Jess - regarding yr blog post sunday March 21st on Crunk

Also, I really like yr analysis of sexism and related problems w/in crunk. Although I think it might be wishful thinking to suggest that it's not "going anywhere" - that's patently ridiculous. Whether or not we like what they are saying - and I agree with you, it's horrible - you can't argue that it isn't doing things that have never been done and that it will undoubtedly influence other music.

1. any time i come up with some keerazy overarching theory on technicolor its generally full of all sorts of oversights, holes, big logical leaps (possibly [probably] total bullshit.) this is why it goes on technicolor in the first place. i'm just throwing stuff out.

BUT

i do think that - for whatever reason(s) - rap has gotten more sexual over the last couple years, in a few different ways. the loverman mc isn't new, no (superlover cee holla at me), but i do think there's been a weird explosion of them circa 2000-present (also the "love thug" etc. pac is clearly the progenitor of this; ja rule is like some sick lovechild born of "keep yr head up" and "i get around".)

2. crunk not "going anywhere" means i can't figure out how it could "evolve", without becoming something else entirely. (it's tunnel-vision is one of the most exciting things about it.) "yeah" is one way, but that's merely adding a new vocal style (and possibly changing venues...VH1 vs. 106 & park(.

2A. for all i slag it off, i do find this stuff impossibly thrilling at times.

okay i sleep now

also i really disagreed with the shouting at women in strip clubs deal coz its like sasha linked to on his blog that slate piece about all the gals dying to get on girls gone wild and he wrote "this is the question right now" and yeah -- why and what this means IS the question and on some overarching scale its v.v. ugly but like i've argued before its not per se a problem with say mystikal asking a girl to shake her ass and the girl shakin it enthusiastically. its more in the onesidedness, the deliniation of the roles, the strict terrain over which the give & take takes place. also food for thought -- the thulani davis article on disrespect in the voice which i found provocative though deeply wrong and also sometimes surface-level wrong too (since when is "shorty" just a synonym for "trick"!?)

if i really wanted to ponder the eternal question of why people want to debase themselves (with no money changing hands even), i could just walk down to frat row tonight.

I'm arguing that there WAS a positive, "in control" postive sexual male role model in early 90s hip-hop that she skipped as if old school had jumped to mannie fresh and then to crunk.
I'm saying that there are plenty of the kinds of sexual ideals she speaks of in early 90s hip-hop.

And also, I can definitely see Crunk going in a lot of directions - it IS going in a lot of directions! Compare David Banner's production to Lil Jon's - Completely unique, yet part of the same mvmnt.

As is he has to settle for being Matt Damon.

Can I trade this analogy in for a better one anytime soon?

i mean there's lots of southern sounds at work but lil john seems like he's got a lock on the "crunk" thing right now -- banners' tracks sound distinct enough that even if they WERE crunk where the word's going they may not be. Bone Crusher on the other hand?

I really don't get this line.

i mean if we're doing crunk :: oi then there's one whole clique, if we're doing crunk sonically there's another, etc. and in some ways the real question is one of projection -- where we expect the label will end up, if it will come to mean "southern" or end up meaning "lil john produced or" end up meaning particular sonics, maybe a particular bpm, or just a constellation of artists coming up together and sharing guest spots?

tanya s has actually done one on the salt shaker rhythm: this was bound to happen. dizzee at fabric last night was spitting over the instrumental of get low, too. it's been said b4 but there's not much separating grime from crunk, except geography and a certain attitude

Noone ever recognises Hypnotized Minds' influence on grime. They pretty much invented the get buck get wild tear da club up concept.

I think the dancehall crossover issue is more to do with the fact that the current biggest rap beats are by Lil Jon. I don't think crunk beats are anymore suited to bashment crossover than other big rap beats in the past couple of years.

"Crunk's Fear Factor

On the matter of music, I've not bought much lately at all. Put it down to poverty and the fact that I can't seem to find a few hours to go record shopping. However, of all the recent crunk discourse, I can't help thinking blissblog's idea that the entire genre can be distilled into two words, "beef and rump", the most astute.
Rump = the Ying Yang Twins' "Salt Shaker":
Face the wall shawty, put your hands on it
Bounce that ass up and down make a nigga want it
Roll that ass round and round like a motherfuckin' wheel
Shake that shit this ain't no motherfuckin' drill.
As technicolor says, crunk is aggressively masculine and, for all its libidinous preoccupations, utterly sexless and in crippling denial of any kind of feminine side. Just listen to the beats; there's no funk, no swing, no warmth. Like the sexual boasts they soundtrack, there's no shred of humanity whatsoever, just cold, digitised bump and grind. (Quick question: are there any women involved in this genre at all, has Lil Jon ever so much as worked with one, other than as a token guest? Answers by e-mail, please).
In this respect, though, crunk is like a lot of rap… a triumph of grotesquerie—so vulgar and squalid that it’s impossible to take it seriously. Anthony Miccio nailed it when he pithily encapsulated this music as “guys shouting at strippers”—and how pathetic is that? Paying women to get their kit off is hardly great proof of desirability and virility. Sure enough, Lil Jon & The Eastside Boyz’ “Get Low” is full of salivating sexist menace:
3,6,9 damn she fine
Hopin’ she can sock it to me one mo time
Get low, get low, get low, get low
To the window, to the wall (to the wall)
Till the sweat drop down my balls (my balls)
All these bitches crawl…
But it’s so extreme, it’s almost funny and if you don't buy that, then you have to agree that it's just as easy to see the dancers these men are bellowing at looking on with disdain, composing shopping lists in their heads as they disrobe, thinking about the electricity bill and muttering under their breath: “Yeah, okay you wanker, now gimme the money and fuck off…” as it is to view them as exploited and objectified.
It's also curiously deluded, like one of those drunk, sweaty, fat bastards who routinely hassle women in clubs, convinced they're God's gift when they're really the last person anyone in their right mind would want to wake up next to.
She leakin'
She soakin' wet.
Er, who the hell are the Ying Yang Twins trying to kid? The poor woman's probably bored stupid, spectacularly unmoved by the whole experience—far from being aroused, she's much more likely to be thinking what 24-carat arseholes they are and how she can't wait to get home to the telly.
Beef, meanwhile = "Throw It Up" by Lil Jon feat. Pastor Troy:
Nigga as soon as I enter
You know I'm making noise
Pastor Troy and The Eastside Boyz
AK bustin' I ride the whole clip
I cock that ho and let it motherfuckin' rip.
Now, this is where it gets really interesting. Listening to this song one morning on the way to work, I realised a few things about it. First of all that it's stunning, incredibly powerful and brutally effective, secondly that I'd be shit-scared to see it performed live. There really is no better incitement to mob violence out there, especially when Lil Jon breaks in:
Okay, okay hold the fuck up
Hold the fuck up/I'm looking round this bitch
I see a lot of niggas aint throwin up shit
What!?
Ya'll niggas must be scared to represent yo shit...
You scared
You must be scared nigga...
Scared!
These lines tap into the very basest male insecurities: feelings of hopelessness, powerlessness, impotence—exactly the anxieties extreme right-wing groups exploit to recruit their members. Yup, you guessed it, the third point is that there’s a definite paranoia and fascism at play in crunk, a continual, internalised undercurrent that its performers and you, the listener, are somehow under threat from a host of unnamed forces.
Here the repeated use of the word "scared" comes on less like an external playground taunt than a nagging, emasculating voice inside your own head. The subtext is simple—anger is all you have, take that away and you're nothing. BE A MAN... SHOW NO FEAR. It's screwface taken to the Nth degree.
Am I reaching here? Okay, there's no named enemy to focus this rage on, no racial/social/political scapegoating, no discernible ideology behind it, but does that really matter? Maybe it would be easier to understand and examine if there was, but the fury is its own end here. Rigteous or not, anger = power. Hell, there's even a thread of quasi-nationalism running through the narrative, a sense of thug pride and ghetto-nationhood—there's plenty of blood in crunk but there's also soil. Just check the intro:
We representing for everybody (everybody)
All the real niggas in America
Where you at or where the fuck you from
We represent for ya'll
WHO?
We represent for G-A (throw it up)
NAP town (throw it up)
Tennessee (throw it up)
St.Louis (throw it up)
J’ville (throw it up)
Mississippi (throw it up)
Alabama (throw it up)
V-A (throw it up)
Detroit (throw it up)
D-C (throw it up)
Dallas, Texas (throw it up)
The Carolinas (throw it up)
Houston niggas (throw it up)
Louisiana (throw it up)
The Bay niggas (throw it up)
Let's go!
This explicity puts crunk forward as music of the people, folk music, folkmusic, volksmusik. Go ahead, put the record on and listen carefully. From the get-go you can visualise Lil Jon and Pastor Troy standing in blunt-fogged, sweat-drenched bar room, spitting and frothing to the booze-fuelled masses below. The orchestral glissandi help set the scene for “a spot of the old ultraviolence” in much the same way Ludwig Van Beethoven's symphonies amped Alex and his droogs in Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, then as the beat kicks in a forest of fists shoots up, pumping the air in unison, the whole crowd baying like Pavlov's Doggs:
Bitch I aint scared
Bitch I aint scared
Bitch I aint scared
I aint scared motherfucker.
Hip-hop's very own beer-hall putsch."

I've got a couple issues w/ this entry myself but lets get a discussion going on it first.

utterly sexless and in crippling denial of any kind of feminine side. Just listen to the beats; there's no funk, no swing, no warmth. Like the sexual boasts they soundtrack, there's no shred of humanity whatsoever, just cold, digitised bump and grind.

why are english people always imagining that rappers are fascists?

maybe everyone here'll roll their eyes, but i think we're still due a smart conversation about content in rap (or why content in rap is the kind of thing i think we need to have smart conversation about etc)(insert sound of meta-barfing here)

Sure enough, Lil Jon & The Eastside Boyz’ “Get Low” is full of salivating sexist menace:
3,6,9 damn she fine
Hopin’ she can sock it to me one mo time
Get low, get low, get low, get low
To the window, to the wall (to the wall)
Till the sweat drop down my balls (my balls)
All these bitches crawl...

Change "balls" to "brow" and "bitches" to "ladies" and this could be the chorus to one of those lost late '60s funk-soul tracks on some Stones Throw comp! "salivating sexist menace"... oog.

I updated by the way!

Haha don't try it blud, I was repping Ruff Sqad while you were still posting to Fushitsusha threads!!!

wouldn't it make more sense to compare lil jon to hank shocklee?? as in, this isn't fascism w/o a target, it's black nationalism without a target??

certainly the crunk sound is more jump-up than anything in the charts since PE.

but TI is wearing a t-shirt with an apache helicopter on it in the rubberband man video. and most US soldiers are from near the poverty line. though repping your friends and neighbors != repping millitarism.

i mean, i think the camo stuff is sort of separate from what's going on with the lyrics/presentation. they could be waving their fists at the camera dressed like kanye west and it'd still have the same effect.

I agree that this whole analogy worked a lot better w/ Santana's Town.

also this is the cheapest of get outs

*falls over handbag on the way out*

i meant art in fascism relies on romanticism as much as it does stringent bombast (but that in crunks case, only the stringent bombast applies, hence my suggestion that romanticism is a separate facet, applicable to fascist art, but not crunk)

this is certainly possible, although are you applying this to art that might use certain imagery, but shy away from implications? (ie, use it only as signifier?). if so, i'd say only if there was intentionality to some degree

or are you applying this to my reading of the subject? in which case it might tie in to the above anyway, as in this take is from the reader rather than the artist, again bringing the issue of intentionality to the fore (as WW gets at quite succintly with his european jibes, perhaps it is something a european audience might be more primed to pick up?)

Change "balls" to "brow" and "bitches" to "ladies" and this could be the chorus to one of those lost late '60s funk-soul tracks on some Stones Throw comp! "salivating sexist menace"... oog.
isn't that like saying change the word "cunt" to "cheese sandwich" and then calling someone a cunt is rather like ordering a cheese sandwich? an utterly facile argument

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Saturday, April 10, 2004 8:17 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, both of 'em are pretty delicious
― Nate in ST.P (natedetritus), Saturday, April 10, 2004 8:23 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this sort of thing is interesting to read, because you can't find the same style of criticism anywhere else, at least not not about weird london rap or cat power, but it's frustrating because it's all written by english people that think rappers are nazis and have never desired a woman sexually. we need an american robin carmody who has masturbated to chingy videos.

― WW, Sunday, April 11, 2004 2:22 AM (thirteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink