Letters to the Editor
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Hip-hop or gangsta rap?
Sorry, but there's a difference.
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Wonderful World Of Skins
I got nothing but love for Salon and their investigative journalistic pieces exposing fraud, injustice and hypocrisy in the world, but they just have never seemed to be up to the same standard when it comes to cultural criticism (except for the wonderful Heather Havrilesky and Rabbit Bites (and for cool historical reference pieces, Camille Paglia). Between this lame self indulgent hip hop piece and the recent lame self indulgent trip hop hit job on the new Portishead album; I don't expect to find many useful insights from the official Salon culture critics but I gots to say I love reading the Salon community responses. Goodtimes. Anyways, keep it real Salon readers. I feel another fawning Arcade Fire article coming on (and check out the new {{{Sunset}}} album as an antidote to that)...
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Paul...Welcome to Genericization Nation.
As far as I'm concerned, this type of thing has been going on for a while. Anything in popular culture that has existed over the past..hmm...30, maybe 40 years that has anything to do with music and/or youth is on the market to be stripped of it's street credibility and regurgitated as generic entertainment. And yeah, you're right on the money with Fall Out Boy, the 'pop-punk' equivalent of The Bay City Rollers. When exactly did this all happen? For me I would say that it coincided somehow with the George W. Bush presidency. I'm not in anyway saying that he's responsible for it, although I like to blame him for that too, but I would say 2000 is a good milestone for the upswing in the corporatization of culture. There's no substance anymore. 'Substance' isn't marketable. Take a look around. New York City is a great example of what was formerly cool and now isn't. Did I ever think I would see a Circuit City, a Home Depot, an Outback, a Kmart, a Target, an Olive Garden, or a Red Lobster in Manhattan, the island immune to all things 'normal' in the world outside its borders? No. I never for a moment back in the 70s, 80s, or even 90s thought that any of those businesses would make it here. But guess what..it's now the norm and it's not going away. With a few exceptions and some cool history, New York City as it exists now is just like ANYWHERE ELSE only more expensive.
As far as Hip-Hop is concerned, although this genre has had some great artists to offer over the years: Run-DMC, Whodini, Kurtis Blow, etc. it has more recently become a platform for young white middle class kids with no identity to consider themselves cool. It's one thing to like a form of music. It's another to try to adapt the mannerisms, language and dress of a culture that has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with who you really are. A great example of this is Eminem. Could anything be more forced than the public persona he's been cashing in on for almost 10 years? From Christina Aguilera's 'black-cent' to Justin Timberlake's and Maroon 5's bad Stevie Wonder falsetto imitations, pop music is filled with nothing but white people dying for the street cred of their African American influences. The argument could be made that this has always happened. White people co-opted Jazz and the Blues, that's true. But they never tried so incredibly hard to BE black until now. The Beastie Boys are an exception. They walked it and talked it, but they never gave you the impression that they were trying to be anything other than what they were.
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judging a genre by its worst members
Wow, someone (presumably) over 30 who thinks music was better when HE came of age. Shocking.