Hey, everyone. Bigthony Lietano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for me to come clean and admit to you that the beautiful, soft, gorgeous, buttery smooth voice that you've enjoyed in many an Argue video, many a review over the years, is in fact a put-on, completely and utterly fake. I have been fabricating my voice now for years.

Here is my actual in person human voice:

:Hey, everybody. It's time for me to talk to you. It might be shocking to hear it done in a voice like this now from here into the rest of the future, but that's how it is."

Okay, I'm sorry. Let's just do the Let's Argue.

"Being punk and unironically listening to Green Day makes you more punk because you don't let the punk community tell you what you should or shouldn't listen to." - 1KonoDioDa

I mean, while yes, it is true that in a sense, it is punk to to be nonconformist, not even conforming to the expectations of the punk scene itself. But honestly, at this point, I'm going to be real right now. I feel like the punk community could use not more gatekeeping, but more attempts at instilling the ethos and the perspective and the point of views that actually line up with punk culture and punk music broadly. Independence, DIY shit, anti-corporate shit, so on and so forth.

That doesn't mean that you can't listen to Green Day. If you really care about these ideals, I feel like, generally speaking, there are bigger fish to fry than whether or not you're listening to Green Day. Instead, let's concentrate more on social shit, political shit, community shit, and let's worry less about whether or not somebody's vibe or esthetic fits into some box.

"I don't care about Snoop Dogg being at the Trump Party." - @jhonimations_studios

I guess I see what you're saying here. I also don't really care about Snoop Dogg being at the Trump Party insofar as we're talking about this one individual guy, this one individual event doing this one individual isolated thing. If there's anything upsetting about Snoop Dog being at the Trump Party, it's more what it's indicative of in terms of this larger trend of corporations and influencers and liberal resistance figures who were so anti-Trump, like back in 2016 or so and for several years after. Now, pretty much at this point, just completely fucking giving in and just being like, 'Well, if you can't beat them, join him.'

I don't know how many of you remember this, but back in the day, Snoop Dogg was going fucking hard at Trump. He was on Trump's neck on social media and with a lot of his commentary. It's just especially weird and disappointing to see him roll over in that way because, dude, I thought you had an issue with this guy. He was easily one of the most verbal and aggressive when it came to Donald Trump.

I just find it annoying. I find it ridiculous. I find it stupid because not only is it just a really hypocritical flip-flop, it further adds to this annoying perspective and narrative that is often pushed on the right. That like, all these people who hate Trump, it's all just personal or it's because there's some weird secret reason that they're doing it, given the right context or situation, they would love him, too, or, 'Oh, they all used to love him until they were told by this or that or whatever to hate him instead.'

And, while for tons and tons and tons of people, including myself, that is not true. Trump is trash. He's a piece of shit. I vehemently disagree with his ideals and the ideals of a lot of his voters and followers. My reasons for doing so have very much to do with my morals and my personal political convictions and the years of study I have put into political science and the like.

But to your average voter that knows fucking nothing about politics, when they see me railing against him, all they see is like, 'Oh, that's a guy who's against Trump. And that Snoop Dogg guy, that's a guy who's against Trump, too.' And maybe in that instance, they're taking Snoop Dogg's opinion on this even more seriously because as a public figure, he's obviously a lot larger than me, and, it says something. It communicates something for Snoop Dogg to essentially flip flop and be like, 'Actually, this Trump guy, is not so bad. Totally cool with the dude. Don't even know what the hell I was on before.' To his psychotic fans, it looks like that the criticisms against Trump are made up and there's no validity to them when in fact there is a lot of validity, tons of validity.

Playboi Carti is a pretty bad person, and I'm glad his fan base is finally noticing." - @EDD1Eprod

I feel like it's only happening now because of two things. One, maturity. Let's be honest, a lot of Playboi Carti's biggest fans got into his music when they were very, very, very young, really living through the edgiest and most nihilistic years of their life because they've barely hit puberty. They have uncontrolled access to the internet, and they feel like they can do and say anything that they want, and they think they know everything. Then once you get a little bit older and have a smidge more experience out there in the world, whoa, actually feelings matter and people matter, and this or that is fucking cringe, conducting yourself like a frigging scumbag.

I feel like also a lot of his fans are upset with him and just not really taking his crap anymore because he's pretty much been depriving his fans of what they want and have been wanting this entire time, new music. Not a feature, not a clip, not a fit pic, an actual goddamn album, but he keeps just not doing it, and he keeps pushing it back.

I think because he understands on some level if he does eventually put out a that disappoints people, the intense demand for him is going to drop. I feel like he's realized that at this point, the less of him there is out there, the better. That means there's more interest in more of him. The moment he really oversaturates that market, his 15 minutes are going to be over.

That is unless he actually comes out with some music that significantly develops or expands upon the sounds that he made it so big with on Die Lit. Also a whole lot of red, too. But I don't know. I feel like there's not really any reason to continue pushing the album back at this point other than for personal reasons of extending his popularity. I think on some level, a lot of his fans are getting hip to that.

"Frank Ocean does not need to drop music. He loves doing it, so if he's not finding joy in it, he's clearly not inspired. People saying that his brother's death could have given him a lot to write about clearly don't know enough about grief." - @mickeytdix8062

Yeah, and honestly, not just about grief, but I feel like if that's the position the point of you fans are really operating under. I feel like it's a gross misunderstanding of the artistic process and the songwriting process that the moment something bad happens to somebody, cold-hearted fans just think to themselves, 'Yeah, just write about the bad thing that happened to you. We would love that.'

There's tons of artists that have horrible things happen to them all the time, but they don't necessarily pull from those things as a source of inspiration for their music. That may not be what their process is, and you can't force a particular process upon a person. I mean, while it's true that art and music has long been a great outlet for a lot of negative experiences in people's lives, it doesn't have to be that, nor should artists be pushed or urged into doing that if the desire to do so does not come naturally.

So regardless of grief, you can't force or just outright expect an artist to write about one of the worst things that's ever happened to them just because you want more music or you want to hear about something that is personal to them.

"Fantano, it's okay to admit R&B is your blind spot. I don't know why every time Grammy season rolls around, you upload reaction videos acting like you listen to R&B." - @LetterNumber

Okay, first off, I don't start my channel by announcing that I'm a single expert in any one genre, R&B or otherwise. But if you're going to call me out for not knowing as much about R&B as you want me to, why in the holy fucking hell would you use Grammy nominations as your barometer for how much I know or don't know or care.

You act like I didn't cover any R&B or R&B-adjacent records in the past year. Erika de Casier, Ravyn Lenae, the new Toro y Moi record, the Kaytranada record, the Tinashe record. I've really been enjoying for the most part her artistic and commercial renaissance as of late. The Tierra Whack album, too. I mean, a lot of these artists aren't necessarily the most mainstream.

I mean, I don't think you're mad at me for not being the biggest fan of Usher and Muni Long and so on and so forth. I mean, it seems like you think that my finger is not on the underground pulse enough. I'll just come out and say here, I'm not a fucking expert in any one single genre to the point where I know everything and I know exactly what's going on at every level. I'm the single most expert in what I like, and that's pretty much it.

Again, I do videos talking about my preferences for who should win whatever Grammy in whatever category, not to show off my expertise or tell you guys how much I know. It's me just like, commenting on a big mainstream music industry event, really the biggest of the year as far as awards are concerned, and it's truly not anything deeper than that.

"Batman would absolutely destroy Iron Man in a 1v1 with equal armament." - @jjjlucky

Well, yeah, I mean, Bruce Wayne is canonically super agile and fit and buff. While obviously, Tony Stark isn't exactly in bad shape himself, he's a guy who is known for enhancing his abilities with his intelligence and tech. Maybe there is a chance that even with equal armament, Tony Stark would outsmart Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne would be so fucking stupid. He would even not use the super special, epic Iron tech, though Bruce Wayne is also a guy who's no stranger to tools and all sorts of gadgets and doodads to help him do his work, his job. I think canonically, Bruce Wayne is supposed to be physically stronger. So, yeah, I don't know if that's a hot take.

"Tom MacDonald doesn't belong on a worse list. All of his songs are practically identical, so there's nothing interesting to say, and it does nothing but give him attention, which is exactly what he wants. I guarantee you the guy would have less stream names and income if people didn't cover him in reviews/worst lists." - @infi-nerdy

I don't know. Honestly, I disagree. The people who stream his music and buy his music and get it up in the iTunes charts and shit like that, those people are genuinely enjoying his shit. They're not just enjoying his stuff because other people hate it or it just triggers the libs.

Sure, there's something funny about that, and there's a reason for his fans and conservatives to talk about that and share in that. But honestly, if you in right-wing social media circles, these freaks don't even need libs to be reacting and be triggered for them to be sitting there being like, 'Yeah, man, these libs sure are triggered right now.' Yeah, the libs don't even need to be triggered in order for them to feed themselves that narrative and just stir a shit pot for themselves just to huff.

I don't think that just because there's not anything interesting to say about it in discussion that necessarily makes it not so bad or not worth shitting on. After all, sometimes a complete lack of anything interesting to say or note is in fact the bad thing about the piece of music. But yeah, I feel like we need to not buy into this narrative that people who are of an ideology or a perspective that find distasteful the politics of Tom MacDonald or Donald Trump or whatever. That we tell ourselves that, 'Oh, yeah. The only reason this person is popular is because he's got haters and people don't like him and people always talk about how much they don't like him."

That completely ignores the fact that there is a massive multibillion-dollar right-wing ecosystem of media influencers and social media platforms. Elon Musk fucking bought Twitter for a reason and turned it into a giant fucking Trump billboard over the course of the election. Like, these are figures and these are platforms that would not just simply disappear if we all stopped hating.

"Pizza is a plant." - @tj9944

For the most part, it's made from plants, dough and flour, plant, Yeast, that's not meat. Little sugar in the dough, sugarcane, that's a plant. Tomato sauce, plant. You could put all sorts of plants and veggies on top. I mean, cheese is not a plant. That's true. Pizza can be pretty plant-based if you make it a certain way. So yeah.

You guys are the best.

Anthony Fantano. Let's Argue. Forever.