8 Comments

Totally agree. Great music writing has always pulsed with personality and been alive to irony and wit. Pitchfork is just so joyless. As another comment notes however, Alphonse Pierre seems to have found a way of sneaking amusing prose under the humour detector.

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Thank you, Ian, I have seen Alphonse Pierre's work and he does have a lighter touch than most PF writers.

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A long-time p4k reader here lol. I like Meaghan Garvey's reviews a lot. Sadly they no longer write for the site. Alphonse Pierre always has witty takes on the current rap in his column. Paul A. Thompson writes sharp reviews for which I keep a lookout. They are some of the people that I can think of on top of my head that really shine through the p4k corporate complex as distinctive writers.

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Thanks for writing, Desmond. Quite a number of good writers have come and gone, and I think there are others who could break through what you so articulately call "the p4k corporate complex." I like Alphonse's work when I see it; if you can't write with humor about hip-hop, why bother?

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Spot on, my feelings exactly.

The other issue I have is that, like seemingly all critics aggregated on Metacritic, every album is rated as around 7 or better. Good is the enemy of Great.

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Hi Mr. Kovacs. I will be doing an article soon on Metacritic and the distance between critical reviews and user reviews, and one summer movie in particular. Thanks for reading and, I hope, signing up

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I agree. I can't think of one article that I have read on the site that has provided the motivation to seek out an artist's work in more depth.

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Thanks Marco. I'm getting a lot of responses just like yours. I appreciate you reading and taking the time to comment.

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