
Ok, so Pitchfork gave Childish Gambino’s debut Camp a 1.6/10. Besides trying to fit as many convoluted allusions to hipster rappers, surburban roots and race relations as they can into one review, Pitchfork loves to play games. Yes, Gambino is only flirting with some of the issues in his life and as a rapper, his “ums” and “likes” are filled with nonsequitar metaphors. Yes it’s highly repetitive. And finally, it might not deserve a “Best New Music.”
Pigeons + Planes got their staff together for a little round robin e-mail chain that they posted a few days ago. In my temporarily blinding rage, I totally forgot to plug it but you should definitely read it.
To be honest, Pitchfork is getting big. Real big. With its website revamp and its sudden liability of covering every aspect of new music, they have more capital to work with but more mouths to feed also. As a result, I surmise that this is a highly political review. Suddenly the most assuredly embraced “new rapper” is getting one of the lowest ratings I’ve seen outside of Mac Miller. The argument for Mac Miller’s Blue Slide Park is loose, but the dude has no affiliation with Pitchfork. Might as well give a it 0, because honestly his target audience could give two shits about the Indie review powerhouse.
Look at Pitchfork’s top read reviews, Miller’s indie record doesn’t even rank in the top 10 most viewed in the past 7 days. On the other hand, Camp is the forth most read review in the past month. On the other hand, Gambino’s association with that “Best New Music” moniker was almost too expected. In an effort to alert the fringe music scene, the organization purposely throws up this attention-grabbing headline of a number.
In many ways, this Ennui blog post was pre-calculated by these stealthy manipulators. Pitchfork has a lot of power in generating fervent discussion because as much as people blather on about agenda-pushing, they are often right. Pitchfork has a very set agenda and a lot of it is based on consumer followership and flipping the formula once in a while. The result is a a talented artist getting treaded on by a system that reminds us to open our eyes once in a while.
Again, read the P+P analysis and wait for the Ah-ha.
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