College Dropout On First Listen

College Dropout marked the beginning of a golden age of writing about music on the internet, and especially rap. At this point, the outsized musical personalities musico-cultural trends became almost more interesting to talk about than the music itself. It’s not like Kanye started that, but let’s say that it’s similar to how Harold Bloom argued that Shakespeare invented the modern human. I’d argue that Kanye West helped invent the modern music critic.

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Do Year-End Lists Matter?

Of all people, based on skill and inclination, music writers should be the best at ranking the year’s releases. Somehow, though, instead of bringing a diverse set of experience, listening habits, and critical proclivities, most year-end lists end up the same.

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"Adult Contemporary" Is The New "Hipster"

The situation makes you wonder if aging musicians don’t rather wish they’d gone to medical school or learned a trade; in very few other professions does getting better at your job mean becoming less acclaimed or relevant.

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Is This It? Why The Strokes' Debut Looms Larger Than Ever

It just seems that Is This It? just is an affirmation of the core values — effortless cool channeled through Fender amps for about three minutes — of classic "cool" rock, and a failure to buy into that sort of noble lie is going to be a failure to appreciate The Strokes.

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Pretty Good Looking For A Girl

St. Vincent’s project, as it were, is to document one person’s world, and she does so to amazing success. Her self is projected upon the listener in four dimensions, concretely. It cuts through the bullshit idealization of the feminine that’s so long hounded musicians throughout the ostensibly more progressive world of indie music.

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An Excessive Attempt To Watch The Throne

Like, the album is about wealth. But it's also kind of not about wealth, you know? Seeing a pair of really rich dudes rapping about Margiela jackets and Murciélagos is not actually about wealth. It's about the crushing poverty that basically literally everybody else experiences.

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Show Ke$ha Some Respect

“TiK ToK” is a brash, grating song. It’s also insanely catchy. While its message isn’t really deep, every atom of the song works toward constructing an entire world. You rarely encounter this purity of purpose in music of any genre. It’s a very smart song about a fairly stupid topic.

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Love the Music, Ignore the Message: How Critics Are Failing Odd Future

By the time they played their first New York show, the Odd Future story was at maximum volume, and had three notable features.

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#ITSAPROCESS

Back when Kanye still gave interviews, he told a reporter that “Yeah, a whole part about being a human is to be a hypocrite."

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Masculine Feminine: Have One On Her

Joanna Newsom has one of those timeless stories. Literally: The press about her just doesn’t change that much.

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