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from: Ann Powers
to: Robert Christgau and Jody Rosen

Lil' Wayne Reminds Me a Lot of Axl Rose

Posted Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2007, at 10:45 AM ET

Jody Rosen chatted online with readers about this dialogue on Dec. 20, 2007. Read the transcript.

Lil' Wayne. Click image to expand.

Hey guys,

Having stayed up until 4 a.m. writing about Celine's last Vegas hurrah (which featured a shower of rose petals, an oddly restrained reading of "The Christmas Song," several cameos by her cutie-pie clone son Rene-Charles, and the loudest pennywhistle I've ever heard), I'm not equipped to be definitive on Little Wayne. His catalog's getting as deep as the Marianas Trench, and his quality level varies from junk to genius, depending on his mood and maybe the paycheck. (In this, he's very early-'90s punk: He's much better when he's giving it away). It would take more than a paragraph to dissect the dude, and besides, SFJ did a great job already.

Suffice to say that Weezy has that thing—that combo of menace and miraculousness that makes for the most compelling figures in pop. He's uncensored, and since he's part of street hip-hop's woman-fearing warrior culture, he can sometimes be unpleasant. But he's also itchily ambitious, always looking beyond the world that made him, even as he demands to define and dominate it. He reminds me a lot of W. Axl Rose—except he's as riskily prolific as Rose became tragically stuck.

And he's funny, though as a fortysomething white girl, I'm not always prone to getting his jokes. I did get pretty much every one on my indie-rock record of the year, Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? Bob, you already name-checked the album's best song—the epic nervous breakdown confessional "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal"—but the whole set's a high point for Kevin Barnes, a glam metrosexual Peter Pan with a penchant for French theory and cheesy beats. Barnes has been hanging around college radio for years, slowly getting better, and it's grand to see him hit his peak.

It was a year of peaks, in fact, for indie-ish artists with a little dirt under their fingernails. Feist made her Tapestry and got to be the latest seasoned boho chick nominated for a best new artist Grammy. Bluegrass heartbreak boys the Avett Brothers released Emotionalism, their sixth album in four years, and showed how a little discipline and a lot of touring can perfect a sound. For White Chalk, Polly Harvey took up the piano, put on the dress Holly Hunter discarded from the movie with that instrument's name, and stunningly reworked her main theme of femininity, bound and unbound. I don't get Spoon myself, but seeing Britt Daniel work his angular charm in a packed Hollywood theater, I could feel the band thrill to its own evolution.

I could go on and on. The point is that as much as novelty harasses us, our speedy era is just as notable for enabling the artists that Bob once famously dubbed "semi-popular" to survive and grow. Rufus Wainwright doing Judy Garland at the Hollywood Bowl—would that have happened before the onset of niche marketing? Or Yo La Tengo making it to the same stage, opening for Bright Eyes, 20-plus years into their cult status? They burned it down, by the way. Wish I could have seen those Hanukkah shows.

The Internet's entrepreneurial paradise is only one reason indie's middle-aged set is thriving, even as young bloods like Arcade Fire (a band I like way more live than on record) break through. It's also because the generation weaned on R.E.M. and the 'Mats has hit middle age and is using what power it's gained to promote and preserve its own. Just look at the soundtrack to Todd Haynes' I'm Not There for proof: The only baby boomer present, besides Dylan himself, is Richie Havens. Putting Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth and Stephen Malkmus of Pavement up front in his version of Dylanology was a polite way for Haynes to say, step aside, fogies, we're the canonizers now.

It's weird for us aging indie hipsters to be in that position, since our youth was spent warming up the margins. But we've adapted. This year, I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony for the first time. Coincidentally, Michael Stipe and the boys were getting ushered in. When the band got up onstage—with Bill Berry back on drums!—and played, my whole table, packed with editors of leading music mags and national newspaper critics, got up to dance. Of course we did. We'd all had copies of Reckoning glued to our dorm-room turntables in 1984. I turned to my pal, one of those taste-making editors, and said with a grin, "We're so old!"

And even as we help our own get museum gigs, soundtrack work, or good slots on late-night television talk shows, we're getting usurped by today's kids, who have a whole new set of values. Most heartening to me is the easy way younger indie kids cross boundaries of genre and, consequently, race; I've seen more booty-shaking on rock club dance floors this year than I did in my entire college career, not to mention more black and brown faces onstage. That's another aspect of the humanism you identify, Bob—rock's good old-fashioned ability to create utopian space. I might find grassroots rock more generally boring musically right now than R&B or the poptimist hit parade, but I still feel like indie's a pretty fun place to hang out.

Ann

the music club
entries
123456789
from: Ann Powers
to: Robert Christgau and Jody Rosen

Lil' Wayne Reminds Me a Lot of Axl Rose

Posted Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2007, at 10:45 AM ET
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Veteran rock critic Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide column appears monthly on Microsoft Networks. He is a contributing editor of Rolling Stone and a contributing critic for All Things Considered, and is archived at robertchristgau.com and Rhapsody.com. Ann Powers is the chief pop-music critic of the Los Angeles Times. Jody Rosen is Slate's music critic. He lives in New York City. He can be reached at .
Entry 1: Photograph of M.I.A. (Mathangi Arulpragasam) courtesy her Web site: http://www.miauk.com/. Entry 2: Photograph of Patty Griffin by Karina Taira. Entry 3: Photograph of Brad Paisley by Peter Kramer/Getty Images. Entry 5: Photograph of Miranda Lambert by Ethan Miller/Getty Images. Entry 6: Photograph of Lil' Wayne © 2007 Universal Records. Entry 7: Photograph of Amy Winehouse by Dave Hogan/Getty Images. Entry 8: Photograph of Feist from the artist's MySpace page. Entry 9: Photograph of Panda Bear by Hisham Bharoocha.
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Remarks from the Fray:

Why can't we just admit that Nickelback is the greatest Rock artist of our generation? By your standards of appreciation for Daughtry (post-grunge, big lungs, showmanship, populism, and oodles of record sales) then clearly Chad Kroeger has usurped the throne of Kurt Kobain down to Jimi Hendrix.

So why not? They have better guitar solos too. Why not them? They've made it themselves - working their way through dingy snowed out Canadian bars. Why not them? Every 18 year old knows the words to "Rock Star" and "How you Remind Me." Why not them?

Because they suck suck suck suck suck, and you know it. Their music is unoriginal (yet somehow Daughtry manages to ape THEM), their lyrics are the worst kind of ham-handed laughable tripe, and the "rocking" is the most middle-of-the-road ho hum of studio slickery ever to be committed to tape. They're a clumsy, artless band - the post grunge equivalent of Turner Bachman Overdrive or Grand Funk Railroad - at least those guys had good competition.

And here you go, giving Daughtry props for being popular. Michael Jackson, the Beatles, Elvis and Bing Crosby were popular, but they were also cultural touchstones as celebrity icons who represented what was good in their generation. Daughtry just represents what IS. He is the sound of reality TV, an Icon of the Bush Decade Generation. You know as well as the rest of us who aren't willing to substitute populism for depth that we will look back on all that with pity at best.

--jwschmidt

(To reply, click here.)

If you think the Shins are boring, you are a populist, open-minded musicologist. If you think Lil' Wayne is boring (just because something is up-tempo doesn't mean it can't be boring), then you are an elitist hipster douchebag. Just wanted to clear that up. Also, can we start backlashing on the whole poptimist thing yet? I mean nobody is saying that Transformers should end up on critic's end of year movie lists, or that "Dancing with the Stars" is better than "The Wire", or that the best novel of last year was by James Patterson. Why is it that popular opinion can't be ignored in music, but it can be for every other media outlet?

--Utz_the_Crab_chip

(To reply, click here.)

I started to write this long justification of how I'm a huge indie guy, how I go out of my way to be as anti-mainstream as possible but will always have a soft spot for Journey. But then I realized how trivial that is because you will never like it and the people that love it just do. And the people that love the song, have loved it for a quarter of a century now. That's substance. You can ignore it by trying to make your criticism sound like a social science by adding historical anecdotes but dropping names isn't dropping bombs. Schlock is putting down a song then dismissing any argument because "you're not buying it." That's cheap. That Brittney Spears or Soulja Boy you list might be on a soundtrack 10 years down the road, but it'll be put there ironically. You can say that a message of "Don't Stop Believin'," is 'hyperemotional' but is it really more shallow than a song that's about "Supermannin'" that ho and has a dance to go along to it??? Oh, and Brittney? At least Steve Perry was writing his own shit.

If I just gave you the middle finger and told you to fuck off would be pretty rock n' roll but I won't since I'm not from the "rebel generation." I'm inheriting an earth that could possibly be facing mass extinctions in 50 years with enough nukes to destroy the world ten times over. I have to go to grad school now, on top of college, just to stay competitive, just so I get a job that makes me wait in line for the Baby Boomer that decided to put off his retirement until he turns 75. So, in those moments where I can let my guard down, allow my heart to shake my cynicism- if only for 4 minutes- give me a song that espouses optimism. I'll listen to my indie, electronic, and underground hip-hop at home so let us all sing the chorus drunk or sober in the bar. Is it cliché? I don't know anymore. It's a post-modern world where every "heresy" and taboo has been upended. Don't you think it's a little more edgy, more "rebellious," these days to sing songs of determined hope?

--SatoriThroughAllegory

(To reply, click here.)

I always find it interesting that music critics have to pay attention to and know all genres of music very well while most listeners (including Slate fray posters) seem to pretty much like one or two genres and dismiss everything else.

It's funny to see Double Up and Sound of Silver on the same list. I listen to a good swath of current "mainstream" music. I don't know that much about "indie" and other "underground" scenes, though I did start to get into some of the French inspired dance music stuff this year.

I found out about this stuff on the recommendation of critics who also give Timberlake, Timbaland, and The Clipse good reviews. The point of this rambling post is that if you see an artist on one of these top 25 lists that you have never heard of, give him / her a try, you may find something that you like.

--Alcibiades

(To reply, click here.)

(12/20)

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