The article you've posted actually relates to the way I've been feeling about some of my own writing for a while now. I notice how often I use words like ''perhaps'' and ''seemingly''. It can come off as very half-hearted and timid. I think when I'm writing about rap music in particular I feel as if I'm treading in alien land, being a middle-class white Brit and all, and so I'm worried about being too strident in my opinions. But actually the writing I've done that I'm most proud of HAS been fairly strident and unconcerned with offending or misreading music.
I'm like this in 'real life', though. A combination of low self-esteem and an over-analytic mind leads me to distrust most of my own opinions on some level. Conversely, I'm extremely susceptible to taking the opinions of others at face value: reading a negative review of music I like too-often leads me into thinking ''they're right, I'm wrong''. So it probably is a self-esteem thing primarily - a passivity and a ''need to be liked'' as per that Zadie Smith quote. On the other hand (there's ALWAYS another hand lol), I also think I've come to suspect my own opinions about music in particular because my musical tastes have changed so regularly throughout my life. I'm always particularly struck by the way genres I previously absolutely LOVED now sound terrible or just mediocre to me, and vice versa. I feel like if I don't like something other people like its obviously not a case of ''I've got superior taste'' but ''I'm missing something, or I've got different priorities when it comes to music now''.
Reynolds actually influenced me in this regard - the way he writes about maligned genres like Gabba, seeking to understand why this apparently tasteless music makes thousands of people go crazy, what it appeals to in them, what qualities it has as music which is lacking in more 'tasteful' genres like, say, Deep House. Then, of course, it works from the other direction - what is it about Deep House which is appealing to people, what does it have which Gabba doesn't have, even if its comparatively staid and pedestrian.
But then, Reynolds obviously isn't like some sort of music-crit ultra-liberal: he has a very strong viewpoint on music and is always quite polemical about it, really. This is also a very appealing part of his writing, the passion that lies behind the reasoning, and I worry that this is something my writing lacks. I tend to write about things I like, perhaps to avoid this issue of having to hold my hands up and say ''I think ____ is shite". Restricting myself to what I like sort of leaves judgment out of the equation and lets me get on with describing WHY I like it.
I'm tempted to ask if there is a similar tentativeness at work in this whole post-dubstep landscape - a leaning on established conventions + an attitude of ''there's something to please everyone here'', which helps make it a) difficult to get a handle on and b) a little bit tepid and inoffensive. I mean, I remember UK Funky (the 'cheesy' vocal-heavy side at least) got a lot of peoples backs up - it was too cheesy, too ''wine-bar'', too girly etc. Whereas with 'post-dubstep' complaints often seem quite vague and (again, relating to that article) bewildered. ''I can't quite put my finger on what this music ISN'T doing, but that's why I don't like it''. Maybe the problem is that the music, as disparate and varied as it is, doesn't have many identifiable POSITIVE qualities. People don't chafe against it as much as feel indifferently towards it. Dubstep's another example - when it was (in my view) at its best a lot of people HATED it: it was 'too slow', too lacking in energy and so on. Now, this is all well and good but at least you could say that dubstep was an identifiable sound which people tended to either love or hate. I'd imagine the same was true of grime/garage/jungle.
In fact, a lot of the argumentative anxiety/half-heartedness on this thread probably emerges from the insubstantial nature of 'post dubstep' as a genre - the variety on offer doesn't allow you to really position yourself in relation to it without making caveats all the time (''I like this producer but not this producer'' ''obviously this isn't true of...''). It's almost like the perfect genre for creating endless hand-wringing discussions about musical quality/ideology or lackthereof and so on. How meta (and therefore how fitting) - a genre which doesn't know what it is being discussed by people who don't really know what their opinions are.
DISCLAIMER: I do/do not believe in anything I wrote above.
Thanks to Luka (one of my favourite strong opinion holders on here/the internet and a perfect example of somebody with an unrepentant stance on things cutting through the timid bullshit), Andy, Wise etc. for the props btw I love y'all too and y'all know it.