Celebrities Don’t Go To Jail

R. Kelly has been acquitted. Woah. After reading Josh Levin’s dispatches from the trial for Slate, however, I can’t say I’m too surprised. The prosecution never got the witness herself to testify, the defense got several relatives to say that they didn’t recognize the girl in the infamous video and some of the key prosecution witnesses were clearly extortionists and just all around sleezy characters. So it’s hard to say that justice wasn’t served, seeing that an unavoidable outcome of our adversarial legal system that presumes innocence and gives defendants all sorts of protections is that people who have committed a crime get off. Of course, it sure helps to be rich and famous. Interestingly enough, one of the best meditations on these issues is Alan Dershowitz’s Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case.

Weezy Handicaps The Race

I used to think that no once could top DMX as far as election related nuttiness spouted by a rapper. The convicted felon, so he can’t vote, has admittedly not been following the race, and when asked by XXL magazine what he thinks of Obama, he had this to say:

You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!

Barack.
What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?

Yeah.
What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.

You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.

I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The nigga’s name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his fuckin’ name. Ima tell this nigga when I see him, “Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit” [laughs] “That ain’t your fuckin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.

Could any rapper top that? Here’s Lil Wayne

Barack, I guess, but I can’t make a real opinion. I ain’t watching no debates. I just want my people to understand that Hillary and Barack are not running for president–they running to be able to run for president. There’s a Republican party, too–we ain’t about to win, fool! A woman or a black man versus an old white dude? Fcuk no! They gonna be like, This black-ass nigga trying to come in my Oval Office? Fcuuuuuk no.The world about to end in 2012 anyway. ‘Cause the Mayans made calendars, and they stop at 2012. I got encyclopedias on the bus. The world is gonna end as we know it. You can see it already. A planet doesn’t exist: There’s no more Pluto. Planes are flying into buildings–and not just the Twin Towers, but dudes who play baseball are flying planes into buildings. Mosquitoes bite you and you die. And a black man and a woman are running for president!

Although Wayne gets points for at least knowing who Barack Obama is, he does better than DMX by talking about the Mayan calendar and citing there being “no more Pluto” as proof that the world is surely coming to an end. And extra pop-culture awareness for citing the tragic Corey Lidle incident. But perhaps Weezy is being extra insightful, four years of a McCain presidency - ending in 2012, could well bring the world to an end.

But to be fair, “there’s no more Pluto” and “mosquitoes bite you and you die” should definitely be new catchphrases for when something really weird is happening. Now only if Tha Carter III could drop…

Would You Wear A Kaffiyeh With That?

Spencer Ackerman steals another great idea of mine:

And the U.S. thinks it can outplay this guy on his own turf? Could Dick Cheney have survived Saddam Hussein’s goons? Moqtada Sadr is the new Che Guevara. Bring on the t-shirts for every sophomoric lefty college student.

I have no proof to back this claim up, but I’m pretty sure that my brother and I thought up the idea of putting Moqtada on t-shirts n late 2005 or so. We also though that the “Mahdi Army” sounded like a great name for a rap crew. One problem though: Moqtada, despite being a certified anti-American badass (I’m not saying that what he does is good, just that he’s one bad SOB, as evidenced by Patrick Cockburn’s book), doesn’t really look that cool on a shirt. He kinda looks like a very chubby, very angry baby. But he could still be adopted by rappers. There’s very solid precedent for terroristic, anti-American figures being seen as badasses by rappers. In 2Pac’s hatikva-sampling some Jewish-liturgical-music-I-can’t-identify sampling classic “Troublesome 96″, he name checks a series of murderous, anti-American world leaders including Qadaffi, Castro, Idi Amin, Mussolini, “Hussein Fatal” and “my nigga Napoleon.” So who wants to join my crew, Ayatollah MZ and the Mahdi Army?

Does Hip Hop Cause Cultural Decline

Ross Douthat is right to point out that even though calls of cultural decline are often times superficially cyclical, it’s still possible that specific epochs of cultural decline are worse than others. Specifically, just because in the past, black conservatives pointed to jazz as symbolic of cultural degradation among blacks, and that today, Bill Cosby and the like are making a similar criticism of hip-hop dooes not mean that, ergo, jazz equals hip hop. As Ross said, I doubt that Dr Dre, despite the considerable merits of The Chronic, will become not only domesticiated by the bourgoise (he already has) but actually high brow.

It’s just true that the decline of the black family, especially the poor, urban black family in terms of single motherhood, the fraying of social bonds, lack of strong norms oriented towards middle class sucess and the whole host of problems that have been festering in urban areas since the mid-to-late 1960s are especially acute. But that doesn’t make these overblown claims that hip-hop, which is largely a response or an epiphenomenon of this horrendous social reality, is somehow deserving of the criticism that Cosby et al throw at it. Hip hop is not responsible for people not graduating from high school, committing crimes, not becoming fathers of their children etc. Sure, the value system that most hip hop that black people actually listen to isn’t exactly positive, it’s also not exaclty normative.

What hip-hop really “promotes” more than anything is a certain bravado and exaggerated sense of masculinity that makes a certain type of sense as a short-term survival strategy in an urban environment that many rappers come from. But inveighing against the music itself, is as pointless as inveighing against jazz was. Douthat may or may not be right to say that there actually were real problems with drinknig and gambling associated with jazz establishments, but it was still stupid to see the music as anything resembeling causal. This is especially true in the case of hip hop because it has so escaped its roots as being primarily a form of music for the urban, black underclass and is now America’s popular music. Which is to say that it’s less responsive to real conditions on the ground in black communities, and now more responsive to the tastes and expectations of its racially  and culturally diverse (read: largely white) audience. Cosby is probably right to go after norms and expectations in the black, urban community that he sees as negative, but going after a popular music form will do him no good.

Can Barack Make It Rain?

In the wake of Clinton blatantly lying about Bosnia and James Carville comparing Richardson to Judas, we’ve forgotten some past Clinton campaign silliness, namely her suggestion that Obama would be a good vice-presidential candidate with her. This was all despite the fact that Obama is leading in popular votes and pledged delegates AND despite Clinton suggesting that Obama wasn’t quite qualified to be commander in chief.

So what is the proper response to such silliness? Finding a good analogy in rap songs! So, my own first suggestion is that Obama being Hillary’s Veep pick would be like “Make It Rain.” When I first heard the chorus, I was really juiced for yet another great Lil Wayne track - and not any Lil Wayne track, but one featuring the best catchphrase of 2007. And then it turned out that Fat Joe had all the verses. I guess other examples would be Dilated Peoples and Kanye West in “This Way” or Dr. Dre and Eminem in “Forgot About Dre“(though in all fairness to Dre, his production is about half of what makes that song tight, Eminem’s contribution is the other half. It’s just that Dre isn’t a very good rapper)

Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself

There’s been a little tussle in Ezra Klein’s comment section since he linked to my post (thanks a lot dude!) about the political prospects of Hip Hop.  As usual, there’s people complaining about my age, kinda-sorta calling me a racist and all that charming stuff.  But “Brendan” chimed in and summed up  my argument better than I could:

Most of thse artists have no real street background, their fake ass punks who wouldn’t last a day having to survive on the streets.

This is the white liberal blogger narrative on hip hop for some reason, and it drives me nuts. First, it’s just wrong; most prominent rappers actually did grow up in projects or slums in big cities. Second, of course the audience for rap is going to be majority white, because 75% of America is white. People who believe that it is strictly suburban white kids who are listening to Young Jeezy while Authentic Black People are listening to Common reveal, hilariously, that they have never set foot in a black neighborhood.

There is a black subculture that pushes some of these “conscious” rappers, but their audiences remain disproportionately white compared to mainstream rappers. This, I think, is because evaluated aesthetically as rap music they are generally not as good as mainstream rappers, with a few exceptions. Lots of white people, who don’t really know how to evaluate rap as art but have a sentimental idea of what “real hip hop” is supposed to be, are the target audience. (As for self-consciously “arty” rappers like MF Doom or whatever, forget it–their audience is 99% white hipsters, for good reason.)

It’s really amazing that the white liberal dialogue about rap can go on without anyone stopping to ask why we are evaluating rap by criteria that we would apply to no other art. It’s almost as if we don’t respect it as an autonomous art form, but expect it to play the role of a political cypher, or something.

Much of my frustration with the attempted poiticization of hip-hop and the denigration of rappers whose music is either apolitical or even antipolitical comes from an aesthetic standpoint.  I just think that many “mainstream” rappers, and their old school predecessors, are just better at making music than “conscious” rappers like Mos Def or Common.  TI, for example, raps mostly about the common litany of the thug live, how awesome he is, guns, women etc.  And yet, his songs are better produced, are more musically interesting, have better beats than most stuff out there.  He’s also an exceptional rapper.  The same can be said for Young Jeezy - who exclusively raps about selling cocaine. It’s just annoying for my favorite rappers to be denigrated because they’re not adhering to some mystical standard of political consciousness that “real” hip-hop is supposed to.

And while this is a poor standard for determining what “real” rap music is, for obvious reasons, it’s worth pointing out that urban, black youth, the supposed ur-audience for rap, don’t really like the socially conscious or “real” hip-hop.  They, for the most part, either like the mainstream stuff like everyone else, or the local subgenre for their area.  Socially conscious rap is, for all intents and purposes, a white hipster game.

The historical roots of this complaint come from the original West Coast-East Coast split.  According to New York partisans, all was well, Public Enemy was making great, socially conscious music that was mostly listened to by urban blacks.  Then NWA, Snoop Dogg and Death Row busted on the scene, started making incredibly violent music, denigrating women and mostly appealed to white people. There’s some merit to this analysis. Snoop’s music and Dre’s The Chronic weren’t particularly serious.  And NWA was promoted by Jerry Heller, who courted controversy with the FBI to increase Staight Outta Compton’s record sales.

But who cares that “Gin and Juice”, “Gz and Hustlas” or “Nuthin’ But a G Thang” aren’t socially conscious like some overbearing Public Enemy track?  They were revolutionary musically.  Dre pioneered using live music in his recording and his G-Funk style was the most effective at bringing in the other revolutionary form of black music form the last 30 years - funk- right into rap.  And Snoop Dogg’s raps on The Chronic and Doggy Style were just amazing for how laconic and easily delivered they were, despite the considerable verbal gymnastics he featured on just about every track.  This was rap that could finally be described as truly musical, which most late 80s, East coast rap just couldn’t compare to.

And not only did the early 1990s West Coast scene revitalize hip-hop musically, it do so culturally and financially.  They expanded the audience for hip-hop by showing that it could be cool, relaxed and just banging.  I dare you to listen to Gin and Juice or Nuthin but a G Thang while driving and not be immediately bobbing your head and just start chilling to the music.  So my basic complaint with the politicization of hip-hop and the implicit denigration of mainstream rappers as being toadies for white suburban kids or not having enough political conscious is that it makes no sense to approach music this way; in a way that we do with basically no other genre, especially one which has crossed over into being our country’s popular music.  I like good music, I like good politics.  I see no reason why they have to be especially congruent.

Hip-Hop and Movements

Being a liberal who loves, loves, loves rap music can be hard sometimes. On one hand, it’s a great way to show empathy and forge cultural connections with a marginalized ethnic group. When blacks and whites are becoming more segregated economically and socially, it’s nice that a black form of music (even in a way rock n roll or jazz wasn’t) has come to dominate popular culture. Especially in the Bay Area, where there is very concentrated educational and social segregation, there is fair amount of musical overlap; kids from the hills and from East Oakland (which easily could have been the setting for The Wire) all like the same rappers and the same local subgenre of music. There’s also the fact that much of the hip-hop backlash comes from incredibly square conservatives who can’t seem to understand that rock music has plenty of objectification of women, encouragement of philandery and all the stuff to object to. It’s easy for liberal hip-hop heads to get on their high horses and describe conservative critics as racist, which is always fun.

But even though I love hip-hop music, I think it’s important to recognize that it’s just music, and the possibility of using it organize young black voters, create any political movement or do anything more than have a great track for a banging party is probably an illusion. Samhita Mukhopadhyay has a post at the Nation discussing the possibility of some sort of hip hop movement or the general political possibilities of hip hop.

How could a genre of music whose most prominent representatives celebrate violence and misogyny be a tool of progressive political organizing? This fantasy depends on a certain over-romatnicized, fictional version of “authetnic” hip hop in which in the South Bronx in the late 70s and early 80s, there was this pure art form uncorrupted by violence and misogyny that was about having a good time and/or criticizing Reagan budget cuts and the evil of the Cross Bronx Expressway and Robert Moses. In the white liberal/black activist narrative, things got really good with Public Enemy explicilty taking on the mantle of Malcolm X and Black Liberation. Then, NWA and Death Row records came in, white people became the majority of hip-hop listeners, and black artists became tools of the man and started an arms race to make the most violent, misogynistic records so as to attract white audiences. This narrative needs to be true for there to be any hope of Hip-Hop being poliitically viable, because as currently constructed, or even how the mainstream of the music has been developing for the last 15 years, there’s little hope that Young Jeezy talking about selling cocaine, Too $hort rapping “I busted a nut and killed a bitch” or that any rap music black people actually listen to can be leveraged to anything greater than an album.

So why do people always turn to hip-hop and expect it to be more than a style of music or a subculture? There are a few reasons. For one, it really was a form of music that emerged from a specific political and culture millieu. The South Bronx in the late 1970s was ground-zero for a certain type of paleoliberalism. You had malevolent public planners victimizing urban blacks, you had welfare cuts, you have rising fear and growing paranoia of the urban black population by outer borough ethnic whites. Add on the fact that there was a genuine cultural renaissance, some of which could be interpreted as political expression by marginalized urban blacks who had no other way to speak out. It was also inevitable that hip-hop would be interpreted this way. White liberals like those satirized on Stuff White People LIke have been looking to urban black communities as loci of “cool” and authenticity since at least the 1910s.

It’s too bad that this history of hip-hop is basically false. Early hip-hop was really party music, Grandmaster Flash was a DJ remixing Blondie tunes before he released “The Message.” There never really was an age when the “socially conscious” music was popular among blacks, not popular among whites and was the best selling hip-hop around (and even Public Enemy had clownster-in-chief Flava Flav to sweeten the message a bit).

But the dream of people who see hip-hop as a method for political organization, protest or for activism depend on an idealized world whereby all the “bad” hip hop with the violence, misogyny and materialism (50 Cent, TI, Nelly etc) is only liked by suburban white people and there’s a legion of frustrated, urban black youth who are flocking to Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common, Dead Prez and all the socially conscious music. Too bad that this isn’t true. From as far back as Jonathan Kozol’s writing about the Harlem family reciting Langston Hughes’ poetry, many just assume that urban blacks are a fount of artistic and cultural enlightenment. But as far as hip-hop goes, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. It turns out that most of the hip-hop that is celebrated as “complex” or “socially conscious” has an audience with similar demographics as Arcade Fire fans. So sure, I’d love Mos Def to get black youth politically active, but it’s no accident that he has his own entry on Stuff White People Like. It turns that black youth basically like the same rap as white youth — the really popular stuff. If you look video clips of Hot 97’s Summer Jam, you’ll see a bunch of black kids, all loving the mainstream hip hop that is supposedly the exclusive domain of clueless, white suburban teenagers.

I’m not trying to say that black youth are uniquely misogynistic, materialistic or violent. I really like mainstream hip-hop. Often forgotten in these discussions is music that isn’t mainstream, liked by black people, and is hardly politically galvanzing. Look at most local sub-genres. Crunk from Atlanta, Hyphy from the Bay Area and Houston’s Chopped and Screwed are all examples of hip-hop at its purest. These are basically autonomous sub-cultures whose music has developed, much like in the late 70s South Bronx, as a response to specific cultural and social conditions. This is the type of music that could be used to spur political action. But when you look at the content of your average Mac Dre song, you’ll hear about smoking a lot of weed, taking a bunch of ectascy and just generally having a good time. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

To pretend that for Hip-Hop to be genuine, it all has to sound overbearing like Immortal Technique is to do great violence to those who genuinely love hip-hop.

Is any other genre expected to be the “genuine” voice of an oppressed people or to be leveraged as a uniquely effective tool for political organization? No, and it’s unfair for hip-hop to bear that burden. It’s just music. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, but to pretend it’s something more than music that’s tight to listen to is to make a rather large mistake.

Obama the Hipster

Remember when I said that “cool” — young, college educated, relatively wealthy — people liked Obama.  Well, yet another piece of evidence: Win Butler of the Arcade Fire has endorsed Obama.

via.

Hillary Is Just A Girl, Just A Girl in the World

If you want a nice anecdote for how Clinton is appealing to gender solidarity, search for “Just a Girl” on Youtube; the first result is the clip from the New Hampshire Democratic debate where Clinton talked about how her low likability ratings “hurts her feelings” and Obama subsequently quipped “you’re likable enough.” The video was put up by the Clinton campaign on YouTube, and they presumably paid for the top spot.

So, is Clinton trying to appeal to women born between 1977 and 1982 who really liked Clueless and Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion?  The song, incidentally, is both awesome and a very effective statement for the Clinton campaign.  Here are some lyrics:

Oh…I’ve had it up to here!
Oh…am I making myself clear?
I’m just a girl
I’m just a girl in the world…
That’s all that you’ll let me be!
I’m just a girl, living in captivity
Your rule of thumb
Makes me worry some

I’m just a girl, what’s my destiny?
What I’ve succumbed to Is making me numb
I’m just a girl, my apologies
What I’ve become is so burdensome
I’m just a girl, lucky me
Twiddle-dum there’s no comparison

Unfortunately, I don’t expect Barack Obama to buy video placement on searches for “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.”

cross-posted on campusprogress.org/blog 

Rollin’ in the Euros

Jay-Z’s new single for the American Gangster soundtrack, Blue Magic, is a poignant symbol of America’s decline — he’s flashing 500 euro notes in the video instead of the classic Benjamins. An email correspondent of Mark Hemingway claims that the 500 bill was consciously designed with drug dealers in mind:

The European Central Bank more or less consciously designed the 500 Euro note (now worth around $900) to be the drug smuggler’s currency of choice. The US Treasury has ignored the pleas of the drug dealers to issue larger denomination bills; see Scarface (the Pacino version) for the difficulty of doing a million dollar drug deal with mere $100 notes. When the ECB announced that they would issue a 500 Euro note it was quite clear they were targeting a particular market to encourage the usage of the currency.

While the reliability of Corner emailers in regard to the EU is probably right around 1%, the idea that an otherwise reputable organization would design a product specifically for drug dealers isn’t all that unbelievable. I mean, who else buys prepaid phone plans in cash?

UPDATE:  Via Garance, we have news that Gisele Bundchen is now demanding to be paid in currency other than the US dollar.  If the rappers and supermodels are abandoning the greenback, shouldn’t we all?

Rubber Band Man, Wild as the Taliban

Looks like the Rubber band man himself, Clifford Harris aka TI, is probably going to jail for a while:

T.I., whose real name is Clifford Harris, missed Saturday’s BET Hip-Hop awards show in Atlanta because he was arrested hours earlier for possessing three unregistered machine guns and two silencers, and for possession of firearms by a convicted felon…

Federal prosecutors are moving to keep Harris detained until his trial, which could be several months away. If convicted, Harris, 27, faces certain prison time - about five or more years behind bars, according to the federal sentencing guidelines.

Though I probably shouldn’t be, I’m both surprised and saddened by this news. Of all rappers, TI had the appearance of being relatively un-thuggish and was making real efforts to achieve crossover success without banking on his past life as a convicted felon. His hits “Rubberband Man” “Bring ‘em Out” and “What You Know” aren’t explicit celebrations of the violent gangster lifestyle, instead they’re mostly boasts about how cool TI is and why the South should get more respect. They were big hits because of genuinely good production and flow, not because of violent lyrics or anything of the sort. Even Pitchfork, a bastion of white music snobery, has lauded TI, declaring “What You Know” to be the third best track of 2006.

TI has also been featured on pop tracks like Justin Timberlake’s “My Love” and DJ Khaled’s “We Takin’ Over.” He was trying to become a widely appealing pop star, not some gangster rapper.  Hell, he was even starting an acting career and a clothing line. There is sure to be an outcry among columnists who will claim that TI is representative of everything wrong with both popular culture and black culture, but of all the rappers out there, TI was hardly exceptional in promotion of nihilistic gangsterism that this intelligentsia so decries. All in all, it’s unfortunate that such a talented and popular entertainer would make such poor decisions. TI is, in some sense, and so I wish him the best.  I guess this gives a whole new meaning to “nine in my right/ 45 in my other hand”

Manilow’s View

Ann Friedman celebrates that Barry Manilow refused to be interviewed on The View by conservative host Elisabeth Hasselbeck because “I cannot compromise my beliefs.” I’m usually not one to bemoan “polarization” in this country, but Manilow is being so cravenly opportunistic as to conspicuously refuse to be interviewed about his album by a conservative, that’s just petty and lame. Really, Barry, pro-lifers are just totally off limits to you? Are you gonna start having loyalty oaths for people going to your shows? Wouldn’t it “compromise” your beliefs to accept dirty conservative/pro-life money? How does Barry’s strong conscience explain his $2300 contribution to Ron “Abortion on demand is the ultimate State tyranny” Paul’s campaign? I guess the usual refrain would be for Manilow to “shut up and sing,” but I feel I speak for most of my generation in requesting that he stick to the former and avoid the latter.

The Immature View

Yglesias flags Ciara’s gender bending video for Like A Boy to discuss larger trends in inter racial dating and demographics.  I’ll just note how intentionally provocative it is for Ciara to release a single with lyrics including “Sometimes I wish I could act like a boy” and have a video featuring her in male clothing when there was a persistent internet rumor that she was born a man.

The Future Begins Today

Peter Suderman’s review of Kanye West’s Graduation is remarkably on point and insightful. Not only does he capture just how widely accessible the album is, but also how Kanye’s artistic triumph over 50 Cent repersents a new direction for hip hop — it’s transformation into a true popular music.

To fully capture where Hip Hop is and where it’s going, it’s also worth seeing who Kanye is taking the torch from. For the last 10 or so years, the two most highly respected popular MCs have been Jay-Z and Nas. They both were not only from New York, but also excelled and typified the type of rap that is largely from the boroughs. They were respected as exceedingly clever and smooth wordsmiths. Their grasp of the rhythmic and expressive possibility of the English language, especially in it’s New York black-urban form was simply unmatched. The problem with Jay-Z and Nas is that their style doesn’t lend itself to making songs, with catchy hooks, choruses, melodies and stirring, expressive or exciting instrumental parts. While Jay-Z’s more popular tracks — Big Pimpin and H to the Izzo are two good examples — have very catchy and appropriate hooks, but they are largely the exceptions that prove the rule. 50 Cent, while his successful singles have had a musical sensibility — In Da Club and Disco Inferno — has an overall ethos of being a rapper who works through his words, at the root of his appeal is his ability, whether genuine or not, to describe the cruel realities of his past life as a Queens hustler.

Kanye is not only from  Chicago  — a city without a strong history as being a hotbed of hip hop –, he’s also not a great rapper, in pure terms. His flow is uneven, he sometimes rhymes the same word with itself and often just departs from any meter or recognizable pattern. Yet, he’s the biggest thing in hip hop. Why? He is seemingly an enigma, he has the dress sense of a preppy with a taste for large jewelery. He doesn’t rap about street crime or the urban lifestyle at all, whereas Jay Z, Nas and 50 were all either criminals in their past lives or at least surrounded by urban crime, Kanye attended college for a year — and then wrote an album about it.  Kanye mostly raps about himself and his own travails, his existence didn’t have the same every day drama that Nas, Jay-z or 50s did.  Thus he’s criticized for being “self absorbed” for rapping about what he knows best — himself.

Another break Kanye is making form hip hop as has been established since the 80s is by making real pop songs.  While rappers before were mostly using similar soul and funk samples, Kanye sampled Daft Punk.  He’s had Adam Levine and Chris Martin on his tracks while having Jon Brion — Fiona Apple’s producer — produce his last album.  All of his songs have real hooks, while his singing might not be great, it can carry most of the choruses.  It’s also clear that the production and hummability of every song is of near equal importance of the rhymes or the verbal flow, which has been true for very, very few popular hip hop albums.  While Gold Digger may have been a cascade of clever rhymes and imagery, it was getting Jamie Foxx to sing as Ray Charles and Jon Brion’s funky electric piano on the third verse that made the song something special.

Kanye, being a little self obsessed, knows how he’s not a real rap star, at least not in the traditional sense.  In his recent interview with Rolling Stone, he admitted that he wants to be a rock star:

 I am a Rock star.  Because rock stars don’t need security, and I can go to dinner and chill.  Rock stars can speak well, or hop a plane to Paris if they feel like it.  Rock stars can catch cabs, they don’t need entourages and they don’t have to pop out of limos all the time… Rock stars can pull their dick out in public and then go rock 20,000 people… Rock stars can give their fucking opinion without having to deal with.. what’s that thing I get dealt with every day of my life?  Oh yeah, backlash.

While it’s not clear that Kanye has escaped the trappings of an absurd entourage or conspicuous rap star level consumption, but the fact that he recognizes that he’s part of a cultural stream going back to Elvis, is another sign that Kanye is different.  Whereas many rappers celebrate the ridiculous clothes, cars, planes and cribs as part of a horribly inflated sense of self importance, Kanye knows he’s part of the larger culture of the rock star.  It’s easy to speculate that many rappers, even those who aren’t that successful, are so full of world conquering machismo because, compared to their previous circumstances, they really are kings of the world.  Most rap celebrates provincialism — Atlanta rap is distinct from Houston which is all together different from the Bay Area.  So Nelly might be the hottest shit in St. Louis, so he can act as if he’s king of the St. Louis rap world.  But Kanye is trying to a be a true American sensation, which is what a rock star is.  A rock star isn’t a localized phenomenon, he speaks to and represents all of America.

Graduation might mark the point where hip hop or rap albums, especially the biggest and best ones, can no longer merely  be hip hop albums.  If any rapper after Kanye wants to be at the top of the game, he’s going to have to be much more than a rapper.

But it’s funny these same wrongs helped me write this song.

Jon Pareles pans Kanye West’s new album Graduation for having only one subject — Kanye and how great he is.  While this charge isn’t inaccurate, I don’t think it’s that bad for Kanye to rap about himself, even in such self aggrandizing terms.   For mainstream rappers there are essentially two topics to rap about — the streets or yourself.  The problem is, you can only credibly rap about the streets for one album, after which talking about slanging rock while you live in a New Jersey mansion is just silly (see Cent, 50).  For Kanye, he couldn’t even make one album about the streets — because he isn’t from the hood.  He even went to college for a few semesters.

Instead, Kanye put out two deeply personal and musically exciting albums.  We got an insight into a driven, self absorbed, talented young man with a huge chip on his shoulder.  While other rappers who talk about how awesome they are — like TI or Lil Wayne — Kanye knows how ridiculous he sounds.  His lyrics discuss how his huge ego is a problem, in his music, he’s conflicted.  That conflict is the elan of his art,  it’s what drives him to produce music, and what fascinates us.  In some ways, Parseles criticism is one that only Kanye can receive.  With any other rapper, they would focus on the litany of clever lines, the clear personality expressed in the songs, the original samples and the deft production.  But for Kanye, all of those things are assumed, we expect them.  He can no longer release the most original and pop-y albums in hip hop, he has to do that, and then not acknowledge how great he is.     Because he is the biggest thing to happen to mainstream hip hop since The College Dropout came out in  2004, he can no longer just release really good albums to sate the critics.

But until another rapper can put out a single that gives Daft Punk a writing credit or say “I”m the fly Malcolm X/buy any jeans necessary” and be an international sensation, I’ll buy Graduation on September 11th, and leave 50’s new album on the shelf.

Kanye Shows His Colors

It’s long been remarked upon that Kanye West is about the “whitest” (most middle class, least “urban”) rapper around.  In his dress (minus the jewelry), speech and subject matter (complaints about going to college) Kanye voices middle class concerns and attitudes more than any other mainstream black rapper.  And like all popular rappers, most of his fans are middle class white people.  Kanye seems to be coming around as to who his audience and has gone totally indie.  First, he put out the video of his single “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” with Zach Galifianakis, released “Stronger” which features an extensive sample of Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” and has a remix of Peter, Bjorn and Jon’s “Young Folks” and even performed with them once.  Since I’m a fan of both rap AND indie rock and pop, Kanye’s new direction is much appreciated.

Rihanna Where You At?

I long thought about blogging on how Rihanna’s “Umbrella” is probably the best female pop single since Nelly Furtado’s run of Say It Right and Promiscuous, but I didn’t want to damage my reputation as most Serious 17 Year Old Ever.  Well, Dan Drezner has broken the Rihanna Taboo, and asked which version of Umbrella is better - Rihanna’s original or Mandy Moore’s cover.

This isn’t even a question - the original is faster paced, more catchy, more fun and has Jay-Z, higher production values and more energetic vocals.  Mandy Moore, on the other hand, is breathy, lame, sad and just has no energy.  There’s also little pacing, tempo changes or a dramatic transition between bridge and chorus that defines the last minute of the original.  Rihanna’s version is the classic summer pop hit - like Beyonce’s Dangerously in Love, while Mandy’s cover is just so typical and generic - it could easily be a filler track on on of her albums, not a career defining hit.  There’s nothing distinctive about it. Not to mention that Rihanna’s video is a Gesamtkunstwerk of black leather, creative umbrella movements, raining sparks, matrix like water dodging, costume changes, Jay-Z and silver body paint while Mandy’s is just some boring clip of her performing the song.

The real Rihanna question is if any of the remixes are better than the original.  The remix with Chris Brown, with Lil Mama, or is the original always the best? I think so, and here’s the proof:

Signs of Cultural Hiphopalypse

If you’re like any type of wannabe ironic R Kelly fan (but you really do like him) then there’s been few events in your life as significant as Trapped in the Closet.  Well, unbeknownst to me, IFC was posting chapters 13-22, a new one every day, starting three days ago.  So, if my blogging slacks up, yall know why.

UPDATE: In Chapter 13, Slyvester describes his brother in law Twan as “crazier than a fish with titties.”  Looks like 13-22 will be as fantastic as their predecessors.  I’m excited.

Late Night Blur

Most underrated song of the 90s - Coffee and TV.  Great video as well.  Enjoy.

Who are the Sweden Finns?

While my brother was looking up the great Swedish rock band Kent on wikipedia, he ran across this little factoid, which just might be the greatest sentence in the history of the internet:

Sweden Finns (ruotsinsuomalaiset in Finnish, sverigefinnar in Swedish) are a Finnish speaking minority in Sweden. The Finnish-speaking Swedes are not to be confused with the Swedish speaking Finland-Swedes in Finland.

OK, loyal readers, raise your hand if you have ever confused the Sweden Finns with the Finland Swedes, I know a few of you have to be guilty. Here’s the video to my favorite Kent tune - Karleken Vantar. The best part about listening to their songs is convincing yourself that they’re actually singing in English and trying to decipher the words. I guess this video is a little racy, so consider yourself warned.