tbf wish you'd given more context there cos rapids was somewhat misinterpreting what I said there and I resent that. Anyway. no harm done. but in future just a heads up.
Dave - All alone in this together
- Thread starter DannyL
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tbf wish you'd given more context there cos rapids was somewhat misinterpreting what I said there and I resent that. Anyway. no harm done. but in future just a heads up.
really the logical implication of my actual argument is that guardian libs need to learn to accept uncomfortableness with their music I.E: in essence stop fighting their battles on the terrain of culture and descend to the mundane bureaucratic muck of economics and population management, which by implication would no longer make them liberals. Which of course is never going to happen unless push comes to shove.
White pop, for whatever reason, has stopped talking to black pop, and that has not really changed since Simon wrote that article in 2005 or whatever. Even the likes of Charley xcx, despite having Gujarati heritage mostly operate in this white pop universe, because the way that things panned out after The Smiths (hang your heads in shame Spurs melts) eventually led to the binary being fixed in the UK in a way it absolutely is not in the US - so someone like her has no option but to become part of white pop, unless she wanted to go into the idea of British asian, which itself is pretty fetishised and extremely restrictive (my influences don't count, central asian stuff doesn't count, etc etc.) You don't really have cultural indieheads over there in the US, its only ever sonic. Whereas here being an indie/electropop/goth is not just a preference for liking certain sounds but a value set of what music ought and ought not to be, and the corresponding fashion, sociocultural mix, etc etc that accompanies that. Anyway. I think I've clarified what I was saying in that thread.
The social dialogue point is very interesting - I guess it's what's driving the particular track he's taking is one of the things that interests me. If i felt it was a deliberate attempt to cultivate a safer and more middle class audience I'd actively dislike it more but I doubt that's what's actually going on - I suspect it's him just expanding the palette of Brit rap through being a thoughtful guy.
I don't really feel I'm qualified to talk about this much further because I'm not black but I mean I can talk about my experiences as a West Asian where there are codes that the british music (cultural)industry pushes you into, something you become aware of when you start developing a musical taste.
Sure. and the last Dave record I listened to when writing in that thread was psychodrama, and I found it very clunky. I don't know if he's gotten more technical or cut down on the fat with this one. But even then there I was not criticising Dave (if I criticise him it will be for not being a good rapper!) I was criticising the expectation that British rap has to sound like some internal confession, so all the things about snappy geometricism, adlibs, contortion of syllables, alternating rhythmic flows, etc etc just completely elude the critics. I.E: rap is not given the credit that it rightly deserves in comparison to singing.
luka
Well-known member
this is the thing isn't it, it's music. it's just music. and dissensus is an anti-music board essentially. i'm certainly anti-music anyway.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
this idea of 'guardian readers' (though you do sound like one as you wrote For me there isn't a contradiction there because I try my best to treat rap as a social dialogue lol) seems pretty out of date tbh.
what does that even mean today when they cover a pretty wide spectrum of music AFAIK (idk, i dont read their music coverage enough anymore). theyve done pieces on 'problematic' rappers like lil wayne or e40 or nicki minaj.
yeah there is a kind of racism, rockism, an attempt at elitism, or some kind of ism at work in only accepting the rappers who you think play respectability politics, those who fit your worldview, even if their music isnt that great. but some people dont listen to music (or certain genres) for musics sake, they listen for what fits with their own worldview, esp if its music they dont understand or know about, if out of their experience.
but does that fit when big music websites like pitchfork (or crack to use a uk example) etc praise 'problematic' street rap (from the uk or us) just as much as anything more sensible and liberally sound (open mike eagle, shabazz palaces)?
yes twee indie liberals who only like sensible rap are still very much out there (and then dissing of those people and the rappers they like by those hipper as seen in this thread) but what does that even mean when a guy like dave can write a few lines that please labour party members as well as people who just want to hear someone go hard on a freestyle? if you think hes not doing much interesting flow wise, fair enough, but not all rappers are about that.
i suppose im going to have to go and listen to more dave now ive posted so much about him.
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I am a guardian reader, but only from the point of utterly despising them. I have absolutely no respect for any of their columnists, none whatsoever. The boundary between love and hate is that thin etc.
Yes and those people are contemptible on this. But I think liberalism at its root is an elitist ideology (Clarence Darrow to thread!)
They do now, yes, but only because poptimism is the default credo, so ultimately still trapped in the ironically detached rockist framework they intend to escape. It's akin to writing about food, you can constantly diversify your culinary portfolio, you can be dedicated to certain foods, but you can't really become a fanatic of the social trajectory of food (at most a boring purist) because it's just there, it exists beyond the realm of forcing you to consider yourself of being involved in it. This is the pitchfork/crack approach. music as something to sample, and then to move on, marketplace of ideas. My whole point is not that you shouldn't separate ethics from aesthetics, but precisely that you should seek out the problematic and the uncomfortable to fortify your ethics and your zeal even more. The pitchfork lot say: Dilettantish but not fanatical. Well, I'm against dilettantism! Might as well go and join some bloody Gurdjieff cult if you want to be a dilettante, sample all the worlds religions and mystical teachings, for fucks sake! I am saying white critics can write about this music from a moral/phanatic perspective, they just have to work harder at it and risk their sorry backsides a little.
Well, to hell with the labour party membership in my not so humble opinion. They deserve no music. Same applies to tories, but they don't have that same kind of need to feel validated by pop culture.
Good post though mate, appreciated responding to that.
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rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
much of this thread hasnt really been about daves actual music lol.
im now listening to this newer album, and my main problem with it isnt dave himself, its the beats, which are obv kanye influenced, in that theyre over ornamented. dave is a good classicist kind of rapper, the sort of rapper who old UKHH people would like, but whos obv kept up date somewhat with grime and drill, a sort of substance over style kind of rapper, with a bit of that typical UKHH mundanity that for me gets a bit too... doleful or something after a while, but thats just a characteristic of a lot of UKHH like jehst etc, its sticking to the idea that rap should be about saying something, repping the underdog, but should also be a bit 'introspective' which just translates as being a bit sad in tone. its like to pimp a butterfly, stuff like that, working on a sort of 'progressive' platform that rap should be musical, a bit easier on the ear, etc. which isnt that exciting tbh. but i dont think ppl go to dave for adrenalin.
im now listening to this newer album, and my main problem with it isnt dave himself, its the beats, which are obv kanye influenced, in that theyre over ornamented. dave is a good classicist kind of rapper, the sort of rapper who old UKHH people would like, but whos obv kept up date somewhat with grime and drill, a sort of substance over style kind of rapper, with a bit of that typical UKHH mundanity that for me gets a bit too... doleful or something after a while, but thats just a characteristic of a lot of UKHH like jehst etc, its sticking to the idea that rap should be about saying something, repping the underdog, but should also be a bit 'introspective' which just translates as being a bit sad in tone. its like to pimp a butterfly, stuff like that, working on a sort of 'progressive' platform that rap should be musical, a bit easier on the ear, etc. which isnt that exciting tbh. but i dont think ppl go to dave for adrenalin.
i basically entirely agree with this, at least that was my thoughts after listening to psychodrama. My mournful/introspective influences lie elsewhere and I find the UK HH approach to be a bit, how do you say, a bit too dissembled? Too intimate, too confessional as it were, which kind of makes the dolefulness far less impactful for me. But that's a limitation of the genre I think by now.
sufi
lala
they try hard to like it but could not hide their feelings and did not get the words in the slightest
shakahislop
Well-known member
I too really liked this line, whenever it was when I heard it. I'm a sucker for these sensitive souls who end up having to navigate the weird shit that happens when you suddenly end up being rich when you didn't start out that way. The second Dizzee album is the pinnacle of this for me. The second Tricky one as well, as k punk so eloquently explained. I've done something a bit similar in my life (though obviously not to the same extremes) and its so few people who do it in England because of how fucked the culture is that its really nice to hear that someone else feels the same way, especially someone who has a way with words.
shakahislop
Well-known member
It doesn't exactly relate to the main point you're making, but I reckon you can basically hear it in the tunes when someone knows at some level who thier audience is. I know we're all attached to the idea of the individual artist genius at some level but the older I get the more I think that anyone in a studio trying to make tunes has in thier mind somewhere the reviews, what people have said to you at parties, what kind of people they were, the reaction when you do specific things or make particular sounds at a show, a photoshoot, whatever. No man is an island and all that. With Dave I think that's where the audience comes into the analysis, though obviously this kind of comment about what's going on in the brain of someone I've only listened to a bit is pure speculation.
You able to expand on this a bit?
no, I'm not an internet search engine. do the legwork yourself.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
i realise i spent a lot of time mounting a defence for guardian readers, which is basically shorthand for middle class liberals who dont really like rap. youre right though, yeah, a lot of artists have a person in mind in some way. or a place. or a group. i consider dave just an extension of the sort of fraser t smith-ificaiton of street music, i.e. sticking on some crappy piano or guitar to soften it up. in terms of the lyrics though, i get that you could just say hes just writing worthy songs, or trying to be politically engaged, or rap about Important Issues to get to MCLWDRLR, but then that just seems a bit condescending. maybe he needs to be more like common or kendrick and stick in a few sexist or homophobic lines just to remind people he can be problematic too (ie the clear marker of a more authentic rapper).