My litmus test for a 10 is: Will my day completely change for the better if I happen to encounter this song in the wild? I love this song, but it doesn't totally alter my brain chemistry. It's a high bar, but it's the one I use.
I would argue that selling drugs is something very different from beating up or exploiting women. I'd also argue that killing someone in self-defense is different from intentionally victimizing people, although that's murkier. "Fashionable" doesn't have anything to do with that. What I've covered in this column is a choice. Maybe it's not the right one. I don't know.
As the the first point: Yes, it is weird. Maybe there's a holistic way to construct a narrative around this guy's music and his life, a way to make them make sense together. I don't know what it is. Maybe I got a little glib here, but I really don't know what the fuck else to do.
A lot of really vital music comes from fucked up circumstances. In rap music, you're dealing with people whose lives are often very dark but whose music is brilliant and demands attention. I've been doing this for 15 years, and I'm still not really sure how someone like me, who doesn't come from those circumstances, can write about this music and these people's lives without denigrating the music but while also taking into account the things that they might've done. I'm constantly trying to figure out the right way to do it.
This is the most detached white-people reference I could possibly bring up, but 'Atlanta' does a really nice job dramatizing the absurdity that happens when someone tries to jump out of the street life and into something like fame. That's never an easy transition.
DaBaby comes from Charlotte, a huge city with no real rap infrastructure, one that's never produced a national rapper of note. Maybe DaBaby really is becoming a target in his own city, and maybe he has to defend himself. I really like his music, and I want to see him thrive. But his whole story is intense, and that intensity contrasts with his music in strange ways. But I still like the music! And I want to talk about it! Maybe hyping a guy like that up is the wrong call, but fuck, he's good!
AOTW started in 2011, when I started working here.
There have only been 3 Deerhunter albums in the AOTW era.
The week 'Monomania' came out, AOTW was Savages' 'Silence Yourself,' which was the right call. The week 'Fading Frontier' came out, AOTW was Majical Cloudz' 'Are You Alone?,' which was also the right call.
If Deerhunter really wanna get AOTW, they should consider making the best album of any given week.
None of those Deerhunter albums would've gotten AOTW, though. Not one. Not close.
The Steve Gunn album is really good, and I had him and SVE neck-and-neck for a while.
My thing is I only rate songs that charted in the top 10, my reasoning being that those songs, and only those songs, were ever a threat to get to #1.
So with that in mind, Kinks ratings!
"You Really Got Me" (#7, 1964): 10
"All Day And All Of The Night" (#7, 1964): 9
"Tired Of Waiting For You" (#6, 1965): 9
"Come Dancing" (#6, 1982): 2
And that's it!
Nah man. I would have to be ODing on Aderall to write 10 of these motherfuckers in a day. I'm good for maaaaaybe 2 if I've got a day off coming up. Usually just one.
Didn't fit in the column, but I really love Edwin Starr's "Easin' In," a deep cut from his 1973 Hell Up In Harlem soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOBh4NZ4wZQ
Got sampled on a bunch of great songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxe5f371rrg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZAvS8QFTV4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8A1LA0WGoA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5SZAMBdHHY
Ryan is from Wilkes Barre. He now lives in Brooklyn, which is an entirely different kind of shithole. (I've never seen him wear a leather jacket, and he's never seen Almost Famous, so he can only be so nostalgic for a fake 70s.)
We at Stereogum have supported Robbie Williams through this difficult time. And through it all, we offered him protection, a lot of love and affection, whether he's right or wrong. And down the waterfall, wherever it may take him, we know that life won't break him. He's loving angels instead.
Matter of fact, South Korean crime epic The Man From Nowhere would also like a word.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAiRifWPgi4
South Korean crime epics know about some knife fights.
Nothing was even remotely close to Cardi on my year-end list.
"Bandcamp hardcore + Cardi B" is basically my taste profile.
Also, I went to Damaged City the weekend that Invasion of Privacy came out, and bands were banging that album from phone speakers at their merch tables. Cardi played the fuckin Knockdown Center! The idea that that hardcore and Cardi are incompatible is frankly baffling to me.
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