...I don’t understand why internet radio isn’t much better and every now and then I run into an acquaintance on the street and we talk for a minute and let’s say she says “what have you been listening to?” and I say “I love Miranda Lambert’s album” and let’s say she goes out and buys Kerosene a week later well here’s what I’ve noticed: no one from Sony’s marketing division comes to my house and gives me 99 cents, so I feel like there are two logical possibilities, one of which is simply never to speak positively of any products ever, and the other is to wonder why the fuck I would ever pay 99 cents for song I could just download free? and to never calculate an appropriate rate for commodities as long as they decline to calculate an appropriate rate for my marketing efforts just you know as a civilian not as a music critic or anything. No one claims the moral right to a price point without paying for labor period I mean that’s not my ideology it’s theirs so show me the money or I won’t show you mine.
This year had a great song by Missy Elliott and several by Ciara including one in particular that was irresistible and so even though Timbaland had a track as joyously driving as anything he’s ever did even if it got slept on like ambien (Xzibit’s “Hey Now”), and even though the Neptunes eluded the diminishing returns of that post-jazz falsetto shit long enough to make Slim Thug seem both slim and thuglike for four superlative hardass minutes (“I Ain’t Heard of That”), and even though Rich Harrison had his one perfect track per annum (Amerie’s “1 Thing”) and is probably about 20 minutes from running the world, it was still about “Lose Control” and “1, 2, Step,” one of which was on a Missy record and one on Ciara’s, like I said, except both were sung by Ciara and Missy jointly (why do you think they call them “joints”?) which is why we need to change this poll now, today, because even ignoring its TOTAL INCAPACITY to reflect how music listening has changed over the last 30 years and especially the last seven, it is also STRAIGHT-UP RACIST: even if all the Dicks and Janes and ILXors know how put rainbow sprinkles on their lists and have dipshit threads about tokenism, this poll itself is structurally slanted away from how music is made outside of the crack-white universe in which the singer-songwriter is the hysterically disavowed totalitarian ideal that dominates rock and indie and the electronic diaspora and every other I’m-a-genius-and-here’s-my-record form, and occasionally spits out an actual genius but mostly is just like getting beaten up by Big Willie in the prison yard the very morning after he’s appeared in Conan acting sensitive and urging us to vote Democratic so listen: until I can vote for something like Artist of the Year and point out that Jazze Pha who — no offense to Ciara who seems supercharming and Missy who is my second favorite rap star ever — but if we can name names at all in the way this poll presumes is somehow natural then we would have to name Jazze Pha for both “Lose Control” and “1, 2 Step” which right there gives him one more perfect song than the guy who will win this poll and oh also he made tremendous tracks on albums by Nelly, Slim Thug, Young Jeezy, Bun B, Trina, David Banner, Jacki-O and I can’t even remember what all else, this was his year even if he’s not a sonic adventurist on par with the other great producers of the millennium but this is his year because he made more good minutes of music listening than anyone else but also because he is better at narrating both cultural history and daily life through dance beats than anyone since Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards which is to say Jazze Pha makes the most embodied music of this particular time and place, and it’s crazy how “Lose Control” swivels from plantation hollering through step dancing right up to tomorrow where it brings Cybotron’s sampler tech back into the fold of black pop from the deracinated fields of electro where it had been lying fallow and this is a song somebody could teach an entire course about called “Bringing It All Back Home” except that on the way to class in the spring when the world seemed like it could go either way you would see someone on the corner start dancing a little while waiting for the streetlight and know instantly they were listening to “1, 2 Step” on their headphones (the best imperative-pop since “Fuck the Pain Away” or “The Love You Save”) and I am not even getting into the cowbell on Nelly’s “Na-nana-na” but I will again mention that it was Jazze Pha’s year and until I have a way to vote for Jazze Pha or Timbaland or the Neptunes or Rich Harrison this poll will remain a particular form of bullshit and I will call bullshit every damn year and I have absolutely no doubt we will feel very progressive while giving record of the year to “the Fiona Apple of hip-hop” Kanye West for the thirty-eighth best disc of 2005 because it’s exactly what we’re allowed to vote for while still obeying the rule of I’m-a-genius-and-here’s-my-record (which is basically all Kanye has ever said with one important exception before he went right back to being an absolute prick which is neither here nor there he just didn’t make half as many great songs as Jazze Pha and this poll can pretend it’s all eclectic and shit but it basically doesn’t care about black people and I will stand on Sufjan Stevens' coffee table and say so).
Posted by jane at January 2, 2006 09:55 AM | TrackBack