The word "hype" wasn't enough to describe the media assault on the sprawling 80-minute To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), another meticulously crafted album that employed legions of writers, producers and musicians (including jazz pianist Robert Glasper and jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington). Six people wrote Wesley's Theory, including George Clinton, and four produced it, including Flying Lotus. Nine people are credited as writers for the funk-fest King Kunta, making it de facto a collage. The producers threw in more live instruments, resulting in a sound that is more revivalist than innovative, but also a sound that helps the general theatrical atmosphere. For better and for worse, The Blacker the Berry is the epitome of this emphatically pointless but fashionable avant-jazz-rap music. I begins as an olf-fashioned synth-pop hit of the 1980s before it begins to sound like a James Brown parody (with the lyrics "the number one rapper in the world" and "i love myself") accented by a jovial piano figure. The best psychodrama is possibly one of the simplest songs, the melodic funk-soul These Walls, and the best political sermon the equally straightforward funk ditty Hood Politics. But the music is secondary to the histrionics and it doesn't matter that the catchy and danceable Alright stands in opposition of the industrial beat that derails Momma, a fact that could account for at least eclecticism. This is a superficial and, ultimately, middle-of-the-road album from an artist who lacks the visceral energy of Public Enemy and Tackhead while also lacking the poetic depth of Kanye West and the musical genius of El-P. He tries to be all of them at once, but maybe he would be most credible if he were just himself: a brilliant script-writer of fictionalized real-life stories: the Christian parable How Much a Dollar Cost presents God disguised as a homeless man, and Mortal Man interviews the ghost of dead rapper 2Pac.
Best scaruffi reviews
memes aside this man's ability to be objective and cut through all the bullshit is outstanding
especially when music is so fucking littered with hype trains
why bother pointing it out though
everyone knows, the fans don't care and everyone else ignores it completely
The genre-hopping Lemonade (Parkwood Entertainment, 2016) was another attempt to promote her to auteur. An industry artifact with no personality, Beyonce swings between the playful reggae of Hold Up and the gospel hymn Freedom via the piano elegy Sandcastles. Best is probably Don't Hurt Yourself, which is quintessential Aretha Franklin. The collaboration with James Blake yields two of the most boring ballads of his career. All the media hype does little to make this album more than a marketing project. In fact, it's even less musical than Beyonce. She's a mediocre singer and an awful songwriter, and no amount of production work can fully hide that. The accompanying video includes spoken-word interludes of poetry by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire.
That's a good review of TPAB. Maybe too lenient, as it was a piece of shit.
The fact that...
>She's a mediocre singer and an awful songwriter, and no amount of production work can fully hide that.
KEK
>Chicago's rapper Chance the Rapper (Chancelor Bennett) was still a teenager when he released his first mixtape, 10 Day (2012). He became a local celebrity overnight and proceeded to put out a more meticulous mixtape, Acid Rap (2013), notable for its hodgepodge of soul, gospel, acid jazz and house elements. The comic festive clownish fanfare Good Ass Intro , the articulate playful elegance of Cocoa Butter Kisses collide with the convoluted introverted multi-part suite Pusha Man. A voice that seems to be coming from a vintage record introduces Juice over a saloon piano, the beginning of a dialogue among voices that seem to belong to different ages. It takes very little music to ignite his verbal talent, like in the indolent nursery rhyme Smoke Again, although sometimes it would help (the anemic Acid Rain). Elsewhere, the music seriously enhances the words, like the merry-go-round of arrangements that fuels the insane altercation of Chain Smoker. His meandering intelligence can transform a song in subtle manners, like when Everybody's Something shifts from childish rant to gospel-ish hymn over martial hyper-bass. The album toys with the pensive gospel singalong Interlude That's Love, with the jumping pseudo-reggae Favorite Song and with countless other ideas; and it still manages to deliver a coherent vision out of a maze of influences and detours.
>while also lacking the poetic depth of Kanye West
lol
I wash I was paid money to write senseless drivel about other peoples work.
Scaruffi does it for free
He has the oddest tastes of any critic I can think of
Look at the scores he gives Talking Heads albums
Also what's with his boner for Pere Ubu? He acts as if it's the greatest album ever.
I love how much he loves the Cramps as well, I think it's funny that someone with such "sophistication" would adore the sleazy, simple, raunchy band with a penchant for 50's horror.
What's weird is that he isn't just a contrarian. Like he gives some albums that are critically acclaimed really great scores (Double Nickles on the Dime, for instance) and while he's famous for his Beatles review, he still gave Sgt Peppers and Abby Road relatively high scores.
It would be easy to pin down Scaruffi as a contrarian, and I think a lot of the time he is, but I just think he's a man with really bizarre and unpredictable taste in music.
scaruffi is not paid, his site doesn't even have ads.
The thing is that he's completely subjective and definitely contrarian, seeing how he hates everything that has a marketing budget, but his reviews look and feel very objective, like he's telling you how he's right and everyone else is wrong
meant to reply to
Again though, look at how he rates Kanye's albums. Or Abbey Road and Sgt Peppers, which are probably the Beatles two most popular albums. His scores are all over the place. He's also got an affinity for hardcore punk, which I find pretty interesting.
Basically he contradicts himself all the time. It's ridiculous that he rated Abbey Road and Sgt Pepper so highly when he despises Beatles so much. Doesn't think much of Black Sabbath, while critics hated them, likes AC/DC *because* critics hated them. Hates Radiohead for being too synthetic and artificial and having strong production. Apparently he originally rated Radiohead even lower, but increased the ratings when he saw how influential they are... He shouldn't be taken seriously, he's all over the place
Why does this dunce have a thread up on Sup Forums everyday? Why do you guys take him seriously? He's no more qualified to critique music than anyone on this board.
>Apparently he originally rated Radiohead even lower, but increased the ratings when he saw how influential they are..
false
>the poetic depth of Kanye West
This idiot doesn't review, he just cries about "hype" all the fucking time
>t. triggered nu-male
What surprises me about Scaruffi is how lowly he rated Yeezus, that album is a pleb filter so it seems he might be a bit of a plen.
>Doesn't think much of Black Sabbath, while critics hated them, likes AC/DC *because* critics hated them
Seriously? You aren't making any sense bruh... there might be different factors involved??
Sure but he always focuses on what other critics say. Beatles, Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, Radiohead, Kendrick Lamar, Beyonce, David Bowie, AC/DC, Kanye and probably many others that I'm forgetting. To him, that's an important thing. And dont you think that Black Sabbath is better or more important than AC/DC? Because that's how he supposedly rates things - from a historian's perspective, not a music critic's perspective
Agreed, if he were a truly "objective" critic/historian why the fuck would he mention critical response?
listen to it again, it's aged very poorly. Scaruffi is truly a visionary
>why would a music critic/historian mention critical response
damn i have no idea, f a m. you made me really think
Yeezus is just shittier Dalek/Death Grips with a couple of watered-down Grime beats sprinkles for variety.
>why the fuck would he mention critical response?
maybe because he disliked those artists so much that he can't believe they were so much hyped?
don't tell me you never disliked a classic and thought "wtf were they thinking??".
Scaruffi is like the anti pitchfork in the sense that he's against the fluff that they base their reviews off of (ex. Hyping up a corporate rap album as the greatest album of all time without telling us why, giving mark kozelek a 6 because he said something mean about women) but I think in exchange he also lacks a heart or any ability to have a fun whimsy in music. There's gotta be some balance between the two extremes.
You can't say he's objective and then that he complains about critics
>he also lacks a heart
agree. He called Bowie on Blackstar "pathetic and delirious". I get not liking Bowie, but I don't get why he's so mad and salty about it
>Bowie crooning melodramatic in Lazarus (from his Broadway musical about an alien who falls in love) or romantic in Dollar Days is either delirious and pathetic, certainly not entertaining.
when you read it in its context it doesn't sound so cruel, scaruffi just disliked bowie crooning.
>This is trivial "music" that any amateur could make, except that most amateurs would be ashamed to release it.
he's definitely salty. Like he holds a grudge from 40 years ago
...
The formal perfection of their melodies reached the sublime in 1967 with two 45s: the baroque/electronic Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever, released in February, an absolute masterpiece that never reached the top of the charts, the hard rocking Paperback Writer, and the childish Yellow Submarine, a mosaic full of sound gags and barroom choruses. Penny Lane represents the apex of the Manneristic style: Vaudevillian rhythm, hypnotic melody, Renaissance trumpets, folkloristic flutes and triangles. Strawberry Fields Forever is a densely-arranged psychedelic experiment (backward vocals, mellotron, harp, timpani, bongos, trumpet, cello).
So, with the usual delay, a year later the Beatles gave it a try. Abbey Road (1969), is a vaudeville-style operetta that combines every genre in a steady stream of melodies and structurally perfect arrangements. It is the summa encyclopaedica of their career. It is a series of self-mocking vignettes, mimicking now the circus worker (Maxwell's Silver Hammer), now the crooner (Oh Darling, a parody a la Bonzo Band), now the baby-sitter (Octopus's Garden, in the silly vein of Yellow Submarine), culminating in the overwhelming suite of side B. Starting with the primitive exuberance of You Never Give Me Your Money (a mini rock opera worthy of early Zappa) and Mean Mr Mustard, the suite comes in thick and fast with Polytheme Pam and She Came In Thru The Bathroom Window, and dies melancholically with yet another goliardic chorus, Carry That Weight (that reprises the motifs of Money and I Want You). It is the apotheosis of the belated music hall entertainer in Paul McCartney. And it is, above all, a masterpiece of production, of sound, of sonic puzzles.
blah blah
what the fuck
Now I'm convinced he's delirious and bipolar
He is unlike sheeples can separate musician from his music.
so what? he never said that beatles sucks, he thinks they were ultra overrated.
Songs From The Hills (Wergo, 1979), written on a hill in the arid area of New Mexico in the summer of 1976, is a collection of ten aphorisms without accompaniment inspired by Indian folklore, each of which Monk plays a different character With a different voice: Mesa is an anguished lament for the sterility of the desert that crosses with spasmodic tension more than one voice, Jade a trepidant monolithic monologue of old, Descending a stridula nenia-dialogue for two Japanese voices, Prairie Ghost an imitation of Wind blowing and the lines of the animals that emerge from nothing in the spectral silence of the night, Bird Code a radiant trilogy, Silo a moody vomiting voice.
The great variety of registers, and the psychological attention Monk interprets, is a new kind of recital. Each lied is not for the melody (banal) or orchestration (non existent), but for the evolutions singing in itself.
The model established in this work will be repeated with successes more striking and aristocratic in subsequent compositions. The fundamental paradigm of his music is the cantilene, one of the most primordial musical forms of humanity. And, in fact, each piece contains something archaic, which reaches the listener through the millennia as something already known. Monk, like most American composers from Cage onwards, works to reduce music to its elementary components, but, unlike others, Monk takes as its reference not the technical-scientific structure of sound, but the emotional tone structure , Or its psychological aspect.
>opinion
>objective
oh boy
>Poetic depth of Kanye West
Listen, i do like his music, but let's not pretend his lyrics are deep
i might not agree with him on some things but he's the best music reviewer still alive, and he says what he really thinks
Okay.
Neu! (Brain, 1972), their first album, was produced, as the next, by Conrad Plank (the same person who had produced the first Kraftwerk record). It brought to rock music the concepts of iteration and impressionism, which had already been mildly toyed with in the works of other cosmic musicians of those years. The songs are essentially a continuum of rhythmic impulses, based solely on percussion and an incessant repetition of a fierce percussive pattern. In practice, the songs become rituals of the deconstruction of sound: the relentless, obsessive beat favors the emergence of details. The method is also used to enhance the neurosis of each piece. Fusing the “dark” tribalism of Kraftwerk and the romantic futurism of Popol Vuh, Neu! contains songs with a certain hyper-realism and an anguished intensity reminiscent of Wagner. The album contains six purely instrumental suites. They are the degenerated, dilated daughters of psychedelia (the reserved guitar playing and coy and slow pulse of Weissensee); this music brings an absurd sound to arrhythmia (Sonderangebot is an exercise on noise in a cosmic void, and Lieber Honig is a voiceless essay created by hand in an equally spooky atmosphere of random sounds). The supersonic vortex of Hallogallo is a pure percussive soundscape of drum machines and guitars, barely disturbed by agreements of minimalism and cacophonous noise. The ten minutes of Negativland contain a blend of expressionism and demonic tribalism, predating heavy metal; this song is an orgy of evil instincts, a whirlwind of daily, psychoanalytic noises (jackhammers, furious guitar distortions, and an ultrasonic syncope). With this austere and hypnotic masterpiece, the Teutonic tradition (that of the desperate Gothic) is combined with psychological tensions of modern times in a demonic ritual. With this record, Neu! invented the "motorik beat;” a propulsive beat and steady pace, which turns the artists’ anguish into a sonic trance.
Why do you guys care so much about this douchebag and Fantano?
t. assblasted cuck
he's a gay piece of fucking horse shit so he deserves to die. He looks like a dildo.
>I think it's funny that someone with such "sophistication" would adore the sleazy, simple, raunchy band with a penchant for 50's horror.
Scaruffi has always been more than okay with unpretentious rock music. He loves New York Dolls, Guns and Roses, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, The Rolling Stones (all get 7.5 or higher rated albums).
>let's not pretend hip hop lyrics are deep
fixed
Because Scaruffi has legitimately great taste (he actually knows what artistic rock music is), unlike Fantano (which just rates popular albums and flavor of the month stuff).
>anti pitchfork
>Hyping up a corporate rap album as the greatest album of all time [sic]
You do know Pitchfork gave Dark Twisted a 10 BNM, right?
>And dont you think that Black Sabbath is better or more important than AC/DC?
They are about the same according to Scaruffi.
Also, Black Sabbath's inventiveness has been greatly overstated.
>It's ridiculous that he rated Abbey Road and Sgt Pepper so highly when he despises Beatles so much
He despised the Beatles for other reasons. You would know if you actually read the Beatles page.
>Also what's with his boner for Pere Ubu? He acts as if it's the greatest album ever.
Because they were very original, they made Post Punk around 1975 for fucks sake.
>I think it's funny that someone with such "sophistication" would adore the sleazy, simple, raunchy band with a penchant for 50's horror.
Becuase he rates music like art critics rate visual art. Also, there is even raunchier and higher rated by Scaruffy than Cramps (Butthole Surfers, one of the top 50 for him).
>while he's famous for his Beatles review, he still gave Sgt Peppers and Abby Road relatively high scores.
Because he's critizing another aspect of Beatles, not just their music.