Fated to revive

[imomus]

This is my song and no one can take it away is the latest Polypunk podcast from Digiki. It begins with the song that provides its title: "My Song" by Labi Siffre:

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Now, if you read me a couple of weeks ago talking about my love for croony, melodic, sentimental-yet-spooky numbers like Harry Belafonte's reading of "Try to Remember", you'll know that I'm threatening a 2008 album with some of this feel to it. Siffre's gentle, self-deprecating, tame, humane song (with a "white black sound", as one YouTube commenter calls it; actually the cross-pollinations are much more complex -- Siffre is British, of Nigerian ancestry, and gay) doesn't quite have the inherent brilliance of Belafonte's cover of Tom Jones' musical number (those backing vocals!). To use that now, you'd have to do something quite radical with it.

And that's exactly what Kanye West has done on his Graduation album, where Siffre's "My Song" becomes the backdrop to "I Wonder":

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This is my song but actually, yes, someone can take it away after all! Kanye's track brings out mixed feelings in me. There's something great about it -- I love how he's appropriated Siffre's song and put it together with a Kaikai Kiki image -- but there's also something shoddy about it. Siffre's song may be a bit alkaline and tepid in both its sentiment and execution, but it does have great singing and chord changes on it, elements hip hop hasn't even tried to master, except through sampling. And I wonder what it means when an artist who can't sing samples an artist who can -- doesn't that distract from his strengths and draw attention to his weaknesses?

Or could it be that hip hop's weaknesses are also strengths, forcing it to make a clear and crucial break from former ways of working in music? Could hip hop be to pop what the invention of serialism was to classical music ("I have made a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years," Schoenberg famously said in response to those who criticized his abandonment of melody)?

At the very least the revival going on in "I Wonder" is a formally bold, postmodern take on the past, one which simultaneously alienates a gentler genre and draws warmth from it. It isn't just Retro Necro rock reverence. I tend to agree with people who say that hip hop is the last new genre popular music produced. The last progressive genre, in the sense that it rewrote the rules rather than revolving, awestruck, around formulae formalised in the 1960s and 70s. "My Song" and "I Wonder" come from different worlds, different eras, in a way that, say, Babyshambles and The Clash don't.

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And what about white pop? Even when I like a track like MGMT's "Electric Feel" (download the partly Jordan Fish-produced video for a fully-interactive experience, courtesy of retro-Quicktime and GoLive Studio), I find it doesn't transcend its influences (70s pop filtered through 90s Parisian irony) and is therefore doomed to get sucked into the Retro Necro vortex, just like the Justice remix of The Klaxons' "As Above, So Below", with its too-arch tribute to The Doobie Brothers' "What A Fool Believes":

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The difference between these recontextualizations and Kanye West's is the difference between one and two: when West revives 1972, it's two different cultures being melded to produce more than the sum of their parts. When The Klaxons or MGMT do it, they don't bring enough that's really new and current to the table. It's just one culture repeating itself thirty years later. All that's changed is the context and the studio tools, and that isn't really enough to block an impression of creative decline. Or, as MGMT put it in their song "Time To Pretend", "We're fated to pretend".

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

you are full of shit

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I am full of the world, my friend.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

WHY DIDN'T YOU CONTRIBUTE TO THIS WONDERFUL SONG, MOMUS???

LOL living in 2004

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

KANYE WEST??





KANYE WEST???!

Re: LOL living in 2004

[trickseybird.livejournal.com]

SPEAKING OF OLD MEMES,

RAPINGSTEEN IS COMING FOR YOU

Re: LOL living in 2004

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I wonder what year people think of when you say "Momus"? Or "Eno"? Or "Bolan"?

Anyway, here's a nice Bowie mugshot for you, from 1976.

Re: LOL living in 2004

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

GEORGE BUSH DOESN'T CARE ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE

Re: LOL living in 2004

[(Anonymous)]

Kanye West????.....I was thinking the same thing when I read the post today, am I just being closed-minded about this? I don't know, after hearing 'Gold Digger' and his praise Jesus song (I can't even remember the name of that one, but I remember it being puketastic and turning it off quickly), I have tried to protect my ears from Kanye

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

I don't know who it was but this summer I heard a Hip-Hop song sampling Kate Bush's 'Wuthering Heights'. They had changed the speed of the sample but it sounded quite good.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You know, there's a clip of Noel Gallagher in the documentary "The Importance of Being Morrissey" saying (I quote from memory):

"Whatever subject you're writing about as a songwriter -- love or fame or whatever it is -- Morrissey has been there before you and he's written about it better than you ever could."

Initially that seems like a handsome tribute, but it also speaks of a creative medium in a really fallen state. And it relates to what I'm saying in this entry: unless you radically change the rules, you'll be forever held in check by the monuments your parents constructed. You'll be an epigone (http://imomus.livejournal.com/208965.html).

Now, try to imagine Kanye saying of Labi "Whatever you try to say in hip hop, Labi Siffre has got there before you and said it better than you ever could." It doesn't sound remotely likely, because they don't have that kind of relationship at all. The rules have been ripped up in the meantime, and that levels the playing field and means that everything is still left to play for. That's incredibly important.

Now, I don't say that hip hop hasn't also entered a phase of decline and repetition. I think it has, and I think its greatest achievements may well be behind it, threatening its present. I see Grime as the Punk Rock of hip hop, a response to a sense that parameters need to be shifted, decline halted. But it didn't quite succeed -- and if anything shouts "2004!" it's Grime.

[crowjake.livejournal.com]

I really don't like that something has to be made Ironic to be acceptable. I adore the originals of that and so many other tracks that have been remixed for hip hop, in their own context - not to say that I don't like hip hop. But if I were to play the original at a party, i can be pretty certain a lot of people would be pissed off, then were I to slap on "I wonder" there'd be a similar proportion suddenly saying "ooh i just looove the backing track!". It just reminds me of how closed minded people can be. At least I know kanye west has got a pretty good ear for it.

I think the more ironic it's made to appear and the more of a era-clash it is presented as, the more everyone comes to affirm that "aahh yes we are completely incompatible", and then that false-self-deprecation you mention can kick in and say "but only kanye west can venture way back there in the past and pull it off, oh no we never could".

I like new styles of music though even if they aren't popular styles... I still think some new popular still will happen, but I doubt from the west.

[(Anonymous)]

as for kanye west using this sample ironically, i don't see that at all. in fact, i would say it's usage is pretty genuine and sincere. he managed to recontextualize it, and that's what's so important about this kind of sampling in music. in this example, the entirety of the original song isn't that great, but he was able to zero in on a certain feeling that would fully emphasize his own feelings, and i think he did it very effectively. i don't see irony having anything to do with it.

people wouldn't be happy if you put the original on at a party just because, as a whole, it wasn't that great of a song.

and i would fully argue that hip hop is such a viable thing. m.i.a.'s kala is brilliant. there is quite a bit of hip hop outside of the states and britain that is brilliant. and i see modern hip hop's production methods having such a strong effect on so much of the more interesting weird electronic music happening right now, as well as some pop music.

so though i would agree that a lot of popular music is suffering this "retro necro vortex," if one can look outside of the obvious places i would argue that it's actually a really exciting time of music. o.lamm's monolith is an excellent example of this. that album would not have been made years ago. it is very now, extremely relevant, and just flat out amazing. and i think more and stuff like this is happening that, really, is quite exciting.

but

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

isn't there some salient triple-double irony in quoting the band to bolster your argument about what you find boring? you should check out some of their earlier stuff. it sounds kinda like momus!

but hey now, let's squash the beef: thanks for mentioning the interactive music video game!!!!!

Re: but

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It is ironic and super-meta that the band's songs are about exactly the predicament I describe them floundering and flailing about in. What that means is that the band and I are in agreement about the basic problem, which is that since there has been no stylistic break with the past in rock and pop music, we're condemned to repeat its history until someone rips up the rules and turns the page, as they did in hip hop. Without that act of destruction, there can be no meaningful creation. Sure, there can be nice tracks, and they made one. Or two. Or several. But they can never live up to "being a rock star in the 70s", and especially not by singing "we can never live up to being a rock star in the 70s".

[(Anonymous)]

good post. as a hip hop fan i must cynically hypothesize that recontextualization has no part in it. it's an ambitious sample to use (half the fans will adore it, the other half will use it to reinforce their opinion that kanye is gay) and it's a lovely implementation. but i don't think this usage or his sampling of daft punk or can or steely dan is really an effort to bridge disparate cultures. i think it's much more vanilla than that; something sounds good and different, contains a line or two which sums up the vibe of the song, can we clear the sample legally, ok let's use it. to effectively bridge the cultures you have to assume your audience will have an idea of the point of reference, and on the whole the hip hop audience is largely oblivious to other genres.

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

people like you (and me) are a significant part of the hip-hop audience. kanye and timbaland and m.i.a. and anyone else making interesting hip-hop hybrids are definitely speaking loud and clear to that part of the audience, as well as the "it sounds good so i like it" contingent. which isn't to be scoffed at--it's the basis for all things pop.

"but i can't understand a word you sayin!"

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

that Labi Siffre track reminded me a bit of this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jX7mG7svEo

..one of my all-time-fave-tunes-of-all-time, type-stuff. ;-)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Do you like Arto Lindsay? Because the sound of that, the way he sings, is very Arto.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

i'm suddenly inspired to sample hairstyle of the devil and rap over it and see what you think about it

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

OH OH OH

CAN I BE A VIDEO BITCH

[(Anonymous)]

You know, Mr. whiter-than-merrit, accusing Hip-Hop of being shoddily performed is probably the no. 1 way to reveal that you've never really listened to it, aside from maybe some snatch on the radio.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

"Kanye's track brings out mixed feelings in me. There's something great about it -- I love how he's appropriated Siffre's song and put it together with a Kaikai Kiki image -- but there's also something shoddy about it."

Is this accusing hip hop in general of being shoddily performed? Note the use of the key words "Kanye's track". Or are you trying to tell me they're all the same -- that if one is shoddy, they all are?

[(Anonymous)]

Hip hop "hasn't even tried to master" great singing?? Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, imomus? Anyone that's ever heard Ghostface Killah's track "Jellyfish" from "Fishscale" will know that, not only has hip hop mastered great singing, it's brought great singing into the 21st Century. See also the ODB's idiosyncratic crooning on "return to the 36"

cheers

Aloysius Munn

市井無頼

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I have a love hate relationship with Hip-Hop & RnB, but then I have a love hate relationship with music is general. Less Bitches and hos, more birds, makeshift birdfeeders made of milk cartons and moths. That's what Hip Hop and RnB needs.

[(Anonymous)]

"retro necro"

That's a way to put it, if you can leave the "apt" and "scary" behind.