Snackable Rants

Anti-Pioneer - Feist

I knew something on "Metals" would occupy a slot on this list. Feist's darker, stronger follow-up to "The Reminder" was every bit worth the four-year wait. But which song to choose for this list? The 3/4 minor-key swagger of "How Come You Never Go There" or perhaps the fragile beauty of "Circle Married the Line"?

No, with so much excellent material on "Metals", it still always comes back to "Anti-Pioneer". I'll be short and sweet with this one.


1) The guitar. Feist has a very distinctive voice, but also a wonderful and recognizable guitar style. She plays mournfully here, and always with so much feeling. It's almost a duet between her two melodic voices when she trades between the guitar interludes, and the vocal verses.

2) The harmonized breakdown at the 3-minute mark. I can't get enough of this part. It gives you exactly what you want - and then more, and more until it finally fades back into her guitar. Shivers every time.

3) The cinematic string section. The arranging on this song is detail perfect, and this particular part elevates the track in a seamless and intelligent way.

4) The wonderfully dry and sparse drumming that perfectly compliments the song, while remaining a major voice in itself.

5) An endless stream of sonic nuances. Everything sounds amazing on this track (and on the record overall)

Enjoy, in all its beauty:




So, there you have it. "Anti-Pioneer" is the last of my Top 5, 2011. It's no small task, but I would love to hear the top 5 lists of others in the comments. I'll be returning to ranting for my next couple pieces, so stay tuned in the New Year.

Hope everyone who celebrates Christmas had an awesome one! Shout out to Hanukkah too, for which I chilled with a lot of drunk Jewish appreciators (and a couple of actual Jews as well).

Don't Carry It All - The Decemberists

The Decemberists can't catch a break, man.

When they craft a gigantic (awesome) achievement like "The Hazards of Love", it gets nailed for "missing the catchy choruses and verisimilar emotions"*. When they follow that up with a gorgeously minimal record like "The King is Dead" - absolutely laden with hooks - they apparently "cling so closely to formula" that they sound "unconvincing"**. Whatever.

"The King is Dead' is absolutely stellar, and "Don't Carry It All" was one of my anthems for the year. This beaming song was delivered in time for spring to arrive, and it brought a huge smile (and a couple tears) to my face as I drove around watching the trees come into bloom. In the second line of the song, Colin Meloy describes the days becoming longer as a "march towards the sun". Indeed. This is how you write a song about a season change.

In fact, "Don't Carry It All" is an ode to change of many kinds. Old to new, chaos to stability, life to death and then rebirth. As always with the Decemberists, complex topics like marriage, community and loss are handled with perception and remarkable economy. A single verse will reveal a lifetime, and words are to be clung to for full effect.

Perth - Bon Iver


I had a lot of expectations surrounding the second full-length Bon Iver album, as I imagine a lot of people did. "For Emma, Forever Ago" is a pretty special record, and for the next one, I was expecting something beautiful, ethereal and even quite different. What I wasn't expecting was for "Bon Iver" to sound so confident.

"Perth" opens with about eight second of silence, and a gorgeous guitar line follows. It repeats, undulating many times until ghostly harmonies and snare drums built softly underneath. None of this (minus the electric guitar) is that surprising, but it all sounds exactly right. This feeling of just nailing it - of a vision expertly carried out - continues through to the more surprising parts of the song. Machine gun polyrythms? Bombastic brass shots? Double kick drum? On paper it sounds bizarre, but I didn't question it once while listening.

"Perth" also does (well) the duty of establishing the first section of the record as a whole. "Minnesota, WI" and Grammy-nominated "Holoscene" sit beautifully in the afterglow that a track as strong as "Perth" creates.  It carves a wide emotional berth, sounding at once deeply melancholy and triumphant. From there, the record has everywhere to go.

"Bon Iver" is a great album, and "Perth" is a perfect way to open it. It doesn't shrug off the features that made "For Emma" succeed, but it signals loud and clear that audiences are in for a different ride. "Bon Iver" will never mean the same thing as the album before, nor should it. "For Emma, Forever Ago" is only a playlist away, and we have something much more exciting in the second album than repetition. We have progress.

Yer Spring - Hey Rosetta


"Seeds", and Hey Rosetta remain inexplicably (and criminally) underrated. They are definitely one of the best bands in Canada, and likely one of the best in the world. When I think of music that makes me proud to be Canadian, Hey Rosetta is invariably one of the first that comes to mind. They're really that good.

I also think "Seeds" is the best thing they've ever done. 2008s "Into Your Lungs" was a huge achievement, but "Seeds" does something pretty remarkable in its nuance: It dials it all back a bit.

"Into Your Lungs" had everything - huge emotional climaxes, grinding guitars, vocal catharsis and whispered tenderness. The range covered is massive, and the results are very impressive. Hawksley Workman gave the band a sonic palette to match the enormous appetite of the songs, and listeners are delivered track after track of epics. Five and six-minute songs that change pace and tone sometimes three times. It's astonishing, but it's also sometimes exhausting.

I am a big fan of "Into Your Lungs", and don't get me wrong. There is a big place in my heart for sprawling, wrenching works like "Tired Eyes". But simplicity can work at least as well for Hey Rosetta. Some of the most singular songs on that disc - "New Goodbye", "A Thousand Suns", "Psalm" - were also some of the best. And with this in mind, enter "Seeds".

"Seeds" is a refinement. It takes the daring, the poetry and the enormous musicality of the former album and hones it to a razor's edge. It sounds a little different, but as far as I'm concerned, almost nothing is lost and a great deal is gained. "Welcome" is, in almost every regard, a perfect rock song. "Young Glass" contemplates and then becomes an anthem before you've even noticed. And then "Yer Spring".

For all the talk of simplicity, "Yer Spring" is actually among the most complex songs on the album, but it never feels that way to me. Washed out reverb crashes into a drum feature, building to an eastern-flavoured string breakdown, distorted vocal tension and finally rockout release. I can hardly think of another band that could pull that off at all, let alone with this much grace and style. Where "Into Your Lungs" drew attention to these big moments and shifting sections, the songs on "Seeds" dance through them with utter finesse. "Yer Spring" is as complicated and daring as anything they've ever done, but Hey Rosetta has the confidence here to let is soar without even waiting for the breathless listener to catch up.

I still don't know if I've fully caught up. But I do know this. I had the privilege this year of listening to one of the best bands in the world at the height of their powers.

Gangsta - tUnE-yArDs


I was a latecomer to the M.I.A. bandwagon (that really seemed to peak in late 2008) , but as so many did, I found her music exciting and refreshing in a way that caught me quite off-guard. The songs that I liked the most, "Bucky Done Gun", "Sunshowers", "Galang" and the inescapable "Paper Planes" were a staggering collision of musical styles, lyrical content and aesthetic. Jamaican dancehall and grimy London electronic beats supported rapid-fire bursts of sharply self-aware commentary on the global, the intensely personal and the the confluence of those worlds. Weed and sex and poverty and excess. Injustice and liberation. It was a crazy-ass mix, and I was totally sold.

The follow-up album did not sell me however. This is really a topic for another article, but 2010s "/\/\ /\ Y /\" had nowhere near the impact on me as either "Arular" or "Kala". Where the first two had seemed so sharp, so immediate and captivating - "Maya" just seemed kind of...muddy. I bring all of this up here because that same startled excitement I had when listening to the first couple M.I.A. albums came flooding back to me this fall, and picked up right where I wished "Maya" had done. The band is tUnE-yArDs and the disc, "WHOKILL".

WHOKILL sounds like Fela Kuti and the Dirty Projectors and M.I.A. and a thousand other good things, all while sounding pretty damn original. Merrill Garbus, a funky-ass bass player and a couple saxophones make a whole variety of delightful noises - sometimes very rough and abrasive, and others soft and sweet. The album is dope, and a number of tracks could have made this list ("Bizness" and "My Country" in particular) but for sheer pedal-to-the-floor ear-grabbing, "Gangsta" wins out by a measure.

Distant sirens start the track, followed by huge drums and fuzzed-out bass. The drums cut out, and another siren - one made by the human voice - enters, and distorts. A harmony drops on top of the line, and all of this builds until, it too, sharply cuts. A powerful, neigh-androgynous voice demands "What's a boy to do if he'll never be a gangsta?!", and it all come shooting back together.

At this point, it has been 45 seconds.

"Gangsta" rules. It gets to be a lot by the end of the track, and some people will surely find it overwhelming and not their cup of tea. That's cool. But for those who can get on board, there's much to marvel at, and shake your body like a crazy person to. Little touches like the intentional de-tuning of the word 'sound' make this track absolutely fly out of the speakers. It's raw, exciting and a little bit frightening for good measure.

The intoxicating, worldly and chaotic blend that an artist like M.I.A. did so well is back in full force here. And holy does it sound cool.

I read a lot of political/activist blogs, and many of them start like this:

"Alexi is a mid-30s caucasian queer feminist transgendered atheist working-class anarcho-communist vegan..."


...and that shit gives me a major case of scrunchyface. 85% of the people in this world are probably unclear about what some of those words mean, and 95% would never use them (or so many) to describe them self. It's totally alienating (and I went there to read!).

Everyone comes to personal understanding in a different way, but how we individually understand our own lives, and how we publicly choose to represent them are different things. I wouldn't criticize someone's private self-image because that's their thing, but when a person's intro to the world is to lead with the term "cisgendered" I will absolutely criticize that - and I don't think that's unfair. Prince publicly identified as a made-up symbol in the 90s and everyone told him to knock it off.

Differences should be celebrated, but I don't think reveling in them is especially productive. Just as hyper-ambiguous terms like "queer" can be a barrier to understanding someone, hyper-specific terms can seem like a social pre-emptive strike. Whatever you were about to talk about, you already know how I feel.

I don't believe that. Do you eat KD in a socialist way? Do you watch Glee as a Libertarian first? Our long-held beliefs certainly inform how we interact with the world - but they should be a lens and not a filter. Wearing all your beliefs, identities and values on your sleeve tells me that you like these ideas more than you like talking to people. I'll let you eat your socialist macaroni in peace.

When I first heard someone chide 'first world problems' after a group of us had been moaning about essentially nothing, I thought it was awesome. It was definitely a funny thing to say, and I'm always in favor of people trying to achieve some humility regarding their relationship to power and privilege in the world.

Now that the joke is everywhere (at least in the circles I run with), its overuse has drawn me to what I find increasingly bothersome about the phrase. I'll be standing in Starbucks and make some complaint about not being able to decide between two drinks, and there's a decent likelihood that someone will tell me this is a first world problem. No it ain't.


There are Starbucks all over the world, even in many 'developing' countries like Chile and Guatemala. Lots of people choose between drinks every day, and lots of them probably moan about that choice. Furthermore, the root of this 'problem' isn't about Starbucks or specialty drinks - it's that I am complaining (however seriously) about having to make a decision regarding non-essential treat beverages, and this is even more universal.


'Third World' and 'First World' are problematic terms not just because they fail to reflect the sufferings and poor conditions in 'First World' nations like the United States, but also because they sell short the realities and ambitions of billions of people worldwide. There are lots of ways my life is very different from many of the people in El Salvador. Whining about the choice between drinks is not one of them. People the world over hate making tough decisions when it comes to delicious goods.

So when I hear people slinging 'first world problems' at so many situations, I can't help feeling that it's as much about dividing the world into ungrateful sweatshop-wearing yuppies and struggling impoverished have-nots and then feeling enlightened about having made that distinction, as it is about having any kind of real-world humility about the blessings we might be afforded.

I don't want to hate too much. I think the root of this joke is a pretty funny place, and this one will probably move on soon. But if the point of humility lies in reminding yourself that you're not as special as you might think, calling out 'first world problems' seems to do just the opposite in a whole lot of cases.

I kinda love Pitbull.

REVIEW

If you like church hymns and Depeche Mode, you will almost certainly love Austra. If you don't know or care about either of those, there's still a chance you will really like Austra. There's a lot of good reasons to like Austra.

The 80's seem to be strong in Canadian music this year. Miracle Fortress, Diamond Rings and now Austra have strong ties to at least the sonic palette of that decade. Fortunately, all three of these bands mine 80s Electronica in a way that feels very natural to my ears. Rather than paying homage to New Order and Pet Shop Boys, these bands - particularly Austra - sound as though they could have been contemporaries of those classic acts.

I believe the strongest weapon in Austra's arsenal is subtlety. Lead singer Katie Stelmanis comes from a classical vocal background, but spares listeners the onslaught that often accompanies dark-sounding bands with a powerful female vocalist. Nowhere on 'Feel It Break' do the vocals over-embellish the gorgeous melodies or give way to melodrama, and the rest of the band follows suit. Drums chug along in simple, but perfectly formed grooves, and synthesizers are more about sound and texture than virtuosity. Every sound on this disc is expertly chosen. At times shimmering and bright ('Hate Crime', 'Lose It'), at times dark and booming ('The Beat and the Pulse') and often a combination of both. When a distorted guitar appears on 'The Noise', it's perfect.

My choice of Church hymns as a reference point for Austra is two-fold. First, the lead vocals are frequently blended with two-part backing harmonies in often medieval-sounding combinations. Fourths, Sixths, and wonderful tone clusters are all over this album, and greatly contribute to a second church-like quality: The subject matter. 'Feel It Break' sounds positively Old Testament. Lyrics speak of beasts, demons, looming and apocalyptic futures, and dark visions thereof.

What's so exciting about Austra is that they seem to understand (on their first album no less) exactly what Depeche Mode and New Order did before them. Darkness at it's best isn't scary or off-putting. It's completely seductive. I'm sold.

Review score: 4/4

LIKELIHOOD

Austra was an early favorite of mine on this list, and they're only growing on me.

As mentioned above, Diamond Rings and Miracle Fortress (both of whom made the long-list, but not the short) are mining similar territory, and to great effect. At a time when mainstream pop music is quite synth-dominated, a handful of Canadian electronic acts are propelling a very throwback sound to exciting places. Junior Boys have been doing this for years (including this year's excellent 'It's all True'), and Owen Pallett has taken his own fantasy-pop in a more electronic direction lately.

In short, I think Canada is on board, and 'Feel It Break' is as good as any to reward with the Polaris. It's daring, intelligent, groovy as hell, and it takes terrific source material to an original place. My hopes are high, and I think chances are good for Austra. A serious contender.

Likelihood Score: 4/4

REVIEW

I love this record. I loved the bits and pieces of it I listened to for a couple of months, and I loved digging into the entire beast, and then re-listening for this review. 'The Suburbs' is a concept album that documents life in suburbia almost as a fiction anthology, sharing different perspectives on a central theme. It's all there - Depression and anxiety, hope and early wonder, concern about the future, love and death - and all set against the backdrop of a half-told (metaphorical?) police-state suburban conflict.

This is a dark record. It's not bleak or unrelenting, but the positives and possibilities are all set within the context of...unease. Arcade Fire co-founder Win Butler described 'The Suburbs' as a cross between Neil Young and Depeche mode, but I hear the paranoia of NIN's 'Year Zero' in many of the songs as well.

I'm hard-pressed to think of a recent album that better sets a tone. The jaunty, damaged-sounding title track builds to a haunting head in 'Ready to Start', and the following off-putting 4/4 to 5/4 groove of 'Modern Man' backs off the energy without losing an inch of feel. From there, track after track of wonderful, powerful music blend into a single, incredible package. The net result is an appropriately cinematic affair that has left a lasting impact on me.

Review score: 4/4

LIKELIHOOD

Here's where it gets dicey. The Polaris Mission Statement reads:

"Polaris recognizes and markets albums of the highest artistic integrity, without regard to musical genre, professional affiliation, or sales history."

Under this statement, it would make perfect sense for 'The Suburbs' to take top prize, but doing so would be totally foolish - and I think no one would agree more than Arcade Fire. The two biggest things an artist receives upon winning the Polaris are $20,000* and lots of (particularly Canadian) exposure. For some bands, both of these are a big deal. In a post-win interview, Karkwa stated that they would use their money to finally hire a tour manager (!). It was also big publicity for a Francophone band to be recognized all across Canada as having an awesome album.

In the case of Arcade Fire though, they really do not need either of the prizes. Everyone likes $20,000 - but Arcade Fire is a large, commercially successful act with an established reputation. They certainly aren't household names the world over, but if the top 2010 Grammy win didn't increase awareness of them, the Polaris Prize certainly will not.

As such, giving the prize to Arcade Fire might affirm the credibility of the Polaris Mission Statement, but it would strike me as a failure for Canadian music overall. Historically, Polaris Jury members would seem to agree with me on this one, passing over major artists like Broken Social Scene and Metric for smaller, less established acts. This logical, but weird setup perhaps makes The Suburbs simultaneously the most deserving (artistically), and least likely album on this list.

Likelihood Score: 1/4


Next up - Austra!


*Apparently, the prize was upped to $30,000 this year, but I think my argument still holds.

In joint celebration of a good friend's 'Canadian Music Month', and the recently announced Polaris Prize Shortlist, I'm going to be counting-down each of the ten albums over the coming week-or-two.

For each release, I'm going to be listening or re-listening to the album in its entirety. I will give my thoughts on the music, and also assign ratings for both how much I liked it, and how likely I think it is to win the 2011 Polaris. My Review score will go: 1 = disliked 2 = indifferent 3 = liked 4 = loved; my Likelihood score will be: 1 = very unlikely 2 = long shot 3 = likely 4 = front-runner.

I'm starting with Arcade Fire, and will be working my way down the list in the order of the website (alphabetical). To kick things off, here's a couple random thoughts about the prize in general:

1) Previous winners (Patrick Watson, Owen Pallett, Fucked-Up, Caribou, Karkwa) tend not to be unknowns, but definitely underdogs or under-the-radars. This however can change following a win (although not necessarily because of it. I think TV and The Cinematic Orchestra did much more for Patrick Watson than the Polaris)

2) Indie rock is thus-far favoured (both in nominees and winners), but there is good variety in the selection, and this year is no exception.

3) This year is the first time a non-physical release (The Weeknd) has made the shortlist

4) Albums I'm most bummed did NOT make the short list are: The Luyas, Miracle Fortress, Daniel Romano, Shotgun Jimmie, and Sloan.

Watch for the first post real soon.

Fuck you.

And your wife. Fuck you too, Demi.

Your shitty, pandering, belligerent, nonsensical, anger-over-facts campaign against child trafficking is a shameful example of the way new media can be abused in favor of dubious causes.

Make no mistake, I am in no way diminishing the harm or wrong of child prostitution. But this is bullshit.

1) These ads are idiotic. So the guy ISN'T a real man, because he doesn't do laundry? Does that mean he 'buys girls'? What's with the cutesy attempt at bro-humor, and then the tacked on serious message? Is this supposed to be funny?

2) When the Village Voice critiques you really, really well - and your response is to try to shame advertisers to pull from their paper via twitter, without addressing those critiques - you are abusing new media

3) Your blanket attacks on sex-related classifieds ads advance a culture of sex-negativity and punish, shame, and diminish (NSFW) tonnes of great people making a living off of sex. You know. That thing most people enjoy.

4) As was aptly pointed out by a Youtube commenter (not everyone is all about the dislikes!), the package of socks opened by Kutcher in the 'Laundry' ad is equally (or more) likely to have been tainted by exploitation than the adult classifieds section of a local alt newspaper. Before you say moronic things like "One girl sold for slavery is too many!", you had better have an equally strong stance on EVERY PRODUCT YOU ENCOUNTER.

Apple factory workers face abuse, electronic waste offshoring is still rampant, and Amnesty International reports that conflict diamonds still have access to legitimate marketplaces in the United States.

I don't think that people should have solutions to every problem before trying to help one. Nor do I think that causes should necessarily be paralyzed by what they don't do, rather than what they can accomplish.

But using incorrect data to bully, harass and shame legitimate media outlets and honest citizens is reprehensible - as is wielding Twitter like a sword to rope uninformed supporters into pushing your bullshit tactics.

Stop trying to be celebrity Tony Starks. You are both acting like fucking assholes.

Youtube comment trends fascinate and intrigue me. There is a very organic nature to the way that memes, jokes, and ideas evolve within the response format - but I am also frequently surprised by the strange things that separate to the surface of this subset of the pop conciousness.

Today, I'm going to focus on one trend in particular: The entirely shocking amount of time and energy people dedicate to being irritated that other faceless human beings do not like the things that they do.


"If you don't like this, you are wrong."

"who ever disliked this is deaf"

"199 people have no soul"


I can definitely understand the initial sting of witnessing a hair-raising moment (be it music, a touching story, an amazing near-miss) and having someone else dismiss it entirely. I have had times in my life where I stand in total awe of what I am priveledged enough to experience, and turn to share that feeling - only to see the person next to me totally unengaged. This is a bummer, no doubt.

But in the case of Youtube, I'm am baffled. Even baring in mind the many countries without widespread internet access (to say nothing of safe drinking water), there are dozens of cultures, languages, religions and lifestyles represented amongst Youtube members. People talk about the 'Youtube Community', but aside from the ability to watch, make and rate videos, there is no common thread or culture to the website.

In the most basic terms, Youtube is a video player, a feedback section, and a whole pile of server space. That's it. Someone watching the same video as you may not be old enough, speak the language in question, or understand the culture necessary to respond to the video in remotely the same way.

In an effort to understand the 'intolerance of dislike' phenomenon, here's one theory to get the ball rolling:

YOUTUBE FEELS VERY SMALL

Despite the staggeringly vast number of videos on Youtube, certain features (notably the frontpage) make the site feels artificially small. This is definitely on purpose. Most super-websites like Facebook and Youtube offer tools specifically designed to make the online realm feel a reasonable size. Facebook simply starts everyone off tiny, and allows them to slowly increase in size. Youube on the other hand uses Subscriptions, Recommendations, and the Frontpage to show you things that are similar to things you respond to, or things that are generally popular and well-liked. This has an innocuous-seeming, but powerful effect:

Frequent Youtube users tend to see more things that are related to them, than things that are unrelated

This seems like a no-brainer, but the end result is that it becomes easy to forget the simple fact that Youtube is made up of people with nothing in common but an internet connection and a desire to watch moving pictures. If we watch video upon video of related things, it starts to feel (at least for me) like a real community, and with that comes the desire to reinforce the norms and behaviors of that community. What I think is important to remember - and what is lost in this latest flavor of 'shun-the-non-believer' - is that an overarching 'community' on Youtube isn't a reality, but rather an feeling aided by sorting algorithms and directed website navigation.

Anyone who disagrees tripped and fell on the dislike button.

I'm assuming everyone saw at least a little of the recent nonsense where a bunch of Fox news anchors (and some other friendly folks) pretended they were outraged about Common being invited to the White House so they could continue questioning Obama's judgement.

In case anyone missed it, here's a speedy recap:

1) Common released a track with Cee-Lo in 1999 called 'A Song For Assata', which continues the case for Assata Shakur's innocence, while praising her perseverance and spirit

2) Common wrote a 2007 poem entitled 'Letter To The Law' calling the Bush administration corrupt and criticizing the War on Terror.

3) Apparently either of those things are a big deal, and lots of people lost their shit, culminating in Karl Rove calling another human being a 'Thug', and than presumably bursting immediately into flames.

Jon Stewart has already ABLY covered this matter, but I want to bring up a side point. If people haven't yet checked it out, "A Song for Assata" is quite a touching piece of music (regardless if you agree with the premise), and it seems a particularly strange target considering another, more controversial aspect of this album has gone relatively unaddressed.

Don't get me wrong, Like Water for Chocolate is in many ways a masterpiece. It's funky as hell, razor sharp, and confronts issues of sexism, violence, materialism and race with great insight and clarity. It's also blatantly homophobic.

From 'Dooinit': Niggas ain't hate you, they pay you no attention/In a circle of Faggots, your name is mentioned

From 'Nag Champa (Afrodisiac for the World)': There's rumors of gay MCs, just don't come around me with it/You still rockin' hickeys, don't let me find out HE did it

From 'Thelonius': Plus, you rhyme like a nigga with his nipples pierced


Now apparently this very March, Common was approached by a couple of gay fans who took him to task for lyrics like these, and he has since pledged to stop dropping gay slurs in his rhymes. It should also be noted that Like Water for Chocolate is over a decade old, and Common is certainly not the first rapper to struggle with a fear of homosexuality.

But what we seem to have witnessed in this whole Common misdirection play is a group of generally hateful people taking a positive artist to task for a loving song about someone they hate, while letting another group that was legitimately hated on remain undefended because they still have no love for them.

Haters gon' hate.

...was very enjoyable. But it has to be said:

The Ginger kid got a lame looking power, and the Black dude still died first (by a mile). Stereotypes, it seems, do not mutate.

I hear variations of these all the time:

"I listen to Hip-Hop, but the good stuff - old school"
"Modern rap is terrible! 50 Cent, Lil Wayne? Total crap"
"New rappers are a disgrace. Soulja Boy? What happened to the four elements?"

Now I'm fully aware that Things Ain't What They Used To Be arguments have existed since time immemorial (and will exist evermore), but I find this particular flavour of it especially corny. As in most things, money has played an important role in Hip-Hop since the very beginning, and the origins of rap music have become as exaggerated and romanticized as the American West.

The above phrases usually allude to a time when Hip-Hop was about self-expression and revealing harsh realities, rather than making lots of money, exploiting people, and wearing lavish jewellery. The problem with this take is that Hip-Hop - both today and yesterday - has always been about all of the above. Not every MC rocks gold chains, and not every track is full of penetrating insight, but Hip-Hop (like any culture) is a chaotic mix of authenticity and posturing; materialism and art.

This conflicted nature is demonstrated beautifully in Hip-Hop's first major radio hit "Rappers Delight" . Eventually becoming a platinum record, this hugely influential song changed the rules for everyone from Chuck D to Grandmaster Flash. It was also as unauthentic as it gets. In Can't Stop, Won't Stop, Jeff Chang carefully describes how the three members of the Sugerhill Gang were not only a manufactured group and a non-entity on the Bronx scene (until their hit broke), but used jacked rhymes for some of their lyrics. After the huge success of Rappers Delight, other crews, including the Furious Five, were so eager to capitalize on hip-hop's money-making potential that they changed their live sound to better fit a studio setting. This isn't to say that Flash & the Five were sellouts, but simply that art coexisted with money.

With this all in mind, artists like 50 Cent take a lot of flack for being focused on killing, sex and cash, but a closer look at 50 (aka Curtis Jackson) reveals a larger picture than the cold-blooded gangsta persona allows. See, 50 also sells vitamin water. And fiction novels. And male cosmetics. This is because 50 is less of a street poet and more of a businessman who sees a market opportunity. This may be artistically dubious, but every genre has its Gene Simmons. Furthermore, even artists for whom art is actually #1 still think about money.

50 Cent becoming popular by rapping about 'Guns, Bitches and Bling' says much less about 50's artistic soul (or lack thereof), and much more about his sensibilities as a businessman. It also says a fair amount about what many North Americans want to listen to (supply & demand and all), and that should make 50 Cent's monumental success even less baffling.

Even years after 50's biggest hits, a certain portion of the American people still want to hear a successful businessman talk about killing people.

This dude:


...was seriously cramping my enjoyment of Modern Family.

I was recently introduced to this show by way of the first three episodes (sorry, late to the party), and taking into consideration the oft-tumultuous first steps most shows go through, I thought it had some really promising elements. One of them is NOT the above fellow.

Phil Dunphy is literally the doofiest TV dad ever. That title is REALLY HARD TO EARN. In a sea of TV dads that are incompetent, unsexy lame-o's, Phil Dunphy is the prince of them all. Worse than Ray Romano, worse than Tim Allen. In his own way, this character is essentially as cartoonish and unbelievable as Homer Simpson - but less likeable.

In the three episodes I watched, the character highlight of Phil Dunphy was being struck in the face with a toy airplane. Seriously. Other accomplishments include: Stealing another child's bike in a misguided parental lesson, Crashing-and-burning through rejecting the advances of an attractive neighbour - and still managing to get in trouble with the wife, and foolishly challenging said (athletic) wife to a footrace and failing to realize her incredibly obvious throwing of the race to nurse his fragile ego. At one point, this same wife refers to "all her kids, even the one she married" (Cue the cleaning product commercial).

Everything about Phil Dunphy is terrible. He is awkward with women (including his wife of 16 years), ill-equipped as a father, unathletic, has a poor sense of humour, and sucks at making and doing things. The third episode attempts to come up with reasons to like this character, and the best it manages is "He tries really hard".

The show is called Modern Family, and the other two families are actually pretty interesting. We have a gay couple raising an adopted Vietnamese daughter, and an interracial couple with a large age-gap between them. Sure there's cliche in each of these characters (cantankerous, unemotional dad; OCD, argyle-wearing gay man), but these are at worst, slightly adventurous scenarios with familiar sitcom faces. I don't expect anything seriously cutting-edge out of primetime TV.

However. Attractive, put-together supermom married to 'lumbering man-beast' is possibly the most played-out formula on TV. Why, why, why does the zombie corpse of dork-dad hyperbole still dominate how North American culture portrays fatherhood? Why couldn't the third family be something actually modern? Why not a single-parent household?

Doofy dad seriously needs to die, and stay dead.