Chuck Klosterman on Danger Mouse
Interesting Chuck Klosterman piece in the New York Times about how Danger Mouse takes otherwise perfectly good acts like Cee-Lo and MF Doom and shapes them to his own, shittier vision. Klosterman seems to think this is good.
Also: Jay Smooth on the article
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Also: Jay Smooth on the article
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posted by Jesse Thorn at Tuesday, June 20, 2006
10 Comments:
Oh no! Cee-lo may be associated with a violence gang! And the album was recorded differently from rock music!
I think DM is okay, but I'm increasingly disliking Klosterman. I think it's interesting how most of Danger Mouse's albums have been mostly been advertised as "Danger Mouse is working with _______," and not the other way around.
So Cee-Lo writes the lyrics and does the vocals, but it's Burtons song? Such an *incredible* concept such an *unusual* beat.
Don't you love how "black" music only become palatable to the hipster set when it either reenforces the very worst stereotypes or is delievered by a white ambassador?
Had this been produced by ?uestlove, they'd call it "Neo-Soul" and it would never have a single spin on KROQ
I think Klosterman making this seem like some sort of new thing or a good thing is rediculous, but Jesse, have you heard the Gnarls album yet? I remember you saying you specifically were not going to hear it, yet you keep MURDERING this record (even on the show, goddamn). I still think it's a pretty great album, but I do agree that Dangermouse has made a habit of taking an artist's sound and making it sound like his music. Even if there's no signature sound, it sounds like his music. And that has been good (Gnarls) and ehh (Gorillaz) and terible (Dangerdoom, probably because Doom is used to being the driving force).
I would argue that Cee-Lo's signature sound is either his rapping, or his singing on cuts like "Liberation."
I listened to the Gnarls album twice, and I thought it stunk both times. Danger Mouse has this kind of super-thin, unpleasant production style, with no real groove to it. He really produces like what he is -- a dance music producer turned to hip-hop. Just because you switched to the my-first boom bap drum kit doesn't make you a great hip-hop producer.
The album wasn't uniformly awful (I thought "Crazy" was OK), but DM's thin production + Cee-Lo's thin voice = unpleasant to the ear.
Now, understand that I feel the same way about the way most rock music sounds, so I hardly claim to be an unbiased observer.
I will also say that I heard a song from the DM + Gemini album, the title track, that I liked a lot.
Yeah, I know you're not the biggest rock fan, so it makes sense that this is sort of dissapointing for a Cee-Lo fan who doesn't enjoy the direction he's going.
i thought it was funnysad that the one paragraph about cee-lo was klosterman trying to determine whether or not he was a gang member.
has klosterman ever tried to write about hip hop before? hopefully this is the last time. was kelfah sennah on vacation last weekend?
also mike - dm is black, but i still pretty much agree with everything you said.
Jesse, you seem to have this preconceived notion that the Gnarles record is trying to be something it isn't. I don't think anyone is trying to shoehorn it in to the hip-hop scene. Your comments on the subject strike me as nearly identical to the Hipster kids you were complaining about a few weeks ago, only defending a different genre.
Well, hip-hop is the music that I like. And I like Cee-Lo as a hip-hop artist.
I think most people are initially considering this a hip-hop album because it's a nominally "hip-hop" producer (based on his work with Jemini and MF Doom) working with a (former?) member of Goodie Mob. As much as Klosterman might wish it were, though, it's also not a rock album. It really occupies the same pop/hip-hop hybrid space as the Gorillaz. (Who cares if Cee-Lo was in a gang or not, just as long as he's not a rapper.)
As much as I like reading the Washington Post and New York Times, most of their pop culture articles seem geared towards informing clueless older folks about what their kids are doing and listening to, which is why it might seem like some things have been "approved" for mass white consumption. But even in that context this article does miserably.
Also, based on looking over the Times' website, it looks like Sanneh was busy working on a piece about Dashboard Confessional.
It seems like sanneh has the emo beat for the Times. Also, pop country.
That said, his hip-hop criticism is generally excellent. I think he has a remarkable facility for doing what you described, Jon, without getting anything wrong or dumbing down. I often get some real insight from his stuff.
He wrote a piece in the New Yorker around when Blueprint came out about Jay-Z that was easily the best thing I've read on him... which is saying something, given that he's the greatest rapper of the modern era.
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