CocoRosie member goes to "Kill Whitey" Ironic dance parties and gets called out by brainwashed.com as racist

CocoRosie made Uncut magazine's list of top 50 albums for the year.

From the Jonathan Dean, Brainwashed piece:

"While reading the article, I came across this particularly heinous quote from a typical, post-ironic urban hipster trust-fund baby:

'[Bianca] Casady was raised in Santa Barbara, Calif., but quickly notes her worldliness by listing the cities where she has lived along the trail to Brooklyn. A regular Kill Whitie partygoer, she tried the conventional (that is, non-hipster) hip-hop clubs but found the men "really hard-core." In this vastly whiter scene, Casady said that "it's a safe environment to be freaky."'

Who do you think that could be making such horrifyingly non-worldly, ignorant and racist generalizations about black men? Surprise! It's none other than Bianca Casady, one-half of sister duo CocoRosie, whose debut album won them high praise from Pitchforkmedia and The Wire, and whose recent album, Noah's Ark, was called "hypnotic" and "angelic-sounding" by Allmusic.com. My recent review for Brainwashed noted that the album sounded like "a collection of willful, calculated eccentricities clumsily juxtaposed with each other."

One of the CocoRosie girls goes to a racially insensitive party!!!!! Scandal!!!!! I can't wait for the somethingawful.com take on this!!! whats the blogosphere have to say?

Get your ass the schwippy the fwap out of here.

They give a lot more leeway to the likes of DIJ and Boyd Rice. But then they're 'serious' industrial artistes dealing with the themes the straight world finds shocking. And big tough guys.

what a shitty article, also obvs this guy as an axe to grind with the Coco girls, check the link to a previous Coco hate screed (this time about how they rip off Dresden Dolls). I can just picture this guy in his unlit basement apartment pacing around coming up with this stuff

Now I don't even like CocoRosie, but finding a regular hip-hop club intimidating (I'm presuming it has more to do with sexism than race btw, although it's hardly spelt out as such) but not finding a hipster equivalent the same = non shocker.

You could make the same assumption about Jamaican Dancehall vs. a Hollertronix party and still be TOTALLY missing the point.

Ellen Allien's said in interviews that she used to go to hip-hop clubs before getting into techno because (aside from digging the music) she didn't get strangers grabbing her behind at them. So, does that make her a racist when she's hanging out with Mad Mike and releasing Kero 12"s on her label?

This is totally more of a sex/class/musical culture issue than outright racism (although it's certainly a factor, but not the whole story).

This sounds like the worst thing

THe thread title is very vague, so newbies to this whole story are not to be blamed for missing it the first time, or not finding it via search..

but please read this, before fortifying another major deja vu thread.

I see that as a bit different. I haven't heard the song, but I don't know what context the word is in. To outright say any white artist who uses the n word is racist is a bit off.

The Brainwashed article is clearly writen by someone who was waiting for CocoRosie to slip up so he could say "SEE, I GAVE THEM A BAD REVIEW WHEN THE ALBUM CAME OUT! LOOKS LIKE BAD PEOPLE MAKE BAD MUSIC AND I WIN ON ALL COUNTS!"

He also brings up HUGE topics and barely deals with them. Don't bring up something like post modernism being the death knell of culture and only mention that you heard it from some neo-Marxist.

And yes, the "dumb rich white girl doesn't really get it" angle was downright offensive in its own way.

I'm presuming it has more to do with sexism than race btw...

http://www.rarebeatles.com/sheetmu/solo/ssmjnigg.jpg

i am sure every city in america has a party like this. the one i used to go to was called "booty bassment". the only difference aside from the name was that they didn't hand out a discount for bringing a fucking bucket of fried chicken (tasteless!) and the DJs didn't act and talk like total asses.

curmudgeon high on crack on the subject of whether brainwashed liking or not liking hiphop has fuck-all to do with anything

Banana Nutrament (straightup@gmail.com), November 6th, 2005.

That's not what I said, Banana.

Wait, is that true?! I've never been the clubbing type (I don't think I've been to a dance club in the last 11 of my 29 years), so forgive me if I seem like a complete naif for being shocked at this. But I am. Men pull their dicks out on the dancefloor? Routinely?

I've been missing out! (kidding). That's fucking awful.

Also yes, there is something so gigantically stupid and bizarre about saying the hipsters at Williamsburg parties are going to become "captains of industry." They're in their late twenties -- if they were ever going to do something beyond live in crappy lofts and play in bands, chances are they'd have gotten started on it by now. The bulk of them will get office jobs like everyone else, and the rest will wind up making cabinets or repairing amplifiers or running record stores or becoming publicisists.

shh nabisco you'll get in the way of the incipient class rage, how we gonna have a revolution without the class rage

E.g. I don't think it's coincidence that constant anti-hipster sneering (usually Williamsburg-related) coincided with the explosion of internet culture-talk: suddenly you can have bloggers with no significant experience of a particular hipster spot or place or scene who can look at the pictures and read about it in record reviews and develop some bizarro fantasy of a whole neighborhood of trust-fund racists with Flock of Seagulls haircuts doing coke all night and feeling superior to everyone. All shit that might, in some extreme instances, kinda vaguely trend toward certain realities, but it's still totally bizarre. Weirdest of all: the way "Williamsburg" become shorthand for NYC hipsters has created this class of people elsewhere who actually think it's a full-neighborhood hipster-trash party, despite the reality that Williamsburg looks and feels not that incredibly different from any "hip" younger neighborhood, anywhere, from San Francisco to Chicago to Philadelphia. That "captains of industry" line in particular is just kinda like ... well, this person's understanding of what he/she is talking about is massively divorced from reality.

How dare you say that about Costa Mesa.

I knew I'd be on the cutting edge of hip one day.

(And umm eBay, I'm not sure whether that's just a joke or whether you think you're making some kind of point; what I'm pointing out is that CocoRosie-as-band is actually about 50% black, and that they seem to think of their music as existing partly within a modern black-music idiom, and that their relationship with the notion of black culture is visibly way more complicated than any of these "I noticed her quoted in WaPo" articles bother examining.)

I mean, God, I can't fathom how young white people seem to think they're doing anyone any favors by saying they're so "awkard and square" but black people are cool -- all they're doing is switching the same old racist assumptions into some jacked-up compliment. (As if that hasn't been done before: "Black people have rhythm! And soul! Maybe they can come in through the back entrance and tap-dance for us!") All they're doing is reducing the whole notion of blackness to some rap-video caricature, one that still slots black people into a position of powerlessness (Ludacris can be "cool," but are you gonna elect him governor?) -- and, even worse, marginalizes and ignores millions and millions of everday "uncool" non-stereotype-fitting black people.

but also guys, it's "kill whitIE" --

Yes indeed.

as someone who likes cocorosie's music (am i the only one on this thread?) i enjoy the fact that they engage race at all. my reading of them is that they are not racist, and that most/all of the racial content in their music comes from fascinations with certain eras/ideas (of [re]appropriation). i feel that there is no harm in that, and that there's actually a fair amount of good in it, being that it has managed to provoke this kind of dialog. whether or not she goes to these kill whitey parties is kind of a moot point. every couple of years i might want to hear zztop at a bar or something, does that mean in order to be socially conscious that i should go to a biker bar and hear it in its native clime? or is it ok for me to go down to the hipster bar's cock rock night? i don't think there's anything wrong with feeling more comfortable among one's own peer group. i'm not advocating some kind of policy for social segregation/insularity, but i don't want to go to a biker bar. y'know?

(Ludacris can be "cool," but are you gonna elect him governor?)

well, he hates bill o'reilly -- that's a pretty good start!

AND HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

I am absolutely the last person that would ever argue that we live in a race-less, culture-less world; I've spent ages on other threads arguing exactly the opposite. But it's ridiculous and annoying for anyone to perceive black culture as being primarily about booty-bass, fried chicken, spilled 40s, and whatever else our culture gets from a steady diet of mostly engaging with blackness in the form of rap videos (and not, say, gospel videos). And for the record, apart from just-funny-on-their-own guys like Chapelle or Eugene Levy, I'm not a big fan of "white guy drives like this, black guy drives like this" humor, no matter who it's coming from; mostly it's just tacky and banal, but it also has some of these much-deeper problems up inside it.

And I don't get your last point: you seem to be implying that these people love hip-hop but are just embarrassed to admit it? Why the hell would that be anything other than kinda-stupid? (And for the record, while I'm sure the people at KW parties like hip-hop as much as anyone else, the point of these things isn't exactly earnest appreciation of the music -- it's about a racial-caricature dress-up, which I'm sure is innocently fun in a Halloweeny kinda way, but problematic nevertheless.)

i think it's interesting that a lot of the people who are attracted to the KW parties are gonna have arts degrees and read Fanon while listening to the Shins or whatever... and that they don't realise the problems the discourse of race that they are engaging with. no matter how "ironically" it's treated, these are real distortions - and you'd think they'd pick up on it.

What's funny to me, "whatever," is that the paranoia and neurosis being dealt with here comes largely from the white side of the issue: it's not as if black people, by and large, are gonna have some massive problem with a white person who sincerely tries to get involved in this music! It seems more like white people are just scared over the idea of having to enter a black context, and to have their whiteness suddenly be an issue -- to have it suddenly make them stand out, to be "out of place" in the game of racial expectations, and for there to be the chance that they'll be negatively singled out for it. But hey, congratulations, white people: welcome to being black in America!

Yeah, welcome to being "the black guy" at your office, or a black student at an Ivy League college. And this, right here, is the nasty undercurrent kinda tainting the flipside of what you're saying up above. If these problems of "appropriation" attach to everything, and not just hip-hop, isn't the implication that it's wrong and strange for a black woman to learn classical cello? Isn't the implication that Condoleezza Rice is play-acting a "whiteness" she doesn't belong in? Isn't the implication that white people "belong" in the dominant culture, and black people "belong" strictly in some booty-packed video, and not in the dominant culture around them? You're working on the assumption that the dominant culture of board room and governorships is common and open to everyone -- that there is no culture of whiteness -- and that the only issue is crossing into a culture of "blackness." But as soon as you construct this culture of "blackness," you're acknowledging something outside of it, and in the process doing something unfortunate -- unless you imagine a president who says "what up, g."

http://www.watergate.com/image/liddy3.jpg

x-post

And oh what a pity the world's not white
Oh what a shame i don't have blue eyes
God must have been a color blind
If i made the world it would be all white...

Jesus loves me
But not my wife
Not my nigger friends
Or their nigger lives
But jesus loves me
That's for sure
'Cause the bible tells me so ...

Ask Charley Pride.

>I mean I feel like a lot of hip-hop, certainly not all of it, but probably most of it deals with inner-city life. Can you really ever claim to appreciate it on the same level of people living in the inner-city if you grew up in the suburbs?

What about rappers from the suburbs like De La Soul, Public Enemy and Ice Cube?

nitsuh do you actually know anyone who listens to rap music?

(I was actually wanting to add on the way to work something kinda about that -- about how even among hip-hop's black audience, I'd venture that like less than 5% are actually living the lives described in some of the music, and less than 25% are even much brushing up on it. What's weird, though, is that the bulk of the hip-hop white people know is primarily about partying and women and making money, an experience that's in no way limited to blackness or the "inner city." White people get hot in here and take off all their clothes, too.)

-- nabisco (--...), November 7th, 2005.

TMI dude

Cocorosie violates a sort of corollary, like "don't be retarded unless it works." White girls dropping the n-bomb isn't always a bad thing but the way they do it is soooo clunky it really kills the song which is actually a fairly good song. (More here if you care.)

I mean nobody's calling Kanye a wigger or accusing him of "acting black"! That's kinda my point here, that neurotic-about-hip-hop white people make it this huge connection about race, even when they know (check whatever's posts) that it's about a cultural experience or whatever (as described by "real"). And for the record I find it just as annoying when black people construct the same linked notions of "real" and "blackness," cause it does the same vaguely dangerous stuff.

100% right, Ethan, except I think the difference that's messing with people is that if you're like a black kid in Indiana listening to hip-hop you still have some kind of imaginary "in" to identify with the stuff that white people somehow build themselves up into lacking. And in both cases that's just weirdo race-linking stuff, more or less.

Meanwhile, three posts in this thread have used the word "retarded" with far less artistic motive.

Alternatively, they'll take the hint, become even more hipsterishly abrasive and sell lots of records to the skull-attired coke-snorting nihilists who think that giving a fuck about issues is gay.

Wow, whatever - your life story could be mine.

Except for the whole 'getting a job and not being discriminated for my ethnicity' part.

But I really, truly identify, man.

was it like how it's described in the article?

its kinda like that ny times article a few years ago about the trucker hat, where the nytimes lady interviewed some drunk hipster at the pussycat lounge and he told her that there's a code to the trucker hat. if you wear it cocked to the left, youre from the east village. to the right, williamsburg. up and left, means youre a gay man from chelsea. down and right means west village, etc. then they printed that in the ny times sunday style section and we all had an enormous laugh.

anyways, the party is pretty fun. jeremy (mr. pumpsta) is kinda insane though.

youre joking, right?

and why is this getting more attention when you can go to ANY club in america and you'll find white people grinding or doing the toosie roll or whatever?

there honestly isn't anything different about this party than most any other party ive ever been to.

i never saw a bucket of fried chicken either.

also, i do not have a trust fund.

phil-two, i kinda maybe believe you that this wasn't as bad as portrayed in the article, but i dunno there's some problematic stuff going on there that's not just our imaginations, i'd bet.

or like that time in the 1990's when NYT ask sub pop employees about grungespeak.

Racism isn't just the province of Klansmen and white-supremacists.

also, i had a party that was ironically ny-hipster circa 2002. nobody else got it tho and they all asked me to change out the electroclash for other music. :-(

probably not any more or less awkward than any other party where most people are white, and a group of five black folks from any particular social/class demographic just wandered in.

Also, it isn't non-white's job to teach us about this stuff, just like it isn't women's job to teach men about sexism. Asking people to "teach" or enlighten you is IMO putting them into the same "other with specialized knowledge" position that got us into this mess. Also note that this is different than just listening to what people have to say, or going out and reading, say a book on white privilege and asking folks for their take on what you've learned.

It's early for me and my brain is slow, but try some of Bell Hooks' stuff for starters. I hope I made a little sense, a lot of the white responses I've read here make me sad and frustrated.

OTM, but since I usually only talk about crap on the Internet all day, that's basically how I deal with EVERYTHING, not just race. haha

I don't choose to 'muck in and deal with it' because arguing on ILM is futile to me. Not because I'm trying to put myself above the whole arguement, but because often you guys' opinions are so far from my reality that it would be pointless to engage with you on this whole Cocoracist issue. I just cut out the middle man and agree that we disagree. It saves time and a helluva lot of frustration.

characturing?

Kill Michael Whitey?

Take a number. Get in line.

they're half-Cherokee, aren't they?

just to respond to this, it seems like whenver a white person wants to claim some ethnicity, their grandmother or great grandmother was conveniently a Cherokee princess. So unless they have certificates issued by the BIA, or are tribal members, I'd ignore it.

or course, they might and I could be wrong

Have CocoRosie succeeded in becoming twin Sandra Bernhardts yet?

/morbz

What a painful thread. I hate needless provocation.

ha

I have learned that I guess you shouldn't tell someone Coco Rosie is racist at a Halloween party because apparently you will make them cry very hard.

i love nabisco on this thread! i want to make print outs and hand them to ppl

Seconded. Super grate nabiscos up above. Except when I lived in NY, 5th and Bedford really did give me the hives.

With any luck, CocoRosie's album will tank as ethically-savvy music fans refuse to buy it and educate their friends; "Cool" record shops will refuse to stock or sell their records, and tell their customers why. After disappointing sales, their label will dump them and they'll be exiled as pariahs, with as much chance of selling records as Gary Glitter. Then anybody else who thinks it's "cool" to be ironically racist will have the burnt-out wreckage of CocoRosie's career and credibility to behold as proof otherwise.

Alternatively, they'll take the hint, become even more hipsterishly abrasive and sell lots of records to the skull-attired coke-snorting nihilists who think that giving a fuck about issues is gay.

― acb (acb), Friday, November 11, 2005 8:54 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Heady times, man

Grey Oceans by CocoRosie shows us a sliver of a secret ocean of high waves we wish to be part of in our dreams. CocoRosie is the shower we need now in the musical desert. - Yoko Ono

They seemed to deal with race as just that, an issue. not like fake Ivy League Afropop ri- off assholes who are, as their wealthy grandparents before them, plundering race without any consideration for the implications. Coco race dives into race in a way that — as I said — scares me. Scares me because it is so insane and so bold and it is also respectful and feels true. - Jamie Stewart, Xiu Xiu

etc.

http://stereogum.com/414512/op-ed-an-artists-dialogue-on-cocorosies-grey-oceans/franchises/op-ed/#

yoko ono's n-bomb >>>>>>> cocorosie's

I'm not gonna trust the judgment of the dude photographed sucking on a horse's dick on anything, tbh.

^^^

i just listened to cocorosie for the first time, just the first couple things that came up on youtube. i thought this was supposed to be some kind of fake rap outfit?

I'm not gonna trust the judgment of anyone that speaks favourably of cocorosie

^^^ also

after listening to another 10 songs or so, i have to say i'm a little surprised this band has taken up anyone's attention much at all

you're forgetting that the inferior Dirty Projectors took up even more attention last year

I only know one Dirty Projectors song, and based on that song I find it categorically impossible to believe that there exists a person who would like CocoRosie more

which song HI DERE?

"Stillness Is The Move"

(waiting for jjjusten to show up and go "actually I have the entirety of CocoRosie's discography, they are wonderful")

is it really just the idea of it that's supposed to be so compelling? old-timey singing over old-timey samply type music, that's... it?

because i can definitely see that being something potent, whether there's racially creepy content thrown in or not. but it isn't, there's hardly one good musical idea at work here and every song i've heard is that same idea.

as they were described itt lo these many years ago, the sound i imagined was basically like what sleigh bells turned out like, or lol tonetta

ugh Jamie Stewart please never talk, I actually like some of yr records

I'm not gonna trust the judgment of the dude photographed sucking on a horse's dick on anything, tbh.

― HI DERE, Monday, June 21, 2010 12:09 PM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark

I almost don't want to ask...

Ten In The Swear Jar is still better than any Xiu Xiu record. He should've never broken up that band. xp

I almost don't want to ask...

Xiu Xiu fans: Evaluate this (profoundly NWS) picture of Jamie Stewart.

Good Friday is a CocoRosie song worth having.

Xiu Xiu guy sounds like a prick.

Very glad to read Brandon and the contributors of that article going to bat for CocoRosie
I like Jamie's contribution
Antony's thing is OTM although he didn't have to point all his fingers all at once

"I have concluded that the reception of CocoRosie in the US reflects the denial of a greater feminist issue, an ecological issue, a racial issue, a spiritual issue."

Yeah, that must be it.

Haha, remember when every ILM thread was like the above?

xp I feel the same way, tho.
That statement isn't talking about "I don't like CocoRosie"
but rather the way that that band gets taken down so often and with so much vitriol

I think the running thread with all the contributors of the Stereogum piece
is that it's easy for people to write off a couple of ostensibly privileged women
who do experiment, and do reveal so much of themselves
CocoRosie have put themselves in a vulnerable position
and the majority of music publications have turned it into bear-baiting
most of which is unenjoyable, unfunny pollution

I wouldn't go so far as to express that this is a result of "music journalism misogyny"
as is intimated

never heard a note and judging by their photos/sleeves I don't think I want to

Thanks for stopping by.

Anyway kudos to j0hn and Brandon for being a couple of straight guys who're willing to rep for some crazy bitches
Lightening the load off us faggots

I wish I hadn't asked...

I don't think bands get ripped apart just for being female/experimental/revealing. Look on Metacritic - the mainstream rock mags have all been fairly polite - "a step back in the right direction" (Q), "hard going, but one can only applaud their ambition" (Uncut). I don't see any bear-baiting going on.

I thought bears were big fat hairy gay guys

Sorry, gays don't read Q or Uncut

but in seriousness I did notice that that with Grey Oceans people have replaced "pretentious" and "insufferable" with "over-ambitious"

In all honesty, the only reason CocoRosie was ever on my radar in the first place was because of this thread, which was not going to paint them in a very positive light.

xp re: bears, yes, and apparently in the 17th century people used to tie dogs to them and things

what Q or uncut say about 'weirdo' or women artists (and who cares) is a whole other question apart from whether CR are any good or not

I was just using them as egs of titles who might be expected to recoil from Coco Rosie. I went on Metacritic looking for egs of the "vitriol" Owen P is talking about and came up empty.

I would have thought Jamie Stewart was too old and experienced to make such juvenile comments (and I don't even think that really is him blowing that horse in that pic).

Though I don't know why I would think old & experienced necessarily = thoughtful & smart

My dislike of the CocoRosie sisters and their albums and their whole thing has nothing to do with me being male and hetero. It's all about my finely tuned bullshit detector, and those girls fucking stink like bullshit.

But, you see, they have put themselves in a vulnerable position by stinking like bullshit.

My dislike of the CocoRosie sisters and their albums and their whole thing has nothing to do with me being male and hetero. It's all about my finely tuned bullshit detector, and those girls fucking stink like bullshit.

This.

And that since their debut, little of their music has struck me as particularly... good.

Like, I get that people who like Grey Oceans are bummed that not everyone agrees. But to write essays explaining how it's because we're sexist buffoons is pretty fucking enraging. I wish these contributors did a better job describing the pleasures they find in the music. (Some do try to do this, but largely it isn't precise enough.)

Given that Cocorosie are a band that, to outside eyes, stink of scenesterism, the NY-loft-microcosm vibe of many of those Stereogum contributors also doesn't help. I'm surprised Sean Lennon didn't chime in.

Meanwhile, here are two Cocorosie songs I like a lot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A57DFvq8zcE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRQZMreM5Qs

Nobody is accusing anybody of being misogynist

Listening to "Jesus Loves Me" for the first time was a deeply upsetting experience, particularly in the wake of the Kill Whitey thing.

Anyway, this isn't really my fight. See you over in the Scout Niblett thread.

not digging their aesthetic at all. broken old-timey folk with crappy loops/noise/digital effects = no thank you. sonic ugliness prevents me from caring about what any of their lyrics are actually about.

actively seeking out the one where they talk about how Jesus doesn't love their nigger friends or their nigger wives is a mistake, don't do it

Nobody is accusing anybody of being misogynist

No?

as women Cocorosie are dismissed because their visual presentation frustrates many male writers’ abilities to sexualize them ... don’t be Aryan muscle-boys...

I do apologise for tarring all the writers with a single brush. Rereading, there are many for whom my criticisms don't apply at all. I was blinded by the other bullshit.

don't really get where racism angle figures into this either - re: the original article is it really so surprising some pretentious twee indie folkie girl would feel out of place/threatened/uncomfortable in yr average hip hop club...?

actively seeking out the one where they talk about how Jesus doesn't love their nigger friends or their nigger wives is a mistake, don't do it

hahaha um oh okay NOW I get it

actively seeking out the one where they talk about how Jesus doesn't love their nigger friends or their nigger wives is a mistake, don't do it

o_O daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang

aside from the shitty music and racism this makes me sad because I love yoko ono

yeah i like a lot of the people giving approving quotes there! whaddyagonnado

this reminds me a little of the time I had to ignore the many awesome directors backing up Polanski (though obv the offenses are not in any way comparable)

lol nice caveat there

the full lyrics to that song:

Jesus loves me
But not my wife
Not my nigger friends
Or their nigger lives
But jesus loves me
Dat for sure
'Cause the bible tell me so

Read your bible good and well
Don't forget about that apple spell
Don't fall in the wishing well
Wishing for heaven and gettin' hell
Wash behind your ears don't smell
Cover them freckles don't ask don't tell
Kiss your papa but not too long
Hold his hand
Don't do no wrong

Jesus loves me
But not my wife
Not my nigger friends
Or their nigger lives
But jesus loves me
Dat for sure
'Cause the bible tell me so

Hush don't cry
Dry them tears
Time'll wash away all them years
Scar or a bruise
Pick and choose
When you're all grown up
You'll have the blues
Life'll give you that wedding ring
Fancy cars and diamond things
You best believe in Jesus' way
And never fall asleep forgetting to pray

Jesus loves me
But not my wife
Not my nigger friends
Or their nigger lives
But jesus loves me
Dat for sure
'Cause the bible tell me so

'Cause the bible tell me so

what it's supposed to be: A satirical take on the contradictory nature of religious values

why it fails: Because it uses the word "nigger" for no reason other than a hateful evocation of black people, yet uses much more restrained/sensitive verbiage to talk about issues surrounding the arbitrariness of some bible rules as well as the sexism and homophobia, it explicitly singles out black people for disdain and derision in a manner wholly out of keeping with the rest of the song, completely undercutting any meaningful message it's supposed to have with a very strong, palpable undercurrent of "btw if you are black, fuck off; we don't want you listening to our music".

This is the type of hamfisted, unthinking point-making you do when you are either a sheltered kid who has heard of racism but have never actually experienced it or a self-absorbed person who lacks the empathy necessary to translate your experience into terms that make the experience relatable rather than repellent and offensive to others who have gone through similar experiences. Had there been parity in language with references to "faggots" and "bitches", the point of view would have been better defined and the narrative less confused; as it stands, you have a song by some people who hate religion and black people but only realize that they hate religion.

holy shit @ lyrics

just reading it (not listening to it) the use of "nigger" reads like a poor trolling attempt. Like ho-hum here's a song about that wacky Jesus, oh by the way, RACISM!

*yawn*

it seems to me like this: like a bunch of kids at a nice college who are so moved and disgusted by the history of racial violence in this country, and outraged that the rest of the student body doesn't really think about it, that they do up one of them in blackface and stage a mock lynching in the quad. and then they don't even get why everyone would be mad at them for pulling a stunt like that, and can barely explain why they did it.

now, set it to music (no beats tho)

(For similar examples, see also: The The - "The Violence of Truth" and Christian Death - "Romeo's Distress")

I like their music a lot, generally (first two albums a lot less than the second two), am really bummed out by their "provocative" race stuff but I listen to a lot of heavy metal bands who hold noxious beliefs & express them (albeit in more heavily coded language) & have sorta been doing the disconnect-from-shit-that-offends-me dance with music all my life -- I'm a pretty easily offended guy, actually, but I mean...I listen to goregrind. I don't think goregrind is making any kind of critical commentary on the behavior it details. I think it's pretty offensive, if I really think about it, but I also enjoy it.

basically CR is a band I like but with some big reservations & I can 100% imagine myself hating them, if I didn't respond so heavily to the last two albums - if I were building a case for them, I'd say listen to "Rainbowarriors," "Raphael," "Werewolf," "Smokey Taboo," "Undertaker," and "The Moon Asked the Crow" -- but I wouldn't build a case for them, because the sounds they make & especially Bianca's vocal persona/delivery are either going to register with you or not.

xpost yeah ha basically the first time I had to go "hey, fuck you, band making music I like, what the fuck is wrong with your juvenile ass" was "Romeo's Distress"

I can't work out who's worse; CocoRosie, Two Gallants or Country Teasers :-(

While googling, the first song of theirs I encountered was "Rainbowarriors" and I was like "why are people objecting so heavily to these girls, this is kind of pretty if not entirely my thing"

Then I googled "cocorosie racism" and discovered "Jesus Loves Me" and really at this point I need to stop writing before I just lose it.

aero i have a hard time believing you hated joanna newsom so much, if you like CR! it's like the same thing only the songs are a third as long and have a quarter as much going on

country teasers are pretty awesome

Just to get a sense of where I'm coming from, if ever I encounter Robert Smith doing some shit like "Jesus Loves Me", I will be throwing away and deleting a lot of music I've built up over the past 23 years.

i can believe this thread has me digging up christian death youtubes

it's like the same thing only the songs are a third as long and have a quarter as much going on

yeah this is def of a piece with Newsom, no?

lol "can't", ah well the jig is up i guess

They "explained" Jesus Loves Me in this interview: http://www.splendidezine.com/features/cocorosie/

i really want to listen to this band but i lent someone my headphones so they could do online training :(

These are some good analyses, HI DERE, free wings.

Just to get a sense of where I'm coming from, if ever I encounter Robert Smith doing some shit like "Jesus Loves Me", I will be throwing away and deleting a lot of music I've built up over the past 23 years.

fortunately I don't think they'll get any worse than lol tolhurst in blackface

aero i have a hard time believing you hated joanna newsom so much, if you like CR! it's like the same thing only the songs are a third as long and have a quarter as much going on

"a third as long and have a quarter as much going on" is a big plus in my book - I do not want to hear any singer-songwriter's 10-minute indulgence

I liked JN's first album a lot but nobody pays attention when I say that, I cannot be bothered with any super-long "song suites" or whatever, I attribute this to my godawful lawlessness

well a third as long i can get with, yeah

lol

argh, I'm trying to write something coherent about this elsewhere, but HI DERE is going to remain OTM about this, and I enjoy Jamie Stewart but his commentary on Cocorosie is absolutely moronic, on multiple levels

the beginning of that linked interview is hilarious

xp: about the only reason The Cure got away with Lol in blackface in that video with me is because I'm totally inconsistent and because the entire thing is incompetent from head to toe (also that's the video where they were calling Lol a cunt IIRC so it seemed like him being in blackface was more band inside cruelty than an overt statement on race)

I borrowed a couple of you guys' posts for this: http://chainofknives.tumblr.com/ / http://chainofknives.tumblr.com/post/722859553/op-ed-an-artists-dialogue-on-cocorosies-grey-oceans

Really? Well... "Jesus Loves Me", I don't know if you recognize it, but it's a children's song, and it's really popular. I don't know if it's really popular in Canada as well. Anyway, kids learn it really early, and it's really stripping down Christianity to its most basic, to a child's perspective. There's such a large population of African-Americans for whom Christianity is a huge thing, but Christianity still remains to be exclusive, and is very segregated, and it's very intricately connected to an old-fashioned mentality that's still very racist. To me, it's a huge contradiction with Christ's message.

*sigh*

this person is stupid

like if anything there's some really fundamental misreading of black culture/Xtianity going on there, among other things

yeah. it is sooooooooooooo not the Christian church's fault that Christian churches are largely segregated

like if anything there's some really fundamental misreading of black culture/Xtianity going on there, among other things

not to mention a fundamental ignorance of history

Really? Well... "Jesus Loves Me", I don't know if you recognize it, but it's a Cocorosie song, and it's really popular. I don't know if it's really popular in Canada as well. Anyway, kids learn it really early, and it's really stripping down Christianity to its most basic, to a child's perspective. There's such a large population of African-Americans for whom indie rock is a huge thing, but indie rock still remains to be exclusive, and is very segregated, and it's very intricately connected to an old-fashioned mentality that's still very racist. To me, it's a huge contradiction with Cocorosie's message.

I like the country teasers but really can't listen to cocorosie

my favorite part of that is "it's really popular. I don't know if it's really popular in Canada as well."

xpost re country teasers

i also don't really get why they were mentioned on this thread

I mean I understand why someone would mention them, but they are like leagues ahead in many ways

Splendid: Yeah. What was the statement behind "Jesus Loves Me"?

Bianca Casady: You really don't know? Or you just want to hear it out of my mouth?

you are being interviewed. for a publication. do you really expect their entire readership to already have an opinion on that song?

i want to hear it out of your eyes

btw if someone comes in this thread now talking about the male nurse I'm gonna get mad

is "the male nurse" the new legal name of genesis p-orridge?

xpost re country teasers

i also don't really get why they were mentioned on this thread

Uh... really? Given the turn the conversation has taken, you don't understand why someone would mention a band who released an album like The Empire Strikes Back? (which I have not heard, but based on its description and blatant lyrical cribbing from The Wall seems at least to be a more coherent, thought out exercise in satire than "Jesus Loves Me")

ah ok, never heard that one, not super familiar other than hearing them and being like "these guys are like the only decent fall rip off band"

yeah a bunch of their tracks have super racist lyrics, I'm sure there should be some quotes around the word racist or something but wtvr.

the country teasers ref was a joke really; sort of funny to imagine the people offended by the controversial parts of two gallants/coco rosie listening to them (although there's obviously a huge difference in the way they use racial issues)

I left my itunes at work open once and when I came back in the room this track was playing really loud

Pedal steel flourishes nail it squarely in a country tradition, but the lyrics are completely mad. Wallers cruises through every negative stereotype in the racist handbook, ending with a triumphant, “If I had my way/ I’d have all of you shot.”

lol :[

oh man here are a couple of awesome lines from a Pitchfork review of Two Gallants:

I want to believe that Two Gallants had good intentions in covering this song. But intention is fleeting; if it ever becomes known to the public, it's quickly dispatched to the mists of time. Only the artifact remains. And this artifact scans to me as deeply insensitive and offensive. Spin.com brushed it off as an account of racism; occasional Pitchfork contributor Jonathan Zwickel hailed it as "nothing short of revelatory" in New Times. But what value is there in an account of racism from people who've never stared down its barrel? What could it possibly reveal? If these myopic responses reveal anything, it's that the topic is much easier to gloss over than to actually discuss. Such an inflammatory project needs a complex intellectual purpose to make it more than a cheap provocation. This rigor doesn't come through in the cover, and when a Drowned in Sound interviewer pressed Stephens on the topic of "Long Summer Day", he equivocated. "I don't think it comes as something strategic," he said, and the interviewer demurred, because he was "in no mood" to really broach the topic.

full review (SPOILER: 4.8): http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8262-what-the-toll-tells/

last paragraph is also killer

lol @ staring down the barrel of racism

not so lol when you've actually done so; it does feel kind of like being in the scope of an invisible sniper rifle 24/7

i guess, i don't know, it always comes back for me to deciding who has the right to use certain words.

tbh I've never had any idea what to think of the country teasers, I do like their music a lot tho

great opening line: Nostalgic indie bands treat history like a playground, and one need not convey an understanding of the monkey bars' provenance in order to swing on them.

i guess, i don't know, it always comes back for me to deciding who has the right to use certain words.

For me, it's more a responsibility/consequences thing than anything else.

You can use whatever words you want however you want to use them; you should also be ready for whatever reaction will come back your way, intended or not, and make sure you can explain why you chose to communicate the way you did if someone takes your words in a manner you don't intend. In this case, CocoRosie recorded a song they wanted to be taken a particular way, but didn't use enough care in crafting their message to support their intent (IMO). Therefore, they are evoking an unintended reaction in me where I want them to die in a fire and their explanation, which is incoherent in its construction and very light on an understanding of the situation they wanted to criticize, does not assuage or mollify that reaction in me.

careful, plax, about confusing rights with reactions. people have the right to use all sorts of words. other people have the right to figure they used them badly or stupidly.

ha, xpost

did we switch bodies today or something

what if nabisco and Hi Dere switched bodies with the cocorosie sisters?

okay, but that doesnt happen with EVERY word, the same would go with like, I dunno faggot or something. A certain position in society gives you a right to use it in a way that will demand less justification for using it.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing btw, I think its good. I mean I think the partic. context I bring to the word faggot, is in a way a type of justification and I wouldnt feel comfortable with somebody who doesnt bring that automatic context using that word without establishing, implicitly or not, how and why they are using it, y'know?

besides being a plot for a potentially horrible indie version of a Wayans-esque comedy

i dunno, i think those rights and those reactions are kind of bound up somehow

I mean, this is kind of cheap, but I think it's telling:

In the States, we've had very few, but some occasions, where people have gotten confused by the message, and wonder if we were being offensive, and maybe if we were ourselves racist, which was really shocking. There was one gig we had where we weren't allowed to sing that song. ... It was shocking to us.

She is shocked -- SHOCKED, I tell you -- that if you use a racial slur a dozen or so times in a song, some people might wonder if you're being offensive and/or racist. That is the absolute LAST reaction they would ever have expected to come from repeated use of a racial slur. They were straight-up FLABBERGASTED that a venue might prefer them not to repeatedly deploy a racial slur in a performance. I mean, who would EVER think, while putting a racial slur in your song lyrics, that anyone would react that way? It is shocking.

^^ I say this not to be a snarky jerk, but like ... wow, if that outcome is honestly shocking to you, can we agree that you do not have nearly enough awareness of American race issues to address them in quite this way? Maybe that's just me.

I don't think we are disagreeing here plax, rather describing the same/similar phenomena in different ways.

I completely agree with you re: the context of slurs, which is the main reason why I think "Jesus Loves You" is a painful failure that actually upset me when I listened to it.

xp: lol nabisco, rest assured that it is not just you

yeah that line is definitely "thou doth protest o'ermuch" material

altho it makes me wonder who physically stopped them from singing that song (a black security guard?)

xp

"where people have gotten confused by the message, and wonder if we were being offensive" = poorly crafted message

man indie bands who say how much better Europe "gets" them really annoy me, too

I have a whole rant about this but as usual must be plied with drink to unleash it

well i saw these guys play in belgium and they really did have a massive following and the atmosphere was insanely volatile btw. My ex was way into them at the time.

CocoRosie - Big In Belgium (Aug 2011)

the atmosphere was insanely volatile

again, what??? so hard to understand, given what i've just listened to. kudos if it was a cool experience tho!

yeah i know, im not even pretending to understand it but they did put on a really elaborate and atmospheric show, and they were having a real or staged fight i wasn't sure, and the crowd were like really involved in the drama of it, and shouting things out. It was actually really, uh, intense. I agree that you would never think that from hearing their records.

(well, as J. Stewart's idiotic comment suggests, the line running from race stuff to reasons other artists might admire them is that it's all messy, volatile, difficult, weird, and intense. at least sometimes. it's natural that other musicians might admire that and a lot of listeners would be repelled by it.)

i don't own and haven't to my knowledge heard The Empire Strikes Back, but man i love the country teasers. that would suck if Waller is a racist. and tbh it sucks that even if he isn't, he's decided to play so fast and loose with his lyrics.

from what i've read i'd say he's not; he's just a huge and decidedly unprejudiced misanthrope.

generally the country teasers use of racist/sexist/prejudiced language seems to me to be half an attempt to provoke and half an attempt to examine how ridiculous those views are by examining them in a really up close and unforgiving way; and very often that means he speaks in character.

^^^ Not having heard the album, this is how all of the discourse surrounding it comes across, which is decidedly different than discourse around "Jesus Loves Me".

yes; you have to deal with what they're saying head on rather than claiming 'oh i was shocked when someone was offended'.
not always comfortable, as intended, but usually interesting.

country teasers cover of short people is p crazy

generally the country teasers use of racist/sexist/prejudiced language seems to me to be half an attempt to provoke and half an attempt to examine how ridiculous those views are by examining them in a really up close and unforgiving way; and very often that means he speaks in character.

yeah, a lot of the over-the-top sexism in the lyrics i've read this way. he was very confrontational when i saw them live, but in a sort of superficial, shtick-y way. i would assume the same for his writing.

generally the country teasers use of racist/sexist/prejudiced language seems to me to be half an attempt to provoke and half an attempt to examine how ridiculous those views are by examining them in a really up close and unforgiving way;

in my opinion the people who were born with all the privileges in the power/class dynamics (white people; men) need to stop fancying that they have a right to "expose noxious views to light" or w/e via caricature: such a stance presumes more than you can probably actually deal with in your work -- Randy Newman is sui generis, manages to get his point across so smartly imo that it would be difficult to miss, but pretty much nobody else should really imagine that they're anywhere near his level

like I can cope with an honest goregrind band a lot better than I can stand some guy flexing a lot of misogynist garbage and trying to claim some degrees-of-remove theoretical ground -- shut up, person of privilege, it's not for you to say whether your use of the language that was used to marginalize an entire population is "really" hurtful or not

well i saw these guys play in belgium and they really did have a massive following

I was at a small festival in Angoulême in 2007 or so, and the front page article of the local newspaper on the Friday was pretty much "ZOMG! International superstars Muse and CocoRosie to play our small town!". There were loads of gorgeous French girls in CocoRosie t-shirts milling around. Crowd at both bands was mental, while crowd for Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem was quite a bit thinner (you could walk right up to the front row no problem). Animal Collective played on the small stage in front of about 100 people drinking wine around the same time CocoRosie were on the big stage. The guy from Klaxons broke his leg. Good times!

CoCoRosie's having more appeal to European audiences than Animal Collective, LCD Soundsystem or Arcade Fire makes total sense. folk and avant-garde and fetishizing twee girls all run pretty deep in European culture and combined all those elements make for an easier sell.

also Europeans not gonna have the same kinda racial politics-related reactions obvy

well, and, not to open up a whole can of worms, but when you are an English-speaking band playing in Europe, you sometimes find that while some people do in fact listen to you for the lyrics, some of those same people think you're saying "fire in the storm" when you're actually saying "furniture store"

i'm a native english speaker and i regularly think bands are saying "furniture store" when they're saying "fire in the storm"

But intention is fleeting; if it ever becomes known to the public, it's quickly dispatched to the mists of time. Only the artifact remains.

As a general point, I really like this line from the P4K review.

hi dere otm, eff these broads

weird to hear people defend the country teasers in the same breath that they begrudge cocorosie. the cocorosie song is much more compassionate and straightforward in its criticism of racism than wallers tends to be. and then there's this (from the 2 gallants review linked upthread, but relevant here):

In the same interview, Two Gallants repeatedly complain about critics not "getting them." But a persistent failure of interpretation usually signals an initial failure of expression. The critic's job isn't to explore what an artist was trying to do, but what they've actually done.

i strongly disagree that we should necessarily blame artists for poor communication when audiences or critics fail to understand them. artists aren't journalists - not exactly. their job is communication, but they can just as legitimately trade in confusion, ambiguity, and contradiction as clarity. and certain subjects are so difficult & loaded that explosive reactions and profound misinterpretations are all but guaranteed. i mean, i completely understand why people object to the "jesus loves me" song, but at the same time, i respect cocorosie's artistic intentions and execution. it's unpleasant & uncomfortable to listen to, and i don't think it quite works (i find it embarrassingly overstated and obvious), but i don't see anything fundamentally wrong with it. i'm not inclined to condemn them for a failed though basically noble experiment.

honestly, i think the objection is less that the song is unclear in its intentions than that people have a strongly visceral negative reaction to hearing privileged young white people say "nigger" repeatedly in the chorus of an otherwise pleasant-seeming pop tune. which is fine. i feel the same: it's jarring and even repulsive. it smacks of naive entitlement, makes me wonder why they decided to go that way, why they thought those sorts of shock tactics were necessary or justified, just what they hell they were thinking in general. but it also makes me think about the power of language and indoctrination, the relationship between the hopeful and the oppressive aspects of faith, and the way our confused and blurry childhood (mis)understandings of these things continue to echo around inside us despite the wisdom we accumulate with years. all of which i respect on an artistic level.

yeah except i think your ending at the exact point where intention comes into the eqation i think. If somebody yells "faggot" at me in the street, its a more effective deployment of that word in me examining my relationship between language and power, because its gonna make me feel shitty and see how language is a tool of marginalisation etc. When some chick uses it in a song in order to make me cofront this same relationship its less effective because it works outside of this power dynamic, that is neither used as a fag-basher to put me down, or reclaimed by myself as somebody who can use it and therefore claim marginality as the source of authority in some way.

Also, existing outside of this power dynamic, there is no context and the power of the word itself is meaningless which either makes it pointless as a rhetoric device to me (I mean, who is learning anything from this) or I will naturally read the speaker into the dynamic and as priveliged white chicks, its a lot easier to see them as the oppressor. Obv, this is not the only way this can go down, but to avoid these traps I think there needs to be a more nuanced stating of positions and you can't just get pissed off that everybody knows you're being ironic for one thing, because "historically", you are the "bad guy" here.

plax OTM

i dunno that i'm prepared to grant great artistic legitimacy to the taunts of assholes in the street, but i get your point. still, i think that "jesus loves me" is being mischaracterized to some extent. it isn't primarily about the power dynamic between the oppressor and the oppressed (with and "i" and a "you" clearly placed on either side of that equation), but rather about how we all internalize the bigotries of our society -- as filtered through the relationship of folk blues to christianity and christianity to racism, done up in a ghastly sort of musical blackface. and that's a tough, strange thing to try to address in song, perhaps especially for a couple of middle-class white girls. i mean, i could see some objecting to the way the song constructs its "we all", either presuming a universality of white privileged us-ness, or pretending an entitled sort of color blindness. but i actually think it handles those issues reasonably well.

i'd agree that there isn't much to learn from it, but the same might be said of most art, confrontational or not. i don't think that a work of art really has to justify itself in that sense though. mostly i just want art to be intelligent, interesting and aesthetically coherent. i find cocorosie satisfying on those levels (well, for the duration of that first album anyway). if anything, i wish that "jesus loves me" were a bit more subtle, conflicted, genuinely confused about its statement, because i find its crude didacticism at least as off-putting as its insensitivity.

i guess it just seems to me that the only people who are like "hey these are words, the needn't exert such power" are ppl who have no primary stake in the struggle of marginalisation, ie those that have never (and cannot) feel the ACTUAL effects, and conversely do not intend to wield them as weapons. The reason I brought up the asshole on the street is bc its an example of somebody actually owning and exerting the power that language maintains, I don't know that from an outside position you can just decide that you are going to negate that power whose effects you dont feel, and who are you to tell the people who have had to deal with it that it is meaningless, it seems really arrogant.

I mean, there is such a massive plurality of contexts that racial/mysoginistic language exists in in the first place.

As a kind of generalisation, I would have a strongly visceral negative reaction to hearing privileged young white people say "nigger" in pretty much any context, or in fact, any white person use the n-word in any context, beyond maybe reporting someone else using it* I read the lyrics of that cocorosie song and they seemed to me to be pretty idiotically using the shock value of the n-word to make a fairly dumb/obvious point. Also, in the interview their defence of it seemd a little disingenuous to say the least. I was glad i didn't like the msuic in the youtube clips I watched, it was really ordinary and lame. it would have been very dissapointing had they been awesome.

*as an aside, when i saw patti smith, she encored with a medley of "rock and roll nigger", and I kind of got the impression that some of the audience dug shouting it out, it made me feel a bit uncomfortable to hear i must admit.

some excellent points from Dan and plax, I thought.

i guess it just seems to me that the only people who are like "hey these are words, the needn't exert such power" are ppl who have no primary stake in the struggle of marginalisation, ie those that have never (and cannot) feel the ACTUAL effects, and conversely do not intend to wield them as weapons.

massively otm - when michael richards had his meltdown, remember that he tried to paddle back from the abyss by saying "so we have these WORDS" or something like that - but it's not for the dominant class to be suddenly distancing itself from how those words are used

I don't want to start a big fight about anything but I wish when people used the words "faggot" and "bitch" in their songs they would also get hated on for being assholes because it is hurtful and offensive for people to use those words, too, even if the privilege isn't as thrown-into-relief as it is in this case

I don't want to start a big fight about anything but I wish when people used the words "faggot" and "bitch" in their songs they would also get hated on for being assholes because it is hurtful and offensive for people to use those words, too, even if the privilege isn't as thrown-into-relief as it is in this case

they don't? i mean, i agree with you, i didn't know most people didn't.

rap music

Just for the record, I think the Casady sisters are white, Native American, and Syrian. (I imagine they scan to people, day to day, as just "white," but would not think of themselves that way.) I'm not sure we have any information about whether or not they are "middle-class."

I understand that art can be used to play out ideas in messy, volatile, and risky ways. But you can't just cordon that off as an anything-goes sandbox -- that is exactly what makes it "risky." If you choose to messily play out ideas that are not just "ideas" to other people, and get them wrong, you will have a problem. A lot of the people contributing to that Stereogum piece want to praise Cocorosie for taking risks and yet excuse them from the consequences of those risks (e.g., some people will find your voices annoying!).

rap music

because no rock 'n roll person has ever used the word "bitch" in a song or conversation

^^^ just want to point out that when I whine about this stuff I do not mean 'rap music'

because no rock 'n roll person has ever used the word "bitch" in a song or conversation

yeah, I meant to follow that up with a clarification and I got pelted w/ work emails. I personally find that for some reason I turn a blind eye to a lot offensive content in hip hop I probably not tolerate in other genres ..? not sure why that is. so it's not so much an indictment of rap as it is of my weird double standards. or something.

e.g. i was listening Back For the First Time and (especially) Project Pat's Mista Don't Play this weekend for the first time in a looong time while my gf (who is a hueg nerd and basically only listens to NPR and Paul Simon) and I were cooking and I have to tell you, it was weirdly embarrassing. i mean, she's a grown up and can handle it/ whatever, but it certainly sparked some conflicting feelings that a 22 year old me probably would not have experienced. but maybe this is for another thread.

"what you want your girlfriend and her sister listening to/can you escape bad/questionable language in modern pop?"

Wives or servants, surely?

yeah lots of otm responses...I don't necessarily think that CR are racist, or that they had anything less than the best intentions, but as HI DERE pointed out, the n-word sticks out like a sore thumb...it feels very exploitative; it sounds like the girls basically decided to borrow the horror and hatefulness of the word to make their song, and the underlying point behind it, sound more urgent and meaningful than it really was. Which is really shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5lMxWWK218

^^^great song btw

I don't think that Lennon is being exploitative, or at least as exploitative as CocoRosie is being. The hatred he is evoking by using that word is being used towards a very real end; he's saying "If you think it's bad for a black person in America, that's how it is for women everywhere." I mean, I don't think you can say that Lennon is dropping the N-word to make his point seem more urgent and meaningful than it really is.

Whereas, with CocoRosie, they use the word right off the bat to paint Christianity as this malevolent force in American society, but when it comes to develop this theme, it's like "Christianity is bad bcz now we can't kiss our fathers very long...?" They use racism to prop up their song and pretend to be ironic with it, but really it's just treating something very serious as if it was something very frivolous.

you know actually:

seriously, black people don't need to hear me talking out of my ass about cocorosie!

― m@tt h (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 1:00 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

That attitude bugs me for an entirely different set of reasons.

Basically, by saying it isn't your place to object to this shit (even though the objection you raise is similar, if not identical, to mine), you are implicitly saying it is MY RESPONSIBILITY to object to this shit; furthermore, you are saying that these objections are only credible when coming from black people, who by raising these objections often find themselves placed in the "you're just being sensitive" pile by the people who did the objectionable thing, and by not getting corroborating objections from others regardless of race, the seriousness/breadth of the objection is undercut.

Or, to put it more simply/confrontationally, it's fucking bullshit that people who feel the same way I do have this easy way of ducking out of the fight and not causing controversy, leaving me out to dry.

i agree with a lot of what's being said here, but i'm still somewhat uncomfortable with the intensity of condemnation attached to cocorosie over this song. when compared to something like patti smith's rock n roll nigger (a song i love, btw), the use of the word in jesus loves me seems more careful and substantial - more well justified. pashmina talks about reading the lyrics of the song and finding them rather dumb/obvious, but the words alone don't get even half the message across. you have to hear the delivery and music to really get the whole picture. again, the song tries to link the blues to religiosity and religion to racism, washing it all down with a horrifying parody of "negro dialect". at the same time, it pretends this naive childishness about the horrors contained in the language it uses and the ideas it raises. in that sense, it's also about how children hear and learn things, how words like "nigger" can be inextricable from ideas like "blues music" or "salvation", both in adult society and through a child's eyes. on a more basic level, of course, it's an unsubtle attack on the racism that religion often disguises - that's the sense in which i'm bummed by the song's didacticism.

i disagree that it tries to pretend its language consists of "mere words", devoid of real power. perhaps CR have defended it in those terms somewhere, but if so, i missed it and am more concerned with the song itself, anyway. it seems to me that the song is fully cognizant of the horror evoked by its language, and is trying not merely to exploit certain words for their shock value, but to address something profoundly tragic and difficult. i've read pretty much the entire thread so far and strongly disagree with shakey mo's "this person is stupid" assessment of bianca's defense of the song. she doesn't sound brilliant to me, but nor does she sound terribly stupid. mostly she sounds as though she's speaking off the cuff to someone she's at least slightly uncomfortable with - there's an awkward hesitancy present throughout the interview, a quality of nearly paranoid reticence. moreover, the basic concept she's trying to get across (that the song is likewise trying to get across) strikes me as both valid and interesting.

finally, i get where hi dere is coming from with the "song by some people who hate religion and black people" criticism, but respectfully disagree. i can see as how CR's use of the word might strike some as insulting or hurtful, and might agree that the song is insensitive on that level. but imputing racist hate to the band on the basis of a single, perhaps thoughtless, lyrical experiment seems excessively and narrowly condemnatory. cocorosie are attempting to address something painful in this song, and they've chosen a painful way to go about it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they were motivated by hate. by that measure, any artist who's ever built a song around the world "bitch" is a misogynist who deserves comparable condemnation. and many (many) songs built around the word "bitch" are far less compassionate and morally responsible in their examination of the issues involved. i mean, i can't claim to know what CR were thinking or feeling. perhaps they really are racists on some level or another. but i strongly reject the idea that we can assume that based on their use of the word "nigger" in this one song.

finally, nabisco otm about their whiteness and perceived middle-classness. i described them in those terms since that's they way they'd been framed in recent discussion (and cuz i drew certain conclusions based on other stuff i'd read about them). but it's unfair to pigeonhole them so neatly.

but imputing racist hate to the band on the basis of a single, perhaps thoughtless, lyrical experiment seems excessively and narrowly condemnatory. cocorosie are attempting to address something painful in this song, and they've chosen a painful way to go about it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they were motivated by hate.

they make some of my favorite music around but this song is not the only instance of them copping some bullshit "provocative" racial stuff (feel free to check "japan" off of ghosthorse & stillborn for "no, seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people" stuff)

I'd like to point out that cutting out the "but only realize that they hate religion" from my quote removes 90% of the argument I'm making.

eriously, black people don't need to hear me talking out of my ass about cocorosie!

― m@tt h (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 1:00 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

this was supposed to be a joke

yeah I got that, but it got reappropriated in a seemingly earnest manner to shut down a line of thinking I strongly agree with and I was responding to that

i have heard the song--it's awful

i don't think the song deepens the lyrics, at all

It most certainly doesn't; if anything, it makes the lyrics stick out even more.

Like, my main takeaway from it was "thanks for ruining a harmless church song"

mostly i just want art to be intelligent, interesting and aesthetically coherent... if anything, i wish that "jesus loves me" were a bit more subtle, conflicted, genuinely confused about its statement, because i find its crude didacticism at least as off-putting as its insensitivity.

See, I'd say that the crude didacticism and the inconsistency in the lyrics w/r/t characterizations of minorities makes the song aesthetically incoherent. It seems like a number of us in this thread would have less of a problem with them and the song if it was more aesthetically coherent, with people citing country teasers as an example of something that is.

I was listening to that Patti Smith song recently, and I really did cringe when she used that word.

^^^ completely OTM re: "Jesus Loves Me" and aesthetic incoherency

but when it comes to develop this theme, it's like "Christianity is bad bcz now we can't kiss our fathers very long...?" They use racism to prop up their song and pretend to be ironic with it, but really it's just treating something very serious as if it was something very frivolous.

― dont forget B.Manning's shout-out to Dock Ellis (Drugs A. Money), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 11:05 AM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark

i find it a very sad song, much more sad than shocking. the sadness arises from the tension between the protected innocence it describes, the idealized state of a child we wish to shield from the world, and the tragic adult realities that it admits, with its talk of choosing between scars or bruises on the road to the wedding rings that will supposedly make everything better for us when we grow up. i can't ultimately endorse or even condone it because i don't think it ultimately justifies its decision to hammer the n-word home over and over again at every chorus, but its conflation of racism and religion isn't as simpleminded as it might initially seem.

it's a sloppily written poorly constructed lyric. There's nothing inherently racist in Christianity, Jesus didn't say anything preposterous on the level of "I hate niggers" and the song draws this line clumsily by just associating the one with the other in the crudest manner possible. It doesn't give any consideration to how black people and Christianity actually intersect, no nuance or actual understanding of history is evident. If I want to think about how racism and Christianity have been intertwined in America, there are any number of Ice Cube lines that are more informative and interesting than this garbage.

xp

"go to church but they tease us/with a picture of a blue eyed jesus"

The conflation of racism and religion is actually as simple-minded as it seems if you know one iota of American history.

I prefer the Vaselines version of "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" to this song

sorry HI DERE I didn't mean to duck out...I was just getting second thoughts about whether I was actually contributing to the discussion rather than 1) parroting other people's opinions, or 2) spouting off about stuff that I don't have a lot of firsthand knowledge about.*

*This is probably just a euphemistic way of restating what it was that pissed you off.

I'd like to point out that cutting out the "but only realize that they hate religion" from my quote removes 90% of the argument I'm making.

― HI DERE, Tuesday, June 22, 2010 11:53 AM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark

i don't think the song deepens the lyrics, at all

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, June 22, 2010 11:58 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

I suppose it's a question of which is unfairer, thinking someone is unintentionally racist (my take) or intentionally stupid (your take).

Because every word you write in defense of them highlights more of their terrible artistic choices (the dialect, the fake blues styling, the minstrel show vibe) and the idea that anyone with even half a brain in modern America could look at this song as it was shaping up and think "Wow! This captures my point perfectly!" and then be shocked and amazed when people think you are a narcissistic racist, particularly when you also attend racist, ironic Kill Whitey parties, it is amazing that your brain functions well enough to keep your subconscious processes going.

There's nothing inherently racist in Christianity, Jesus didn't say anything preposterous on the level of "I hate niggers" and the song draws this line clumsily by just associating the one with the other in the crudest manner possible. It doesn't give any consideration to how black people and Christianity actually intersect, no nuance or actual understanding of history is evident. If I want to think about how racism and Christianity have been intertwined in America, there are any number of Ice Cube lines that are more informative and interesting than this garbage.

xp

― in my day we had to walk 10 miles in the snow for VU bootleg (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 12:17 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

that said, i think you could easily make the case that christianity has a complicated relationship with racism in america, and that the song's argument makes a certain amount of sense in light of that.

"complicated relationship" in implied scare-quotes there...

i'm generally in favor of artists taking risks, and ambiguity and messiness, and works that "problematize" issues - but there are certain subjects, and certain language that are extremely volatile and potent that require greater sensitivity and care taken with their use.

The conflation of racism and religion is actually as simple-minded as it seems if you know one iota of American history.

I really don't think this can be stressed enough - sure you can point out that white racists used Christianity to justify their way of life, and that they forced the religion onto the black slave population, but that's only a part of the picture, and is a ridiculously narrow view that ignores the role of Christianity in the abolitionist movement, or the way black slaves managed to take Christianity and subvert it to their own ends, using it to preserve other cultural and musical traditions, with it eventually becoming one of the pillars/driving forces behind the civil rights movement. there are a LOT of nuances. I don't think MLK would be too down with this "Jesus hates black people" nonsense. And taking the tack that because you put the words "Jesus" and "nigger" in the same song makes you some kind of incisive social provacateur just makes you look stupid.

xp

he song describes an outsider's view of that intersection, and moreover a deliberately childish version of an outsider's view.

who is this hypothetical "oustider"? someone who is neither white nor black nor Christian or American presumably...? that makes no sense.

is this the classic Native American/Syrian take on American racial relations and Xtianity, is that what you're getting at...? they're deliberately hiding behind a character? one that doesn't understand how provocative/inciteful the language being used is? wtf

yeah, that gets at the main problem with reception for an American audience - and might explain why they're better received in Belgium - here in America (with a few exceptions) no one is really an outsider with regards to this.

i'm generally in favor of artists taking risks, and ambiguity and messiness, and works that "problematize" issues - but there are certain subjects, and certain language that are extremely volatile and potent that require greater sensitivity and care taken with their use.

― i don't know whether it's really popular in Canada as well (sarahel), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 12:37 PM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark

contenderizer - have you seen the movie "Farewell Uncle Tom"? (title might be Goodbye Uncle Tom) made by the Italians that did Mondo Cane?

David Allan Coe IS playing a character you ninnies

who is this hypothetical "oustider"? someone who is neither white nor black nor Christian or American presumably...? that makes no sense.

― in my day we had to walk 10 miles in the snow for VU bootleg (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 12:40 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think you're making an admirable effort to try and unpack the motives and structure and ideas in the song, but for a number of us, it's cringeworthy enough to make us have no desire to go to that effort.

have you seen the movie "Farewell Uncle Tom"? (title might be Goodbye Uncle Tom) made by the Italians that did Mondo Cane?

― i don't know whether it's really popular in Canada as well (sarahel), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 12:47 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah i think this thread would be pretty awful if it was just everybody sagely agreeing abt what massive assholes CR are

farewell uncle tom is probably the most uncomfortable movie watching experience i have ever had that was not a horror movie of the "torture porn" subgenre.

yeah, i've heard good and bad things said about it. it sounds uncomfortable and ill-advised. like the song?

it's basically the problem people have with the song magnified 1000x - except the music is better than cocorosie's.

a ridiculously narrow view that ignores the role of Christianity in the abolitionist movement, or the way black slaves managed to take Christianity and subvert it to their own ends, using it to preserve other cultural and musical traditions, with it eventually becoming one of the pillars/driving forces behind the civil rights movement

This is very important to remember. It's something completely ignored by this song.

With their Native American background, perhaps they substituted a personally appropriate slur for something more sensationalist .

jamie stewart didn't really suck a horse's dick, sorry about that guys

i've said more than enough, but wanted to touch on this. it seems to me that the song presents a series of textbook lessons. "jesus loves me" is the first lesson - a gentle, almost crushingly saccharine affirmation of childlike faith. this is followed up by instructions like "wash behind your ears," "cover them freckles," "don't ask don't tell," and eventually "kiss your papa but not too long."

indie kids seem pretty hung up on their early childhoods tbh

just doin some quick ctrl-f's ... of course contenderizer is a cocofan/apologizer

on being f'd...

why it fails: Because it uses the word "nigger" for no reason other than a hateful evocation of black people, yet uses much more restrained/sensitive verbiage to talk about issues surrounding the arbitrariness of some bible rules as well as the sexism and homophobia, it explicitly singles out black people for disdain and derision in a manner wholly out of keeping with the rest of the song, completely undercutting any meaningful message it's supposed to have with a very strong, palpable undercurrent of "btw if you are black, fuck off; we don't want you listening to our music".

...

Had there been parity in language with references to "faggots" and "bitches", the point of view would have been better defined and the narrative less confused; as it stands, you have a song by some people who hate religion and black people but only realize that they hate religion.

I don't think the inclusion of other slurs would've made it better or less offensive. What I don't like is making the infamous slur the artistic equivalent of a 'SHIT JUST GOT REAL' device, an inexpensive and effortless way to let people know you're a Serious Artist with Something to Say.

This is very important to remember. It's something completely ignored by this song.

― Beach Pomade (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 10:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

fwiw its perfectly fine to 'ignore' things like this -- theres nothing per se bad abt observing religious hypocrisy -- but this is such a lazy way to do it that u start siding 'with' religion

It's totally fine to ignore, even contradict established history if you know enough about it to make intelligent choices (or if you get lucky; I consider "sufficiently compelling wordplay" to be an intelligent choice).

I don't think the inclusion of other slurs would've made it better or less offensive. What I don't like is making the infamous slur the artistic equivalent of a 'SHIT JUST GOT REAL' device, an inexpensive and effortless way to let people know you're a Serious Artist with Something to Say.

I just wanted to point out that I did not say that adding in more slurs would make the song less offensive. I said it would make it more thematically coherent, which would allow the listener to get its point better. (Given the "explanation" for the song given in the incredibly lolsome interview linked upthread, I concede that adding in more slurs would actually divert the song completely away from what they were trying to say, but since what they were trying to say was a misconceived crock of shit in the first place I don't really think that's a bad idea.)

did they ever find out whether it was popular in Canada as well?

popular everywhere ppl dont get the big deal with a ronaldinho bottle opener basically

so a guy at work just heard cocorosie and now he's challenged me to find something he would hate more than cocorosie...but i can't do it!

it's driving me nuts, any ideas?

has he heard Joanna Newsom?

if your friend hates cocorosie, i can bet she'd really hate Gabby La La

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcQOXCLB_6Q

probably won't like Diane Cluck much either

Cool thanks for the ideas. Tried newsome which he didn't like but her sincerity sat better with him than coco rosie. Did not hate devandra as much as I suspected. He's mid twenties listens to only classic rock dislikes most new bands.

bROKENCYDE?

Xiu Xiu?

Insane Clown Posse?

really -- brokencyde vs. ICP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfbqrNPJXlQ

Maher Shallal Hash Baz

Why to hate MSHB?

:(

Oh I didn't say I didn't like them :)

nah i mean he's heard ICP obv from them just being funny and ridiculous....brokencyde he would probably really hate, that's a good one.

kimya might fit the bill, but i'm not sure if he'll hate it as much, i think cocorosie are hitting some sort of snobbish "cool" white hipster girls thing that bugs him more. like i said, he didn't really seem to hate newsome at all, really suprised me. i think he hates irony and shit.

Xiu Xiu is a good idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAcqkX7O0Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4AG3r-2aM0

so i just showed this guy the video for "bizness" by tune-yards...definitely the closest i've come to something he hated more than cocorosie

This might be my favourite thread title after "yo is it true vordul got sonned by a wite kid after a aol beef??????"

has the guy at yr work heard this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUz75nc_JRw

Kill Whitey parties aren't still a thing are they?

Was just musing that the Kill Whitey parities where when "hipster" moved from sixty years as a neutral term, to one of derision.

C'mon, how can you hate on this guy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Swpw9yZ5w

Lets all gather at time square
And lets all say a prayer
To Walter Disney and Mike Tyson
At Madison Square Garden

And then the lights came on
In the middle of the night
What I should do with my life
How I should spend my time

I'll be a stock broker and get me a wife
Have the diamonds cut
Have the diamonds

And Jesus said there a girl's best friend
And hell they'll last forever
And Jesus said now take her hand
And raise this harlot's bastard sun

And then the lights....

And afterwards we'll all go to hell
When the money's all spent
When the money's all gone
There'll be a place for us in heaven's gate
Waiting for us on lay away

And then the lights....

And oh what a pity the world's not white
And oh what a shame I don't have blue eyes
God must have been a color blind
If I made the world it would be all white

what the hell is wrong with these people

also I just read the lyrics to "Japan" u_u

They're full of shit and try to hide it by being provocative and edgy. But, really, shit. Full of it.

eh time was you could do some dumb blunt satire and not be an object of hatred and disgust for it. (they're not 'white' themselves, are they? part-native american at least?)

First time I've ever heard being part native American invoked as a get out of asshole pass.

lol

im part part-native (south) american, this doesn't mean i can't be racist about black people.

or that im not "white".

I'm part dumb satirist

the more oppressed your group has historically been, the more the public lets you slide for your horrible beliefs. kind of like how music fans give rappers a pass for being sexist, like all the time.

xp No, I get that it's a character song. That doesn't make it any less stoopid.

These girls have all the depth of a petri dish.

hello Poliopolice

(is there a "threads I regret reviving" thread around somewhere)

lol

the more oppressed your group has historically been, the more the public lets you slide for your horrible beliefs. kind of like how music fans give rappers a pass for being sexist, like all the time.

― Poliopolice, Tuesday, June 5, 2012 2:19 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4tgjzQ7q71r8j1jb.gif

I'm not saying that's the way it should be, but unfortunately, it's pretty hard to dispute that that's the way it often works. also, i understand that you might disagree, but the use of dismissive animated images is a fairly juvenile way to respond to an argument.

i wuz only being contrarian for kicks, save myself from working, don't blame me.

just saying, i think you'll find a lot more people here willing to call Gene Simmons a sexist jerk than to call Jay-Z one.

I was looking for a "threads I regret reviving" thread (there must be one, right?) and rediscovered this so I'm in a much better mood now:

I Regret Eating My Placenta

a lot more people here willing to call Gene Simmons a sexist jerk than to call Jay-Z one.

poll

Jay-Z was much more respectful and less disgusting to Terry Gross than Gene Simmons was.

(altho fwiw Jay-Z's apologized/issued mea culpas for past comments/behavior/material. Simmons has not, and never will)

xp

Is it buried in the code somewhere that we have to get a new Poliopolice every year or so>

fyi everybody "the use of dismissive animated images is a fairly juvenile way to respond to an argument" is too long for a dn :(

fwiw, i think the the gif was deployed as more of "i'm so not even going to get into it iit" than as a "response"

itt

the use of dismissive animated images is a fairly juvenile way to respond to an argument.

http://gifs.imgdumpr.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/wait-what.gif

songmeanings.net a little confused about who wrote the cocorosie tune these lyrics are from however

"Armageddon" as written by Prince Far I
Lyrics © EMI Music Publishing

hey look, i have opinions. hey look, i'm not stating them.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/yay.gif

each generation gets the randy newman it deserves

holy shit, lol

fyi I <3 contenderizer but that fruit hung low

no worries, lolled

and i do

just saying, i think you'll find a lot more people here willing to call Gene Simmons a sexist jerk than to call Jay-Z one.

― Poliopolice, Tuesday, June 5, 2012 3:34 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

lol

lol

lol

(lol)

That's sexist.

Oh, wait, I misread that as (o)(o).

to be clear, what i meant to say was

lol

poliopolice has got it backwards

the use of dismissive animated images is not a fairly juvenile way to respond to an argument

it's actually a fair way to dismiss a totally juvenile argument

http://www.barstoolu.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Polio1.jpg

I Regret Eating My Placenta

― WHEY AHR MAH DREGUNS? (DJP), Tuesday, June 5, 2012 12:35 PM Bookmark

I am so glad I never contributed to that thread past the OP.

who is that bitch saying "oh ye" with the thumbs up

the pumpsta

hey dylann guess what "bitch" as substitute for "woman/girl" is gross whether you're super-edgy or not

do we have a thread about "bitch"

the word, not that unlistenable meredith brooks song

I would rather talk about the Meredith Brooks song, seeing as this is ILM

that sounds like I'm mad at crut or something, oops

that was not my intent, sorry

so anyway, Meredith Brooks: I never actually minded that song

oh dude. dude.

so did they ever kill whitey, havent been reading the thread, thx

yes

do we have a thread about "bitch"

if we get one, can we ensure that most of the people posting to it aren't dudes?

@DJP man you are p. forgiving of that Gwen S./Alanis M./Meredith B. sort of alt.Ethyl.Merman style of singing, you have more receptive ears than me & I salute you

i hadn't heard one way or another tbh

xp

if we get one, can we ensure that most of the people posting to it aren't dudes?

ans: no

max is wrong they found whitey in santa monica he's back in prison now

starting dudes only bitch thread brb our voices will not be silenced

omg "alt.Ethyl.Merman" I am stealing this and using it from here on out

whitey died

Damn, just read DJP's lyric posting. Sounds like some 7th grader writing bad poetry and trying to be really serious and really subversive with it.

hey who killed whitey?
there should be a trial, yeah?
think its only fair

omg "alt.Ethyl.Merman" I am stealing this and using it from here on out

I so totally grinned and went "DJP is gonna love this" as I was typing it

Sounds like some 7th grader writing bad poetry and trying to be really serious and really subversive with it.

^^^ this is basically exactly what's going on w/CR's racist stuff, tho sidenote I encourage all 7th graders to write a lot of poetry & take it really seriously & do all they can to annoy adults who frown on their efforts

NEW RULE any white person who goes to a "kill whitey" party but does not commit suicide by the end of the evening is expelled from the white race, and must henceforth identify on all forms as 'other: poseur'

How has nobody ever used "Whitey G. Whitegarden" as a dn yet?

xp (I call it the "one dope" rule)

How has nobody ever used "Whitey G. Whitegarden" as a dn yet?

key q here guys

kill whiney

gets called out by brainwashed.com as racist

^^^ this is the best part of the thread title

hey dylann guess what "bitch" as substitute for "woman/girl" is gross whether you're super-edgy or not

― decrepit but free (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, June 6, 2012 9:36 AM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wasn't he referring to the person in the gif edward iii posted who is clearly male?

no, scroll up

oh nvm i was confused, cause jennifer lawrence is definitely saying "ok" so i assumed he was referring to the "yay" gif

also following his post up with "the pumpsta," who is a guy

it's like dylannn said, don't criticize what you can't understand, my pumpstas and bitches are beyond your command

calling a dude a bitch isn't really any better

EIII wouldn't have it any other way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8cHxydDb7o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBAiZcNWecw

latifah otm

I think "Kill Whitey" parties are an awful, self-indulgent idea. But when someone has a mixed race parent I won't assume things about them.

I assume coco rosie are talentless race baiting shitheads

I think "Kill Whitey" parties are an awful, self-indulgent idea. But when someone has a mixed race parent I won't assume things about them.

― โตเกียวเหมียวเหมียว akaBulgarian Tourist Chamber (Mount Cleaners), Thursday, June 7, 2012 7:52 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The ”one drop” rule of indie race politics

I'm not indie, that's not my music background.

didn't remember making that post until i saw it referenced on excelsior thread. drunk.

apologies to jennifer lawrence, tha pumpsta and cocorosie.

lock thread!

press release for new Coco Rosie mentions song titles.

"Hairnet Paradise" and "Big and Black"

God, they're never going to stop are they?

lol

could you imagine how many internet articles there would be about this if this happened today

57

could you imagine how many internet articles there would be about this if this happened today

lol

remarkable they've managed to stay together for a decade

I just watched that entire Latifah video

I think the dude that grabs her butt is played by Vinny from Naughty By Nature

Never caught that before

Also as long as this is ostensibly a thread about appropriation and whatnot, remember when 90s rappers like QL would sometimes affect a Jamaican accent just for the hell of it?

It's very likely Latifah's family has Caribbean roots.

During this time KRS-One also gained acclaim as one of the first MCs to incorporate Jamaican style into hip-hop, using the Zung gu zung melody, originally made famous by Yellowman in Jamaican dance halls earlier in the decade.[3] While KRS-One used Zunguzung styles in a more powerful and controversial manner, especially in his song titled "Remix for P is Free", he can still be credited as one of the more influential figures to bridge the gap between Jamaican music and American Hip-Hop.

p interesting imo

Um hip hop and dancehall and reggae have been intertwined since, say, Jamaican DJ Kool Herc started hip hop in the Bronx

Not to mention how much dancehall by the 90s was already influenced by American hip hop, it's a complex process of years of cross pollinization that's really unfair and simplistic to characterize as appropriation

Cross pollination is fine, fake patois probably isn't if you have no direct link to the Caribbean - though this is getting away from the entirely noble thread purpose of clowning CocoRosie.

that's really unfair and simplistic to characterize as appropriation

tbf he characterised it as "appropriation and whatnot"

Cross pollination is fine, fake patois probably isn't if you have no direct link to the Caribbean - though this is getting away from the entirely noble thread purpose of clowning CocoRosie.

so nobody can do accents anymore, b/c they are "appropriation," and that's always bad? i'm sure there's a smarter response to that kind of idiocy, but all i've got at the moment is "fuck you."

sry for fighting humorlessness with humorlessness but sometimes a man's got to step up

how badly do you really want to do jamaican patois?

/want/ to do? i'm doing it right now, bwoy.

"Probably isn't fine" = "always bad"?

How exactly is what he said incorrect? That shit is often disrespectful.

Adopting the persona of someone from a different culture whose lived experience is not yours is rarely a good look - particularly, as if often the case, that persona is a reductive 'weed and guns' one that reinforces stereotypes about people from the Caribbean. It is appropriation by definition though whether that is always bad is open to debate.

/want/ to do? i'm doing it right now, bwoy.

well, that is certainly doing it badly. sharivari otm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4XD5MTMACg

persona is a reductive 'weed and guns' one that reinforces stereotypes about people from the Caribbean

this has it 'twisted' (am i doing it right??!)

this is getting away from the entirely noble thread purpose of clowning CocoRosie.

― Petite Lamela (ShariVari), Friday, June 12, 2015 7:18 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Some weird ideas about hip hop itt

I always thought KRS1 sounded like a dick on his faux Caribbean style chatting tracks. I can recall some member of London Posse saying as much in a 90's edition of HHC, he said something like "you come from London or The Yard and you can "chat", American rappers sound like wankers when they attempt it" or words to that effect.

i always thought he sounded cool. idk...

Just Ice pulled it off better imo

persona is a reductive 'weed and guns' one that reinforces stereotypes about people from the Caribbean

this has it 'twisted' (am i doing it right??!)

idk, i don't listen to as much hip-hop as a lot of ilxors but the prism US pop culture, including but not limited to a fair amount of rap, sees the Caribbean has always struck me as #problematic. It's all too often a binary between tourist-key-chain-rasta-hat-weed-vibez positivity and mock-Yardie doggerel. Even where it isn't, to me, performing 'as a West Indian' rather than performing music influenced by the West Indies often has the effect of reducing a culture to a set of badly-imitated vocal tics.

I'm fairly relaxed about appropriation in general - it's often a healthy and good thing to borrow / imitate and music would be much less interesting without it. This has always annoyed me, though.

The 90s stuff I was thinking about, beyond the QL clip upthread, was Black Moon, who iirc had a lot of 'bloodclaat / botzi bwoy' type lyrics. Also didn't intend for this to become a "thing," was just reminiscing after watching that Latifah video.

BTW, is Latifah dissing Boss in that third verse? Sure sounds like it.

xp i think it's more about showing flashes of afrocentricity, from within the home (american) culture? and the binary (unity and violence, say) is present in that one too. so the salient thing about patois or whatever is not that it constitutes an attempt to appropriate or imitate (or give accurate representation), but that it momentarily decenters or translates a primary experience with which it shares something.

Also there were Jamaican communities within NYC and even artists like say Super Cat who moved to the US and collaborated with hip hop guys and I'm sure there was a lot of crossover in the club scene between hip hop and dancehall audiences, this isn't exactly like Mick and the Stones doing cod reggae

xp That can be true in some cases. Rastafarianism is a unifying movement and referring back to pan-African themes that are more heavily developed in the Caribbean than a lot of other places can be very positive. I don't see that being the primary motivating factor in a lot of cases and, even where it is, it requires a level of engagement beyond surface cliches to not simply reinforce those surface cliches for the primary audience.

shit dude i ain't over here studying up on haile selassie, i think it's pretty plain?

but i think this goes for the less harmonious cultural transfer too.

a licky boom boom down

all bets are off when canada

Toronto had a huge/significant Jamaican community and reggae scene fyi

think it's weird to take rappers to task (esp 80s/90s rappers) for quoting dancehall/adopting patois when rap was all about quotations and repurposing cultural signifiers AND the links between rap culture and Jamaican music culture go so very, very deep - right back to the beginning - with huge overlaps in audience, technological approaches, politics etc.

haha i know they do it's just… who can say what anything means in canada

the 70's was kind of the peak of bad faux-caribbean accents. you could easily make a 10-disc box set out of bad fake/cod reggae/calypso tunes by white artists. it was an unstoppable force and i'll never understand why nobody even gave it a second thought.

and lyrically, the vast majority of them were just as offensive as the accents.

that's not what's at issue tho

maybe it's thanks to having grown up with parents who played lots of ub40 and the police, but i kinda like cod reggae. i love real reggae too of course, but there's something about bad white reggae i can't help sort of loving for quite different reasons.

ace of base were nazis

eager to propagate the aryan race iirc

All that she wants
Is another baby
And to heil Hitler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4XD5MTMACg

tbf only one member of Ace of Base was a neo-Nazi.

The guy seemed genuinely mortified that he'd had any involvement with far-right politics afterwards.

das racist is one of the worst rap acts ever

tbf only one member of Ace of Base was a neo-Nazi.

wait really???????????????

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulf_Ekberg

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/ace-of-base-nazi-past-lyrics_n_3148797.html

In 1998 some of his old songs were released on the compilation album Uffe was a Nazi!.

how did I never hear about this

ok wow

maybe people knew how much you love them

I am mentally singing "Uffe was a Nazi!" to the tune of "Mary Had a Baby"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPK29mexIi0

Learned about it from some Mountain Goats stage patter.

I thought this was one of those well-known facts!

tbf I've aggressively ignored any and all biographical information about Ace of Base and just bumped those original singles

i just put on the the tom tom club at the store and i totally forgot about the song "bamboo town".

xp often the best strategy

Ace of Base (feat. Boyd Rice & Death in June) - "All that She Wants (Is Another Nazi)"

LOL

memories

This sounds like the worst thing

"What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat.

Uffie was a nazi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0SuIMUoShI

CocoRosie: As charming as ever.

The loft used to belong to Bianca, and it is still filled with her art work, including a photograph of a brown dildo encased in purple quartz. (“I’m interested in exploring black-male sexual stereotypes,” she said, laconically.)

this is self-parody at this point

haha it's like she's seen the classic nabisco post
Why does Europe love CocoRosie so much?

"Bianca, who had concluded that the ancestry of her and her sister is part Cherokee, “but more Syrian than anything else,” said that she was going to wing it. “I really like to surprise myself.” "

of COURSE she is Cherokee

“The Camargue’s a landscape with just the right amount of darkness and death,” Bianca said. “Pale-wheat land and gray skies, the migration of storks in December, this Gypsy fête where they take the black Madonna into the sea. But it’s also harsh and ugly, trashed with lying-around junk. I’m in love with West Texas, and this part of France is completely Texan, ancient cowboys with leathery skin and light-blue eyes.” She went on, “We’ve started this thing called white-trash Sundays, where we burn wooden palettes, have our way with tractors. At night, the baby screech owls scream for food—it’s the most demonic sound I’ve ever heard.”

“We record in our courtyard at dusk,” Sierra added. “The birds are leaking into every song.”

Objectum-sexuals

seriously why is Cherokee the default tribe that white people claim is in their blood

I blame Europe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRP8e47x55o

i blame don fardon. or paul revere & the raiders.

i'm trying to think of the worst-case scenario with these guys. maybe starring in a netflix mini-series about the antebellum south that is directed by miranda july. that oughta do it.

i only read about them here though. who is their audience in 2015? french people?

Was at a gig over the weekend - one of the acts was 'rejected and unheard of in his home country (UK) but had gained popularity in France'

this monstrous red flag did not dissuade me from hearing his set, which was some self-indulgent misogynist loathsome ageing-singer-songwriter flathat-wearing bullshit of the most irksome order

I liked their first record, or maybe it was the second one. It had some charm. but they personally sound like loathsome narcissistic art school people with little to no actual experience with actual human beings.

of COURSE she is Cherokee

every southern white person claims cherokee ancestry, it's a thing (science proves most of 'em wrong btw)

Most of what I've read from them in interviews seems so problematic and "provocative" in all the wrong ways that I remained surprised that I *do* really like about 4-5 songs on each album they release.

I like DJP's explanation, but not as much as I like Rock the Night.

My sister-in-law apparently did some kinda of ancestry.com family tree that supposedly uncovered native-american ancestry. NOT Cherokee; a lesser-known group of people who would have been more appropriate for the area. But I don't know how much stock to place in that website, ya know? My dad was a super-genealogist. Spent his weekends at the National Archives and perusing Mormon microfilm collections. I really hope that in his retirement he'll offer to do some work on my wife's side of the family, so that my kids don't run around spouting any awkward fairy tales about their heritage.

actually every southern person full stop; whites and blacks.

my paternal grandmother sent me a birthday card this year, and the first line of it was "i don't know if you know this, but my great-grandma was part cherokee indian." the message didn't even reference the fact that it was my birthday, actually

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZEZPs06Sgw

http://www.nerve.com/life/why-do-so-many-people-claim-they-have-cherokee-in-their-blood

apparently even most actual cherokees don't have a lot of genetic markers common to native americans. make of that what you will.

meanwhile

“JEREMY PARKER is an actor, comedian, musician, and writer.

Under the monikers Jamstation, Next Nikki, Durty Nanas and Tha Pumpsta, he’s released five albums, and he’s worked with both well-known and underground personalities, including opening for legendary entertainer Slick Rick.”

Uffie was a Nazi!

All that she wants
Is another baby
And to heil Hitler

loooooool

back in 2019 thanks to Chance the rapper

Yeah that's why I bumped this; I was going to give Chance a chance and then I saw CocoRosie listed among the guest artists and was like ☮️

lol, give Chance a peace

ahahahahahahahahaha

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFD9juCW4AAWBxC?format=jpg

This seems like a bad idea

Not in a country where this kind of thing happens:

https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2019/10/04/au-college-de-france-francois-xavier-fauvelle-brise-les-cliches-sur-l-afrique_6014181_3212.html

Maybe they should invite Cocorosie to the Collège de France

i never understood this band

xp your point is that fauvelle is white ?

thought it was :

Un professeur dans une université américaine s’étonne de constater cette majorité de « mâles blancs et âgés », inconcevable dans le milieu universitaire anglo-saxon, où enseignent certains des plus grands intellectuels du continent.

Yep.

ah okay. will actually read article next time

"i never understood this band"

their first album has always been pretty good. I've not actually paid attention to anything since.

Is it...possible that CocoRosie are unaware of the racial connotations of the term "shine"?

New album, new song/video.

https://static.stereogum.com/uploads/2019/10/Cocorosie-Put-The-Shine-On-1572439333-640x640.jpg

hasta la vista, rosie

lol phil

They apparently have a new album and this is part of the press guff:

"(They) have released seven albums....each one inspiring controversy and debate in equal amounts to praise; such is their fearlessness and willingness to take risks with their art. This strong creative vision runs through every aspect of their work - from videos to live performances utilizing theatrical costumes and make-up - which they create alongside each new body of songs."

Amanda Palmer goes into the Jeff Goldblum fly machine with Grimes and hits the "divide by two" button.

https://www.hollandfestival.nl/en/interview-with-bianca-casady-from-cocorosie

‘As stated in the first tenet of Future Feminism; ‘The subjugation of women and the earth is one and the same.' In general, our feminism is strongly earth-centered with an unceasing reverence for nature. We see the body as sacred. We are currently interested in a vision of re-wilding as a broader concept both for the planet and for female beings. We were raised with a particular moral compass regarding cosmetic surgery and the transfiguration of the natural body which we have carried forward into our adult lives and in turn, our political perspectives. When we see for example how some women believe testosterone will make a women’s body stronger and therefor better, that’s worrying. It also appears to us that many middle class Western families would nowadays prefer to have a diagnosed trans child than simply a ‘dyke’ or a ‘faggot’. We believe that radical self-acceptance is true feminism and that much of the problem which needs to be addressed is society’s rejection and oppression of female bodies.

Regarding our view on surgery, it is not a dogmatic stance that rejects modern innovation, it’s the ethics of how we use these modern innovations and ultimately who is profiting and being harmed by them. Women and girls are being stripped of their wilderness. This view does not make us trans exclusionary radical feminists. This terminology, “TERFS” is being used to silence women who have a dissenting view on current identity politics. The dissenting voice and a kaleidoscope of multifarious perspectives in a healthy, uncensored discourse is in our opinion essential to reaching the most enlightened and humanly compassionate ideas and goals. Silencing, censoring and disenfranchising women with differing points of view is blatant misogyny and we see it as part of the milieu of the modern witch hunt.’

Oh who's surprised? NOT ME.

"not this" would have been a surprise and it sounds like they were born into it too

funny thing is I was onboard with the first paragraph despite the art blurb buzzwordiness of it all until they got to the surgery part and it was like here we go

woof

hard to think of a less kaleidoscopic movement than terfism though

These girls live in France iirc and would not know that most American families who are DoorDashing to keep the electricity on would probably rather have a “faggot” than have to deal with the tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical costs involved in transitioning a trans child

this is nuts, I was just in the process of c&ping those two paragraphs myself. fucking TERFs

Absolute goofery

the statement that TERF is misogynistic is definitely a thought-terminating cliche used amongst the TERF community which just goes to prove that any label with utility that exists for more than 5 minutes will eventually be abused en masse by people who are seeking to shield themselves from valid criticism

aren't they friends with Anohni

oh right, in that linked interview, it's right there

too lazy to read, does it say what Anohni thinks of their terfery

"In general, our feminism is strongly earth-centered with an unceasing reverence for nature. We see the body as sacred. We are currently interested in a vision of re-wilding as a broader concept both for the planet and for female beings."

Always thought there was something vaguely fascist about new age Earth mother people who talk about "the body" a lot.

Is that translated from the French? Something might have been lost or mangled.

It's really hard for some people to not offer their opinions on other people's bodies

especially in france am I right

Have to check the French stats vs. the Irish

This terminology, “TERFS” is being used to silence women

if only it worked

this doesn't really surprise me coming from them but it is pretty bizarre in the context of an interview for a performance as part of a festival program curated by anohni, alongside a statement from her about the legislative attacks on trans people. #4 in the 'tenets' here does read as a dogwhistle though: https://www.hollandfestival.nl/en/fututre-feminism

Always thought there was something vaguely fascist about new age Earth mother people who talk about "the body" a lot.

it's whole lot more than something!

i'm not going to bother listening to their new song ("witch hunt", lol) but i recommend looking up the lyrics because it is mostly 'we transphobic and are being silenced!!!' the song

I did listen to it (incognito mode on YouTube so this shitstain doesn't influence my algorithm) and I can confirm it's every bit as bad as you'd expect it to be!

lol it's more than just #4 that's a dogwhistle, the whole fucking Future Feminism thing is gender essentialist garbage to put it lightly

women be shoppin and nurturin

so can we assume that Anhoni, despite trans status, has some not very friendly beliefs about all of this