I'm shallow. And a little pretentious. I confuse musical taste with personal value and as such, I've often tried to manipulate people's opinions of me through my record collection. It's lead to some alienating experiences and some shitty records. Here are five musical artifacts I thought would make me look real cool if a girl knew I was into them. Each failed.
There comes a time in every suburban teenage boy’s life when he decides to cast off the bling-laden shackles of the rap world and immerse himself in the murky waters of experimental hip-hop. I hit this stage like a bag of balls. No longer would I pretend to be interested in all that guns and hoes nonsense! Oh no! I was going to care about serious lyrical invention married to avant-garde takes on the tired tropes of East coast boom-bap. Buying this album from the Norwich HMV’s post-Christmas sale felt like a turning-point: I was about to become part of something weird and underground – something my friends didn’t know about. And that’s the important thing to remember about music: a supposed sense of superiority over your peers. That I’ve never managed to listen to the thing the whole way through and remember nothing about it now other than the first track beginning with a circus-organ sample, I think, is a damming indictment of something or other. Largely, no doubt, of my own inadequacy as a listener and as a person (Look! A weird album you’ve never heard of! Kiss me!). But, also, possibly, of underground hip-hop largely being really boring guys droning on about "trans-human transplants in Benzedrine dreams/Acid-laced tea with metaphorical Custard Creams" or whatever.Read the rest over at NOISEY.
