Bun B Says You Can Listen To Black Flag and Radiohead and Be Cool.

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From the news desk.

Starting listening! Send Bun some Saccharine Trust mp3s.

AllHipHop.com: Your musical tastes extend beyond Hip-Hop, tell me about other things you dig…

Bun B: I like a lot of early 80's Punk music like Black Flag and Dead Kennedy's. Some of the Ramones stuff too. I really dig Dead Kennedy’s, and I'm a Sex Pistols fan. ‘Cause if you think about it, the same timeframe of that music [was] when early Rap was breaking. Whether it was Hollis, or coming out of Queensbridge or coming out of the Bowery or Hell’s Kitchen - all of it was out of poverty. Whatever you want to call it, it's below standard living. There is a certain intensity and rage that come out of living in that type of world, and the way that they view the rest of the world, because it's not comfortable where they sit. That's the same mentality that Rap had in its inception. The same mentality that Punk had. ‘Cause I can feel like that, mothaf**kas are pissed off. And I can buy it a little more from them than I can from Rap, because I'm too closely tied into the performance and the artist, and Rap music. ‘Cause I be pissed off, mad, and angry, and I be wanting to vent. But some of this Rap don't do that. I listen to Radiohead every now and then. I'm still trying to figure out how they make that s**t. There's really just an art of the music that they put together. I really have no clue on how they sit there and put that type of s**t together. But I'm not going to sit there and try to decipher it. If I like it, I just like it.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 20:46 (nineteen years ago)

I remember reading a thing with Lil Jon and he said was was into DK and PIL.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 20:48 (nineteen years ago)

Why does black people never want to rock?

― jaxon (jaxon), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 20:54 (nineteen years ago)

Is this really a surprise after 'Hollerween' and Dizzee Rascal collabs and flirting with Oxy Cottontail and performing with Diplo as his DJ?

― jawn doe (sitcom), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 20:56 (nineteen years ago)

Black Flag, huh? Maybe not. There was a feature story on Ray Petitbon in either the LA or NY Times Sunday magazine a couple weeks ago. It went into life in the Ginn household growing up. Writer made it sound solidly middle class. Didn't see no below standard living poverty, dere.

― George the Animal Steele, Wednesday, 2 November 2005 20:57 (nineteen years ago)

Alex in NYC is guesting on government names next month.

That was a great great article. it was the NY Times Magazine....The house sounded like kind of a run down mess, nowadays, though.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 20:59 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, it sounded cluttered. But it's not an indicator of poverty. Much of Lehigh, Northampton and Schulykill counties in PA were like that when I lived there.

Anyway, what's this shit about American punk rock being lower class? Idiot. All the bands out of the early CBGB's scene that wound up on major labels came out of poverty. Yeah, sure.

― George the Animal Steele, Wednesday, 2 November 2005 21:04 (nineteen years ago)

When I interviewed Lil Jon, he told me he was a former skate-rat into Ramones, Agent Orange, Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 21:05 (nineteen years ago)

John Cale's dad was a coal miner.
Iggy Pop grew up in a trailer park.

I'm sure some other people were poor too.

― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 21:08 (nineteen years ago)

Wow. And I know some were rich, too. Coal mining was solidly middle class for lots where I grew up. Dirty, hard and dangerous, but not poverty work. We got the entire bell curve distribution.

― George the Animal Steele, Wednesday, 2 November 2005 21:10 (nineteen years ago)

I don't think he's saying punk-rockers were poor, or at least involuntarily so

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 21:11 (nineteen years ago)

Alex in NYC is guesting on government names next month.

hahaha

― Al (sitcom), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 21:12 (nineteen years ago)

Ah, but does he honor the fire?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 21:12 (nineteen years ago)

all of it was out of poverty.

Looks unambiguous.

― George the Animal Steele, Wednesday, 2 November 2005 21:13 (nineteen years ago)

I bet he'd like Killing Joke if he heard it.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 21:14 (nineteen years ago)

I bet that's right.

― George the Animal Steele, Wednesday, 2 November 2005 21:14 (nineteen years ago)

Imagine Jaz's relief.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 21:16 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.anirrationaldomain.net/images/jaz/jaz199.jpg

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 21:18 (nineteen years ago)

that's trill.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 21:26 (nineteen years ago)

Why izzit only teh poverty-stricken can like Black Flag and feel teh anger?

― George the Animal Steele, Wednesday, 2 November 2005 21:37 (nineteen years ago)

Endless bean-counting and checking the early-70s tax returns of guitar players' parents is totally missing the point here, as is the weird lack of reading comprehension (Black Flag weren't from New York, you know): he's talking about the feeling of a scene, listeners included, not the salaries associated with individual auteurs' upbringings. And yeah, he's not being ultra-precise about the lines between "poverty" and "below standard living" in other senses: with English punk it was a blur between actual-poverty and rote working-classness without any opportunity and the interested middle class; with American punk the "below standard living" was less economic and more social, a sense of below-standard living due to exclusion or ideology or even choice. If ILM could get beyond its increasingly boring habit of trying to do roffle-house fact-checks on stuff people didn't even necessarily actually say, there might be an interesting discussion to be had about what he's claiming: that the mentality and worldview of hip-hop and punk -- one characterized by "not being comfortable where they sit" -- have some sort of kinship.

Cause to be honest I think he is, in a lot of ways, right -- only it's not an issue of economics, and instead an issue of social placement. Hence the way the two scene respond. For black people in early hip-hop, the social discomfort is being forced on from the outside, and the response contains all kind of aspirations of wealth and class and, well, fun. For equivalent American early-punks, the social discomfort can be slightly more ideological and "chosen," and so the response contains all kinds of non-aspiration, all kinds of dropping out into privacy.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 22:37 (nineteen years ago)

Nope. SoCal/LA punk wasn't from poverty either.

Speaking of reading incomprehension, wrote the maroon cited, "...or coming out of the Bowery or Hell’s Kitchen - all of it was out of poverty."

with American punk the "below standard living" was less economic and more social, a sense of below-standard living due to exclusion or ideology or even choice.

A sense of below-standard living? How so? Not the way I experienced it. Didn't see the poverty-stricken. Lots of rile it up and anything goes types getting into some rock action not as stodgy as they maybe perceived classic rock and big label stuff to be. The idea that Fear came from poverty or social discomfort is pretty funny.

― George the Animal Steele, Wednesday, 2 November 2005 23:28 (nineteen years ago)

Good lord, George: are you a native speaker of English? I was inclined to argue with you, until it occurred to me that nothing you just typed in between quoting me actually had any relation to anything I said.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 3 November 2005 00:00 (nineteen years ago)

This is like Avril all over again isn't it?

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 3 November 2005 00:20 (nineteen years ago)

nabisco, George is on a Mission! a bitter, crusty sarcastic mission.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Thursday, 3 November 2005 00:24 (nineteen years ago)

Let's Start A War!

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Thursday, 3 November 2005 00:25 (nineteen years ago)

nabisco otm - Bun B, were he writing instead of talking off-the-cuff, wouldn't say "below standard living." Bun B is talking about class rage, which is the provenance of both the poor and the petit-bourgeois. Both the poor and the gettin'-by know they're never gonna get enough to feel content, and while the secret to inner peace here is getting off that gettin'-stuff wheel, that's cold comfort to the rat in the maze

I SEE THE WORLD THROUGH RATS' EYES
SULLEN
RATS' EYES

etc

― Banana Nutrament (ghostface), Thursday, 3 November 2005 02:41 (nineteen years ago)

nabisco OTM x1000.

IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER. It sounds like it comes from poverty to Bun B, that's how he hears it and relates to it....the actual facts about the Ginn family finances aren't that relevant.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 3 November 2005 16:24 (nineteen years ago)

never mind the Ginn family... Black Flag, as a band, lived hand-to-mouth for quite some time

― am0n, Thursday, 3 November 2005 17:10 (nineteen years ago)

Rollins lived in the Ginn family shed.

I hear Big Mike from The Convicts/Geto Boys-after-Willie-D-left is a big fan of The Meatmen and Nig-Heist.

― ELLI$, Thursday, 3 November 2005 17:18 (nineteen years ago)

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