I was all excited to show my girlfriend Barton Fink because she had never seen it and knew NOTHING about it: given how few movies there are like that, where the movie basically changes direction halfway through, and how few people know nothing about them, I couldn't wait to settle in with her as she watched what was,…

zappa
I can't believe nobody has mentioned Frank Zappa here.

*lexicondevil, you're right on target as usual. I think I'm a little more sympathetic to the 20c avant-garde tradition than you are — I consider Schaeffer and Grandmaster Flash to be kindred spirits (although neither would have been my example, necessarily). I tend to argue for the real pioneers (that metaphor…

ZFORZENDEJAS, thanks for your thoughtful comment. I disagree with you, and I don't think the difference is just semantic. The way I look at it is, what we think of as a genre is really like a landscape of musical resources that have would up there as a result of various philosophical, cultural, and technological…

hello! glad i came in to check the dying embers of this thread…

cool. thanks for the response. of those Tricia Rose is the only one whose book i've read — i'll check out the others. You might be interested in music theorist Adam Krims's _Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity_ — it's academic, yes, and "poetics" there means something different than "poetry" per se, but you might…

Aiyyo lexicondevil —

"inter-wu period" is a FABULOUS turn of phrase.

Captain Beefheart

Captain Beefheart

Well said, lebron.

Gee thanks… "Heaterz" is a really special song for me. I think True Master's production is fabulous, and it has strong verses by U-God, Deck, Rae, and Cappa; but what's really important about the song is that it hints to what ODB would have been like as a "normal rapper." What I mean is, he's such a force of nature…

Blue and Court and Spark are twin peaks, as it were; anyway with an artist like Joni Mitchell there is also so much quality work dispersed throughout a long career that it just doesn't qualify for these discussions. Producing tons of good music, the best of which was your earlier music, is not the same as peaking…

well, OK, I was a little hasty perhaps. I should have said "save it for right-wing talk radio." And kept my dick out of it, so to speak. I apologize.

Hey Unregistered Chauncey Grizzly — I'm amazed you are able to type so well while my dick is in your mouth. Save it for the Klan meeting.

Hi everybody! (Hi, RIP Rizzuto!)

I meant the first Ghostface joint (1996), ie Ironman. Point holds. I make some other comments re Liquid Swords below.

Wow, Liquid Swords, really? I don't know the order in which the three 1995 albums were released but certainly the first ODB joint (1996) is stronger than Liquid Swords.

Don't be silly — that certainly adds something to the debate. I'll agree that "The W" is underrated, although I think that's true of almost every Wu-Tang joint after 1993 (don't get me started on the Bobby Digital albums, believe me).

Hi Jorobot!