Kendrick Lamar will kill your favorite rapper for money

but now I will read it

the only thing I think is being undersold (a point more relevant to another thing I started reading by her on The Roots' album undun) is the idea that some of the material-based bragging being waved by Jay-Z and Kanye West is a manifestation of the threat of black people breaking through the economic barrier she is describing in her rejection of the fiction of post-racial America, and that that bragging isn't being done in a "race doesn't matter" way but more in a "we are coming to get you on your own terms" way, which is IMO empowering from a different angle and more radicalized than people realize

― This beat is TWEENCHRONIC (DJP), Monday, February 25, 2013 11:21 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

super otm

usually i resist academic proclamations that things are HUGE and IMPT but i found this angle interesting at the very least

“There’s a certain kind of American story that is characterized by a laconic surface and a tight-lipped speaking voice. The narrator in this story has been made inarticulate by modern life. Vulnerable to his own loneliness, he is forced into an attitude of hard-boiled self-protection,” writes Vivian Gornick in her essay “Tenderhearted Men,” in which she takes to task the terse, unchanging masculinity of Raymond Carver and Andre Dubus. Gornick, however, could just as easily be writing about the emotional impasse found in hip-hop.

also, wow do i wish my students read that much.

i'm with this and then

In 1992, David Foster Wallace coauthored with Mark Costello one of the finest essays ever written about rap music, Signifying Rappers.

lol

yeah i didnt think anyone was into that book

A few months ago, when Kendrick Lamar released his album good kid m.A.A.d city, it excited all of the critics who get paid good money to not get too excited.

lol one of those adjectives doesn't belong

did you think that the paragraph she quoted from the DFW/MC essay was unfounded/wrong?

the only thing I think is being undersold (a point more relevant to another thing I started reading by her on The Roots' album undun) is the idea that some of the material-based bragging being waved by Jay-Z and Kanye West is a manifestation of the threat of black people breaking through the economic barrier she is describing in her rejection of the fiction of post-racial America, and that that bragging isn't being done in a "race doesn't matter" way but more in a "we are coming to get you on your own terms" way, which is IMO empowering from a different angle and more radicalized than people realize

― This beat is TWEENCHRONIC (DJP), Monday, February 25, 2013 11:21 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

most clever thing either of them have done in like half a decade is to give their ubiquitous pop hit a title that makes - or should make - all non-black people awkward

this is thankfully low on hyperbole and simply argues that kendrick has 'made a third way' but per usual w/ academics its all 'hip hop, voice of the dispossessed' but only engages w/ hip hop via one artist and not as a whole

what DJP said, too

but, it is a very good piece

did you think that the paragraph she quoted from the DFW/MC essay was unfounded/wrong?

― This beat is TWEENCHRONIC (DJP), Monday, February 25, 2013 10:49 AM (13 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no.

the Thomas Chatterton Williams sounds fantastic

I am not really going to fault an academic writing about a particular person for focusing on that person; it would be more problematic issue if the focus of this paper was a Grand Unifying Theory of Hip-Hop rather than an attempt to describe a specific rapper in terms of a wider literary and socioeconomic context.

can I get a full breakdown on what's wrong about "signifying rappers" while we're here

has anyone read it? i just had never heard anything good about it so had never investigated further

Get the feeling that you'd really have to be interested in DFW to enjoy it.

I have it. It's flawed there are some great parts. Get a bit sick of ppl with big opinions 4u about dfw who haven't read him

ive read him but i havent read 'signifying rappers' i've just been warned to avoid it like numerous times

ha yeah same and i'm a dfw fan, like him too much to be embarrassed for him if it sucks

but i would be interested in hearing what the most common criticisms of it are

the excerpts ive read from it seem like stuff that is either self-evident but written in a suuuper academic way that seems like it would make for tedious reading

scratch 'either'

I haven't read this either but, looking at the publication date, it seems to be sensible to allow for the possibility that things that seem self-evident in 2013 may not have been self-evident in 1990.

well, it was panned back then too

I just read Christgau's review, which is pretty brutal in its economy

Kendrick is going to be playing at Brown in April (yay) opening for Dirty Projectors (boooooooo)

lol college bills are the best

ha, that's insane

this is prob the best one http://www.songkick.com/concerts/832766-clipse-at-columbia-university

one of my favorite shows ever was from the Spring Fling my freshman year:

Figures on a Beach
De La Soul

kendrick and dirty projectors would be pretty sweet imo

yeah DPs are pretty cool live

I had a terrible dream last night that kendrick and jay rock were bullying me and threatening me with guns. I woke up sweating. it was a serious nightmare lol, as distressing as any I've had.

uh

that's a pretty loaded nightmare, ya bish

lol

since gKMc I kinda imagine Kendrick as the older Clifford in the frame story of the movie Clifford

When marc iv awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a G.

that's a pretty loaded nightmare, ya bish

real time lol

are guns phallic? i am not super familiar with dream analysis, is symbolism really that straightforward? i am more concerned with racist overtones than gay ones. I have been thinking about race a lot: the conflict of the n-word's meaninglessness in hiphop and the disastrous meaning it suddenly has if I, a white person, use it. I am not saying this double standard is not defensible, but any language control is a form of thought control, right? maybe Kendrick and jay = black ppl in general, "bullying" me into thinking along the lines deemed acceptable for white folks?

excuse me if this is not the time or place. and if I say anything offensive I swear I am not overtly racist, merely unconsciously so (as this dream hopefully is NOT proof of. though I know studies have proven that ALL are unconsciously racist).

whats so hard to understand about not being a dick?

http://www.s2ki.com/s2000/uploads/gallery/album_34941/gallery_82195_34941_252920.gif

xp

I think your subconscious is throwing curveballs at you as it processes during sleep the ruminations you've been having on race

xp why does one person get to be a dick and it is not even being a dick while another (whitey) is dick?!?!?! it is alienating and confusing and as I hear the word rapped 100000x a day I become desensitized and prone to slip ups.

because of slavery

one way to combat against this is to remember that you aren't a black MC on a hip-hop record and as such don't really have a particular reason for dropping the n-word? or maybe bump up yr Will Smith intake

because people were actually owned and sold like fuckin' property your ass doesn't get to say the n-word whenever you want, tough shit

http://pixhost.me/avaxhome/15/a9/000ea915_medium.jpeg

I have been thinking about race a lot

but not enough

I have definitely met non-black dudes from parts of Miami, etc. who can more or less get away with n---a because that really truly is the pervading language of their environment; sounds like you are not one of those ppl. I'm not either. Just let it go, there's absolutely nothing to be gained from this particular battle.

And yeah, I mean maybe that should be kinda obvious, but you know, sometimes people just get lost in their kind of abstract reasoning without acknowledging painfully obvious realities. I know I used to do that regarding almost everything when I was younger and still do quite often. Certainly the stakes are higher when it's something race-related. When you put something like that post out there people are going to jump on you like it's the most horrible thing ever when it's not that hard to see where you're coming from imo, it's just pretty apparent to me and the world that you should get past that line of thinking soon as possible.