Last week The Rhapsody blog held a roundtable discussion (via email, no doubt) with a batch of hip-hop producers: Tricky Stewart, Danja, J.R. Rotem, DJ Toomp, and others. If you need hints as to what's wrong with modern record production, and how confused even those who are successful at it are at the moment, you can find plenty here. Besides the usual complaints about falling budgets, shifty A&R people, the T-Painization of the top forty, and performers who expect writing credit "because they ask for more volume in their headphones", there's also the issue of how records are actually made.
This statement from Tricky Stewart sums up the situation nicely: "The other day, me, Dream, and Ne-Yo did a record together and we weren't even in the same place." As DJ Toomp points out, most producer's are only too aware of how this hurts what they're trying to accomplish: "It takes away from what we really worked hard to get to. Tip, Jay-Z, and cats who been in the game for at least five years or more understand being in a room and vibing. But this new generation came in just [emailing] tracks. Some new rapper who never heard of a MPC, never has really been in a true studio, and has never seen a record being mixed, that's how they think it comes together."
They worry about the situation, but there's also some ambivalence. These guys are businessmen, after all, and they've seen the future, and though they may not like it much, they're trying hard as they can to figure out how to make money off of it. For the most part, the solution comes down to going into A&R themselves. They all want to be Diddy, even if that seems to mean working against their own principles. Toomp, for instance, cites Mr. Collipark--who actively promotes the sort of rappers (Soulja Boy, Hurricane Chris, V.I.C.) Toomp complains about--as an example to follow.
And the future of the album? There isn't any. Stewart pronounces the CD dead, and predicts that artists will start releasing a half-dozen tracks every six months instead of waiting to release an album. And though he considers it unfortunate, Stewart himself has no interest in making anything but singles: "If you call me and I could get the single on a lesser artist than being on a big artist's album, most of the time, you take the single on the little artist because you're going to get the spins and airplay, and that's where the producers are making their money. If me and Dream do a record, we only want the single. We don't even give records up unless they're the single."
To these guys, the future seems to look a lot like the 1930s, before lps were invented. As Colione of J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League puts it, with artists making big money on singles and ringtones, but being lucky to sell 50,000 lps, what sense does it make to produce albums? Put out a new single every couple of months (or even every month, as many artists did in the 30s and 40s), and let your audience compile them in any way they see fit. It's an interesting concept, if only because it comes with the implied admission that lps have become little more than marketing schemes that have outlived their usefulness. But it also sounds like they're looking for any way they can to protect themselves from the hordes of bedroom rappers and producers who are sure to follow in Soulja Boys' wake. I mean, what record company is going to pay these guys $100,000 a track when they can be outsold by some teenager with a laptop and a rhyming dictionary?
Jaq hasn't posted here (or, ahem, anywhere else) for a long time, but she contributed the following to Frank's APA, a conglomerate zine we've both signed up with. Since we're moving to a new place in a couple of weeks (it's only two blocks away but already feels like a different world), I thought it would be a good idea to post her first contribution to Frank's here, as it provides an accurate description of what our life has been like the last year. Also, I really like it.
As I mentioned when "Forever" first came out, I have had a hard time reconciling my dislike of Chris Brown with the above-average quality of the song itself. Now it turns out he wrote it in half an hour expressly to promote Wrigley's chewing gum. It's good to know that, even if I continue to enjoy this song, I can also continue to hate Brown with a clear conscious.
Aside from M.I.A. and the Jonases, the only other interesting debut this week is Jazmine Sullivan's "Need U Bad", produced by Missy Elliot. It's not a great record, but I don't think anyone's ever put old school dub on the Hot 100 before. Sounds as good as ever.
Glam emo kids, that's who. At least according to this poll on the All Songs Considered blog. Panic At the Disco number one? Really? By almost three times the vote of the number 2 band, Death Cab for Cutie? Of course, the post itself is all about how PATD's fans flooded the poll after a link was posted on the band's MySpace page. Still, you need to wonder who in PATD's camp spotted this. Maybe they were reading Carrie Brownstein's blog and clicked the banner for this one out of curiosity, like I did. Whatever the case, I actually approve of their ballot stuffing, since the rest of the poll does nothing for me other than reinforce my dislike of NPR in general. Give them another year or two and they'll make hipster culture as boring as the boomers', if it isn't already.
If you ignore the pretentious blather of the first few paragraphs, this summary of the disappointing James Brown auction at Christies will tell you all you need to know. DJ Shadow was there, as was Paul Shaffer. A lot of jumpsuits were sold, along with various awards and certificates and other pieces of ephemera, including a medical bracelet and a few scrawled letters. In one, Brown kisses off a girlfriend with a few kind words ("I hope our short Relationship got you on the Goodfoot"), and a present of $6,000, "so you won't have to go to work to guick [double sic]". In another (not sent, apparently), he complains about rappers ripping him off and record companies not paying him royalties, and ends with a threat to destroy the recipients' career. If Brown had seen the results of this auction, which was protested by some of his descendants and which brought in less than half of what was estimated, he'd have written another one.
backmasking is not good for tomatoes and other living things
Artist Tony Romano subjects tomato plants to Judas Priest forwards and backwards. The one that got it in reverse looks none too happy. But then, neither does the other one.
Now that you do all your listening with ear buds, right? All you need is cornstarch, water, and a cookie sheet. And maybe a little food coloring to heighten the effect.
Nothing new this week, and the only notable change is Miley Cyrus' return to the top ten after falling to 16 last week. Airplay dropped, but her digital sales increased, and all I can say is that I'm counting the days until Billboard announces its next formula change.
Not much happening on the rest of the chart, either. Only five debuts this week: John Mayer covers Tom Petty; DJ Khaled and the usual gang of idiots essentially cover themselves; Vanessa Hudgens hires J. Rotem to turn her into a nerdy Christina Aguilera ("Basically what we're gonna do is dance"--huh?); The Lost Trailers defensively celebrate country life after discovering there are such things as white hip-hop fans; and Kid Rock celebrates summer by mashing up Warren Zevon and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Seems the summer doldrums have started early this year.
I haven't said much about the singles that have been popping up in the lower reaches of the Hot 100 lately, mostly because there's been little that's either exceptional or odd enough to be worth mention. This week, however, there's a record that's both. Debuting at number 94 (for reasons that will soon be apparent don't count on it getting much higher than that), Rehab's "Bartender (aka Sittin' At a Bar)", is as fine a piece of twisted redneck songwriting as I've heard in a long time. Imagine, if you will, a mixed-race, redneck hard rock band (with a DJ) from Atlanta, trying to write like Todd Snider. They don't come close to Snider's delicacy and grace, but they sure have that "I could give a shit" feel down.
She broke my heart in the trailer park So I jacked the keys to her fucking car And crashed that piece of shit Then walked away
Uh-oh. It's been less than a year, but it looks like it might be time for Billboard to change its formula for tabulating the Hot 100 again. For the second week in a row, digital sales have propelled Disney-identified teen and tween pop into the top ten, and there's more to come. The Jonas Brothers plan to release a new song to iTunes every two weeks until their album comes out, and no doubt there'll be another Miley Cyrus single in the works soon, as well. At the same time, Rihanna's "Disturbia", a track off the special edition of Good Girl Gone Bad, debuted at 18 last week and, if it hadn't been for Disney, would be in the top ten right now, despite the lack of significant airplay (it's not even on the Hot 100 Airplay chart). Billboard, which always tries to keep radio happy, changed their formula last year, essentially halving the effect of sales on the chart (I do my best to explain it here). Since then, according to numbers released this week, digital track sales have increased by 30%, and the Hot 100 is starting to bounce around in much the same way as it did last year.
Me, I think this is great news. But radio programmers hate it because it makes the charts too volatile, and hence too difficult to adjust to effectively as far as programming is concerned. Which is another way of saying they would prefer to play the same records for months on end, and have greater control over what becomes a hit and what doesn't, because the more power they have, the more money they'll make. Ultimately, I think this is going to bite them, hard, because the audience they're resisting now is the one that will rule the ground in a few years, and will essentially have already abandoned terrestrial radio in favor of whatever medium plays what they actually want to hear. At the moment, radio is too powerful for Billboard to abandon, but the writing is on the wall, and it might be a good idea for the magazine to start standing up to the radio conglomerates now. The industry is rapidly moving past them, and it's time for Billboard to more actively acknowledge that.
