I don't think it matters if a producer is considered "all hype" when he works on something that moves as many copies as that Gorillaz album did. You can chalk it up to the hard work that others did on the same album, but you're still left with the fact that this is popular music that people enjoy despite who's behind the boards and whether he's trendy.
The precalculated argument doesn't really work out when you can read in recent interviews that many of the songs -- like "Crazy" -- were pulled off in one vocal take. This is one reasonably popular producer who has some cartoony and indie rap cache working with a talented rapper/vocalist who has his own cartoon past (i.e. Adult Swim appearances). Claiming it's a precalculated or cynical move is reading more into it than the artists have. I don't think there's anything particularly bad or lacking in credibility about music that has an audience made up of pop fans, indie rock fans, and cartoon fans. Debating about whether it's "worthy" of being liked by hip-hop fans is more pedantic bullshit.
While I can see Geoff Barrow being bitter or disliking this sort of thing, he's not that many degrees removed artist-wise and they really have different goals. Just because his music has some artistic pretensions and what he believes is a pedigree doesn't mean that other music can't have different goals or different influences. To his credit, there is a lot of music that sounds like there's a big "chill-out trip-hop" button, but that's more a function of artists who would list him as an influence not bearing out the intellectual fruit he believes he's seeded -- or he views his music as a conglomerate and not an influence in itself... diluting the source, maybe?
The precalculated argument doesn't really work out when you can read in recent interviews that many of the songs -- like "Crazy" -- were pulled off in one vocal take. This is one reasonably popular producer who has some cartoony and indie rap cache working with a talented rapper/vocalist who has his own cartoon past (i.e. Adult Swim appearances). Claiming it's a precalculated or cynical move is reading more into it than the artists have. I don't think there's anything particularly bad or lacking in credibility about music that has an audience made up of pop fans, indie rock fans, and cartoon fans. Debating about whether it's "worthy" of being liked by hip-hop fans is more pedantic bullshit.
While I can see Geoff Barrow being bitter or disliking this sort of thing, he's not that many degrees removed artist-wise and they really have different goals. Just because his music has some artistic pretensions and what he believes is a pedigree doesn't mean that other music can't have different goals or different influences. To his credit, there is a lot of music that sounds like there's a big "chill-out trip-hop" button, but that's more a function of artists who would list him as an influence not bearing out the intellectual fruit he believes he's seeded -- or he views his music as a conglomerate and not an influence in itself... diluting the source, maybe?
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