Vinyl Me Please Essentials

Ericj32 said:
I'm not saying that it would be a good idea - I'm not a fan of Kanye or VMP, and I'm in no way trying to, like, manifest this outcome. I'm saying I would not be at all surprised if they were so excited about putting out the only official release of the album that they would find a way to convince themselves that it's ok. They're both beholden to the cult of hype and willing to do seemingly anything for money and attention.

I just don't know what's off-limits from their perspective if they put out a mediocre John Mayer album that no one asked for in Essentials in July 2020, just a few weeks/months after we all learned the names Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. Just a few weeks after the instagram black square thing, they put out an Essentials ROTM by their 5th white artist in a row - one who had pretty famously gone on the record in an interview saying some pretty racist things (with a much flimsier case than Kanye's for any possible insanity defense).
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I mean the lead time on these things, especially something as high profile as Mayer (like him or not), means that current events/history has very little to do with their curation for ROTM.
 
duke86fan said:
Storf actually was literally saying on the discord today that the weird shit he's saying about Kanye trying to buy trumps free speech map makes his dream of getting graduation on vmp more and more impossible

Despite the impression given its not going to happen and we probably need to stop claiming they'd be that tasteless
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So Storf himself is TODAY saying on discord that it’s his “dream” to do a Kanye album…but you think it’s unfair of me to think VMP would be tasteless enough to do a Kanye album? I don’t understand the logic there.

I haven’t seen the Discord posts you’re referring to, but saying “my dream of doing x is getting more and more impossible” is nowhere near saying “x is awful and toxic and we would never want to do it even if we had the opportunity”. Sounds more like he’s saying he would if he could and it’s just out of his control, which is still quite problematic.

I feel like people think I’m slandering Storf by merely saying that he’d allow them to do a Kanye album for the hype and $$ and the dude himself is out publicly posting today that it’s his dream to do a Kanye album.
 
Ericj32 said:
So Storf himself is TODAY saying on discord that it’s his “dream” to do a Kanye album…but you think it’s unfair of me to think VMP would be tasteless enough to do a Kanye album? I don’t understand the logic there.

I haven’t seen the Discord posts you’re referring to, but saying “my dream of doing x is getting more and more impossible” is nowhere near saying “x is awful and toxic and we would never want to do it even if we had the opportunity”. Sounds more like he’s saying he would if he could and it’s just out of his control, which is still quite problematic.

I feel like people think I’m slandering Storf by merely saying that he’d allow them to do a Kanye album for the hype and $$ and the dude himself is out publicly posting today that it’s his dream to do a Kanye album.
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Storf isn't suggesting they do Donde. Graduation is a widely respected (imo highly overrated) Hip Hop classic. Unfortunately, since its release Kanye has become extremely problematic. The discussion of whether or not and how to separate the artist from their art will go on ad infinitum, but I think it is wrong to attempt to erase meaningful history because of things known after the fact. I struggle with this quite often.... I gave up all my Ryan Adams records after it turned out he was a dick. I got rid of my Jackson vinyl when it became painfully obvious to me that something is there about the allegations but I kept my CDs.... My wife wanted to know if she should skip Thriller when it showed up on a halloween playlist... Led Zeppelin has its issues, but I still have their records on my shelf and will one day complete at least a studio album disco...

The fact is that Kanye is one of the most influential artists of this century. Unfortunately, he is also batshit crazy and needs help. I don't think picking one of his classic albums is a hype and $$ move but an acknowledgement of the classic status.

what it sounds like to me from the discord stuff without having read the direct quotes is the director of VMP music saying it won't happen despite his desire to make it happen.

It would also be widely nutso to say oh yeah this month will make you go oh they went for it and then a week or so later say this particular thing is highly unlikely and then have it be that thing. Maybe when storf first showed up and wanted to be a wrestling style heel as some weird kind of art thing, but all these years later... nah.
 
In fact, in some ways, a classic Kanye album would be perfect. You could tell an amazing story about the impact and influence of the album and artist while trying to acknowledge and explore the more troublesome recent history. Place it in context. Despite their dumb catch phrase for marketing, their mission statement has pretty much always been release albums they can tell a story about.

Edit - The long and short is not every story is the heart warming Blessed Feathers and Big Smoke. Sometimes the story is messy and scary. Tell a story worth telling.
 
Lee Newman said:
I mean the lead time on these things, especially something as high profile as Mayer (like him or not), means that current events/history has very little to do with their curation for ROTM.
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I mean - John Mayer’s playboy interview was 10 years before they released his ROTM. They had plenty of lead time to know that would be in bad taste. They had plenty of lead time to schedule 5 white artists in a row. Sure - they obviously didn’t know about all of the shootings that would take place in the months prior to July - but it’s not like the world would have ended if at any point in the weeks between May 25th and June 22 (when the July ROTM was announced) they’d said, “hey, this might be in bad taste right now - maybe we should cancel the essential track for this month (John Mayer) and encourage our subscribers to explore the classics (Mccoy Tyner) or hip hop (Prince Paul) tracks instead this month or one of the former ROTMs we have thousands of copies of in our warehouse like Donald Byrd or Patrice Rushen.”

They also had a year of lead time between MIA’s anti-vaxx comments (she said she’d rather die than get the covid vaccine) at the beginning of the pandemic and putting out her album in Essentials in March 2021.

What would they have done differently with more time?
 
Lee Newman said:
In fact, in some ways, a classic Kanye album would be perfect. You could tell an amazing story about the impact and influence of the album and artist while trying to acknowledge and explore the more troublesome recent history. Place it in context. Despite their dumb catch phrase for marketing, their mission statement has pretty much always been release albums they can tell a story about.

Edit - The long and short is not every story is the heart warming Blessed Feathers and Big Smoke. Sometimes the story is messy and scary. Tell a story worth telling.
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How do you do that without giving him more money though and enabling his continued downward spiral?

Aren’t there any other artists more deserving of being given a platform? Why waste it on someone who’s already plenty famous and has used their fame so selfishly and dangerously?
 
Ericj32 said:
How do you do that without giving him more money though and enabling his continued downward spiral?

Aren’t there any other artists more deserving of being given a platform? Why waste it on someone who’s already plenty famous and has used their fame so selfishly and dangerously?
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Because maybe he (being Kanye) gets the message finally. I don’t think Kanye is a possibility because 1. He doesn’t need VMP and 2. His people would know the kind of discourse this would cause and will protect him from it.

I don’t think Kanye is the problem as much as his people, same thing with Trump. Someone needs to have the balls to go look boss…
 
Lee Newman said:
Because maybe he (being Kanye) gets the message finally. I don’t think Kanye is a possibility because 1. He doesn’t need VMP and 2. His people would know the kind of discourse this would cause and will protect him from it.

I don’t think Kanye is the problem as much as his people, same thing with Trump. Someone needs to have the balls to go look boss…
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I mean - he would benefit from VMP way more than Aretha, Outkast, or Bob Dylan.

I think Kanye and Trump are both 100% responsible for their own delusions. Plenty of people have reached out in good faith and tried to talk sense to them over the years and tried to stop the destructive behavior to no avail.
 
Ericj32 said:
I mean - he would benefit from VMP way more than Aretha, Outkast, or Bob Dylan.

I think Kanye and Trump are both 100% responsible for their own delusions. Plenty of people have reached out in good faith and tried to talk sense to them over the years and tried to stop the destructive behavior to no avail.
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I agree to a certain extent... people from outside the camp are not going to solve the issues both of them have.
 
Being bi-polar makes one paranoid and delusional

Being bi-polar doesn’t make one a racist or an anti-semite

The fucked up thing is Candace Owens is currently the one whispering in Ye’s ear. Her husband also owns Parlor, the “free speech” Twitter clone that is a bit of a ghost town since all the MAGA types joined Trump’s Twitter clone, Truth Social. Now today it’s been announced that Kanye is going to buy Parlor.

Seems to me that Candace Owens is gonna be naming her new yacht “Black Skinhead”.
 
The minute that you ignore the personal and political lives of the artists and just enjoy the music (assuming the music doesn't contain any strong abrasive political stuff) then the happier you will be. I don't care what Ted Nugget, Kane West, Eric Clapton, Phil Spector, Van Morrison think or do in their own lives (especially those old guys who are grumpy old men now). But I enjoy the heck out of their music and focus on that, because there is none of that dramatic nonsense to be found in the art typically. Some people read the headlines and can't separate music from the personal lives of these guys and I can respect that, but that's just my philosophy. I think it's dumb to not touch someone like Kanye as a reissue label just because he's a sensationalist, attention-seeking probably pretend racist with fame/personal issues, yet they have no problem putting out Miles Davis music over and over (who was known to beat the hell out of women). Double standards. Just listen to the tunes and ignore their real life personal drama.

Of course there are lines, I can understand not selling or buying the license to use stuff from child rapists like Gary Glitter obviously.
 
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