#kris ex

[yankeeblue]

The Firm in VIBE Magazine December 1997/January 1998 issue. Written by Kris Ex. Photographed by Dough Ordway.

[yankeeblue]

Mya in VIBE Magazine August 1998 issue. Written by Kris Ex. Photographed by Philippe Balobos.

[yankeeblue]

Jermaine Dupri in VIBE Magazine September 1998 issue. Written by Kris Ex.

[rounthug-blog]

Genius isn't necessarily moral, compassionate or even evolved. It just has to be able to go forward where and how others cannot imagine. It creates spectacle. It says that not just any spectacle born of embarrassment is genius, but it makes spectacle marketable and profitable in terms both human and financial. It inspires us. It causes us to take inventory. And it makes us ask, what are we mastering as this album is being mastered? What are we rearranging in ourselves as he shuffles his playlist? What are we separating and equalizing? Because if we love ourselves like Kanye loves Kanye, we would not be mastering the art of waiting.

kris ex

Eight Writers on The Life of Pablo So Far

[ratsonly]

On Nicholas Payton on D'Angelo

Iconic jazz trumpeter Nicholas Payton’s overall assessment of D’Angelo’s new album is, for my (and many people's) money, totally wrong, but it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve read this month. Payton is a musician and not a critic, but this type of writing seems to be becoming more popular recently: pieces where writers place music (literally, the details of the music) and musicians in a very explicit and high-stakes societal and racial context (for particularly divisive examples, see Kris Ex's op-eds on Pitchfork). Obviously, it makes sense that this would be happening now, given recent events in this country, even putting Iggy Azalea aside. (Also--in relationship to Payton's piece specifically--let's not forget that the release date for Black Messiah was supposedly pushed forward due to the incidents in New York and Ferguson, and the ensuing protests.)

Work like Payton’s and Ex’s challenges the idea that we can analyze music without talking about societal/racial considerations more specifically. These pieces postulate the responsibilities of black artists who actively attempt to cross and push musical boundaries, and how the size of their platform (for Ex, Nicki Minaj) or reputation (D’Angelo) affects their level of responsibility. Context is widened to an extreme in these analyses. This MO sometimes results in polarizing, even offbase, qualitative analyses but also accommodates some really interesting trains of thought.

In lots of contemporary Internet pop criticism, writers discuss the appropriation of black styles (or, in the case of this article, black musicians white-ifying black styles) loosely, often without getting into the details of how where the music is missing the mark (or, taking the value judgment out of it, how it is different). They fail to connect these details to race and tradition non-superficially (without getting past the tone-deaf or #WhitePeopleProblems lyrics or the overall appropriation of an stylistic mode). One of the most fascinating things about this piece is how it explicitly politicizes musical details on the record (one of its most distinguishing attributes) and contextualizes D’Angelo’s specific musical language (in relationship to J Dilla and the evolution of the unquantized funk beat). So many people laud D’Angelo as an innovator, but often talk about him in terms of his ability to repurpose the music of the past (after all, the “neo-soul” buzzword) instead of how he extends and alters it. The focus in Payton's analysis is difference, not sameness.

[A lot of people think music theory has no place within criticism—yes, it limits its audience, but here I think it makes the piece stronger and one of the most intelligent pieces I’ve read about this album. Black Messiah is an extremely fussy and hyper-technical album (I think that is on the surface of the music—attention to detail in counterpoint as well as production values), so Payton’s approach (aside from the fact that he’s writing a blog post for his own site and not doing Criticism, so why wouldn’t he) seems appropriate.]

Payton (or—and this is not meant in relation to Kris Ex—old-head/Golden Age-minded rap critics) can be irritating because his aesthetic sensibilities are so brazenly and self-consciously narrow (see his discussion of "youth" music, or his problematic and vague notion of “less sophisticated times”). But pieces like this one and Ex’s raise issues that are worth considering in our listening.They expand the context for criticism in a way that is more meaningful than the inclusion of celebrity gossip source material to which some object in current pop criticism, or free-associating extra-musical significations and comparisons to the point of deflecting attention away from the music at hand. This type of work hinges on the idea that it is not only aesthetics/music for music's sake that matters, but the cultural importance of certain traditions or tropes. Payton even hypothesizes the societal model demonstrated by musical structures, a move straight out of the music writing of Theodor Adorno as much as Amiri Baraka’s.* With the way people discuss thinkpieces or just things nowadays, it seems like it’s increasingly unpopular to take an equivocal or nuanced stance on a strong argument--to draw things from it, as opposed to patently agree or disagree with vitriol.

It’s nice to read pieces that force you to do more than like or dislike, since they can't easily be written off--to pay attention, enjoy reading while disagreeing. In spite of the “#BAM,” this is the type of bold, opinionated and non-self-consciously contrarian piece which threatens to make you forget “trolling” was ever a term.

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*Theodor Adorno talked about how Schoenberg and Beethoven’s music, in certain ways, demonstrated the progression and development of a musical idea (a positive, generative social model), rather than a rehashing (Wagner) or collage (Stravinsky) of unchanged material (fascistic, in some of his analyses)—in this piece, Peyton talks about the signification of details within a groove, and puts this in a larger through-line of development in black music (the artists who have furthered it, rather than stunting its growth, as with the Marsalis bros—those who “stay in the game”). Peyton’s in a weird position since some would accuse him of being a growth-stunter rather than an outside thinker—he walks a strange line, but part of this article’s focus is articulating his difficult position (between Wynton dismissing electric Miles, and a Bruno Mars endorsement). 

[gbattle]

On the fine arts-heavy "Picasso Baby," Jay refers to Basquiat at least three times by three names, once saying "I'm the new Jean-Michel." He begins the song claiming, "I just want a Picasso" and ends saying "I'm the modern day Pablo Picasso, baby." Taken linearly, it's a mess of ego. But comprehensively, it's all insatiable radiant child cubism — poignant signifiers of ghetto brashness juxtaposed with impressionistic images of intergenerational wealth creating the collage of an identity that's yearning to be accepted, but unwilling to be acceptable.

Kris Ex for NPR.