The Role of the Critic: Cause all we know is bands

The role of the critic is rarely useful. I can think of only a handful of instances: I.A. Richards, Christopher Ricks, Frank Rich, that food critic from Ratatouille, the occasional (and I mean annual?) movie review and the following that you are going to read now.

You see I heard some Fetty Wap song called ‘RGF Island’ just now. Sounds newer than ‘Trap Queen’. I’d mention two things:

a) don’t use your production company in a name. That’s never made sense. That will probably never make sense. In all probability, that’s just people around you being like, ‘thumbs up’, to the idea of a little more publicity for them. But you have to be real in terms of your life. Production about production is only interesting if done by very interesting producers. And that’s rare and rarely interesting or to the point anyway.

b) https://soundcloud.com/thebakaboyz/trap-queen-fetty-wap-clean#t=1:18 I’d say 30% of the symptoms of the fact that the beat to that song seems interesting is in the contrast of the fugual movement that he goes on about in terms of ‘you my trap queen’, laced with the shifted minor key used where he raps over it in that first full verse or whatever it is.

That mf* is a variation on a theme and it’s interesting. Rappers sometimes do that. It’s a leapfroging of their previous melodies. When the little grace noting to fill out the track gets strong enough that it becomes its own thing. You know how when you played some b.s. watered-down Beethoven or Bach piece on the piano as a 10 year old and then there was a minor variation? Yeah Fetty straight up did that with his lyrics by accident.

This is interesting because variations are f*ing interesting end of story. But also because it creates a more robust tapestry and branching in terms of the overall thoughts of the piece — i.e., his perspective on a future friend of his perhaps being a queen and yet embracing the trap lifestyle.

So that’s it. Keats on himself also had a couple of moments but now you know. Keats would’ve loved Beyonce. And both of them are idiots (though they have unconquerable and interesting senses of confidence and occasional interesting pieces yes). But again, it takes a particular critic sometimes to tease out what precisely could be useful for better music and not this RGF island b.s. Realign m-f-s and get with what had kernel interest in what you did before.