8A - Monday, November 30, 2009 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com *I Videogum's 'U' alum Wale deserves your 'Attention' How Gabriel Delahaye made a career out of snide online comments By BRIGID KILCOIN Daily Arts Writer "People don't really realize how much work it is to write a professional blog. I think it's because of how stupid blogs are. But they are incredibly work-intensive." Although many might not equate "profes- sional pop-culture blogger" with "grueling occupation," University alum Gabriel Dela- haye, a senior editor of entertainment blog Videogum.com, wants to clear up a common misconception: Getting paid to provide com- mentary on YouTube videos and write snarky recaps of television shows isn't as simple as it seems. "Videogum is my full-time job. I work about 60 hours a week, and it would be easy to work more. Then most nights I watch something on TV to write about the next day. I'm very lucky to have a boss that likes my work and trusts me, so there is basically no editing hierarchy. That is definitely one of the reasons there are so many typos on the site all the time," Dela- haye wrote in an e-mail interview. "I mostly cover what I want to cover, and what I want to cover tends to be things that I hate," Delahaye wrote. "I mean, it's much easier to be funny about things that are ter- rible or silly or flawed than it is to be funny about things that are genuinely wonderful and enriching and beautiful." It's easy to believe that someone who watch- es TV for a living would prefer to do anything else in his free time. But Delahaye is differ- ent. Despite making a living by critiquing the awful, the hackneyed and the woefully mis- guided, he still has a soft spot for television, easily providing a list of his favorite shows. "I love '30 Rock,' and 'Tim and Eric,' and 'Arrested Development,' and 'The Wire,' and 'Lost,' and 'The Sopranos,' and 'Mad Men,' and 'Friday Night Lights,' and 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force,' and 'Eastbound and Down.' I genuinely think we are living in a golden age of TV and of comedy. It's never really been any better than this." But this doesn't mean he's able to completely "It's definitely harder to enjoy TV now because everything is a potential subject, and I'm much more aggressively critical," he wrote. "But good shows are still good, and there are a few things that I watch that I don't write about specifically so that I can just enjoy them and not have to think about what Locke becoming the leader of the Island says about the Israeli-Palestinian conflicf. That's a bad example, though, because I write about 'Lost.' And because Locke becoming the leader of the Island is more about NATO's role as an inter- national police force." The comments on Delahaye's Videogum posts are often as amusing as the posts them- selves, with dozens of anonymous posters slav- ishly imitating his unique style and attempting to one-up his commentary. Others criticize his repetitiveness and constant cynicism. Despite the polarizing nature of his writing, Delahaye loves the feedback, going so far as to create a site feature where he posts his five favorite comments each week. "Oh, it is incredibly flattering. Sometimes I worry that I'm too predictable. But I'm also writing about 12 posts a day, so it is hard to reinvent that many wheels," Delahaye wrote. And bored college students aren't the only ones paying attention to his work. "I did get an e-mail from Verne Troyer last winter telling me that he hoped I got hit by a bus." Troyer's dismay is a little understandable: Delahaye's jaundiced views can seem need- lessly harsh to someone unfamiliar with his sense of humor. However, he accepts that many will react negatively to his work. "I'm very aware that a lot of the people that I write about on the site are trying their best to actually create something, even if what they're creating is terrible," Delahaye wrote. "I respect that. But I also figure that anyone who just sold their Tumblr to NBC or is making $10 million to star in a movie about a hotel for CGI ferrets can probably handle someone calling them names on a pop culture blog." Prior to serving as professional media gad- fly, Delahaye attended the University of Michi- gan. As an Ann Arbor native, the decision was natural. "If this was a Lifetime movie, I would tell you that I didn't decide on Michigan, but rath- er Michigan decided on me. But this is not a Lifetime movie, and that is a ridiculous thing to say," Delahaye wrote. Not content to simply focus on his studies, Delahaye worked at famed Ann Arbor liquor store Village Corner during his collegiate career, inspiring terror in underage Wolverines. "Oh, it was really a power trip in the worst way," he wrote. "I lovdd taking people's fake IDs and I had no sympathy for them at all, despite the fact that I was only 18-20 when I worked there. I think my philosophy was that if you were underage and you wanted to drink alcohol, you should just get a job at a store that sold alcohol." After graduation, Delahaye joined the mass of Midwest college graduates descending upon New York and searched in vain for a media job, but he found life as an East Coast transplant challenging. "I moved to New York the fall after college, and I hated it," he wrote. "The thing about New York is that if you're not happy with what you're doing, it's the most depressing place in the world, because it's not like some coal min- ing town where everyone is unhappy with what they're doing and you just drink about it. Then again, in New York's defense, I think part of the problem was I just didn't know what I wanted. And I didn't know how to figure out what I wanted and stay in New York, so I left." Delahaye finally found his niche in Inter- net-based writing, and his familiarity with cyberspace led to his job at Videogum, a blog that collects reader-submitted video links and offers commentary on them in a way similar to its sister site, Stereogum, compiles music links. Despite - or perhaps because of - his familiarity with the medium, he disparages the majority of Web-based content. "I got involved by starting a LiveJournal, which is a free blogging service reserved for chil- dren. But that ease of access is great for young people trying to get their writing out there. On the other hand, it is terrible for people actually tryingto read the Internet for pleasure. Because, let's be real: most of it is terrible. 90 percent of the Internet is a nightmare. After that, 9 percent is top-10 lists of kittens wearing casts. And the other 1 percent is actually decent." Despite his slow beginnings, Delahaye doesn'tdissuade otherstarry-eyed kids dream- ing of ripping apart the latest shitty media in a public forum. "I think that getting a job in the entertain- ment industry is difficult, but I think that get- ting a job in any industry is difficult. Except stripping." By SHARON JACOBS Daily Arts Writer "Yeah, they keep sayin''Whale' but my name 'Wa-lay,"' raps Wale on his studio debut, Attention: Deficit. Born Olubowale Victor Akintimehin to Nigerian immi- grant parents, Wale can't be faulted for taking on a Wale simpler stage name, even if Attention: its pronuncia- Deficit tion is less than Allido/ Interscope obvious. And despite the name change, he's certainly not trying to hide his African identity, which shows up throughout Defi- cit, adding color and variety to an already far-reaching endeavor. Deficit opens with the brassy track "Triumph," which channels Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. Produced by Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio, "Triumph" toes the same heavy-yet-uplifting line as some of TVOTR's songs, but it's set apart by its horn-driven instrumentation and delightfully clever rhymes like "Me against you / The movie of the year / Cause you slumdog / And I'm the millionaire." The other Sitek-produced track is "TV in the Radio." Also sax- powered and Afrobeat-inspired, the song features Somali rapper K'naan in a creative tirade against posturing and poseur boasts in rap music. But despite his stylistic influ- ences, Wale isn't an "African rapper." He pumps R&B and mainstream hip hop into his play- ful tunes, and he makes more shout-outs to his hometown of Washington, D.C. than he does to Nigeria. Ultimately, what sets Wale apart from the crowd is not his unique background but his witty lines and relaxed, confident delivery. Refreshingly timely and precise lyrics pop up throughout Deficit, as Wale name-checks everyone and everything from McLovin' to the H1N1 virus. At the end of "Prescription," he jokingly disses The Roots (who featured him in one song on their album "Rising Down") in a series of puns on each member's name. Wale can set an affecting scene, as in "90210," a surprisingly origi- nal story of a bulimic Beverly Hills wannabe. The crisp, con- cise synth background exposes the inner thoughts of a girl whose clean-cut "dream of the fame or a ring on her finger" doesn't mesh with the smoggy, extravagant reality of Los Angeles. Wale's empathetic portrait makes a well- worn subject new. But Wale is equally comfort- able channeling a lighthearted dance vibe, like on "Pretty Girls" ("Ugly girls be quiet (quiet) /Pret- ty girls clap (clap) like this"), or a moody R&B-tinged reflection, like on down-tempo "Contem- plate," which coolly considers an unfaithful girlfriend. It's clear from Attention: Defi- cit that Wale is a romantic. Sev- eral of his songs are stories of women victimized by the world. Others deal with Wale's conflict- ed feelings about women. Even "Shades," a bouncy, poppy-but- personal consideration of race, has him talking about a botched relationship with a white girl by the end of the first verse. He also features as many female as male Hip hop's clever romantic gets his name out. artists, and the album definitely feels more balanced because of it. But Wale doesn't try to tackle anything too serious on Deficit. This is afunalbum atheart,which is most evident on "Chillin," a made-for-the-frats grinder that samples Steam's "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye." Above a thumping, party-hardy beat, Lady Gaga does her best swagger- ing M.I.A. impression between energetic verses. The track finds Wale bragging "I got the right to be cocky / Get so much cut, disc jockeys jock me." Yeah, he has the right to be cocky. Already a star in our nation's capital, Wale shouldn't worry about people pronouncing his name wrong. With his smart and accessible style, soon the name Wale is something we're goingto be hearing all the time. *I switch off the critic's mindset. ROLLING STONE From Page 7A ence Rolling Stone has had on my musical tastes. its constant gushing over Bob Dylan made me check him out for myself before I even knew what "everybody must get stoned" could possibly mean. Later, it made me rethink my high opinion of the whole emo scene. And it's where I first read about Sufjan Stevens. The nostalgia I felt for Rolling Stone kept me reading despite the obvious dip in integrity and rel- evance over the years. I overlooked the extremist, dogmatic, George W. Bush-hating political babble that filled each issue. (I'm no Bush- lover - or even liker, for that mat- ter - but Rolling Stone fostered a hate for this man that went way beyond the normal spectrum of human emotion. If he had been assassinated, the magazine would orobably have orinted a full-color celebration spread complete with detailed death pics and free pack- ets of confetti.) I did become a little more con- cerned when I began to notice the apparent review inflation that Rolling Stone would give to its "pet artists" (U2, Green Day, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, etc.). Still, this egregious pay-per-star review system didn't dissuade me from reading on. What kept me going were those one or two redeeming articles per month that seemed to validate my blind affection for the magazine and the $I9.95 yearly subscription fee. For instance, when the Jonas Brothers first graced the cover in August 2008, I was dismayed and even embarrassed to read the magazine in public (and this came months after those darling ladies from "The Hills" posed dumbly in the same spot). But then, a few issues later, there was a fantastic piece eulogizing the late novelist David Foster Wallace. My faith had been restored by a single article. But the shit kept pilingup. Around the time of the Fos- ter Wallace article, Rolling Stone switched formats from the clas- sic, larger-than-average print size to the more standard-sized, glossy style used by magazines like Maxim and Spin. Now, I wasn't opposed to the magazine's switchover in essence. Actually, I was quite excited for it. But somehow, with the change in format, Rolling Stone's gradual debasement came to a head. A new celebrities-are-just-like- us photo section was added. The biased album reviews became too corrupt to ignore. Every time an artist was interviewed, the maga- zine made sure to ignore the good questions about stuff like song craft - and inspiration and instead focused on exactly what and how many drugs the person has taken (seri- ously, this occurs every time and is almost always uninteresting). They put Lady Gaga on the cover. It all became too much to bear. So I can- celed my subscription and haven't looked back since. What happened, Rolling Stone? You used to be a cultural force that dictated America's musical opinion. Remember how happy Stillwater was to be on your cover in "Almost Famous?" Remember the count- less iconic photographs that sprung from your pages? You lost a bit of clout after a cou- ple decades, sure, but that's natu- ral for an institution that has been around as long as you have. At least you were still a magazine that had a contagious passion for music with enough engaging articles to keep a prepubescent kid interested. But now, Rolling Stone, now you're nothing more than a pan- dering, overstuffed, Us Weekly- ripoff tabloid. I know that many grizzled Lou Reed fans will tell me you haven't been relevant since the '60s and it shouldn't have taken me this long to realize it. And I will say maybe they're right. But you have now devolved into something that even the most casual music fans roll their eyes at. 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