Don't let the other guy scare you off of some good bands. The Decemberists, for instance, are fantastic. They're main weakness is how literate the lyrics are. Which can be off-putting when you're ready to settle down to some fuck-a-bitch hip-hop or we've-got-big-balls rock. But sometimes you (meaning "I") want to feel smarter than you are (meaning "I am"). And the music itself is very accessible.
However, he's got a point with the current state of hip-hop, though I'll add that it takes a lot of digging to find the still-existing good stuff. There was a time toward the end of the 90s when I thought we were entering a Renaissance of rap. I was discovering Mos Def, Talib Kweli, The Roots, Common, The Coup, Dead Prez, Rawkus Records, etc., and imagining radio stations crammed with songs of substance. Gangsta rap would wither and die (sorry for the Judas complex, Snoop), and the bling, liquor and weed songs would seem trite to fans craving something real, something with a message to lead us to social revolution. But I've never been able to predict the future of music.
I also thought Beck's Midnite Vultures would be huge and give people something to fuck to for years. And I said that defunct Dallas band Chomsky with their XTC tendencies would be the blueprint for hip, intelligent 21st century radio rock and subsequently lay waste to all the crappy pop-punk bands.
So I'm an idiot.
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2 comments:
Of course you can like the Decemberists. They're kind of like reading an Irving/Grisham novel - it's a book so it's more menatally stimulating than TV, but it's still really not as good as a real good book.
Acutally, The Decemberists are more like the rock equivalent of Dickens or Nabakov. Some people find them boring and won't even read the Cliff's Notes. Grisham is mindless pulp. Grisham is Nelly or Def Leppard or Beyonce.
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