by Dustin
Hey, hello. It’s been quite a while since Rajin or I have put together any semblance of writing for this website. To be exact, our last published article was all the way back in February of this year. Eight whole months have flown by in the meantime, and it’s been quite an adventure to say the least; however, it would also be inaccurate of me to blame our hiatus on life. To put it bluntly, I think we’ve both been extremely burnt out on the whole process of running the blog. While interacting with artists and shining light on their music never grew stale, maintaining relationships with readers and other writers quickly became as insufferable as humanly imaginable. Quite honestly, I think this particular set of annoyances needs to be aired out for a couple of reasons. Primarily because it irritates me and I feel like complaining, but additionally for the sake of anybody else thinking about starting a blog, podcast, or anything similar as a precautionary tale of some of the trash you’ll deal with.
It gets old.
I will say that although it’s easiest to point fingers at emotionally charged readers (which we’ll get to a little later), dealing with other bloggers and writers can be an experience akin to pulling teeth with no anesthetic. It’s not terribly uncommon to get approached by other bloggers interested in hosting you on their site for a review of a particular album. In concept, it’s pretty cool, music blogs aren’t as prominent as they once were and I do believe that we should support each other. In reality though, it doesn’t seem to work that way at all. For example, I spent a lot of time working on a review for another website only to be told I needed to make it “more positive,” even though that wouldn’t have been genuine to my thoughts. I refused to make the changes, and took my article here to release it on my own. The same guy proceeds to spend the next while alternating between asking me to collaborate “again”, and tagging us alongside every artist under the sun in Instagram and Twitter replies. Having never been involved with his shit in any way, being roped into the attention baiting was incredibly irritating. While I’m sure he had good intentions at heart, that’s not what we’re about and it’s just something none of us were okay with in practice. Mixing bigger problems like this with the standard group of people who want you to write their content for them rather than contribute your own style just absolutely killed the beauty that could be collaborative writing.
Shout out to MJC of FilthyBroke for following through hosting an article of mine at his blog when he was dabbling with it, though, you’ve always been an absolute pleasure to work with. Thanks for letting me be me.
Now, to the readers: I love most all of you from the bottom of my heart. If you’ve ever taken an interest in anything on this site, sent an email suggestion, contacted me on twitter, or any of that, then thank you. Aside from the artists, you make putting time and energy into this so very rewarding; however, a smaller but louder minority have some of the most volatile misplaced anger and musical insecurity, and I really think they need to check how they conduct themselves. Nobody should be sending death threats, defamation of character, slurs, or telling somebody to kill themselves over music discussions. It’s stupid to the point that it becomes more than a routine annoyance than anything serious, but it’s a huge drag. We’re chatting about hip-hop because we adore the genre and want to be able to share it with others in a fleshed out way. Even negative reviews and articles are written because one of us took enough interest in it to want to spend that time talking about it. It’s not an assault on individual taste, and nobody is trying to dictate what you can enjoy listening to. If having someone else validate your personal taste is important in your eyes, I would recommend you shop around until you find a publication that leans your way. It’s that simple, stop wasting your time harassing people on websites that are likely never going to make you happy. It isn’t going to change their content, and your opinions aren’t going to change their mind. What are you accomplishing, really?
I don’t have much else to say, so I’m going to cut myself off here. If you think you recognized your own behavior in this article, maybe reflect on it a bit. The people you’re talking to behind the monitor are people too. None of this is really that critical, but at the end of the day, paying a little more attention to conduct both as a blogger and as a reader can go a long way. Rajin, myself, and everyone here sat on the sidelines for quite a while trying to figure out how to proceed, and we’ve decided to keep it alive. At the same time, it’s going to be zero tolerance from this point onward for most of the nonsense discussed here. I really don’t have the energy for it anymore.
On a more positive note to end things: thank you for your patience, and we’re happy to be back.
Much love.
Extraordinary Nobodies 