How El-P and Cannibal Ox Crafted a Cult Classic →

DJ Pizzo, writing for Cuepoint, on Medium:

With Company Flow disbanded, it would take into the next year for Def Jux to get off the ground and plant their flag with a full-length album release. But on May 15th, 2001, the label would present Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein, introducing the world to rappers Vast Aire and Vordul Mega. Produced entirely by El-P, the album would set the stage for Definitive Jux’s future. It was critically hailed by Rolling Stone, Stylus, The Village Voice, and made Pitchfork’s top albums of the 2000s list. Notably, if you Google “top hip-hop albums of 2001,” Google ranks it as #3, following Jay-Z’s The Blueprint (#1) and Nas’ Stillmatic (#2).

Released just four months before the Twin Towers fell, it was as if the sound of The Cold Vein accurately predicted a post-apocalyptic New York City, one where it didn't matter whether Jay-Z or Nas was king. Even on that double 12-inch released a year before the attack, the cover artwork featured two figures—presumably Can Ox’s Vast and Vordul—running through the narrow streets of Harlem while the sky burns and the buildings turn to ash. When it finally happened in reality on September 11, 2001—the same day Jay-Z dropped The Blueprint and officially began a battle for rap supremacy with Nas on “The Takeover”—it was as if everything Cannibal Ox and El-P had predicted on The Cold Vein had come to pass.

It doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and it doesn’t mean it’s for everyone (and I think this article undersells the miracle that is an indie label as small as Def Jux ((I went to a Def Jux label party in 2004, that’s how small it was)) selling 100,000 copies of something), but I’m still yet to ever hear a hip hop album that sounds like The Cold Vein. If you’re a “Music Person,” and you’ve never heard it, I highly recommend it.

I Love the Internet Even Though It’s On the Internet →

John DeVore, writing on Medium:

America was founded on clickbait. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is clickbait. We’ve got snake oil in our veins. Grousing about clickbait is like buying a lotto ticket and acting shocked that you lost. Clickbait works because after the commercial, a celebrity will say something outrageous.

Let’s not pretend that the internet invented bullshit.

Read this if you fall into either of these two categories:

1. You find yourself constantly defending what happens on the internet.
2. You find yourself constantly complaining about what happens on the internet.

Apple’s ‘Make a film with iPad’ Commercial

Marty narrates. So fucking good. I really, really hope the copy was created with his input, especially the

If you’re dreaming, you’re sleeping

line.

The World of Children’s Books Is Still Very White →

Amy Rothschild, writing for FiveThirtyEight:

Annual statistics from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center bear out what I know from visits to my local library. For three decades, the librarians at the center, a modest outfit at the University of Wisconsin, have tracked one dimension of diversity in books for children and young adults: racial diversity. Children’s and young adult literature (“kid lit”) represent a stubbornly white world even as U.S. children are increasingly people of color.

Just another one of those things that I never stopped to think about until I read this article. I know where I’ll be looking for Luna’s next few book purchases.

The Perils of the Personal Essay and My Podcast →

Mensah Demary, writing for Human Parts on Medium:

Writers are, by our very nature, unsociable creatures. We hide ourselves in our rooms, or in our home offices, or in the corner of some crowded coffee shop, in order to do the work, conducted only in isolation and in solitude. Humans are, by our very nature, sociable creatures in that loneliness and isolation in large doses can cripple us, render us into hollow husks, and it might even kill us if the lack of communion drags on for far too long. Writing, then, is a balancing act: to isolate, but to connect as a matter of survival, hoping that the work we create matters to someone, anyone, even ourselves.

I’ve been thinking on this piece for a few days now. As I dig further into this storytelling podcast experiment, I keep asking myself something that Demary states perfectly:

The personal essay is, I suppose, the transmutation of a ho-hum life into meaningful art; it is navel-gazing solipsism at its finest.

I’ve been reading/listening-to far more nonfiction writing in the past few years than I have fiction. My response to writers like David Foster Wallace, Scott Carrier, and Charles D’Ambrosio is what finally compelled me to begin my podcast. I felt, and feel, strongly that by presenting a story that is uniquely my own in as honest a way as possible (along with some decent writing, of course), that I can allow others to a. empathize and b. have some emotion stirred-up within them.

I still feel like both of these outcomes are possible in fiction. I’m just concerned that the amount of artifice that needs to be built beforehand is untenable in our current culture. If people just don’t have the time to spend, at what point are fiction writers just wasting their time?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m overthinking it. But read Demary’s essay, for sure. And after, listen to the most recent episode of I Better Start Writing This Down. And let my own hype machine begin: Episode 4 comes out on 3/16 and a little birdie tells me that it’s my best one yet.

Let Them Have Cheesecake →

Rachel Syme, writing for Matter on Medium:

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West wanted to marry at Versailles. They made a request to the French government: Let us wed like royalty, in the palace of the Sun King, among the gaudy gardens where Marie Antoinette swished around in satin, where a grand hall of mirrors will reflect back our image, over and over, infinite selfies giving way to infinite likes, for as long as we both shall live. Their request was denied. The French still have their standards.

Terrific, thoughtful pop culture writing. I say it all the time—love them or hate them, the various arms of the Kardashian clan are the vestiges of what we all collectively refer to as The American Dream.

Figuring Out Kanye West’s ‘Greatest Song of All Time’ →

View fullsize

Casey Johnston, writing for Matter on Medium:

In the spring of 2004, a girl on my high school lacrosse team wearing her uniform of a kilt and polo shirt dropped into a seat next to me on the bus on our way to a game and said, “Here, you have to listen to this song, it’s so funny.” It was “The New Workout Plan.” There, I had the whitest possible introduction to Kanye West.

The College Dropout, Kanye’s first album, was released 11 years ago, and I never could have guessed how he would evolve over the next decade, how integral he’d become to how I live. Kanye is not just content or an artist, he’s a mindset and a way of being.

It’s funny: Kanye is known for his bombastic overconfidence, but so much of his music is about laying bare his insecurities. He has a lot of modes: He’s arrogant, emotional, clever, regal, desperate, dazed, dismissive, self-assured, self-aware. A few months ago, I decided I wanted to find a systematic way to process him, his body of work, and what he means to me.

There are album reviews, which is how Kanye is usually processed, but they don’t show him fully in context. Ranking also doesn’t work , for reasons mentioned above: He’s changed too much and his work is too varied. So I made a bracket, and through this bracket, I’ll find my favorite song. Theoretically.

I’m pretty against pop culture brackets as a thing (they’re starting to go away, thankfully, having been usurped by oral histories) but this one intrigued me because a. I’m always intrigued by anything KW-related; b. a woman wrote it; and c. I love reading stuff on Medium.

She did a pretty good job. My only quibble is that, in her quest to make sure she didn’t over-represent The Present Kanye tracks, she wound up with some early-round head-scratchers (‘RoboCop’ over ‘Mercy’?!). But by the end, two of the final four are two of my all-time favorites, and the winner is one of those two, so I can’t complain.

And on the web design point—read this thing on a computer screen. Awesome pictures, gifs, and audio samples of every song.

How We Learned to Kill →

Timothy Kudo, in a New York Times Opinion piece:

When I originally became an infantry officer, increasing my Marines’ ability to kill was my mission, and it was my primary focus as I led them to Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, as a young lieutenant, I had faith in my Marines; I trusted them and looked up to them. But in the back of my mind, I always wondered whether they would follow my orders in the moment of truth. As the echoes of gunfire reverberated and faded, I received my answer. Yes, they would follow me. I also received affirmation to a more sinister question: Yes, I could kill.

A must-read for anyone who has an opinion on war, politics, or the military (read as: everyone).

Kanye Performs ‘All Day’ at the BRIT Awards

All Day BAL by YardieGoals

After watching this about fifty times, I’ve got a couple of thoughts:

1. Only Kanye West takes the “flamethrower” metaphor and says: you know what, fuck it—let’s just use the real thing.

2. With this performance, Yeezy also sets the new record for Largest Stage Posse in Hip Hop History.

3. Apparently, Kanye isn’t done with his Verging-On-the-Edge-of-Something-Threatening-Super-Grimey-Reggae-Choruses phase, which I, for one, am thrilled about.

4. Keep a close eye out at 1:31 and 1:48 for Taylor Swift, who apparently polished off Terence Howard’s Oscar’s Molly water before the performance.

5. At 2:31, Lionel Ritchie.

6. 2:35 and Taylor Swift is just, like, hearing colors and tasting sound.

7. I guess it goes without saying, but, wow, as usual, Yeezy isn’t done.

Bonus: “Like a light-skinned slave, boy/We in the motherfucking house” 😮

/via Pitchfork

What Gary Shteyngart Learned From Watching a Week of Russian TV →

Gary Shteyngart, The New York Times Magazine:

You might be wondering why I left my home and family and started watching Russian drag-queen parodies. I am the subject of an experiment. For the next week, I will subsist almost entirely on a diet of state-controlled Russian television, piped in from three Apple laptops onto three 55-inch Samsung monitors in a room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan. (If I have to imbibe the TV diet of the common Russian man, I will at least live in the style of one of his overlords.) Two of the monitors are perched directly in front of my bed, with just enough space for a room-service cart to squeeze in, and the third hangs from a wall to my right. The setup looks like the trading floor of a very small hedge fund or the mission control of a poor nation’s space program. But I will not be monitoring an astronaut’s progress through the void. In a sense, I am the one leaving the planet behind.

I will stay put in my 600-square-foot luxury cage, except for a few reprieves, and will watch TV during all my waking hours. I can entertain visitors, as long as the machines stay on. Each morning I will be allowed a walk to the New York Health & Racquet Club on West 56th Street for a long swim. Vladimir Putin reportedly takes a two-hour swim every morning to clear his head and plot the affairs of state. Without annexing Connecticut or trying to defend a collapsing currency, I will be just like him, minus the famous nude torso on horseback.

Kudos to The New York Times Magazine for coming out swinging with their new design. Between the Knausgaard piece and the above piece, they hooked me back into my digital subscription. Also, all the David Carr reading I was doing made me feel a bit guilty.