"There is no objective quality difference between Kendrick Lamar, Justin Timberlake, and AJR. It’s all cheesy pop."

obviously there isnt because its subjective. the avg person here hates ajr but doesnt hate those other two artists. its not that deep

Someone please explain to a plebe like me, what makes the first song a celebral classic and what makes the latter song the worst music ever made?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-48u_uWMHY

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UnyLfqpyi94

I actually prefer the AJR track. Doesn’t try so hard. Focuses on clarity and substance in lyrics over rapid fire gibberish rapping. Actual instrument use. Doesn’t overplay this out of one sample.

yeah we know, you dont hate ajr that much, you dont like kendrick that much, i think u just like arguing

Only reason people “like” Kendrick is they assume listening to him makes him cool. Only reason people “dislike” AJR (to such a ridiculous extent) is that internet culture has made them a meme of “worst pop band of all time” that they never deserved.

ok

“You just like arguing”

Says the guy doing nothing but crying about people discussing music on a music forum.

i like arguing too to an extent but chill out lol

Which is more immature? 3 kids singing about their dead dad, or a BLM limousine liberal whining about first world problems and a fake genocide?

haha yeah man you showed them
anyway check bladee

Album Rating: 1.5

still better than Sprain, Chat Pile, Imperial Triumphant, Swans, Portal, Kayo Dot

Imagine going to bat for the one of the most focus grouped, juvenile and sanitized groups in all of music.

Worlds Tiniest Violin should be proof enough that this band is a pestilence on pop music.

The AJR guys seem like nice blokes that make the art they want. I don't know why this guy is insisting we like them as much as him. He doesn't even like them, mind. So I have no idea why he's trying to convince us to... not like them less? Just the right amount of dislike that satisfies him.

The craziest part to me is him dragging Kendrick Lamar into it, and then proving he has never actually understood what Kendrick wrote about

They're not even similar artists. Their goals as creative aren't aligned. It's such a bizarre comparison. Nevermind trying to make one artist seem better by dragging another. It would be better to just make a case as to why AJR aren't so bad for you. For me, they don't tickle my pickle. Just do nothing for me.

Nobody who finds profound depth in Twenty One Pilots is intelligent enough to parse TPaB

Or argue with, for that matter, if you don’t want to wade through a field of the most poorly disguised projection. Plus the shades of racism in his Kendrick criticism is just 🤮

“No matter how famous he is, he’s still a black man in America”

This is the epitome of immature lol. Ignore all of your “privileges” coming from the absurd amount of wealth that few besides you have ever experienced.

while crying about literal first world problems like “being black like America” in the 21st century and facing a non-existent genocide at the hands of police. It’s pathetic, pretentious, and cringe. He’s trying hard to replicate the actual oppression that older hip hop artists at least experienced some what (their parents growing up in segregation times), which he never experienced at all, and which he in no way demonstrates with the narrative of this album (all of his problems stem from his own bad decisions and the decisions of those around him.)


At least AJR aren’t going out of their way to pose as victims because it is cool. They actually have some sort of moral compass and humbleness to their music.

How do you conclude that Kendrick Lamar did not experience oppression before his music career? Do you think he grew up rich and famous or something?

Stop trying to make strawman arguments to push some narrative that this Target commercial, ultra sanitized radio fodder is profound and in anyways deeper than the most surface level and lowest common denominator white perspective.

hipflopispenis6969 is a bitch

Woah, this thread got pruned a bit when I was sleeping

Album Rating: 1.5

very cool and normal replies to my review lol



@HipHopIsDead2000 I do actually agree that my previous reviews of AJR were as overwrought as the band themselves can be, which is why I tried to take in as much context as I could when listening to this album. It made OK Orchestra better in hindsight, but I think it made Maybe Man worse. Knowing that we're five albums in makes the basic nursery rhyme melodies stand out, as does the blatant admittance on 2085 that they're not interested in changing their lyrical approach. In a world where Dua Lipa, The Weeknd, Carly Rae Jepsen, even Post Malone, are switching things up at least a little every new album, it makes their art feel even more vapid. They're not keeping up with some of the most manufactured pop music in terms of dynamism, so even if I'm kinder to their overall baroque-tinged electro-pop sound than others, their repetitive mediocrity is catching up to them.



What I feel less emotional about now but still feel holds true in a clinical sense is their weird non-popularity and their indignances with their place in the pop pantheon. AJR are technically one of the biggest pop acts today but they didn't actually get on the same radios and playlists as Post Malone or Billie Eilish or Travis Scott before Bang came out. They've toured with Imagine Dragons and worked with Weezer but none of their other collaborators are household names, but they name-drop Ed Sheeran and Kendrick Lamar in songs specifically asking to be compared with them in stature. It's so bizarre, I don't think I can name other band doing this kind of piggybacking right now, and it means that whatever bigness they've achieved in doing this comes with bad baggage that...well, it just makes them less charismatic as both pop stars and people.



I mean for God's sake, you wanna know how they got their big break? They made I'm Ready as a demo, tagged every pop artist on Twitter they could think of, and the one to take a shot on them was Sia, the biggest starsucker around right now. "Industry plant" is a term that gets thrown around a lot, I dunno if this instance really counts, but most "plants" don't stick around long enough for their desperation for relevance to be so transparent (except Gayle, who was just really really bad at hiding it).