[Music] hi everyone Anthony Fantan oh here the Internet's busiest music nerd with the best teeth in the game and it's time for another edition of let's argue where I go over a bunch of hot takes on popular opinions and tough questions that you have thrown to me via social media I respond to the best ones in in these segments let's go to pimp a butterfly is a hilariously bad and silly sounding album title I mean when you understand the point in the concept of the record not really as the entire record is essentially about selling a person commercializing artistry and emotion and humanity so the idea is to sell and to market this organic thing to pimp something as natural and as innocent as a butterfly and when you go even deeper into the album title with the acronym and the guys over at dead and hip-hop pointed this out and Kendrick confirmed it in an interview that originally the album title or you know sort of what Kendrick was thinking in the early stages of creating it was more a to pimp a caterpillar to sort of a you know tribute to POC because we have the to PA see so knowing and understanding all of that it makes absolute sense I guess you could see the album title is dumb if you if you have no idea what the album is about and you you're only just hearing of it just now I hate to say this but I think I agree with little zen as influential as Tupac was to hip-hop his music isn't that great little Zen if I remember correctly remind me if I am incorrect here his his point against Tupac was that he makes boring music and I feel like little Xan isn't really in the position to be commenting on whether or not another artists music is boring when he literally makes just dribble there are certainly artistic critiques that one could make of Tupac's music I mean the man had some bad songs in his catalogue yes and you could argue that over the course of time maybe his music has not aged as well sonically and aesthetically as some other artists who were his contemporaries okay like obviously the chronic aged way better than all eyes on me did but still Tupac's ratio of good to bad tracks is way higher than little zann's and and really any number of other trihard mumble rappers that are just going at him to get some attention if you were to re-review teens of denial you give it a 9 I would have to go back over the tracklist and see which tracks I I loved and which ones maybe I didn't love so much but I guess I wouldn't deny the idea that the album has has grown on me since I initially reviewed it but still even considering this to me I know that a lot of the fans make a big deal of this and I and I understand why I I get that it's just sort of the nature of the beast but in in my view it's not like there's a huge like world of difference between a record that gets an 8 and a record that gets a 9 you know they're both still very good quality records there are plenty of records that I have scored 8 that habitually I probably find myself listening to more often than some of the records I've given an eye maybe because they're a little bit more accessible or approachable or something like that some of the records that I end up scoring the highest do tend to be albums that are sort of more like experiences or are a bit more intensive so while again I think your baseline assertion here is most likely true for me it's not like an aha moment or something that's a shocker in any way shape or form I mean scores are cool scores are convenient I just don't think they're the most important thing in the world rich Brian walked so little nas ex could run in what regard by what measure in what way I don't understand I don't think either of them sound like each other I guess both of them when they first exploded onto the scene had had a very viral and meme like quality to their breakout track to their intro into the music industry but rich Brian and little nas XR just like one of a few examples of many artists that that that's that's essentially been the case like ugly god he's certainly a prime example and if we want to go back even further would any of these guys be around with that little B I don't know about that I don't know the ooze isn't bad it aesthetically expresses Kafka esque themes of alienation self-loathing oppression and control in a poetic bohemian inner city melancholy really well but you reviewed it negatively because you personally disliked slower formless vignettes slash mood building music I certainly appreciate what you're trying to say here in terms of the themes and the messaging in the king cruel album the the lose but here's the thing this is not the only album that I've ever reviewed and I reviewed thousands that has presented to me hey some pretty compelling lyrics or themes or a concept but for whatever reason the writing the instrumentation the production just totally bites the musical element of the album is just not really that interesting to me and this just happens to be one of those cases and in this particular case I really disliked a lot of the music on it wasn't just a case of being underwhelmed by it or thinking it's not just for me I just really straight-up disliked it diehard black metal fans are walking contradictions they embrace an offensive genre for the fact that it's offensive to people then get offended when people say it's offensive I don't get this I don't I don't see this where is this happening when is this happening I can't recall an interview or a forum post I've ever read where like the dudes from Emperor or Bathory or dark throne are like whining and crying about it nor can I recall many fans complaining about this too because in my experience a lot of these black metal diehards do kind of like the community and the genre to be sort of insular which is a very insider outsider mentality that I don't necessarily vibe with but still that doesn't really play out in this narrative of black metal fans crying because people think that their favorite style of music is too offensive to enjoy NPR tiny disk is better than MTV Unplugged I agree this is not even really debatable I mean there weren't really that many MTV Unplugged to speak of whereas there like hundreds and hundreds of NPR tiny desks at this point and generally they cover a much wider array of artists and can be very quirky and fun and cheeky and silly show a new interesting side to an artist that you've been loving and enjoying for a long time become a place that turns you on to an artist that you've you've never really gotten into before so yeah I culturally I think NPR tiny desk has way more value than than freaking MTV Unplugged maybe ever did that in color show damn that that's that shit's popping off right now go go color show hell yeah color show people who dislike hip-hop and rap are inherently racist I mean I think there's certainly a correlation to this but you know it's it's not it's not it's not one-to-one a lot of the music people enjoy just comes down to preference and a lot of that preference is informed by experience and culture and where and how you were raised and there are a myriad of different contexts in which one could grow up where you either most likely wouldn't enjoy hip-hop music or you just wouldn't know all that much about it if coming to the conclusion that someone is racist is your goal there are way smarter questions and inquiries that you could explore to end up reaching that answer if all you're asking people is what kinds of genres do you like and like you're gonna get a lot of false positives and negatives the music industry is pay2win mm-hmm this is true in a sense but the way that you put it is a little reductive it's not like if you have $300,000 right now you can just start indiscriminately throwing it into the music industry and then just voila you have a career it doesn't work that way there are lots of artists out there over the years who have talked to and have just sort of been aware of the PR campaigns of and a lot of money may have gone into their PR campaign some of which was their own maybe some of which was from the label or the PR firm that they were working with and yeah it didn't get off the ground because it just didn't resonate with people or the music wasn't very good so I wouldn't say the music industry is literally just pay to win ask our friend uncle Adams you know I'm not hating on the guy or anything but but he has paid quite a bit into the music industry and and he is very much in debt as a result of it and and he is still trying to win he has not won yet not not counting the guy out or anything but you know some of that money I'm sure he wishes he did not spend going into the industry with money and having resources having the ability to pay for certain beats or studio time or just be working on your art for months on end without having to worry about food or shelter and so on and so forth those things will greatly increase your ability to succeed but they do not guarantees success what are your thoughts on this hot heavy metal take from Calvin and Hobbes I mean I think it's kind of a cute comic it's got some cheeky humor to it however it's it's not really a profound or a thorough understanding of the artists within the genre of heavy metal who have explored the theme of suicide in their music to go as far as to say that a Judas Priest or even an album from the catalogue of records in the genre of suicidal black metal are advocating for suicide insofar as they want their audience to actually kill themselves yeah that's kind of a logical leap in my view and not really an appreciation for what the point of the art is and the irony here is that that misunderstanding is coming from another piece of art and speaking of other art forms what about the variety of artists throughout the genres of folk or rock or blues or hip-hop that have had some suicidal themes crop up in their stuff are they insincere because they're not killing themselves or advocating that their fans kill themselves is every expression of suicidal emotions in art insincere just because the artists aren't killing themselves it's a it's pretty it's pretty shallow that's that shallow post ambient music would just be silence I don't know if I so much agree with the idea of that because while ambient music is quiet and it is meant to hang around in the background that does not mean that music isn't existing there are certainly something there in that ambience in a way I would say post ambient music is kind of already here because you do have ambient artists and composers who make ambient music that is maybe a bit more active or compositionally engaging than a lot of the records that came out at the forefront of the genre and a lot of genres that have post in the front just usually mean this genre but sort of expanded upon artistically in a variety of different ways and and I would argue in in terms of ambient music that has happened to a very great degree we just haven't really sort of thrown the post in front of any records at this point we just still kind of call all of it ambient music and I think I'm going to leave it at that everybody thank you very much for watching thank you very much for viewing you're the best you're the best you're the best you're the best over here next to my head is another let's argue that you can check out hit that up or the link to subscribe to the channel Anthony Fantana music let's argue forever