Are white people who say "I don't like hip hop" yet listen to it when white people make it really saying "i don't like black people"?

Or maybe that's a stack of poorly rationalized crap and they're just thinly-veiled racists.

xxxpost

Eminem doesn't.

(you can substitute Beastie Boys for Cypress Hill in this scenario)

Besides that, even, most of the tracks Em raps over are really rigid and structured and usually follow a distinct verse/chorus/verse/chorus pattern. Easier to follow for people who are accustomed to listening to rock records all day.

How does having a verse/chorus/verse pattern make Eminem different from say...every other rap artist in extistence?

http://citypaper.net/articles/071201/mus.ahmir.shtml

"She brings in Rick [Rubin], who you have to remember is the guy who invented the pop rap song. Verse, chorus, verse. Before him, hip-hop tunes were 16 minutes long..."

(there was another article on him written back in 89 that also shed light on this, but I cou;dn't find it today in a pinch)

*true with Eminem too of course, and yes i'd be suspicious about anyone who claimed to love Eminem but be dismissing 'black rap' at the same time

basically, KILL THE FOOL

Good sleuthin, man!

wtf

as does run-dmc ... and public enemy ... and dmx ... and jay-z ... and outkast ...

And Conor Oberst?

haha cuz ya know indie/white hip hop has sooo many different themes!

1) We're not "commercial bling bling" rappers
2) We have feelings
3) Bush sucks
4) The Twin really need to increase their run production if they have any hope of catching the White Sox in the division
5) It sucks that Firefly got cancelled
6) Have you tried that new Coca-Cola Zero? It tastes almost the same!

He'll love Akon then.

Man, have you heard the narrative in most Rock/Pop? This is not philosophy.

wtf.

1997, median household income of the second-lowest quintile was around $22k. I'm guessing Em's mom didn't clear that. So yeah, most Americans came from slightly plusher circumstances than Eminem.

choice cut from the Fresh Prince: "Black radio, they won't play me though," he raps in one song. "Guess they think that Will ain't hard enough. Maybe I should just have a shootout ... just ignorant, attacking, acting rough. I mean then, will I be black enough?"

yeah I thought that was wierd!
-- M@tt He1geson (matt@game[remove]informer.com), June 27th, 2005 3:18 PM. (Matt Helgeson) (link)

I'm just saying that, given the choice between The Chronic and Master of Puppets, I'd probably take Metallica every day of the week because that's just how I'm wired. It's not a race thing. It's a sound thing.

Rather, it's that such listeners are only meaningfully exposed to (and thus turned on to) hip hop which the indie/alternative structure as a whole has decided to endorse. It was, I think, impossible to have a passing interest in alt. rock throughout the 90s without coming across much praise of the Beastie Boys as trailblazers, but it would be comparatively easy to effectively ignore the existence of 2Pac etc. This insofar as, for many listeners, mainstream radio play is treated as little more than background noise, but the recommendations of friends, college radio DJs and certain magazines count for a great deal.

There seems to be a rebuttable presumption enforced by this structure of endorsement that whiteness is a prima facie sign of good values and innovation. This can be overcome both ways - ie. white people can be kicked out and black people can be invited in, but they have to make an extra special effort on both sides. Bubba Sparxxx is not part of the club because all of his associations are distasteful (a fat hick who talks about sex as crudely as any black gangsta rapper!) but Michael Franti is because he has good old fashioned uni leftist politics, flirts with rock/soul/etc. and uses live instruments (The Roots and Andre 3000 have been issued guest passes for similar reasons).

It also comes from the perceived position of the person - why it's okay for someone to like Ben Folds' cover of Bitches Ain't Shit because it's perceived to be "ironic" while NWA would never be given that kind of credit.

and re those subtextual issues, i trust that some of these white "i can't relate to black rappers" dudes are solidly middle-class and are totally immune to what life experiences underlie the above subjects for jigga and fiddy.

Haha genetically programmed to like Metallica.

Yeah but if it wasn't just you but every seemingly tasteful rock fan they knew who was repping for black hip hop you can bet they'd strain harder to hear the value in the music. Having a friend play you stuff isn't enough in this regard - there needs to be an entire culture of validation such that the hip hop-skeptic feels under pressure to question their own position.

The changes in the coverage policy of Pitchfork is a good example of this process occurring on a wider scale - it's not like the quality of street hip hop has changed dramatically in the last five years, rather it's the critical environment which has changed to the extent that media organs who had previously consciously ignored this music no longer feel quite so comfortable doing so.

xxxxxpost

Probably. Beck and the Beastie Boys don't really get played on hip-hop radio stations.

if so, why haven't they?

Because they suck?

and again, WHY don't they get played on hip hop stations?

Obv. the exact same thing happens wrt to black hip hop stations and media organs gravitating towards black artists.

The existence of friends who don't follow trends doesn't challenge the overall "trickle down" effect of this structural taste-making, any more than (to use an entirely random example) the existence of non-racist white people contradicts a trend of racial prejudice/privilege as a whole.

xpost they were EXAMPLES. but yes I can give you an example: Will Smith!

Tim, everything you've said has been OTM but I have to question this part:

Obv. the exact same thing happens wrt to black hip hop stations and media organs gravitating towards black artists.

Does the black media really practice the same prejudices in reverse? AFAIK, the Beasties in their prime, Vanilla Ice, and Eminem were equally embraced by the hip-hop audience and media. And in cases where there hasn't been a crossover there is usually a pretty obvious reason sonically. Do any Beck or Prefuse 73 tracks really fit into the narrow framework of mainstream hip-hop radio or club playlists?

Personally, I wish it was more "self-derogatory".

*raises*

Not quite. I think Tim's point, which I agree with, is that rock audiences tend to only like hip hop that is endorsed and approved by mainstream rock critics, general MTV rotation, college radio, etc. So it's not down to personal taste in the sense that people are hearing everything and making aesthetic choices on a case by case basis. The consensus trickles down from the personal taste of a small group of critics, editors, or programming directors. It's not so farfetched to think this might involve some degree of institutionalized racism.

why did white people find it easy to appreciate, say, Public Enemy but not so much Kool G Rap?

Public Enemy fit a narrative that the rockcentric gatekeepers bought into: political content, a revolutionary image, innovative production, etc.

xpost they were EXAMPLES. but yes I can give you an example: Will Smith!

What about Will Smith? I thought "Parents Just Don't Understand" and "Summertime" were hits with black and white audiences but maybe not.

I can't speak for the station and its listeners, but I will say that when I compare and contrast the emotional ambiance of "My Name Is" and (for instance) Dre's "Nuthin' But a G Thang," one of them reminded me of the Stones, Dylan, the Velvets, the Stooges, Rocket From the Tombs, the Electric Eels, the Sex Pistols, the Contortions, and Guns N' Roses, whereas the other did not remind me of any of those bands.

That said, I know of a long-time Stooges fan (me) who greatly prefers most hip-hop to most rock that's been released since, oh, Hexenduction Hour, and who tends to go to almost any music other than "rock" for what he once got from rock. But I think my point here is that people listen to what speaks to them.

The consensus trickles down from the personal taste of a small group of critics, editors, or programming directors. It's not so farfetched to think this might involve some degree of institutionalized racism.

(putting aside that i don't really buy this "gatekeeper" theory)
but wait, i thought it didn't have anything to do with racism?

Public Enemy fit a narrative that the rockcentric gatekeepers bought into: political content, a revolutionary image, innovative production, etc.

you could just as easily argue that PE fit into and contained more readily recognizable aspects of white aesthetics and values.

LL Kool J. (Started on the same label, too, with a similar tendency towards rock sounds.)

But you're right, there aren't a lot of them.

-- oops (don'temailmenicelad...), June 28th, 2005.

Really? I still remember the whole Professor Griff fiasco, among others...I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd be interested in which aesthetics and values you're referencing.

Oh sorry, I misunderstood. Good call.

Thanks for making me burst out laughing & nearly choke on my dinner.

I think Tim's point, which I agree with, is that rock audiences tend to only like hip hop that is endorsed and approved by mainstream rock critics, general MTV rotation, college radio, etc.

Doesn't MTV play a fair amount of hip hop and rap these days? I don't watch much of it (no TV :( ) but I feel like when I do flip through the channels at my friend's house, I see a lot more rap videos being shown on it than there were even 5 or 6 years ago.

Maybe think of the Stones et al. as reminding me of Eminem, and work backwards (the Stones also remind me of bits of Public Enemy and Kool Moe Dee and Spoonie Gee).

Anyway, there's a double effect going on: if you're a republican voter and a republican politician tells you to care about something, you're more likely to at least think twice before disagreeing. On the other hand, if you're a republican politician and a republican voter tells you to care about something, you're also more likely to at least think twice before disagreeing.

So there are two levels of identification: specific case-by-case values/positions (which we might consider to be roughly analogous to styles and values in music) and the sense of identification with a communitarian discourse around values, which allows you to say "I'm a republican/democrat/indie fan/rap fan" etc. Each mutually reinforce but can also manipulate and mutate the other.

Obviously not all pro-choice republicans are going to become pro-lifers just because they are republican. In the same way not all people who like/dislike hip hop are going to do so purely on the basis of the dictates of the musical discourse in which they primairly move. In both cases there are multiple factors to be taken into account, as well as space to make a personal decision based on what can be very complex personal beliefs and ethical/aesthetic values etc. At the same time, if I was a republican who was undecided on this issue, wouldn't I be likely to give strong weight to the arguments of my pro-life republican friends, who seem to be in accordance with many of my other values?

Thing is, I kinda doubt Rocket From the Tombs, the Electric Eels, or the Contortions ever got played much on Detroit rock stations! (Or even the Sex Pistols, when I was living there.) (And I had no idea that "My Name Is" did either, until now.) (But I DO understand how Eminem partakes in a punk aesthetic -- like, wishing violence upon his Mom and stuff - that most rappers never would.)

I agree with the first part but not with the second. I think you're giving both politicians and critics too much credit for listening to their "constituents." At least I hope most music writers don't bend and capitulate every time they get nasty LTEs.

Parents they just don't understand.

Tim, I half agree with you, but I want you to take in what Oops and I are saying. People respond to content. That is, if a Republican gatekeeper said, "You should listen to and appreciate Eminem because he's got a song where he rapes his mother," this would not impress his constituents, whereas if a punk-rock gatekeeper said the same thing, it would impress his constituents.

(Hey, cool, I've got constituents.)

Do you care for me
Like once I cared for you
Honey come and be my enemy
So I can love you too
Sick boy sick boy fading out
Learning to be cruel
Baby with me in the heat
Turn me loose on you

Eminem lyric from "My Name Is":

This guy at White Castle asked me for my autograph
So I signed it, "Dear Dave, thanks for the support, ASSHOLE!"

I trust you're out there shaking hands and kissing babies.

rock audiences tend to only like hip hop that is endorsed and approved by mainstream rock critics, general MTV rotation, college radio, etc.

And one of the reasons for this is that rock audiences tend to be similar (culturally, socially, emotionally) to the critics et al.; they've self-selected themselves as people who pay attention to critics, for this reason.

Structural musical taste, like politics, doesn't work by getting influential people to say that white is black (ie. "Eminem espouses conservative moral values when he pretends to rape his mother") but by changing what it is that people consider to be important in politics/music. Your Eminem/Punk example is a good one: the punk rock gatekeeper, if he were to elaborate, would say: "ignore the content relating to rapping and samples and guntalk, focus on the content relating to mother-raping!" - ie. the "content" of a particular piece of music will depend on what you seek to get out of it.

The Eminem example is a good one: Elton John doesn't congratulate Eminem for hating homosexuals, but he does congratulate him for "bucking the trend" and "saying things no-one else will" etc. ie for Elton John the "content" is read through a matrix of values that emphasises artistic free speech and rebellion over respect for others' sexual orientation.

Likewise frequently the "content" of current street hip hop for a lot of reformed rap-haters starts off being the interesting sonics and only gradually extends to the rapper's flow and persona.

That might be true for people who, well, read rock criticism and seek out reviews and are like most ILMers. But that arguement doesn't hold water for 'casual' (for lack of my brain coming up with a better word) white music fans who listen to Eminem and Beastie Boys but not rap by black artists.

Interesting example. Why does Eminem get the benefit of the doubt but not other instances of homophobia, misogyny, and gunslinging misanthropy?

No I wouldn't. I tell people to listen to the musical relationships and think of them as incipient social relations, actually.

Of course, I might play the authenticity card and tell the reader that if he doesn't like Spoonie Gee, Kool Moe Dee, Public Enemy, and Eminem, then he doesn't like real punk, but only the stuff that dresses up like punk.

(I can be really obnoxious when it serves my purposes.)

This puts it better but I'm not sure if it means something different to what I'm saying - ie. saying "here are three ways that Eminem is like punk" also says "here is how to listen to Eminem as if he were punk" ie. "here is what to listen for in Eminem".

It actually does at that!

So you should like the Pistols because they're sweet like the Crystals (if you overlook all the noise and caterwauling and destruction, that is).

Walter, I actually think that rock and hip-hop have a lot in common emotionally, and I think the trouble rock fans have with hip-hop is that the latter has moved beyond them formally. (That is, some rock and some hip-hop have a lot in common, though by now those two genres encompass several universes each.) I don't see why a Beasties fan wouldn't like Cypress Hill (who had a minor hit last year with a song based on a Clash sample), but I can see how the Beasties are easier on his ears.

Yes I agree with this!! So then I'm not sure where we disagree. What am I saying that seems odd?

See, I believe it was the very last major case of "white guy=rock, black guy=rap, even if all sonic evidence points to the contrary" industry thinking. The very thinking that Eminem's debut, in effect, ended. Rock radio never played his singles again after that. But for those first several weeks, they did.

*still doubt that these so-called gatekeepers have as much impact on people's tastes as walter and tim do

not true at all - whfs in balt/dc played "the real slim shady" pretty heavily, if i remember, and i believe continued playing many of his singles as he kept releasing albums. i stopped listening to that station a few years ago, but i seem to remember even something as late as "without me" getting airplay.

Oops I think I understand yr resistance now. I don't see myself as being outside of this process at all! My tastes have totally evolved according to the sorts of groups i've moved amongst and ideas I've been exposed to. I too really dislike attempts to distinguish between sheep listeners and liberated listeners. What is ILM if not a "community" that does the exact same thing that e.g the alt/indie rock "community" does? How else would people be able to complain about the "hivemind"?

And Ned is right, it's not at all about individual gatekeepers (can't remember who used that word first) so much as an entire structure of ideas and ways of thinking about music that you get from radio, magazines, television, your friends, your workmates, the bars you go to etc. etc. The success of eg the Beastie Boys is helped along by all of these - not just cover stories in Spin, but also friends making copies of Hello Nasty for eachother etc.

Because he's obviously smarter than that but he's an artist in love with provocation/uses ghetto tropes incidentally as grist for his creative mill/some other shit that halfway makes sense...

I mean, yeah he obviously is some of that but why does that realization(or rather, examination) require such a leap of faith when it comes to the hordes of black rappers with similiarly complex and disparate personas is the question that gets soft-pedalled in discussions like these if it comes up at all. The fact that if you lined them up in front of the casual non-rap fan(who has heard of them), Nas would=50 Cent=Snoop=Mike Jones=Busta Rhymes=Ghostface=Ludacris, and it's the black skin that's papering over wildly differing levels of playfulness, bravado, malice, imagination, etc. of their respective musical packages. I don't know at what level the "let's at least listen to the white guy" meme is being maintained or furthered, and if the only problem was sloppy assignment on the critical chessboard(in "purely" musical terms) it would be a massive improvement, as it stands there's plenty of space made for 'those rappers over there' but very little actual consideration and engagement is afforded at all(and listening /=engaging) and the reason why has a lot more to do with the question at the top of the thread than most of this discussion belies.
Speaking personally, it's a red flag when someone lists Paul Boutique as "the greatest rap album ever" without apologizing and identifying themselves as clueless dilettantes, at which point I'm willing to swallow an oopsish scenario with Beastie Boys as 'perfectly reasonable point of entry' but not without rolling my eyes.

You're probably right; but it probably did cross their feelings: something felt indie or alternative or modern rock about "My Name Is," probably, some emotional resemblance (and the white skin color could have contributed to the feelings as well). And also, the song doesn't move in the way that hip-hop tends to move, even Eminem's other tracks (in fact that's why I don't like it as much as "The Real Slim Shady"). It's more of a talk than a rap. And one of the things that may have made it feel "rock" is that the voice sounded white.

In regard to the question that started this thread: It's not surprising that a rock fan would hear something that rings his bell in Eminem and the Beastie Boys. Like attracts like.

What if said person is highly knowledgeable about and enjoys the more canonical (i.e. black) hip-hop albums, but just likes that particular album a little more?

Licensed to Ill. Way better.

I think you're too quick to assume it has to be one but not the other. To make a simple and not too carefully thought out analogy, taste in music is probably somewhere between taste in food and taste in literature: on the one hand some stuff just tastes nice (per food), but on the other, how we judge good/bad music is very much bound up in all the other music we've heard, and the way we've been "taught" to listen to it (per literature).

Even with food, there are some tastes you can get used to if you stick at it and even begin to approach in a very formalist manner (see wine tasting) so it's not totally unmediated enjoyment. It's not like adults start drinking a glass of wine with their meals because their taste buds spontaneously start responding well to wine at a certain age.

That said, people who drink wine do genuinely enjoy it: it's just that their enjoyment is following a model of enjoyment they have been encouraged to adopt. And of course this model would never have been adopted so widely in the first place if wine wasn't amenable to be enjoyed. But that doesn't change the fact htat drinking wine is a social practice. There is no primal cause for this practice, no person whose taste was totally unshaped by social factors, any more than peer group pressure at school starts with one kid, or the pressure to "keep up with the Joneses" actually starts with one family of Joneses.

how we judge good/bad music is very much bound up in all the other music we've heard

this is I think, for the majority of the population, the greatest determing factor in what music people do and do not like. it ties together our two arguments: most white people grew up listening to rock and this has shaped their aesthetic musical preferences. then it all snowballs and fold back on itself, as people interact with one another, particularly those within their social circles who have presumably grown up exposed to similar music.

So we are basically in agreement, then... Also, more on the "like attracts like" front: English is not my first language, and although I am perfectly comfortable with it now, I do run into occasional trouble with rap lyrics - Eminem's excepted. It's a slightly embarrassing confession but... there you go. Since he sounds "white," he is, perhaps sadly, more intelligible to me. (He's also not nearly as heavy on regional slang as most rappers, probably because he doesn't feel he has the right to usurp it). I wonder if that's the case for some native speakers as well?

Are these groups totally divorced from eachother? If someone says, "I don't know much about wine but I do think a chardonnay over dinner is more dignified than a beer", they're already drawing on assumptions about wine which are rooted in social practice as much, if not more than taste.

"this is I think, for the majority of the population, the greatest determing factor in what music people do and do not like. it ties together our two arguments: most white people grew up listening to rock and this has shaped their aesthetic musical preferences."

So why do most white people grow up listening to rock then? Is it because white people are genetically designed to enjoy rock? Or are you agreeing with me that enjoyment is socially mediated?

No I'm not trying to be as hardline as this - individuals obviously break free of their social contexts all the time (most frequently by joining other social contexts). But I'm not talking about individuals so much as overall trends within groups of people, and I think that on that level it's clear that those social contexts still have quite a sway.

Again the ILM analogy is useful here: there are individuals on ILM who will refuse to see any value in chart pop until their dying breath, but nonetheless ILM has had quite a good success rate when it comes to opening up people to chart pop who previously disliked it. It's not that the latter group are passive receptacles for ILM's position on chart pop. Rather, that there was always the chance they might begin to like some chart pop if they were placed in a social context which encouraged as much.

What I'm trying to do, and what I think Oops is trying to do as well, is demand that we dig our circles deeper, if we want to understand what's really happening. The question of this thread wasn't "I have a friend who likes some things but dislikes some overall related category, so does he have social attitudes?" The friend was expressing specific likes and dislikes.

Let's take this a model. Lester Bangs wrote in his review of the Stooges' Metallic K.O.:

Jungle war with bike gangs is one thing, but it gets a little more complicated when those of us who love being around that war (at least vicariously) have to stop to consider why and what we're loving. Because one of the things we're loving is self-hate, and another may well be a human being committing suicide.

("I just drank a fifth a vodka/Dare me to drive?")

Of course, you can answer that question - correctly - by saying, "Well, one reason is that cultural gatekeepers like Lester Bangs (and Frank Kogan, and Paul Simon, and Lou Reed, and Peter Laughner) tell a Hero Story in which self-destruction is portrayed as heroic." This answer is true, but what the hell does it tell us? Why did we gatekeepers come to buy (and sell) that story in the first place, and why does anyone buy our story and keep paying us to man their gates?

("Cars are crashing every night/I drink and drive everything's in sight/I make the fire but I miss the firefight/I hit the bull's eye every night.")

One answer is that we were raised on this story (thanks to earlier gatekeepers), various Hero Tales of noncompromise unto death, so that's why it appeals to us later; but surely there's more to it than that. Not that there will ever be a "reason" that doesn't have a story underneath it, or a story that doesn't have a reason underneath it. ("I lay awake and strap myself into bed/With a bulletproof vest on/And shoot myself in the head.") But the point is, if you're willing to dig through to these stories, the discussion makes its way to the lived experience of at least some of the people who are deciding to listen to Eminem but may or may not be listening to Snoop Dogg. How can you have a discussion of why people might listen to Eminem and the Beastie Boys, and not talk about Eminem and the Beastie Boys? ("You get nothin' for nothin' if that's what you do/Turn around bitch I got a use for you/Besides you ain't got nothin better to do/And I'm bored.") (The Beastie Boys' "Fight for Your Right to Party," by the way, uses a close cousin to the riff from the Stooges' "I'm Loose" and the MC5's "Kick Out the Jams.")

So anyway, Lester and I were brought up on previous gatekeepers, and were repeating an old story. For example, way back when, Kenneth Rexroth wrote this (New York Times book review) about the poet Weldon Kees:

When Weldon Kees started to write, the alienated poetic hero was at the height of his fashion. Conrad Aiken and T.S. Eliot had launched him on his poetic career a generation before, and young W.H. Auden had picked him up and put him on the science-fiction stage of a near future of universal disorder and decay. At first Weldon Kees' poems seemed to be unusually successful exercises in a very current idiom. Then, as they accumulated, it became apparent that they were something very different; in fact quite the opposite - this man really meant every word of it....

He is Robinson Crusoe, utterly alone on Madison Avenue, a stranger and afraid in the world of high-paying news weeklies, fashionable galleries, jazz concerts, highbrow movies, sophisticated reviews - the world in which Weldon Kees was eminently successful. When he said, in these gripping poems, that it filled him with absolute horror, he meant it. On July 18, 1955, his car was found abandoned on the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge. He has never been seen since.

(Typical numbskull pseudointellectual response to this passage would be "Oh, he meant it! What a rockist thing to say." As if calling it rockist would help us to understand the story, or to explain its appeal.)

Anyway, to answer the question posed at the start of this thread: Well, I don't know what gives with your friend, or why he likes Eminem and the Beasties and Beck and Buck 65 but doesn't generally like hip-hop. There could be all sorts of reasons, and your friend might like Eminem and crew for reasons very different from mine (and I haven't analyzed all the reasons why I like those guys anyway [I've heard them all except Prefuse 73], and since I love hip-hop I wouldn't be attuned to your friend's dislike of the genre, anyway); but I do know that there are no black equivalents to Eminem, Beck, Buck 65, and the Beasties (not that those guys are all that similar to each other, mind you), so the music rather than the skin color might be what's moving your friend towards Beasties and away from Snoop, and how the music plays to his life (as a white person) and to his own hero stories, which might not or might not have some similarity to mine.

("Since age 12 I felt like someone else 'cause I hung my original self from the top bunk with a belt.")

Possibly one too many "nots" in that sentence, though maybe not.

he's also from the midwest!

how do we negotiate between "It's not surprising that a rock fan would hear something that rings his bell in Eminem and the Beastie Boys. Like attracts like" and "What's REAL is what's happening SOMEWHERE ELSE"?

(ie that great frith quote frank has often leaned on, where frith looks at and tries to explain the attraction early british jazz and rock had for music from entirely elsewhere)

I've never really come across this, to be honest. The only thing vaguely along these lines I can think of is the appeal of Three Feet High & Rising, because it drew references from white and black culture. So, basically, my answer to the question would be no.

sometimes when i listen to stuff i don't think...but then other times i'm thinking about stuff and people are talking to me but i'm not really listening.

I think I interpreted the original post a bit differently insofar as Jacobo rock seemed to be saying his friend dismissed hip hop as a whole but then liked certain tangential examples of hip hop or quasi-hip hop made by white artists - presumably he does not consider this music to be "hip hop", or he's thinking of something more specific than these groups when he says "I don't like hip hop". Furthermore, presumably he expects jacobo rock to understand that when he says "I don't like hip hop" he doesn't mean those groups - i.e. it's not merely that the Beastie Boys are not hip hop in his own head, they are also not hip hop in reality. On what does he base this assumption if not the existence of a discourse that would support this distinction?

Your stuff above is great and insightful as usual Frank, but are attitudes towards genres as a whole really about personal hero stories? I tend to think any discussion about genre as a whole is always a discussion of social attitudes - if not necessarily racist ones.

If I apply your interpretation - that this is merely an expression of specific likes or dislikes - then I agree with everything you said.

How can the discussion go anywhere if we don't talk about particular words and music and what is done with them?

i know this will be annoy a few here, but to me hip-hop is mostly just stupid and juvenile music for teenagers. it's either juvenile or totally pretentious. i don't want to hear some guy "spreading the knowledge" any more than i want to hear some guy talking about how big his dick is. i know not all hip-hop is like this, but it's rare that i find a hip-hop act where i like the production, the lyrics, and the rapper's style. i like a lot of groups that don't meet all of that criteria, but i don't love them.

'minimal' hip-hop production is a joke. i often hear some of these songs critics rave so much about, and think they have all been bamboozled somehow. timbaland (in his prime) is the only hip-hop producer that did minimal well. i lost so much respect for so many music writers over that retarded ying yang twins song, it's not even funny.

Indie-alternative bands who've made my P&J ballot since 1998: Rocket from the Tombs, Mirrors, Notekillers, Manu Chao, Fabulous Disaster, The Donnas, Turbonegro, Lifter Puller, Ugly Casanova, Gore Gore Girls, Clone Defects, Winfred E. Eye, A.R.E. Weapons, The Hold Steady, Country Teasers, Electric Six. Anyway, this list is unrepresentative of indie-alternative as a whole, starting as it does with some archival punks and no wavers from back when punk was punk and sheep were sheep (though back in the '90s I did once vote for the Auteurs, and I might have voted for Franz Ferdinand last year had a paid them sufficient attention). So anyway, old punk, old no wave, neo glitter, neo punk chicks, bands that remind me of the Fall, bands that remind me of the Electric Eels, bands that remind me of Red Dark Sweet, bands that remind me of Foreigner, bands that remind other people of Suicide, Manu Chao. (Red Dark Sweet was a band I was in 1981-1982.) Anyway, these performers loosely represent something of a sensibility (or several sensibilities), and this sensibility isn't incompatible with my overall opinion that indie-alternative blows chunks. (However, I hope I'm able to like things that are way outside my sensibility.)

By analogy, Jacobo's friend's list could therefore represent a sensibility rather than his swooning strictly on the basis of paleness of face.

(This is not meant as a criticism of Beck.)

i didn't write that "ugly and mean" post, but i could have.

By analogy, Jacobo's friend's list could therefore represent a sensibility rather than his swooning strictly on the basis of paleness of face.

yes. that's what i was trying to say 200 posts back.

the nagging doubt i have about "this speaks to me" comes where you have to train yrself somewhat - eg acquire a taste, in the learning-to-drink-shrry-and-eat-olives sense (haha and "get jazz") - before the thing speaks to you

it's a chicken-and-egg type nag i guess: you hear something and think "i would LIKE this to speak to me but i will have to do a lot of homework before it does"

(ps this HaPPENED to me! the v.first braxton record i ever heard - he and leo smith and leroy jenkins squeakin ballons bcz they couldn't afford synthesiers, and i thought "i would like to love this but but i have no idea what's going on, it just soundss balloons squeaking! i shall put it on the shelf and steep myself in whatever i need to before i listen again")

(so what was speaking to me here? the music? i don;t think so. an idea about what kiund of people they were and what this music "meant"? i think the latter)

i was specifically thinking of "wait", and "drop it like it's hot". 'minimal' as an adjective in reference to the production... i don't think anybody is comparing the neptunes to philip glass or anything. the first time i ever heard a lil' jon song, "there's some hoes in the house" or something like that, i honestly thought it was a joke song - one of those internet gags like the star wars rap or something. i guess i am a crusty old man who will never get the appeal to that stuff.

and i'm not any regular posting under a guise, i am just a lurking music-lover who is bored at work and have a hard time keeping my uninformed yap shut.

wow, this is like a concise list of everything good about hip-hop right now.

But isn't this kinda the point? Someone saying "I don't like hip hop" doesn't penetrate to the level that you want to take this conversation, they are deliberately speaking in generalities about imagined words, imagined music, and what is imagined is done with them.

Let's say that one of the ways that specific music works on us is to play with our imaginary construction of genre, strategically adhering to or departing from our expectations in different ways. ie. we're accustomed to expecting that, in the context of a genre, X means Y, but then a particular piece of music uses X in a way that appears to equal Z, or signifies Y by using W.

Our relationship to a particular piece of music is thus never simply to that piece of music, it's also an expression of the relationship between what the music does and the imaginary it evokes (via genre belonging) does.

(this is even implied by your comments re alternative-indie - ie. the music you like has a sensibility which might be its use of [w] or its expression of [z] in relation to x/y)

If we're talking about a particular sensibility then, aren't we talking not only about some vital "like" of lived experience, but also of how the speaker considers genre to work? the existence of [w] or [z] implies the existence of a belief in a certain [y] and [z] in the first place. And once you have a [y] and [z], you have a certain regulative norm that applies across specific examples of music. So the question becomes, where does this regulative norm come from?

Perhaps if we're talking about hero stories, we can also talk about myths: stories whose form is mystical, whose resonance is personal, whose application is vague (and likely to breed differences in interpretation) and whose dissemination is social. An example "what rock & roll means..."

Beastie Boys may have appeal to those whose main reason for disliking hip-hop is hip-hop doesn't use real instruments (read: noisy rawk guitars)

word is bond.

I'm gonna take a stab at a tiny thing discussed here. I like gun talk in rap (more than I like other supposed lyrical cliches). It's like watching an action movie. Sometimes it's a cheesy genre flick, but sometimes it's really well done. Some whites take gun talk too seriously, and in it see all the things they hate about (their image of) black people -- aggressive, violent, savage, nihilistic. They don't "hate" black people, they would never burn a cross or nuthin, but they can write them off (they probably have very little contact with blacks in real life), and not face up to their own racist beliefs. I'll bet dollars to donuts dude's friend doesn't talk to a whole lot of black people on a daily basis. Or read black history, watch black movies, etc. Which, ok, that's his taste, but if you live in America, it's fucking ignorant and a problem.

This isn't limited to whites. Upper-class blacks (which is a category with LOTS of baggage) have similar criticisms of guntalk/ho-talk/etc. in hip hop. Really, they're afraid of lower-class blacks (a group some "respectable" blacks, usually older, refer to as "the niggers").

So does the macho gun wielder have an undue influence on the black youf? Maybe. But do whites worry (to the same extent) that their kids' music isn't giving them the proper moral instruction? Maybe. But they miss the point. America has a lot of guns. American culture has a lot of guns (comix/movies/tv shows/rap music/toys/video games). Americans kill people with guns a lot. Rap music didn't make gun culture.

Can someone find guntalk boring? Sure. Can they say complain they "don't relate to it"? No. Black youfs don't necessarily "relate" to guns popping off everywhere 24/7. But they like strong black superheroes/supervillains a la the personas in most rap tracks derided by whites.

Anyway, this is rambling, but a lot of people, even smart ones, overlook the effect of prison culture on the current generation of blacks. The same people making hip hop were the first to be affected by the criminalization of being black and poor in the late seventies. Prison populations have skyrocketed in the past 20-30 years, a huge proportion of them black. So you get a lot of hopelessness, a lot of distrust, fear, violence, etc. Prison culture has had a huge impact on hip hop culture, but don't confuse the two.

One thing to clarify, when white folks say "they don't relate" to guntalk, there's an implicit assumption that black people who listen to rap DO relate to guntalk, carry guns all the time, rob people, etc. The average black youf may indeed come into contact with more gun crime, but they aren't robbing and shit.

Most OTM ever.

Why do we read about dead, white English people in school? etc etc etc

what.. you got a man?
-- Sterling Clover (s.clove...), July 30th, 2005.

haha!

They don't overlook it, they just don't give a shit.

It is frustrating that this never went unchallenged - Elton congratulated Eminem because he (Elton) heard Eminem's lyrics in the context of British black comedy, i.e. knew how the signifiers worked there and therefore that he wasn't being attacked as a gay man despite the appearances that so many were sucked into believing (i.e that for some reason Americans were taking the Shady persona seriously when it is obviously a comic creation).

otherwise altho im skeptical of this speculation abt elton anglocizing eminem uh, the shady persona to me is neither obviously comic nor essentially comic, it is occasionally funny, tho

There's a deep comic strain running through hip hop per se - from "Rapper's Delight" on really, white and black - Biggie and Kanye are Eminem's equal all the three are different from one another, but the Beastie Boys started out that way too - Chuck had his Flav; even The Chronic had RBX. Also you can't rule out the dozens and other game playing as deep influences.

Exactly, cuz they don't give a shit! And not just about African Americans either. They don't care about LOTS of stuff.

"scott im interested in the difference btw overlooking smthng vs not giving a shit, cld u elaborate?"

Usually, if you are overlooking something, it means that you are ignoring something or have something to overlook. That you don't want to think about something. I think, for a vast majority of people, this isn't the case. They don't think about it AT ALL. They don't think about or debate the ramifications of a corrupt and haphazard criminal justice system that is stacked against the poor and that favors people who aren't poor. They don't think about a decades-long near-genocidal war on drugs that has laid waste to GENERATIONS of American citizens and the effects that this has on society both here and abroad. They don't think about any of these things. They just want the bad guys LOCKED UP. and they want the key thrown away. They want to PUNISH "bad" people. And when those people are gone, they are DEAD. They cease to exist. And this is fine for a great many citizens of the United States. They aren't shielding their eyes from the messy realities of life and the consequences of overzealous law enforcement. They hired/voted for that overzealous law enforcement! They want vengeance, not rehabilitation. They just want people to stay off their fucking lawns. A lot of Americans have no tolerance for anything that doesn't work or that isn't working. They just throw it away. That includes people. For more insight, I recommend reading the article in the latest Harper's magazine on how Americans have perverted Christ's teachings into a personal wish-fullfillment/damn the weak philosophy that is as hard-hearted as it is mind-bogglingly selfish and diseased.

on some levels, yes, people may shy away from the specifics of poverty/prison/what their tax-dollars buy them, but some people are just naturally squeamish. other people enjoy the fruits of inequality by watching Cops and choice HBO docudramas. And some people even find themselves rooting for the children of a drug dealer. I know I'm curious as to what kinds of hijinx Meadow and Anthony Jr. are gonna get up to on the next season of The Sopranos! (jeez, if there is a next season. they really make you wait.)All in all, people seem pretty happy with the system of justice in this country that we are ALL responsible for.

That's all I meant when I said that people don't give a shit and weren't overlooking the effects of a prison-culture on people.

Someone just sent me that article a few days ago (partial text). I went to Catholic school, Congregationalist sunday school and a quaker high school so it all seems rather DUH to me. Golden rule, J-Dog chill with prostitutes, etc.

The Strokes - First Impressions of Earth
Beck - Guerolito
Eminem - Curtain Call: The Hits
Girls Aloud - Chemistry
Carl Craig - Fabric 25
Jens Lekman - Oh You're So Silent Jens
Death From Above 1979 - Romance Bloody...
Lady Sovereign - Vertically Challenged
Wilco - Kicking Television: Live in...
Menomena - Under an Hour
Bonnie Prince Billy - Summer in the...
Madonna - Confessions on a Dance Floor
Kelley Polar - Love Songs of the...
Matias Aguayo - Are You Really Lost
Kate Bush - Aerial

There are some songs and artists I can relate to (I, like Jay Z, have no patience and hate waiting), but it's not some prerequisite that I need all music to fit into for me to enjoy. Sometimes I just want to nod my head or understand the emotion the artist is feeling or space out or one of a million billion different levels I as a human can appreciate music on.

Is it?

Please highlight the exact passage where I used the words "every time I listen to music."

You're just kidding around but the word cracker comes from Scotland and the obnoxious Scottish people who got that tag ("Shakespeare's King John (1595): "What cracker is this . . . that deafes our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath?") ironically moved to the Southern US and formed both Southern white and black American culture in general.

The black card game of whist (which some of my black friends' still play!) was picked up directly from Northern Brits for one example.

To call Merritt a cracker is essentially no different from calling him a "loud nigger."

I'm just pointing out that irony always wins.

Again. Irony. Winning, etc

http://tiny.abstractdynamics.org/

Ohhhhh-T-M !!

Or is it his token hip-hop selection in question? Or his token 11% of his votes by black artists? There are plenty of other cultures completely absent from his ballot as well, should we alert Amnesty International?

Don't want a cat,
Scratching its claws all over my
Habitat
Giving no love and getting fat
Oh, (oh oh) you can get lonely
And a cat's no help with that

-----------

Morrissey, "King Leer"
-----------

Your boyfriend, he
displays to me
more than just
a hint of cruelty
I tried to surprise you
I crept up behind you
with a homeless chihuahua
you gushed for an hour
you handed him back and said
"You'll never guess
I'm bored now"

---

thus: CHIHUAHUA = GAYISM

http://www.chihuahua-info.de/fotos/paris.hilton.chihuahua.jpg

This debate is fucking boring. It's so lame, people aren't even talking past each other, they're just popping out these strawmen that were stale the first time someone trotted them out. Sasha and Jessica aren't arguing that people who hate rap hate black people. Whatsisname at Slate isn't arguing that musical taste exists in a vacuum.

Frankly, Magnetic Fields stuff is so escapist, so clearly untouched by urban America, that it does strike me as similar (in its cultural white flight) to all the creepy, interchangeable white suburban/rural dramas on TV that started with Dawsons Creek (the OC, Smallville, One Tree Hill, etc etc.)

On the other hand, I believe Stephin when he says he just doesn't give a shit about syncopation and rhythm and shit. Man just likes a good tune, and thank god, because now we have 69 Love Songs. And that being the case, his taste is going to skew white. It's problematic, but not inherently racist.

I dunno, I think Sasha and Jessica chose the wrong guy to pick on here, but can we recognize that linking taste in music to the rest of the culture isn't ridiculous?

Dudes, see the EMP thread for much more on this, including posts from Hopper and a big-ass thing I posted before I realized y'all were talking about it here.

http://www.sashafrerejones.com/2006/05/idee_trix.html

Ask Don Delillo to do the same for books, and it's not like that list should be the syllabus in universities nationwide - it would just be interesting as a reflection of literature that has resonated with him as an artist. In Merritt's case, it happened to be work that would be an appropriate tie-in with the records he released that year, and probably more fun for him to do than an interview. It's just an artist's list in a weekly magazine, is all. I love reading artists' best-of lists (music, books, whatever) for their idiosyncracies and championing of underappreciated work, not for their breadth.

And just so we're careful what we wish for in asking our songbook composers to acknowledge rock and r&b influences, would anyone like to listen to Rent?

(I'm not a fan of 69 Love Songs because I can't get over the production and Merritt's voice - so hearing the same songs on a Morning Becomes Eclectic archive was quite a revelation.)

I can't think of a better pop song about people who've been sexually abused than "Papa Was A Rodeo".

Mind you, I'm no fan of Merritt -- but it's for strictly musical reasons. (All his songs sound, to me, like demos with which he has no emotional connection. His lyrics are repetitive, and frequently embarrassing in a tee-hee-look-at-me-I-am-talking-about-sex-aren't-I-shocking? kind of way. Also, I tend to dislike synthesizers. Personal biases, blah.) But I think expecting songs that aren't about class/race/etc. to acknowledge those topics is supremely ridiculous -- that's not the point of the song, the point of the song is that someone is in some sort of unrequited love, or requited love, or whatever. And I think it is fair to say that maintaining lyrical focus within a song is particularly important to Merritt, but I think that much breadth cannot be expected of anybody.

Maybe he could write his songs as normal, only devote the bridges to Matters of Political Import? "This guy doesn't love me, he doesn't love me... / also, I would like to point out that a lot of people are homeless / something ought to be done / And if there are any racists listening to this song / Well, you guys can just fuck off, okay? / Oh, good heavens, I said "fuck"! / (synthesizer solo)"

I blame Dave Chappelle for breaking down my inhibitions.

I should clarify that the archetype of the "cracker" is from the same historical family as the redneck/white trash/wigger/nigger/gangsta/pranksta person. The invention of the word "wigger" to describe "backwards white guys trying to act backwards black guys" or something similar is redundant as we already have enough words for those types of people (redneck, cracker, good ol' boy, etc). To criticize a white person for being anti-black and then to call him a cracker is a sort of circular insult.

I find it backwards though that so much can goes on in message boards but the only thing that brings people to react morally is the idea that a bad word might be used (even objectively speaking) by the wrong race on a keyboard. Would the use of the word "cock" only be acceptable if I came from I Love Farming? I think not.

When Merritt said "I think it's shocking that we're not allowed to play coon songs anymore" it reminded me of Freepers who say "niggardly" all the time just because hey it's not "technically" offensive nudge wink.

I tried playing Merritt a track by the Southern rapper Cee-lo, called "One for the Road," a dazzling display of verbal ingenuity and wit I thought he might enjoy. Before Cee-lo actually starts rapping, there's a short introduction, in which, sounding very Southern and very black, he says, "Yeah, mm-mm-mm, yeah that sho' feel good. Hello, I go by the name of simply Cee-lo Green, how d'ya do? Welcome. I thought I'd seize this opportunity to tell you a little bit more about myself, if you don't mind. This is my vision, ya know what I'm sayin'? Check me out now."

Unremarkable and tame, at least it seemed to me, but it was too much for Merritt, who stopped the song after a few seconds of this. "I think it's shocking that we're not allowed to play coon songs anymore, but people, both white and black, behave in more vicious caricatures of African-Americans than they had in the 19th century. It's grotesque. Presumably it's just a character, and that person doesn't actually talk that way, but that accent, that vocal presentation, would not have been out of place in the Christy Minstrels." Dramatic pause to prepare for the inevitable hyperbolic quip, "In fact, it would probably have been considered too tasteless for the Christy Minstrels."

Or you know...maybe he has a different taste and cultural background. Does anyone think he'd give more time to a country act in the Shania/Toby Keith mold? This isn't exactly the first time New York musicians could be said to be out of touch with mainstream American taste (!). This is all very similar to the accusations Charlie Gillett had made towards the Velvet Underground in Sound of the City, "(describing the VU sound) deliberately primitive musical accompanyment seemed to have filtered all the black influences out of rock n roll, leaving an amateurish, clumsy, but undeniably atmospheric background." And the Velvets at least had an explicitly anti-black racist in Nico to warrant suspicion that their music wasn't black enough for critics.

Let's stop getting shocked that affluent, educated, homosexual songwriters and artists living in Manhatten bring a more European approach and taste to music and don't instantly remind everybody of America and the South especially.

Having said that, rap songs use the word "faggot" so regularly - and get a pass from critics so routinely, either by explaining "it doesn't really mean gay" (what the fucking fuck, who are you to tell people whether an abusive epithet commonly aimed at them is or isn't abusive in a given context) or just quietly ignoring it - that one oughtn't be surprised if he thinks "fuck a genre that on the whole thinks I am beneath contempt by virtue of who I am"

-- Cunga (visionsofjohann...), May 11th, 2006

Um, Cunga, I hope you are joking, because the last time I checked there were people of color living in NYC, and correct me if I am wrong, but various people of color in NYC have contributed to the music world in countless decades now. I hear that there are books out, available in the US and Europe, marketed on the internet, that have text and pictures about the contributions of these people of color from New York. I understand you can ever hear this music live, or out of car windows and such in both NYC and Europe on ocassion.

It seems more like Merritt has just chosen to isolate himself from some African-American made music. To a certain degree that is his perogative (are people requiring NYC opera singers and classical musicians and metalheads or whomever to document a multicultural i-pod song list?), but on the other hand he has published a list of what he considered to be important 20th century music, and he gives pretentious interviews and writes pretentious reviews declaiming what he thinks is important. I do not think this makes him a racist, but it does seem to allow for his tastes to be questioned.

best song ever.

"A pretty girl is like a minstrel show It makes you laugh
It makes you cry You go It just isn't the same on radio
It's all about the makeup and the dancing and the Oh,"

Of course, the next verse compares the same pretty girl to a violent crime...but then again using the image of a minstrel show as a means of ironic juxtaposition is questionable.

alert me when somebody gets called out on ilm for calling somebody "bitch" or "faggot"

Having said that, rap songs use the word "faggot" so regularly - and get a pass from critics so routinely, either by explaining "it doesn't really mean gay" (what the fucking fuck, who are you to tell people whether an abusive epithet commonly aimed at them is or isn't abusive in a given context) or just quietly ignoring it - that one oughtn't be surprised if he thinks "fuck a genre that on the whole thinks I am beneath contempt by virtue of who I am"

My point is: why would a gay artist have any interest in a genre which, with the exception of the (very) occasional Kanye, dehumanizes him constantly? (why, for that matter, would a woman?) I would expect a gay artist to be about as sympathetic to hiphop as a hiphop artist would be to National Socialist Black Metal.

Calling SM "indie rock" will getcha bruised! (ok, an ornery protest)

Just caught up with this navel-gazing 'controversy' on the Noise board, as I'd never click on this topic or a "jessica hopper" thread...

Cook in that Slate piece:

the whole of their sustained attack against Merritt is founded on the dangerous and stupid notion that one's taste in music can be interrogated for signs of racist intent the same way a university's admissions process can: If the number of black artists in your iPod falls too far below 12.5 percent of the total, then you are violating someone's civil rights.

O the fuckin' TM. Fuck jh and Frere-Jones with the same chainsaw.

It's clearly overboard to call Merritt a racist, but I've always been uncomfortable with his (not actually his, but similar to) views on music/culture dismissiveness toward musical pop culture. There's just something odd about the attitude that always seemed tied up in race, but not actually racist. There's one ILE pariah who does the Merritt dance quite often.

-- milo z (wooderso...), May 11th, 2006.

LOL! Theyyy calll the wind pa-riah..... That's logic worthy of Parentheses Man. Where's that film poll?

Really looking fwd to the new Dr. Octagon album, btw, as comedy records from all quarters are about all I can stand anymore (eg, Art Brut).

This is totally misleading. Didn't nabisco address this in the emp thread? does everyone just say 'nabisco otm' and not read what he writes? Ditto on the Zoilus post.

Yo, I can freak, fly, flow, fuck up a faggot/Don't understand their ways I ain't down with gays

Fuckin' mayonaise eatin', cat ownin' fancy ass indie rock old faggIt

xpost see?

yeah if you never heard an underground rap album ever before or never bothered asking anybody over 40 what they think of crunk/pop/gangsta rap

Having said that, rap songs use the word "faggot" so regularly - and get a pass from critics so routinely, either by explaining "it doesn't really mean gay" (what the fucking fuck, who are you to tell people whether an abusive epithet commonly aimed at them is or isn't abusive in a given context) or just quietly ignoring it - that one oughtn't be surprised if he thinks "fuck a genre that on the whole thinks I am beneath contempt by virtue of who I am"

isnt this dude into like wack old pre-war bicycle with the big wheel music? isnt that a genre much likelier to hate fags than rap music? and since when is this argument just about rap anyway, dude seems mostly ignorant of it & much more interested in dismissing modern r&b, probably the most gay-friendly pop genre in america! youre totally grasping at straws here, & kinda like right wingers vs 'islamofascism' using lefty signifiers to attack something from a regressive conservative, not-just-a-tiny-bit-racist stance

This fuckin' fairy looks like a queer middle aged european version of Doug Funnie.

Fuck the aja/dante krew and fuck downhicked hipster newjack bloggers.

ummm, no - its authors are perhaps as likely to harbor the same attitude (except, no, because that style of music was where a LOT of gay musicians could work back in the day), but unless you know something about 30's music that I don't, you didn't hear a lot of people calling people faggots in it. It was theater music, and theater has historically (at least from Roman times) been a place where gay men & women could work relatively unharassed.

I'm not grasping at straws; I'm just wondering (pointlessly) against why predominantly white male ilm will fight the good fight against any possible latent racist tendency anywhere while ignoring, soft-soaping, excusing, or glossing over misogyny and homophobia, which are both of them as virulent, harmful, and wrong as racism is

I'm afraid I'm a little in over my head even posting in this thread, and I know I'm responding to a tangent, but just a thought on why people might be slower to condemn things like use of the word "bitch" in hip-hop than racism in music. There's a certain amount of tension between the sexes that's just kind of a given in pop music (hip-hop totally doesn't have the monopoly on this), because so much of the subject matter is sex/relationships. and because men are historically better-represented as musicians, songwriters, whatever, there's a lot more hostility to women out there in song lyrics than there is hostility to men. so it can be hard to ascertain how much derogatory references to women in rap lyrics are, you know, deep down misogyny, and how much are an epiphenomenon of the real issue, which is about accumulated heartbreak, or whatever. obviously there are numerous clear-cut instances of misogyny, but I do think it can be fairly subjective. none of this is to excuse what I think Thomas was suggesting, that maybe dudes get a thrill out of the misogyny in rap lyrics.

on the homophobia, I've got nothing.

xpost

what ilm are you reading?

I'm not tryna fuck an indian bitch in a hurry/'cause you know they pussy smells of curry

-Kool G. Rap-chack da bitch

Yo, what was that kids name ?

utter bullshit. and there isn't a "female answer record for every sexist jam" - all the fucking jams are sexist! fuckin' ALL of them! calling women "bitches" is sexist, period, just like whites using the N-word is racist whether they mean any harm by it or not - that you're desensitized to it (or don't give a shit about about women's cultural or subcultural status) doesn't mean it's all a-ok

Name a rock single in the top 40 from the 1960s with the words "marijuana" or "LSD" in it.

I want to say something about the use of the word "bitch," but I can't formulate it without sounding like a self-hater, so...

The same way you listen to rock?

I'm not gonna get on a high horse about minstrelsy --- to me thats just a word for a kind of awkward cultural conversation that there's no way around ---- but it does seem kind of weak-ass to say OH THE CARICATURES NOWADAYS ARE SO MUCH WORSE cause back then race relations were cute but when I hear these folks shouting angry things in the street right outside my window in the present tense goodness sakes I just find that distasteful!!!

fucking hell athens all over this thread now!

now see what ann coulter was tryna say here, without actually saying it or anything, of course,, is that as a woman she feels threatened by the sexist laws of modern islam, and its perfectly within her rights to feel that, as a woman, you know

How about Sage Fagcis ?

the homophobia dynamic is different (that's why it's the one you prefer to address) - the sexism one isn't, except that it's worse, because it's a population who unquestionably holds most/all (ymmv) of the power using language ("bitch," "ho") to subjugate/further subjugate the historically disenfranchised population - men calling women "bitch" is no less hurtful, nor less odious, than white men calling black men by the N-word

x-post trife you gotta get off coulter's jock one of these days

citation?

what position are you in to argue either of these things? for the record women weren't denied humanity by birthright, unless they were black women, and theres no lineage of government-constructed poverty running through women in american history

Uh what?

xpost with:

what position are you in to argue either of these things? for the record women weren't denied humanity by birthright, unless they were black women, and theres no lineage of government-constructed poverty running through women in american

yes, they were. For about four thousand years. And denying women the right to the workplace is gov't-constructed poverty.

therefore, calling women 'bitches' is peachy. Also, the US never denied Jews humanity by birthright, so let's unload on them, too.

"Rock should have consisted of only the Paul McCartney branch, not the Lennon/Jagger/Richards one," he mourns archly. Detesting the very idea of white blues ("it's fundamentally racist"), he admits that his own aesthetic universe�from Nordic synthipop to redneck C&W�is "so darn white!" "I'm not so concerned with rhythm or syncopation, which are the main concerns of black music after Duke Ellington."

okay, see, this is why I hate discussions like this. this comparison shouldn't happen. I mean, it can't be substantiated and in a weird way it plays sexism off against racism as though they're discrete and comparable entities, when in the real world they're messily intertwined in all sorts of ways. when you start saying things are the same, you lose the particularities of how they actually operate.

No they thought they were fucking someone who didn't count AT ALL for voting purposes.

And while TT/JD might be right about a few folks being more willing to get into racial issues than gender ones, I don't think that's representative of the wider world, where for many many people the opposite is true. I think that as a point of argument it might work with some people on ilm but in the wider world there are plenty of racist feminists who've done the same thing in reverse, and there's evidence of this throughout history, so I don't think its fair to generalize.

Yeah it's been historically important in reifying their place as second class citizens.

was turned into this:
merritt's assertion that duke ellington ruined american music by 'africanizing' it and that's why the pop charts are filled with 'mongrels' now (ca. spring 2000) and that's why abba could never chart now

are you playing a subset ("rappers") against the general population here? I also find that "conditionally" thing total garbage, the madonna-whore/bitch bit is the exact same power dynamic as "I know some good 'uns, hard workers, but most of 'em are shiftless"

deej I'm talking specifically about ILM, because I think that gender inequity & racial inequity are parts of the same disease, and that to care about one and not the other is effectively to care about neither

xpost no James I don't! same power dynamic! Ethan you're not seriously arguing that abusive language toward women is as common in rock records as it is in rap ones, are you? 'cause if you are you are smokin' that loco weed

hip-hop: misogynist
rock: you can't seriously think it's misogynist, that's crazy talk

you know personally that I've been a feminist most of my lif

you know personally that I've been a feminist most of my lif

you know personally that I've been a feminist most of my lif

you know personally that I've been a feminist most of my lif

you know personally that I've been a feminist most of my lif

you know personally that I've been a feminist most of my lif

was turned into this:
merritt's assertion that duke ellington ruined american music by 'africanizing' it and that's why the pop charts are filled with 'mongrels' now (ca. spring 2000) and that's why abba could never chart now

No, it got turned into:

"AS A WHITE MAN, I HATE NIGGERS!!"

I have to say, this is fairly well OTM, except of course I'll still argue that (what I actually said, mind) openly abusive language should be discouraged - one could make the case, I guess, that rock uses less of it because white culture is so heavily shame-based that it cloaks its motivations even when it doesn't really need to. But what I meant - what I'm pretty sure I said outright! - is that rap uses the word "bitch" both as a general descriptive & abusive epithet, and that that's harmful and wrong, whereas rock does so far less often. And that the use of "bitch" as a way of emasculating one's enemies offers further proof, if any were needed, that the word is indicative of contempt for women.

xpost James I only picked indie 'cause I don't listen to or write about any mainstream rock, I just don't give a shit about it! why I get all worked up about rap = I used to enjoy the music & now I don't, just can't, because it's so fucking openly hateful; indie rock stuff (and metal) is either off in its own nonsense universe, or somewhat engaged with the question. But maybe you guys are hearing rock tunes about beating up women that I'm not, I dunno!

FIGHT FOR JUSTICE, MAN

LOL IRONY

Do you think Black people appreciate your efforts to give them their status as ultimate victims?

Ethan bcz I'm fond of you can I tell Sadat X to suck his own dick or does that count as playing save-a-ho?

the best part was when he said women weren't legally denied personhood but blacks were, it was like a big sign saying "I don't actually know anything about women's history but I'm keen to make statements about it"

you may not know this dude Eth but he's right here, it's like you care about the one issue - presumably because you care, generally speaking, about abstract matters like justice and fairness and equality - but aren't interested in learning about the other at all

That second pic was work safe other than Necro's ugly face.

says the guy whose name is ++--+++-+. Nigga, fuck you.

How about Sage Fagcis ?

"I'm a spaceman, you're a filthy fuckin' bitch"?

thread should have been locked a while ago Ned

Dose One ???

like merrit when he says he likes minstrel shows!

...in a retro-styled song with a ukelele upfront. Looking up Bert Williams might help (bigger in his day than Jessica Simpson).

I hear you Ethan and I know you care more than I say you do sometimes. At the same time (and you & I have had this argument before) the more "different & tangled" history isn't the white-on-black one: it's the male-on-female one, which is a cancer that cuts across cultures & societies and has been going on far longer and has discounted the lives of more people! white Europeans invented white-on-black racism in order to rape Africa & get free labor (Africans in Italy circa 200 B.C. held office, wrote books, etc); women have been fucked-over for thousands of years! I agree with you, and am in fact arguing, that sexism & racism are part of a single malevolent impulse...which is exactly why I'm always arguing that it's a little weird when somebody (as here) wants to call out somebody for a whiff of questionable racial attitude in a place where there are seldom discussions of widespread misogyny, which occurs across the entire spectrum of pop music, as you yourself & blount have aptly observed

-- -+-+-+++- (-...), May 11th, 2006.

this is sort of a ridiculous viewpoint. since when are we holding artists accountable for the people who buy their records? does this serve any purpose other than to lionize the adventurous music listener?

-- Sadat X (derek...)

implied misogyny in "two women walk up to a penny"

-- Thomas Tallis (tallis4...)

GOOD POINT JOHN oh wait

"Hayden get off my digga-digga-digga-dick bitch"

-- Thomas Tallis (tallis4...), May 12th, 2004.

i guess its ok as long sensitive indie rock singer-songwriters put on blackface for transgressive jokes, its not like those black rapper guys who say bitch can go back to being sensitive feminist indie dudes later on

what does "nm" mean?

blount, lose the hard-on for me, it bores

You really think so? You think using "bitch" interchangably with "woman" is the same as a single remark in visible quotation marks?

I listen to 'em all the time! I just don't make sorry-ass excuses for them!

I mean Graveland rock real hard but I don't think I'd hold it against a Jew, black, Asian or other nonwhite person who doesn't feel 'em cause they're fucking nazis! it's fair to describe rap (and rock for that matter) as homophobic and guess what? Merritt hates rock, too, and is generally much more dismissive of it - he likes pop music, which has historically been a little more welcoming to gay men (and sometimes women)

yes the only people more gay-friendly than vikings are "rednecks"

xpost yeah ethan they're real vikings up there in Sweden and Norway: wtf was that?

hmm its starting to look like dude doesnt care about homophobia at all & just doesnt like black ppl!! imagine that!!

theres no gay/camp subtext in rap music?? or 'character relationship songs'????

??????????

But then, why shouldn't that be their real reasons? Except, of course, they should be expected to like Fugees and The Roots as well.

Including lots of white people. Probably more or less into hip-hop all of them though.

Oh, Merritt, so much to answer for.

Anyway, if Stephin Merritt liked rap then we'd have two Rufus Wainwrights, and one is probably enough, thanks.

that thing is racist against richard belzer

Including lots of white people. Probably more or less into hip-hop all of them though.

I don't know, Geir - to find a hip-hop record that sold more copies, you'd have to edge into Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'em and To The Extreme territory.

umm, he goes clubbing a lot as far as I know - though "as far as I know" means "as recently as '96," maybe it was only white people in clubs back then

xpost no! but I'm friends with his daughter! who's REALLY into the "wack old-timey music" i.e. cabaret!

wasn't that a Peach of Immortality album title at some point

Easy there.

There's obviously a great big gaping hole here for any number of snarky/'witty' answers but it's a serious question.

it can be hard to ascertain how much derogatory references to women in rap lyrics are, you know, deep down misogyny, and how much are an epiphenomenon of the real issue, which is about accumulated heartbreak, or whatever

i remember talking to my mom about this, i think it was "dazed and confused" and i was real embarrassed when she heard me listening to it, with the whole "soul of a woman was created below" part, and she sat down and listened to it with me and told me she didn't have a problem with it because this guy had obviously been hurt really really bad ("you hurt and abuse, tellin all of your lies") so it was understandable, it was exaggeration. "what i really DON'T like," she said, "is 'under my thumb', because it's like he's just being sadistic" ... which is funny, because in retrospect, and t the age i am now i VASTLY prefer "under my thumb" .. maybe bcz it's so cheerful (cf. ethan's thumb-on-scale example of "laffy taffy")

in any case, the stuff that offends me is almost always the casual, passing refs to bitches/hos/fags rather than the really up-front cruelty because the latter at least foregrounds itself and sets itself up for interrogation, instead of being just one visible consequence of what's probably a whole mindset.

the other thing that hasn't been mentioned here is that gender relations across classes have far more more striking variations than race relations across classes, at least in my experience.

actually i just wanted to make sure that a thread about hip hop that has already referenced duke ellington also mentioned led zeppelin and the rolling stones.

xpost 'he had an ill-favoured look...'

http://www.informationen-bilder.de/der-herr-der-ringe/sam-frodo-faramir.jpg

xxpost haha yes, cf. "you faggot" ~~~> "you wish you could have me" (well, sometimes)

The gabacho continued. “Every time I go get a hamburger, some Mexican always screws up my order! What kind of country is this where I have to order a hamburger in Spanish?!”

“So where’s this Spanish-only burger joint?” I asked the guy, whose name I never got but whose yellowed, jagged teeth will haunt my dreams for years.

“Everywhere!”

No, really: Where?

Um, in Carl’s Jr.

Which one? I want to order a hamburger in español. The word in Spanish is hamburguesa, you know.

Well, uh, I don’t eat hamburgers anymore. I grill them on my grill.

So where can I get a good hamburguesa?

[. . .]

* * *

While Los Angeles Latinos dealt with only a smattering of anti-immigrant activists, Orange County Latinos faced off against the Orange County Anti-Immigrant All-Stars, the people who can’t give you a straight answer about hamburgers but have the ear of Congress. They stood on the corner of Ross Street and Civic Center Drive for a couple of hours Monday and tried their damnedest to provoke a Mexican riot. But the marchers didn’t take the bait. Most walked by without even turning their heads. Others stopped and stared, bemused.

“Do you know all the immigrants in the world know English before they come to this country except Mexico?” Hamburger Boy’s friend told me.

Who pays for their English classes? The United States?

How should I know? But everyone knows English. Asians. Europeans. But not Mexicans.

What about Costa Ricans?

Um, yeah. I think they know English a little bit more than Mexicans.

How about Guatemala?

Don’t know about them.

And Nicaraguans?

[. . .]

* * *

Most of the big OC anti-immigrant names were there: the Reverend Wiley Drake, who bellowed through a megaphone and had come out the day before on KABC-TV Channel 7 arguing that the Bible requires opposition to immigration. Barbara Coe, president of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, co-author of Proposition 187 and the grande dame of the anti-immigrant movement. Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist was nowhere to be found, but a contingent of Minutemen Angels—ladies born around the middle of the last century—handed out plastic “USA” jewelry.

Drake and Coe are always good for a quote. At one point, as a yellow bus idled next to the Santa Ana Public Library, Drake shouted, “Attention, please! Last call for the Tijuana taxi.” With her megaphone, Coe—nice butch haircut, red/white/blue ensemble—quickly added, “Use your welfare checks to go back to Mexico.” But the real fun was talking to the anti-immigrant movement’s storm troopers, the soldiers of Velcro, fanny packs and sweatshirts, the guys who blasted “Born in the USA” from their Ford F150 trucks and made jokes about tacos and amigos.

“This is the first time I’ve ever attended one of these protests,” a short, middle-aged white woman told me.

What made you attend?

I was talking to a friend in Brooklyn, and she told me illegals live there! Imagine! Mexicans in Brooklyn! I never realized there was a problem!

So you don’t mind all the illegals living here in Southern California?

No, I do. I can’t even visit a hospital anymore!

How long have you lived in Southern California?

My entire life.

And you just realized today that illegal immigrants live in Southern California?

No, they’ve always been here! But today is the day we start civil war!

What about in 1994, when Proposition 187 passed? Did you have a problem with illegals then?

Yes, but there weren’t as many then. Some of my best friends are Mexican!

I moved on to another young man.

So how about those Mexicans?

They’re ruining this country! Look at all the flags!

I mostly see American flags.

They’re liars! They really want to wave the Mexican flag! All they want to do is get free welfare!

Do you know any illegal immigrants who want welfare?

All of them!

Like who?

[Pauses.] All of them!

Another woman shouted, “In my country, you speak my language.”

What language is that?

English. This is America.

So people shouldn’t speak Spanish.

No. They need to learn English. They shouldn’t be translating the national anthem into Spanish.

So what do you think about the guy next to you with the “Viva Minutemen” sign? That’s part Spanish. And he looks Mexican too.

She looked to her side, where a dark-skinned man silently held a yellow “Viva Minutemen” placard.

“He’s okay, I guess.”

also ethan is weird.

WFMU, Friday, May 12, noon-3pm

Tune in tomorrow from noon-3pm as guest DJ Stephin Merritt joins Monica Lynch for a celebration of the song “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.” My, oh my, it’ll be a wonderful day.

'zip-ah-dee-doo-dah / zip-ah-dee-day / negroes are inferior in eve-ry way...'

-- Geir Hongro (geirhon...), May 11th, 2006.

THEY WERENT MARTIANS THEY WAS FROM AN UNDERTERMINED PLANET

i am so tired of these 19 yr old rappers with crack game punchlines, back in 1987 they were still shittin in diapers. in 2005 pushin weight is another fashion accessory, like white suburban kids with doo rags and ballpoint tattooed tears. its still a real hustle in ATL but all these lil mixtape fucks need to get off cocaines nuts. when i see websites talkin bout 'this joint is that crack!' my face screws up and i switch that shit off in a second. 1% of men who sell crack get rich. 99% are gettin raped in jail, dead, or wish they were dead. i grew up in my fathers apartment surrounded by dealers, gunshots past the one window every other night. i had to go lie down in the cast iron bathtub out back while he sat on the bed ready to deal with whoever the fuck came thru the door. i got out of that situation. but right now im livin in a nasty ass house on the east side towards decatur, with a crackhead who sleeps on the kitchen floor, this man eats my damn bread all day, brings home 65 year old toothless hoes with skin like roast chicken to get fucked in the basement, leaves his gooky porno mags open stuck to the kitchen counter. walkin on glenwood ive seen tiny, scared girls behind buildings who look 14 and when they open the mouth they got no teeth. i dont wanna hear shit about crack unless you were sellin that shit in the 80s and got some old man stories to tell. i dont need another white college student quotin biggie "you either slang crack rock or got a wicked jumpshot" (worst of this shit was a telemarketing company i worked at, my white boss busted that out with a straight face to a full room of employees and me as the only other white there, who the fuck are you, david duke? i know kids in the hood who write novels and tabulate their t-shirt profits in microsoft office!!). crack destroys the community. shit is not funny. shit is not even real. its just shit. get the fuck off that.

I'm disappointed that said polarization pretty much rolled over the people pointing out that the issue isn't Merritt being a Klan member, but his attitudes being problematic.

not that erick sermon has alot to say about females

(guns are still total bullshit but that's another subject)

On ILX generally you always seem to be some kind of language policeman, trying to digging out the racism hidden beneath innocuous sentences, and you do seem to think that language is important, can be used as oppression etc. But when faced with 'Bitch', 'Ho', Faggot' in a rap song it's all jokey, or suddenly 'Complex'.

Maybe it is, but it seems to me like it's not oppression or prejudice per se that bothers you it's exclusively oppression or prejudice against black people. Which is pretty stupid.

x-post Bidfurd direct & otm in his 2nd graf!

xpost my point is not that all racially insensitive coded language is racist nor that all rap songs about bitches/hoes/faggots are misogynist/homophobic, but that white folks in the media who do the former get the jokey/complex excuse a lot more than rap does & im doing what i can to correct that imbalance & build a level playing field

basically it seems theres a national pasttime of allowing shades of grey & complexities for some artists (white folks) and not others (black folks)

it is my real name (someone who didn't like one of my reviews once called bullshit on it, but it really is) - not the dj though (is that HIS real name?).

consider yrself lucky - 3 1/2 here and today's my last day.

I'm imagining Ice Cube rapping this word-for-word.

ROFFLZ

xpost w/ 'bass players'

if Li'l Kim is on your list of women who don't sell out as sexist caricatures btw you are insane

considering that 9/10ths of gender roles are fairly arbitrary constructs, yes IT IS A BFD. J0hn otm.

really are you capable of having any discussion that doesn't immediately devolve into ridiculously vicious ad hominem attacks? its weird. how do you expect anyone to take you seriously?

But hey, project and destroy - thats yr M.O.