Amazing skills but ... appalling taste

[luka]

out to my main man Frosty Jack

Got pissed off and ripped Pamela Lee's tits off
And smacked her so hard I knocked her clothes backwards like Kris Kross
I smoke a fat pound of grass and fall on my ass, faster than a fat bitch
Who sat down too fast
Come here, slut!
"Shady, wait a minute, that's my girl, dawg!"
I don't give a fuck, God sent me to piss the world off!

 

[Corpsey]

Another aspect was his voice, which stood out a mile. I first heard him on Westwood, had no idea he was white, and it still made your ears prick up. The voice and the "shock" lyrics. He sounded like an evil cartoon.

 

[luka]

yeah it sounded completely different to everything else that.

 

[Corpsey]

That style of super fast rapping was recently demonstrated to horrific effect in this tune that Dwayne the Rock Johnson raps (badly) on



Makes me think there's some sort of connection between that style of rapping and intense exercise, which makes sense.

Rappers often compare themselves to athletes. There's different ways you can read that. Athletes like Ronaldo can pull off amazing, beautiful physical feats but there's also the side of them which is remorselessly drilling the same moves again and again and again and being able to do 6,000 keepups (or whatever they're called, I'm so out of my depth here)

 

[Corpsey]

And ofc this sort of concentration on technique probably breeds tunnel vision, and makes you think that the audience is as interested in it as you are

 

[thirdform]

i mean its too obvious to even be worth saying isn't it, but this kind of thing is exactly the same as shredding, so much work and practice just to comprehensively miss the point

Yeah, but at least it's not Aesop Rock!

 

[sus]

the writing is very impressive technically and my guess is that its realtively difficult to recite too although i didnt get on the eminem thing at the time. i found it weird and confusing when westwood was playing that my name is thing. never got my head around it.

Also all the masks, role-playing. Obviously there's a central dirtbag character, but there's also tons of internal dialogue, him doing girl voices, him doing Dre, it's great. Come to think of it, there's a whole sorta sick sorta healthy father/mentor thing happening with Dre where Em can't figure out whether he's attracted or repulsed, wants to kill Dre or get rap tips, it's cute.

 

[bassbeyondreason]

There's a whole online scene of horrorcore/juggalo-adjacent bedroom MCs pushing that superfast "choppa" style as far as it'll go, probably the least tasteful music there is, but it does take on a certain psychedelic quality at length:



This guy Crucified is hilarious:

 

[version]

There's that K.A.A.N. guy who makes you feel out of breath just listening to him too;

 

[IdleRich]

Musicians who would be greater if they weren't aiming in the wrong direction
I think every musician must have a vision (a sonic vision?) or what they are trying to create, and for some that vision is about psytrance or hair metal, sadly.

I think sport often breaks down like this. Sorry to harp on with the two that I play but I do think that they can be quite illustrative.

With squash, say you lose a point and you look back and think "why did I lose that?" - it's normally (perhaps always in the points that you lost, rather than your opponent winning it by doing something really good) due to one of two reasons.

1. You picked the wrong shot
2. You picked the right shot but you didn't execute it properly

And football is the same, you lost the ball because either

1. You did the wrong thing
2. You did the right thing but you fucked it up

A musician with immense technical ability but misusing it is like a technically skilled footballer who doesn't understand the game. Playing with someone like that is extremely frustrating cos if they were just a bit smarter theh would be great, but they keep dribbling when theh should pass or picking the wrong pass etc Ultimately it's more fun having a teammate who is at least trying to do the right thing, and I imagine that's the same with music, if your guitarist has terrible taste (vision) you'll never make a good tune cos they are simply pushing in the wrong direction.

 

[IdleRich]

Similarly with turntablism - I used to have a flatmate who could effortlessly do all these tricks that I would never be able to pull off even if I practised for years... but his taste was fucking awful, it felt like such a waste.

I remember a friend talking about those DMC tournaments, he said that "noone in their right mind would watch Steve Vai doing an axe solo battle with someone - and yet this is the exact same thing but somehow it has this weird veneer of cool".

 

[bassbeyondreason]

There's that K.A.A.N. guy who makes you feel out of breath just listening to him too;

Out of breath, you say?

 

[wektor]

skrillex

 

[Benny Bunter]

I'd contribute but I'm more of an appalling skills but...amazing taste sort of fella

 

[thirdform]

skrillex

yup.

 

[bassbeyondreason]

ZAPPA

 

[luka]

its probably more usual for a person with exceptional skills to have terrible taste than it is for them to have good taste. in a sense
youre talking about different skill sets

 

[Corpsey]

skrillex

This makes me think about Aphex – obviously doesn't have "bad taste" in general, has made some incredibly beautiful music, but the more explicitly technically skilful his music becomes the more (for me) self-indulgent and tedious it is.

But then I'm sure plenty of people on here would argue that his best music is the more abrasive, aggressive drill n bass stuff.

Which brings up the old question (asked too many times by me) of what 'good taste' actually is. It's more or less shorthand for "not my taste".

 

[maxi]

Which brings up the old question (asked too many times by me) of what 'good taste' actually is. It's more or less shorthand for "not my taste".

I agree that's how it plays out because most people can't prove these things and use their intuition to understand what's good or what isn't without it having to be a conscious reasoned through position, particularly with music as it elicits such an immediate response.

but I'm increasingly coming round to the idea that there are actually objective criteria to what makes something good or beautiful, out there. It can be extremely difficult to articulate what they are, even if you think you can immediately can tell intuitively whether something is good. and it's even more difficult to do with something as abstract as music. and it might even be impossible for humans to map out fully and definitively and with hard proof.

then again i used to argue vociferously against it and still have doubts about that way of thinking. but when i was arguing with a friend about it he brought up morality and said do i think that's purely subjective too. and I don't, and that's what partly what's swayed me to the beauty is objective side. I think that might be a good way of thinking about it because it's also something where it's impossible to find definitive proofs, but we still don't just say it's a subjective thing where one position can't be more right than another

 

[luka]

peoples palettes vary to such an extent that while you might find a middle band in which theres a general level of agreement (oh, yeah, i guess corpsey is beautiful now you mention it') once you get past that zone i dunno.... but then its very hard for me to imagine certain sounds not being greeted as objectively beautiful. the kora for instance, or certain kinds of bamboo flute