Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

Consumer Guide:
  User's Guide
  Grades 1990-
  Grades 1969-89
  And It Don't Stop
Books:
  Book Reports
  Is It Still Good to Ya?
  Going Into the City
  Consumer Guide: 90s
  Grown Up All Wrong
  Consumer Guide: 80s
  Consumer Guide: 70s
  Any Old Way You Choose It
  Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough
Xgau Sez
Writings:
  And It Don't Stop
  CG Columns
  Rock&Roll& [new]
  Rock&Roll& [old]
  Music Essays
  Music Reviews
  Book Reviews
  NAJP Blog
  Playboy
  Blender
  Rolling Stone
  Billboard
  Video Reviews
  Pazz & Jop
  Recyclables
  Newsprint
  Lists
  Miscellany
Bibliography
NPR
Web Site:
  Home
  Site Map
  Contact
  What's New?
    RSS
Carola Dibbell:
  Carola's Website
  Archive
CG Search:
Google Search:
Twitter:

Consumer Guide Album

Death From Above 1979: You're a Woman, I'm a Machine [Vice, 2004]
I don't get this. We listen to a Snoop or Lil Jon record--I do, anyway--and say, Yeah, the music is pretty good, but it's really no fun hearing women degraded that way, so the hell with those guys. Maybe if the funk is terrific (Cam'ron, or the new improved--and somewhat more mild-mannered--50) or the rhymes acute (Jay-Z, Ghostface), we let down our guard and try to hear how the other half feels. Otherwise no. So why is this tight, intense, recidivist screech-and-crunch exempted from such complex responses? Preferring funk to crunch as I do, maybe I'm merely insensible to the guitars' siren call. Or maybe its slaves are insensible to misogyny that stops at cut-and-run man's-gotta-do you-hurt-me-too, rather than claiming to control that 'ho. B-