Idolator

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 offing: Sam Sifton, the paper's culture editor, says he's "looking at a lot of candidates." Still, Sanneh's departure to The New Yorker (he'll be a culture writer there, not the pop critic—that's still Sasha Frere-Jones' job) hasn't made him lose any perspective, as he tells Koblin, "It's also a job that's impossible to complain about, partly because it's the opposite of boring, and partly because no sympathy will ever be offered to someone who goes to concerts for a living." [NY Observer]

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? More »

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 at over 1,000 words, which ain't too shabby for a publication that years ago was still pumping out story after story about Bavarian opera houses.

Most interesting, though, is that Sanneh combines a critic's detached appraisal with a long-time fan's enthusiasm-slash-frustration: He calls the album "impressive" and "grumpy [and] lovable," but also notes that Nas grown into a "humorless scold"; clearly, Sanneh loves the guy, but you can almost hear his eyes rolling to the back of his head when Nasir pumps out his umpteenth bar of braggadocio (it makes a slow, squishy sound). More »