I've thought about writing this for a long time. It started with a telegram post by Bronze Age Pervert. I don't follow BAP but I saw Zero HP Lovecraft mention the post in a tweet so I found the telegram and read it. I also don't follow ZHP but I'm not saying that to get ahead of anything, I don't dislike him and his "she could lose weight" bit is pretty funny. This is BAP's post:
That is poltard "take your meds schizo" rambling that I won't talk a bit about other than how reading it made me realize the animosity BAP has toward eminently black music would spread through his devotees into the rightist sphere. It has, now it's at a simmer.
I'll give a bit of a primer but I figure a lot of you have some familiarity with Hip-Hop. It's more than just music, it's a subculture of fashion, art, music and dance, but I'm only talking about the music. As the genre developed, inside baseball is its variation into East Coast and West Coast Hip-Hop. East Coast where emphasis is on hard lyricism: artists like Biggie, Jay-Z and Run The Jewels. West Coast where emphasis is on the vibe: Dr. Dre, Tyler the Creator, Anderson .Paak. Subgenres people should be familiar with conceptually are Alternative and Progressive. Alternative about deviating from mainstream sound: A Tribe Called Quest, the Roots, BROCKHAMPTON. Progressive, about incorporating whatever sounds good as complexity is developed within the form: Outkast, Kanye, Kendrick Lamar.
I think most people I see in those threads who criticize "Rap"--and some elaboration will follow--don't really know it. They haven't listened to much and what they have is the weakest examples of the genre in performers like Drake and Jack Harlow. In polite terms they call it Rap. Rap isn't wrong but it's imprecise, rapping is what the vocalist does on the track, Hip-Hop is the rap-to-and-the-beat, and the production is equally if not more important. I'm not doing a pedantic gotcha thing, if you respond to this by calling it Rap I'll know what you mean, and when I call it Hip-Hop you can mentally shortcut Rap if it's easier.
I think most of those Xers would enjoy it if they were shown its best, but there is the minority. Those who didn't originate the thought but they are its loud propagators, so BAP, who are filled with the kind of racial hate where they dislike Hip-Hop solely because of its blackness. I know they'd yeschad me calling them racist but that's not my angle. I'm not criticizing them for being racist, I'm criticizing them for allowing their supposedly great intellects to be subjugated by their racism; to be made retarded by hate as they showboat their inability to appreciate beauty. A failing never more obvious than when they inevitably cope with their flaw unrealizing by saying "No, it really is bad."
I try not to call music bad, it's too subjective. I'll happily comment to the side, like Jack Antonoff probably does all the real work in his collabs with Taylor Swift, Swift's popularity is far more memetic than musical, and/also for Olivia Rodrigo who is a stunningly obvious industry plant; Jack Harlow grew up on a horse ranch, enough said. I still won't call their work bad. I have friends who love their music, why would I want to diminish that? But if I called Swift or Rodrigo or especially Harlow, or pulling back to the albums out of pop, rock and alt-rock of the last 25 years (country ignored for obvious reasons), with few exceptions--Viva La Vida counts and it's pretty good but a lot of its strength is the title track and I like X&Y more; Toxicity is superb; In Rainbows likewise--if I called the best of those genres bad relative to Hip-Hop's best, I would be right.
The best writers of lyrics is a long list of black artists. Ed Sheeran, who seems like a right proper lad, had song of the year 2017 with Shape of You (the link is the lyrics.) It might seem unfair to compare it to Outkast's Bombs Over Baghdad as it's the song of the millennia so far, but it is fair because BOB came out about 17 years earlier, as in pre-Iraq, pre-9/11. This is also where production matters so much, the lyrics are good but made best in context of hearing them in the song. So production, the best producers are many of those same lyricists--Kanye, Jay-Z, Pharrell Williams--or they work with those black artists. Nolan's Oppenheimer was beautifully scored by Ludwig Gorranson, Gorranson broke out on the strength of his production work with Donald Glover/Childish Gambino. He could do things he couldn't anywhere else because there is no genre that allows creativity to flourish like Hip-Hop. Shit Kanye was figuring out 25 years ago dominates the sound of modern pop. I anticipate a certain cope: "Yeah, because it's 2024 and we worship blacks." There is sardonic truth in ascribing a religious reverence to some of the leftist establishment's treatment of blacks but production techniques made prominent by Hip-Hop are now in pop because it makes it better. Carly Rae Jepsen's Emotion (2015) is one of the best pop albums ever recorded and it could hardly be more white. White girl from Canada spending 25 tracks (super-deluxe + B-Side EP) singing about her broken heart. Its production techniques, the samples, the synths, yeah that's the stuff Kanye was doing over a decade before, reaching a degree of culmination in his 2008 album 808s & Heartbreak. Easily the most influential album since its release, past all the Hip-Hop it impacted, down the line we have Scooter Braun and Jepsen, we have Lorde, Lana Del Rey, Dua Lipa, Rina Sawayama, Spellling (though The Turning Wheel calls way harder to Kate Bush's The Hounds of Love), Billie Eilish and the biggest and whitest T-Swift.
The only genre with that level of willingness and brilliance in total experimentation by arena acts, aside from the artist-that-is-the-genre of Tyler Joseph's Twenty One Pilots, is electronic music. Those Frenchies dominate it, and you know what? Game recognizes game. Daft Punk working with Kanye and then Pharrell, then later coming out of their soft retirement to work with the Weeknd. Outside of France there's Ratatat and MGMT with Kid Cudi, Moby with Public Enemy, DJ Shadow with Run The Jewels, and Calvin Harris with a bunch of artists.
Funny, I never see the righties complaining about what should surely be "height-of-degeneracy" raves. Heavy light shows where white girls take molly and get fucked by strangers in bathroom stalls. What, do they see blond blue-eyed DJs and it's easy to ignore? Must be they see a white girl dancing to a good beat with a black guy rapping and their miscgenic hackles raise. Funnier still since I'm certain those guys know by heart or else have desktop folders with charts of online dating message/response rates-by-demographic just ready to slam on a /pol/ troll's slide thread.
A tangent, but it follows. I watched Demolition Man a few nights ago. I'd seen pieces over the years but never watched it start-to-finish and it's free on Sling. Sly Stallone as the classic 80s (though 1993 release) action hero cop and the fantastic Wesley Snipes as the villain. After Snipes' big plot at the opening, he and Sly are cryo-imprisoned for decades, during which their "destructive behavioral patterns" will be conditioned away. When Snipes is revived for his parole hearing and jailbreaks, he emerges in an idyllic but Huxleyan-dystopic society. The cops are totally unprepared for a man of Snipes' criminality and martial prowess. Sly is revived to stop him; action comedy ensues. A recurring joke is in the control of language, Sly's frequent profanity is met with computer chime, chastisement and fine for violating the "verbal morality statute."
Control of language is a serious problem in modern discourse. It puts on the veneer with lies and thought-terminating clichés, it makes our speech inauthentic and our way of living becomes inauthentic in turn. I don't know if I'd give the film points for directional correctness, I will give it points for the crass, man's-man-at-the-time Stallone solving all his problems with a hammer. It's that language control--inauthentic discourse--has been a problem for this country since before cinema existed. Early American political discourse had a viciousness to it: Jefferson against Adams is the famous example, where Adams was described as with "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman," while Jefferson was described as a "mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw sired by a Virginia mulatto father." (There is some contention about whether these were actually said, I believe firmly they were.)
What changed? Elite WASPs, Boston Brahman and the like. Their values, their etiquette of "modesty" and "restraint" dominated elite institutions and those values trickled down, being inculcated in the masses and where we once had politicians showing their authentic animosity toward one another, now even lefties calling Trump "fascist Drumpfler" or whatever is somehow still only the patina over authenticity. Imagine that level of candor today: Trump calling Biden a "braindead retard whose only good son is dead" and Harris a "marabou cocksucker" while they retort by calling him a "smalldicked whorefucking bankrupt wannabe wop."
It'd be great. I love boisterous and loud, the most obnoxious political characters on all sides. We know you're thinking it, be authentic and say it! Who cares about pretense? whose standards are you appealing to? Yeah, WASPs from 150 years ago. Fuck off, it's a lie, it's the most inauthentic behavior. Trump will sometimes lie in really bad and obvious ways yet his character remains wholly more authentic than anybody else in politics. That fucking is Trump, that's the man himself, and I think it's a mark of great merit, in itself. I'd think every bit the same if AOC came out being her true self. I know there's a lot of digs at her actual competence vs if she's just a mouthpiece, I think she's probably more than competent enough to be a house rep, low bar as that is. I'd love it if she said what she actually thinks, authentic, absolutely no pretense (and to be appropriately crass, in a push-up bra with a tasteful top to show the goods.)
Would this cause future trouble? Would we move even closer to President Mountain Dew Camacho? I dunno, where's the impact? You're telling me American politicians have yet more character to sell? Or do you fear politics transforming into the final show, where the people are all but entirely removed from changing who stands at the levers of real power? Well I think the evidence is pretty good Biden isn't entirely running the operations of the executive so . . . who's there when he isn't?
Pretense, decorum, expected behavior; these are arbitrary and often worthless. Note often, not worthless for being arbitrary, worthless where they only exist to delineate class. Talk more properly, dress more properly, behave more properly, again I ask whose fucking properness? The culture-progeny of the blooded aristocracy we killed out of this country 250 years ago. That's who the WASPs were. They deserve credit for the spread of meritocracy America benefited from for so long, but they deserve scorn for that etiquette pushed post-war to post-war and then inertia did the rest. Profanity is nothing, it's sounds, use it or don't. (I do hate the thankfully unsuccessful practice of naming in things like "Slutty Cookie" recipes or putting "FUCK" very large on the cover of books.) Restraint is good to a point, modesty to a point, to speak in circles, restraint and modesty are good when they are good, but they are not good in themselves. "Modesty is a virtue" as it goes but I disagree, rather as with the proper understanding of "meekness", it is not modesty that is the virtue but knowing when to be modest that is the indicator of character. Frank Lloyd Wright said "Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change." As the greatest American architect and the greatest in the world since the Imperial Hotel or Fallingwater, were he to practice "hypocritical humility" it would only serve to assuage those who correctly appraised themselves as inferior to him and lacked the character to persist. It's not like he could design every building.
Not only Wright; the most effective wielders of power in this country's history dropped decorum wherever possible. Big Johnson, back to Teddy Roosevelt, whom I particularly like in this context because as the best member of the Roosevelt family his behavior spurned the etiquette of that mighty WASP dynasty. Back to Lincoln and of course Jefferson and Adams (Adams, whose descendants swiftly forgot the lessons of their sire.) Hate these figures if you want and where appropriate, their high effectiveness as political actors is not up for debate.
So Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop is more authentic to the founding spirit of this country than any other music. I don't mean it in the Project 1619 "blacks-built-literally-everything" pseudoacademic bullshit. I mean in its content, its lyrics, its successes. These are the most American stories. So hating on a guy rapping about all the bitches he fucks? It's called bragging, it's where the eponym "Casanova" comes from. Bragging about gang violence? To the Romanophiles (guilty), you've surely heard of Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico. Odds are good Ceasar made some of that up or at least embellished to boost his image but that reinforces the point.
Not that I'm comparing Jay-Z rapping about hoes or about his life in the hood to Caesar, but a man famously talking about his wealth or his women or the horde he reduced unto the slaughter, the idea of these as in any way novel, which is necessary for saying Hip-Hop is uniquely degradative, is comical. As long as humans have told stories men have talked about rape, pillage and plunder. Thus authenticity.
Success stories are obvious. Yeah there are guys like Drake who have a negative amount of street cred but Jay-Z was selling crack, now he's worth billions and married to Beyoncé. (And second pic so you can see how little help she needs from staged shots.) There's a lot just there, the pathetic racists who would deny, or maybe really are so tragically incapable of recognizing beauty they miss that Beyoncé is one of the most beautiful women alive just as they miss the beauty of Hip-Hop.
I've talked so much about it, I should really talk about it. If you're unlearned, here's a progress in tracks.
I start with Mark Ronson's cover with Daniel Merriweather singing of the Smith's Stop Me that incorporates parts of the Supremes You Keep Me Hangin' On. This is Neo Soul, Merriweather's soulful singing with modern production techniques: synths, drum machine.
Next is Gnarls Barkley's Smiley Faces. At release, Crazy was the massive single off the album St. Elsewhere but the rest of the album had a sharp falloff in listening. As with Stop Me it's Neo Soul, but with Danger Mouse's production we're getting closer to a beat to be rapped to.
That's Madcon's Beggin. Pure Hip-Hop, not Sugarhill Gang pure, but pure. Taking The Four Seasons' Beggin' as the hook to follow into Tshawe's sing-rap verse, to Yosef's pure rap verse.
Next is the Pharcyde's Runnin' as remixed by electronic duo Philippians. The original is closer to Sugarhill Gang purity vs Madcon, in part of course because Pharcyde is old school. Their sample of Saudade Vem Correndo as the guitar riff is the big feel of the song, gets you that instant West Coast vibe. The Philippians remix preserves the sample, keeps the rapping at the front, and is an example, insofar as it's DJs remix, of Progressive Hip-Hop. Developing complexity within the form. If you haven't listened to much but you enjoy what I've listed and you're interested in more, the original is just as good but I'd say Pharcyde's Passin Me By, which is probably their most well-known track, is the next step.
Last is Kanye, Heaven and Hell. Ye starting off as usual with a sample he's put his spin on from the beginning of 20th Century Steel Band's Heaven and Hell is on Earth, and he also incorporates the refrain from the song as backing on his verse. I'd say this is pure progressive Hip-Hop, it would have been at the start of his career, but now this is just standard work for him.
Can't ignore Ye. Continued below.
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Notes -
I don't think this is a good steelman of why the DR types wouldn't grok onto hiphop. Hiphop is, as a cultural shibboleth, nearly unequaled in the catch 22 it places white people in. And the defining feature of white-identitarians on the dissident right isn't their racism, its their conspicuous sensitivity to racial slights against them. Hip hop's place in culture would be an ulcer for them, not because hip hop is Black, but because Hip Hop goes out of its way to degrade white people involved with it.
It doesn't happen every time, by any means, but I've heard each of these responses to the question "do you like Hip Hop?" called racist:
-- "Yes, I love Hip Hop, I'm super into it, I know everything about it." Ewwww, wigger, cultural appopriation, etc etc. And God forbid you sing along to the lyrics! You're not allowed to say nigger, they are.
Ok, so listening to Hip Hop as a white person is racist, the right answer must be:
-- "I don't listen to Hip Hop, I only listen to [other music]." Obvious racist, denying Black excellence, made retarded by hate, yadda yadda. No, it doesn't matter that you love Bad Brains or Charlie Pride or Mingus.
Ok, so I have to listen to Hip Hop, but it's bad if I appropriate Black culture, and I can't sing along to songs with Nigger in them, which is basically every rap by a Black artist, I should listen to white rappers.
-- "I like Hip Hop, but really only like Eminem and El-P and stuff like that, their lyrics speak more to me personally." How racist do you have to be to only listen to white guys and not the many great Black rappers?
The status of white rappers is itself an obvious inequity. A true case of having to be twice as good to get half as much credibility!
Now, of course, that isn't the standard outcome. Most white people like rap and it's just fine. But DR types are often defined by their strong sensitivity to racial slights, they are people who really suffer from that kind of thing psychically, who Notice. They hate being in a position where a vague and byzantine social code defines the statements they are "allowed" to make without being accused of something. Less charitably, they're often people who don't have the social know-how to navigate these situations successfully.* Hip hop gives them an ulcer.
Semi related, because you seem to be an enthusiast of hip hop culture and history: why did rap rock fail? I've been listening to a lot of Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine, Time Zone, Public Enemy's album with Anthrax. Up to 2000, you see a lot of crossover. Beastie Boys were one of the most important groups in bringing hip hop to the mainstream, but that was a sterile evolutionary line for some reason. Ice Cube had a punk rock group, Body Count. Rock and punk bands frequently included a bit of record scratching or hip-hop production. Then like Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit happened, and it was so lame it killed it? But that seems like a weak explanation though. In many ways, it feels like Rap/Hip Hop wasn't really solidified as a Black cultural patrimony until much later in the game, white rappers adopted it rarely but unselfconsciously in the 80s and 90s, while after 2000 white rappers were required to pay tribute to Black culture in a way that earlier artists didn't; and in turn Black rappers in the 80s and 90s recognized punk rock and metal as interrelated genres they were interested in, similarly rebellious youth music, which naturally interacted. The split in 2005 when I was a kid, seems to be much harder than it was in 1985. Am I off base here?
*All this applies equally, if not moreso, to race-warriors on the left. The same thing that gets a Slate thinkpiece about "microagressions" from one overeducated Black author is "just joking around" or "literally what are you talking about" to another Black guy. Something I've been thinking about a lot is the way that pushes for group rights are oriented around differentials in group identification and sensitivity. For one man, second class citizenship status is just fine as long as his life is ok; for another anything but perfect equality for his racial group is experienced as a constant open sore. I'm not sure all of this is downstream of culture, some of it feels like a personal predilection, genetic or otherwise, towards offense taking.
I was gonna say, while I admire the OP's passionate argument about the artistic merit of rap, I think they missed that, for all its merits, rap as we first knew it was incubated in the oppositional culture of post-Civil-Rights-era Black American culture. Sure, every notable artist from the 90's and early 2000's at the calibre of the N.W.A. became rich as fuck in the decades that followed, and commensurately adorned with celebrity status, but I think our own 2rafa would argue that this does not at all erase where these people came from. It is the oppositional culture that the right has the biggest beef with. Paeans to authenticity are nice and good, but the argument from the right is about the culture war and which one gets to be dominant, and authenticity is kind of orthogonal to that.
Also, yeah, it is weird how stillborn the crossover of rap and rock has seemingly been.
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Hybrid Theory and Meteora are masterpieces, I won't tolerate this slander.
I love hip-hop, rap, and R&B. I think your points here about how annoying it is to be a fan of these genres is spot on.
Donald Glover touched on how often he was treated as an Uncle Tom early on in his career. Eventually, though, he fell in line - "This is America" was a tarted-up whypepo bad anthem. I more closely identify with black masculinity than the average moustache-and-plaid barista, but it's always strange to hear about how someone would fuck my bitch.
There's a maximum amount of anti-white sentiment I can handle in order to pay to music and go to shows. If I know someone has complained about certain people singing their lyrics, it's off to the high seas for the album.
Unfortunately in life there are many products made by people who actively hate me. The average coffee roaster, bike shop, or beer brewer spits in my face just as much.
Is also a great example of how a Black rapper who is obviously from money and grew up "soft" can still access credibility and be taken seriously as a rapper in a way that, say, Mac Miller has to try much harder to reach if he ever could. Drake is allowed to fake being a tough guy in ways Aesop Rock isn't.
I don't really have much trouble with race stuff and rap music, but I also don't really listen to my own music in public. It's always in my car, in my basement weight dungeon, in my headphones cleaning the house. It doesn't really muss my hair to listen to Immortal Technique rap "you got beef with niggas, I got beef with Aryans", anymore than I don't sing along to Endicott because I'm a really good Husband, or to any other song making fun of people like me in other ways.
Just a small thing, Donald Glover was poor growing up. Not quite hard poverty but poor, he had both parents in the home, no gang shit, theatre magnet program in high school and from there New York. What hurt his cred more than anything was 30 Rock and Community, not his upbringing, and he still definitely has more cred than Canadian-child-actor Aubrey Graham.
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