I promise I will get tired of shadowing Reynolds. Please no one flame me. I have a weak heart. Jess, keep it to yourself.
Reynolds on the other hand has the hide of a rhinocerous. I’d really suffer if Nick Southall laid into me like that. For that matter, if any chap who didn’t know better laid into me like that. Not that Nick doesn’t know better. Reynolds seems to find the whole thing jolly amusing and really rather stimulating (takes off his half-moons etc). He actually didn’t seem to find it necessary to outright defend himself, just paced round his high-backed leather armchair, leant with his back to the roaring hearth (twirling aforementioned specs).
Remember how Wire got sick of being asked to perform their early tracks? They hired as their opening act a dedicated covers band called ex-Lion Tamers who played all their early numbers (note-for-note) before they came on. Do I have to spell this out for you? I’ve gone through Nick’s salient points and done a point-by-point riposte. I would smooth this out into a bit of sparkling prose if I thought it would be any more interesting to read:
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1) Simon Reynolds think's Prefuse 73 is crap. Simon Reynolds says that Ludacris "creams [Prefuse 73] on just about every front, including riddimological invention."
Yeah poor old Scott! While I bet he could do with with Ludacris’s lucre, he isn’t short of people telling him how bloody great he is. Ludacris on the other hand could do with a little back massage from clever folks.
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2) That bit about Reynolds being as keen as Freud to pigeon-hole stuff.
I weep. I thought it was only musicians who complained about being pigeonholing (on and on and on and on and on and on).
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3) What’s wrong with music without sociological relevance?
No such thing as music without sociological relevance. It’s so easy to be blind to one’s own implicitly-held bourgeois agenda.
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4) That bit where Nick says Simon’s patronising with his “Hope lies with the Proles” approach.
Er, desire criss-crossing social, racial and class boundaries. Champagne in the dancehall. Folks with gold vomit stains sown into their jeans. U2 dragging their leather jackets out of the back of their Cadillac. Blah blah blah.
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5) Simon wouldn’t like it because it’s a white guy doing arty hip-hop.
Er, Ardkore being mix-race. He did like the Recloose LP!
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6) Black music beyond tampering by those with privelleged backgrounds.
Well it is a bit naughty!
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Yeah well Prefuse are OK. I did like the Phoenecia stuff on Schematic more (different crew, same square root). I had a secret history mapped out for them (which I know they were riffing on) via Miami Bass like DJ Battlecat’s DJ N Effect, Ladi Luv’s Good to the last (Dub) and Dynamix II’s Purple Beats. That Miami Bass stuff is pure Techno. Dave Tompkins might have spotted it but (maybe?) he’s too myopic a hip-hop head.
As for Ludacris, well nothing did it better for me than Southern Hospitality.
Posted by Woebot at May 14, 2003 09:13 PM