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.
The Vinyl Polis 