According to John Koblin of The New York Observer, the main candidates for the now-vacant pop critic job at the New York Times are Jon Caramanica (who is departing his post as Vibe’s music editor this week) and Jody Rosen of Slate (and, frequently, Blender), though there are others allegedly in the… More »
New York Times music critic and official rockism explainer Kelefa Sanneh is leaving the Gray Lady for The New Yorker, where he’ll reportedly cover the “culture” beat; Sanneh wrote about World Changers Church International pastor Creflo Dollar for the mag in 2004 and penned a piece on corporate rap… More »
As a way of profiling three artists who made three solid hip-hop albums this year–Turf Talk, Prodigy, and Project Pat–the New York Times‘ Kelefa Sanneh has written another entry in the “hip-hop: possibly dead, definitely changing” trend piece parade. The reasons, in case you’ve been otherwise occupied: sales are in the crapper, hip-hop sales are really in the crapper, one-hit ringtones rule, albums by former backpack outliers are (shockingly, right?) selling better than albums by the one-hit ringtoners, and the genre’s mainstream is taking the reality of the new model harder than most thanks to its longstanding “if you’re not getting money, you ain’t shit” philosophy. The difference being, Sanneh argues, that the rappers themselves are (sometimes) finally realizing the need to scale back their ambitions and “keep grinding” on the indie circuit. But what if hip-hop’s multitudes can’t be contained by the indie circuit alone? What if the genre needs the money men to foster creativity? What the underground needs the promise of the giant gold tank to keep that grind rolling?
Today’s New York Times review of Nas’ Hip-Hop Is Dead, written by Kelefa Sanneh, is a must-read for a number of reasons: It uses a recent anti-Nas rant by Young Jeezy to illustrate the regional/generational divide among rappers; it quotes a Pitchfork interview; and it clocks in… More »
