Exit Survey: Joe on Famoe's 16Bars Rap-Blog

See the rest of the exit surveys HERE.

 

1. Were you happy with the reviews that were published? How do you feel about your week as Record Club captain?

 

Shoutout to Sunny and Nate and Gary, Record Club's champions of 2023. They combined for a total of 154 reviews written this year, and finished 2023 off strong with a handful of reviews for the instant classic, Famoe's 16Bars Rap-Blog EP. I'm proud of my friends for their commitment, their creativity, and their love of music (plus subsequent love or perhaps sometimes tolerance of writing about music).

 

2. How was the variety of opinions? A wide range, kinda samey, or somewhere in the middle?

There's no room for variety on an album like this, but that's okay. We're not playing the short game in Record Club. We track patterns over long periods of time. We notice that on some weeks, there are static opinions, and for other weeks, opinions are all over the map. It expands and contracts, and over time you start to notice that music criticism is this living, breathing organism. Yes, even a four-minute rap album from some random jabroni who lives overseas.

3. Were there any differing opinions that made you view the album in a different light?

Always. One from each: on Sunny's, I appreciated his highlighting Famoe's off-the-wall "inspiration" in Nelly's Country Grammar, since I loved that title track back in the day, and it really put in perspective Famoe's age relative to mine, I guess; on Nate's, the description of the production is always what I'm looking for in rap albums, and I really place value on his opinion on such matters (opinions that are much more informed than my own, in this genre); on Gary's, I was taken aback with how crucial his final sentence felt to this whole affair, how important it probably is to consider the artist's own opinions on their own work, like... does Famoe really like making five-minute albums, or what?

4. Was there anything about this album or this artist that you wished that people would've written about more?

No, I think we wrung it out as much as possible. Especially during the week between Christmas and New Year's, which is historically the week in which no one really feels like doing much. At work, I usually take like 20 calls per day. I received five calls the entire week. Suffice it to say that I did not spend a lot of that extra time thinking about Famoe (though you may see the extra time reflected in some long Song Challenge entries next week).

5. How do you feel about your album choice now that the week is over? A success? Any regrets?

I feel like I'm going to be buying a few more basement-bargain Cameos from some musicians in the coming year. The whole "$1 for a personalized video" thing fascinates me, and I think we can find some room for a few other random-ass artists. Not for Record Club, but I don't know. Maybe the $1 country singer wants to do a Song Challenge prompt, or the $1 vaporware artist wants to tell me what they think about Police Academy 3: Back in Training.

6. Any other takeaways from the reviews? Or from this experience in general?

This felt like a nice end to the year of Record Club. Kinda felt like a "dance with the one who brought you" situation. Our every-week regulars all filed in and gave one last review for 2023, and I'm thankful for that. In 2024, we will start anew. I'm looking forward to reading your words in the new year, and we begin some fresh endeavors, while somehow keeping the Record Club engine running. The flame will flicker but it'll never die.

Here is the big number: we collectively wrote 356 album reviews in 2023. That's the most ever for a single year, beating 2022 by fifteen reviews (and this year didn't even have a McGruff-style gimmick to boost the numbers). That's an average of 6.8 reviews per week. Almost one per day! The important thing isn't the numbers, though, but the quality. And I cannot overstate how grateful I am to be able to read my friends' shit on this blog. It's a constant joy every Friday. That's the reason I am relentless in attempting to get more and more people to write on here consistently: because it's fucking fun, man. I get to have fun, which becomes precious and valuable as you get older and life ceases to be one constant joyride.

7. What is an improvement that Record Club can make that would enhance everyone's experience, either as a captain or as a listener/writer?

 

Start thinking of it like a pyramid scheme: these four writers all get four other writers each to write in Record Club, and those writers get four writers each to commit, and by the end of 2024, everyone on earth will be writing a review for Week 301's Country Grammar.