Pop music’s race problem: How white artists profit from mocking hip-hop (from Salon)

Pop music’s race problem: How white artists profit from mocking hip-hop
From "Royals" to "Thrift Shop," many of the year's pop hits have been built on tone-deaf critiques of rap
DANIEL D'ADDARIO

Lorde’s single “Royals” has been at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks — enough time for pop listeners to begin expressing their discontent at the perceived politics of the song. A common critique has been that the young New Zealand native is specifically mocking the tropes of hip-hop when she sings about rejecting “Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece / Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash.”

“Royals” arguably critiques popular music across genres. But its mockery of hip-hop may stand out in part because that mockery places it squarely in the middle of American pop music right now. As rock critic Chris Weingarten pointed out on Twitter, two of this year’s other long-running No. 1 hits are racially problematic in the extreme.

Chris Weingarten @1000TimesYes
Between "Royals," "Thrift Shop, & "Harlem Shake" 18 WEEKS of 2013's Billboard No. 1s have been about shaming or exploiting African-Americans

Anyone who thinks it would be easy for a black artist to cut through all the noise and express himself or herself should look to the case of Kanye West. His most recent album “Yeezus” is many things, but it’s definitely not solely focused on materialistic tropes to the exclusion of serious thought. After his lynching-themed “Blood on the Leaves” performance at the VMAs was entirely overshadowed in the press by Miley Cyrus (with whom West has reportedly collaborated), West gave an interview in which he described his influence in the music and fashion industries. West was lampooned as an egomaniac on Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show, then when he defended himself as a legitimately influential artist in a Kimmel appearance, his quotes were framed as “ridiculous” or crazy. It’s much easier to frame people as mindlessly materialistic if they don’t talk back — or if you don’t let them.

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/21/pop_musics_race_problem_how_white_artists_profit_from_mocking_hip_hop/

I'm not versed on pop music as much as many of you all but hasn't culture appropriation (for better or worse and usually white folks appropriating black culture) been around forever (i.e. Rock and roll itself, Pat Boone, Elvis, Beastie Boys, etcetera)...

Here's someone in 1969 accusing The Beatles and Cream of ripping off black artists.

appropriation isn't quite the same as the trend - NB i don't know if there really is a trend - that this piece is identifying. as the quotes you've used point out, the records mentioned here specifically mock or attack values and iconography associated with black artists. this plays out more as culture war than culture colonization.

Also, we have a tendency to hold the current era to more modern standards of ethical behaviour than we would previous eras.

Critiquing aggressive materialism is fine but you are always going to run into trouble if your only frame of reference for that critique is pop culture - one of the few spheres that has allowed marginalised groups to obtain and display wealth. It is excusable in a teenager, less so if you are as old as Macklemore or Lily Allen.

^

sorta weird that piece doesn't mention lily allen - despite her relative irrelevance in america, that video got a lot of US critics weighing in... (more than UK critics if we're being real)

It does mention her.

Perhaps we’re in a high-decadent period for grotesqueries of white people laughing at black culture, from Lily Allen’s “Hard Out Here” video that parodies a flesh- and Champagne-obsessed rap world that doesn’t exist in the way Allen seems to think it does (see Feminista Jones’ recent analysis for a more in-depth take on this video) to Miley Cyrus’ exploitation of black female sexuality.

But I don't get any original thought from this piece. It's just a dutiful and somewhat timid rehash of recent internet debates. Why is this trope so popular right now? That's the interesting question.

oh yeah i missed it

xp

Critiquing aggressive materialism is fine but you are always going to run into trouble if your only frame of reference for that critique is pop culture - one of the few spheres that has allowed marginalised groups to obtain and display wealth. It is excusable in a teenager, less so if you are as old as Macklemore or Lily Allen.

On the money like microscopic traces of cocaine

Why is this trope so popular right now? That's the interesting question.

if there's one thing i really appreciate about this piece it's that it has the decency to use "how" in its headline, rather than committing my least-loved of editor errors and using a title like "why white artists are profiting from etc etc etc" despite the piece being entirely descriptive and making no decent stabs at finding reasons.

It's all speculative guesswork - "the perceived politics of the song," "arguably critigues." Give me quantifiable evidence-based fact to support your premise and I might be persuaded to give you a listen.

But given that the world is in general hurtling back into the Middle Ages you'd think that there are bigger and more deserving targets to be attacked than easy and ARGUABLY undeserving targets like Macklemore and Lorde. If that's the best the Left can do then they have truly had it. This is back to the bad old "The White Album is racist" eighties days.

sp. "arguably critiques."

That's Salon's deal right now. I refer you to last month's "The dangerous transphobia of Roald Dahl's Matilda."

The White Album was racist?

If that's the best the Left can do then they have truly had it.

lol 'the Left' probably able to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, iirc

The White Album was racist?

beatles most racist band in history iirc

Kind of think that wasn't the main reason for defeat of miners strike tho

Back to the days when the NME slagged off Loveless for not protesting against South African apartheid.

there is some difference there too, since the piece isn't talking about a perceived absence of political discourse but a quite intentional discourse that contains, inadvertently or not, a racist subtext

"Inadvertently or not" is a paradox when set against "intentional." You either have an intention to do something or you don't. Until I see evidence that these people intended to be racist then I'm not prepared to listen to the harangue. Although I suppose it would be quite fun to slag off Lorde or Lily Allen or whoever and argue the toss on our way to the workhouse.

Can we just ban any writing on pop culture for about 5 years

xp

to be clear - intentionally they are critiquing a perceived showy materialism. whether these critiques are aware of their racist subtext is up for question. i agree this isn't big P politics from a classical Marxist perspective. i think it raises interesting questions about representation and a privileged version of materialism that seems to be antagonistic to material wealth.

The writer doesn't distinguish between intent and reception, which is particularly important in the case of Royals. I don't think there's anything racist about the song - the lyrical references are too diffuse - but I'm sure there is among people who have embraced it for what it's not, ie a hatchet job on rappers.

i think we ought to be very clear about the difference between racist discourses and "is Artist X a racist". but i say this as a white man.

Back to the days when the NME slagged off Loveless for not protesting against South African apartheid.

Did this actually happen btw? (Hardly counts if it was just Steven Wells)

there was a debate from some sections of the indie world in the early 90s about whether shoegazing was a version of political quietism but the NME def didn't have a party line on it

see also Richey Manic "Slowdive worse than Hitler" I guess

that's the kind of thing, yep

The writer doesn't distinguish between intent and reception, which is particularly important in the case of Royals. I don't think there's anything racist about the song - the lyrical references are too diffuse - but I'm sure there is among people who have embraced it for what it's not, ie a hatchet job on rappers.

I think this is OTM

Can we just ban any writing on pop culture for about 5 years

― the Shearer of simulated snowsex etc. (Dwight Yorke), Friday, November 22, 2013 7:28 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if you mean "songwriting about pop culture" then yes.

I'm pretty averse to aggressive displays of wealth and hyper-consumerism in general, be it bankers paying themselves enormous bonuses or people spilling £100 bottles of alcohol all over the place. It's hard for me to reconcile my stance when I see it in pop culture, whether it comes from TOWIE-esque reality TV glitz or the kind of excess talked about upthread in hip-hop and pop videos.

Like it or not, this is a mass media representation of wealth that proliferates throughout the social consciousness, arguably endorsing lucre, consumer fetishism, the glamour of capitalist excess, a culture of aspiration and desire which, for most of us, is highly unachievable, unrealistic even. It ties into this trend of game-ification where everything's got to be about competing, one-upmanship, measuring your social worth according to wealth and other superficial merits.It just doesn't sit well with me, and I have trouble trying to be pragmatic about that.

It perplexes (but doesn't really surprise) me, how in an age of serious economic hardship that one of the most popular shows on UK TV revolves around the trials and tribulations of the mega-privileged; people who are born into wealth, who have nothing going wrong with their lives other than the boredom created through that wealth; whose lives are based around how they go about using their wealth and social status to create a very narrow, very specific sense of drama.

For most this is escapism and I completely understand the various reasons why someone would follow a show like Made In Chelsea or even why so many pop videos exude enormous levels of glam. But I find myself uncomfortable when I come across these displays in the media and pop culture. I think such representations were perhaps more acceptable as escapist fantasies before the economic downturn, the idea that you too could live in some wonderful world where money is no object, you can have whatever you want, when you want it etc... But as the poverty gap widens I find it increasingly grotesque; a kick in the face to those who are affected by the same greed and desperation that's boosted on TV and radio broadcasts around the world.

I don't think it's controversial to think this way, not to mention pointing out how manipulative the pop industry is of its artists and fans, of racial and sexual stereotypes, and how often it's done in much more subtle, manipulative ways than a Miley Cyrus video. Of course I'm all too aware of the counter-arguments or misreadings these opinions can bring. Why shouldn't people be allowed to dream big and want to make the most of themselves for a start? Also, if like Lorde and Allen you focus on just one aspect, (i.e. pop and hiphop music), you come under fire for critiquing racial tropes (and yeah, if you bang on about Cristal etc you're kind of asking for trouble). Rather than pushing against extreme excess on all counts, you're seen to be trying to level people down, telling them where their place is and shaming specific aspects of their culture.

But then you could also argue that a lot of these tropes have become so pervasive throughout pop that they're no longer tied to any specific race or culture other than big-P pop. It's easier for a pop song to criticise pop music than to criticise governmental economic policy or the housing market etc. Allen apologists will point out that the intention behind her video was to parody and critique the very videos that appear to be exploiting social, racial and sexual boundaries (Thicke, Cyrus etc) even if she did make a fucking massive pig's ear of it.

Did this actually happen btw? (Hardly counts if it was just Steven Wells)

― In times of osterity, these Eton-educated poshboys (Bananaman Begins), Friday, November 22, 2013 12:35 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

believe this refers to Dele Fadele's album review http://www.tohereknowswhen.org/press/nme-9nov91-2.html

so maybe a teeeeeeeeny distortion of what was actually said

"Inadvertently or not" is a paradox when set against "intentional." You either have an intention to do something or you don't. Until I see evidence that these people intended to be racist then I'm not prepared to listen to the harangue. Although I suppose it would be quite fun to slag off Lorde or Lily Allen or whoever and argue the toss on our way to the workhouse.

― Here he is with the classic "Poème Électronique." Good track (Marcello Carlin), Friday, November 22, 2013 7:25 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark

Intention doesn't matter, dummy

Intention doesn't matter, dummy

aren't we p much over believing this 80s-crit-theory canard

Discussion of racism in a comment/tweet/video/piece of writing/policy almost always gets diverted into discussion of whether the person who said/wrote/made it is "a racist" or not. That's not the point. Racism isn't made by "racists", in that sense. It's primarily a form of collective behaviour and the focus should be on whether the act is likely to strengthen or weaken that collective behaviour.

(as per Daniel Trilling on Twitter)

50s, actually xp

I'll cop that even I don't follow the hardline on the matter any more, I'll weigh intention along with everything else in the mix

But the opposite end of the spectrum, "intention trumps everything," is still dumbheaded and wrong

I think the biggest sign that I'm not going to survive in the new thinkpiece-as-content economy is that I didn't feel compelled to turn that tweet into an eight paragraph essay full of hyperlinks

I'll never be royals :(

I wonder why prioritising intention is "dumbheaded" and "wrong." I'd be interested to learn the detailed reasoning behind that.

Meanwhile, Lex appears to be agreeing with the premise that anybody can be called out as a racist even if they're not. I'm rather glad that people who think like that aren't in a position of power to make laws for the rest of us to live by.

In the interim, Britain has become a Third World country dependent on Red Cross parcels whose government is clearly not interested in anybody except the super-rich (and therefore, though by no means uniformly, ultra-materialistic). "Thrift Shop" and "Royals" are above everything songs which argue against materialism as an end in itself. To call the people who made them racists because you PERCEIVE they're having a crack at hip hop really is muddled thinking (if there is another reason, what is it?); it reminds me of the students' unions here who have been busy banning "Blurred Lines" while at the same time the colleges' owners have systematically banned their own students from engaging in any form of protest.

But attacking the real villains involves much harder work than having a go at easy and UNPROVEN targets, so things won't change until it's too late to change anything.

Dude you are out of your fucking mind if you don't think "But everybody's like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece" is about hip-hop

*isn't

No wait, *is

The line is about hip-hop.

I have to admit, when I saw "pop music's race problem" I pictured little stock cars zooming around with Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber's faces on them. Not painted on, but big fucking bobbleheads kinda this:

http://i2.ebayimg.com/01/i/001/2c/fe/4614_35.JPG

The big "problem" was rollovers, since they're so top-heavy, obvs.

West was lampooned as an egomaniac on Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show, then when he defended himself as a legitimately influential artist in a Kimmel appearance, his quotes were framed as “ridiculous” or crazy.

this part seems a little dishonest to me

You'd also be out of your fucking mind if you didn't think the line "Bloodstains, Ball gowns, Trashing the hotel room" was about
Agent Orange, Taylor Swift, and Nikki Sixx, respectively.

"Look, when Lorde says 'everybody's like fried chicken, watermelon, grape soda' she's just taking about people who don't eat healthy food, it's not a race thing"

Your dedication to ignoring every line in the song that isn't about hip hop continues to impress.

see also Richey Manic "Slowdive worse than Hitler" I guess

― Just noise and screaming and no musical value at all. (Colonel Poo),

Funny I always thought it was the Manic Street Preachers who were worse than Hitler

Your dedication to ignoring every line in the song that isn't about hip hop continues to impress.
--Deafening silence (DL)

Because lambasting bratty white rock stars for trashing hotel rooms and lambasting black rappers for aspiring to wealth after growing up in a broken, unfairly weighted system are maybe different?

Well first up she's not lambasting them, she's saying she's alienated by the lyrics. Secondly, some of those bratty white rock stars grew up poorer than some of those rappers. You have to do a lot of simplifying and distorting to make the song fit your reading.

Discussion of racism in a comment/tweet/video/piece of writing/policy almost always gets diverted into discussion of whether the person who said/wrote/made it is "a racist" or not. That's not the point. Racism isn't made by "racists", in that sense. It's primarily a form of collective behaviour and the focus should be on whether the act is likely to strengthen or weaken that collective behaviour.

Vs

Meanwhile, Lex appears to be agreeing with the premise that anybody can be called out as a racist even if they're not.

Rather proves the point, no? Calling Lorde or Macklemore out as "a racist" is neither accurate nor helpful, it doesn't mean one shouldn't draw attention to dubious racial subtexts that exist.

Lots of people behave in ways that are unconsciously and thoughtlessly sexist in an offhand way but I wouldn't argue that each and every one of those people was "a misogynist".

Well first up she's not lambasting them, she's saying she's alienated by the lyrics. Secondly, some of those bratty white rock stars grew up poorer than some of those rappers. You have to do a lot of simplifying and distorting to make the song fit your reading.
--Deafening silence (DL)

It sure is hard out here for a poor white man in America. If only the judicial system and the prison-industrial complex and the job market and the entertainment industry gave white people SOME sort of advantage, oh well

Fun fact: The video for Hard Out Here was released the same day as Da Mafia 6ix's comeback tape. As far as I can tell.

the da mafia 6ix tape/album is pretty good

Can we interpret the lyrics of "Harlem Shake" now

think as usual the British gap of understanding of American racism is relevant to this thread. iow Whiney's last post otm

i can think of many pop songs that delineate between the disadvantages of economically poor but culturally distinct backgrounds. i'm usually whistling these throughout the day!

xp Of course there's a massive systemic bias but individuals have different stories and if you're talking about wealth here then yes there are SOME white artists who had a harder upbringing than, say, Kanye or Rick Ross (who actually worked for the prison-industrial complex btw). But have Kanye and Rick Ross experienced prejudice, then and now, that even the poorest white musician hasn't? Absolutely.

It's not as if many black artists haven't been criticising conspicuous consumption for the past 20 years.

the rhetoric around "royals" is far more dubious than the song itself, which is eyeroll-worthy but not castigation-worthy imo. stuff like "oh FINALLY a pop artist who will criticise conspicuous consumption" as though, as DL says, black artists hadn't been doing that on their terms for years; and "oh FINALLY a female pop artist who keeps her clothes on" which contains a multitude of false assumptions

They're generally not getting #1 hits by doing so though. TBH the question of whether a 16 year old girl from New Zealand has a simplistic notion of race and materialism on the other side of the world (of course she does, durr) is less important than why it's so popular right now and to what extent its popularity is down to people who are quite happy to take it as an attack on hip-hop.

(xpost to DL)

don't think the debate over who has it harder is gonna get us very far. as Whiney says above:

Because lambasting bratty white rock stars for trashing hotel rooms and lambasting black rappers for aspiring to wealth after growing up in a broken, unfairly weighted system are maybe different?

material aspiration in American black culture isn't the same as material aspiration in other cultures; the former expresses a reply to material oppression going back centuries. and it's also part of black evangelical expression (thinking about the prosperity gospel in black evangelicalism). it's really its own thing.

and that fucking "Royals" song fails to evince any comprehension or even interest in this. which ok this is by some non-American teenager so who cares, but hearing esp White America going "right on" rankles because it's reinforcing their self-righteousness about material aspiration

I'm glad the Americans are waking up.

hearing esp White America going "right on" rankles because it's reinforcing their self-righteousness about material aspiration

OTM, this is why "intention" is irrelevant when what we're really talking about it about the discourse around it, which is bigger than any one song.

I agree Matt. I'm in the position of loving the record while not liking a lot of the rhetoric around it. The point of Royals is that it's a response to ubiquitous messages in mainstream pop and if you look at the charts in recent years that comes as much, if not moreso, from the velvet-rope/bottle-service vibe of EDM and it's Top 40 mutations as it does from hip hop. If anything Royals is less finger-wagging than critqiues from conscious rappers. They're more like "you shouldn't rap about trivial stuff" whereas she's saying "people can rap/sing about whatever they like but it doesn't speak to me or my friends".

the funny thing to me is that the few times I've brought the "Royals" controversy up to Ivy-educated black friends, the overwhelming response has been eyerolls

The difference between the way the Lily Allen controversy exploded and went mainstream and the Royals controversy, which is still confined to a small group of critics, is revealing.

but hearing esp White America going "right on" rankles because it's reinforcing their self-righteousness about material aspiration

This is the interesting part, i think. I don't know how much is simple racism and how much is a deeper malaise about consumption / late-era capitalism that manifests itself in racist tropes because there's a lack of an acceptable political framework / vocabulary to express it more fully.

Something something Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good" something.

The difference between the Lily Allen controversy and the Lorde controversy is that Lily Allen has a video that is 100% in your face and piss-taking and full of ugly racial stereotypes and the Lorde video is basically just some white people moping around.

The difference between the way the Lily Allen controversy exploded and went mainstream and the Royals controversy, which is still confined to a small group of critics, is revealing.

Yes, it's revealing that people are pretty well equipped to deal with blatantly offensive things better than subtly offensive things; also that people need to tie racial incidents directly and incontrovertibly to an individual person as a source before finding them valid.

or what Matt said

Ugh whites and their mopey synths

I don't know how much is simple racism and how much is a deeper malaise about consumption / late-era capitalism that manifests itself in racist tropes because there's a lack of an acceptable political framework / vocabulary to express it more fully.

pretty interesting way of putting this though I think there's room for both of these to be true (and I don't know which side I'd ascribe as "deeper")

there's a whole field of class-inflected privileged responses to "vulgar" materialism at play here too that i wanted to think about at lunchtime before i spent two hours trying to nail jelly to a wall

Yeah, vulgar capitalist materialism is something you can only really criticise when you're in a reasonably privileged position.

"vulgarity" is frequently criticized from a position of good taste and there is a lot of class stuff going on in there. you'll notice i didn't say "only" criticized from there so i assume you're saying it is never criticized from there?

Just gonna jump in here and say I was under the impression the appeal of "Harlem Shake" was more or less entirely dependent on the video jump-cuts, and had nothing to do with how "weird" the song is. It isn't weird at all.

Isn't the Macklemore sort of making fun of itself a la "Blurred Lines?" The Lorde, that one sounds sort of rueful, like she's the outcast kid at the prom making fun of being at the prom.

I don't think it's true at all that materialism/conspicuous consumption is ONLY criticised by people in a position of relative privilege. It's more likely that most people making those points from a poorer background just aren't being paid attention to, and the complaint is less likely to centre around "vulgarity".

it's complicated, and again i didn't say that it is always people who are privileged themselves who reiterate the "bourgeois"-ish opinion, but conversations about showy displays of commodity fetishism are riddled with classist assumptions in my experience

for one thing, it's very easy to critique luxury/excess/decadence without remotely critiquing capitalism

^^^^

It would be interesting to consider all of this in the face of US political rhetoric, where many minority-helping programs are framed (by both parties) as entitlements that should be looked at with a patronizing suspicion and any criticism of power-structure programs (defense spending, bank bailouts, corporate loopholes) are off the table because Class Warfare.

When does Australia wake up, I want to see if an ILXor would defend Lorde wearing blackface

"harlem shake" is only being mentioned because it co-opted (however inadvertently) the name of an existing dance, tied to a regional culture, etc

x-post--Huh? Australia, New Zealand whatever... Aboriginees, Maori

australians are super racist tho

some things can only be grappled with by white american rock critics

glad to see this argument getting some play

Perhaps Whiney can expound further on this

white artists

bands

LOL... SONGS

― s1ocki (slutsky), Sunday, April 2, 2006 11:01 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Glad the Americans have woken up.

for one thing, it's very easy to critique luxury/excess/decadence without remotely critiquing capitalism

― uk cheese board (Noodle Vague), Friday, November 22, 2013 7:32 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, basically every critique coming from white male capitalist patriarchy that isn't self-directed is discursively about reinforcing class/race/gender hierarchies. bell hooks is really good and clear on this in outlaw culture.

Give me quantifiable evidence-based fact to support your premise and I might be persuaded to give you a listen.

― Here he is with the classic "Poème Électronique." Good track (Marcello Carlin), Friday, November 22, 2013 6:50 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what is non quantifiable to you about Between "Royals," "Thrift Shop, & "Harlem Shake" 18 WEEKS of 2013's Billboard No. 1s have been about shaming or exploiting African-Americans

Until I see evidence that these people intended to be racist then I'm not prepared to listen to the harangue.

― Here he is with the classic "Poème Électronique." Good track (Marcello Carlin), Friday, November 22, 2013 7:25 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://i919.photobucket.com/albums/ad35/Squishy-Beaver/CreepedOut.gif

why is this not in the thread about the marginalization of r&b? it's all of a piece

Was gonna say.

Y'all know I have a ton to say on this matter, but I have no interest in participating in this thread with Marcello Carlin because, above all things, I value my sanity.

xp i assume because nycnative wasn't aware of that thread when he started this one

as a native of new york city he should be!

Like any liberal arts-educated freelance writer and activist from San Francisco who values his progressive culture and identity, I’m a very strong supporter of Salon.com.

Itunes, Billboard, and the marginalization of black music and black audiences in America

Lily Allen - This summers biggest racist?

Lorde (from New Zealand)

what is non quantifiable to you about Between "Royals," "Thrift Shop, & "Harlem Shake" 18 WEEKS of 2013's Billboard No. 1s have been about shaming or exploiting African-Americans

Also this year is on track to be the first in the history of the Hot 100 (dating back to 1958) that there isn't a #1 hit by a black lead artist. And because of the rule changes to the r&b charts, white artists have had the #1 r&b hit 38 of 46 weeks so far this year. You know, the chart meant to track black music.

And because of the rule changes to the r&b charts, white artists have had the #1 r&b hit 38 of 46 weeks so far this year.

Holy shit

Discussion of racism in a comment/tweet/video/piece of writing/policy almost always gets diverted into discussion of whether the person who said/wrote/made it is "a racist" or not. That's not the point. Racism isn't made by "racists", in that sense. It's primarily a form of collective behaviour and the focus should be on whether the act is likely to strengthen or weaken that collective behaviour.

(as per Daniel Trilling on Twitter)

― lex pretend, Friday, November 22, 2013 5:17 AM Bookmark

material aspiration in American black culture isn't the same as material aspiration in other cultures; the former expresses a reply to material oppression going back centuries. and it's also part of black evangelical expression (thinking about the prosperity gospel in black evangelicalism). it's really its own thing.

and that fucking "Royals" song fails to evince any comprehension or even interest in this. which ok this is by some non-American teenager so who cares, but hearing esp White America going "right on" rankles because it's reinforcing their self-righteousness about material aspiration

― Euler, Friday, November 22, 2013 6:39 AM Bookmark

yes, basically every critique coming from white male capitalist patriarchy that isn't self-directed is discursively about reinforcing class/race/gender hierarchies. bell hooks is really good and clear on this in outlaw culture.

― ✓B (Matt P), Friday, November 22, 2013 9:19 AM Bookmark

These posts totally otm.

And because of the rule changes to the r&b charts, white artists have had the #1 r&b hit 38 of 46 weeks so far this year.

Holy shit

― 乒乓, Friday, November 22, 2013 2:26 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

now do the harlem shake !!

i'm not looking forward to the "it's not our fault, the people have spoken" defense that fact will inspire

or maybe they'll go with a "hey, ALL charts are being ruled by a handful of crossover artists, we see no color except green" stance

Also this year is on track to be the first in the history of the Hot 100 (dating back to 1958) that there isn't a #1 hit by a black lead artist.

and with rihanna having a fallow year, beyoncé still frustratingly absent, and no apparent smashes left on albums by jay-z, kanye or drake, there isn't really anyone i can think of that could remedy this, unless a black person makes something that turns into a harlem shake-style fluke

Which may explain SFJ's Kanye worship in the New Yorker yesterday.

yeah, even aloe blacc isn't credited for his lead vocal on 'wake me up'

rihanna and wiz khalifa are actually the only lead black artists to have billboard #1s in the period 2011-2013, and wiz was only for 1 week

before that you have to go back to the first half of 2010 w/ usher, b.o.b., taio cruz, and the black eyed peas (if they count)

Hey now I know how we all feel about Flo Rida but

haaaaaa oops. okay, so that makes 3 black artists in a 3 year period to have a #1

you also missed LMFAO

It's all speculative guesswork - "the perceived politics of the song," "arguably critigues." Give me quantifiable evidence-based fact to support your premise and I might be persuaded to give you a listen.

i dipped "royals" & the solution in the test tube turned blue - next!

xp- aw, forgot about them <3

i'm sort of awestruck that people are still arguing against the really fucking obvious racial and social and anti-hip-hop aspects of these songs, even more disturbed that some people actually seem to like any one of this steaming burrito turds as actual music

lily allen keeping it modest for chanel

http://thisislavie.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/lilyallen_chanel_clv_01.jpg

i dunno, "Royals" does have a pretty solid, catchy arrangement for a "i'm a very impressive teenager" anthem

i keep getting it mixed up with Muse's "Madness" in my head

her producer heard 'paper planes' and broadcast's 'the noise made by people'

Also this year is on track to be the first in the history of the Hot 100 (dating back to 1958) that there isn't a #1 hit by a black lead artist.

Wow, this is bonkers. Tieing into notions of class/luxury etc., do you think this is at all related to how downloads and streaming are now counted toward sales/charts? When did that begin?

Itunes, Billboard, and the marginalization of black music and black audiences in America

ha, you beat me to it

Screw the internet, I'm waiting for that article to be published in print form.

i do think it is important to realize this isn't solely an issue for r&b, i.e.

The Hot Country Songs chart methodology was changed starting with the October 20, 2012 issue to match the Billboard Hot 100: digital downloads and streaming data are combined with airplay from all radio formats to determine position. A new chart, the Country Airplay chart, was created using the previous methodology (airplay exclusively from country radio stations). Following the change, Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", a pop song whose country remix had been falling from its peak in the mid-teens on the country chart when the change took effect, shot up to number one on the new chart due to the success of the pop version on non-country stations; it would begin the longest run at #1 on the country chart since the 1960s. However, its length of stay at #1 was soon surpassed by Florida Georgia Line's "Cruise". It has likewise remained buoyed by a pop remix featuring Nelly, long after the song fell into recurrent status on country radio); it has had the longest stay at number one of any song in the country chart's history.

in a sense, it's a logical de-evaluation of radio airplay for streaming/downloads/etc. and as airplay numbers tend to be easier for labels to influence and fudge, it's not wholly criminal. but the hamfisted way it's being done is rendering these market-specific charts irrelevant, which has the effect of rendering these markets commercially irrelevant, except when they crossover into the WHAT'S STREAMIN market

clearly not an ilxor:

http://i44.tinypic.com/jif88h.png

ha! She's not exactly beloved here either.

problematize yr idols

there is also an irony in robin thicke being included in this white dominance of r&b thing, since, while he is white, dude was always more of an r&b chart presence than a pop one - "lost without u" ruled the r&b chart for months but only went to like #14 pop. commercially, he's really more of an r&b-to-pop crossover than vica versa. not that this contradicts overall point, though.

yeah. I definitely went from being glad for him finally having a crossover hit to it feeling really bittersweet in the overall context of this year.

i would almost feel bad for the billboard folks for having to answer "why did you erase black people from the charts?" type questions since its really a changing of metrics that has more to do with the collapse of sales & radio and the rise of streaming, but they've created a chart where kanye's biggest hit of the year is "Gone" and Bon Jovi's "Living On A Prayer" is in the top 40 becuz people watched some dipshit jump around a celtics concert so fuck them and their fucked-up metrics

celtics game, rather.

like, it'd be one thing if people loved that celtics vid soooo much that they all downloaded bon jovi - like a "unchained melody" circa ghost thing - but this is like if "Unchained Melody" was at #1 just because everyone saw Ghost. It's so stupid.

i'm waiting for it to get to the point where grizzly bear has a top ten single cuz they're in a superbowl ad - not that people bought the song, just that it's #1 on the ADS PEOPLE SAW THAT HAD SONGS IN THEM chart.

Charts are stupid? Stop the presses

yeah charts are stupid, but they do affect people's careers and culture at large. certainly merits bitching on a forum full of music nerds.

the butterfly effect soundscan had on music in the '90s was huge

This is a question that's been in the back of my head: It seems to be taken as a given that the radio industry is faltering in the wake of the increasing options to hear music bred by new technology, but is there any empirical evidence of such a thing? I haven't looked into it personally but I haven't seen anyone present it either.

As mentioned on the other thread, Bill Werde of Billboard hasn't exactly been open to discussing any of this, based on his twitter and tumblr comments

i def haven't heard super-recent stats, but even in the '00s there were plenty of articles re: radio numbers dwindling, not to mention playlists being streamlined by conglomerates (and billboard etc usually get their info from known sample stations - which labels then spray goodies at). but yeah, it's hard to find stats that are about audience size rather than audience share.

uh you guys realize there's no way to track who's listening to what radio station at any given time

shakey have you not heard of the portable people meter?

One-eyed, one-horned etc.

lol Myonga

I feel like the streamlining of playlists is a better-documented phenomenon. xps

our radio station gets listener-percentage market stats, not sure through who but I think it is a Nielsen type deal xps

There have been problems with the Portable People Meter that affect minority-oriented stations and audiences

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/arbitron-agrees-to-improve-how-it-counts-minority-radio-listeners/?_r=0

yeah not shocked to hear that, obv these practices have always been messed up and benefiting those with the most money. my point was just that, whether or not they're overestimating radio's drop-off on the whole, the current way they're measuring pop success is fucked.

surprised to read some nostalgia from questlove for the pre-soundscan years. while the roots is totally the kind of group that would benefit from NOT depending on record company hustle to chart, he rather enjoyed the days of labels like ruffhouse being able to grease the wheel.

some nostalgia in his book, i should say.

hmmm, interesting. But the Roots never released any albums pre-soundscan.

oh yeah, his nostalgia was as a runner for ruffhouse right before the switch

and it wasn't a "bring back the old days" thing, it was a "man, it WAS fun to get a guy to lie about how many copies he sold" thing

but the hamfisted way it's being done is rendering these market-specific charts irrelevant, which has the effect of rendering these markets commercially irrelevant

Does the fact that the charts are bad really make the genres commercially irrelevant? Presumably the programmers at country and R&B stations would be aware that these charts don't represent what their audiences actually want to hear anymore.

shakey have you not heard of the portable people meter?

― da croupier, Friday, November 22, 2013 9:15 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think it's pretty well-established that Shakey Mo's familiar with meter data.

lol

Presumably the programmers at country and R&B stations would be aware that these charts don't represent what their audiences actually want to hear anymore.

well, part of the problem is that it was never just "we play what the people want to hear." it was a real push and pull between stations, listeners and labels. there wouldn't be decades of payola if it wasn't worth pushing stations to play songs they wouldn't have otherwise, and a lot of hits got their start thanks to payola but grew a life of their own (labels try not to spend money on songs that would only survive as long as you're spending money). for all the flaws of this system, radio stations were still cultural outposts specific to region, genre and subculture. by saying 'fuck all that, if a rapper gets downloaded a lot, that's a rap #1, we don't care if it's Psy and people are just watching him dance' it becomes less important for labels to engage with those regional outposts and, instead, spend all their time and money on cultivating The Internet.

These are problems and trends that go back decades, and sometimes - like questlove re soundscan - it's just a sentimental preference for the world you know. but its fair for people engaged with the subcultures these charts represent to question the merit of metrics that are creating such static blandness.

if i may drop ridiculous metaphor, this situation is like a symptom of a disease that could be harmful itself if left untreated.

But what's the value to the label that it's called a "rap" #1 rather than a "pop" #1 or whatever? That doesn't actually help them in any way, right? That doesn't actually make the song sell more to rap fans I would assume.

that's part of the problem - the charts are rendered meaningless, as they're neither influential or easy to influence. they're just a subset of the hot 100 based on an arbitrary genre assignment.

if billboard continues to resign music success itself as a subset of internet success, the rap #1 in 4 years could hypothetically be some garbage from a burger king ad nobody actually spent a dime on or heard on a radio station

which is fine if you're a businessman who sees that as a grand success, but pretty fucking sad if you like rap

that is obviously going to happen, its already happening

i mean, this week, billboard is congratulating bon jovi with a top 40 placement because a lot of people watche a doofus lip sync to "livin' on a prayer" at celtics game in 2009.

How white artists profit from mocking hip-hop (from Salem)

LOL "what the people want to hear," more like "what we want the people to hear."

Wikipedia says "Royals" was inspired by Lorde seeing a Kansas City Royals baseball player and while listening to hiphop artist Lana Del Rey... no joke, go check it out.

lmao

Lorde had thought of writing a song about the luxury of pop musicians after seeing a National Geographic image. It showed a Kansas City Royals-player signing baseballs, with his team's name emblazoned across his shirt – according to Lorde, "It was just that word. It's really cool." More broadly, historic aristocrats were also inspirational.[9] She wrote the lyrics to "Royals" at her house in only half an hour.[10] She was listening to a lot of rap and hip-hop-influenced music, especially Lana Del Rey, while writing. Lorde has mentioned that "all those references to expensive alcohol, beautiful clothes and beautiful cars – I was thinking, ‘This is so opulent, but it’s also bullshit.’"[11] Lorde later went to the studio to show the lyrics to producer Joel Little, who said "Yeah, this is cool", and "Royals", along with two other songs, was produced in a week for The Love Club EP.

This is the pic apparently, not a fan of this guy's hiphop mixtapes to be totally honest:
http://media.kansascity.com/smedia/2013/11/20/17/11/hG8FU.St.81.jpg

‘This is so opulent, but it’s also bullshit.’

was she studying the kc royals' recent contracts?

Ok I was wrong, it was inspired by "Dancing Queen" B. Chen:

http://wapc.mlb.com/play/?content_id=20069423&c_id=mlb

Y'all are going to have to start deconstructing Off To The Races/Blue Jeans now?

I'm coming to the thread very late and not reading the posts before mine, but
the lyrics quoted (from the song "Royals"?? what is this????) in OP remind me
of something I observed a little while ago about american culture from the late
80s/early 90s on: the black millionaire entertainer who is consistently genera-
lized into a representative(scapegoat) for materialism & conspicuous consumption

maybe there's just a vast cultural trauma [via OJ] which leads ppl to resent successful african-americans

She was listening to a lot of rap and hip-hop-influenced music, especially Lana Del Rey, while writing.

in an alternate universe where hip-hop never happened, Lana Del Rey would still write the theme song for the 2013 Great Gatsby movie

[MODS plz replace "the 2013 Great Gatsby movie" with "The Great Gatsby (2013)" for greater comedic potential. thanks in advance—BS]

Pronunciation "may-back" vs pronunciation "my-bach" as cultural signifier: discuss.

I only say it in a sexy vaguely-british(?) female voice

how is lana del rey not hip-hop influenced, she hired emile haynie, jeff bhasker and a bunch of other people I forgot for beats.

(which, before anyone starts to quibble "are you seriously saying lana del rey is hip-hop," doesn't mean it's anything more than "influenced," but the fact that these guys are on the album and guys like, I dunno, paul epworth or mark ronson are not does point to a different set of influences.)

xp it's not a question of whether or not lana del rey is "hip-hop influenced"—it's a question of this thread's entire premise becoming laughable if lornes' reference point for "jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash" is ldr

nb I haven't heard the song & I'm too jaded to seek it out

I Actually Secretly Hate Music

Around the middle of last year I started listening to a lot of rap, like Nicki Minaj and Drake, as well as pop singers like Lana Del Rey.

http://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/discovery-lorde/#_

"jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash"

Shitting on Bond villains imo

ELLA is frequently compared to Del Rey, though it infuriates her. Both are white women making pop music soaked in the rhythm and attitude of hip-hop. But Del Rey has a much more conventional narrative — she had an image makeover prior to her breakout Born To Die album, and co-writes her songs with some of the biggest producers and writers in the industry.
Ella’s songs, meanwhile, are very much her vision, and hers alone. That meant there was no one to deflect attention to when a blogger writing on the website feministing.com decried ‘Royals’ as racist. Months earlier, over burgers and cokes on a sunny winter’s day, Ella and I had discussed the potential for the song to be misinterpreted. Even though “gold teeth, Grey Goose, trippin’ in the bathroom” – a set of black music clichés – is immediately followed by the rock’n’roll excess of “trashin’ the hotel room”, it’s the nature of contemporary commentary to intentionally misconstrue in the endless quest for clicks.
“I mean, I was 15 when I wrote that song,” says Ella, a little sadly. “I wasn’t thinking about anyone’s cultural aspirations. I was being a bit silly. I don’t know. I can understand [the response] now, and it’s probably not my place to even comment on it. It’s just one of those kind of uncomfortable grey areas.”

http://www.fasterlouder.com.au/headliners/lorde/

to intentionally misconstrue does not seem totally accurate

Though to her credit that's as gracious a response as you could possibly make.

I was disagreeing with the writer of the piece's take on other writers

Yes "intentionally misconstrue" implies naked cynicism and malice. It's more about the tendency to take the most uncharitable reading possible.

Though to her credit that's as gracious a response as you could possibly make.

otm, i'm honestly impressed with that response, esp when you compare it to lily allen's "i'm sorry i'm not sorry" thing.

though fuck "intentionally misconstrue", obv

that she's willing to admit the song is "grey area" and that she gets the distaste is all the more impressive considering the apparent perspective of the person she was talking to.

This whole racism scandal with Lordes is just like back in the 80s when they were saying Billy Joel was racist because he mentioned "Malcolm X" alongside "British politician sex" as a fire that we didn't light but were trying to fight.

isn't "intentionally misconstrue" the writer's wordss & not lorde's?

no one's saying otherwise

that's my point, that she was talking to someone taking the "oh internet people just like to be mad" stance

since when was trashing hotel rooms exclusively a rock trope though? I mean, if you are picking out a lyric to supposedly refute the "it's about hip hop" argument, that is not the best one to pick.

I don't listen to radio much anymore, but they played Royals on Hot 97 today sandwiched in between hip-hop

My problem with the whole premise of this thread is that while I agree that it's problematic for privileged white kids who enjoy thrift-shop slumming to mock poor black kids for fantasizing about wealth, it seems equally problematic to treat chart hip-hop as some kind of Definitive Expression of Black Culture, when it's actually in large part a fantasy cooked up by record execs and product placement people. I mean aspiration to wealth is an old trope in hip-hop, but I think it's become a kind of grotesque caricature of itself.

i think lorde gave a good response

pretty impressive response from lorde, yeah

The internet is full of white people trying to earn their "I Noticed Some Racism" merit badges

As long as the arguments stand up, there is nothing particularly wrong with that. If hit songs or shows have a regressive message on race (or in the case of the Salon piece about Matilda, gender) making that case seems entirely legitimate.

Where I have a sliver of sympathy with Marcello is the question of priorities. It's depressing, in the UK context, to see dozens of similar articles discussing whether Lily Allen is racist, for example, while new laws that dramatically increase the level of English proficiency required to get citizenship go almost unremarked upon. That is a function of how the media works rather than a stain on contemporary leftism though.

The internet is full of white people trying to earn their "I Noticed Some Racism" merit badges

You give record execs and product placement people far too much credit. Aspiration to wealth is an old trope in African American culture going back to the 19th century. The fact that conspicuous consumption came to look like what it does has far more to do with the susceptibility that comes from a history of poverty and disenfranchisement than it does anything cooked up in a boardroom.

Moreover I think compared to say the shiny suit era, displays of wealth in hip hop in 2013 could easily be called conservative, yes this is because rappers are making less money but I don't see how one could say it is getting worse.

since when was trashing hotel rooms exclusively a rock trope though? I mean, if you are picking out a lyric to supposedly refute the "it's about hip hop" argument, that is not the best one to pick.

― katherine, Saturday, November 23, 2013 10:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2012/3/14/194213/202/hotels/SXSW_Hotels_Might_Want_To_Keep_An_Eye_Out_For_This_Rapper

It's not "exclusively a rock trope" but if you were to ask people, the majority would immediately associate trashing hotel rooms with rock stars.

I mean obviously rock stars were living out pretty much every conspicuous consumption cliche long before any rapper. It's what happens if you give enough young men enough cash, although there are enough examples of white indie types being alienated by 70s rock excesses as well.

I think it's safe to call hotel-room trashing a rock trope, however many non-rockers may have adopted it over the years.

But I'm more interested in what people are suggesting about the reception of these songs. Arguing about artist intent is one thing, but there's also an implicit or explicit argument being made that not only are the songs racist, they are succeeding because they are racist. I am curious about either the evidence for this or even just a theory as to how or why that would be so. I'll set aside the fact that many of these songs are popular with racially diverse audiences and focus only on the white listeners: The suggestion is that white listeners, or some white listeners, are responding positively to racist content. I know for some people that might just be a given -- white people are racist LOL -- but what's the evidence or track record that making racist appeals is a path to chart success? I'm not satisfied with just saying "I find aspects of this song racially problematic" and "This song is a huge hit" and therefore "The audience is racist". There's some essential analysis missing there.

These days tbh, it's more of a Lindsey Lohan trope.

@ tipsy mothra: I don't think people argue white people like these songs because they are racist, as much as because the songs problematize consumption and gender-relations with someone other than the white listeners themselves. It's saying young white people feel alienated in a materialist culture, not because of the failed lies of the neo-liberalists, but because of rap. As most white people, middleclass, probably bear some sort of responsibility for the excesses of neo-liberalism, having voted for it and in many places profited off the sky-rocketing house prizes, the thought that someone 'other' is to blame would be quite comforting. The worst line in Royals is for me 'we don't come from money', as if Lorde hasn't had a thousand times more privileged background than the rappers she is critiquing.

Not 100% sure Lorde grew up more privileged than Kanye

i mean Kanye didn't have a major label contract before he started high school, so there's that

I was with this article until it gets around to offering up more unexamined blanket praise for Kanye.

if he did, we'd all be jamming The Middle School Dropout, i guess (xp)

+ Kanye isn't the only rapper alive.

I don't think people argue white people like these songs because they are racist, as much as because the songs problematize consumption and gender-relations with someone other than the white listeners themselves.

That's interesting and more nuanced than most of what I've seen about this, which has tended to revolve around (imo) fairly reductive notions of race and racism. It's a complicated set of signifiers and receivers, and I don't think it lends itself to simple-minded "That's racist!" blogging. (With the arguable exception in this particular subset of Lily Allen, who of all of the alleged offenders is most clearly going for some kind of shock value.)

A counterbalance, if not completely a counterargument, is that for the under-30 demographic these songs are largely produced and consumed by, cartoonish displays of wealth and excess do not necessarily register as only "black" or "rap" but as a fully incorporated part of the pop culture landscape. I think it's always tricky when symbols escape from a subculture to mass culture. You can continue to insist on their primary subcultural meaning, but they don't necessarily scan that way in a mass culture setting. So kids reacting against an overload -- now well past its peak anyway -- of songs about expensive name brands and cliched displays of opulence might well be largely reacting to songs about expensive name brands and opulence, not to the subcultural associations of those symbols. And I understand it! Even allowing for the subcultural associations, it can be pretty wearing to hear people trying to find one more rhyme for Cristal.

I don't long for a return to the days of Disco Demolition Night or some of the dumber aspects of punk, but haven't those types of petty cultural wars been a pretty important driver of innovation and novelty in popular music? It's great to be more sensitive to issues of race, class, and gender, but it also seems like if you can't laugh at shit that's laughable, then some aspects of pop culture are going to stay stagnant.

Scrutinizing the lyrics of a 14 year old is probably overkill, though. She's right about something, she is wrong about something. However, now that I think about it, it is quite interesting how the media just immediately sees the problem of pop-culture being alienating for the young white middle class. Lots of people are probably alienated by the disneyfied world of Taylor Swift or One Direction or Justin Bieber or whatever. However, that is rarely seen as a problem per se.

Looks like someone never voted for the all the small things vid on trl

Hey tipsy maybe you should make your fictional young ppl who don't even see race (is lorde black? Is rick ross white? Idk who could say?) Another 25 times on this thread

That wasn't my point then or now. But thanks for the suggestion.

I'm not satisfied with just saying "I find aspects of this song racially problematic" and "This song is a huge hit" and therefore "The audience is racist". There's some essential analysis missing there.

― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Sunday, November 24, 2013 8:35 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think the analysis is missing. it sounds more like you either didn't read any of the arguments (itt, in the salon article, or in the og thread Itunes, Billboard, and the marginalization of black music and black audiences in America) or you are wilfully misrepresenting them. it's been spelled out multiple times, i'm sure you can figure it out

I have read most of those and I understand the concerns being raised. Given the pop landscape of the '00s, I'm wondering what the theory is that would explain a surge in popularity for racially-encoded white-privilege pop. Beyond I mean just asserting that white kids are all little latent racists just waiting for a chance to mock non-white people. If we have to stipulate that it is possible for non-white people to enjoy these songs for (presumably) non-latent-racist reasons, then do we also allow that possibility for some of the white audience? Or is that simply out of bounds? i.e. Is it possible for a white kid and a black kid in the same 10th grade class to both have Thrift Shop on their iPhones and enjoy it in more or less the same way? Or no?

http://i44.tinypic.com/zxk2ug.jpg

Given the pop landscape of the '00s, I'm wondering what the theory is that would explain a surge in popularity for racially-encoded white-privilege pop.

It's got a (weak imo) hook and she sounds funny with that scratchy accent? Don't overlook sheer novelty.

Have only followed this thread intermittently, and can only speak to one specific point. We play the radio in my grade 7 art classes, and "Royals" is on there incessantly--once per 48 minute class. What 13-year-olds seem to love about the song (some of them mockingly) is the chance, in unison--mostly Indian, some black, some white--to sing along loudly with the "and we'll never be Royals, Royals" part, at which point their grumpy teacher threatens to shut off said radio unless they quiet down. I'd be surprised if even one of them have given a second's worth of thought to what any of it means.

yeah the question "why is this a hit?" is the one with the easiest answer

I agree. But there's a persistent (and in the Lorde thread, at least, explicit) assertion that not only are it and "Thrift Shop" racially problematic, they are successful in part BECAUSE of their latent racism. That's the argument I'm trying to unearth. Frederick B's post made some interesting points in that direction, but I'm wondering what trend exactly is being identified, from the audience standpoint. If you buy that it's a trend.

well fwiw if a song makes someone want to sing along it isn't just the melody, it's that the words are something they feel comfortable saying or want to say

I think they like them as a hook, I just don't think they have any specific content for them (talking only about my students). I don't know--maybe I'll ask them this week.

i haven't seen anybody really saying they're popular because they're racist, just saying "oh look some very popular songs lately have dodgy racial subtexts"

haven't those types of petty cultural wars been a pretty important driver of innovation and novelty in popular music? It's great to be more sensitive to issues of race, class, and gender, but it also seems like if you can't laugh at shit that's laughable, then some aspects of pop culture are going to stay stagnant.

otm. One of pop's driving impulses is to kick against whatever feels ubiquitous and stale. Even the disco backlash is complicated. The Demolition Derby strand was bigoted but there were other people, including some black artists and critics, who felt they were criticising bandwagon-jumping schlock, most of which was made by established white stars, and weren't thinking about its roots in black, hispanic and gay audiences. But it's also natural for practitioners and partisans of that style to feel like all the criticism is coming from a bigoted place, especially if it comes when the genre is suddenly experiencing a commercial downturn. What's different now is that there's no way hip hop is going to implode and fragment as rapidly as disco did, if at all, because the backlash is focussed on particular lyrical tropes rather than the sound itself, and anyway those tropes have migrated beyond hip hop.

Regarding Royals' success, I think of Born in the USA and most listeners' enduring tendency to latch on to a couple of lines while barely thinking about the rest of the lyric. I doubt the majority of its fans have gone deep into the details and inconsistencies.

the racially problematic part is singling out rappers for what's judged to be materialistic excess; and it's that singling out that's being celebrated in my world of White People

Yeah its all part of the Blacklash

At the risk of sounding like I'm on a loop, the reason this debate is still happening on multiple threads is that there's disagreement over whether Royals exclusively targets rappers. I didn't think it did when I first heard it and I don't think so now. If I did then I'd have a problem with it.

Some of the white people I know who like Royals like it because that part where she quadruple tracks herself singing "I'll rule" sounds like a pack of howling dogs

If we have to stipulate that it is possible for non-white people to enjoy these songs for (presumably) non-latent-racist reasons, then do we also allow that possibility for some of the white audience? Or is that simply out of bounds? i.e. Is it possible for a white kid and a black kid in the same 10th grade class to both have Thrift Shop on their iPhones and enjoy it in more or less the same way? Or no?

― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Sunday, November 24, 2013 3:28 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no one said people like the song for racist reasons. again i don't think you're really engaging with any of the arguments, maybe quote specific posts before responding or something instead of just constructing sketchy irrelevant hypotheticals

Some people -- maybe not you -- absolutely did say people like these songs for racist reasons, and that's at least a subtext of the whole discussion. If we're now circling around to, "There may not be either racist intent from the artists or racist reception from the audience," then I think Marcello's suggestion that this a lot of chin-stroking over not-much-at-all becomes even stronger.

just looking at how people are still trying to undermine and dismiss reasons to find the song and the context of its success distasteful, you really have to give it to lorde, the person who has the most to lose by acknowledging how it can be received, for getting it. she's not finding the most overstated expression of that distaste to dismiss it entirely, she's saying she understands. she's not assuming intent is everything - in fact, she's debating whether it's even her place to speak on it. granted, she's probably just another oversensitive liberal who overthinks this shit - she IS a pc millenial - but her stance makes defensive efforts in regards to the song all the more absurd.

otm

obv the song is problematic but the leap to "white people like this song because it criticizes African American culture" is a bit simplistic.

you don't say

she's not assuming intent is everything

you don't say

I do say. Do you actually have anything to say?

I agree that Lorde seems admirably smart and self-aware. (Which wouldn't be a surprise to anyone who'd bothered to listen to her before deciding she was an entitled racist brat.) I think it's good for any artist, especially one with mass success, to think about how their work is received and its effects intended or otherwise.

I don't think that answers this slippery question of what's actually being alleged here. If we're not positing racism in either the singer or the audience, then what's being suggested is a kind of authorless, readerless racism -- one that maybe exists purely for the purpose of Internet approbation.

It's folly to assume that racism only results from "bad" people acting intentionally racist.

That's movie racism, where it's easy to spot the villain.

I think it is interesting to examine some of the messages in these songs, and think about what's behind their success and general reception.

I agree that Lorde seems admirably smart and self-aware. (Which wouldn't be a surprise to anyone who'd bothered to listen to her before deciding she was an entitled racist brat.) I think it's good for any artist, especially one with mass success, to think about how their work is received and its effects intended or otherwise.

― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Sunday, November 24, 2013 9:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Let's refer back to earlier in this thread, where someone rather smartly noted that making conversations about race into defenses against accusations of racism is a good way to turn the conversation away from any actual fruitful discussion, which you were definitely guilty of doing in that Lorde thread where the only people who brought up the idea of her being a racist brat was...you. Which you're doing again in this thread.

katy perry did something, i can tell from twitter

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x17l8bb_hd-katy-perry-unconditionally-ama-s-2013_music

http://a57.foxnews.com/global.fncstatic.com/static/managed/assets/660/371/katyperryamas.jpg?ve=1

seems like a lot of places are finding it to be a delightful throwback to when appropriation was elegant and fully-dressed, maybe they missed the dancers wearing yellowface

http://cache3.asset-cache.net/gc/451804403-singer-katy-perry-performs-onstage-during-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=GkZZ8bf5zL1ZiijUmxa7QboCEZzOUqFc1s5FDVzbbZe3dAXYUhhXSotsW8JzS5WEiy%2fCe0I%2bdlEGONi8e3MBGg%3d%3d

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65_Qfatb5CY

any excuse tbh

this is basically just selena all over again

I think it is interesting to examine some of the messages in these songs, and think about what's behind their success and general reception.

― intheblanks, Monday, November 25, 2013 3:42 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree! I think it might even be interesting to open that consideration up beyond easy/lazy assertions about the racist proclivities (intended or otherwise) of their producers and consumers. Like, I think the issue and implications of subcultural signifiers making crossing the border to mass-cultural signifiers is always interesting, because it sets up all sorts of unpredictable response and feedback. It's one facet of how culture works. What I think is less interesting, and what I've mostly seen on ILM and assorted blog posts, is playing self-congratulatory games of spot-the-racist, in situations that call for more complex and less accusatory analysis.

You're being such a smug asshole. The way you ask in this professor my way "oh dear could we perhaps look at this in a more nuanced way?" *puffs on pipe* *swishes around brandy* then subsequently choose to ignore posts by people like Katherine and others which are actually well reasoned and completely valid and obvious apparently even to lords herself is really fucking amazing trolling. Take your patronizing tone and shove it directly up your tweed asshole.

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

holy shit

The theory is this: America is very much a race-conscious culture, and there is a powerful strain of racism the infuses its culture dating back 400 years. This is obviously a bad thing, but it's a very real thing worth confronting. There's a famous quote about how racism is like smog: everyone's always breathing it in, even when it's not visible. The messages social actors send and the policies created by a myriad of institutions reinforce this daily. I don't exclude myself, a white person, from this in any way.

If that reads to you like "white people are racist LOL," then that's you're interpretation of it. I don't read it that way, and I think a lot of the people in this thread, myself included, accept this on background.

Getting specific to this song, most of the tropes being deployed in the Lorde song are archetypes/stereotypes about rappers. I don't think it's too much of a stretch that these specific behaviors are coded as "black" when interpreted in the culture at large, given hip-hop's history as a primarily black art form. So this is a song that specifically takes what amounts to a black stereotype to task for being frivolous or shallow in wealth and consumption. And it's found a lot of success in a culture where African-Americans are consistently treated as second-class citizens, reduced to stereotypes in the culture at large, and constantly sent negative messages about their worth as human beings. That's problematic.

It doesn't mean that Lorde set out thinking, "I'm going to write a racist song!" or that audience members are thinking, "I like this BECAUSE it's racist." But the message of the song very plays into negative stereotypes and ideas in the culture at large about black people, and it is being well-received because those are common ideas in American culture that resonate with many people. Pointing this out is an attempt to push back against the ideas because they are pernicious, not to vilify anyone as the most evil racist who ever lived.

xxxpost on the last one

attila are from georgia, btw, not new zealand

more complex and less accusatory analysis.

But how is dismissing all the criticism as self-congratulatory games of spot-the-racist more complex?

can I just go back to that Attila thing for a second

what the FUCK

well fwiw if a song makes someone want to sing along it isn't just the melody, it's that the words are something they feel comfortable saying or want to say

― sleepingbag, Sunday, November 24, 2013 2:59 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I really disagree with this

I mostly agree with it, particularly since it was in response to an assertion that no one listens to the words, that all anyone really cares about is a catchy melody or rhythm.

People may not always pore over their favorite pop songs like poetry, but they most definitely listen to the words.

the phonetic appeal of certain combinations of consonant/vowel sounds is a huge component of wanting to sing along with something or finding it catchy

like, you can't just swap in different words with the same number of syllables into famous choruses and get the exact same result.

otm

People may not always pore over their favorite pop songs like poetry, but they most definitely listen to the words.

Yeah, but people also mishear shit all the time and become quite attached to the version that plays in their head.

One of many, many books of misheard lyrics

cool reader's digest link

I was going to the youtube page for the video to point out that almost everyone is in fact praising the song for the words/message, which they are, and then there was this: "Finally! A pure blooded video with no added ghetto people, thank you I enjoyed that! Lorde is so pretty, love her eyes."

lol

xxxpost No idea how that contradicts my statement, or makes a point about the Lorde song. Are people mishearing the lyrics to "Royals"?

Unless you're subtly throwing shade at the interpretations of her song being espoused itt

but returning to the complexity argument, the problem is that "Royals" doesn't stand up under complexity. the argument is "I'm never going to be a landed old-money noble, unlike these ostentatious pop stars, a large percentage of whom are rappers, but we're above that." Nadia Oh's "Kate Middleton" stands up to more complexity than this." and christ, even Lorde probably thinks so at this point ("I wrote it when I was 15" is as close as you can get to disowning something as a media-trained-to-hell teenager.)

xpost
sorry, you're whole theory is disproven, most ppl think the chorus to "royals" says "there's a bathroom on the right"

People most certainly do listen to the words and maybe even analyze them a little bit but I dunno exactly how much that has a bearing on how much you like the song. i.e. I like plenty of songs by Depeche Mode and New Order and will sing along very loudly to them even though most of their lyrics are fairly lousy. Certain phrases just sound good to the ear, I loved the line "c'mon Barbie let's go party" for years before even realizing there was a sexual connotation to it, I never felt the need to analyze things on the most basic level

"certain phrases just sound good to the ear" is basically what i was saying about appealing phonetics.

i mean maybe you meant that with your initial disagreement with sleepingbag too, it's hard to tell from that post

what is some awesome tigercore rap?

h8 attila so much but that's partially because it hits so close to home. like i know people from my high school who are friends with them. they really are the worst though.

you can be our assassin

xxxxxpost Sure, but I don't know if there's evidence that most of Lorde's audience mainly looks at "Royals" as an "I Zimbra"-style tone poem. Certainly not everyone hears this song and thinks, "I like this because I agree wholeheartedly with every sentiment in it." But some people do, and others generally agree with it. I'm not going to brave the youtube comments sections, but I'll trust katherine upthread that it's full of support for the lyrical message of this song.

Not wanting to use typical death metal terms, their name comes from Attila the Hun, a name which they came across in a book not long after their inception.

lol

I'm mainly just disagreeing with the implication that people sing along with something because they "want to say" those words (which I took to mean, because they agree with them or find them meaningful in some way)

I don't think about the meaning to something like 80% of my favourite songs I know the lyrics to. Most of the time lyrics mean shit all anyway.

that's cool and all, but I don't think that necessarily holds true for everyone. I'm a teacher, and I can tell you that a great deal of young people take the lyrical content of their favorite music pretty damn seriously.

sure, i'm not saying it applies to everyone.

when i was a kid i used to like the song that went "join me for a ride / speed up the music / join me for a ride / maximum overdrive"

don't know what that's got to do with anything, just throwing it out there.

yeah there's certainly a difference between singing along to what's on the radio and the dude who thinks Green Day has some real cool insights about George W Bush

just trying to think of some of the songs I liked in middle school and high school, I dont know if I pored over the meaning of any of them. I mean this was the Max Martin era for crying out loud.

the dude who thinks Green Day has some real cool insights about George W Bush

aka the editorial staff of Rolling Stone

yeah, I guess one point I want to make is, even if they're not necessarily in your social circle, the dudes who think Green Day has some real cool insights about George W Bush are fucking legion.

i would guess, not that it matters here at all, that for many people - most people? - the lyrics are not usually the point of access to the song, but that once they like a song or an artist they will explore and identify with the lyrics to some extent

not true, but whatever
saying the lyrics of "royals" aren't intended to resonate with the audience is delusional

I loved the song "I Want it That Way" for about 10 years before realizing that the lyrics make no damn sense at all

obviously it depends on the song, there are songs that might have a message and songs that are clearly meaningless. "Royals" does strike me as one of the former. then again I thought it was Miley Cyrus the first time I heard it.

the message is in the receiver to a large extent, to the extent that everything has a message

i don't believe that's true either, but whatever!

xxxxpost I agree, in that the lyrics are embedded in the song. No one got a flyer with the Lorde lyrics, and thought, "I agree with this, now I will explore what they sound like set to music."

But I do think that enjoyment of the lyrics often happens simultaneously upon listening to a song, and that it doesn't necessarily take the form of, "Now that I like this song, I will choose to explore the lyrics."

some songs (and genres) are more conducive to identifying with the lyrics than others and i don't think it's a stretch to put lorde into that category

also the usage of pronouns like "we" and "us"

intheblanks thoroughly otm about the racial angle though, i hope that puts tipsy's complaints to rest?

lol dream on

LL i agree with your "whatever" and i've probably made my statements more blanket than i believe but i do think that fans of lyrical music tend to engage in a relationship with the lyrics and that relationship isn't fixed down by the lyricist or their intentions, assuming the lyricist ever fully knows their own intentions

i guess i'm saying the lyrics maybe unfold more slowly than the hooks, but obv people hear things that grab them straight away

maybe it's leashsta rap.

maura's spin piece was pretty otm here: "its sing-a-long chunkiness designed so listeners can trill played-out tropes of "success" ("Jet planes / Islands / Tigers on a gold leash") in unison with Lorde, even though the rest of the song implicitly places her —and her beloved — above trifling materialism."

i think listeners don't hear lyrics in a fixed way but certain artists are famously known to attract fanbases who pore over every last opaque word they write, and i think lorde consciously targets that demographic. like, she's not whigfield.

Yeah, for this specific song, the Green Day comparison is a lot more apt than the Backstreet Boys one.

it doesn't help that musically it's so damn spare that listeners can't help but concentrate on the words

yeah the converse of that i think is that as a teen when i really really cared about lyrics it was still only the lyrics within certain kinds of music, there are whole genres that i wd've dismissed as having anything of worth to say back when i was a idiot

yeah the converse of that i think is that as a teen when i really really cared about lyrics it was still only the lyrics within certain kinds of music, there are whole genres that i wd've dismissed as having anything of worth to say back when i was a idiot

yeah my point is that lorde is in those "certain kinds of music" - maybe not for you specifically and maybe not for her entire fanbase but this is the model of artist she wants to be

I think the fact that it's pop is playing into whether people think the lyrics are being taken seriously.

But just because it's pop doesn't mean everyone who listens to it doesn't care about the lyrics, or is stupid because they're a kid and kids are obviously stupid and unsophisticated.

absolutely agree with you and lex there, and yes i'm sure Lorde is "that kind of music"

i mean, i spent the last month reading lou reed obits that talk about how revolutionary his lyrics were. lyrics obviously matter to people.

listened to by Those Kind of People

i spent the last month reading lou reed obits that talk about how revolutionary his lyrics were

tried to this as much as possible tbh; I remembered my roots in Sumnerville.

haha *as LITTLE

i hope i'm not disparaging anybody Alfred, i'm thinking about my own younger snobberies and am certain those snobberies are still present and fully functional amongst many music fans

it's pop in that it's popular and in the charts but it has a kind of "credibility" (see also florence, lily allen) that people like katy perry and ke$ha don't - lorde positions herself as part of the singer-songwriter lineage as much as, if not more than, pop

which means that she can be praised as against pop simply on the basis of her genre alone

Totally good observations, I'm probably making my classifications based on some gnarly assumptions about age/gender myself.

going to repeat myself -- she is using language of inclusion -- we, us -- to identify those who agree with her about the opinions/"facts" she is listing in the rest of the song. there is nothing obscuring this -- it's all right there!

there is no way lorde would have written this song with nonsense lyrics just because the tune was cool
would kim deal sing this song? no.

hell, maybe she would, but in 2013 she wouldn't write it
although she was in a disco band in her teens!

it should also be mentioned that the racial tropes lorde reinforces aren't explicit - she positions herself as a fairly typical white liberal, ie like most media tastemakers. not just the anti-materialism but also the mere fact of her being a female pop star who doesn't dress like a "slut" and the way in which she presents herself as an outsider, not someone who would be in the popular crowd at school. lily allen also does this in the uk.

white liberals have the most TORTUOUS relationship with chart pop because so many of its values are antithetical to their nice white middle-class liberalism, so the not-insignificant number of mainstream pop artists who convince them that they are "one of us", like lorde and allen, get ridiculously gushing coverage. (this is why lily allen gets hailed as a feminist despite making a racist video for a song that displays the opposite of female solidarity, and nicki minaj will never get hailed as a feminist despite actually saying feminist things and rapping lyrics about female solidarity, because sometimes she wears skimpy clothes)

Wedding Ringtone Rap

I just feel like this song actually does very little to add to the stereotypes about rappers and materialism compared to rap videos themselves. And I still can't get past the fact that calling out the implicit "racism" in the Lorde song requires a kind of condescending equivalence between mainstream rap videos and black culture in general. Discussions of mainstream rap tend to leave out the fact that the audience for it is primarily white.

Discussions of mainstream rap tend to leave out the fact that the audience for it is primarily white.

??

I have literally never seen a discussion of mainstream rap on this site that hasn't gleefully reveled in pointing out that the audience of mainstream rap is primarily white.

xxpost Cite the post where people say or imply that mainstream rap is equivalent to black culture in general.

massive xposts but I just want it out there that Attila are the fucking worst. And I'm not going to make any Billy Joel jokes unlike everyone on facebook did earlier this year.

America is populated mostly by white people. arguably something can't become mainstream without having a primarily white audience, just in sheer numerical terms even if you were able to set aside privilege/perception/power structures?

I wouldn't say 'mostly', the numbers hovering in what, the mid 60s, and is going down further every day. Victory

^^^^

i guess it depends if 'mostly' means more than half or some other wider margin or majority, sure. but still -- sales figures for rap music would be mathematically improbable, if not impossible, if the audience was primarily black.

duh

that doesn't really change the point

i'm not really that invested in whether or not she is a racist (i don't think she intends to be) as i am that she means what she sings.

imagining that she's singing "plum balls, timepiece, lasers in my eyebeams" is actually better than what she's singing. i wish this song had nonsense lyrics tbh!

xxxpost yeah, also, I never get the logic behind pointing that out in this context. Is rap's popularity among white people supposed to somehow negate the fact that it arose from a very specific African-American context, and that the overwhelming majority of its most innovative and successful practitioners are black?

xxpost what is the point?

talk to me like I'm stupid and make it clear and obvious for me.

If the Lorde lyrics had been sung by a black American female how would the lyrics be interpreted then?

let's not

lol

Great thought experiment

hurting, are you basically saying that disco DOES suck, and it's wrong to assume one's saying anything about black people just because they say "Disco sucks"?

If the lyrics had been sung by a black American female, that female would have been India.Arie and no one would have noticed

very thought. such hypothetical. wow.

again, big ups to lorde for going the "i can see why people don't like my disco sucks anthem" route rather than the "how can you say i'm a racist just because i think disco sucks, boo hoo hoo" one.

my takeaway is that Lorde is a more thoughtful, introspective person than Lily Allen, which I think we all already knew anyway

that response def makes me feel better about adoring the middle of her album

xxxpost yeah, also, I never get the logic behind pointing that out in this context. Is rap's popularity among white people supposed to somehow negate the fact that it arose from a very specific African-American context, and that the overwhelming majority of its most innovative and successful practitioners are black?

― intheblanks, Monday, November 25, 2013 12:58 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's supposed to point out that what is "mainstream" in hip-hop is being shaped by a largely white audience that wants certain things out of black performers, and that I find the implications of what white audiences respond to most in hip-hop to be a lot more problematic than the implications of a white singer taking a swipe at materialism in hip-hop.

i do like how her response also functions as a riposte to everyone gushing over how ~precocious she is - that typical 17-yr-old thing of going "ew, i was 15, how can you connect that to me now"

Would anyone be shocked to hear that Jim DeRogatis thinks she's a genius?

xxxpost yeah, also, I never get the logic behind pointing that out in this context. Is rap's popularity among white people supposed to somehow negate the fact that it arose from a very specific African-American context, and that the overwhelming majority of its most innovative and successful practitioners are black?

― intheblanks, Monday, November 25, 2013 12:58 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's supposed to point out that what is "mainstream" in hip-hop is being shaped by a largely white audience that wants certain things out of black performers, and that I find the implications of what white audiences respond to most in hip-hop to be a lot more problematic than the implications of a white singer taking a swipe at materialism in hip-hop.

― i wish i had a skateboard i could skate away on (Hurting 2), Monday, November 25, 2013 12:20 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't really buy this tbh, because i think the black audience wants a lot of the same things, and also i think a lot of these artists are basing their work not off of what ppl want but what they want to do and say, and also probably crafted out of their own experiences and the likes and dislikes of the community around them.

i wonder if there was a period where dero was intrigued by the "swingin party" cover but wanted to be sure she had all her clothes on and hated disco

xp DJP otm. That dialogue has been happening within black music for years.I googled "anti-bling" and got quotes like this from Syleena Johnson:

When you listen to the album, you have to remember that Eminem doesn't have to talk about killing, raping, b*tches and h*es to get his point across. He can talk about real life things that people can really relate to. He's not rapping about bling and girls and stuff like that. Everybody does stuff like that. He can really tell a story.

i'm more or less sympathetic to lorde / dont think shes a racist or w/e but hurting's argument is b.s. and also outdated

what year is this anyway? the biggest rap star is macklemore not 50 cent

oh right because lorde's song is aimed at artists like macklemore, good point

So [cont.] it really doesn't surprise me that someone like Janelle Monae digs Royals. Googling also led me back to Kanye's Breathe In Breathe Out and I forgot what a smart take on hip hop's internal dialogue it is.

Golly, more of that bullshit ice rap
I got to 'pologize to Mos and Kweli (probably)
But is it cool to rap about gold
If I told the world I copped it from Ghana and Mali? (Mali!)
First nigga with a Benz and a backpack
Ice chain, Carti lens, and a knapsack
Always said if I rapped I'd say somethin' significant
But now I'm rappin' 'bout money, hoes, and rims again

couldn't her song be aimed a Rich Kids of Instagram or whatever who have transformed rapper shit into genuine douchebaggery w/out the context rappers are coming out of

guys it's about asap rocky and lana del rey

is anyone on this thread actually calling lorde a racist for saying "disco sucks"? if not, there's really no reason to go down this "disco is mostly for white people anyway, here's a black person who said disco sucks" road.

It doesn't mean that Lorde set out thinking, "I'm going to write a racist song!" or that audience members are thinking, "I like this BECAUSE it's racist." But the message of the song very plays into negative stereotypes and ideas in the culture at large about black people, and it is being well-received because those are common ideas in American culture that resonate with many people. Pointing this out is an attempt to push back against the ideas because they are pernicious, not to vilify anyone as the most evil racist who ever lived.

― intheblanks, Monday, 25 November 2013 15:28 (2 hours ago) Permalink

This is well articulated, and yes I understand the concern. I still think it is a sort of blinkered and limiting way to think about how culture works, still tethered to a sort of Elvis=racism Manichaean view of appropriation and power that does not fully appreciate the fluidity and unpredictability of communication through art in general and music in particular. (And the role music has played in American racial/cultural evolution in particular, which has been often complex and problematic, but very valuable.)

xp People have said all kinds of things and nobody's making exactly the same argument so at this stage I'm just running with the interesting digressions.

what's interesting about Reasons Its Ok To Hate Disco?

en you listen to the album, you have to remember that Eminem doesn't have to talk about killing, raping, b*tches and h*es to get his point across.

em actually specifically does rap about these things in some detail

I was gonna say, someone clearly skipped "Kim"

xp What's interesting about different groups of people having different but overlapping critiques? Wow that's a hard one.

h8 attila so much but that's partially because it hits so close to home. like i know people from my high school who are friends with them. they really are the worst though.

― Tip from Tae Kwon Do: (crüt), Monday, November 25, 2013 11:17 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the singer seems like a legit psychopath

btw disappointed in u guys still talking abt lorde when we have all new katy perry material

^^^

i was expecting that to take off a bit more than it did

itt a bunch of Mikado stans handwring about rap music

Tipsy, it seems to me that you're talking primarily about appropriation, but to me that is not germane to the discussion around Lorde. She isn't Elvis or the Rolling Stones or Talking Heads or Eminem or Janis Joplin, or any of the thousands or artists you could discuss re:appropriation. To me, that's a separate issue from the racially coded scolding I hear in "Royals"

feel like white twitter doesnt really care about racism against asians

whitter surely

whitter/rasianism

i feel like i should be right in there with the righteous outrage but i don't really care about katy perry :(

if people are praising her for being classy and old-school that sucks, but if people are ignoring her trollbait i think the punishment fits the crime

feel like white twitter ILX doesnt really care about racism against asians

same dif

i wonder if she's glad or mad that the cameras mostly did a good job of gliding past the dancers' make-up, which was the most WTF bit of the thing

she didn't mean it, y'all, it's ok.

I got lol u mad about this and katy perry's faithful are after me, here is my most favorite of their responses:

if putting on a costume is racist then everyone is racist on Halloween Katy was showing culture being racist is discriminating others because of the color of their skin

the performance last night clearly was meant to use Madama Butterfly’s tired orientalist imagery as an ironic statement on her broken marriage.

A representative for Perry didn’t return a request for comment.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/11/25/memories-of-a-geisha-katy-perrys-amas-performance-stirs-debate/

"Madama"

XP no lie I had a coworker try to explain to me earlier this year why it wasn't racist for her sorority sister to attend a costume party...... as aunt jemima

she just really loves pancakes and tbf who doesnt

itt ILXors show that they don't know Puccini

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madama_Butterfly

mdma butterfly

lol reading the article, the opera is explicitly referenced right before the part you quoted curmudgeon, so now I have no idea why you quoted it and then wrote "Madama" in quotes like it was a mistake

pfft i know all about that shit

http://www.gourmetfoodideas.com/images/P/050201%20Lg1.jpg

mdma butterfly

― lag∞n, Monday, November 25, 2013 7:41 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yassss

mariah remix album title please

http://pitchfork.com/news/53128-echo-chamber-mountain-goats-john-darnielle-calls-katy-perrys-geisha-act-racist

i didn't see it but is Katy Perry dressing up as a geisha just inherently racist or is there more to it

mdma butterfly is the best joke I've seen all week

its monday tho

id like to thank my fans you mdma this all posssible

smithy otm

The geisha thing is terrible but I've kind of avoided Katy Perry for some time and had forgotten how bad her awful honking voice is, especially when she's out of tune.

fusion culture

I know the opera, but how did I not grasp the spelling all this time? smh at myself.

pwned by Italiano

The geisha thing is terrible but I've kind of avoided Katy Perry for some time and had forgotten how bad her awful honking voice is, especially when she's out of tune.

― Matt DC, Monday, November 25, 2013 7:58 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tho it could just be this bowl of ice cream...

"Unconditionally" does have the dubious distinction of being the worst Katy Perry song I've heard since "Firework"

this + the sheer awkwardness of the phrasing on the hook (un-con-dish-SHUN-all-EEEEE) made my teeth itch

how to effectively troll an aerosmith: call this "wordplay"

"Unconditionally" does have the dubious distinction of being the worst Katy Perry song I've heard since "Firework"

this leads me to the conclusion: people have to first like the song and think that it's good before anybody worries about it being racist

I am certain that a lot of people do actually like that song, solely because it's the new Katy Perry single

I do find it odd that the one pop megastar that's not being autotuned to hell right now is the only one that desperately needs it

i don't think autotune would fix KP's problem

katie perry used to be xian singer right? you can ever erase that weird thing, that kind of "off-brand pop star" feeling that xian singers or bands give you...they are doomed to walk this planet as mr. pibbs and not dr. peppers

haha

lol

otm

t-bomb

OTOH I used to feel the same way about ex-child-stars and now pop is pretty much dominated by them.

Tipsy Mothra otm upthread, I think.

Is there not a fighting chance that, given Royals has been a worldwide hit, many of Lorde's fans are also exactly the same people who are buying equally enormous materialistic R&B/hip-hop hits, and that maybe they just really like the tune?

I don't think it represents some kind of massive anti-hip-hop backlash in the zeitgeist, to be sure, and as I mentioned above, it gets played on hip-hop radio

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-pacific-heart/201311/yes-katy-perry-s-performance-was-racist-here-s-why?quicktabs_5=0

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/american-music-awards-2013-katy-perry-accused-of-racism-for-dressing-as-geisha-8962401.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2513107/Katy-Perry-accused-racism-dressing-geisha-AMAs.html

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/music/music-news/katy-perry-accused-racism-after-2849679

enormous materialistic R&B/hip-hop hits

this is the wrong way to think about these hits

I know, I was just writing in the binary terms that much of this thread is in, and which the Lorde song is held to be representative of. Like most binaries, I think it's false.

sure dude

daily mail comments

Sonnybabe, Port of Spain, 5 hours ago

Every body needs to calm down. I'm no fan of hers but seriously, racist, because she was costumed as a Geisha. It's not like she was wearing black face.There are even white women who become Geishas, yes, I have seen the documentary. I thought the performance was visually stunning, the vocals on the other hand not so much. But all in all, a decent performance.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2513107/Katy-Perry-accused-racism-dressing-geisha-AMAs.html#ixzz2lh9A5xDy

lol if she was in blackface DM comments would be like "IT'S NOT LIKE SHE KEEPS SLAVES, GOD! PC GONE MAD"

but and im just throwing this out there what if she does keep slaves

thanks for the links birdhouse/temple character

There are even white women who become Geishas, yes, I have seen the documentary

I like the assumption that there's doubts. YES I HAVE SEEN THE DOCUMENTARY KTHNX

"seen it on a documentary" is a standard reply by morons with stupid opinions in the UK when asked for proof of something.

"There are even Japanese women who have become geishas, yes, I have watched Memoirs of a Geisha.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_22EXDJCJp3s/ShQ4qwlM0qI/AAAAAAAABdM/H6r2lpXBB70/s400/gwen-stefani-harajuku-girls-400a062207.jpg

GoodallsGirl, Wolverhampton, 5 hours ago

Hold on, No one complained when Gwen Stefani did this or when she had 3 geisha girls follow her about. It seems that people try and be PC over everything and it borderlines on silliness :/ x

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keesha99x, miami, United States, 5 hours ago

Imitation is the highest form of flattery. I remember Madonna as a geisha at the grammy's in 1999. No one accused her of racism.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2513107/Katy-Perry-accused-racism-dressing-geisha-AMAs.html#ixzz2lhCdVvri
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i think that's enough daily mail comments

as I mentioned above, it gets played on hip-hop radio

― i wish i had a skateboard i could skate away on (Hurting 2), Monday, November 25, 2013 9:13 PM (39 minutes ago)

The most recent, loaded example of rap and R&B stations conceding to the music industry's whitewashing is their embrace of Lorde's "Royals." The New Zealand teen's massive hit has some of the electro-buzzing murk of Drake or the Weeknd and drifts at the same BPM as plenty of syrup-afflicted radio R&B, so it isn't an out-of-nowhere inclusion. And "Royals" was first introduced to urban radio thanks to a Weeknd remix, and then by way of a Rick Ross verse added to the song.

http://www.spin.com/#articles/lorde-royals-rap-radio-urban-macklemore-thrift-shop/

I was surprised to see that Hot 97 does indeed play Macklemore (and Bruno Mars!), however I'd hardly call this list "whitewashed":

1 V.S.O.P K.MICHELLE
2 HOLD ON WE'RE GOING HOME DRAKE
3 HOLY GRAIL JAY-Z F/JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE
4 STANDING ON THE SUN BEYONCE
5 BEWARE BIG SEAN F/LIL WAYNE & JHENE AIKO
6 GET LUCKY DAFT PUNK
7 ROYALS LORDE
8 POWER TRIP J COLE F/ MIGUEL
9 F*CKWITHMEYOUKNOWIGOTIT JAY-Z
10 TAKE BACK THE NIGHT JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE
11 TREASURE BRUNO MARS
12 THE MONSTER EMINEM F/RIHANNA
13 POUND CAKE DRAKE F/JAYZ
14 FINE CHINA CHRIS BROWN
15 LOVE MORE CHRIS BROWN F/NICKI MINAJ
16 CAN'T HOLD US MACKLEMORE & RYAN LEWIS
17 OWN IT MACK WILDS
18 SWEET SERENADE PUSHA T F/CHRIS BROWN
19 STARTED FROM THE BOTTOM DRAKE
20 COLLARD GREENS SCHOOLBOY Q F/KENDRICK LAMAR
21 CROOKED SMILE J. COLE F/TLC
22 NO NEW FRIENDS DJ KHALED F/ DRAKE, RICK ROSS, & LIL WAYNE
23 SHE KNOWS J.COLE
24 TOM FORD JAY-Z
25 PRIMETIME JANELLE MONAE F/MIGUEL
26 BOUND 2 KANYE WEST
27 DIFFERENTOLOGY BUNJI GARLIN
28 FASHION KILLA A$AP ROCKY
29 PART II (ON THE RUN) JAY-Z F/BEYONCE
30 WHITE WALLS MACKLEMORE & RYAN LEWIS

The "whitewashing" reference in the Spin article was not to suggest that r'n'b/rap stations now play 99% white artists; it is likely more a reference to the new way Billboard does its charts (mentioned in that other thread and above)

I mean aspiration to wealth is an old trope in hip-hop, but I think it's become a kind of grotesque caricature of itself.

― i wish i had a skateboard i could skate away on (Hurting 2

So you don't think its problematic to only have Lorde and Macklemore making this argument?

The "whitewashing" reference in the Spin article was not to suggest that r'n'b/rap stations now play 99% white artists; it is likely more a reference to the new way Billboard does its charts (mentioned in that other thread and above)

and how radio stations are arranging their playlists.

well as DJP pointed out above, there are plenty of black artists who make the same critique. But they get ignored by mass radio/tv. Which to me comes back to what audiences want out of white vs. black artists, which I find a lot more problematic than the song. I guess what I mean is that the song shouldn't inherently be problematic, although it is problematic in the context of the pop landscape.

huh?

people shouldnt make scoldy songs, nagl

"The most recent, loaded example of rap and R&B stations conceding to the music industry's whitewashing is their embrace of Lorde's "Royals.""

this is a dumb sentence tbf

WOO K MICHELLE AT NUMBER ONE CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW AMAZING SHE IS

The "whitewashing" reference in the Spin article was not to suggest that r'n'b/rap stations now play 99% white artists; it is likely more a reference to the new way Billboard does its charts (mentioned in that other thread and above)

and how radio stations are arranging their playlists.

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, November 25, 2013 5:48 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf there have been a fair amount of white artists on the R&B airplay-only charts this year -- big presence from Robin and Justin, minor presence from Lorde and Macklemore and Eminem. and in recent years there's been R&B play for Adele, Katy Perry, etc.

I was pretty mortified by the Katy Perry performance last night. She was wearing only socks on stage, which is fucking disgusting. Just terrible

So... James Franco & Seth Rogan's Kanye thing

Pop culture’s Apatow problem: How white artists profit from mocking everything

What are the hip hop records that would have been hits this year if the climate were more like 2003? I know Jay-Z and Drake went Top 10 and J Cole had two in the Top 30 but I'm interested in what's missing out.

"versace" and "uoeno" feel like the biggest and most ubiquitous rap hits of the year regardless of chart placing

also maybe "bugatti"?

i wouldn't mind talking about how great "vsop" is. her vocals just give me chills.

yeah there's so much defiant power in it - like, her style is so predicated on her pushing louder and louder, working herself into a frenzy - the way "sometimes" builds is astonishing. it's virtuosity not just as showing off but as pure aggression. "you want ratchet then i'mma be that"

I figured out one of the reasons why I love VSOP so much, well I think

I think it's cause the horns in the chorus hit these minor-key notes

Not 100% certain since I don't have golden ears

So her triumphant vocals are tempered by this latent buried melancholy

I know the above is gonna make lex mad because according to him sadness is not a valid emotion to feel

i think i've already posted about how the appeal of "vsop" is because of the brittleness underpinning what's ostensibly a celebration - melancholy is perhaps a bit reductive but there's a desperation that comes through in lyrical details too, half the lines are fleeting paranoia about being dumped and her friends telling her it's a messed-up relationship, and the hurriedness of the song sort of papers over all of that in a very conscious way

Yeah I agree with that

i'm REALLY surprised Hot 97 plays "Get Lucky" - p sure that never gets played on hip-hop stations in Atlanta. i guess rap is different here though.

Every time I've heard Get Lucky on Hot 97 there's always been a preface mentioning Pharrell

RE: VSOP…

think it's my favorite tune of this year. and if you watch one of many live performances around the komputah wurld, there is no doubt that her herculean performance and the lyrical details that Mr. Pretend and others mention have struck a chord: probably every woman at each gig sings along in the unmistakable manner of somebody who's been there.

"Versace" and "UOENO" weren't even top 10 on the urban airplay charts.

biggest rap radio hits that weren't top 10 on the Hot 100 were like... "Power Trip," "Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe," "Bad," "Honest," "Ain't Worried About Nothin'," "We Still In This Bitch," "Poetic Justice," "Feds Watching," "Tom Ford," "Type Of Way."

Thanks sd

do you know why "uoeno" did so well on streaming?? like that seemed to be the main thing buoying its place on the hot 100 (+ all the charts that now use the hot 100 formula)

i don't even know

lol

it's pretty offensive how lorde implies that hip hop is all about cristal, maybach and diamonds, when it's really more about vsop, bugattis and versace this year.

do you know why "uoeno" did so well on streaming?? like that seemed to be the main thing buoying its place on the hot 100 (+ all the charts that now use the hot 100 formula)

― dyl, Tuesday, November 26, 2013 12:21 PM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dunno really -- there were a hundred freestyles over that beat, and given the way things work with any YouTubes with any audio of a song (even a clip of "Harlem Shake" level brevity) registering on Billboard's measurements, it's possible that all the different versions floating around getting small #s of views reached critical mass?

do you know why "uoeno" did so well on streaming?

Because 1000 thinkpieces condemning Rick Ross's verse just wound up making people want to hear the song?

i could be wrong but i'm pretty sure there were rumors of kanye and kendrick being on the "uoeno" remix before anyone even noticed that rick ross bragged about date rape

You could be right; I don't know. I like Ross a lot, and I still haven't heard that song.

"uoeno" emerged as a hit right around when the controversy happened so there is some connection there, but it seemed to have a real buzz regardless

yeah it definitely had commercial momentum that the controversy seemed to tail behind. i'm sure controversy/hate-listening has a chart impact now -- "Accidental Racist" charted from lots of people feeling the need to Spotify/YouTube this terrible album cut by an artist they'd otherwise never listen to.

i think "uoeno"s popularity was independent of the controversy - i heard about that at the time but it was only a few months later that i realised i was hearing the song everywhere (usually not the original), there were a million remixes of it etc