They played an indoor festival in Portugal once. It was some band I forgot, Laika, then Asian Dub Foundation pre-"Rafi's Revenge" (awesome), them, and Teenage Fanclub (boring). Place was barely 10% full. These Brazilian teens saw I was on my own and asked if I wanted to hang out. They were big fans of SM so we moved to the front row. After they played their song about The Fonz, I realised I should have stayed on my own.
A lot of "Destroyers of hiphop" records are now lauded as classics. I'm old enough to remember "The Chronic" and "Doggystyle" being labelled as such, and we all know where they stand in the pantheon nowadays. Coincidentally, I was listening to "Reasonable Doubt" today, and it went through the same path. Well, maybe not everywhere, but in certain circles it did. In my country, a lot of people never got over Daisy Age and Native Tongues aesthetic, and since some of them were critics, that stopped a lot of hiphop from coming through in the musical dork circles. I realised I turned out different because my school - and I do love De La and Tribe - was the aforementioned Dre and Snoop, as well as records by Wu-Tang, Mobb Deep, Onyx, Jeru The Damaja, Nas, etc, that I bought on a couple of NY trips. Things are finally changing and hiphop is bigger there than it ever was. Be it with national - a lot of it has dropped the "Undergrounder and realer than thou" aesthetic of the early years - or international names. I'm sad that living in the U.K. will make me miss a festival featuring Future and Pusha T among others, for example. Anyways, maybe in 20 years Lil' Yachty will be the classic, and a lot of us will be the moaners. That being said, still can't stand "I'll be Missing You". Sorry.
TBH I never understood the "Mmmbop" hatred. Ok, the song itself could turn annoying really quick. But I truly have no time disparaging what was essentially 3 children living the dream of being pop stars for a short period. At least with Bieber we know for sure he is a world class douche, whose "Despacito" bit sounds like the Hare Krishna.
Only heard Kamaiyah. Love Kamaiyah. Like mumblers like Future and Migos. Have no patience for Yachty, despite being pretty open-minded in the hiphop context. Should I explore further?
Self-important self-obsessed teenage album turned into a stage show by the director of a movie about a self-important self-obsessed teenager? What could go wrong?
Honestly, I am not surprised. I have for a long time penned them down as self-serving hypocrites. Singing songs like "Unpretty", as if they could actually know what it's like to be bullied for that reason, did not help.
"back to a hotel to hang out." - Hang out? They seriously thought young testosterone-ridden rappers just wanted to hang out at the hotel? That would be naivety on the highest scale. We might never know the truth, but if he doesn't lose his fame with jail time, he will continue to prey on groupies. Of course, if he is found guilty, jail's too good.
It will always mean epilogue of The Office UK for me. Didn't know they had a different name in the US. The synth riff from "Don't Go" was my first ever riff-crush
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