Short Stack bassist Andy Clemmensen has been accused of plagiarism in a ‘review’ he ‘wrote’ for music Channel V’s website of Kanye West’s new album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It appears he was originally called out by critic Craig Mathieson on Australian music website Mess+Noise yesterday, who found a curious similarity between a portion of a review he did of the album in Fairfax Newspapers and Clemmensen’s ‘review’.
The offending sentences?
“eclectic but never offhand; it’s hip-hop where every deviation serves the song’s texture, every boast contrasts with slyly lacerating self-appraisal.”
Craig Mathieson’s Review
“It’s eclectic but never off-hand. It’s hip-hop where every deviation serves the song’s texture, every boast contrasts with slyly lacerating self-appraisal”
Andy Clemmensen’s Review
The review was quickly pulled, but it still exists in Google cache. Over the course of the day, internet sleuths with mad googling skillz were able to find portions of the review apparently cribbed from major music websites such as Pitchfork, Brilliantly Blunt and Music OMH with few if any changes made. So this begs the question – did Andy go to all this effort to compose a review? Or is there an intern at his record company who is currently being soundly spanked with a slipper?
Update 2pm: The scandal has progressed further, with Andy Clemmenson from Short Stack confessing he didn’t write the review of Kanye West’s latest album and rather a ‘friend’ apparently plagiarised it.
His Facebook post says: “apologies to any reviewers not quoted. arriving home late from a month long promo tour and having the Kanye album review due the next day, I was exhausted, so i foolishly got my friend to do it for me. was unaware that it was plagirised [sic] but I accept full responsibility and would once again like to apologize to the journalists I have offended.”
See the apology in full here, and beware, some of the comments are truly scary.
http://www.facebook.com/mrandyclemmensen/posts/167938983242849
