The great thing about the internet is that it gives us the chance to elevate people to the point of heroes before we’ve had a chance to look into who they are. It’s the classic local news story of the guy who’s given the freedom of the city for rescuing orphans from a fire, and then has it retracted the week after when someone realises he did 15 years in prison for child sex offences. And so it is with Chloe Papas.

You know her, right? People thought she was called Chris Havercroft for a bit. She’s a jobbing Australian hack who has spun social media gold by giving a Chris Brown album 0/5.Chris Brown, of course, is a wife-beater, and it’s important that we treat him exactly the same as John Lennon, Miles Davis, James Brown, Mark E Smith and all the other wifebeaters in musical history who had their careers ruined by the discovery of that fact.

So you put Papas Does Preach into a search engine. And you find her Pinterest page. And her favourite band of all time are Fleetwood Mac, as helmed by Lindsey Buckingham. Buckingham, as we all know, loved to smack his ex-girlfriend Carol Ann Harris about. Couldn’t get enough of beating women up, to the extent that he’s never refuted Harris’s allegations that he liked to pop Stevie Nicks one in the jaw on occasion as well. Now that’s weird. Because Chloe Papas, for some reason, loves wifebeating when it’s done by 1970s coke heads but not by peanut-headed R&B ingénues. Now, why could that be? What is an obvious difference between Chris Brown and Lindsey Buckingham. I mean, you look at them…. does anything come to mind?

Hey, for a laugh, let’s have a look at Chloe Papas’s favourite bands on Facebook. Long list, be patient:

•     Basement Birds
•     My Chemical Romance
•     Mumford and Sons
•     The Kooks
•     Biffy Clyro
•     Calvin Harris
•     Blink-182
•     Fleetwood Mac
•     Velvet Underground
•     Les Savy Fav
•     The Strokes
•     The Cure
•     Weezer
•     Local Natives
•     Cold Chisel
•     The Last Party
•     Hells Bells
•     Emperors
•     Set Sail.
•     BOOM! BAP! POW!
•     The Bamboos
•     Fiona Apple
•     Charlie Mayfair
•     Katchafire
•     Steve Parkin
•     William Elliott Whitmore
•     The Sleeping Souls
•     Splinta
•     Kimbra
•     The Cairos
•     Frozen Ocean
•     DUNE RATS
•     Deez Nuts
•     The Menzingers
•     Stu Larsen
•     Jay Hoad
•     The Raveonettes
•     Local Resident Failure
•     Snakadaktal
•     My Own Pet Radio
•     Spoonful of Sugar
•     Dead Set Radio
•     The Beat Nightclub
•     Rainy Day Women
•     Steel Panther
•     Sincerely, Grizzly
•     WILD FLAG
•     The Silents
•     POND
•     Bleeding Knees Club
•     Real Monsters (Band)

Between them, these acts have 193 members. And, at a guess, how many of those do you think are black? If you went with “0” you win the star prize! Which is a copy of “The Turner Diaries”, as signed by Chloe Papas.

Chloe Papas is a hypocrite and a racist, and the fact that people are marking her out as some sort of hero is fucking disgusting. I hope you’re all ashamed of yourselves for doing so.

Of all the creepy skeezballs in music journalism, Everett True has to rank… somewhere in the middle. I mean, he doesn’t write for Complex so he can’t be in the top 10 percentile.

You young cats won’t remember this, but there used to be a standard operating procedure for clowning True: mention his verbal tic of repeatedly reminding people that he once hung out with Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love in everything he wrote. However, it’s 2012 now. Kurt Cobain is now a Bob Marley poster. Courtney Love is the kinderwhore Jocky Wilson. So our man has moved on to something different in order to get attention.

True’s main failing always was that he saw himself as the daddy dom of ageplay music criticism. For whatever reasons, he likes it when adult women dress-up and sing like 13-year-old girls. And then he goes and sets up Collapseboard, a music review website that specifically invites young women into his swelling bosom. If I had a beard-and-grooming combo that made me look like I spend a lot of time in the copse at the bottom of Morrison’s car park, I’d probably refrain from issuing come-and-get-me pleas to tweens. But maybe that’s why I’m stuck OKCupiding girls who have Etsy accounts most of my evenings.

But this isn’t about True, this is about the fact that he, and his project, have recently gone to bat for something that few people would in 2012: Kate Nash.

Kate Nash has often attracted a lot of ugly, violent, aggressive hatred and criticism. Good. The 2007 Adam and Joe parodies of her demonstrate why: anyone can write their own Kate Nash song. Just adopt a year 7 reading age, drop some pop culture references and then slap a bit of Feminism 101 at the end of it. Ergo, “Mandy it’s the media/They make my bum feel fat/I have to go binge drinking just so I can deal with that.”

So really, if you’d been paying attention, Nash’s switch to riot grrl to make a truly awful song shouldn’t really be a surprise. It’s not the worst single of the year though, I truly can’t bring myself to write about that but here’s “White Boy Wasted” by Your Favorite Martian. The fact that Nash now looks like an aspiring Bizarre cover model from Leeds circa 2005 perhaps is shocking, though.

Never forget that riot grrl is, along with grime and metal, one of the three entirely worthless musical genres. It took what was shit about punk music (a load of middle class white fucks complaining about how hard their life is) while forgetting what made it passable (occasionally stumbling into a decent chord progression).

Nash’s defensiveness is… weird. Like many a clapped-out former C-list celebrity, they treat Heat Magazine as a kind of lost lover, alternately angry at it for getting bored and desperate for its attention. At the end of the day though, having a poor little white girl Brit School graduate who signed a record deal at 18 want to tell me how hard her life has been is probably the worst thing I can imagine in existence. If she’s doing it in her little babby voice as well, all the worse.

Kate Nash is, at the end of the day, the adult baby of indie. Except instead of defecating into a specially made diaper she does it onto a Tumblr account and onto MP3s.

So, if Kate Nash is terrible because anyone who enjoys her clearly has issues around infantilism, why is Kitty Pryde good? Well…

OK, right, I never “got” Lil B. I think a lot of rap fan movements nowadays are based upon a kind of teenage autism/Pokemon mindset, where you have to get on board as early as possible and collect every single mixtape, MP3, blog post and tweet. I don’t have time for that.

Kitty Pryde is better than Lil B. You want to know why? Ask Spike Milligan. In an interview he once did that I can’t find online (and, therefore, may have actually made up in my head), he explained one of the rules of comedy: if there’s no reason that a sketch shouldn’t be performed by men wearing Groucho glasses and deely-boppers, then it should be.

And it’s the same with rap music. If there’s no reason a song shouldn’t be performed by quirky ginger jailbait, then bring it on.

I mean this is the problem, there’s an assumption that most men review female artists with their dick, and it’s probably fair comment. Back in the day at Stylus we went to great efforts to not treat the amazing Hello Saferide with a kind of “OMG I WISH THIS CUTE QUIRKY SCANDI BROAD WAS MY GIRLFRIEND WE COULD WANDER AROUND BRICK LANE TOGETHER ENJOYING POP-UP TACO STANDS”. And then Pitchfork reviewed her and did exactly that.

I met someone recently who was aware of Sady Doyle’s failed roasting session (more like a parboiling) of me before they were aware of me as an actual person. And so that raised a lot of concerns about the ILB voice. I don’t think we’ve ever been misogynistic per se, just depressingly honest. And I don’t think I’m reviewing Kitty Pryde her out of any awkward Reddit-style jailbait fixation. Plus her friend is cuter anyway.

I like “Orion’s Belt”. I like “Okay Cupid”. I like the EP she put out. I think I can cope with this as music. Kate Nash, on the other hand, just depresses me with her continued existence. I think this might be why England is the worst cultural country ever.

The game starts in a few minutes and Italy are going to get knocked out. This is what to listen to while it happens:

Apathy ft Emilio Lopez – It Takes A Seven Nation Army to Hold Us Back

Long before Roma fans were jacking Club Brugges’ sing-alongs (and, let’s be honest, the origin story of how a mid-tier indie club banger became the world’s biggest sports anthem is as confused and suspicious as “So they were told to sing some songs without swearing in, and ‘Delilah’ just happened to come on the pub jukebox”), Apathy knew what the deal was, flipping Jack White’s paean to fucking his pretend sister for this quintessentially “last days of undie rap” 2004 joint. Although it’s questionable if a rapper as pasty as Apathy should be making songs about the joys of Beckys like this. Apathy was last heard of in a hospital bed somewhere with half his bowels rotting away. Don’t Camu Tao/Party Arty on us, big man.

Some Italian Dude – Seven Nation Army

My father has this exact version of the song in a CD in his car, purchased from a presumably Eritrean stall owner at a Palermo market. It jostles for disc space with Europop versions of various pop cultural patriotic Italian joints (basically “Vindaloo” and  “World In Motion” for the children of Pitagora), but it never fails to make me laugh at the fact that one of the defining artworks of the early 2000s by a Serious Musician who wanted to carve his place in the annals of Serious Music is now known by my mother as “The Po Po Po Po Song”.

Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman- Time to Say Goodbye (Con Te Partiro)

As you may hear in a forthcoming ILB special, I have a problem with a lot of “immigrant humour”, as it’s nearly always based on false assumptions: overbearing grandmothers, raucous family dinners and a cousin who works importing counterfeit shoes aren’t unique characteristics to your immigrant community, Italians, Pakistanis, Polaks, Kosovans, Nigerians, Pinoys… we all share them. I can write better Italian immigrant humour than Joe Avati with my fucking eyes closed. I mean, for instance, my mother, like most Italian mothers, has not pressed play on a single piece of music other than “Con Te Partiro” in the past decade. I’m pretty sure she knows it more thoroughly than she knows the rosary by now.

Union – You Are The Number 1

ITV’s theme to Euro 1992, a song that still gives me vivid flashbacks of Basile Boli’s bulging forehead veins. I seem to remember it being used by ITV for other footballing shows in the early 90s, but then I start thinking of Saint and Greavesie’s “Sport in Question” and start getting heart palpitations. Not on Spotify, although a band called “Union” are on there doing one of those cheap-cover-albums-for-playing-in-bars-and-in-movies full of PJ Harvey songs. “50ft Queenie” probably could have done with a sax break, tbh.

Gabry Ponte ft Little Tony – Figli di Pitagora

Gabry Ponte is one-third of Eiffel 65. Little Tony is arguably the world’s most famous person from San Marino (jostling with Massimo Bonini), who had a top 20 hit in England back in 1960 with “Too Good” before going on to become one of Italian rock and roll’s defining artistes. This is a song in which the latter sings a list of notable Italians (legendary comedy actor Toto, commedia dell’arte proponent Dario Fo, political scientist Niccolo Machiavelli) over a backing track by the former. Italian patriotism is an odd thing, few feel “Italian” and most identify with the region of their origin (Sicily, Tuscany, Campania). This song doesn’t do much to help.

The Wolfe Tones – The Rifles of the IRA

I have no real problem with the Irish, and it’s always unpleasant to have a deciding game resting against the hopes and aspirations of a country you vaguely respect. On the other hand, a 4-0 thrashing by Spain is what you get for not picking Kevin Kilbane. I used to live across the road from a bunch of strong Irish nationalist who would, once a month or so, get cunted on potcheen or whatever and start blaring the rebel songs. It gave me an appreciation for them, and I think maybe pro-IRA folk songs are the next big ironic rediscovery, so get on board now.

Val Doonican – Delaney’s Donkey

I don’t get this song. After all the fucking commotion, the donkey refusing to move, the dynamite, the mass invasion of the race course to get the beast moving, which takes forever… how can the donkey have won the race? No part of the song is actually taken up with the donkey running the race, as soon as the donkey starts moving it wins the race. Now, remember it’s a half-mile race, which is 4 furlongs, or underneath the length of the average sprint horse race. The average shit-tier horse would do six furlongs in 72 seconds. So let’s be generous and say 50 seconds for the horses in the race. The race would be over by the time Val started singing the first chorus. The donkey cannot win this race. This song is fucking bollocks.

Pill – Trap Goin’ Ham

Limp Bizkit – Rollin’

NOW I KNOW YOU BE LOVIN’ THIS SHIT RIGHT HERE: E-U-R-O BISCOTTO IS RIGHT HERE. A “biscotto”, as more learn’ed football fans will have discovered over the past few days, is a football match in Italy with the result… if not settled on  beforehand, then at least “baked in the oven”, usually an end of season match where a point will keep both teams out of harm’s way. 2-2 between Croatia and Spain tonight knocks Italy out. Italian Twitter wags have been nominating their “#top5biscotti” all day, and sadly few have plumped for the cantuccini, which with a nice vin santo makes a great end to a lazy Sunday meal.

Thomas Tantrum – Why The English Are Rubbish


Still, there’s always tomorrow’s game to laugh at instead.

As long-term readers of the site will know, if there was ever an ILB Hall of Fame, J-Zone would be an inaugural round inductee along with Townes van Zandt, Les Kellett and April Flores.

Although Zone has effectively retired from music, he’s still got enough content out on the streets: his book, Root for the Villain, is presumably good although I’ve not bought it (I only buy second-hand paperbacks in order to impress women); his legendary podcast Gator$ and Fur$ made a one-off return (for some reason, on the Dazed and Confused website); and he’s still rap’s second best blogger, churning out some classic pieces for Ego Trip.

His most recent article takes in the ignant class of 92 and looks at how their albums would go down if released today: would they get the Odd Future “it’s art” Guardianista cosign, would they get protests or would they just linger in obscurity? It’s a great read, it touches on perennial rap blogger favourite Tweedy Bird Loc and it’s going to introduce you to at least one act who are big fans of rapping about knife rape.

But it was the #1 artist on his countdown that piqued my interest: Dead at Birth. Here’s Zone’s words C+P’d:

There’s very little doubt that Genesis of a Madman: Book 1 is the most offensive rap album ever released. There’s a disclaimer from the record company on the CD insert. Info on the album is scarce. The only images Dead At Birth offer are masks and clown faces. It had to be an experiment of some sort (albeit with some incredible beats) – and turns out it was. Purportedly the group’s MC (Loco) was a Warlock Records employee and was hired by the label to produce a “gangsta rap” album that would enter Warlock into the 1992 fray of controversy. The IRS is again maxed out in all categories: Violence, misogyny, racism, nihilism, gay bashing, matricide, rape, disrespect for the homeless, and not being a father to your child. Lines like “Lincoln freed the slaves, but he ain’t said nothin’ ’bout no hoes” say it all. An additional two bonus slices of audio are added below, but this one is not for the easily offended. You’ve been warned.

So MC Loco, over the course of one song, breaks a woman’s nose because she won’t sleep with him, breaks her nose again for  being a slut, and then breaks her nose a third time for menstruating. Elsewhere he opines on what women are good for (“cooking, cleaning, sucking and fuck”) and then hits a pregnant woman with a sledgehammer for shits and giggles. All pretty basic stuff in this kind of music, but entertaining enough, especially when delivered in that early 90s hip-house MC style.

But, like Zone says, the album was actually a project of some sort. Following this YouTube link brings you to some comments by MC Loco himself, Matt Senatore:

ok ya’ll.. it’s been 20 years since I did this.. I never had these views actually.. it was when gangsta rap was kind of popular and I worked at Warlock Records in NYC.. So my boss knew I could rap and asked me to do an album for them. So I came up with this.. I’m 43 years old now and listening to this stuff and it is so not me its hilarious.. BTW.. I am from Brooklyn.. Don’t know why people are saying this is from Detroit..

It’s fun to think there’s a 43-year-old father of two out there just idly reminiscing on his childhood and happening to come across his old joints on YouTube, an wistful smile on his face as he recalls writing his first song about slashing homosexuals at the behest of his CEO.

But like he says, he was already working in the music industry. So he must have done other recordings as well, right? So you do some Googling and you can find a list of every song our man has ever been credited on. There’s “Genesis of a Madman” in its splendor at the top. And then further down…

Matt Senatore, the man who has recorded one of the most ignant, misogynistic, racist, homophobic, aggressive and downright funny albums of all-time… went on to work heavily with Blessid Union of Souls, the Christian alternative rock album of the early 90s. MC Loco actually produce their #1 smash “I Believe” under the pseudonym of Emosia.

As far as hip-hop gimmick changes go, I’m not sure it matches your man who went from being in  Hijack to DJ Pied Piper and the Masters of Ceremonies, but it’s pretty close.

So yeah, Ad-Rock or MCA or Beck (I forget which one) died last week. We didn’t write about it.

In fairness, we’ve written about very little recently. We have a corporate gig now, which takes up 90% of our time. The other 10% is taken up dealing with the self-loathing that comes from having 90% of your time taken up by a corporate gig. But the reason we didn’t write about the man’s death is because… well, it’d have been dishonest.

Like most kids outside the US in the mid-90s, it was the Beasties, along with Cypress Hill, who first got me intro rap music. So when the news of Yauch’s death filtered through, I thought “I know, I’ll get Ill Communication popping on Spotify.” Within three tracks, all I could think was “Man, I could sure go for The Cactus Album about now.”

And you can’t write an obituary of a guy that says “Fucked with this dude when I was 16, but when I was 16 I also thought Adam Schlesinger was the GOAT lyricist, so idk.” You can’t do that because there’s an inverse statute of limitations on speaking ill of a recently deceased musician. If you have a valid critical point to make about them, you need to do it before, rather than after, they pass.

Which is why I should probably say this now. Glen Campbell is ill. The man has Alzheimer’s to the degree that he doesn’t remember the lyrics to his songs anymore, so he probably has three to five years left on this planet.

Everyone likes Glen Campbell, right? He was the last of the “acceptable” Nashville country musicians, kitschy enough for those ironic country retrospectives on BBC 4, earnest enough for Radio 2 airplay, edgy enough for people who use the word “Americana” in all earnestness. He had the karaoke classics (“Rhinestone Cowboy”, “Wichita Lineman”), but I always fucked with him more as a maudlin Sunday morning comedown musician. “Mary In The Morning”. “Little Green Apples” with my girl Bobbie Gentry. And “Dreams of the Everyday Housewife”.

First ten, fifteen times I heard that song I thought “Right, I get it.” It was the last 60s, Campbell presumably had liberal songwriters (hence “The Universal Soldier” a few years earlier), and they were on their Betty Friedan tip with a song about how it’s wrong that women have their hopes and dreams crushed by domestic drudgery. The woman in the song things about dancing as a teenager and how she was the prettiest thing in town, and now she’s stuck darning socks and waiting for the UPS guy to arrive between 8 and 4.

And then we listened to it the last time and… well, it’s not about that at all. It’s a song in which Glen Campbell sings a song of celebration that his wife, who broke all their minds back so many years, has been forced into a lifestyle of subjugation to him. Yes, the end line of the chorus is “An everyday housewife who gave up the good life for me.” Glen Campbell is the husband in the song. He’s saying it’s a good thing that his missus has no aspirations any more.

Look, ILB has never shied away from praising the wrong people. All of my musical heroes are assholes: Dean Martin (alcoholic mob-affiliated sociopath), Warren Zevon (alcoholic abusive father), Eazy-E (back-stabbing drug dealer and Republican), Darren Hayman (opened a ukulele store). But but but…

What we’re trying to say is: Glen Campbell spent most of the late 70s smacking the living shit out of Tanya Tucker. For him to do that in the aftermath of a song where he boasts about keeping a woman locked down like a fucking Muslim child bride… I dunno, man. It’s awkward. Maybe too awkward.

I know, as a rap fan, you eventually come to expect that anyone who makes any half decent music in the genre is, at the very least, the kind of guy who deals crack to pregnant mothers and hates at least three other races intensely. But they at least weave stories out of them. This Glen Campbell thing just reminds me of when Eminem was doing Dee Barnes zingers while on the same track as Dre. It’s not even a case of “too soon”, it just looks like really, really bad bragging.

Glen Campbell was honoured at the same Grammys that Chris Brown took a bunch of flack for performing at. There was precious little in the way of protest. Whether this is a mark of respect for the man’s music, a feel that time has passed, racial issues or just the fact that people find Rihanna more attractive than Tanya Tucker, I don’t know. But what I do know is that all of this makes me very, very confused as to which asshole musicians I am allowed to cosign. I don’t want to end up like one of those liberal metal fans who decry misogyny in pop, commercialism in rap and monoculturalism in indie before listening to an album of songs where a Norwegian guy shouts about the purity of the Aryan Brotherhood for 23 minutes.

So what I’m saying is: someone write a list of which wifebeating musicans are OK to listen to. Chris Brown apparently isn’t, neither was Ike Turner. Mark E Smith and James Brown apparently are. Let’s get one of those feisty feminist “personality” bloggers, one of the ones with the shitty pink dyejob, labret piercing and propensity for writing in lolcat talk so they sound about 13, and set them to work on this. Maybe we can get an answer once and for all and I can go back to listening to my Glen Campbell best ofs without suffering a breakdown in my conscience.

Ever feel like your knowledge of regional rap is being exploited by advertising executives who know you’ll send anything concerning it viral? Welcome to the 21st century, bub.

ILB comments: You know, if I had a Florida IP address, this week probably isn’t the one I’d be using to start randomly accusing men of African descent of being intimidating, scary and threatening to women. Just saying, like.

Dear content farmers of the internet: maybe you’re on the look out for something that has high traffic potential, but also allows you to build your brand by cyberbullying a marginalised aspect of society? If so, I’ve got just the thing for you. Here is 12 minutes of one man unboxing various My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Happy Meal toys before enacting a little play scene with them. It took me a good 15 minutes to summon up the strength to carry on watching this after he storms to the front desk and demands he gets four different toys, but I feel like struggling on through has made me a stronger person and perhaps given me a greater insight into the worst minds of our generation.

Lisa Loeb

The image on this poster is the same one that features on the back cover to Loeb’s 1997 album Firecracker, which saw her move away from the girlish Lilith pop of her debut release and towards a more AOR sound. It received an 8.8 from Pitchfork Media, with the reviewer, Lang Whitaker, positively commenting on how the album’s lead single, “I Do”, has a video in which Loeb is “squirming around on pink shag carpeting, not wearing any pants”. The review, for some reason, has since been removed from the Pitchfork website.

Nadanuf

This is the cover to Nadanuf’s only album, 1997’s Worldwide. They were a blink-and-you’ll-miss-them female pop rap duo consisting of Sweet Diggety and Phor-One-One. Their soul moment of fame came with a cover of Kurtis Blow’s “The Breaks”, which Kurtis himself featured on. It made #115 on Billboard’s “Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart”. Both artists are now out of the music industry, although according to one blog post one half of the group wrote a book called God Is In The Bathroom, which sadly doesn’t appear to have made it to Amazon.

Girls Against Boys

A promotional photo of the Washington DC post-hardcore act who functioned as a cornerstone of Touch and Go records for much of the late 90s. The band recorded the soundtrack to the “There’s worse ways to spend 90 minutes” early 2000s movie Series 9: The Contenders, and also toured with Gina Gershon’s punk rock band in 2002. Frontman Eli Janney later went on to produce James Blunt.

Gaunt

As with Nadanuf, an Ohio-based act, although Gaunt were a pop punk band forming a loose scene with acts such as New Bomb Turks and some other guys who have less than 200 plays in last.fm. Gaunt’s debut album was produced by Steve Albini, and after their brief moment of fame various members of the group have gone on to play drums in briefly voguish alt act The Sun, open a coffee shop, or die in a car accident.

A black boyband of some description

I honestly can’t tell who that is at the top left of the photo. It’s not 3T or Ultimate Kaos (there’s four guys there). Part of me thinks it’s Men of Vizion but surely those guys in the photo are far too young? 112? Regardless of whoever it is, all you can really say is that each poster in this room is a testament to how willing Meadow Soprano was to experiment with musical boundaries, skipping from post-hardcore to L’Trimm-esque pop rap without a pause for breath. A true inspiration for us all, and if only Christopher had bothered to seek her advice when he was trying to find the “next Matchbox 20” early in series two, maybe a lot of trouble could have been saved.

Alternatively, lol at set designers who just grab the first five band posters they can find in the freebies bin at the local record store.