The Culture Gabfest “Butchery and Bitchery” Edition
Slate’s podcast about Drake’s new album, hatchet job book reviews, and Apple’s new operating system iOS7.
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On this week’s episode, the critics discuss Drake’s new album Nothing Was the Same. With the help of New York magazine’s music critic Jody Rosen, they explore Drake’s wildly-popular brand of hip hop, in which authenticity is tied to emotional availability instead of street credibility. Next, the gabbers join in on a debate initiated by Clive James in the New York Times, lamenting the state of the American book review. Have American critics lost their bite? Finally, the critics take stock of Apple’s newest operating system iOS7, assessing its successes, controversies, and departures from a Jobs-approved aesthetic.
Links to some of the things we discussed this week:
- Drake’s latest album Nothing Was the Same
- Drake’s 2011 album Take Care
- Jody’s review of Nothing Was the Same at Vulture
- 2 Chainz, Atlanta rapper and “Drake antidote”
- Clive James’s New York Times piece criticizing American criticism
- Lee Siegel’s response to James in The New Yorker
- Isaac Chotiner’s responds to Siegel’s response in the New Republic
- Helen Vendler’s hatchet job review of David Denby’s Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World
- Dana’s flip-flop hatchet job
- Julia’s Slate review of The Missing Ink by Philip Hensher
Endorsements:
Julia: The unexpectedly delightful shelter magazine House Beautiful
Steve: Cabinporn.com, Louis Menand’s merciless review of Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate and Vi Hart’s math videos
Outro: “Started from the Bottom” by Drake
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