Great topic, Tom. One has to wonder if that 70,000 sales or so is really the effect of "critical love" or if Clipse's reputation worked wonders for them. One thing's for sure, music generally doesn't sell that much nowadays.

not to dwell on post hoc=/propter hoc, since you know that one, and not to dwell on the elephant walk dynamics of this piece, since i empathize, and not to shortchange "every little bit helps," since it does, but this is the wrong act to get high/mighty about you know? plus i think it's pretty unhealthy to think of criticism as like this kingly "we say who eats around here" gig, or at least to intend it as so, which is what you're suggesting towards the end. i like to think maybe (some) critics have some control over the canon, and twenty or thirty years from now maybe (maybe) girl talk will be something somebody still cares about and chooses to be influenced by or whatever.

but all the sales stuff is icky, man, really really icky, and then you get into "responsibility to the artist," and suddenly you're running a really "nice" website, staffed with really "nice" people who all get along *really well* at the CMJ staff gettogether, who all refuse to pan records because the guitarist has two kids and a wife and a dog, writers who have all but forgotten how to get excited about music both good and bad, because their job suddenly has social-work type implications. hey, i'm guilty just as much as the next guy for thinking he can save the local falafel place--one $3.50 falafel/babaganush at a time.

which is maybe why this post is really aggravating. not that i want this gig to be some behind-doors boys club, but i can't help but think there's a terribly insecure tagalong spirit to the "i helped make *you* happen" post-positive-review circle jerk that i'm beginning to witness with clipse post-11/28. it's like fuck off! you didn't make the record! you didn't do a single fucking thing. and instead of being upset about that, maybe it's time to realize that's the best thing writing-wise you have going for you.

This happens when you're too big to be on Koch, but not big enough to do Jay-Z numbers.

Phonte of Little Brother recently had an excellent post on their myspace blog about the 3 types of LB fans: the Heads (care about the music and want to see us win at whatever the cost), Loyalists (care about the music and want to see us win as a team.....but still have emotional stake and loyalties to certain players), and Stans.

"The average music listener likes Little Brother because we make good music. Our 'base' however (internet heads, music nerds, and other aspiring rappers/producers), likes us because we're underplayed, underpaid, and (for now, at least) fit snugly in their back pockets. We're the group that music nerds use to one up their Clear Channelized friends on some, 'yo, I bet you ain't up on THESE n***as tho....' They then walk away feeling all warm and fuzzy (read: high and mighty) because they did a good deed and educated the savages.

So, what happens when a music nerd's personal best kept secret gets out, and the rest of the world catches on? They turn their backs and move on to the next Little Rap Engine That Could, that's what. I seen it happen to The Roots. I seen it happen to Kanye. I see it starting to happen with Lupe."

i just want to say, on some half joke/ half serious ish, that Trey's unrelenting hate on Hell Hath No Fury has kept me from buying the album, because the holidays is too damn close for me to risk spending my precious few dollars on a wack album. whenever i finally do cop, i hope it's NOT hot, or i'm going to be upset at dude.

jaja

Tom, can we PLEASE get some fukkin commentary on Hip Hop is dead, i would like to know if I'm to be angry at you or impressed with your incite on the subject.

Pinder: I use to pull that shit in high school, then I noticed it about myself and cut it the fukk out. Real annoying habit some of us have.

Tray's the name. No, see, the album's okay, on paper it reads very well, but it's mostly a series of drily delivered punchlines about coke, you know, "it cools to a tight wad, the pyrex is Jewish," that kind of thing. And over dull beats. I don't see the big fuss. If I could predict Tom's take on Hip Hop Is Dead, I'd say that he'll find some reason to not like the album, or what he's heard of it. Perhaps alleging that Nas seems "grumpy" these days. Myself, I've been very pleased with everything I've heard from it so far, lyrically it's far from his best work but he's coming a lot harder on tracks than he usually does and his flow almost seems as if it's improved.

I think of Clipse's lack of success can be attributed to the general public disagreeing with the critical praise heaped upon Hell Hath No Fury. If you were to go on to any hip hop message board, I think you will find that the majority of the people found the album to be underwhelming and not the classic that the critics heap upon it. I personally found the album underwhelming for the sole reason that the beats are so blah. I thought Malice and Pusha really brought it but the Neptunes spaced aged boom bap sound doesn't really fit with the Clipse's style. It was too "underproduced" and sounded as if it were some budget ass Neptunes beats. I feel as if Clipse would be better suited with Blueprint and Ghostface-esque soul sampled beats. I feel it would add gravity to their subject matter. Instead, it comes off as shallow and materialistic.

I'd also like to note that I think punchline lyricism is a complete different form of lyricism than the traditional, more poetic lyricism of Nas or Rakim. Being clever with punchlines does not make you a lyricist. Clipse are way too punchliney for my taste but I still thought they really brought it on this album, anyway.

You want to write your 800th post about The Clipse, ok. No problem.

You want to damn near throw your shoulder out of its socket patting yourself on the back (writing paragraph upon paragraph of subtext suggesting that you in some way contribute to their success), fine. That's cool too.

But your continual agenda pushing bullshit about Jay-Z, is really starting to wear on me. It wouldn't bother me so much if you hadn't already shown that you're capable of so much more.

I woulda just stopped reading a while ago, but part of me wants to believe you're not doing this consciously. I'm hoping against hope that if people point out your unnecessary and sometimes (as in today's post) completely out of nowhere petty sniping at Jay, that you'll stop, or at least review the album that seems to have become the bane of your existence
"...the same week that Jay-Z's Kingdom Come, maybe the most relentlessly and extravagantly marketed event-album in recent memory, took an 81% drop from first-week sales that weren't as high as the projected sales in the first place."

I mean really, aren't there about a million other ways you could have made the same point without backhandedly celebrating a second week drop off? Careful if this rampant hating doesn't find its way out of your column, people are going to start calling you TomZino.

As always, what continues to be most distasteful about the whole situation is utter gutlessnes of your approach. If you think the album sucks, maybe you're right. Maybe it does. Maybe the 700,000+ people who bought it the first week are wrong about about it. Its possible. I mean, the millions who keep buying Nelly and Chingy albums sure are. But until you step up and tell us why you think the album sucks, shut the fuck up.

i am definitely going to start calling you tomzino

riffraff - all you're doing is playing the part of another equally aggravating critical archetype: the cynical whistle-blower; the guy unafraid to tell us how it REALLY is because that's what real critics do.

So you think Tom's cash talk is icky. But what's the subtext behind disassembling the life of a critic for 'the rest of us'? Do you want a pat on the back?

idol building is dangerous; idols, after all, are built to be destroyed (i seen the same thing happen to kane...and the guy who said he saw the same thing happen to kane; and Granola Bar Rap; and, um--prolly--lupe fiasco)

'cause, like, one minute they're getting 9.2s on pitchfork, then the next they're doing Folklore numbers--which, come to think of it, they were probably already doing--and whining to their constituites (the people who, in this case, actually went out and bought *most* of those $78,000 copies) about how "hipster journalists" are ruining EVERYTHING. (the inevitable clipse backlash STARTS NOW; so says the existence of posts like these.)

so i guess maybe in a way, the okayplayers are right--maybe we should seek to examine the reasons why we single out certain shit (and why we tend to pat ourselves on the back for singling out said shit)--especially when it's always sometthing that clearly IS ironic (witty, high-art hustlers over futuristic beats? and again, i must return to: "backpacker on a baller's budget"? word to me: his ass is so fucking lucky that george bush doesn't care about black people)

fawning over someone's perfect imperfections is a great way to blog but it's a terrible way to have an attention span.

so i guess we've gotta get to the point where "critiscm" doesn't = idol building. which is gonna be very hard; ask lester (r.i.p.).

Breihan and Sylvester are both mis-appropriating, pompous, detached academics. Backpacker, thug and all else aside these guys are wolves in sheep's clothing: new-Age Orientalists fawning (great word I had to borrow) over what they feel is exotic.

Read further comments here.
myspace.com/biggestthingsince

Three points:

1. Clipse sales weren't so bad comparatively speaking.

2. Their "critical success", is, i think, less universal than suggested by this article.

3. Is it so surprising that an album without a strong single didn't blow up?