Letters to the Editor
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Salon: please, no more music articles by dilettantes
As other letters have rightly noted, the article is founded on the shaky premise that mainstream hip-hop is somehow representative of the state of the art form.
In a way I sympathize with the author's old-crank complaint that the old stuff was better. On the whole, I much prefer listening to older music than new, and that goes for all genres, not just hip-hop.
But the author is quite obviously nowhere near the hip-hop scholar he fancies himself to be, and seems oblivious to recent paradigm shifts in the music business, and in music itself.
Because of the internet, more potential future artists are being exposed to more diverse music than ever before. Advances in technology have made it cheaper and easier than ever before for those kids to create and record their own music.
Who would be ignorant enough to proclaim that in this fertile musical climate, the quality of the art is at an all-time low? Particularly in a genre as young, evolving, and full of sonic possibilities as hip-hop? Paul Kix, that's who.
Mainstream music mostly sucked long before Puffy or MC Hammer ever made a record. If Kix had written that today's mainstream hip-hop contains a higher proportion of irredeemable crap than mainstream hip-hop circa 20 years ago, he'd get no argument from me.
But Kix couldn't stop there; he had to spout off about being very disappointed in and "embarrassed" for young black men, who have become far too "lame" to succeed in entertaining Paul Kix. That statement is very patronizing if not racist.
Before high-speed internet access became commonplace, people had the right to complain that they couldn't hear their favorite records because they weren't played on the radio or MTV or stocked at the local record store. Today it is easier than ever to get your hands on good music, but there is also more of an onus on the listener to discern the good from the bad. Sorry Paul, the folks who used to predigest and palatably present your hip-hop to you are declining in relevance; I'm afraid that if you can't figure out where the good hip-hop can be found, then you deserve the likes of "Soulja Boy."
I do sympathize with any young music fan who lacks the internet, but not with Paul Kix.
Salon, there are so many people who really know a lot about music and can write. Can't you find one of them and save us the millimeter-deep analysis if Kix and his ilk?
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A correction...and a complaint about ageism
There is a mistake in the article. Soulja Boy did not sell over 3.3 million copies of his album online; total sales of the album, digital and physical, are fewer than 400,000 units. The track "(Crank Dat) Soulja Boy" is what sold 3.3 million digital copies.
Secondly, what's up with the description of Kix as an "aging white writer?" He says he was eight years old in 1989; that makes him 27 today. Are we so ageist, even here on Salon, that 27 - 27! - is considered old? Are you excluded from rendering opinions on popular music once you're too old to be cast in "Gossip Girl?" Unless "ageing" is used in the sense that each of us gets older from the day we were born - and not, as I suspect, as a synonym for "too old" - describing someone in this way, especially someone still several years shy of his thirtieth birthday, is deeply offensive.
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Correction to My Correction
The total sales for Soulja Boy's album are around 900,000 units - more than I said in my previous post, but still below the figure cited in the article.
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@chartfan
You didn't read all the letters did you? People already noted this. The point is it's absurd for someone so young do complain about kids these days in terms which make him sound like an out of touch old guy.
There is no "ageism" here and I think you take offense at this as a red herring used to evade real issues of racism.
The point is it's BS for a white guy who knows little about hip-hop to use an idea of cool he had at age 8 to call young black men "lame". It's racist.
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Rock (new rock)
Is dead.
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Thank You! I Am Not the Only Hayseed That Loves Ice Cube.
As the child of a country and western dance instructor from Fort Worth Texas, it is refreshing to read another person with taste for music that is converse to his background. As I grew up, my Run DMC tapes were tolerated, but had to hide my Beasty Boys, NWA, and Public Enemy cassettes. My parents informed me, the music was all trash that promoted drug use, produced by people that had no right to be angry. I needed to stick with good music by real artist like Kenny Rodgers and Dolly Parton.
Convinced of my parents’ stupidity and willful ignorance by their refusal to listen to the lyrics with me and talk about were these artists were coming from, I found my way to rebel against them and be different. But I was also alone.
Few black kids my age would accept a Jimmie Olsen prep as part of their click, because I couldn’t possible understand what the music meant since, I was the son of the man. In a cruel parallel I couldn’t stand the white kids that ‘loved’ the music, because they all were gansta wannabes that could only quote “Dopeman” by constantly saying, “I ought to slap you upside the head with nine inches of limp ….”
Through the nineties and college I continued to be a lonely fan of the deeper cuts. While “California Love” got screams from the co-eds on the dance floor, “Gansta Party” garnered strange stares from the cheerleaders visiting my dorm.
I worked my way through an MBA program as a substitute high school teacher. One day a student said he saw me running over the weekend. As he continued to try and avoid work he wanted to know what I was listening to on my run. I flatly answered gansta rap. This stunned the whole room middle class suburban kids as they could not fathom the idea of the Clark Kent me listening to rap . Who was it? Did I like a long list of rappers I had never heard of? I informed them I was listening to Ice Cube’s “Predator” that day.
The guy from Friday and Barbershop? Yes that guy. They didn’t even know the man had rapped. And I was out of sync with what these tadpoles listened to, since I would venture no further than what Dr. Dre or Snoop dog were putting out.
So under a veil of secrecy we spend the second half of the next algebra lesson listening to each other’s tracks. After listening to “We Had To Tear This Motherf*cker Up”, the kids told me they liked it ok, but it was really to old school and not as good as their music. They played for me Lil John.
I immediately told them it was garbage. I tried to convince them that rap could teach them perspectives they could get nowhere else. That “We Had To Tear This Motherf*cker Up” was a social commentary. And finally it was just plain better music. The album I showed them had complexity and depth; it showed hard work and thought in its production. What they showed me was simple rhymes and repetitive catch phrases garbled with over the top music that made no statement other than I have more than you and I get laid a lot. I suggested that they stick with true artist and to give rappers like Tupac and Snoop Dog their attention and money.
I had turned into my parents, I hope for the better.