B (3:18)

Right.

C (3:18)

In popular culture anyway, when at least you and I were growing up. Because I actually think if you do that there is a through line here to what you and I have come together to talk about today. So I just think we should start by you allowing me to show you something.

B (3:33)

Let's see something.

D (3:35)

Let's switch channels. This show is dull. You bet. What is that? It looks like two ancient old guys sitting in a theater box watching television. That's crazy. No one would watch junk like that.

C (3:51)

So, Kelefa, who are we looking at here?

B (3:54)

We're looking at Statler and Waldorf, the critics from the Muppets show. So the Muppets are on stage at this theater, and usually we're just watching the stage as if we're in the audience. But then sometimes the camera kind of pans up to this opera box where there are these two old guys, Statler and Waldorf, watching the action, commenting on the action. And that's when we realize that, like, oh, there is a show within a show.

D (4:18)

What was that? It's called the Medium Sketch. The Medium Sketch. Yeah. It wasn't rare, and it certainly wasn't well done.

C (4:29)

I love Statler and Waldorf. And I didn't understand that it was criticism, but I definitely understood that it was telling me that what was happening down on stage or, like, you know, as a viewer on tv, the thing we had just watched had some value one way or the other. Often they were, like, really bitchy about it.

B (4:49)

That was the joke, but that was beneath the joke was an understanding that, like, that's what it is to be a critic. Right. To criticize means to say that something is bad. And so that was. That was their whole role. And I think as a kid, I probably just intuited that. I just figured, like, oh, that's what a critic is. A critic is someone who's, like, kind of cranky and has something negative to say. Right. The idea is that the people in general are kind of happy to hear whatever is going on on stage. And the critics are there to put the fist down and be like, no, this sucks.

C (5:19)

Right.

B (5:20)

And I know for me, as a kid, there was something I liked about people having strong opinions about things. People disagreeing.

C (5:26)

The harshness of their reviews was part of what was appealing about them.

B (5:30)

Yeah. The fact that you could see something on TV and you didn't have to automatically like it. Like, you could hate it if you wanted. Like, that was interesting to me and I think probably before I even knew that's what I was thinking about. Maybe I got some of the same pleasure from like Siskel and Ebert as.

D (5:47)

Well as Boogie Night's plays at the end of the movie in a sequence that sums up the fate of all the characters. I was left cold, frankly. That's why you're getting a positive, to be sure. But mixed review for me. Mixed. Yep.

C (5:57)

This is on my list of the.

D (5:58)

10 best films of the year.

C (5:59)

This is a wonderful film.

B (6:00)

These two guys are going to be disagreeing about movies and disagreeing with each other and you're going to see that disagreement and that's maybe going to spur you to decide which one of them, if either of them you agree with.

C (6:11)

Right. Like who is going to win this argument. But you know, there's one other fictionalized duo that I'm thinking of and it's the men on film guys from In Living colors.

B (6:22)

Yes.

D (6:22)

Channel 62 presents Men on Film.

C (6:26)

Hello, I'm Blaine Edwards. And I'm Antwon Mayweather.

B (6:30)

And welcome to Men on Films, the show that looks at movies from a male point of view.

C (6:37)

Tonight's show, and it's Damon Wayans and David Alan Greer, basically is two very gay, flamboyantly gay men reviewing movies. And they're reviewing real movies.

B (6:47)

Right.

C (6:48)

They're sitting in director's chairs. They've got on these outfits that are, I mean, I don't know what to call these. This is like cater waiter at the S and M dungeon. And the teeny tiny hats were what.

B (7:02)

I always remember, five stars.

C (7:04)

And not only that, but like it's the other accessories, the ascots, the earrings, the, you know, belt suspenders.

B (7:13)

Next we have Betsy's wedding.

C (7:16)

Hey, Dadette.

B (7:19)

Then there's Ghost. You know, Patrick Swayze was the real standout in this film. You know, I'd breathe life into his spirit any day, even if I did have to go through Whoopi Goldberg. They were also making fun of the idea of the critic as a serious figure.

C (7:37)

Right. There is this idea anti Statler and Waldorf.

B (7:40)

Yes. The idea that there is this starchiness, this old fashionedness and they were gonna do it in a very unstarchy way.

C (7:46)

So this brings us to your piece, which is called Everything Nice but is really about a history of music criticism that involves this change from like the.

B (7:59)

Mean old days from nasty to sweet. That's right. And maybe back again and maybe hopefully we're lucky. So I don't know.

C (8:07)

Let's talk about it. Let's let's get into the piece.

B (8:11)

So this probably goes back a few decades before that. Right. If you look at the dawn of rock criticism in the late 1960s, it is a quite cranky profession. And you have people like Robert Chris Gau, the so called dean of American rock critics, who's giving out grades to albums. And you have this idea that, yeah, they're gonna mix it up a little bit, they're gonna fight a little bit, and it's gonna be. It's gonna be a kind of a cranky discipline. And so as the music evolves, that evolves a little bit. And by the time you get to the early 2000s in the US a lot of music critics are talking about this thing called rockism. And rockism is a term to describe basically a musical prejudice. Right. An idea that good pop music kind of looks like rock music and functions like rock music. Right. It's probably gonna be earnest that they're gonna be able to really play and sing live. And it's not gonna be too pop. Right. So it's gonna be looking down on anything that seems a little bit too concerned with fashion. Right. Too concerned with music videos. Right. It's an idea of what musical authenticity should look like and sound like.

C (9:15)

It's a purity paradigm. E. And through that paradigm passes like every kind of popular music. And it is sort of measured against these sort of rock ideologies, essentially.

B (9:28)

And that can be broader than that. Right. Is this real country music or is that the fake stuff on the radio? Right, right. Is this real hip hop or this. Is that gangster down south? Whatever. Right. Like there's a lot of these binaries. And I want to say, just for the record, like Chris Gow, the so called dean of American rock criticism, has always been an extremely wide listener. Someone who's written probably more about African pop music than any critic of his era.

C (9:54)

Right.

B (9:54)

But I think there were people that were less imaginative listeners who were influenced by him that did a much less interesting version of what they took to be his school. In 2004, I wrote about this here at the New York Times, a piece about rockism and about this discussion that was happening. And I made the case that there were a kind of a generation of critics who maybe were still thinking about music in those terms and that that made it hard for them to appreciate what I considered to be some of the most exciting music that was happening. Whether that was kind of Nashville country music, whether that was mainstream hip hop, whether that was smooth R and B. The vocabulary that critics used Was a little bit out of touch with what was going down. Oh, I see you printed it out.

C (10:44)

I came prepared, sir.

B (10:45)

You got receipts.

C (10:46)

So I just. I will. I'd read you to you about this rockism piece because I think, you know, I had never heard this term before your piece. I remember reading it and having my mind expanded in this really exciting way because it had answered a question or a feeling that I had had about the way, like, all kinds of criticism in an interesting way were being practiced and, like, who was not being lavished with the same degree of rigor, attention, enthusiasm, care, concern, as opposed to just sheer dismissal. Right.

B (11:29)

I think for me, in a sense, I got interested in music through criticism, not from reading critics, but I got really interested in music through punk rock and punk rock. Part of what it was was a criticism, right? Part of what punk rock is, is a movement that says, like, no, this thing that's happening sucks. This thing that's happening is bad. Like aesthet. Morally bad. All that stuff that you normal people listen to, there's something wrong with it. And we're gonna be a critique of that. But honestly, I'm not sure I would have started to get as serious about writing about music as I did if I hadn't gotten back into hip hop, which is what I loved before. I loved punk, and then I kind of, like, left it for a while. And then I came back to it, really, in the 90s. And unlike punk rock, punk rock, there were these totally obscure bands, and I was like, well, the rest of the world hates these bands. That's fine. They're supposed to hate it. It's okay. Whereas with hip hop, I felt like, no, there's something happening. These records are really incredible. They're not getting celebrated and written about the way they should. The world doesn't understand 400 degrees by juvenile and they should. Just to name one, a record that totally expanded my mind, and a record that a lot of even hip hop critics at the time didn't really enjoy.

C (12:46)

Yeah, because it was juvenile and it was.

B (12:49)

It was a. But it was a big hit. It was cool. It was regional, it was American. I was like, this is incredible. So I think for me, moving a little bit away from thinking of myself as a punk rocker and getting in back into hip hop and some other stuff helped inspire me to really want to have those kinds of public arguments, because there was an argument worth having. I thought people were wrong about hip hop.

C (13:09)

Right. And so I will just lure us all to the end of this piece and what Is it? It was originally called the Rap Against Rockism. Right. This is you good critics are good listeners. And the problem with rockism is that it gets in the way of listening. If you're waiting for some song that conjures up soul or honesty or grit or rebellion, you might miss out on Ciara's ecstatic electro pop or Alan Jackson's sly country ballads, or Lord Lloyd Banks felonious purr. Wow, it takes me back. Rockism makes it hard to hear the glorious, incoherent corporate finance, audience tested mess that passes for popular music these days. To glorify only performers who write their own songs and play their own guitars is to ignore the marketplace that helps create the music we hear in the first place. With its checkbook chasing super producers, its audience obsessed executives and its cred hungry performers. That's you. And that is essentially rockism.

B (14:08)

Yeah.

C (14:08)

And what I think was interesting about that moment was it introduced this tension, right? Where there were classes of critics who were younger than your Chris Gals, who came up through your Robert Chris Gals and you know, your old school Rolling Stone critics who were like sincerely, passionately, furiously interested in hip hop, interested in like, you know, metal pop music as practiced on the charts of Billboard. I think it might be interesting to like just sort of live in it for a second for personal reasons.

B (14:47)

I always think about the summer of 2001 because it was my first appearance in the New Yorker. I was super excited.

C (14:53)

What is your appearance in that?

B (14:55)

I profiled a rapper named Jay Z.

C (14:58)

Oh, I know it.

B (14:58)

I know.

C (15:00)

Known to me.

B (15:00)

So I probably have 30 of these things in my house and.

C (15:04)

But wait, is this it?

B (15:06)

This is it. This is the New Yorker music issue from 2001.

C (15:10)

Oh, I love this.

B (15:12)

It's got a hip hop portfolio. It's got.

C (15:15)

Oh no, it's got the Notorious PJ Harvey piece that Hill and Alge wrote where he's like, sorry, Lauryn Hill, the real shit is this white British lady.

B (15:24)

It's an incredible. It's got Alex Ross on Radiohead getting all musicological on Radiohead, an incredible issue. And, and it has this piece by Nick Hornby, who was then kind of acting as the magazine's pop music critic. Nick Hornby, obviously famous novelist, screenwriter, you know, one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation, but also a huge music fan. And so he had been writing a series of music criticism pieces for the New Yorker magazine. And for this issue he decided to do something kind of crazy, at least crazy for him. He listened to the top 10, like the 10 most popular albums in America, as determined by the Billboard 200 chart.

C (16:02)

Yep.

B (16:03)

And he was just gonna say what he actually thought of them.

C (16:06)

Having just reread this thing.

B (16:08)

Did you read it when it came out in.

C (16:09)

Oh, of course I did.

B (16:10)

In 2001.

C (16:10)

I have a very clear memory of being surprised that Nick Hornby also enjoyed Alicia Keys album, her first album.

B (16:20)

That was the only one.

C (16:22)

Yes.

B (16:22)

That was the only album of the.

C (16:24)

10 that was the only one he could have imagined listening to.

B (16:26)

Yeah.

C (16:27)

So here's your top 10 that Nick Hornby is going to town on in this piece of criticism. Songs in A Minor by Alicia Keys, the Saga Continues by P. Diddy and the Bad Boy Family, devil's night by D12, break the cycle by Stained, Survivor by Destiny's Child. That's number five. Jagged Little Thrill by Jagged Edge, Take off your pants and jacket by Blink182, Lil Romeo by Lil Romeo, Skinned by Melissa Etheridge, and Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park.

B (17:37)

There you go.

C (17:38)

You know, he basically is sitting with this music and deciding that it's just a lot of it is unlistenable and.

B (17:49)

That it's not for him.

C (17:50)

It's not. Well, it's true, because he's looking at this music through the paradigm of 20 years before and what. These albums would have been on the same chart 20 years before, essentially. Why'd you identify that as being a very good, for example, of the way things previously operated?

B (18:13)

Well, because when that piece was published in 2001, there was all sorts of pushback, whereas especially, like, younger critics were saying, like, this is terrible. This proves that the New Yorker is not serious about popular music. I can't believe they thought, like, oh, this is the old guard. This is the establishment. And it's interesting because when I look back at this piece now, that's not what I'm struck by. What I'm struck by is the honesty and the wit and the fact that, like, these days, if a critic hated just about everything in the top 10, they would never tell you because that would make them seem maybe out of touch or something. And I wish there was more of that spirit today where people were being honest and saying, like, I actually don't like any of this stuff. As opposed to sometimes I read people now, and you're kind of reading between.

C (19:01)

The lines of what it is they're saying.

D (19:02)

Yeah.

B (19:02)

And they're like, oh, yeah, I love Charli xcx. And I'm like, do you like. Really? Everyone loves Charlie. There's no one who's like, no, this is not for me. This is terrible. And again, I think this is maybe not to get us into a rabbit hole, but that idea of an album being not for me, I think that's just a polite way of saying it's bad.

C (19:20)

Yes.

B (19:20)

I don't think there's any. I would never use a. Yeah, I don't think. And so. But he's explicitly doing both because this was the last in a series of columns that Nick Hornby wrote as essentially a music critic for the New Yorker, and this was the last one in that series. Obviously he's a world famous novelist and screenwriter. He has lots of other things to do. But the column is kind of a resignation letter. He's kind of saying, like, if this.

C (19:47)

Is pop music, I can't do it.

B (19:48)

I'm not a pop critic.

C (19:49)

I can't do it.

B (19:50)

Right.

C (19:50)

Yeah.

B (19:50)

And so, yes, when I read that now, it makes me think of some of the moves that he was making then that many critics no longer feel like they can make. Right? No longer feel like they can be like this. Like this record is dumb. I don't want to listen to dumb stuff like this. Right. That's a very human reaction. And so it's interesting, this piece that at the time there was some blowback to it. I read it now, and I read it really fondly, not just because Hornby's a great writer, but because he's so.

C (20:21)

Honest, refreshing about his just, I don't like this.

B (20:25)

Yes.

C (20:25)

And so here's, here's why it's bad.

B (20:27)

And which is also about disagreeing with the conventional wisdom or with the public. He's not coming across as like, I'm a cranky guy who hates all music. He's saying, I love music more than anything and I just don't love, like what's popular. I love this other stuff, but I.

C (20:43)

Kind of want to sit with, like, another aspect of this kind of what we're going to call a era of harshness. And I'm just gonna read something from one of my favorite critics ever to walk the earth, Greg Tate.

B (20:57)

Greg Tate.

C (20:58)

And Greg, of course, wrote for the Village Voice for several years, kind of.

B (21:03)

Helped invent hip hop criticism.

C (21:04)

And not only that, but you also had a guard of critics who were black critics who wanted nothing to do with hip hop, right?

B (21:13)

Yeah.

C (21:14)

And were cursing it, saying all kinds of, I mean, you want to talk about rockism, let's talk about like intra black racism.

B (21:24)

Like many great kinds of music, hip hop was creating and emphasizing a generation gap.

C (21:29)

Right. And into this gap steps Greg Tate, RIP if you know Greg Tate, you probably know this piece and it's called the Devil Made Em Do It. Public Enemy. But he's writing about. It takes a nation of millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy comes out in 1988.

D (21:46)

Yes, the rhythm, the rebel without applause. I'm lowering my level. The hard drama.

C (21:53)

He mostly loves the album, but in the middle of, you know, this very, very granular assessment of what the samples are doing, what Chuck D is doing, the values of, you know, black nationalism of this music. Greg takes a second to say the following. To know Public Enemy is to love the agit, prop and artful noise. And to work. I mean, I can't believe I'm reading it like this. This is not how Greg Tate sounds. Let me do a better job to no, Public Enemy is to love the agit prop and artful noise and to worry over the wack retarded philosophy they espouse. Like, quote, the black woman has always been kept up by the white male because the white male has always wanted the black woman. Like, gays aren't doing what's needed to build the black nation, period, unquote. Like, quote, white people are actually monkeys, uncles, because that's who they made it with in the Caucasian hills, period, unquote. Like, quote, if the Palestinians took up arms, went into Israel and killed all the Jews, it'd be alright, period, unquote. From this idiot blather, Public Enemy. This is still Greg are obviously making it up as they go along. Since Public Enemies show sound reasoning when they focus on racism as a tool of the U.S. power structure, they should be intelligent enough to realize that dehumanizing gays, women and Jews isn't going to set black people free. As their prophet, Mr. Farrakhan hasn't overcome one or another of these moral lapses, Public Enemy might not either. For now, swallowing the Public Enemy pill means taking the bitter with the sweet. And if they don't grow up later for they asses, I mean, well, one.

B (23:45)

Of the things you hear in that is confidence, right? The confidence to be like, no, this is bad, this is wrong.

C (23:50)

And I think within the context of this album being a landmark, according to.

B (23:56)

Him, and this became a major thread and a major kind of tension within hip hop criticism, which was you had a lot of critics who found themselves not agreeing with a lot of the things that rappers were saying. And so sometimes that meant, like, dismissing all that stuff, right? Like, if the rule is that we can't really co sign Any album that has language that we find offensive. A lot of critics were like, oh, maybe hip hop is bad, except for like alternative hip hop or some of the righteous stuff. And maybe most of it is just is bad. Right, right. And so that, that became an interesting fissure within the conversation about hip hop and hip hop. I mean, going on through the 2000s, 2000s, there is a sense in which hip hop kind of got bracketed, right. Where like rappers could say stuff on record that no one else could say. And even at a time when criticism became much more intensely moralistic, there was a kind of hip hop exception.

C (24:54)

Well, this brings me to what I would say is another shift in the way that you're thinking about this, which is the arrival of this anti raucist stance within the world of criticism and maybe even music listening and fandom. And it's called.

B (25:13)

It's a word that's even sillier than rockism. The word, for obvious reasons, is not rapism, it's poptimism. Yes, poptimism, Poptimism. People start talking about poptimism to name the sensibility that might come next.

C (25:31)

And I mean, what does it set out to do? Because it doesn't stay in its box.

B (25:38)

No, I mean, the idea is instead of just celebrating Bruce Springsteen and stuff that seems a little bit like Bruce Springsteen, we're gonna celebrate pop music, which on the one hand, there was and is lots of great pop music. And at the time this term was being used, there was a lot of sort of self consciously pop music. Right. There were acts like Robin, right. Who were like kind of underground, but using the music and the sounds of 80s pop music and proudly identifying as pop as opposed to rock. And it makes sense that there's a critical movement that says, like, no, we're gonna be about. We're gonna center the fact that we're.

C (26:17)

Celebrating pop music now, come the mid-2000s or the, you know, early 2010s. How are you experiencing this, like, as a critic?

B (26:27)

Well, so critically, like the stuff that was exciting was changing. It's becoming clear that if you want to talk about music, it can't just be rock music, right? It's becoming clear that, like, we're gonna need to talk about hip hop and R and B. So just like, as an aesthetic, the rock thing is starting to fade a little bit, right? So critics that wanna talk about the interesting music need a different vocabulary. Anyways, it's a little bit paradoxical, right? Because on one hand, if you're saying like, yes, we're Gonna embrace pop music. Cause we're pop music critics. Like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But poptimism, right. Most of that word is optimism. Right. Like, it has a.

C (27:06)

It's inherently at odds with the critical exercise.

B (27:09)

Yeah. Does this mean we gotta celebrate all the pop songs? And I always thought it was kind of ironic because if you ever talk to an actual pop music fan, that's like some of the most vicious tribes you could possibly encounter. Like, they hate the people they hate and even the songs they hate with a passion of a thousand suns, right? And so, like, one thing that a real pop fan is not is like mildly positive about pop music. They're like, this thing is great. This thing is terrible. But I think that underneath there was a really interesting question, which I think is a question that anyone who's a music critic confronts, which is, who are you? Like, who the fuck are you?

C (27:48)

To be saying anything about XYZ artists?

B (27:52)

Yeah. To be telling me that this is good or this is bad. To me, that's the fun of the job. But yes, there is something, that question of who are you? And I think it can be a political question, right? If you're a non black critic and you're talking about music that is disproportionately beloved by black people, right? They're like, well, this isn't for you. Who are you to say this? If you're a man writing about music made by a woman, like, who are you to say this is bad? And so I think that that question is always bubbling and lurking under the surface, especially with the rockism poptimism debate.

C (28:24)

I think what you're identifying with, this question of should people who aren't the demographic of the work or artist they're writing about be allowed to do it? Like, how much should they know or be aligned with?

B (28:40)

They're always allowed to praise it.

C (28:42)

The question is whether allowed to dispose after that. How much criticism are you. What percentage criticism are you allowed to expend on this work? But I think that that observation is really critical to.

E (28:56)

Right.

B (28:56)

Yeah.

C (28:57)

I would cite the arrival of Kendrick Lamars to Pimp a Butterfly as being like an interesting turning point in this discourse around identity and the identity politics. That sort of is what had always sort of been percolating through an aspect of music criticism, but now was explicitly made textual. Oh, it's my life I has to.

E (29:26)

Fight.

C (29:28)

All my life.

D (29:29)

Ah, hard times like, yeah.

C (29:33)

Bad trips like, yeah, Nazareth, I'm fucked up, homie, you fucked up but if God got us then we go Be all right. There is a piece that Jay Caspian Cain wrote in the New York Times Magazine not long after it had come out, where he doesn't love the album and part of his frustration is, you know, just as music, he wishes that Kendrick were more of a storyteller here rather than this messianic figure that he sort of positions himself as being. Which is a classic complaint among certain hip hop people about the messianification of certain hip hop acts, right, who go from, you know, the street to sainthood, like, of their own making, essentially. Here's Jay Many of the first critical responses to Pippa Butterfly pleaded for more time to figure out what exactly Lamar was doing in Slate. Carl Wilson, great critic, that's me saying that, wrote it's too soon to say whether To Pimp or Butterfly is a more satisfying album than Good Kid Mad City, the previous album. In the fader, Rwea Kamir wrote, God knows how long it'll be before any of us fully grasp the stacked meanings, extended metaphors and shrouded complexities of Kendrick Lamar's To Pip a butterfly. Definitely weeks, probably months. There seemed to be a reluctance, Jay writes, especially among white critics, to straightforwardly criticize the album. Quote, how should white listeners approach the overwhelming blackness of Kendrick Lamar's brilliant new album, unquote. Read the deferential subhead to Wilson's review. This caution is a testament to Lamar's talent, but also the power that comes with his messiah status. Critics seem afraid to say much about this album because they want to believe in him too, even when what's in front of them doesn't exactly deliver on those expectations. Basically, here's where Jay is leaves the text of To Pimper Butterfly just to think about, like the lonely island he sent us he might find himself on as a Korean American man writing about this black ass album and like, insisting that he that people just be honest about how it makes them feel, right? Regardless of how connected they are to the themes of its blackness.

B (31:51)

I mean, Jay is a guy who's not afraid to stir the pot, and it was really courageous of him to write what he did about that album at that moment. And the funny thing is that even at the height of excitement about that album, most of us, if we had talked to a random group of our friends who love hip hop, we probably would have heard a diversity of opinions, right? If we were talking to our friend.

C (32:12)

Ruth, I definitely was among a diversity of opinions when that album dropped.

B (32:16)

And just like normal people are pretty free in being like, I'm not Trying to listen to all that pimper butterflies like, you know, normal people. And so I think you do have a bit of a problem when critics start sounding less interesting than everyday people, right? I'm not so much concerned with what the opinion is, but I do think the critic's job is to be interesting. And so when there are those moments when it feels like people are having more interesting discussions in real life or more pointed discussions or sharper discussions in real life than on the page, those are moments when I think that, like, there is some energy that professional music criticism is kind of missing out on. And this goes back to this argument about rockism, right? Because rockism, the term, sort of sounds like racism, right? It sounds like an ism that you definitely don't want to be associated with. And part of the discussion was that, like, oh, maybe critics are spending too much time praising white guys in rock bands. And maybe as a result, they're not spending enough time thinking deeply about slow jams or about some other form of music that's maybe not dominated by white guys. I would wanna say, though, that part of why rockism was valuable to music critics was that it gave you a frame, it gave you a narrative. I would even defend the idea of prejudice, right? The idea of prejudice is that I have a value system. I have an idea about what's good before I come to you and before I assess what it is that you're doing. I have a preconception the student in.

C (33:47)

Me wants to agree with what you're saying about it being a useful framework. But then just thinking about what it would have meant to do this work when hip hop was not only innocent, but it was beginning to eclipse, like, you know, Rolling Stone's beloved rock and roll. And the argument against rap album after rap album after rap album was not so much about rap as an art form, but about the ethics of the sample. Right. And the ways in which all of this white music that had wound up as, you know, tiling and grist and gilding for these great rap records came from this rock music that is being befouled and besmirched by a class of young black men.

B (34:42)

I don't think I agree with that.

C (34:44)

You don't think that that happened? You don't think that was a response to, like, a class of rappers?

B (34:50)

I think criticism of hip hop sampling practices was as likely, if not more likely, to posit black pioneer musicians as the people that were being befouled. I mean, it depends who we're talking about, right? That is true. But when critics are, when critics are criticizing Sean Combs for taking every Breath youh Take and turning it into I'll Be Missing you, and they're like, this is just karaoke.

C (35:14)

This is a bad sample.

B (35:15)

Right? Yeah. They're not saying like, oh, you're befouling the legacy of Sting. They're saying like, oh, this isn't crazy creative enough. And often the move that's made in hip hop criticism in general is this is somehow led astray from the spirit of good hip hop which existed five or 10 years ago.

C (35:31)

But then, I mean, all I can conclude from what you're saying though is that there, there has been a cost to this encroaching niceness. And one of the costs is that the discourse gets flattened. I mean, I'm not saying anything terribly profound here, but I mean, you've put your finger on, you've put your finger on this shift. And I mean, I read your piece with a great sense of lament. Right. Because I think that, you know, there are a number of other things that have happened to bring us to this moment. Like I think that these so called fan armies have made it almost a terroristic experience, to be honest, about how you feel about some of these albums.

B (36:17)

Yeah, I wouldn't want to compare this job to actually dangerous jobs. And I wouldn't want to try to solicit too much sympathy for people who write about music. But yeah, I think the online culture, which has blurred the distinction between talking about someone and talking to someone. Right. In the social media era, it's the same thing.

C (36:36)

It's the same thing.

B (36:37)

And so criticizing someone feels like starting a feud sometimes. And so yes, fan bases and just people have raised the cost sometimes of saying negative things because of the kind of feedback you get back.

C (36:49)

So you think there's a difference now because of the immediacy of the platforms, delivering a readership straight to your end.

B (36:57)

Yeah. And also the jobs get less secure. Right. Maybe it's easier to laugh off that kind of reaction if you have a staff job. If you're a freelancer and you're worried that this kind of backlash not only like blows up your mentions, but like makes it harder for you to get another assignment. You know, that can seem different. Again, I don't think it's like a life and death thing, but I think it is something that maybe is in the back or even in the front of people's minds when they're deciding what assignment to accept. And I think that's another difference. If you're A staff critic, maybe you have to review everything that comes across your desk. If you're a freelancer, you're picking and choosing and the publication is picking and choosing too. And they're probably not going to assign the BTS review to the person who hates K pop. So there's a built in bias, I think, just from how the system works. So I think this is maybe inherent in the industry and I think maybe part of what happened.

C (37:50)

Inherent or is it like a development that has like swept up the industry?

B (37:58)

Well, both. I think for me personally, as I got older, I got less excited about writing reviews saying that people were terrible.

C (38:07)

Okay, here we go.

B (38:09)

I got nicer.

C (38:10)

Okay.

B (38:11)

And I think that there is a sense that as people age, as genres age, sometimes as institutions age, there can be that sort of pressure to be a little more. More quote, unquote, mature.

C (38:27)

All right, I want to, I want to pause you there cuz we're going to take a break and when we come back, I actually want to think through like where that energy goes and has gone.

B (38:39)

Okay, let's do it.

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C (40:36)

Okay, we're back. I want to sort of sit with this idea of knowing when to fold them, so to speak.

B (40:46)

What do you mean by that?

C (40:47)

Well, I mean, you introduced the idea before we went on this break that you. But also one reaches a point where, like, the culture changes, the music changes, you change. And so in that divergence that time creates, you change your relationship to how you want to, like, write about music and express your feelings about the art form.

B (41:13)

I think I got more curious. I think that was the biggest change.

C (41:16)

How would you explain the difference?

B (41:18)

Like, when I heard something now that I don't like, I'm kind of like.

C (41:22)

Huh, why don't I like that?

B (41:23)

Why don't I like that? Who does like that? Why do they like it? Like, would I eventually start liking it if I listen to it a lot now? There are still things that I hear and I'm like, ugh, really? People liked it? Really?

C (41:36)

And is there an example of something like that?

B (41:40)

Well, in the piece I mentioned the most recent Lady Gaga album.

C (41:43)

Sure. Where?

B (41:44)

Like, which has gotten, you know, gotten good reviews. And I just like, every time I listen to it, I'm like, ugh, this sounds like a chore. This feels like a slog.

C (41:52)

That's not what you said. What you said was. Do you remember exactly what you said?

B (41:58)

You tell me what I said.

C (41:59)

What you said was. I feel less inspired to rail against, say, the most recent Lady Gaga album. Cause I'm putting that cuz in there. It strikes me as awkward and effortful, like someone trying to start a dance party in an empty nightclub. Yeah, but why commit that kind of judgment to print when instead I could wait to see whether it will grow on me? As awkward seeming albums sometimes do, that to me, is a critical escape. Val, I'll go back to it. I will return to this album and consider maybe writing about it in 10 years. Maybe mayhem will be like Banger City in 2033.

B (42:41)

I mean, obviously when I wrote that, I was kind of making a joke because I was saying I would never commit this judgment to print while committing it to print. Right?

C (42:48)

Sure, sure, sure.

B (42:49)

But there's also. I do think that when I was at the Times and I was doing daily criticism, one thing I thought about a lot is I wanna write things that I feel like I'm gonna agree with in 10 years or 15 years. Because I know, and I know from experience that, like, people might bring them up, and I know that for the artist, you know, that might follow them around. Like, you know, to the extent that I felt a sense of responsibility, that's the sense I felt. Not that anyone else would have to agree with me in 10 years. Like, not that.

C (43:19)

Cause you live with yourself.

B (43:20)

Yeah. Like, I think it would be a little annoying to read a critic who's like, all, you know, a year later was like, nevermind. And like. And partly because there is this impulse to go with the flow right when we read. That's why I love reading reviews that were published in the 80s or the 90s or the 70s. Because when you go back and everyone's saying the politically correct thing and Prince is the most amazing, you know, compare that to. You read Nelson George writing in the 80s about how Prince is maybe a sellout, and you're like, oh, yes, that's a judgment that would have been, like, kind of like, sanded away by time. And I think you understand Prince better and you understand Prince's place in the culture better if you read a piece like that. Precisely because that's the thing that no one would say today.

C (44:04)

Well, not no one.

B (44:06)

Not no one.

C (44:06)

I mean, one of the most incendiary pieces of criticism that like, that somebody had the gall to both write and then have published was about, you know, what some people would describe as our Lord and savior. Beyonce. Beyonce. Cause I'm in the mood to be deep in love how do we fix this? Because this is a very big problem. I got this drink in my cup I'm out of breath we just need to simplify. This piece happens in the wake of her Renaissance film coming out, a film she directed, and it's by Angelica Jade Bastian, runs in New York Magazine, and it's essentially review of the movie. Do you remember this piece? Yeah, of course. People didn't like it. There were a class of people who were upset by it. Not because of the quality of the criticism per se. It was more that Angelica Jade Bastien was practicing criticism at all on a person who, you know, depending on where you sit, doesn't receive enough. I'm gonna read to you toward the end of this Angelica Jade Bastian review of Beyonce's Renaissance movie. It goes like this. When Beyonce uses their aesthetic, she's talking about the Black Panthers here and the black radicals and the black feminists. When Beyonce uses their aesthetic, along with the words of Malcolm X, it behooves audiences and critics alike to hold her to a greater standard. Her apoliticism should not slide by. It should be noted that Renaissance is playing in Israel, which has led to Break My Soul, becoming an anthem of sorts for Israelis waving their flag and screening. Beyonce has yet to make a statement about Palestine, but this silence is itself a statement. Perhaps she isn't apolitical so much as an emblem of black capitalism and wealth that seeks to maintain its stature. A film demonstrates that Black Joy isn't inherently radical. In fact, without a sense of materiality, Black Joy becomes directionless and easy to co opt by the varied forces of power that are fueled by anti blackness. Beyonce is an icon who has carefully maintained a sense of accessibility to anyone, anywhere, for any reason. Black musical traditions may have the potential for radicalism, but Beyonce's neutrality demonstrates they aren't inherently that way. More than anything, Renaissance is a testament that Beyonce is a brand that stands for absolutely nothing beyond its own greatness.

B (46:46)

Mm.

C (46:47)

Now this, to me is the continuation of this tradition that we're kind of dealing with here. And it's a person who, in the reading seems unafraid to say the unsayable about a person who's come to seem and represent and embody very much a meaningful blackness.

B (47:13)

Yeah. And it's an ethical argument and it's a political argument. And therefore it's exciting to read that, to listen to that. And again, I think a lot of times in music criticism, sometimes the most exciting pieces are the pieces that take us away from the practice of making music.

C (47:31)

Right.

B (47:32)

It's hard to, I was gonna say.

C (47:33)

Has left the realm.

B (47:36)

It's hard to generate that kind of excitement when you're talking about, you know, well, this drum hit was sampled from this. And the way they cut out some of the mids and added some of the bass. Like that kind of technical musicological writing tends not to generate that kind of excitement. And so again, this goes back to the idea of rockism. Right. The idea of if you have some sort of frame, and maybe it's an ethical frame, and maybe it's a frame that tells a story of good and bad. Right. You can write a piece about music that feels like it's part of this good versus bad struggle.

C (48:09)

Right? Right.

B (48:10)

And you can do that in the context of what we would call rockism. You can do that in the context of fighting back against rockism. You can do that in the context of making an argument about the co option of black culture. But a lot of times the exciting musical stories kind of do that. And I think one thing that happened in the aftermath of the rockism debate was critics had a hard time finding a new story One answer was this political answer. Right. That one thing music can do is it can fight against injustice and oppression. And you can write a review using that as a frame casting music or the musician as a hero or a villain in that story for simply being.

C (48:50)

The person they are, not necessarily. Not inherently for the music they make. Right?

B (48:56)

Well, yeah. Or you could talk about how the music fits into that. And again, I have some sympathy for that because part of the reason we love music is that it always ends up feeling to us like it's something more than just music. Right? Part of the reason.

C (49:09)

Yeah, sure.

B (49:10)

Part of the reason I loved people shouting and fast guitars back in the day was cause it summoned up this whole world, this whole, like, ethical world of like, well, here's how we're gonna run our concerts and here's what we believe about the meat industry or whatever. Right. And so the idea that music has that power, like a piece like that is a testament to that kind of power, that when we listen to music, often we're thinking about stuff that's beyond the music. And when we're fight a map about music, often we're having these broader fights and that we don't really want a world where people are fighting about music. They're literally fighting about guitar tones and time signatures.

C (49:45)

Right. I think inherently I have been doing this long enough to know where the lines are. And I also think it matters to me. I don't know what your social media relationship is, but I don't really have one. And I don't know if that makes it easier for me to sort of practice whatever kind of criticism I'm doing and not having to worry about how it's gonna make me feel. But I also am never adhamed. I'm attacking people for the people they are. And I think there's a way to do that. You know, it's funny, that piece we were talking about with Beyonce that Angelica Jade Bastian wrote, it comes right up to the line of a kind of ad hominem attack. Right?

D (50:32)

Yeah.

C (50:33)

Or not attack, but I mean, it's a critique of almost the soul of the person. Yeah.

B (50:38)

And I'm not sure that ad hominem is necessarily a bad thing in that sense. Right. Ad hominem is a derogatory way to characterize an argument. If people are having, like, a philosophical debate. But part of what a pop star is selling is their Persona, is their whole thing. So it's not necessarily. It's not necessarily out of bounds to have a personal response to a pop star. To have a. And in fact, if you talk to someone who's not a music critic, as most people are not, they have a lot.

C (51:05)

They have no problem going to town on the personhood of the person.

B (51:10)

For me, there's part of me, probably for part of you, that says, well, let me just make sure I'm actually saying what I actually feel. Let me make sure that what I'm saying is as close as possible to what I would say to my friend. Right. Let me. Let me. Anytime I find myself not saying something that I would say to my friends, that makes me a little bit suspicious of myself.

C (51:28)

Yeah, I mean, I really like that assessment because it does then bring us from the page into the real world. And I've been thinking a lot about, since I read your piece, what the value of the work is. I frequently think about this.

B (51:49)

I know you mean, like, what's the point?

C (51:52)

I am thinking about, like, that Monday after Taylor Swift weekend happens. The weekend after the life of a showgirl drops. And I go to my coffee shop and I get in there and all the people who do the coffee wanna talk about is this album. In this case, it was Gianna and Joy. I'm standing there talking to them, and Gianna's like, tell me about the Taylor album. What'd you think about it? And I'm like, it's okay.

B (52:28)

You're not with where our friend John Caramonica is on this one.

C (52:31)

No, I'm not. But it doesn't matter. The thing that was fun about that moment was. And they really wanted to know what I thought. And that felt fun to me to be able to sit there or stand there in this shop with these people, one of whom was all in and was really thinking about the meeting. She'd thought about the meeting of everything already. She knew what every song meant, who it was probably about. But I don't know. I'm like, oh, this is the point, right? And I probably would not have had the same facility if I hadn't, like, worked through the feelings, through a piece of criticism before I got to those guys.

B (53:09)

Well, yeah, to me, the fun part is the figuring out part of why.

C (53:13)

You mean the sitting down and actually thinking it through?

B (53:17)

Yeah, but also the uncertainty.

C (53:18)

Walking around and thinking.

B (53:19)

Also the uncertainty. I think part of the reason why it was kind of easy for me to step back from doing kind of, like daily music criticism when I did. Part of the reason was, like, I got my dream job. But part of it, right, like, you know, I got to, like, go to New Yorker and write about whatever. It's great, still great. But part of it was I was getting to a point where I was starting to feel like I knew what I thought about pop music.

C (53:42)

Hmm.

B (53:44)

And that's a little less interesting to me. Right. So I liked the idea of taking a step back, thinking about some other stuff, and coming back to it when I was once again feeling a little bit confused or like. Cause my favorite writing to read is when you feel like someone's figuring something out or trying to figure something out.

C (54:00)

Sure, sure.

B (54:01)

And so any. I feel like, oh, I know what I think about this. That's something I don't really wanna write about. I also think, you know, if we go back to talking, when we talked about rockism and the idea that critics who had that background were missing out on something, One thing I did in the wake of writing about rockism was I wrote a book about popular music.

C (54:22)

A very good book called Major Labels. Major Labels. And it just goes through every.

B (54:27)

It goes through seven genres, many genres. But part of what that helped me think about was that that any community of listeners has their own prejudices, their own ideas about what matters and what doesn't, and the right way to do things and the wrong way to do things. And that even as people, that's how we make sense of the world, is by dismissing some of the world, we can't pay attention to everything. We can't say that, like, oh, all music traditions are equally valuable to us. Right. There's always something off screen. There's always something we're not giving due to. And so in that sense, like, it's not just a. It's not a defensive prejudice. Exactly. But it's saying that prejudice is. We don't have any alternative to that. Right. We're always missing out on something. We're always not understanding something because we're using some sort of framework to make sense of whatever it is that we're hearing. And so the question isn't like, oh, are we inclusive or not? The question is like, well, what do we want to ignore? What do we want to devalue?

C (55:25)

So, but where does that leaving you now as a thinker and as a critic, Right? Like, if poptimism is good for anything, it is almost certainly like the celebration of possibility, not the art in and of itself being celebratory because it exists.

B (55:44)

But the other thing is also, like, I was at the NBA YoungBoy concert a few weeks ago in Newark, New Jersey, and like, this is the most hip hop environment you can imagine, right? Like In a sense, this is a really strict, narrow. Everyone there knows all the words. It's all, you know, thugged out people with the lime green bandanas. It was a real. In that sense, culturally, it felt like a really pure audience. Like, everyone liked this one thing. And there's enormous power to that too.

C (56:12)

Oh, sure. I feel like there is a kind of religious experience to that. And you're in your house of worship and this is denominational.

B (56:23)

Yeah, yeah.

C (56:24)

I mean, I don't even know where we are right now in terms of, like, where I'm trying to even get. But I'm just sitting with the idea that, you know, we began this conversation thinking about the ways in which music criticism has gone from, you know, something a lot more direct and blunt and willing to risk negativity to, like, get at assessing the quality of something. To, like, thinking about, like a more existential question about what it even means to practice the form in some way.

B (57:03)

And we've been, I think, circling a little bit around this idea of preconceptions and the idea that you bring preconceptions with you to music. And if you have no preconception, your music criticism is probably not gonna be interesting. Cause it's probably not gonna be coherent. Right, right. But if your preconceptions are too strong, you're gonna maybe miss out on hearing something interesting that would challenge those preconceptions.

C (57:25)

But how did you get to a point where you felt like you had figured it out? And then when did you feel like you had the capacity to forget what you'd figured out?

B (57:35)

Oh, I don't know. Cause music is always changing and there's always something. I'm gonna hear a new song tomorrow that helps me be like, oh, that helps me, like, think about country music slightly differently. Like, there's always some new music. And so, yes, I think it was. It was an illusion. The sense that I had it all figured out. But maybe what it meant, that was that I was getting closer to a point where I wasn't listening as carefully as I needed to be.

C (57:57)

Is it more that you were burnt out?

B (57:59)

I mean, maybe. I mean, burnt out makes it sound like I had a real job that was actually hard. Right. Which many people do.

C (58:04)

Listen, you were times a week that, you know, required you to stay out till 2 o' clock in the morning, 3 o' clock in the morning.

B (58:12)

Sometimes I did that even when not required.

C (58:14)

Right. Well, I mean, that's your problem.

B (58:17)

But yeah, yeah, maybe it was that. It's nice to take a breath. But yes, I never stopped listening to music as much as I do criticism, if you define it broadly as I do, to include what people are saying on TikTok and also like what I do. If I'm writing a profile and I mention something about the music in there. Yeah, we're all practicing it all the time. As long as we care about music, we'll argue about it, Right? We'll do the critical thing of having strong and differing opinions. It's just a question of where those opinions appear. Might change, but I don't think we're running out of opinions.

C (58:53)

No, just arguing about how they should be expressed is a different story. Kalifa, I think we did it. Did we do it? I think we, we solved music criticism. We told a story of how we got from at least Robert Crisco to right now. And you made me really excited to, like, see what the next 10 years of music criticism looks like.

B (59:22)

Thanks, man.

C (59:23)

Thanks for being here.

B (59:23)

This was fun.

C (59:24)

Appreciate.

B (59:43)

Mont Blanc invites you to use life's quiet moments to pause, reflect, and put pen to paper.

C (59:49)

Chapter one oh, no, no, no, no. Part one Perfect. The mountains are impressive. Oh, I wish you were here to see them. Dear Diary, meet my new writing companion, the Meisterstuck.

B (60:05)

For every journey, the perfect companion awaits Mont Blanc. Let's write. Visit montblanc.com for exquisitely crafted writing instruments, leather goods, and more.

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Hi, I'm Solana Pine. I'm the director of video at the New York Times. For years, my team has made videos that bring you closer to big news moments. Videos by Times journalists that have the expertise and training to help you understand what's going on. You might have seen these on social media or browsing the New York Times. Now we're bringing those videos to you in the Watch tab in the New York Times app. It's a dedicated video feed where you know you can trust what you're seeing. All the videos there are free for anyone to watch. You don't have to be a subscriber. Download the New York Times app from your favorite app store to start watching. And if you're more of an audio person, there's a Listen tab, too.

C (61:03)

This episode of Cannonball was produced by Janelle Anderson, Elissa Dudley, John White, and Austin Mitchell. It was edited by Lisa Tobin. This this episode was also engineered by Daniel Ramirez. It was recorded by Matty Masiello, Kyle Grandillo and Nick Pittman. Dan Powell, Diane Wong. They did the original music. Again, our theme music, as always, is by Justin Ellington. Bobby Doherty took the photo for our show art. Our videotape is Brooke Minters and Felice Leon. This episode was filmed by Alfredo Chiarappa and Lauren Prewitt. It was edited by by Jeremy Rockland and Eddie Costas. We're on YouTube. If you have not watched and subscribed yet, I. I don't know what to tell you. It's out there. Please do it. Thanks for listening.