u/2ksprince

Like what the main sounds and artists leading/going up in the ug currently?

Over my time listening to music, there are many artists that had me in a chokehold. At one point it was kanye, carti, bjork. Right now xaviersobased. and while im in that phase it would be unimaginable that another artist could be better. But when i step back i can understand that the infatuation is only temporary and that i will inevitably prefer other music in the future.

The thing is that there isnt one artist or one song thats better. Its really just about the relationship between the listener and the piece of work at the specific time that it is consumed.

And what I think is poisoning music discourse today is not only the assumption that the listener is a stable subject but also that each individual listener experiences music the same way. 

in reality we all have different bodies that will be affected by music differently. old heads will like tupac and i will like nettspend, but theres no objective metric to say that either is better or worse.

The mentality that music is objective is what leads to top 10 lists and scores out of 10. These things can be fun but ultimately i think they are unproductive and it devalues the artwork.

We see this going on with fantano, I disagree with much of his takes but in his videos he makes the effort to dissect the work, point out what he liked what he doesnt like in an informative way. (*ive been kind of disappointed with how he dismissed pompeii/utility and early life crisis but his older videos really helped me develop my understanding of music concepts) However all that people do is click to the end of the video, screenshot the rating and run with that. And they will compare the rating to other ratings and complain that it is inconsistent.

But its simply the structure of rating systems that is not suited to adress music. You can’t quantify a qualitative artform. Just like you cant capture a film with a star rating on letterboxd.

The most infamous example of this is pitchfork 6.5 rating of the peppa pig album. People will complain that the rating is higher than utopia and donda. But how are you even supposed to rank those albums with same scale? Its a ridiculous idea

What id like to see more online is discussion which centers the personal experience with the music, rather than striving to be objective. I wish the questions critics answered were “How did the work affect me?”, “What are the formal qualities of the work which produced these affects?” rather than “Is this good or bad?”, “What is this /10?”

Someone who i think does this well is professor skye. He starts his videos by saying “welcome to the always positive new music review show” not really because he always likes the work but because he can talk about the music in a way that isnt judging it. 

I wish that we could have more of this in the music space but i dont think that the internet really allows for it

I also dont want act like im above this all, like everyone ive participated in this devaluing discourse, because its just fun to rank stuff and argue abt it.

tldr: dont rate music, talk about it

i feel like there is this divide in the underground scene where one side is led by black artists with the rage stuff that sometimes tend to be a bit ignorant with their lyrics. like che dropping the f slur recently. and the second side the hyperpop adjacent scene led by more queer white artists like jane.

but recently we had the two sides interact and blend thanks to artists prettifun and lucy bedroque, which was a great thing to see.

but with the whole beef between jane, skaiwater and dabo i think that that gap will never be bridged.

skaiwater framed the whole situation as black vs white. and then dabo released his diss which was just full of transphobia and misogyny.

and this is terrible because it reinforces the divide between the black misogynist side of the ug with the white queer one.

this framing was reinforced by jane tweeting "Anywayyy I'm gonna go back to working on my LGBT MUSIC" after the dabo (carti affiliate) diss.

its just disheartening to see because this whole beef was so avoidable and i feel like it will set us back years.

(note: reading this back, i know referred to the "black" side of the ug as ignorant and misogynistic. I wasn't trying to say that they are, more that its a stereotype attributed to them because of the legacy of hip hop )