Ironic and memey

Trav wears the Ye influence on his sleeve

If you a Ye stan it stands out so much too lol even the chants/vocals in the songs (“Yall feel like that?”) just screams Ye lol it’s hard to ignore so naturally people compare/contrast

Over time it’s more clear that Ye was in a class of his own though. He’s at Michael status in rap. His sound is a staple in the game at this point. People are gonna be inspired by his career. Been following him since the first album so it’s hard to recognize that his contributions to music are ubiquitous

I hear some pop music from 2010s that reminds me of Ye now. At the time I didn’t recognize it. Probably bc Ye was still active and I was looking for his next wave bc his sound was always evolving. Now that he’s an og I can look at the different eras and see how different artists/producers were inspired by different Ye albums

Trav himself said he was mainly inspired by the music after the first 3 Ye albums which makes sense, even as far as lyrics go

ya p much

veeze ain’t even that much of a crazy writer but the bar has been so low in a lot of hip hop albums wordplay wise + production-wise that Ganger comes off as a masterpiece

personally i hadnt heard that much wordplay in an album in years besides underground one-offs like Mach-Hommy, Woods and whoever

I don’t disagree with a lot of his comments tbh.
Album is cool but it’s really lacking some soul

yo somebody on reddit described this album like

Narrator: this is the epidemic, the pantheon, the moment the universe was created, Sparta and babel

40 seconds synth build up

Bon iver (singing): is this life then why are we liviiing

Synth explosions, autotune choire

Travis: I F*** B****ES THAT ARE TWINS BECAUSE IM RICH

He naturally draws that comparison when so much of this album sounds like Kanye cosplay

Hmmm, I could be mistaken

reddit

Your logic collapses in on itself by the end of the first sentence

1) You want a nerd chronicling music as nerds possess some level of expertise or at least elevated insight into the topic they are nerdy about relative to the average person. If this were not the case, the entire concept of a professional or even freelance "critic" would be null.

2) Pitchfork having the time to catalog albums and review them is no different in material form than random people on the Internet doing it. You are prioritizing the commodification of journalism over the actual written content, which is a fallacious and ignorant way of approaching really anything. If I make a sandwich at my house and I'm a classically trained chef and the food is ultimately good, is it as food of lesser quality because I didn't monetize its creation? Be for real here.

3) "Internet" music fans in 2023 is an irrelevant descriptor writ large because the Internet is omnipresent at this point. This isn't 2005. If you are referring to "more than just casual music fans", this again roots back to my first point, and Pitchfork is comprised of these exact same people but are less trustworthy in their writing due to the profit incentive driving their reviews rather than their true feelings on the project (hence the existence of clickbait)

4) The assumption that it is "pretentious" to have opinions on music is patently idiotic. The entire point of music is to subjectively draw conclusions as to the quality of the project from your perspective, which by default creates an opinion. Humans would have to lack abstract consciousness in order to not form opinions about art. This is such a banal and sophomoric understanding and view on "music opinions" it's kind of embarrassing that you even devolved to this point of "criticism" . What is pretentious however, is creating false hierarchies of what a "good" opinion is, rooting said hierarchy in whether or not the reviewer is making money from their craft or not, as you are doing. The commodification of writing in no way insinuates that commodified writing has any serious advantage over un-commodified writing. Otherwise, doctoral theses would hold less intellectual value than journalistic op-eds, which is ridiculous to assert as a rule.

5) The entire point on "entity" makes absolutely no sense because the premise of RYM is that it is not a monolith, but an aggregator comprised of over 100 thousand people who collectively set narratives and opinions at a scale that blows any critical outlet out of the water and does not have any financial incentive to sensationalize or trivialize their reviews such as Pitchfork has made a habit of doing since day one

Just say you didn't like it and be done with it, this is some of the most insufferable, self-important dreck I've ever read. Embarrassing really.

Are the Fantano fans in the room with us right now?

He's a hater, but he's a hater because he wants genuine artists with an actual culture to them instead of pop musicians who capitalize on trends. He grew up in Atlanta and watched trap go from local flavor to the Billboard. He's bitter about it and he should be tbh. KTT wants to call rap dead and dogshit but only praise it's most influential and dominant artists. At least these reviews see why

it’s grandiose with literally nothing to be grand about lmao

it’s like c*******without jerking off

knew who it was before i clicked

Dude does a weekly column where he draws attn to relatively below the surface hip hop from different localities but ktt calls him a race traitor for not liking a travis scott album

I agree with their sentiment but not the rating. Ever since like 2020 pitchfork has gone down with their reviews tbh. Unless you’re a non binary lgbtq experimental pop artist you’re not getting a good score. Which sucks they use to be the cool older brother who showed you stuff like Radiohead and pulp fiction for the first time. Now they’re that annoying sister who argues with your dad about politics every chance they have. So take this review with a grain of salt. But utopia still isn’t bnm worthy though.

shaboing boing

Angering the dumbest people with the least to say

ppl acting like alphonse is above criticism for what @BernieX accurately described as ktt/twitter bait ass reviews is hilarious

idc how many regional hip hop acts he covers, bro writes almost exclusively to get off some of the most unfunny jokes off ever and deflects that by saying “rap journalism should be less serious 🤓”

that last bit makes so much sense as to what his music is lol , I’ll also say the Ye inspo on this album is mostly tastefully done he’s his own artist but in the grand scheme there’s a huge chasm in terms what they mean to music even in the present tense where ye is mega washed

like start a podcast or a youtube channel if you actually wanna change something instead of grandstanding whilst writing for a white ass publication acting like you’re leading a revolution

I miss his suburbs raps. At least those were relatable lol

exactly