he cares about Dada... if Melzter or Bangs are eternal adolescents, Marcus is an eternal college freshman!
but, he turned me onto "Quartermass and the Pit" and for that i will be eternally thankful!
Co-sign. I have good memories of Spin's hip-hop coverage in the 80s b/c it really conveyed how exciting the music was, how quickly it was developing, every Rick Rubin or Marley Marl production topping the last one etc. Despite PE shitting on John Leland on "Don't Believe the Hype" (if I remember correctly for an uncharacteristically misguided article JL wrote for the Voice, ironically enough; he & Chuck made up later) Leland & Spin were holding it down bigtime for a minute.