"Critics" by Lefthandedbandit

Ill

ustration by Pat Weedon 

            Tuesday comes around, the universal retail release date; at least in most cases.  Your favorite artist’s new album is fresh on the shelves or in the cart of your preferred digital downloading vendor (itunes, play store, amazon, etc.).  You cop it of course because you support this album and it’s highly acclaimed and this artist has released classic after classic only to find that this artist doesn’t have the same content.  The subject matter has changed; he isn’t the drug slanging, purse snatching hoodlum that the streets created.  She isn’t the same drug abusing, self destructive artist that a life of heartbreak and strife created.  He or she isn’t the teen pop sensations they were when they you know, were teens. 

            I find that line of criticism a bit absurd.

            So you’re telling me that an artist is just supposed to make the same music forever and can’t expand their horizons or even do something as natural as grow older?  I saw something the other day on facebook about the top 10 weakest rappers of 2013.  There were some very deserving rappers of that title and on the other hand some that didn’t.  T.I. was one of them and their reasoning was that he wasn’t making the same music anymore.  I thought was an inadequate reason because of course he isn’t making the same music he was in 2005.  His life is entirely different now.  It’s one thing to say you do not like the direction and artrist is going in their music.  It’s your right not to like it, but to say I don’t like this guy because he isn’t putting out the same music is crazy to me.  I’m not judging though, I’ve done it too.  As your favorite artists grow older, you yourself have to realize that you do too.  I grew to realize that things will never stay the same and losing the fear of change crossed over into my musical taste.  I used to be one of those conservative hiphop fans who hated on everything that came on the radio because I thought it was wack.  I found though that if you do that too much, you begin to generalize and that’s not hiphop at all.  Through that generalizing you can miss out on gems like Kendrick Lamar, Joey Bada$$, and Hudson Mowhawke and a vast plethora of young talent ready to tell their story. 

            Fame in the music world is all about the now.  Who is hot now? That’s probably why you see all the teen sensations in their mid to late twenties having breakdowns and what not, Amanda Bynes (that’s my version of a Big Sean punchline).  In the hiphop world to me it’s a little different.  There is always that now factor, but that rings truer from some rather than others.  Your usual suspects, Nas, Jay, Snoop, Dre, will always go down as legends, because they made the most out of their 15 minutes of fame, turning those minutes into decades and could probably put out an album tomorrow with effortless success; just because their name is on it.  On the other hand you have your one hit wonders or some of which only made music for a certain time period, like the crunk era.  When I look at an artist nowadays I don’t look at him as the in the now guy, I try to look towards his future.  I listen to their debut album, wondering what their second album was going to be like.

            My point of view may be a bit different from the general listener.  I majored in art when I was in college and after years of critiquing and analyzing the work of my peers and legends of the past; I find that I look at things from a different perspective.  It is never easy for me to wholly like or dislike a piece of work be it artwork or music.  There’s is always something “beautiful” or aesthetically pleasing in any work and there’s always something that can be worked on.  I think the general listener sees an album final product whereas I see it as something similar to a take in a movie that made the cut out of maybe hundreds of takes. Peace.