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Today, I emailed Time Out New York this “letter to the editor,” in response to their rather amateur compilation of “The 50 Greatest NYC Hip Hop Artists.”
As I’ve specifically written about, such lists are stupid. Well, not stupid, but always subective, and never really worth arguing over.
But come on. This is New York. We birthed hip hop. Time Out NY is supposed to be one of us.
It’s not that it was a bad list per se, but just thrown together. No real criteria. Many good choices, some more inexplicable. Many problems with placement. Many glaring omissions. Many non-hip hop journalists on the selection committee.
It is a problem. Part of a pattern of shoddy journalism at hip hop’s expense. And I’m going to call it out whenever I see it.
Please join me in echoing my concerns with an email of your own to the Editor in Chief of Time Out NY.
Please share this as well, to let people know we take our hip hop music and culture serious, and are tired of seeing it treated without the respect it deserves.
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Time Out New York is a venerable publication, one that rightfully stands atop the New York entertainment space for its groundbreaking model and thorough coverage, with pride and a New York flair, of a vast amount of New York-area interests.
It is what makes your recent posting, “Best New York Hip Hop: The 50 Greatest NYC Hip Hop Artists,” such an disappointment.
As hip hop fans, connoisseurs and in my case, journalists, we are used to seeing our music and culture, one with a rich, varied, complex and constantly evolving history, mocked and ridiculed by mainstream media, right-wing nutjobs and even our own so-called “hip hop media.”
We’ve seen our music and culture commercialized and bastardized by corporate interests, and our value as artisans diminished.
We watch as our collective image is tarnished, as that tarnished image is then projected to the masses, casting a cloud of negativity over our entire culture.
We constantly have to fight to have these distorted perceptions corrected, or properly understood by those who do not understand us.
In New York, these deviations from reality are even more heartbreaking. As the place of birth for what is now a worldwide mega-culture, we have immense pride in our city’s contributions to hip hop music and culture.
So much so, that when the entire music and entertainment journalism field, and corporate music entities (labels, radio, publishing) turned their backs on New York hip hop for years, we felt inclined to start our own outlets, to combat the rampant misconception that New York hip hop had fallen off completely.
We take our New York hip hop seriously.
So, when I caught wind of your list, I rolled my eyes, as these sorts of lists have become all too prevalent in today’s pseudo-journalism days where anyone can, and often does, have a blog, or can contribute to the online arm of what was once a respected print publication, often with a fraction of journalistic skills that their off-line compatriots have.
For whatever reasons, this is widely acceptable behavior these days.
But since it was Time Out NY, and since I’m such a NY hip hop advocate, I was both excited and worried. I’d love to see such a list be done well, to help celebrate the greatness that New York has contributed to hip hop, but worried because we know what these lists usually are: highly subjective, designed-to-incite-debate, click bait.
You know. Get those page views up! Get people taking about your list, and by extension, your brand.
I expect this of every publication these days, from the most respected, down to the most sleazy.
However, even with subjective lists, there is usually some cohesion, some criteria that is followed, to at least, if nothing else, be able to argue the merits of such a list.
When a list comparing iconic members of hip hop’s rich music history, especially those from our own community, are so callously tossed together, with little more overall thought than one would expect from some clueless manufacture of a deck of trading cards, is paraded around in such a manner as you did with this silly excuse for a well-thought out analysis, I just must take offence.
As I commented on the posting itself:
To be honest, for the most part, this is simply a list of 50 great NYC hip hop artists. While lists are ALWAYS subjective, and NO list can or should be argued, it’s pretty clear that this list is more arbitrary than carefully constructed. It’s a great list that pays tribute to a great history of artistry from our area, but it is not fully accurate, nor properly indicative of a true hierarchy, and should not have been presented as such.
If your staff was not qualified to properly analyze and compare the breadth and depth of hip hop history that has risen from the birthplace of a music and culture as important to New York’s history, they shouldn’t have even tried.
Did your editors attempt to reach outside of your circle, to secure input from actual hip hop journalists?
Marley Lunch (Foam Magazine). No. Corban Goble (Pitchfork, Stereogum). Nope. (Hank Schteamer, Time Out NY). Nah. Drew Milliard. Maybe, barely. Colin St. John? No. Chris Schonbeger (Complex).. Doesn’t seem like it..
Jesse Serwer gets a pass. But other than him, you seemingly let a slew of writers, who may be great writers and may have great intentions, but don’t seem to be close to being experts on hip hop, commit to writing a list of “50 Greatest NYC Hip Hop Artists.”
It’s as if someone decided to compile of list of 50 best car models ever and asked people who only casually wrote about modes of transportation to create the list.
It’s unfortunately part of a pattern I noted in a recent editorial [Mayhem Lauren, Pitchfork, Hip Hop & Hipster Media], a pattern which is not only less than admirable from a journalism standpoint, but one that cements the fact that a publication which is happy to gain income from the controversy such a list creates, actually has no affection or respect for the very genre it writes about to gain that traffic.
A pretty slick way to further pimp our beloved music and culture.
Don’t get me wrong, many of the choices on the list are fine examples of NY’s rich hip hop history, many deserved to be on ANYONE’S top 50 list.
But some didn’t. Under any circumstances. And some were so poorly placed, hierarchy-wise, in ways I don’t think any methodology could explain. Despite the fact that again, any and every list like this is, by default, subjective and shouldn’t really be argued, it is the complete lack of care with which this list was chosen and displayed, from an outlet in our own city no less, which makes this a highly unforgivable event.
Not to mention several inaccuracies (Public Enemy is not from NYC, for example), which further dismissed any credibility that might have been argued.
Simply out, there is a large contingent of the public who are rather tired of seeing our music and culture reduced to pageview fodder by media outlets who lack the understanding or respect that any musical, cultural or historical analysis should be afforded.
While Cornell University opens its doors to a permanent archive that properly values the historical contributions members of our artistic society have made, many institutions and media outlets continue to treat us poorly. I will vehemently call out those, especially those with a voice who we have in the past trusted, when they insult the field of journalism, and the music and culture of hip hop.
Please take this into serious consideration in the future when you seek to profile hip hop on Time Out New York in the future.
Thank you for your time.
Respectfully,
Manny Faces
Founder / Editor-in-Chief
Birthplace Magazine
646.867.3587
Creator/Host
The NY Hip Hop Report