it's like when louder talks about the Weekend.

are you kidding me? really?

:fuckyou: you guys!!

SY was into Madonna cuz they knew her from clubs. She was in the same spots as them but blew up mainstream so it was surreal to them.

There's no such thing as underground/mainstream anymore, really.. the Internet fucked everything up.

So after a few listens, Starboy is pretty great and definitely his best pop album so far. I can hear the Talking Heads and Smiths influence he was talking about throughout the album, and False Alarm hook is clearly the reason he mentioned Bad Brains.

What he does with his voice on Secrets (an incredible song, by the way) is pretty brilliant. Starts with low register and then switches up to his normal, high voice halfway through.

Weeknd is a risky artist but this time it totally worked.

Wha?? I wrote up a whole response to NR's thing last night and it just never fucking took. Huh? Dammit.

Listened to a couple Starboy tracks. They were OK. I think there's a bit of a fundamental misunderstanding of Bowie at work here. I read that Starboy is at least in part some kind of Bowie tribute (Starboy, Starman, geddit?) but while the tracks seem to work on a pop-hip-hop crossover level, I feel like the most endearing part of Bowie's legacy is missed. But... the guy's, what, 26? Not sure what else I should have expected.

I enjoy hearing Daft Punk. The Fest of the two collabos sounds like rehashed/recycled DP grooves. Swear I've heard them somewhere before. Oh well, I don't really like Weeknd much anymore but it's hard to argue that he's got ambition.

FML is still the best thing he's ever been involved with. :D

Lost my initial response, but here's the bare bones of it in bullet point form:

• Yup, pretty much. Some would say the Internet "opened things up," and in many cases they're right, but largely yes, the Internet had killles underground culture.
• This effect has been better for hip-hop than it has for most genres though. Kanye "happened" just as the digital/MP3 age was really taking off in earnest. A Tribe Called Quest have a #1 album. Artist like Chance (and even Thug) have used the Internet to bring a decidedly outsider perspective to "mainstream" hip-hop, and you no longer have to be "underground" to be conscious, or "mainstream" to make crazy depraved butthole bangers.
• I think indie, rock, punk have all had worse luck with the death of the underground than hip-hop has.
• Underground culture still seems to thrive in certain regions of techno, house, and electronic music in general. Footwork had been a massive underground phenomenon, largely, I think, in response to to ultra-mainstramization of dub step... but from the perspective of an avid electronic music fan, that genre seems to be holding up a measure the culture. Otherwise, people would know about DJ Koze, KidKanevil... Yeah, Daft Punk won a Grammy, but I think there's a thriving "below-the-radar" scene in electronic music.

But yeah, the underground is largely super dead. Too bad.

What was the tldr version of your response?

Doesn't that mean "too long; didn't read"?

If so, I don't know how to respond.

Haha yeah i just meant if you dont want to retype the long response you lost, what was the jist of it?

That ^^ up yonder was the jist of it. My bullet points turned into a longer post than the original. Lol

Oh i yhought you said a response to something i said

I meant what Louder said about the underground/no underground thing.

But I did think you had said it for some reason.

Full disclosure: I often consider you and Louder my only audience in this thread, and I have a much higher response rate to your posts than to those made by others. And sometimes I honestly skim replies for what one of you guys has said. :o I guess the fact that Louder doesn't presently have an avatar makes
me more likely to "see" you. Makes sense from a psychoperceptual standpoint.

Also I'm not fully checked in at the moment

Got it.

Super exciting back and forth we're having here, NR. ;)

Anyone give a smidgen of a shit about the TWO mixtape Gucci dropped this week? One with Future, the other with Lil Uzi Vert? Or his Return of Atlanta Santa album? Or even Woptober for that matter?

It's getting beyond oversaturation at this point. We get it. You're out of prison and doing stuff.

Ja Z was a crack pusher and a pimp, yeah.....classy. real classy., fuck that puto. Pimps are the worst of the worst.

You listening to Mike Huckabee now? I don't think he was a pimp at any point.

Could be wrong though.

I don't remember anything about being a pimp either. Rob makes stuff up when he doesn't like people.