Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Jay-Z (band)
Jay-Z [edit source]
Yo, if you don't give it a good review, my homeboy, Jay-Z, is gonna solicit gay sex. HODIS 17:52, October 5, 2010 (UTC)Hodis
| Humour: | 5 | Ok, while this article isn't bad, it does suffer from a few common trappings that most articles by new users do. Considering you are a relatively new user, this is perfectly acceptable and even to be expected in most cases, so don't go and kill yourself over it. Welcome to the site by the way, I know you'll love it.
So like I said, the style of humour employed here is a little tired now, and a lot of the jokes you go for are a bit cliched. Opening quotes are a good example of this. Most of the userbase have varying issues with these, but personally I just don't really see how they add anything to an article. They're not an encyclopaedic quality that we're satirising, they're a bit of an anomaly in that sense. Opening quotes from the likes of Captain Understatement and Oscar Wilde are especially despised around here too, so I wouldn't bother with anything like that if I were you. Another issue I have with them is that they're rarely funny. It's a fairly cheap way of telling a joke; skipping all the context and build-up and just reducing it to the punchline. Usually, I suggest users try to re-work their quotes into prose-based jokes in the text, which you can certainly try, I think with these ones however you'd be better off just getting rid of them. They don't really have anything to do with Jay-Z now do they? This leads me to another issue; random humour is bad. We have a guide called How to be funny and not just stupid, which I definitely recommend you read (it can probably give you much better advice than any pee reviewer). Generally speaking, it advises that making up random shit (that the Illuminati is butt-fucking Jay-Z, for instance) is very difficult to make funny, and that you're much better off just going for the satirical approach (Jay-Z married Beyonce in the hopes of butt-fucking her, to give you an example, but she still won't let him - not a hilarious joke I know but I just wanted to give you an idea of something more based in reality). You need to have a think about what is actually funny about Jay-Z; real things that you can make fun of, whether he's the target, or his fans, or his music or something else - so long as it makes sense and is believeable - then write about that. That will be much funnier than any made up nonsense you can think of. Other popular noobish pitfalls to avoid: "Jay-Z may, in fact, be a figment of all of our imaginations" - not possible I'm afraid. Also this one seems to crop up a lot in noob/unregistered user articles. Another is the unclear origins thing - that's just another cheap way of skimming over large portions of his life. Sadly it's not that funny. It might be a lot more hard work to dissect his childhood and find humour there, but it will be worth it if you can. If there really isn't anything there, just start from the earliest funny thing you can think of. This isn't Wikipedia after all, no one's going to care if you skip important events because there's nothing funny about them. The "made up discography" is another common trait of articles about musicians, the problem is they are also very difficult to get right (although I always had a soft spot for the Beach Boys one). Again on the notion of skimming, you know what would be much better than a list of made up album names? A long piece of humorous prose about each album with background, production and reception information, very much like this article about the best singer ever and my future wife. |
| Concept: | 4 | There were another few issues here, in my opinion. The first and most obvious being, why is this entitled 'Jay-Z (band)'? It's not about a band called Jay-Z, it's about a man called Jay-Z. I would definitely recommend you fix this. Simply copy and paste this page into the page entitled Jay-Z (since that page is just a redirect to here anyway) then get the Jay-Z (band) page posted to QVFD and a nice admin will delete it for you. If you don't understand any of that, come find me and I'll do it for you.
The main thing you need to work on conceptually is your characterisation of Z. The only thing you've really got in here at the moment is jokes about how shit his music is and that he's gay. That's not exactly the pinaccle of humour, I hope you understand. It's all a bit juvenile and easy. You can call anyone shit and gay, it doesn't matter that it's Jay-Z. Try to think of something specific to him you can make fun of. Best thing to do with biographical articles is probably to satirise the celebrity's public persona (whether or not they're like this in real life in unimportant, it's how the public perceive them). Other articles that take this approach include Chris Rock which plays on - and mocks - his obsession with being African-American, and Keanu Reeves which exagerrates his unintelligence and spaced-out nature for comic effect. Have a read of those articles and try to think of how you could do something like this for Jay-Z. Of course, don't feel restricted to that, we have tons of biographical articles that take more imaginitive approaches (see Rod Serling, Anderson Cooper for example). Just be truthful, it's easier, it's usually funnier. Or if you do want to lie, just be consistent and clever about it. If you're going to write from the perspective of Jay Z being a band, for instance, keep that the running gag throughout the article (although I can't really see much humour in that idea, to be honest). |
| Prose and formatting: | 6 | Ok, your spelling, grammar and prose are ok, not great, but I can tell you know enough to write in a professional style. I think the main problem is that you haven't proofread it properly. You should give it a really careful going over, just to make sure you've got all the errors. It's always important to proofread; even writers who can spell every word in existence and know everything there is to know about grammar still make typpos. If you can't be bothered or are ready to admit proofreading is not a skill you possess, you can always try to get someone else to do it for you. You can also try posting it into a spellchecker (although I tend not to put too much trust in them), or reading it out loud to get a better idea of how it flows. My main advice here having read your article is just be careful where you're putting full stops/periods. They should come after brackets, not before or inside, and you only need capital letters after a full stop/period, not a comma. |
| Images: | 4 | Well, the first image is fine, although I'm not really sure what's supposed to be funny about it. The second one isn't so good, in fact I couldn't actually figure out a reason for it being there. It's someone dressed up as a camel, right? What does that have to do with Jay-Z? I recommend in this instance you search Google Images for as many pictures of Jay-Z as you can. If they're in some way funny, then great. But if they're not, spend a while thinking about what you could say about them in the caption that would satirise Jay-Z. Then put your funniest ones into the article, so it's illustrated all the way through rather than just in a couple of random sections. |
| Miscellaneous: | 4.5 | My gut feeling. |
| Final Score: | 23.5 | So for my final comments I'd just like to say good effort, and I hope you stick around, whether it be shaping up this article or applying the things I've hopefully taught you to writing something new and amazing. Experience is really the best teacher on this site, no one starts off writing featureable stuff, so don't worry if you're not totally happy with this. Also, I'm sorry if I seem at all harsh in this review, I tend not to talk about the good stuff as I spend so long on all the bad. As far as noob articles go, this isn't really anything to be ashamed of. I've seen much worse. In fact I've seen worse from users who've been here years. So please have a go fixing up the things I talk about, and definitely take a look at our best of and HTBFANJS for more ideas on the kind of thing that passes for humour around here. If there's anything I've said here that you want me to explain better, or if you want my opinion on anything I might have missed, please let me know and I'll try to help. I hope the review is ok. |
| Reviewer: | --Black Flamingo 10:29, October 24, 2010 (UTC) | |