I used to get pretty annoyed when Anthony would dismiss Kanye on the trivial basis of the weak, bloodless way he says "c'mon" on one of his singles. Then I realized the other day that I've dismissed Franz Ferdinand on the very same grounds. But then, of all the things that Kanye has been inaccurately praised or marketed as, "sexy dance party!" is not one of them. That song is like a real time progression of corny indie taste: Strokesy chug, then wait, it slows down to a sluggish bomp-bomp-bomp that I guess is somebody's idea of disco. Oh well, at least someone Kanye has already publically endorsed won something that could've gone to him so another outburst is unlikely. Ah, who am I kidding, does anyone who's up for a gazillion Grammys care about P&J?

Check out these numbers:

2004 Albums 10 Danger Mouse The Grey Album www.djdangermouse.com 904(82)

2003 Albums 13 Jay-Z The Black Album Roc-A-Fella 618(62)

Also, for good measure, and because I like "Faint/Jigga What" more than anything on The Grey Album:

2004 Albums 856 Jay-Z and Linkin Park  Collision Course Warner Bros. 13(1)

Not that I'm crying for Jay; he's made plenty better albums than BA that've gotten much less critical love. But maaan. I caught some flak on ILM for (somewhat jokingly) making a remark along the lines that I hate the internet for the role it played in the high placement of The Grey Album and M.I.A./Diplo. I mean, I guess I'm in favor of the power of the web and blogs and stuff to put mp3/bootleg phenomena on that kind of pedestal in theory, but I'm not a fan of it in practice if it means color-coded novelty 'mashups' and weak-voiced faux dancehall over played out Timbaland/Neptunes beats and obscure/exotic dance music from Brazil and, um, Baltimore. And can we dead all the "world music" chatter when we're talking about someone who's lived most of their life in London and is tight with fucking Elastica?

Something else of note was that even in a banner year for southern rap on national radio (well, '03 was the real breakthrough, but '04 was the saturation point), the dubious "crunk'n'b" offshoot showed it up both commercially and critically, with both "Yeah!" and "Goodies" in the top 40 singles with the otherwise highest southern hip hop being "Rubber Band Man" down at 47. And the rest of the top 40 rap singles entries were being held down by non-southerners (the obvious Kanye/Twista/Eminem/Snoop) and especially the NYC old guard of Jay/Nas/Fab/Fat Joe/Jada. Granted, my taste is still fairly NY-centric too as far as rap is concerned, but that's just me, I'm an east coast kid. The zeitgeist is another story.

Labels: ILM, Jay-Z, Kanye West, lists

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 09, 2005 at 4:24 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.