Week of October 29, 2009, Issue #732
MUSIC
Backlash Blues: Be a prude
Casual sex and the hip-hop saviour
Roland Pemberton / roland@vueweekly.com
Some people will just sleep with anybody. No, I don't mean hook up with everybody, I mean anybody, as in undiscerning. Some people, for a variety of reasons, will go on a date with practically anyone and subsequently take them home. As hard as it can be to hold out or say no to a willing participant regardless of actual compatibility, one must consider their own romantic history, compare the aspiring partner with those of the past and decide whether or not the new one is up to their personal standards. There's a system and I apply its principles to my experiences with rap. And I see some promiscuous heads in my midst.
Even though rap music is developed in a uniquely referential way (sampling, homage, etc.) and, like house and techno, is an attempt at recreating an old form (disco) in a new image with cheaper equipment and less music theory, the genre's development still simulates an expedited version of the genres that proceeded it. Disco flamed out on a Chicago baseball field in 1979 after media saturation reached a breaking point. Its development was longer and contained a much vaguer starting point than rap, but is still a mirror image of the current challenges of today's genre du jour.
Rap has been completely stripped of the danger and mystery that amassed during it's so-called "golden age" in the early '90s. Rap is in commercials for milk, the white noise while you get your teeth cleaned. Fear of extinction from inside the community (see Nas's sensationalist headline grab Hip Hop Is Dead) has purists jumping at anything with remotely positive or outstanding attributes, like a guy on a string of bad dates who gets excited when the next girl is wearing red lipstick. And this fear has been stirring since the late '90s, not very long after the genre's first truly developed full-lengths were produced.
Much like the rock 'n' roll renaissance in 2001 had the Strokes and the White Stripes trading blows for genre saviour status, rap and the media orbiting it are grasping for someone to save their jobs and keep their chosen art form afloat. In the past, wordy battler Canibus was pegged to tear down the walls of the hip-hop establishment (namely Def Jam) from the inside and lead rap's critical vanguard. It didn't work out. Similarly-hyped artists (Jayo Felony, The Game, Ras Kass) have since failed to make good on their premature coronations, shipping out diminished returns and causing much hand wringing from aging record pluggers and disc jockeys.
The most ridiculous and desperate ply is that involving Toronto's Drake (the rapper, not the hotel). Are they excited about his skills? (Mildly.) His affiliation with Lil Wayne? (Sure, a little.) His stage show? (No—have you seen the YouTube where he hurts his ankle?) The real draw here is that he is clean-cut, charismatic and marketable enough to sell records and return rap to the charts and commercial relevancy. The true school, typically all-skills purists are skipping out on their usual belief system to crown this guy, simply because they think he can become popular! It's unprecedented. Some people in our country are excited because he's Canadian and people in the States don't immediately laugh at him. It's sad.
The hyperbole has never been greater than for Atlanta's Gucci Mane. Primed for success from regional radio hit "So Icy" with Young Jeezy until he caught a case, he's followed his release from jail with a restless release regimen. He's recently become the go-to guest emcee for any radio artist's prospective single. He has a chain with a diamond-encrusted Bart Simpson riding a skateboard hanging from it.
My personal preference lends itself to rappers who are style over substance, entertainment instead of dogma, more beat and less speech. And while Gucci falls firmly on my side of the fence with his silly, ebullient way of presenting gangster fare weirdly ("My car got personality, the grill be smilin', honey / My rims are very charming and the leather seats are comfy"), I won't exactly recommend he start guest editing The New Yorker.
But various bloggers and hip-hop journalists are championing him for his colourful use of alliteration and metaphor, as if these were things that he actually excelled at (he doesn't) and as if these things haven't existed in the form since before LL Cool J was old enough to drive a car to pick up girls with. It's strange and has a vaguely racist feel. It's insulting to see high-end literary establishments celebrate a black ex-drug dealer stringing together an extended metaphor about his car being like a spaceship as some transcendent musical event. Do they have short memories or just a low knowledge base?
I am a fan of Young Dro and find his current mixtape R.I.P. to be highly entertaining, filled with his admittedly dexterous flow and possibly hundreds of metaphors alluding to the color of his jewellery. But I hold no auspice of him being the next big thing and a brave new face in the lyrical pantheon. I do think some people are so desperate for a hero that they would will themselves to say such a thing and it's both a discredit to the artist's intended goal and the audience that absorbs their work.
Maybe I'm just playing hard to get. At least when it comes to rap, I'm not easily sold on a potential suitor. I've got to hear a few mixtapes, check out an album and really get to know a rapper before I'm ready to commit. And I don't think chastity is so bad. I think if rap fans could dodge all the genre-doomsday talk and consider the rappers they follow for longer and with more scrutiny instead of quickly rhapsodizing on people they barely know, they'd forge a more worthwhile relationship with the music they listen to on the whole. Do you think I should start a service for this kind of thing? V
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