How to ACTUALLY Become a Critic's Darling

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This has been a big request from you all. I’m calling it the “well-reviewed album route”. The kind of artist who builds a career off critical acclaim and strong press. Some of the names people asked about were RAYE and Dijon, especially after I showed you all Dijon’s incredible full-length video for his album Absolutely. But this applies to anyone in that critic’s darling lane. Think Yves Tumor, FKA Twigs, Tierra Whack, Teezo Touchdown, or The Last Dinner Party.

So let’s talk about how they do this.

Hang Out With Them

The first thing is obviously to get really good press from review-type people. Now, a lot of you are probably like “That’s great, Jesse, that's reeaalll helpful…” But I'm going to tell you how some of that sausage is made.

Let me say this upfront, not as a flex, just for credibility: I spend time with a lot of these people. I produced (editor note: there was a misprint here previously identifying me as a co host) wwo of the best music writers working today. We’ve had so many excellent critics: Jeff Ihaza, Angie Martoccio, Brian Hiatt, Suzy Exposito, and an incredible range of voices.

I’ve known a lot of these people for years. I hang out with them. I get drinks with them. I go to shows with them. This isn’t to name-drop, it’s just the truth. I live in Brooklyn, I spend time in music circles, and I meet people.

And that’s the point. If you move to a major city like New York or LA and go to the right shows, it’s really not that hard to meet music journalists. And that often makes a difference. I’ve said this before, and I’ll keep saying it: it’s wild how often a band becomes a critic’s favorite simply because they hang out with critics.

These critics are often dorks and are very excited that a cool artist wants to hang out with them and talk to them, who has personality. And yeah, in all reality, it's one of the easiest hacks in the world

Where Critics Hang Out: Brooklyn

So there’s a cluster of neighborhoods in North Brooklyn: Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Bedford-Stuyvesant — that together cover roughly a 10-mile stretch. Each of these areas is about a mile or two across, and this is the zone where nearly every influential person in music criticism spends their time.

Most of the city’s independent venues have been pushed into industrial pockets of these neighborhoods, where there are fewer residential complaints, old warehouses, and factory zones. But the tastemakers, journalists, and artists still hang out in the nearby bars, galleries, and cafes, especially around subway stops.

That makes this area a high-impact target for grassroots visibility. If you’re putting up striking wheatpaste posters or stickers in these neighborhoods, especially near subway entrances, at the cool bars. If you are doing that, you are infiltrating nearly every influential person whose job it is to discover new music, especially if you have a striking image. And if you expand just a little into surrounding areas like Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Crown Heights, and down toward Gowanus and Park Slope, you’re effectively covering about 20 miles.

Where Critics Hang Out: Los Angeles

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