Lil Jon and minstrelsy

What Williams and Walker understood then and what so many black performers have come to realize since is that white mainstream interest in blackness is often predicated on their belief that what they are consuming is "authentic,"

The main question I have is why is this? I guess I need to read more post-colonial stuff, but I'm thinking psychoanalysis would help too.

God, minstrel performers were pretentious.

Now, if Lil Jon felt the same way, that there was so much more he wanted to say but that the racial dynamics of the marketplace prevented him from doing so, then MAYBE you could make a case for minstrelsy. But he's apparently just a guy cooking up some cool pop tunes and living like a pop star, so I don't get the problem. And I don't know why I'm trying to make this writer's case for him.

re: white people desiring "authenticity" from black entertainers - I'm fairly confident a lot of this stems from the white community realizing that the great mediator between them and black people (ie, the insitution of slavery) set up all sorts of weird and ugly social dynamics that would predicate black people behaving in a specific, "unnatural" way when white people were around. And so white people would be curious about what black people were "really" like, what they did when they were among their "own", etc. Add some "forbidden fruit" psychology and the tantalizing appeal of the unknown and there ya go...
-- Shakey Mo Collier (audiobo...), January 12th, 2005.

That's really interesting. Could part of it also have to do with white guilt, and a belief that if black people were "themselves" around you, then they thought you were OK?

It's a good point, but ... nobody thinks LL Cool J is "authentic" when he rhymes about being tough, and he's still popular.

Also, "stop fucking with me" (dunno if that's the right title) from Crunk Juice gives pathos.