This is a relitigating of the p4k review and it is wild how mad folks are getting over this album. Are boat’s comments on being a “real artist” a little cringy? Sure, but the dude wants to broaden his music and made a (pretty good imo!) rock album. Honestly the rap heads fuming over this has finally proven to me that the oldhead snobs in rock and rap are the exact same type of person, just pointing at each other saying “you’re genre’s not real music!” While the rest of us enjoy some cool stuff.

I didn’t expect “telling a homophobic activist to get fucked” to be a controversial take here on Stereogum.com, but apparently that’s not quite the case?

WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED FROM TODAY’S #1 AND OTHER ASSORTED SONGS

Hips don’t lie (Shakira), but eyes do (Eagles), though they sometimes don’t have a face (Billy Idol), which can launch a thousand ships (Bread), which sometimes pass in the night (Manilow), that has a thousand eyes (Bobby Vee), which, did I mention, are lying (Eagles again), the second most fun a girl can have (Panic! At The Disco), but really, girls just want to have fun, nothing more (Cyndi Lauper), until their t-bird is confiscated by daddy (Beach Boys), who along with mommy is standing by (Gershwin/Heyward/Gershwin) when the night has come and the land is dark (Ben E. King), and speaking of night, here come those ships again, passing by each other, smiling and saying “It’s alright,” (Manilow again, can never have too much Manilow) though smiling faces sometimes tell lies (The Undisputed Truth), but do you know what don’t lie?  Yep. Hips. 

I don’t particularly care about this album one way or another but this review seems like the worst kind of gatekeeping.

So the whole basis of the critique of the album is that the wrong kind of person might like the music? Also some weird implications in essentializing MGMT and Alex G etc. as only “music for white kids”. Tame Impala alone has a very diverse fan base.

I don’t agree with Albini on this particular topic, but I sincerely appreciate his dedication to the art and craft of being a Hater.

I submitted the following comment:

Please do not implement this fee increase. It is regressive and will culturally impoverish the United States by penalizing foreign artists who are relatively marginal commercially.

While I understand that the administrative burden of processing a visa for a superstar EDM DJ who commands a million dollars a gig is the exact same as that for a singer-songwriter who makes $500, it is grossly unfair to levy the same fee on them over and above the existing federal tax they pay on income earned in the United States.

As the spouse of a naturalized immigrant, I am much more aware than most Americans that our system of immigration is neither fair, nor just, nor reasonable. I urge DHS not to exacerbate this problem, even if the justification of recovering a greater share administrative costs is a valid one.

When Usher did this he wrote “Yeah!” instead of a notes app apology.

This gatekeeping attitude is way cornier than any sonic pivot could hope to be. Let artists make whatever the fuck they want.

As a black guy who loves psych music (and plenty of other “white” things), fuck this piece and fuck Alphonse Pierre’s review too. I don’t appreciate being told that my interests are “too white” and born out of racial insecurity and a need to gain approval from white people. Jayson all but says that Yachty made this album because he is ashamed of being a rapper and by extension ashamed of being black. Who the hell are you to tell other people that their tastes and interests aren’t “authentic” enough? Who are you to tell black artists what lanes they should stay in and what parts of culture belong to white people?

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Smug rap critics who pride themselves on being more “real” than more casual listeners took Yachty’s speech at the listening party as a personal affront but missed the entire point of what he was saying. He wasn’t saying that no one takes rappers seriously, he was saying that no one was taking him seriously. He was right, and he’s still right. The discourse surrounding this album is wracked with confusion and denial that Yachty isn’t the one-dimensional cartoon character that he was pigeonholed as. People are constantly trying to discount him by pointing at the long list of collaborators as proof that he has no creative output over his own music, or claiming that his influences are too entry-level for him to be a “real” fan of this music or that his take isn’t innovative enough (a criticism that rarely ever gets applied to established artists like Tame Impala or King Gizzard who aren’t exactly on the cutting edge of music either), even making up conspiracy theories about how this album was made as critic-bait to sell records to a white audience. Maybe Yachty made this album because it was a passion project he wanted to make, and he’s just a more interesting, versatile and multifaceted person than you thought he was?

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People aren’t loving this album because it’s an unexpected change in direction, but because of the surprising level of quality, ambition, cohesion, polish, and execution from an artist they believed weren’t capable of any of those things. I can personally say that even after the initial shock value and reset of expectations has faded away, I think this still a great and impressive album on its own merits, regardless of who made it. Plenty of rappers have tried this thing before and failed because they half-assed it, got Travis Barker’s seal of approval and called it a day. Yachty understood the assignment, did his homework, got the right collaborators to execute his vision, and clearly understands what makes the genre work beyond a simple aesthetic, all without losing his personality in the process. If he released a rap album with these qualities, people would still love it. If this album had been an indie band’s debut, we wouldn’t be having these conversations about authenticity.

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Critics should focus on judging the music on its own terms instead of focusing on whether listening to it will make them feel subversive enough in front of their normie friends.

“Mummy, Daddy, look at me / I went to school and I won a Grammy” – Wet Leg, now.