As part of Idolator's continuing effort to geekily analyze every music chart known to man, we present a new edition of Project X, in which Michaelangelo Matos breaks down top-ten lists from every genre imaginable. After the jump, he sifts through two rundowns of jungle singles that hint at where the genre's been and where it's going:
Urb busts back against Pitchfork's takedown of Idolator fave Steve Aoki's Pillowface mix CD with a screed that manages to zing the entire city of Chicago in the process. Urb's argument, such as it is, hinges on the idea that if Internet faves Justice had released a similar mix CD, Pitchfork would have been all up in that shit, but because of Aoki's rep as a trustafarian faux-celeb DJ, he gets an automatic bad rap. Perhaps. But then again, regardless of your feelings on its merit, Justice is also occasionally known to record and release music—that thing we're still supposed to care about—whereas Aoki's main contribution to the wider culture seems to be providing a reason for the continued existence of the Cobrasnake and Last Night's Party. [Urb]
The most recent issue of electronic/hip-hop/indie lifestyle mag Urb features their picks for best singles, albums, remixes, and live shows of the year (the lists are so far unavailable online, as far as we can tell). Unlike just about every other paper and online rag trying to cram as much music as they can into lists that stretch to 100 albums or more, Urb only throws its weight behind 10 albums, seven singles, six remixes, and five live gigs, all unranked. It's also the first entry in our year-end list analysis to feature Lil Wayne's double-CD mixtape Da Drought 3, which you can probably expect to see a lot over the coming weeks. The full (brief) lists are after the jump, but for now, some cursory judgments.
THE GOOD: Quibble all you like with their picks, but it's still nice to see a publication favor brevity when it comes to compiling their year-end wrap-up lists. Do you really care what some magazine thought was the 76th-best album of 2007? (At least with long singles lists you stand a chance of having time to listen to all 100 entries.) A not-so-well-kept secret: Even professional listeners are largely bullshitting when attempting to seriously rank albums after about No. 20 or so.
THE BAD: All that said, this list is not at all surprising if you're even a little familiar with Urb's editorial remit, drawing entirely from 2007 faves widely-acknowledged by folks from the non-Paste/Harp side of indie, whether it's hip-hop (Wayne, Kanye, the Flosstradamus/Spank Rock axis), dance rock (LCD Soundsystem, Klaxons), or miscellaneous (Battles). Many of these are excellent records of course, but the uniform hipness of it all is pretty suffocating.
THE WHAAA?: Forget placing in the Top 10: There's no way that The Good, The Bad, And The Queen album was the best anything of '07. Except maybe "the best way to give Tony Allen and Paul Simonon a little well-deserved extra spending money."
So shortly after my personal plea to Beth Ditto went up yesterday, someone posted a thread to the I Love Music message board under the heading "Has Anyone Here Interviewed Beth Ditto In the Last Six Months." And apparently the person looking to "purchase an interview for publication" is Urb editor Joshua Glazer (or at least some joker pretending to be Urb editor Joshua Glazer):
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Look, I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt with the NME cover. Your heart was probably in the right place. But this? Perez Hilton? This has to be a gag, a sloppy Photoshop job on a slow news day from those jokers at Urb, slapping the logo on something they filched from Last Night's Party and then passing it off as a "contest" to choose the cover for the magazine's next issue. Right? Just look at the washed-out digi-cam quality of the photographs and the crude cut-and-paste job (especially noticeable around your noggin'). Totally a joke. Right? Please? The other photo is after the jump, along with some choice quotes from the contest's comments section:
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