Pitchfork jumping 7.8 sharks: on Kanye’s 10.0 (and why what I say doesn’t matter)

This post is two weeks too late and was supposed to be about how silly and ridiculous Pitchfork was for giving Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy a 10.0. This wasn’t at all supposed to be about the album itself. Let’s see where this goes.

I guess I’d first like to say, though, that I’m no hater. I have to love Pitchfork because I’ve been reading it on a near-daily basis since 2000. There is so, so much to hate about the site, sure, we all know that, and whether or not you agree with many of the site’s ridiculous proclamations (remember how much dance punk we all listened to 5 years ago? Oh, no?), the influence has been obvious for years, and they still reign as kingmakers of the music world. Even with the rising popularity over the last few years of Pandora, Hype Machine, and especially NPR Music, Pitchfork is still tastemaking for a large segment of the self-described music-loving population.

Which is partly why my first reaction before I listened to a beat of the album or read a word of the review was to roll my eyes when I saw they had given a 10.0 to Kanye’s latest album.

First, to get it out of the way, after reading the review, I thought it was one of the most lush examples of “pretentiously Pitchfork” music writing that has been up in a very long time. Yes, yes, it’s way easy to hate the reviews (and it’s been done for years), but at moments the writing is fantastic (for example, read all of the Beatles reissue reviews. I think they give tremendous context and insight into the band and the albums).

However, when I was done reading the MBDTW review, I thought it embodied the effort-fullness that makes hipsters hate other hipsters. As was written in a NYT Book Review article the other month:

“Taste is not stable and peaceful, but a means of strategy and competition. Those superior in wealth use it to pretend they are superior in spirit. Groups closer in social class who yet draw their status from different sources use taste and its attainments to disdain one another and get a leg up. These conflicts for social dominance through culture are exactly what drive the dynamics within communities whose members are regarded as hipsters. …. All hipsters play at being the inventors or first adopters of novelties: pride comes from knowing, and deciding, what’s cool in advance of the rest of the world. Yet the habits of hatred and accusation are endemic to hipsters because they feel the weakness of everyone’s position — including their own. Proving that someone is trying desperately to boost himself instantly undoes him as an opponent. He’s a fake, while you are a natural aristocrat of taste. That’s why “He’s not for real, he’s just a hipster” is a potent insult among all the people identifiable as hipsters themselves.”

I don’t want to get into the specifics of why the review makes my eyes roll, but it does, and I suspect the excerpt above is involved (that is more likely than not a self-damning admission).

Secondly, it had been a ridiculously long time since I could remember when they gave out a 10 to an album that was not a reissue. If we can assume Pitchfork has any self-awareness (and we can refer to it collectively), it certainly had to know that this was something of an “event” given that it had apparently been eight years since it had last given a 10 to a Wilco that was definitely not being played in Starbucks when YHF came out. Pitchfork’s influence has only grown since then. To give this most elusive of honors to one of the most eagerly anticipated albums of the year…

It relates to my ultimate point: bestowing this honor on an artist that’s as big a phenomenon as Kanye felt like Pitchfork’s own declaration of future irrelevance. I was reminded of the time when one, say in the 90s, might read an at-times-glowing Rolling Stone review of an album that in hindsight is totally shitty. It’s like Entertainment Weekly giving any grade at all to the Black Eyed Peas or a Justin Bieber album: what’s the damn point? Pitchfork has to know who it’s writing for, it has to know who that score would titillate, it has to be so proudly aware that giving the decade’s first 10.0 to a hip hop artist could be used as a cred in a “we’re not rockists!” discussion.

“Bitch(fork), please.”

ALL THAT SAID: the album fucking deserves the 10.0. No words I say can suffice. Maybe if you let me keep my Robyn, I’d trade all the other music I listened to this year for this one album. I spat out an email to my girlfriend when I was 2/3 of the way through the album on my first listen: “it’s a big gamechanger in ways that i can’t define b/c i don’t know how hiphop well. but i can hearsomething. it’s just so beautiful.” Sasha Frere-Jones said it better: “Good luck figuring out what kind of music this is, though it does contain rapping. West’s music is born of hip-hop, but it now includes so many varieties that it feels most accurate to call it simply Kanye.”

And that, ultimately, is why I’ve wasted my time writing this and you’ve wasted time reading. Pitchfork hasn’t gone away. They’re still doing what they do, giving another Best New Music to Robyn last week (sO eXcITed to SEE hRR IN baWlmEr in FEB!!). And in the end, they were probably right in saying the album was “Essential.” (see scale on right) Maybe the last time an artist displayed such mastery over a genre within their own considerable talents, thereby busting the game open, was Radiohead’s Kid A. It got a 10.0, natch.

I forgot: I want to be this movie

I might have cried a few times watching Up in 3d. If anyone asked, I would have just blamed it on the glasses. Nevermind that. I love this.

Wondering if this beats the Carl Sagan video chop up from earlier this year (see after the jump). Also, wondering if this will spawn a lot of garbage in 2010. Boy oh boy.

This one goes out to my rat and my spoon

Who doesn’t like a little innuendo? Who doesn’t like love songs? I thought today I’d just mention a few that put the two together — you know, those songs with lyrics that sound lovey-dovey but turn out to maybe be about non-human subjects. I think the good ones (like so many good things) have to be ambiguous (sorry, “Quiche Lorraine.”) Think Michael Jackson singing to his pet rat “Ben.” Sir Paul was also really good with these; “Martha My Dear” was named after his sheepdog (though not necessarily about her) and “Got to Get You Into My Life” is about everyone’s favorite gateway drug. (Mountain Dew?)

My favorite one of these maybe ever is The Only Ones’ “Another Girl, Another Planet.” I’m certainly in the camp that thinks this is one of the greatest pop songs of all time, even if the neverending fight in youtube comments about the original version vs. the Blink 182 cover makes me hate the internet.

Straight-forward, sing-alongable, and excitable with a perfect guitar solo, but from the first slurred line (“I could kill” or “I look ill”?) you think maybe he could be drugged out. And yeah, the band did have a little problem with this stuff called heroin. More oldies but goodies about drugs and pets after the jump!

Lists and nuggets

I haven’t made a year-end music list in like 9 years. For some reason, yesterday I decided to do that. Of course, I did not put together a decade list of any sort, so I’m still happily behind the kool kids kurv.  Let’s put some shit together, okay? Tracks, shows, some other things after the jump.