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November 16, 2018 11:18 AM   Subscribe

 
Just nope on the Bowie/Kanye comparison.

Also I must be old as hell now because all of these I think of most of these as the “new” guys.
posted by Artw at 11:27 AM on November 16, 2018 [15 favorites]


my reaction as I kept scrolling was no, no, NO, STOP, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS

funny though, the Bowie/Ye comparison had me like "eh, I guess I can see it"
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:33 AM on November 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


The Fugees aren't a rock group?
posted by mattamatic at 11:41 AM on November 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


But they seem to be missing the really old-school rap groups that us old white guys actually know like Run DMC or Grandmaster Flash or Eric B. So I'm confused.
posted by GuyZero at 11:44 AM on November 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


This kept surprising me with well-thought out comparisons that justified the polemic. Even Bowie/Kanye made some sense (tho I think their personalities couldn't be more different). Then he got to Morrison/Tupac. I love the Doors, but Jim Morrison was a selfish mid-range talent who overdosed. Tupac was a brilliant, socially conscious trail-blazer who was wrongfully harassed by the police and tragically murdered. Not much of a comparison.
posted by es_de_bah at 11:49 AM on November 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


Nailed it with Drake. I'm assuming the Wu-Tang comparison is to the revolving doors of CSN and sometimes Y.

Nobody should be compared to Wilco. Fucking Wilco.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 11:58 AM on November 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


I’d go for Morrison/Kanye TBH.
posted by Artw at 12:00 PM on November 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


I have been saying for the past few years that hip hop is grandpas' music. I know literal grandfathers who will pontificate at length about who runs the rap game right now.

Some revisions I would make to the list:

Drake is The Beatles. Both had music written primarily for white high school girls and dads learned to appreciate them as artists by being dragged to concerts by their daughters.

Kanye is Morrissey. Both undeniably talented. Both unable to shut the fuck up when they really ought to shut the fuck up. Both credibly rumored to catch rough trade on the DL.

Wu Tang Clan is Queen. Groups made up of a bunch of guys who each individually could be a star in their own right.

Run the Jewels is Golden Earring. We forget they both exist, and they both slap.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 12:14 PM on November 16, 2018 [25 favorites]


Decent call on Tribe Called Quest / Kinks although that begs the question of which member of Quest was Ray and which was Dave.
posted by ardgedee at 12:17 PM on November 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


Wu Tang Clan is Pigface.
posted by Artw at 12:18 PM on November 16, 2018 [9 favorites]


> Kanye is Morrissey. Both undeniably talented. Both unable to shut the fuck up when they really ought to shut the fuck up.

Both having unhealthy and offputting affiliations with racists and fascists.
posted by ardgedee at 12:19 PM on November 16, 2018 [16 favorites]


Tupac doesn’t deserve what this article did to him. No one does.

(Except Kanye)
posted by gc at 12:20 PM on November 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


Someone has to be Dire Straits -- music that was always dad music, even when it first came out. My dad talks about getting into Dire Straits in his 30s when he had two kids and it felt like the musical equivalent of settling down.

Oh shit -- the cast of Hamilton is Dire Straits.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:22 PM on November 16, 2018 [28 favorites]


Tribe Called Quest is so obviously Steely Dan I can't believe they missed it.
posted by rocket88 at 12:25 PM on November 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


like Run DMC or Grandmaster Flash or Eric B.

Ton-Loc is still touring. He gets to be uh....the Dave Clark Five. So is Vanilla Ice. Let's call him The Monkees.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:26 PM on November 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


Ice Cube or Ice-T is Elvis -gave up music for tv.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:28 PM on November 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


can someone explain how Wu-Tang Clan is Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young is self-explanatory???
posted by supermedusa at 12:29 PM on November 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Tribe Called Quest is so obviously Steely Dan I can't believe they missed it.

I think you are on to something there...
posted by supermedusa at 12:31 PM on November 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


But they seem to be missing the really old-school rap groups that us old white guys actually know like Run DMC or Grandmaster Flash or Eric B. So I'm confused.

Wouldn't converting from things old white guys know to to things old white guys know be missing the point?
posted by atoxyl at 12:59 PM on November 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


Drake is The Beatles. Both had music written primarily for white high school girls and dads learned to appreciate them as artists by being dragged to concerts by their daughters.

Drake is far too late in the game to be anything closer to the Beatles than Britpop.

Wu Tang Clan is Queen. Groups made up of a bunch of guys who each individually could be a star in their own right.

But the guys from Queen didn't. And the guys from the Wu did, as they planned to from the beginning.

Tribe Called Quest is so obviously Steely Dan I can't believe they missed it.

This one I like where style and fan base are concerned - though I think the personalities and goals of the band members may be pretty different.
posted by atoxyl at 1:04 PM on November 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


I'm kind of angry that I read all the way through it, and I'm exceptionally angry that I think the Kanye/Bowie take is fair.
posted by grandiloquiet at 1:12 PM on November 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


Also I must be old as hell now because all of these I think of most of these as the “new” guys.

We are almost exactly as far from 99 Problems today (The Black Album turned 15 two days ago!) as it was from Parents Just Don't Understand when it was released.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 1:15 PM on November 16, 2018 [8 favorites]


Holy shit I just realized: Dr Dre is Thomas Dolby. Both made classic records, both spent more time as producers than performers, both made their biggest money in technology (Dre had Beats, Dolby had Beatnik Inc, which licensed their patents to Nokia; Dolby also composed the signature Nokia ringtone).
posted by ardgedee at 1:17 PM on November 16, 2018 [11 favorites]


Which 99 Problems?
posted by Artw at 1:37 PM on November 16, 2018


does anyone else feel like there's something weirdly reductive about the whole premise here

"black culture has handy white analogues!" is just...I dunno.
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:39 PM on November 16, 2018 [14 favorites]


Ice-T is Ozzy, an ex-bat-biter rehabilitated via television.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 2:01 PM on November 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


We let white artists stand on their own without comparison. Why do these (overwhelmingly) Black artists need to be compared to white archetypes?
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:09 PM on November 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


Both had music written primarily for white high school girls and dads learned to appreciate them as artists by being dragged to concerts by their daughters.

No, that's silly, and almost the opposite of what happened. The Beatles stopped touring at the height of their popularity primarily to get away from Beatlemania and focus on making innovative music.
posted by Sangermaine at 2:12 PM on November 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


"black culture has handy white analogues!" is just...I dunno.

Yeah, that definitely occurred to me, but I don't know, I think you also have to take rap seriously to think about this. I don't think this devalues any artist, and I certainly don't think the underlying idea here is that you can only appreciate a rapper when you find a white analogue for them. No one is really suggesting that artist X is actually the equivalent of artist Y, it's just entertaining to think about genre comparisons, who has the similar impact/talent/ego, whatever. I'd have as much fun doing it with dad metal, or dad jazz (Kneebody is the dad jazz equivalent of Frank Zappa).

I'm not going to push hard back against the idea that this is problematic. Obviously there's a racial component, and that can send the wrong message. Dad rock is implicitly white, and the article is pretty white in its perspective, so I don't think anyone is wrong for looking at it skeptically.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 2:24 PM on November 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


Ice-T is Bodycount.
posted by Artw at 2:25 PM on November 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


Kool Keith is Sting, a member of a popular music group whose first solo album explored the inner mind of a fictional gynecologist
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 2:53 PM on November 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


Thanks for convincing me not to read this. Thanks for all the cranky hot takes so that I did not have to cranky hot take my way through this.
posted by cashman at 3:30 PM on November 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


This article is tangentially related, and a bit older now, but still rings true: Rock is the New Jazz. Opened my eyes quite a bit.
posted by zardoz at 4:02 PM on November 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


Sugarhill Gang is Bill Haley and the Comets.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:27 PM on November 16, 2018


If we’re looking for someone who died young but was socially conscious and pushed the limits of his genre, shouldn’t Tupac be Jimi Hendrix?
posted by nonasuch at 4:45 PM on November 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


“You know that new sound you're looking for? Listen to this!”
posted by Artw at 4:51 PM on November 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


So who gets to be Throbbing Gristle?
posted by gtrwolf at 5:54 PM on November 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


Boots Riley - MC5 or Zappa?
posted by Artw at 6:12 PM on November 16, 2018


Will Smith is Will Smith
posted by kmkrebs at 6:24 PM on November 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


can someone explain how Wu-Tang Clan is Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young is self-explanatory???

Members in, members out. Good individual albums, all work as a whole musician without the group or can work in pairs or trios, but total stone-cold classics when they work together. Not sure this is a particularly true or well-thought-out comparison; it’s just what I think the writer was going for.
posted by Yoko Ono's Advice Column at 7:10 PM on November 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Kanye West is David Bowie

Ha ha ha ha yeah bullshit. Whoever wrote this mess points to the Wikipedia article on the Thin White Duke; this was roughly the same relatively brief period when Bowie started out an interview (with Cameron Crowe) by saying that he just saw a body fall past the window. (If you follow the link, scroll down for a shot of Bowie that's about the scariest picture of anyone this side of Bill Skarsgård.) Bowie was practically living on cocaine, and it wasn't long after he cleaned up that he disavowed all that bullshit.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:34 PM on November 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


Dolby also composed the signature Nokia ringtone

Oh, Dolby actually invented the sound chip / software format which allowed Nokia phones to play melodies like that signature ringtone. The actual tune is a tiny snippet from a guitar waltz by Francisco Tárrega. But yeah, Dolby was responsible for that snippet being The Giant Worldwide Thing That It Was.
posted by hippybear at 9:02 PM on November 16, 2018


i think purely in artistic terms it's insane to deny that there are parallels between kanye and bowie's careers. both of them were weirdo art nerds making work in the dominant genre that was both avant garde and populist. both of them were creatively restless, jumping from one sound to the next and changing the game for everyone else as they did went. both of them were fashion icons. both of them presented an outsider image from the normal rock star or rapper, the kind of image that showed kids you could still be cool while being different. there are differences too, primarily that bowie excelled at playing characters and kanye west is always some version of himself, for better and for worse.

the morrissey comparison is alright if we're talking persona, but basically every morrissey song sounds the same to me so it doesn't work musically at all.

Bowie was practically living on cocaine, and it wasn't long after he cleaned up that he disavowed all that bullshit.

and kanye west is openly no longer taking medication for his bipolar disorder. it's easy to dismiss bowie's fascism phase in retrospect, hopefully the same will be true of kanye and MAGA, especially since he's already walking it back.
posted by JimBennett at 9:05 PM on November 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


also i've had a lot of time to think about this since the article came out earlier this year, and i think you can even map kanye and bowie on a roughly similar album by album progression, if you start at ziggy stardust to compensate for kanye's years as a producer. consider:

-aladdin sane a refinement of the landmark ziggy stardust the same way late registration was to the landmark college dropout.
-diamond dogs and graduation were both sci fi tinged magnifications of the records immediately prior.
-young americans and 808s were both left turns into new genres.
-station to station and dark twisted fantasy are dark explorations into prog with long, elaborate compositions.
-the berlin trilogy and yeezus are electronic deconstructions of what "rock" and "rap" could sound like.
-pablo is half scary monsters weird wacky and dense and half pure let's dance radio pop.
-which of course makes ye tonight, the beginning of the Dark Times. hopefully we don't have to wait nine years for the next halfway decent kanye west record.
posted by JimBennett at 9:22 PM on November 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


Halloween Jack, I was scrolling through that interview looking for the scary picture, and I was like, "Hmm, not scary, not scary…which one is the scary one, did I miss it and just not think it was scary?"

And then I found it.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:20 PM on November 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


And then I found it.

Aw, that's just his "Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine from 'The Man Who Laughs'" face. Huh. Now there's a film bio Bowie could've done when he was in his late 30s.


The one from the list that I really don't agree with is that The Roots are Wilco. Wilco would never be the house band for a prat like Jimmy Fallon, no matter what they do in their off time (and if you like Fallon, my apologies, but I CANNOT stand his schtick).
posted by droplet at 6:09 PM on November 17, 2018


I don’t think hip hop history goes back 45 years yet.
posted by snofoam at 4:30 PM on November 18, 2018


It is presently the year 39A.R.D*

(* After Rappers Delight)
posted by Artw at 4:48 PM on November 18, 2018


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