I want to agree with Mark Steyn about hip-hop, and I almost kind of could convince myself to be snobbish enough to agree with him if I didn’t know it would just be me succumbing to my worst personality traits.
Yeah, for my money, Billie Holiday is considerably more awesome than Jay-Z. But I’m not here to tell you who is a better credit to the black community. I don’t think Billie Holiday speaks to the current generation. Do I wish she did? Yeah, kind of. But my parents didn’t get rock and roll, so…
I’m not going to talk about rap music. I stopped paying attention around 1994. I’m too busy listening to the stuff I consider timeless.
Do you think they’d do okay on American Idol?
I don’t think Billie Holiday speaks to the current generation.
I call bullshit!! I thought the same thing when I first saw Springsteen back in ’92 with that other band(Shane Fontayne, Tommy Simms and so on). I was proven wrong in 1999/2000 and The Rising Tour. I saw so many people younger than I was during both tours. And I went to 25 shows of The Rising Tour. I think it’s just because her music isn’t played on the radio, plus she’s not around to tour or anything now.
You call bullshit?
The PA turnpike near Bedford is treacherous.
More self-satire that is parody-proof at that link. Seriously, Steyn pontificating that the kids should be digging themselves some Hammerstein? Oh my god.
Even Boo lapses into fantasy thinking with his Holliday wish. He doesn’t condescend massively, though. Unlike Steyn and his painting-with-feces cohorts.
Look, when I heard my first U.S. Top 10 list and I realized that I had heard none of the songs before that moment, I felt really old. When flavor-of-the-month musical acts arrive on Saturday Night Live, I’m tempted to think the kids are NOT all right. But I had an epiphany in my 30’s which has helped me get through the musical trends. To wit:
It’s not meant for us.
This is by definition. Young people must find musical styles which reject and antagonize older generations. They’ve got to make their own scenes. Steyn wishes to forget, but his generation did the same, and he likely participated in it. The industry delivers the music in ways which fragments which trends will reach the Big Time and how quickly, but the kids decide in the end, and the industry is not chiefly about values, they’re about money. The kids give them the money.
Oh, and Mark’s freaked out about Ke$ha (yeah, I absolutely trust that he’s telling the truth when he describes himself as listening to her song “Sex Room”- probably put that track right on, he did) and Jay-Z? Motherfucker needs to have some NWA crack his dome.
that’s all true. the thing is, who was Shakespeare for? Who was Who was Beethoven for? Who was Louis Armstrong for? I mean, it seems absurd to talk about them speaking to their generation, although they each undoubtedly did just that.
When it comes to the legacy of black music in American culture, it is pretty hard to compare Tupac to Ella Fitzgerald.
But I try not to be a snob.
Some contemporary music will last. It won’t be the top of the pops. Take a look at the #1 hits during Billie’s career (who had none), and particularly during Satchmo’s (who had two in 45 years). Actually, I’d recommend it- it’s quite an educational exercise. What gains the most immediate attention usually hasn’t been built to last.
Besides, you’ve already conceded that you stopped listening to rap early in the genre, so you’ve missed out on later achievements. I’ve listened little more, prime evidence being my NWA reference, but I’ve heard more recent songs that felt artistically worthwhile and powerful to me. Completely a matter of opinion for now, but a general opinion will coalesce about what has been great, the one limit being the level of topicality which has defined some of the rap scene. Topicality and timelesness can go together, but it’s got to be truly great.
Just because the #1 songs of 1947 reflected a soft, sclerotic mess of popular music doesn’t mean that, for example, the Bird wasn’t delivering the goods elsewhere that year.
BTW, it’s rather silly to decide that the quality of a particular popular music is best judged by whether it represents a “culture” in an admirable manner. Sure, I draw feelings about the dirt-poor Delta culture of the ’30’s from hearing Robert Johnson wail and work his slide, but the prospect that he doesn’t achieve greatness until he delivered to me an “authentic expression of black culture or black identity” is a little over the top, beginning with my white ass deciding what an “authentic expression” of another culture is. That’s way too complicated.
Speaking of silly, I took your invitation to listen to “Cherokee”. I have a general understanding that the genre is built upon planned improvisations, but I can’t help myself- I immediately think of a brief scene from Christopher Guest’s underrated movie The Big Picture.
One of the satirical film student shorts in the movie was called “Afterbirth of a Notion”, which consists of Jennifer Jason Leigh dressed up bizarrely and doing bizarre things, with free jazz as the soundtrack (not as high quality as Cherokee, admittedly). Ever since, whenever my wife and I are together and free jazz is played, one of us is likely to look at the other, hold the back of a hand near our mouth and pant, just as Leigh’s character does in the movie. Then we break out laughing.
Damn that Christopher Guest- he left us incapable of differentiated objective taste about an entire genre thru one extremely well-targeted bit of satire more than a generation ago.
that’s why I said that I didn’t want to talk about rap music and that I am not going to tell people what art reflects well on the black community. I agree that is an exercise in wanking.
Speaking of Cherokee, there is actually a YouTube that attempts to diagram one of the solos. It’s pretty cool.
Thanks for this. While the sound of the electronic instrument is not as pleasant as the original, it is clarifying to see the construction of his lines in isolation, and moves the experience for me from one of improvisational chaos to surety.
It’s odd that this is often a point of resistance for me in jazz. The moments in live performances of rock music which have most excited me are when the band was throwing up a wall of raucous noise which was still recognizable as the song they had begun playing a minute before, but just barely; that can be easily experienced as a form of tremendously exciting improv to me.
Prime example: The Replacements did a show in San Francisco in ’87 where, during a number of different songs, I lost confidence that the players would be able to keep on to the end, because I was losing the thread of the melody completely for a verse or two. But they always pulled it back, and they always kept the time, even when it, too, almost became lost in the 100-decibel onslaught. This idea that the artists took their original creations, much more tunelike in the studio, were brave enough to shake the songs violently until they almost fell apart, but skilled enough to hold them together and deliver a whole show that way- wow, I loved that new experience.
There’s some jazz from the era which is in my collection. I got suckered into Dexter Gordon from seeing him in ‘Round Midnight, and was knocked out right away by this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phWurR8BB6I
Dexter’s run between 3:00 and 3:30 (particularly that 3:05 figure!) had me screaming as I did when hearing Jimmy Page’s best playing for the first time. I can hear now that every player is astonishingly good here.
The band The Replacements largely aspired to be:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svYc9EzQ3yw
For me, Big Star’s performance here is in that skillful “things-coming-apart” realm that excites me, something this band was able to capture in the studio regularly. Potential contributing factors to this aspect of their style, in addition to the band’s artistic decisions and some substance abuse issues, one of the members ended up in a psych ward, and Alex Chilton’s life story suggests he might have benefited from some mental health treatment. He created dozens of pop masterpieces in the middle of his troubles, though.
It’s good flexibility practice, to explore different music styles. As we get older and more ossified, we need to step out with our minds to keep them nimble.
The rewards of listening to more and more fantastic music are great!
Well, it could be worse. You could believe that hard bop was the best that music ever got, and that everything else after it was worse than the dumbest bleatings of the ignorant instant-gratified masses.
But you’re not a white male jazz critic, so you’ll be fine.
I want to comment on this topic so bad.
But I’m having trouble with the spacing in my post and embedding youtube videos. I wrote four or five graphs and they all showed up in preview as one graph.
And the youtube videos aren’t showing up at all.
Sorry I’mma lurker who barely comments. So I’m having trouble with it. Went to FAQ but still doesn’t seem to be working.
you tubes may not show up in preview, but if you’ve cut and pasted the embed codes correctly, they will post. If it is screwed up, I can delete it for you.
Make sure it says Auto Format below you comment box.
I saw the post but doesn’t look like the youtube videos popped up
Never mind just saw them. Thanks
You try not to, but you do anyway, no offense. Rap and hip-hop doesn’t speak to me, and this is my generation, but I get that it does speak to a vast majority of my peers. I won’t talk a lot about this topic because I’m ignorant — again, I couldn’t tell you much about pop culture because I was never an active participant, even in middle/high school — but you do this a lot with my generation, whether it’s video games or music. A lot of times you’re just like John “Get Off My Lawn” McCain.
See also:
A case study in the right sabotaging its own cultural criticism, starring National Review contributors
Yeah, well, I guess I am like Barack and Michelle that way.
Obama actually already professes to be a fan of hip hop, unlike you and he is well verses on the genre from the interviews I’ve seen and heard. And I guarantee you if Obama like JayZ, then he also is a fan of Tupac. Obama invited Common to the White House & unlike JayZ & Diddy, Commom is not a known entity.
Barack often reference hip hop sayings in his early speeches as well. I suspect you and The Obamas have big difference when it comes to the liking of. “Rap” music
yeah, I know that the president knows and likes hip-hop. I was referring to the fact that the girls don’t get to waste time playing video games and that the president doesn’t want other people’s kids wasting their time with that either.
If people are still listening to a piece a hundred years later, then it’s good.
Bach had hundreds of contemporaries, now 99% forgotten.
I first heard rap in 1984, in LA, from a loud house party down the block. My reaction was “WTF? Is that supposed to be music??“. I don’t know whether it has gotten better, or I’ve gotten more tolerant, but it’s more tolerable now. Not something I’d choose to listen to, but I can see why someone would.
Give it another 70 years. IMNSHO, the jury is still out on Prokofiev.
For those that don’t want to wait until they’re dead for an assessment of music, use the twenty year test. That’s the outer limit time range for the adults screaming about the “crap” their kids listen to until they embrace some version of the “crap.” How long did it take for Presley’s audience to go from screaming teen to the gray haired set in Vegas? Happened even faster for the Beatles and other 1960’s artists.
There was a time, too, when jazz was the “crap” that people were screaming about.
In between being labeled “crap” and being accepted by the adults is often advertising. A fun factoid is that in 1926 Wheaties bought the rights to the 1919 song Jazz Baby
Like any music, the good stuff is missed, and dissed, on the more commercial stations. Can anyone recommend a good place to listen? I’m past 60 myself and have drifted out of earshot somehow. But this gets me going, should be able to find something with a good look.
Seems to me hip hop is full of emotion. And a great outlet for painful experience, as with jazz and blues.
I’m musically ignorant, about your age, Boo, but you should start paying attention again. There’s some stuff that’s better than timeless, it’s now.
There’s also things like this. Not my style, but I defy anyone to watch the performance and not feel it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2xuleGvsGE
You can call it snobbery or just middle age or whatever. But I have reached the point where I just don’t want to consume empty calories anymore. Art that doesn’t aspire to be timeless is like eating Pringles. If the cost of being socially aware is listening to stuff that is basically consumer-driven, I just don’t have time for it anymore. I liken it to watching Entertainment Tonight just so I know something about the people I see in the grocery checkout line magazines. I’m not doing it.
Now, if someone says, “Listen to this, it’s great.” I’ll listen to it.
The Last Poets – E Pluribus Unum
Immortal Technique – Rich Man’s World
It’s just purely a matter of taste. I’m not a huge Jay-Z fan, but I’d much rather listen to him than Billy Holiday.
Of course, I kinda figured that Boo might be suffering from fogeyism back when he was complaining about how video games are the scourge of today’s youth.
It’s the time sink, pillsy, not anything in particular about the games.
Well, if you put on a popular country music station right now, you could easily come to the conclusion that country music is devoid of human feeling. All of these overproduced, interchangeable, pseudo-country pop/rock songs. Then you might discover Willie Nelson, or Hank Williams, or Patsy Cline, or the Stanley Brothers, or the Flying Burrito Brothers, and realize that country music can be a lot of different things.
And after 35 years, hip hop is just too broad a concept for any discussion of its human feeling content to be meaningful. But it’s just a fact that it has been, and is a pervasive influence in ways that will continue to reverberate for a long time.
These are types of arguments I used to dream about. Being the hip-hop aficionado that am. I would be more than willing to destroy Mark’s arguments. Not to mention it bugs me when white conservatives, who spend most of their time demonizing black culture, try to speak authoritatively about it. I react the same way when they talk about abortion being a “black genocide” or black unemployment or black on black crime. Mufucka this shit BEEN going on. We’re out here trying to find solutions to it. But you care NOW that it pertains to whatever bullshit argument you’re making?
But as I’ve entered my 30s I’ve realized this is a conversation more and more I’m loathe to have. I try to avoid them. Why?
Because I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Most people my age are abandoning hip-hop. They’re uninformed. They have lives. They’re disenchanted with the genre. They’ve turned off the radio. But most of all they just don’t care. Lots of my friends are stuck in a Golden Age time warp. They peak their heads out of the sand once in and while. But its mostly to say the same stuff our parents used to say: this crap sucks and my era was better.
So I’ll try to keep my points brief.
The audacity of a white conservative to call hip-hop an inauthentic expression of black identity still boggles my mind. I’ll just say when I listen to “Boobie Miles” by Big K.R.I.T. I do indeed feel like it expresses what it means not only to be a black but a 35-year-old married black man struggling to pass the Bar Exam.
Here’s the chorus:
“Get money, don’t be no lame
Bench warmers never ride foreign, so play the game
Never drop the ball, never accept a loss
Get back up if you fall, and when your number called
you better give your all
I hope you give your all
You gotta play until the end
The only difference between a winner and a loser is a winner plays until he wins”
Here’s a sample of the second verse.
“Just be aware that everybody ain’t your friend
They’ll be gone with the wind once your jump shot don’t go in
or your ACL torn and you a couple yards short
from a Super Bowl Championship and it was down 4
Gotta play the field, be willing to ride, willing to dive
for what you desire, call your pop fly but never collide
with other players that play the game
Don’t be eager to run with crowds, stay in your lane
Pass the knowledge onto your team, but carry the flame
cause it’s yours and yours alone to brighten your way
Put God first and free your soul
cause even Olympic runners sometimes lose their gold, so”
Look. I’m days away from taking this exam. Not my first time taking it either. Some of my friends are not necessarily employed through legal means. But I’m trying. And if this song doesn’t speak to my need to persevere I don’t know what does. And nothing really speaks to that more than the sports analogies he uses.
So you can tell me you don’t really listen to hip-hop. You can tell me you don’t like it. But don’t tell me it doesn’t speak to me. Ask me first Mark Steyn.
Just as a bonus I’m posting “She Was Fly” by Full Crate & Mar feat. Eric Roberson. The other reason hip-hop speaks to me is because I’m in love. And nothing really expresses the love I have for my wife quite like hip-hop. Its a nuanced thing. A wink, an inside joke, a look, a smell. And no other genre can really capture that. I’m just happy to watch her walk. Can’t really get that in a sappy love song.
I apologize for the length of this post. Started rambling.
No need to apologize. That wasn’t a ramble- heard you willingly and very clearly. Thanks for all this. And Steyn offends this middle-age white guy by writing what he did, too.
Good luck with your exam, and congratulations for feeling deep love. Love is a privledge.
Thanks. I appreciate it. Thought we defeated the “hip-hop isn’t art” argument with Lauryn Hill’s Miseducation of Lauryn and OutKast ” Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.” Guess not.
Love the Hill CD, and it’s got lots of great singles, but “Hey Ya” is among the very best pop singles of all time, I believe. Some of the arrangement parts on the counterbeat get my ass moving and my mouth laughing.
If you cannot distinguish that all hip hop is not rap and that all rappers are not necessarily on the hip hop genre, then u shouldn’t be talking about this Subject.
Case in point, would you classify Mary J Blige as a hip hop star? She doesn’t rap and yet she is known as the Queen of Hip Hop Soul.
If you can’t recognize the distinctions, then IMHO, please just shut up about it.
Don’t give in to the snobbery! The first time you say, “What is it with kids and their music these days?”, that’s when you’ve become old. It’s fine to prefer something else, but always respect the creativity, even if it doesn’t speak to you.