Cocaine Blunts gets meta, criticizes goldrush/flavor of the month blogging, and notes the viral marketing aspect of so much rap blogging. From the blog:
Despite often being branded with the term “tastemaker,†most rap bloggers (and most music writers by and large) have no taste. [1] And I don’t mean they have bad taste. That would be the least of their problems. I mean no taste. Their relationship with rap music is solely about finding what’s hot (the tastes of others) and either reinforcing it or tearing it down. Taste is not a binary decision. I want to read writing from people who are actively going out of their way to find rap music that they aren’t yet familiar with. And when they do find it, I want them to gut that shit and wear it’s skin like a new fur coat. Literarily, of course.
I think a lot of indie types went through something similar during the late stages of the rockism debate. Most critics interpreted popism as an excuse to celebrate a lot of garbage artists, rather than to celebrate what was good about them and trash the rest. When I read critics who struggled to accept, or wholeheartedly rejected popism, I find that their reviews still hedge a bit: the poptomist school was to rock criticism what the Gang of Four was to the Cultural Revolution.
As for the pullquote above, it’s difficult to listen to music in the way Cocaine Blunts wants us to. Music criticism demands new material all the time, new pitches, new angles, new artists and genres. It’s the Great Nothing come to sweep clean the face of the Earth. With so many hungry writers out there, whether they’re freelance or bloggers, it’s hard to keep up with the Joneses. There’s not always the luxury of living in a record before you review it. Trust me, I miss listening to music that way. But keep in mind: the more you listen to music, the easier it is to tell whether you like it or not, regardless of intense publicists and elbo.ws hype.
[As I finished this up I’m giving Dan Deacon’s Spiderman of the Rings a listen. This is what a day on noise board looks like in terms of hype cycle. Music — it’s a love/hate game any way you play it.]