“The launch of Apple Music hasn’t only included a new radio station, social network, and streaming service,” Amy Phillips reports for Pitchfork.
“Apple have also started creating their own original content,” Phillips reports. “The company made Drake’s amazing ‘Energy’ video in-house, as well as Pharrell’s ‘Freedom’ and Eminem’s ‘Phenomenal.'”
“Next up: M.I.A.’s ‘Matahdatah Scroll 01 Broader Than a Border,’ coming to Apple Music on Monday, July 13,” Phillips reports. “When asked for comment, Larry Jackson, Apple Music’s head of content, Tweeted this:”
Oh ok. 👊🏾😉http://t.co/OnIBvlvfqT#AppleMusicBreaksTheInternet#Content #Culture #Curation #EnergyVideoOnConnect
— Larry Jackson (@LarryJackson) July 10, 2015
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Oh ok.”
Bwahahahahaha! That’s beautiful, Larry. Just beautiful!
A little of Steve Jobs-style cheekiness we’re seeing lately from Apple is definitely welcome.
SEE ALSO:
Apple features Tim Cook laughing his head off at Android in iOS 9 beta’s News app – July 9, 2015
Spotify founder: Oh ok, we don’t need to be number one in music streaming – June 11, 2015
Oh ok, Spotify: Apple’s iOS 8.4 adoption already at 37 percent – July 7, 2015
Spotify CEO claims to be ‘ok’ with Apple Music – June 9, 2015
I’m not a fan of drake but I liked the song and loved the video
Well, now that they have that ignorant trash out of their system maybe they can try creating something that actually pertains to real music. I am so sick of this black rap shit that is portrayed as art created by talented and gifted performers.
Saying it over and over again doesn’t make it true, but it brainwashes the gullible into believing it. I always thought that under Steve Jobs their music choices were a bit off, but now with Tim Cook it has turned into a pile of pure crap. Give the guy time and he will turn into Apple’s version of Steve Ballmer.
Who forces you to listen to rap? No one, there are other stations available. Go find something different and quit your wining.
I don’t agree with his Tim Cook as Steve Ballmer assessments but I do agree with the questionable taste of this music being supported by Apple in a seeming quest to appear hip and current. To be fair Apple should support music from every genre and not just the most convenient at the moment.
I couldn’t agree with you more. Apple please save precious resources to lavish on the truly talented and not this both black & white phoney phallacious phakery trying to pass itself off as anything but c-rap.
Looking hip is not as important as supporting real music and not trashy Auto-Tuned to death artists who seem to be contemptible of quality talent and song writing. There are so many other gifted black and white artists out there worthy of your attention and funding.
BTW this is not about racism, it’s about real music. Black
“fartists” are just as open a target as white ones for criticism. Nobody is given special dispensation. The audiences ear is the final arbiter.
Seems like the audience has spoken and likes Rap.
Only those with poor taste. I daresay the majority of mankind has thoroughly rejected rap. There’s nothing remotely toe-tapping about talky, talentless and reputious sounding rap and it’s doubtful when youth is much older they will be remembering it not so much fondly but with questionable revulsion. Rap is cold and soulless. It has no emotional resonance at all, and seems to only take humanity to it’s lowest crass level.
Cynical artists calculatedly go more for shock value but that day is ending fast as audiences become completely jaded and numb to shock. Resorting to things like waving & wagging big butts in the air (however entertaining in its own right)show just how desperate these talentless jerks are trying to vie for your attention.
As much as you and I may like it to be not so, rap is very popular world wide. I don’t have much appreciation for rap either but to deny reality is to stick your head in the sand. Apple is catering to a world wide audience with their music service and they would be crazy not to if they want it to be a success.
I was saying Apple shouldn’t pick someone right off the bat in an apparent attempt to look hip. And they should diversify and support all musical genre’s, not just the crappiest one. Rock is still the most popular musical genre, by far.
They did buy Beats and the principals behind it. The people that they put in a position to manage the Apple Music business. Perhaps they know best.
Oh there’s always going to be the catering to the crass low end of society but I somehow doubt Jimmy Iovine plays this same promoted rap crap when alone in his car, or Tim Cook. It ain’t got no soul. Well as you know there’s no accounting for taste.
I’ve been meaning to ask you, if “Indian Reservation” has soul, or if it is considered crossover music, or if Cherokees had a unified opinion about it. Paul Revere died last year and the question came up.
As a classically trained conductor with over 20 years of work on classical, jazz and musical theatre, I will say this. We may or may not like to as a genre but after over 25 years, it is clear that there is some enduring quality in the genre that allowed it to survive and attract audiences. Original fans of rap when it first appeared are now well in their forties, and apparently many are still fans.
Every once in a while, I make an effort to listen analytically to some of the most popular samples of the genre in order to discover the qualities that make it so enduring. It seems to me that the most significant property in general is its rather hypnotic rhythm and repetitive ostinato harmony that provides the foundation for the recitativo voice. My personal tastes are far removed from the genre, but I can see how many may find some appeal in its minimalistic qualities.
Yes as our parents thought about our 50’s, 60’s music. 🙂 For that reason I’m aware of the ironies and risk “old-fogeyism” but by any objective standard it’s mostly junk.
For one thing no actual singing is a non-starter for me, plus the fact every producer copies production sounds & techniques from the next – BORING. Add too the fact it’s just a fugly tin-plated sound in general and unattractive to the ears expecting more. Lyrically it’s often at the level of 10 year olds. Maturity? Hah. Usually nonexistent.
I have film score composer and conductor friends and they agree with me. My tastes are very eclectic but there are limits. Appreciate your opinion though, and open mindedness. As Dennis Miller used to say “It’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.”
My father was born in 1921. The music of his youth was the very early forms of jazz (Rock & Roll wasn’t invented yet). His parents, and their generation, considered sounds of jazz equivalent of trowing a bunch of pots and pants tumbling down the stairs. They were very unequivocal that jazz simply cannot be called music by any reasonable criteria: it was repetitive, boring, all songs sounded the same, like one writer was simply copying from the other, and it all sounded harsh and full of metallic sounds. Much like your (our) generation’s comments about rap, my grandparents’ comments about jazz were not any different.
My parents had pretty much exactly the same comments about rock of the 60s, and don’t even get them going about the disco of the 70’s (“incessant mind-numbing pummeling of drums and bass!”)…
As much as my personal tastes would like to agree with you, judging by the history of contemporary music, I have to bite my tongue and allow time to pass objective judgement. And if we look at that historical perspective, disco died within ten years; yet rap seems to endure for close to 30 years. While it may be easy to write this off as simply a genre that strongly represents a subculture (urban minority), its popularity goes far beyond the original subculture from which it grew (much like fifty years earlier, jazz did). After all, Berklee College of Music (one of the preeminent contemporary music institutions of higher learning in the world) has a “Hip-Hop Writing and Production” course.
Based on all available information today, objectively, hip-hop (and rap) are legitimate music genres that have so far withstood the test of time (personal tastes notwithstanding).
Very good comment, Predrag. But what I still find absolutely astounding is that Apple – normally so classy – are so fully into a genre that could be described as “street poetry with a beat”. Hell, they’re even getting rappers to help them at the highest levels of their music service! Whilst apparently paying very little attention to the many far, far, FAR more talented and musically knowledgable artists out there.
To me it’d be about the same if Apple started a food service, ignored all the high quality food recommended by dieticians and naturopaths and, instead, put all their energy (and billions of dollars!) into greasy salty chips made from reconstituted potatoes. Sure, it’s all food, but… where’s your focus, Apple? Quality or the bottom of the barrel?
Dear Dr. Predrag,
Please help. What’s the difference between a hip-hop song and something like “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haa!” by Napoleon XIV in 1966?
—Clanless in California
One song celebrates the joys of insanity, the other, the joys of rape, murder and anarchy. So basically, no difference, (other than era.)
I wouldn’t know. I know nothing about either. These simply aren’t the genres of my expertise and I won’t pretend to know something when I don’t.
Well would you venture an opinion on Webern at least.
discussing rap with words like “ostinato harmony” and “recitativo voice” is absurd. it’s neither.
it’s an artform with its own vocabulary, derived from R&B, soul, jazz, and world music.
repurposing italian art music lingo sounds… pretentious, and doesn’t further the musical discussion.
I agree it’s an artform with its own vocabulary and sensibilities. But in traffic, when the badass bass blasters pull alongside my ride, I punch in mariachi and crank up the volume. The higher frequencies of the happy horns penetrate the menacing whale calls. Art must do battle.
My apologies if my comment offended you. As an experienced and trained professional musician with over 30 years of musical experience, I was commenting on what I was hearing in rap. If you re-read my comment, you may notice that I never passed judgement about rap (unlike some others here). I assumed it was music and approached it as a professional musician would approach any other musical genre. What you say implies that rap isn’t music. I thought it was, since it possesses properties necessary to be considered music (rhythm, harmony, formal structure, etc).
I wasn’t commenting on taste. Perhaps if Apple had gone with young women singing angry lyrics you would be more comfortable?
It really doesn’t matter what genre they chose to begin, the end result is the same, experience producing music videos.
I personally don’t listen to rap. I personally know rap artist and have met met rap artist including Queen Latifa, Ice T, easy e and others so I am not speaking in a vacuum and I have actually made the same comments to others in the genre. It will become mainstream just like every other disruptive musical style including rock and roll. That’s the nature of the beast.
Mainstream for some, circular file for most others. And no we don’t need to see a return of Sinéad O’Connor. 🙂
Maybe all the “real” musicians didn’t want to sell out to the man and make videos with MegaCorp, Inc. Artistic integrity and all that.
Yeah that’s it. 😉
… and I was thinking Joan Jett.
no fast foward = no chance