Letters to the Editor
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More of this!! Try--at least TRY, Salon!!
White guys with guitars. YAWN
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why either/or
Why does an artist have to be dark serious and intense or playful and putting on a show? Can't a person have dark thoughts and not take the thoughts or themselves seriously?
Do we need to put Gnarls Barkley in the Depeche Mode or the Lindsay Lohan bucket?
I prefer to think of the music as complicated.
Life's a mess, funny and sad often at the same time. Can't our music and our performers also be like that?
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Clowns?
"Hip-hop's Biggest Clowns," eh? But it's not really a hip-hop album. R & B, sure, but there's not a trace of rapping on this record, and only a little bit on the first record. I guess it was a grabber of a headline, but maybe people can be playful and introspective. Even "hip-hop" artists.
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Well it got them YOUR attention, didn't it?
Otherwise they'd just be a middleing R+B duo with no special claim to fame other than they sound like white boys sounding like black boys.
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context, please
I would've liked to see more exploration of the "indie pandering" to which the author offhandedly refers. Unlike him, I didn't think their cover of "Gone Daddy Gone" displayed any kind of brilliance; on the contrary, it was a blipped-up, shiny pop bastardization of the original's nervy angst. In Gnarls Barkley's hands, it operated as a nod to its target audience: See, kids? We like some of the same white music you do! It's a trip Kanyeezy fell into when he sampled Can and Daft Punk for two of last year's most sluggish hip-pop tracks. 70 years of recorded popular music have proven that white audiences are more than happy to meet black artists on their own terms. Even if I assume that yes, Cee-Lo is finally making the music he's always wanted, I'm slightly mortified to admit it's nowhere near as exciting as a Goodie Mob cut. Most of St. Elsewhere was thematically comprised of a navel-gazing, goth-lite outlook that wouldn't be out of place in a Tim Burton first draft - or a She Wants Revenge album. The only exceptions were "Crazy" - fresh sound, facile "aren't-we-artistic-people-like-insane-or-something" message - and "Smiley Faces," which leavened a life-sucks message with existential bomp.
And Danger Mouse - it's appropriate that he sprung to mainstream consciousness on the strength of a mash-up album that bore no authorial stamp. That's the problem with his production - it's so glossy, the imagination can't grab hold. There's no sonic trademark. All his projects have been like this; the man is the epitome of the jack-of-all, master-of-none condition.
Hip-hop (to name just one "black" genre) is rife with the kinds of angst Lewis seems to dig (and the Cure/Depeche Mode comparisons are, like, so trite, dude)... and you don't even have to watch these guys' muddled visual mummery to get to it. And there's also the matter of bands like Bloc Party, Pretty Girls Make Graves, and the Dears that similarly rock a "post-racial" aesthetic (black/brown people doing "white" music), only they take treat rock as more than consumer enticement. Props to the boys for being so weird (self-consciously or no) and still maintaining a pop presence for two albums, but without an thematic ambiguity that's more than playful, I can't get too excited.
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use your words...
WIGGERS? Please. I know that you are all trying to be hip and use "real life" vernacular. This word is as offensive as the "N-Word" in as much as it is a variation on it. I know that you would never say the "N-Word" in your articles in a derogotory way, I would hope that you refrain from wiggers in the future as well. Would you refer to kikes? Spicks? Wops? Probably not in mildly patronizing/demeaning ways.... There are many other ways of talking about this demographic.
Instead of "While wiggers all across America have been aching for street credibility, Cee-Lo channels suburban boredom." How about : "While white suburban teens all across America have aching for street credibility, Cee-Lo channels their boredom."
I expect more from you guys! Come on!
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hip-hop
(sigh) Here comes the hip-hop debate:
So, hip-hop is a culture. And just because an album doesn't have rapping on it, it doesn't mean that the album is not of the hip-hop aesthetic. Mary J. Blige is a hip-hop singer. Erykah Badu says that she considers herself a hip-hop artist. It's a sensibility, not a matter of an MC spitting 16 bars.
This usually has to be explained to people outside of the culture, and the whole debate is a red flag that the person arguing the opposite position is outside of the culture. No offense; this is just (yet another) education into how hip-hoppers view our own culture.
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Cee Lo...
He's been around forever as those of us who follow hip-hop know. He's always had an over-the-top persona. I'm just glad he and Mouse have created a band that sells beyond what you normally hear on BET.
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"Wigger" is funny in the same way "Red State Update" is funny
If you can't laugh at David Chappelle's skits, a man in a wedding dress, Rudy in drag, or "Red State Update", you might be offended by the term wigger. Otherwise, it's a pretty funny term.
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Well, I've certainly been taken to task...
For being white and liking Gnarls Barkley. Glad I had a chance to be properly shamed.
Salon editors: Is the word 'wigger' really necessary or acceptable?
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LESS of this!! Please put it away?
Music critique? Ick!
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I'd trade it all
for the goodie mob of ten years ago. I don't think I listened to any albums more in high school than soul food and still standing. Oddly, they seem like far more radical albums compared to gnarls, in the sense that they bucked mainstream expectations of the time.
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more pop, less substance
i was never a big fan of goodie mob, but cee-lo's solo albums were great. just as eclectic and off-beat as these gnarls barkley albums, just bigger and more enjoyable. even with more tracks there were fewer i skipped (as opposed to every song that's not "crazy" or "smiley faces" on st. elsewhere). i know he complained in his lyrics about not selling more albums, but i've never been a fan of andre 3000, seeing cee-lo and danger mouse emulate him is not fulfilling.