YMMV / Rodriguez

• Anvilicious: Rodriguez' lyrics are not subtle about the Crapsack World around him. Then again, this is 1960s Detroit we're talking about.
• Critical Dissonance: Inverted; critics always loved Rodriguez despite his lack of success. They still do.
• Cult Classic: Both of his albums.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: "Sugar Man" should sound weary and disillusioned, but the thick, spacey production just makes it psychedelic awesome. Hell, the Yolanda Be Cool & DCUP remix brings this trope to a whole new generation.
• Epic Riff: The killer bassline from “I Wonder,” which doubles as an ear worm. As seen in the documentary, his big comeback concert in South Africa opened with this song.
• Fair for Its Day: "A Most Disgusting Song" discusses how Rodriguez has played "every kind of bar there is to play" including "faggot bars." Of course, that wasn't as much of a slur at the beginning of the 70s as it is now.
• First Installment Wins: Cold Fact generally seems to be viewed as slightly better than Coming from Reality, though they're both well-respected (Coming from Reality is considered a little less gritty and more introspective than the debut).
• Harsher in Hindsight: As pointed out in Searching for Sugar Man, the last song on Coming from Reality, "Cause", opens with the line "'Cause I lost my job two weeks before Christmas". Shortly after the release his label dropped him, and it happened to be in mid-December.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In this case, South Africans Love Rodriguez. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more impressive instance of this happening to anyone else.
• Posthumous Popularity Potential: And that's before they found out he was alive.
• Signature Song: “Sugar Man” or "I Wonder."
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Establishment Blues" is a tip of the musical hat to Bob Dylan's "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)".
• Tear Jerker:
  • The utterly dejected Break Up Song, "I’ll Slip Away."
  • "Cause." Dear God, this one is bleak. It's more or less a poem set to music, a poem about paying your dues in life and never seeing anything in return. It gets even darker subtext considering it's the last song on Coming From Reality, the last song Rodriguez ever recorded, and thus ending the initial phase of his career in failure. Talk about Downer Ending!
• Values Resonance: The reason he struck it big in South Africa. The societal turmoil and apathetic leadership in Detroit during The '60s that Rodriguez commented on in his music were similar to what was happening during apartheid.
• Vindicated by History: A shining example. His music lingered for decades in obscurity until his fame in other countries finally reached the Western world. Having an award-winning documentary about him certainly helped a lot.

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