I've clearly been outclassed, because I have no idea what this is in reference to.

high fidelity - the special tape for monday morning, SPECIAL, for YOU, and you had to go and ruin it

if you think sage has a better flow than 50 than we clearly have different thoughts on the subject. i'll give you the lyrics, but only because i can't quantifiably defend them and he goes cartoonishly overboard sometimes.

i can see not likeing 50, but finding him boring? i don't see it.
one of the more lyrical and inventive voices in rap history.

i can see not likeing 50, but finding him boring? i don't see it.
one of the more lyrical and inventive voices in rap history.

let's not suck his dick here, dude can flow sometimes but he sounds like Ma$e.

i think we already had a "he sounds like mase" debate on the old CMJ board. it went nowhere, so i won't go there again.

he's honestly one of my favorite rappers of all time, and when his mixtapes started coming out like crazy (in the months leading up to Get Rich) it was the most excited i had been about new rap in years.

Most of this threads preoccupation with getting paid strikes me as slightly opposed to the reason most of us filtered towards the CMJ and now obner sites... we wanted to learn about stuff we liked/loved. Most of us have dabbled our feet in other ponds (hipinion, pitchfork, etc...) and most of us seem to acknowledge the fakery, the bile, the "snarky" as some have noted previously, and the overall sense that it is a high act of pimpery, a con, a way for some to "get paid."

I've never liked pitchfork's reviews and have never used one to actually inform a purchase. I use to go for daily news, but I even gave up on that. Their reviews are spiteful, arbitrary, and on the whole utterly usless as a tool to inform readers as to what is worth buying and what is better off avoided. Even if they are getting paid, they seem to be failing at their reported purpose, and that deserves some disrespect from all of us.

Mainstream News is dumbed down, but I don't gotta like it. Indie Rock traditionally appeals to those more educated than the rest of the herd (hell it use to be labelled college rock back in the prehistoric eighties). For Pitchfork to become the clearinghouse of all things indie they need to come up with some criteria for reviewers that ties this to a reality we can all sort of see from our vantage points, or they too will jump the shark, and Ryan's so-called paycheck will not matter in the least.

They have a great opportunity to get better in the review area, and truly become informative as their daily news briefs, it'd be a shame if they missed "Capitalizing" on it.

Does that mean that I am jealous? Do I secretly want to swap places with Ryan to do his job "Better"? I dunno. I use to want to work in the music world, and I use to review ( I'd hazard a guess that most of you never noticed that I reviewed for CMJ for about a year).

I don't want Ryan's job, I don't think I could do it any better than he. I don't think i even want to give it all up to follow my muse in rock journalism anymore. All I want is Pitchfork to sort itself out and be as useful as it could be, to be as good as it hints at from time to time. If they'd turn that substantial corner, to quote the highly under-rated movie Robocop, "I'd buy that for a dollar."

Sage, > 50 Cent > most indie hip-hop out right now.

ODB > Doom > Aesop > El Producto > Kool Keith on his worst day > Dizzee Rascal > Airborn Audio > Beans > Sage > Lil' Pocketknife > 50 Cent > most indie hip-hop out right now.

I'm just going off the top of my head, here, folks...