September 15: Screwed Up Click and Bun-B in NYC for $10!!!!

September 16, 2005

Ain't got love for those crackers, no motherfuckin' white jackers, no motherfuckers comin down tryna snatch us up.

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The Rakes - "Retreat"
The Rakes - "Work Work Work (Pub, Club, Sleep)"

- As Jeezy would say, THHAAAAAT'S RIGHT! It was time for New New York to peep game on the folks from the Screwed Up Clique and they took it to our Yankee asses with style and grace (for the most part). Good lookin' out to all the bols and jawns that came through to chip in their hard earned skrilla for the Red Cross and pour out a little purple drank for the late great Richard Davis Jr, the Sultan of Syrup.

- E.S.G. and Lil Keke took the stage with some bass-heavy jawns (not sure on the names) spun by Texan DJ Rapid Ric and absolutely murdered the place, shining brighter than Paul Wall's teeth in a tanning bed. Shit was hectic. Bols and jawns from all races, ethnicities, creeds, religions, hoods were booty-shakin' all over the place and really turning it into a regular ol' heatrock.

- The rest of the night was un-noteworthy. H.A.W.K. and Lil O put on a fluid show but were bogged down in misogynist, racist heckling of the audience. Would you guys have called the supervisor at a job interview a "hot vanilla piece of ass over by the bar" or compared her unfavorably to Chelsea Clinton and suggest she needed to "suck a little dick tonight"? Real professional, guys. But I forgot you've never had to get a real job. I can get down with all that "machismo" bullshit sometimes but not when my lady is in the crowd. I dunno. I try not to think about this shit, but in this case it’s just too noticeable and very, very lame.

- Bun B was a big teddy bear and granted me an exclusive after the show, breaking out his iPod Nano and playing me his new collabo with M.I.A. with the boy Dizzee Rascal pon di remix. Two words: bonafide heatrock. We traded AIM names and he says he might be able to lace me with his baile funk-inspired track featuring JR Writer (Dyyip-SUTTTTT) and produced by a mystery producer. Heh. I'll let you boys figure that one out for yall's selves.

- Any and ways! Peep game on Big Bro 6: Linkage.

http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/statusainthood/

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It hurt me when I had to pop yo' whole crew fo' dolo. Gotta pay dem bills, dunny.

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But the most recent Hollertronix flyer is floating about, and their website speaks volumes. The front page of their site hints at what they are doing. Why is Flavor Flav on one their flyers? The history of these DJs is even more offensive. The question I have to ask here is: Why the need for Black hip-hop artists, from Lil’ Jon to Flavor Flav, in addition to images of Black women in their publicity material, and unnamed Black faces ‘holding’ pieces of text, or the Black men at the center, on the very first page of the site? Clearly, this is not accidental. They have a graphic design company under contract. The pictures they provide are, finally, the visual evidence of their appropriation of Black culture. The audiences in Philly, New York, Sundance are overwhelmingly white. But, there are a sufficient number of photographs of Black people suggesting that their music crosses racial boundaries or simply that they have a ‘multicultural’ following. But isn’t this reminiscent of the standard undergraduate catalogue at any given non-HBCU, in which the cover photograph nearly always depicts at least two students of color, smiling, and is then dotted with other photos showing ‘racial harmony’ to convince would-be applicants that the institution is truly ‘inclusive’ and is a comfortable place for Black people and other students of color? (I hope not to insult the reader’s intelligence, by stating that HBCU is the acronym for ‘Historically Black Colleges and Universities").

Returning to Hollertronix, Why on earth are they represented as crunk DJs? Certainly crunk has been exposed to a wider audience in the last two-three years, as Lil’ Jon and The Ying-Yang twins signed to TVT, Three 6 Mafia are on Sony , etc. But what is the relation between white people and emergent Black musical genres such that white people are so eager to begin playing/making/producing a given Black genre almost as soon as they hear it? It has been happening in the US for decades. The last thing to do is read me as saying that there is some absolute racial purity at work when Black people invent a new cultural form. I’m talking very specifically about Black culture as a whole way of life. I can’t claim Black folks own crunk. But you might well want to own something in a country in which your ancestors did not own their own bodies.

Consider crunk’s origins. it began In Black strip clubs in Atlanta and Memphis. Fortunately, the extraordinary ingenuity and pace with which Black culture, in all its forms changes form, shape, and content is too complex for white kids to mimic as it emerges. But the popularity of Hollertronix arises, at the very least (on the part of cops, for example), from the fact of youth and whiteness, which, in the US, will take you a long way. The old maxim � you’re free, white, and twenty one� is far more than just an idle comment.

That crunk began to attract a young, white, suburban audience it no shock at all. But I ask that you consider this: For as long as the US has defined itself, Black people have been the object of both fear and fascination, terror and allure, lust and hatred. During enslavement, this took the form of lynchings, rape, torture, humiliation and numerous other kinds of violence. Those acts have been made ‘illegal’ and Abraham Lincoln made the so-called ‘emancipation proclamation’. The unconscious power of the fear/fascination dynamic and its analogues has not diminished one iota. Hollertronix are merely one instance of this terror/allure dynamic, the sadomasochism which defines black/white ‘relations’ in the US.
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How come places like Pitchfork and Stylus weren't covering Lil Jon/David Banner/Juelz Santana two years ago in the same way they cover Paul Wall/Young Jeezy/Bun B now?

Am I wrong?

~C

So, you can't have your tastes change over time? By that measure I guess I can't listen to anything except like Judas Priest (or Joan Jett, the first record I ever owned!)

Baby Bash - Tha Smokin' Nephew
Big Tymers - Heavyweights

*shudder*

Someone online did an unofficial Twista one a while back which was pretty cool. You could actually understand him.

That said, I've got plenty of respect for PFork's efforts to broaden its breadth, for sure. And since when is diversity so reprehensible?

I'm def. not trying to hate. I generally think it's a good thing that these guys are trying to broaden their base. It got me reading the site again too.

I'm just sort of curious on why it's happening. And how long it's gonna last.

1. The staff/editors are getting older & expanding their tastes.
2. They want to broaden their reader base & try to play down the idea that they're a "niche" site.

But I guess your point 4 reflects on both these ideas.

oh and forks, i can post some hottt klan action if you riddlemethis... are the bouncers that were at joes for screwYC there on any regular basis??

That said, I've got plenty of respect for PFork's efforts to broaden its breadth, for sure. And since when is diversity so reprehensible?

-- mike powell (revelator...), September 22nd, 2005.

bragging about reviews of Screwed & Chopped albums does you no favors. IMO reviews of S&C versions of albums in magazines (print or web) are the dumbest bandwagon shit ever, they all have the same stupid introductory paragraph where someone excitedly explains the concept to a reader they assume has never heard of it.

And still Al, I don't know that all of the New Yorker's audience are necessarily up on the pop charts. Certainly some percentage, but I think a short survey of female AARP members living in small Pennsylvania towns would come up pretty blank on Paul Wall.

You also forgot 9/11.

I, for one, blame Freaky Trigger and ILM for all this love of all music instead of hiding in a genre.