Rag & Bone

I happened to be shuffling through some backfiles of news articles on hip-hip and rap this morning trying to make sense of the fear I have over what Madonna’s new LP means for that genre and the industry. (There’s a whole post in the works about this topic for later, but here’s an example from fan forums: “Woop! Tres excitement! Though I’m also apprehensive about her going all supposedly ‘hip hop’ & using the ubiquitous Timbaland as producer (seriously can Timbaland just go on holiday for a year or 2?! …every song nowadays is done by him or has him in the background or something)…Still, any Madonna album is a good thing to look forward to!” That flavor of statement reminds me (not just of Kanye West–also a whole separate post…) of the timbre of argument that’s usually a harbinger of assimilation; a form of assimilation distinct from synthesis (sonic, in this case) because someone like Madonna forecloses musical dialog by subsuming/co-opting/reclaiming a history and allowing it to be heard only through the filter of her music. This is not the first time Madonna’s done this; in fact, there’s plenty of literature indicating this trend is formulaic in her music).

Sheesh. Regardless, ISO50 made me laugh, since he posted these cool faux-7″ sleeve mashes (check out other artwork by Nikolay Saveliev) to make them look like the covers of academic articles:

I killed some time at my office scrolling through Scott’s ISO50 blog and also found this cool vintage Playboy shot, which reminded me of the razzy Barkley video earlier.