one time - the roots
goodness gracious i’ve been listening to this all day.
i was thinking about how—with any genre of music—i often find myself making concessions for the weaknesses in the quality of whatever i’m listening to just so i’ll find satisfaction that doesn’t have to be attached to artful musicianship. that’s okay, sometimes. music doesn’t necessarily have to be painfully created and wrought to brilliance to be good. but with some types—in my experience, namely the realms of hip-hop and hardcore (the latter less so just because my forays into the genre are deep-seated and long)—this becomes a struggle more than ever. there’s seas of pallid, colourless releases in both and it gets tough to find something worthwhile.
i think that can be attributed to perceived flaws within the form. with hip-hop, you have a style of delivery that can be rife with allusions and nuances rather than concise statements (or ambiguities crafted as metaphors, et cetera) and those are often abused by braggards wholly consumed with the value of their posessions or the number of their female conquests. hardcore’s much the same way in the sense of its usual connotations. you have horrible sister genres in the heavy music scene that, unfortunately, scar the reputation of hardcore by their generalized grouping into the same basket. passionless trend-of-the-moment bands that rise to the top by their threatening-worded t-shirt sales. hardcore’s guilty of this too—the “angry” medium is abused by tough guy language and all-around negativity, and is conversely ruined by bands so obsessed with being contrastingly “positive” that they forget to be creative.
i believe that these mediums work best and work brilliantly when they’re used for projects that work because the delivery of the genre lends itself to the work. for example, take defeater’s endless days and sleepless nights, a story in a postwar depressed world of a man who life and circumstance quite bluntly screws over. from what other standpoint is that best told but a place of fury? then there’s pianos become the teeth’s the lack long after, a collection of songs told in the desperation and confusion in the wake of the loss of a dearly beloved father. to sing that emotion would be to dilute it to less raw form, so the writer yells over accompanied music.
the roots’ undun arguably involves stereotypical subject matter—a narrative about an urbanite in less-than-positive street conditions who is depicted in various scenes at the point of futility and hoplessness—but does so in a way that doesn’t augment reality or glorify the concept. it just tells the story because the story’s there and they’re the best ones available to tell it.
i don’t really know how to finish this. i planned on reblogging this song and that’s it. but, simply put, a gem in these genres (and others i’ve likely yet to find) is a truly rare piece of art because it’s become so through the obstacles that are the shortcomings of their peers. for this they should be applauded.
