I’m not opposed to them growing on me, but I wouldn’t bet on it. They just weren’t very engaging for me. When they were more musical and did harmonies and stuff they sounded good, but most of the time they’d just have, like, record scratch sounds in the background while one of them rap/sang and the rest chanted something in the background, plus the songs were too long and repetitive. Altogether just not my jam, not my style
RELISTEN1: there’s still a lot in there that just isn’t necessarily my jam, that isn’t my favorite to listen to, but there’s also a lot that’s fun and engaging. And I can’t help but have a deep appreciation and respect for them and what they did with their art. I think when I first listened I was still warring with myself for how frustrating it was to my personal experience to have sexually explicit songs in the way they do, I felt like it distracted. Or, if it didn’t distract, it wasn’t an attractive factor, it didn’t pull me deeper into the art. Now, I just think it’s awesome. It’s so clearly done with immense purpose, and I think that purpose is inspired and beautiful. I’m kinda torn on rating, because my appreciation for the music is much greater than my enjoyment of it, than how much I like it. I definitely like it way more than I did at first, there’s a lot to love about it, but I’d still probably say on the whole of it it’s not my jam. There are individual songs I quite like, but also lots that I don’t much care to listen to (music-wise).
This makes it a bit of a pain to place, but I think it should do alright as a C+. Y’know, it’s tricky. Sometimes I think my C ranks should all be higher than my B ranks. In a lot of ways, I tend to respect the C ranked artists more. I characterize them as having one or two critical flaws but otherwise being fairly compelling, which is why the C to A pipeline makes a lot of sense to me. If I overcome my critical flaw with an artist, what remains is usually compelling. I dunno, it’s tricky. At the end of the day, my adoption of tier lists to organize everything is a function of them being fun and silly, and convenient thanks to their existing structure. They’re not the most accurate and they’re not the most efficient. They’re a shorthand, and that’s fine, and I’ve got to be able to handle that. I’ve got to be able to handle understanding that anybody trying to understand the nuances of what I try to say on this site are going to have to put in a decent chunk of time, reading, and effort regardless. Whatever I offer on the surface can only ever be a poor shortcut, and I’ve already decided to commit to working with the shortcut I have, and I think that’s fine because frankly it’s about as good as any other. And if a price I pay with that is being a little bit misleading or unintuitive with how I treat the B rank versus the C rank, so be it. There’s going to be misleading and unintuitive stuff no matter what I do.
Anyway, gosh, that got me on a tangent, sorry ‘bout that. All that to say, TLC, mad respect. Lots to love, more to respect, I just don’t love listening to the music enough, C+
tunafruitsandwitch 