A Village Voice blog recently published “How Not to Write About Female Musicians: A Handy Guide“. Using some recent, unfortunate examples of misogynistic so-called critical writing about female musicians, they listed four questions any writer should ask themselves prior to submitting a piece on female musicians. They were as follows:

1. Go through your piece and flip the gender of your descriptive phrases’ subjects. Are there any that sound ludicrous as a result?
2. Are you essentially making shit up about the artist in order to sexualise her?
3. Are you comparing the artist you’re writing about to other female artists only? If so, why?
4. Are you writing about a moment where your subject flirts with you and you respond in kind?

Looking for an article discussing female emcees to try these questions out on, I came across a Complex profile on Iggy Azalea, an up-and-coming underground (what is underground in the Youtube era? Another question for another time.) female emcee. It failed fairly quickly.

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The first week of February was welcome to one of the best boom-bap downloads we’ve heard in a long while. “Beauty Joints”, by MOEdavey and featuring Melodious Mike, focused on different descriptions and meanings behind the word beauty – it also had great production. So we caught up with the producer half of that release, another British artist, MOEdavey and allowed him to introduce himself by asking him those important six questions.

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We’ve just got a few more guestlists to round up our Best of 2011 coverage this week. First off, the guy who released our favourite download of 2011, Milo.

To preface, I’m hardly a worthwhile musician. More of a clumsy dabbler or something of that sort. I don’t listen to much in the way of new releases for whatever reason, so what I do listen to tends to be very calculated. Therefore my list will consist mostly of things you probably could have predicted.

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An interesting phenomena I’ve noticed when Odd Future, their music and its popularity are being discussed is the comparison drawn between them and the Gravediggaz. Comparisons between contemporary and past musicians is neither new or unique. When attempting to digest a newly popular form of music the listener will attempt to liken it to something familiar to help them understand and categorize it. What is notable about the Odd Future-Gravediggaz parallel is that it is typically used pejoratively by fans of the Gravediggaz, waving off the popularity of Odd Future by linking it stylistically to a group they enjoy. Writing off a current trend by tracing back its stylistic origins to a group considered pioneers of said sub-genre is a non-argument at best, at worst it betrays an ignorance of the very group of which they are purported fans.

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About a week ago we made a rare post that featured a UK artist. It’s something that we need to fix considering most of us are from the UK and that’s why we got in touch with Jae Fresh. Unlike the bulk of UK artists that call themselves rappers, this one isn’t a grime artist, opting for laidback jazz-laden beats rather than overly bassy sounding synths. So we decided he should be allowed to introduce himself by asking him six specific questions.

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We finally got around to finalising our list of our favourite albums of the last year. There are too many honourable mentions to go through, but the quality of the music over the last 12 months is clear in this very list. Let’s hope it continues throughout the next 12 months. For now though, here’s our top 10 albums of 2011.

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We kick off our final week of Best of 2011 coverage with our Top 10 Free Downloads of the Year.

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For our next guest list we asked the author of our new column Letters From The Front, Kwes, to tell us his favourite five tracks of the last year.

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For the first time we’re going to allow our favourite artists have a say on their favourite artists. So before we finish up with our album of the year list, let’s hear what others thought of the past 12 months in music. First off, Ugly Duckling’s Andy Cooper.

Who could forget 2011? A year filled with, um, well, there was that one time when, uh…darn, I don’t remember anything. after 365 days, it can all become a blur but, somehow, I do recall some really good music so as I groove my way into 2012, I would like to submit my favorite albums of 2011 in no particular order…

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Before we move onto our albums and free downloadable of the year (along with a few guestlists), we’ve got the little matter of our top 10 tracks of 2011.

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