Songs of Evil: Notes on Whitney Houston's "Saving All My Love For You"

A few weeks ago they released the 25th anniversary edition of Whitney Houston's debut album, Whitney Houston.

Whitney is sort of fascinating as a human embodiment of the philosophical conundrum of "Theseus' Ship (props to Jen Dziura's one-woman show for reminder on this).

The Ship of Theseus paradox poses questions of identity and authenticity in the form of a riddle/parable: If a ship leaves the port -- in this case Theseus' ship -- and while out at sea has all its planks replaced over time, piece by piece, when it returns to port with all new parts is it still Theseus' Ship?

Now you may or may not know that some scientists will tell you that our cells are regenerating every 7-10 years. In effect, we all have a little Theseus Paradox in us: our whole bodies are renewed over time, piece by piece, but we stay (in some essential way) the same person.

In the case of the fourth best-selling female artist, the paradox is striking: If when we met Whitney she was a god-fearing, clean-cut, singer from heaven, and then twenty years later all of her cells have changed, and she's a crack-smoking, Bobby Brown f'ing, reality show ghetto diva doing very little singing. Well, is that still Whitney Houston?

I don't know.... But, uh, ANYwhitney, I didn't want to unpack our enigmatic angel in this post, but rather her song, "Saving All My Love For You" which got stuck in my head upon revisiting her debut album.

Have you listened to this song recently? I personally had not, and after being briefly enamored with the parodic possibilities of turning the song into an ode to eye-crust called "Saving All My Crust For You", I realized the song is one of the most purely evil songs I've ever given my attention. It's selfish, obnoxious, and pretty much morally reprehensible. If that proves to be a harsh assessment, then it's at the very least disingenuous. Like some sort of romantic Trojan Horse purporting the spirit of true love, when it's no more than the the deranged fantasy of an intolerably narcissistic lunatic.

The title of this song suggets a paean to waiting, pining, fighting, and willing ones way into someone else's heart. In a different context, perhaps a noble sentiment. But as per the setup of the song, you get a sense of some rather questionable pathology lurking beneath the surface. Some notes on all this after the video below.


~~

A few stolen moments is all that we share
You've got your family, and they need you there
Though I've tried to resist, being last on your list
But no other man's gonna do
So I'm saving all my love for you

1. Ok. First off, on premise alone this song it's clear they just don't make 'em like they used to. This is a pop song! It's like writing a lament for a Chat Roulette stalker and having it be on the radio all the time. Maybe Bob Dylan might have popped something like that off back in the days, but definitely alternative indie material in the 2010.

2. Think of the last year of rampant infidelity news stories, and amidst all the grief and hubbub and backlash the one sentiment no one considered putting out there is a LOVE BALLAD FROM THE MISTRESS (hoes gotta sing love songs too? Say it ain't so! ). Next up: Requiem for a Rapist. Or a woeful Murderer's Malaise ballad. Ok, not those two so much. Sorry. But still, the edgiest pop song material we get these days is Beyonce or Lady Gaga or Ke$ha talking about how dudes want to f 'em in the club. And if you take away the soft porn videos, that's really about as tame a sentiment as you can get. This is like going out with your hottest girlfriend -- not only hot cause she's naturally physically hot, but because she enjoys drawing attention to her hotness, dresses hot, etc -- and she's prattling on and on: All the boys want me in the club. Can you believe all the boys want me in the club? I think all the boys want me in the club. Don't be mad all the boys want me in the club. I think your boy wants me in the club. He has to beat those other boys that want me in the club. I think the DJ wants to see me dancing in the club. Everybody lets start dancing in the club. Me and my girls 'bout to start dancin' in the club, and then comes the chorus about how the boys want me in the club..... so, y'know, its pretty boring and lame without music and visuals of dry-humping. And that's our "edgy" pop stuff. So off the bat this mistress manifesto is treading in dark places we dare not venture.

3. "they need you there": Maybe I'm getting old and soft, but is it not WEIRD to be so brazen about breaking up a family? the subtext of the first two lines are basically: Your son will have daddy issues. Your daughter will have insecurities. And they need you.... They need you to not make the damage worse and flat out abandon them. For a few stolen moments. So don't worry about me.

3.5. And ...THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF THE SONG. THIS IS HOW WE START THE CONVERSATION? Can I get a drink? How's the weather? Sun shining? Rain falling? Maybe some *ooh la la, I love you* stuff to warm me up? Do we have to cut right to, hi, let's get the issue of the damage you're doing to the people you love for selfish reasons on the table ASAP?

4. "but no other man's gonna do": Really? No other man? Seriously? I mean Whitney is looking impossibly hot rocking the off-the-shoulder sweater (apparently imported direct from 2010 American Apparel catalog). So I think she has options. Are we distinguishing between man and peen here? Is this her soulmate? I'm not getting a sense of that from "a few stolen moments. So if this is just some motherfucker you like, I mean, come on now. Its one thing to have a crush and write a song for someone, but if they're married with a family? And no other man's gonna do? huh?? what??? Shit, I'm going to try that on someone married and hot. Look, Angelina, and, uh, family,-- no other woman's gonna do! THAT'S IT! Tell Brad. And we don't have to, y'know, resolve to live together right this second or whatever, but realize that every drop of love is in fact being saved ... for you. Not just some ideal avatar for a "perfect partner". But you. Yooooouuu.

4.5. If Rachel Uchitel showed up at Tiger's press conference and was like, "Look, no other man's gonna do! Surprise! " Would we be like, awwwww, yay her?

5. Life Truism #1: Being last on the list sucks all around. For listmakers too! But if there's a list, someone has to be last! it's really the list's fault when you think about it. not players, hate the game, etc.

It's not very easy, living all alone
My friends try and tell me, find a man of my own
But each time I try, I just break down and cry
Cause I'd rather be home feeling blue
So I'm saving all my love for you

6. Life Truism #2: everyone lives and dies alone on some level. If you're a sensitive brooder type, that's awesome. I'm one of those too! But it doesn't entitle you (or me) to peen. Or anything, really.

7. The friends: Your friends probably hate you, Miss Myopia. Do you realize this? If you have a crush on your -- let's call him a project manager, or boss; it's not a best friend, or long time confidante, which would be more understandable -- and you like them, but they have a family, and are otherwise unavailable, and your friends are like, girl, you need to find someone who's like, available, and interested. and what do you do? Cry? Really? ... break down and cry?!!? What kind of friend is this? It's such a selfish socially dysfunctional response. Put on a front, at least. You have to at least be able to lie and say, ha ha, just kidding. No, I'm not really sweating him that much. Then cry and stalk him anonymously on the internet like the rest of the world. When your friends act like friends and suggest you act normal, i.e. not like an asshole, you're not allowed break down and cry. Not without needing new friends to hoodwink with your emotional bait-and-switch routine.

8. The Girl: I don't even know about this girl finding a man of her own at this point. This girl is f'd up. What she needs is a break. Some time smacking herself in front of a mirror. Banging her head against the wall. Building houses in Haiti. Anything will be more productive. This sort of OCD possessiveness sows the seeds of discontent in any relationship. All the love being saved here is toxic. let it go and replenish from new supply.

You used to tell me we'd run away together
Love gives you the right to be free
You said be patient, just wait a little longer
But that's just an old fantasy

9. The Guy: ah, now we get a little backdrop. dude sold the "run away" fantasy to get in the drawers. Ha, I don't know how many girls i've told that we'd totally run away to zimbabwe as soon as I get my papers in order ... y'know, as long as we definitely have sex tonight. Oh wait, I do know how many. Zero. Because what f'ing woman would still be listening to me after I suggested "running away together"? This is some humprey bogart white people shit that was never fact-checked before being allowed to run amok in songs and movies and general storytelling. People don't run away together. Because soon after running away together comes followup questions like, "what the fuck are we doing running away?" "Who or what are we running away from?" "why have we left the comforts of our home and familiar lifestyle and environment?" "Do you not see this is f'ing retarded?"

Now poor people might be like, do you want to share this rent together? Ok. That's practical. Romantics might want to try and find a soulmate. That's very sweet. But running away together? That's just some retarded leftover vestigial tail shit. No one is really pitching a new love interest on that unless they also refer to dinner as "hunter-gathering". I guess when this song came out in the early-80s those people weren't all dead yet. But still.

10. At least we see this isn't strictly Whitney/Songwriter making melodies to emotively underscore this particular brand of mental derangement and disregard for others. Until this point in the song the dude seems like an innocent victim (in the video too he never indicates much interest besides pleasantly smiling.) So, ok. Now we have a glimmer of something that might make sense in terms of reciprocated affections, complicated relationship problems. But just to be clear, this one glimmer of possible rationality is predicated on THE GUY BEING A BIGGER ASSHOLE THAN THE GIRL. So yeah, getting better. Less unequivocally evil. Still pretty bleak.

11. love gives you the right to be free? does it, really? whitney? why are you hitting that line with such warbling gusto? wtf does that even mean? That's definitely some more pretentious white man talking to dumb natives bullshit. Would someone say that during sex? New Rule: If you can't express the sentiment during sex without laughing (not the fun irreverent laughing, but contemptuous sneering, judgmental laughing), then it's not love.

I've got to get ready, just a few minutes more
Gonna get that old feeling when you walk through that door
Cause tonight is the night, for feeling alright
We'll be making love the whole night through
So I'm saving all my love
Yes I'm saving all my love
Yes I'm saving all my love for you

12. The glimmer of goodness that appeared to shine through in the last refrain has been shut out. Old feeling? Oh, ok... the cheating that was speculative fantasy in the beginning has already popped off. Those lines about the family were apparently just some casually callous role playing? Ok. Well, unless maybe this narrative has a timeline and divorce been settled in between verses? Doubtful. Sounds like these two just don't give a fuck. Maybe they are made for each other?

(13. Aside: this is also the "get busy" verse. I remember blushing when i heard things like "make love the all night through" when i was little. now, y'know, i just think much like "running away together" and "love gives you the right to be free" who are the people who say such things? I do have surrealist fantasies about someone saying that to me, but never have any notion of what the person saying it looks like.)

No other woman, is gonna love you more
Cause tonight is the night, that I'm feeling alright
We'll be making love the whole night through
So I'm saving all my love
Yeah I'm saving all my lovin
Yes I'm saving all my love for you
For you, for you...

14. How to Love More, by Miss Selfish & Evil: Interesting assertion, about no one loving more. How does one, exactly, enhance the qualitative nature of love? Or even assess how much one individual loves another? Is it more, like, more physically tangible? Like more backrubs and BJ's? Is it more concerned with his failings, like snatching hoagies out of his hand before he continues to fatten himself up? Is it more emotionally available? Like when he's tormented about leaving his family for a long night of making love the whole night through? There are questions for another song i guess ... because I know the girl in this song hasn't thought about any of this.

15. I don't know if this is Whitney Houston, but if you told me that in twenty years, the clean-cut girl inhabiting this song and video would be a crack-smoking, bobby brown f'ing, reality show ghetto diva doing very little singing. Well, I don't know, I guess I wouldn't be shocked. The sensibility of this song and that lifestyle seems to be the same ship with different planks. Or something.

Previously in Deconstructed Song Lyrics:
My Conversation with Biz Markie

Knicks Trade for TMac, Pray to the God of Big City Sports

A starting five of notes on the Knicks trading for former superstar Tracy McGrady:

1. The TMac Narrative: everyone in the analysis business wants to write off TMac as a strictly cap-money acquisition. The brains say he's too old to really help. And even if he is good he'll be too expensive to keep on the roster. It's a lose-lose in terms of him sticking around for Knicks fans. But I'm thinking sports, if nothing else, is all about defying our rational intellectual senses. This is why despite exponents of stat-head freaks overpopulating the globe compiling every statistic known to man we still in any given game NEVER KNOW WTF IS GONNA HAPPEN. This was a man crying(breaks down circa 1:50 mark), emptying his heart in front of a crowded press room only a few years ago. Sports can get schmaltzy, but still not many superstar athletes expose themselves quite like that. Allan Houston was our All Star, he never cried. Nate Robinson has heart, but he ain't been broken up over much. And it's not like these guys haven't had plenty to sob about for the last decade. I don't know how Eddy Curry gets through the days. But I think TMac has a particular qualitative element to his story that fits in with the majestic arcs demanded by the city of skyscraping dreams (too much?). Its not likely, it's not something to bet your rent on. But if we snooze, he's the kind of player who can sneak up on you and become a factor. I guess I think it's good that he's being written off by the media.

2. How to build in the NBA: this trade wasn't a no-brainer. which many trades are, in either direction. No-brainer brilliant, no-brainer retarded. But this is a conscious choice with a significant amount of risk involved. It's true, that smells a little like Isiah's m.o. But this upcoming free agent market is unprecedented. It's different than going all in on a hospitalized Eddy Curry. I think more than the NFL, MLB, the NBA is a player's league. You need The Guys. Every year these are the teams that can win: Team Kobe, Team Lebron, Team Garnett & friends, Team Dirk, Team Wade, Team Nash, etc. The Rockets have a good roster, but no matter all the awesome moves by their GM, they're not gonna win unless Yao returns as a superstar. Its no slam dunk to land two players the caliber of which to make us much legit contenders. But i think it's the only way to make it happen. We have to go from bad to great. Not bad to ok.

3. Eddy Curry exists: I feel sorry for Eddy Curry. Even vegan ballet-dancing nonsports fans make fun of Eddy Curry. True story! Imagine you're a real person reading this stuff about you. Printed in real newspapers and magazines on the regular. Is Eddy Curry a real person? I don't think he and god can mutually exist for the abuse he takes. True, he's making $11M/year to sit around.... Would you take daily abuse for years in exchange for millions? I mean, if you're not 7-feet 300 pounds and able to blend in, then sure. Take the money and avoid crowds. But he can't help but stick out and attract the abuse. I don't think I'd take $11M to be Eddy Curry. True story! Maybe. Still, it's a cruel world.

4. Does NYC have its own sports life cycle? how long can a NYC team stay irrelevant? Championships are never guaranteed, but you don't go decade+ in NYC without being relevant. If there's anything to NYC being NYC, then we should probably be owed something soon. This move portends along those lines, the idea that you have to make your own luck sometimes. Put yourself in position. Milwaukee, for example, doesn't get to do that with any sort of confidence.

5. What if we had a draft pick we liked? I was sort of down on Walsh because we wanted a PG, we needed a PG, turns out this draft was loaded with them ... and we took Jordan Hill, who looks like a generic non-factor NBA big man at the moment. Of course, now it works perfectly to have a blown first round pick we can throw in a deal. But if we didn't f up the draft pick, and had, say, Brandon Jennings, then we'd be stuck. No way we could throw him in for a chance at a superstar. Rather, we'd be trying to build around Jennings, Chandler, Lee, Danilo. Which is like Houston Rockets ball without the Yao Ming. Which would play in the media better, but probably wouldn't work, ... so maybe there are NYC destiny gods in the mix after all ...



image, nym

The Thin Tao of Deli Meat Slices

Here's something I didn't realize until a few days ago: There's a morality to the thickness of deli slices! By morality I mean a right and a wrong. A Good and an Evil. The guy behind the counter is like a Boars Head archangel or something (whatever the kids call 'em these days...).

Good, which is to say godly, are razor-thin confetti-fluffy light slices of honey roasted maple turkey (or crack pepper, or ham, or whatever ...). Essentially you're shooting for how it looks on the posters and commercials. Maybe a millimeter thick at most(?) Really they should look like meat versions of those breath-strips that melt on your tongue. (Boars Head should get into that market. Sounds weird at first but I could see that growing into a popular item. little shot of pastrami for the tongue? )

I'm aware that some deli people like to ask their clientele "how thin would you like it?", but that's all a formality. Basically everyone wants their slice as thin as possible without getting to the point where it falls apart.

Evil, then, is represented by thick dunderheaded hamhock slices. Excuse me, kind slicer, but if i wanted a turkey burger i'd ask for that, thank you. Thick slices don't melt in your mouth, they sit on your tongue like cancerous meat pancakes...

anyways, so yeah, i got some thick turkey slices the other day and i was not happy about it. most definitely judging my deli dude. But he was new to the grocery, or at least I'd never seen him before, and so after the initial tension i started to think it might be a cool coaching/teaching opportunity. It couldn't hurt to nurture your own deli slicer from the womb to the tomb, amirite?

But not sure how to go about it. I mean, the platonic ideal for deli slices is obvious, as i've stated. So if one had to frequently remind someone, maybe they should get a different job. Like packaging chicken breasts, where thicker cuts are more appropriate and generous to the consumer. That might be a more natural fit....

anyways. i didn't want to get so pretentious about it. just wanted to make sure there was a page on the internet where children could find out what is good and what's just not cool/evil with deli slices. this should at least get you on the right track, little one...... k, cheers, off to eat a sandwich!

Haiku for the Politically Correct

Now
I'm
Gonna
Get
Everything
Right


...d'oh!

(per wiki: Haiku (俳句 haikai verse?) is a form of Japanese poetry, consisting of 17 moras (or on), in three metrical phrases of 5, 7, and 5 moras respectively... In Japanese, haiku are traditionally printed in a single vertical line, while haiku in English usually appear in three lines, to parallel the three metrical phrases of Japanese haiku.)

Not Bad: NBA All Star Game Rap Battle

Recently enamored of Lydia Davis and her unique brand of short story/poetry (shoetry? hmmm, pronounced show-a-tree? ...forget it, ugh!) ) I've been thinking about rapping as a form of prose styling. Which fits in with a growing notion that hip hop's grand error is its creative cachet being tied to the musical arts and not the literary arts. The music was the conduit to commercial empowerment, but the lyrics are where all the cultural and intellectual DNA reside. So as smarts trumps capitalism, hip hop is losing inventory (mostly due to bad accounting in the past).

When seen as a form of lit stylizing, then the rhythms, cadence, dialect choices all conspire to signal artistry at work in a more tangible way. Per Samuel Beckett (via Lydia Davis interview):

"I am interested in the shape of ideas even if I do not believe in them. There is a wonderful sentence in Augustine. I wish I could remember the Latin. It is even finer in Latin than in English. 'Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.' That sentence has a wonderful shape. It is the shape that matters."

This is why the art of hip hop, of rapping, can/should be respected even if the content is about nonsense. Not that nonsense, especially of the lazy commercially-pandering variety, shouldn't be held as a demerit. But fact remains you can rap about the money, the cars, the hoes artfully. The heft of the craftsmanship in quality lyrics come from the person shaping their content/story/themes into proper "hip hop form" ...

of course that leads us into style vs. substance debates, amongst other tangents. but that's for another time. my point here was to set up this nba all star rap video, which i enjoyed as a stylizing of the "who's better: east or west?" conversation/debate most nba fans are engaging in to some degree during the All Star break.



so yeah, i mean hardcore sports fans are going to find the broad nature of this as substantively compelling as the latest black eyed peas joint (or whatever fluffy pop hip hop song is at odds with your intellectual sensibilities at the moment). but, like your average BEP song, it's mostly a fun aesthetic conceit. one that more and more people are finding accessible, if not fundamental. maybe soon rapping will be the equivalent of writing someone a note in thick permanent marker, as a sonnet or something. just having fun with language/communication! word, yo!

(also, i love the east coast production style, but think it makes the song a bit biased.)

Remembering Black History

I wrote this Objective Perspective of Black History Month a while back, somehow it still feels relevant ...

In the long and storied history of the universe, nothing has come so far and overcome so much as Black.

Some have theorized that in the beginning there was only Blackness. And it wasn't a color. It was just a void. Nothingness....

(continued at McSweeney's...)

Black History Month: An Objective Perspective

Maybe "Illmatic" is Hip Hop's "Catcher In the Rye"?

Yesterday JD Salinger passed away at the age of 91.

As a former disaffected "Choatie", I grew up in a world, uh, beholden to his majesty Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye for poetically exposing the sturm und drang of white preppie youth. As this obit on Gawker points out,

"his ability to channel the internal monologue of a bright-but-alienated kid made the book essential reading for generations of high school students."

Now this type of line gets to the heart of the problem of cultural inequity; because while I was obligated to lighten my pinky through the learning of traditional anglo spirituals (nobody knows the troubles on Park Ave, nobody knows their sorrows), my own personal Holden Caulfield years came right around the time Nas dropped his debut novel, err, album Illmatic. And I'd be a phoney moron to not recognize Nas as "channeling the internal monologue of a bright-but-alienated [black] kid which made the album essential listening for generations of [black] high school students."

So, hmmm, Catcher vs. Illmatic...

a cursory check of the wiki on Salinger and Catcher reveals:

"written in first person (as if Holden himself had written it). There is flow in the seemingly disjointed ideas and episodes ... Critical reviews agree that the novel accurately reflected the teenage colloquial speech of the time."

What's this? Flow, disjointed ideas and episodes, teenage colloquial speech?? Sounds like my kind of rapper...

how about something on Nas:

"[Nas] realistically depicts the darker side of urbanity, creating highly detailed first-person narratives that deconstruct the troubling lives of inner city teenagers"

or the NYTimes noting, "Nas imbues his chronicle with humanity and humor, not just hardness ... [He] reports violence without celebrating it, dwelling on the way life triumphs over grim circumstances rather than the other way around"

These thematic similarities are striking even before the thought of autotuning the voice of Holden Caulfield through some sort of ethnocultural babelfish translator, and getting the lyrics to "New York State of Mind". Or hypothetically plucking Nas out of the ghetto at an early age and sending him off to boarding school where he learns the writing of prose fiction books instead of ones filled with 4-measure rhymes.

And while I'm certain we'll get more out of comparing the works of Catcher vs. Illmatic than Salinger vs. Nas as artists themselves, it's still tempting to think about how they both shared the weight of auspicious debuts relative to the rest of their output. And how both debuts occupy the same psycho-generational space, and get handed down as timeless classics. And how the big reason for that in both cases is a certain poetic literary quality to a profile of disaffected urban youth (in the case of Nas, a mostly unprecedented style in hip hop at the time). And how Nas has show plenty signs of his own reclusive persona, and if hip hop classics moved units like lit classics he may very well have gone off and pulled a Salinger. Who knows, he still might. He has time. Of course, it just wouldn't register on the public landscape the same way.

Assimilation creates a necessary conflict of values. As we synthesize -- hopefully evolve -- we are practicing a form of cultural natural selection. As a black kid from the south bronx you might be taught Salinger, but experience Nas. And ten to fifteen years ago, there was still a pervasive lack of respect for all that noisy hippity hoppity business. Certainly the artists were a far cry from getting covers on Time Magazine. Now over a decade later, it could be time to reassess. As Salinger inspired many in the Mad Men era, hip hop has been the wellspring for so many from media mogul billionaires to the President of the United States. Hip Hop's history has cred now. It's genuine Americana. So is Illmatic on the summer listening list at Choate? At a prep school back in the days Illmatic vs. Catcher would have been a joke, now it might very well be a 50-50 proposition in terms of what the student population has been exposed to on their own.

Picture a black guy on a trip with some college friends. Or on his first post-grad job interview. Some joke referencing catcher in the rye is made. It flies over his head and he's scoffed at. No chance at the job. Shame is introduced. doubt. fear, etc. The guy feels alienated and he puts on his headphones and starts bumping Illmatic because that's what he always plays when he's feeling down and disaffected. He nods his head to his favorite line,

"the n raps with a razor, keeps it under my tongue. school dropout, never liked the shit from day one..."

Holden Caulfield couldn't have said it any better.

RIP JD Salinger

Previously:Is Kanye our Norman Mailer?
Is Elzhi Deeper than Updike?
Stewart & Cramer Meet KRS-One & PM Dawn

TAN Guilty Pleasure Guide

so i write down things all the time. and sometimes you do it with no annotations or clues. sometimes you have some of the clue but not all of it.

all to say, i recently came across this and was bemused....



Guide To Guilty Pleasures


A: Anything From the 80s, ass, alternative porn, **award shows for black people

B: being racist, *blaming the condom, biz markee, buying from crackheads

C: Cosby, *Cuba Gooding Jr (hating on), **cumming too soon, [candy] cereals

D: *Diary/Email reading, other people's

E: explaining slang to white people (also, black people +2)

F: Fresh Prince, fat black women, Flavor of Love, Friends

G: Golden Girls, getting a metrocard swipe for a buck(bwahahaha), gambling

H: Halal street vendors, hopping the train, hip hop magazines

I: Ingrown hairs

J: slow Jams ...(mixes)

K: Kirsten Dunst, King of Queens, *Kevin Smith

L: **Lipgloss is poppin, Lil Mama

M: Meg Ryan, Maxim Magazine (sigh)

N: New Edition,

O: overhearing sex, Oprah, Onion Rings

P: popeye's chicken, picking fights, picking boogers, **PM Dawn

Q: quarter waters

R: R Kelly, R&B (same thing), "rapearations", rhymes, Run's House

S: Smurfs, saving money via the dollar menu, sandra bullock, sex in the city marathons, selling a metrocard swipe, smoking too much,

T: Tyler Perry, Timberlake

U: Using the supermarket circular

V: video games, violins in hip hop (also, flutes), vitamin water,

W: White Castle, weed, white girls, Will Smith

X:

Y: yawning in someone's face, yeah yeah yeahs "maps" on repeat,

Z:

not sure what that asterisks indicate exactly. also don't think the metrocard swipe economy is popping such that it warrants a couple mentions anymore. black people award shows i might need to revisit. i kind of miss the old times when hip hop shows were guaranteed riots. The Oscars could use an old fashioned melee where Clooney throws his shoe someone or something.

image via

Publishers In Agreement On How to Market the "New Negro" Literature

Tracy Morgan memoir: I Am The New Black

Helena Andrews (black, female) memoir: Bitch is The New Black

Paul Mooney Memoir: Black Is The New White (points for originality!)

Disclosure: my book WAS gonna be called .... Black Is The New Black.

what's up with that? ... my original title was deemed a little dangerous, and this was a suggested alternative. i wonder if that's the case with the others. it's sort of whatever, sort of an interesting bit of ethnocultural groupthink by publishing pros who have to determine the best ratio of risk/reward with books on race.

Rapping Isn't Fundamental

When I did ironic little rap ditties (diddy's?) for 50 Cent's Vitaminwater, Nerve.com, Gawker and such I thought I was on to something new and different. The future. Hip hop's untapped potential as both an art and a more compelling form of communication. Like cellphones and twitter, Hip Hop was a new technology to deliver whatever message you wanted: Like, Eat at McDonald's!, or, buy khaki pants!, or, we love black people!

But just like watching a movie on your cellphone, you realize in execution the premise doesn't totally satisfy. turns out some of the things that make the cellphone convenient (i.e. it being small) undermines your ability to totally indulge the movie. Likewise, a rap's rhythm, pacing, style that make it artful undermine its ability to function as effective, direct communication (make your point and stop internal-rhyme-scheming already!).

As a hip hop enthusiast and champion, i always thought if you had flow and make some good punchlines, you could convert anything into the form and the young urban kids would bob their head and be like, yeah, i feel you. And even the white-people-rapping pandemic of the mid-2000's didn't persuade me otherwise. Those people just weren't good.

But now it seems, most people can at least kick a few bars without totally embarrassing themselves (right, Miley Cyrus!). And it's just like, eh. Not bad, you have competency ... but why are you doing this again? Anyrap, that's what I thought after seeing this journalism school graduation video...



It's like, don't stop on my account. Go, have fun! Rap! But i don't know, it's like seeing an interactive exhibit at a museum or something; I nod at the proactive gesture of edutainment more than i feel viscerally engaged by it. knahmean?

Packed My Bowl, Err Bags, And Moved To Portland

From the town that brought you the Portland Jailblazers, and mad roses, comes the latest smellgood sensation: the first "marijuana cafe" in the United States.

The Cannabis Cafe in Portland, Oregon (opened mid-November), is the first to give certified medical marijuana users a place to get hold of the drug and smoke it -- as long as they are out of public view -- despite a federal ban.

Just make sure it's not Oregono you're smoking. hey-O!

Previously From the Oregon News Dispatch:
There's a "Meet A Black Guy" Booth In Oregon [TAN]

The Assimilated Piano

They're calling it "the fluid piano"; I'll just call it a "culturally assimilated piano", since that's longer and more cumbersome to say or write. In either case, here we have an instrument of art that dares to step outside of its western music roots/tradition like artists themselves occasionally do. how fancy!



Pretty awesome. I mean hip hop/electronic music producers etc. have been doing this for a while through sampling, keyboards etc, but this seems like a serious breakthrough with all the never-seen-before tuning/modulating options now on the instrument itself.

if kanye gets wind of this it might be the piece that finally lets him be great. we could also call it the Lady Gaga of pianos. or maybe the tiger woods of steinways since it's kinda-sorta cheating on the plain ol' regular notes. or maybe the michael jackson of [piano instrument] for reinventing how black-white notes sound when children play with it ...(?) hmm, that last one is a little off-tune but you know what i mean if you think about it. right? RIGHT???

Looks Like Someone Put Something in Katie Couric's Drank

I dare you to deny your love for some Katie Couric after seeing photos of her getting her freak on...

surreal... but ooh, looks like Katie was the one that got the party started also

yo, she's backing that thang up and erything!

seriously is she, like, bogling and doing the butterfly?!!? work those legs, katie!!!

I'm putting my money on it being Weezy that's responsible for this Moment of Assimilated Genius ...

pics via: gawk

Where For Art Thou Black Lady Gaga?

I've caught the Lady Gaga fever of late. Methinks the proof for her legitimacy is in the live acoustic pudding.

When she's sitting at the piano doing her hipster-glam-quirky Amy Winehouse meets Alicia Keys (Alicia Winehouse?) thing we get a more intimate feel for the song itself, along with her naked vocals (vs. nude body suits, etc), and her own personal charm/isma.



and Paparazzi is a pretty tight piece of songwriting craftsmanship ...



Compare those with her official cinematic vids for those two songs and you have a spectacular case study for "Art over Artists".

Then her recent American Music Award exhibit is a nice capper on a string of raising-the-bar performance art stage shows.



I'm excited she and Kanye are schmoozing, I feel she represents exactly the over-the-top fantastical sensibility hip hop emcees struggle to assimilate into their own "art". Kanye is surely inspired by the ambition of her whole Artist Presence. Also, Beyonce. This video with her and Lady G is fairly compelling dreamscaping ...



Gaga says herself she played it down out of respect for the B, but I still think Beyonce holds her end down as Superstar Presence. (it's a video that raises other questions as well: for example LG schtick seems "post-racial" and Beyonce's def has a "black/racial" quality (is it just the hips, etc?) to it. what does that mean?) ... but either way - as to the race/culture angle on all this, per TAN commentary objective C-1-4.2 -- negroes need more of this kind-of-crazy so maybe B's alter-ego Sasha Fierce and Kanye's alter ego, uh, Kanye West could make some sort of Amorphous bi-inquisitive Black Lady Gaga superartist. it's like a homosexual black dude who raps, video-hoes, and plays the flute all at the same time. And lights his balls on fire at the end of every show. And he's twelve. A 12-year-old ball-lighting cello-farting falsetto-beatboxing prodigy. From a broken home in a forgotten hood. And diddy discovers him. And he blogs. And he's me. Or am I him? Or am I a she? Kanye Fierce: flute-fart-beatboxer extraordinaire? perhaps, perchance to dream bwahahahahaheehehehehoohohohoh, uhhhh, o-k-bai......

DJ David Sedaris on the Wheels of Steel

yo, i knew my homey, my stromey david sedaris was down with hip hop! that's got to be why he's dropping his next audiobook in a format they used to call vinyl. wax. phonograph records.

i think it's a very cute hipster-funky idea, but i honestly haven't seen a working victrola in some time now. does apple still make those?

i can't imagine at a hopped up price and less material ($25 and doesn't have all the material, huh?), that it's getting the best opportunity to succeed. but i sincerely wish this "vinyl" good tidings on the marketplace.

And I definitely hope DJ Sedaris takes the opportunity to cut and scratch and blend his essays for a pipin' hot new yorker literary party or something. he should include katie couric and black lady gaga in his video girl entourage.

word.

Popular Author's Audiobook Tries New Format: Vinyl [NYT]

image: via

Dear TAN: Is Perez Hilton Always This Racist?

Send your questions/letters to theassimilatednegro [at] gmail [dot] com.

In this edition: The metaphysics of Perez Hilton's racism!

Dear TAN,

For whatever reason, I've found myself skimming his site for the past week or so.

Check this out: "She joined by some dude name Zalon. In this alternative universe, the white bitch is rapping, while the black guy is singing the sweet melodies. Go figure!"

Or this one: "Also, Whoopi Goldberg eats fried chicken - and we love her for it!"

???? I like to err on the side of not accusing people of being bigots, but I don't even know how else to interpret these. Do you follow the site regularly? Are these just aberrations, or part of a trend?

- Not Terribly PC

~~

Dear Not Terribly PC,

Well, on the surface your question is an easy one: Yes, he is racist. Besides your links above, you won't be at a loss to find plenty of examples of Perez Hilton(TM) being full of dubious isms and phobias.

But it brings to mind a phrase both Perez and myself would be certain to mispronounce as silly americanz, the ol': "cogito, ergo sum", aka: "I think, therefore i am"; aka: if Descartes didn't say this at a time when 90% of the world was racist/less worldly, it might have been phrased as "I think, therefore I am ....Racist?."

Which is to suggest that beneath the surface question lies deeper, more difficult questions: Like, is Perez Hilton a racist of his own free will? Does Perez Hilton have malicious intent? Is Perez Hilton a bad person?

The answer to the last one is also obvious: Yes. PH is a bad person. But we do need bad people. As outlets and objects for our own animosity, angst, assholishness. So, yay him. Good job!

The other two though... I don't know. Michael Richards revealed he was a racist. Then went on his "But I'm Not A Bad Person" tour, featuring Jerry Seinfeld as lead moral representative. I don't think Michael Richards or Perez want to discriminate against black people. Or deny them some sort of equal opportunity. They just want to make a little dough off the n-word, like a lot of other n-words are doing. Does that make them bad people? Like Perez Hilton, entertainment-meets-capitalism America is full of dubious isms and phobias. R-list celebrities. Chappelle went crazy off this.

So this is classic Post-Racial 101 stuff. People -- especially, "the kidz theez dayz" -- own the stereotypes and wield them for their own purposes. Most likely somehow someway trying to turn it into fortune, maybe fame. 30 Rock, Curb, The Office all use racism to great comedic effect. It's a universally resonant human condition; by virtue of our timing and circumstance most of us have some socialized racism in us. Sexism as well. Also the odd attraction to musky foot funk (just me?). And we deal with those the same way we deal with the rest of our flaws and foibles.

Even better: this deconstructing can be summed up in this clip of an ethnically-discriminating child, and asking the same question: is this baby racist?



well, is he? Please let me know.

Thanks,

- TAN

"Am I In The Right Place? I Don't See TAN's Laptop Anywhere ..."

while you're fixing your straps and awaiting my return. here are some old items to peruse at your leisure while smoking a cig, or not:

Michael Vick's been in the news. I once challenged the dogs on his behalf.

Eminem's back. I once did a spoof of "My Name Is".

Football's back. Do you remember Negro Bowl I?

Who Will Be America's Next Top Racist?

I still think Salt Water Taffy is a fairly retarded invention...

internal: might be worth revisiting Post-Racial Fight Club again ...

since we know Post-Racial is not PostModern, or somesuch...

Who's Got Next???: y'know on the whole Minorities Being President tip ...

remember the girl whose booty Obama supposedly looked at? No? Well she probably remembers you sizing up her booty.

unrelated: my shower doesn't talk anymore....

hmm, speaking of showers, i haven't talked about sex in a while. i wonder if i should re-sex "Sex is re-sex"...

kanye's still around, but who's the new 50?

eh, should be back by the time you finish this and listen to lykke li's black cab session 500 more times.


pic via: Ye

Table Beat-Boxing Has Improved Since I Was A Kid

As a kid in the south bx, banging a beat on the desk or table was standard practice. nothing to see here folks. when i went off to prep/boarding school, and me and my boys would start orchestrating multi-track instrumentals in the dining hall, it was probably a little more avant garde. a future look at the assimilated learning curve, or somesuch....

and now it's just cool to see that the kids are a little bit on some table beat-box 3.0 with it. this business with the pencil was definitely beyond our skill-set in the 80s, 90s.



via videogum

TAN: Out To Greece

TAN is away in Greece. Athens, Mykonos, and Santorini. Your regular irregularly scheduled programming will resume end of this week. The Greek assimilation will not be be televised, but probably blogged. holla.

Hov's Blueprint 3 Leaking, Might Be A Little Watered Down

If the world is made of two people, artists and executives. animals and zookeepers. or somesuch. I've long thought Jay-Z's legacy might be most interestingly framed as testament to an executive pushing the artist envelope as far as possible. A zookeeper jumping around with gorillas, hunting with lions, and pulling it off, for a while, with great success. The Black Album might be where he even blacked out and ate like some raw carrion or some shit before puking out Kingdom Come on some "raw, uncooked flesh does not agree with me" ish. Hov is technically brilliant, and knows his *brand* inside-and-out, but he lacks the stomach for the risk required of the most brilliant, soaring, time-spanning art[ists].

The Blueprint 3 looks like its fitting the same formula. Recent leaks from nahright and the NMC:

Reminder (prod. Timbo)
Off That (w/ Drake (on hook))

of course DOA makes airs of ambition, but ends up staying a solid song.

Run This Town bumps, but the vid is conceived in a much airier space; the song itself is much more dense, inert. It's a solid song.

Jay-Z |MTV Music

that's 4 of 15 or so. 25%-ish for the lazy mathematicians in the building. suffice to say, there's probably some decent music coming- we hope. which is nothing to complain about. but for jay, if he really cares about such matters, it's clear The Chase is still on.

When Will Hip Hop Get That Woodstock Love?

TAN's bringing in guests and correspondents! Herewith: MGJordan on Woodstock, hip hop's lack of media respect (no Rodney Dangerfield?), and how he learned to stop worrying and love Jonah Weiner.

Last week, anyone with access to a TV or computer was treated to a display of boomer self congratulation so vast and insistent that experiencing it became compulsory—Woodstock turned 40. The entirety of the MSM stopped to remark on that glorious occasion when America’s youth gathered in the mud of upstate New York to drop acid and listen to the Grateful Dead’s poorly amplified noodling. For a single slight shimmery weekend the 60s counter-culture realized its belief in peace, love and understanding—and then everyone grew up and ushered in Reaganomics.

Yes, put me in the group dedicated to deflating the Woodstock bubble. The continuing fellation of the boomer’s moment in the sun—remember Woodstocks 1995 and 1999? (hopefully not)—annoys me to no end. But even though it’s beyond obvious that Woodstock reverence is beyond hyperbolic, it’s not necessarily its extent that irks me. Culture, to a degree, is delusion on a grand scale and that’s fine. There’s no real difference between scrawling “Clapton is God” on a London subway wall and swearing to your friends that Jigga man is the God MC.

What really bothers me about the Woodstock celebration (besides boomer hypocrisy…that’s a horse to flog on another day) is the disparity it reveals between the press’s attitude towards hip hop and the press’s attitude towards other cultural movements. This October marks the 30th anniversary of “Rapper’s Delight,” the first top 40 rap single and the song that launched hip hop culture’s global explosion. Will Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood put together a retrospective like they did for Woodstock? Doubtful.

I suppose that’s fine in a way. The appreciation gap between rock and rap doubtless has much to do with racism and classism, but it probably has even more to do with age—rock is old and rap is young. Rock, already canonized, has affected all the change it ever will—rap is rock’s kid brother, all grown up but still largely undefined by critical consensus. So I guess I’m okay with hip hop not receiving as wide coverage as rock does—how can we celebrate hip hop as a group if we haven’t really agreed yet on what parts to celebrate?

My real beef is that the press seems congenitally incapable of treating rap as a legitimate art form. Consider the lazy journalistic device of rendering articles humorous by mashing up hip hop and a “serious subject.” As offensive and nonsensical as these articles are, they’re still alive and well. Check out this NPR piece on how the feud between Jay-Z and The Game mirrors world politics. The author writes:

The Game is the erratic wildcard.

"He's North Korea; he's Iran," Lynch says. "He might not win, but he can hurt you if he drags you down into this extended occupation, this extended counterinsurgency campaign."

Why is he doing this? After Jay-Z released "D.O.A. ('Death of Auto-Tune')" The Game saw an opportunity to peel off Jay-Z's key alliance partners to form a coalition and undermine Jay-Z's hegemony.

No. Fine, Game is an erratic wild card. But what “key alliance partners” is he trying to peel off from Jay? What, he wants Memphis Bleak to guest on The R.E.D. Album? It’s just confusingly wrong. Anyone who knows anything about hip hop can recognize that this article is logically barren.

But that’s sort of beside the point, isn’t it? The intent of the article isn’t to conduct an interesting juxtaposition between hip hop and international relations. The article exists to compare a subject that is, to NPR’s audience, obviously silly—hip hop—with a subject for grown ups—international relations. The whole thing is just an excuse for suburban house wives to exclaim “well, isn’t that a riot?!”

Hip hop deserves better than that. Hip hop definitely deserves better than blogs like Snacks and Shit, which gets its name from a woefully misinterpreted Jay-Z lyric and purports to catalogue “preposterous” rap lyrics. I’m all for acknowledging that hip hop can be ludicrous and stupid, but most of the blog’s posts either aren’t funny or depend on taking a lyric outside its original context. I mean, wow, if you take rap lyrics literally they often make no sense? I guess these guys never heard of figurative language.

Rock ‘n’ roll is no less inherently silly than hip hop (“I am the eggman, they are the eggmen/ I am the walrus, goo goo g’joob”), but it hasn’t been held up as an object of ridicule since hair metal went out of style. Enough with the goofy or ironic hip hop references: hip hop, even when it’s being fun and insane and over the top, is worthy of serious consideration.

That’s why the embrace of rap music by mainstream critical outlets—Pitchfork, The Village Voice, Slate, The New Yorker—is so important. Reading Jonah Weiner painstakingly explain the ins and outs of rap to a rap illiterate audience may grate on the nerves of serious hip hop heads (see comments here), but at least Weiner’s articles propagate the idea that rap is a legitimate art form. Maybe with a few more Weiners (and a few more Nathan Rabins and Sasha Frere-Joneses), hip hop will eventually get the mainstream respect it deserves.

~MGJordan

Quotable Nietzsche: Why TAN Is So Wise

(more and more feeling like TAN is trending towards a meaning closer to that of "The Assimilated Nietzsche" over "The Assimilated Negro", but then any minority rising to power is Nietzschean, so yeah, makes sense ... anyFried, more/excess is coming...)

"How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare? more and more that became for me the real measure of value. Error (—faith in the ideal—) is not blindness, error is cowardice ... Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself ... I do not refute ideals, I merely put on gloves before them."

~~

"Under these circumstances I have a duty against which my habits, even more the pride of my instincts, revolt at bottom, namely, to say: "Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else!"

~~

"My practice of war is formulated in four principles: First: I only attack causes that are victorious,—I may even wait until they become victorious. Second: I only attack causes against which I would find no allies, so that I stand alone—so that I compromise myself alone ... I have never taken a step publicly that did not compromise me: that is my criterion of doing right. Third: I never attack persons,—I avail myself of the person merely as a powerful magnifying-glass that allows one to make visible a general, but creeping and elusive calamity [...snip...] Fourth: I only attack things when all personal differences are excluded, when any background of bad experiences is lacking. On the contrary, to attack is to me a proof of goodwill, sometimes even of gratitude. I honor, I distinguish therewith by associating my name with that of a cause or a person: for or against—that makes no difference to me at this point.

- all quotes from Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is
(no homo?)

Real Recognize Real: 2 Years Is a Long Time On the Internet

A couple years ago I posted a Failed Ideas in Hip Hop video, billing it as "a funny sketch by people who do funny sketches". Lo and behold, "It's The Real" (I think they changed their name from "The Real to "It's The Real"?) are still making funny videos a couple years later. As the hip hop loving jews say, muy impresivo.

Also they got all kinds of internet and hip hop cameos/testimonials in their 2-year anniversary video. Which is like the internet version of "making it rain" or something.

2 Real 2 Furious from jeff on Vimeo.

Congrats to It's the Real, here's to two more years, 95 more vids, 200 more testimonials, etc. etc.

No Homo and the Evolution of Tolerance

Jonah Weiner, who serves as one of the hip hop/urban music ambassadors for Slate, has a solid point-of-entry piece on the "No Homo" craze in hip hop (and beyond, since the term has by-and-large crossed over into more of a pop cultural phenomenon). His point, essentially, is: yes, saying "no homo" is still homophobia; but it's a lot better than what used to be status quo in hip hop.

Both those things are true. But, just like when racial or religious or *any* sort of intolerance needs a firmer hand, or at least noting that we are only scratching the surface of a much more profoundly complex issue, I think that's called for here. Because honestly, we need to be further along, and I say that mostly from the spirit of being a fan and hip hop urban-culture enthusiast.

Coates at the Atlantic has run some harsher words over this before. And been much more pointed about the problem. It makes me briefly wonder if Jonah, and/or Slate as proxy, can only approach with a certain cavalier attitude because it's not *their* issue so much. Maybe The Root and Skip Gates need to be slamming the door on this a little harder. Because while i don't actually cry, I do think about shedding a tear or two -- i feel the emotional swelling (no homo) -- when considering the rampant homophobia and ultimately, hypocrisy of intolerance, when I think about all the rappers and artists and *Heroes* who have brazenly been hateful to a group of people. It's really no different than your daddy being a racist.

Jonah opens his piece with the both brilliant and obvious example of Kanye. Specifically mentioning his rant about homophobia, that came a little prior to his "george bush hates black people" comment. Which got a lot more pub. He notes the anti-homophobia rant for its unique anomalous nature; no one else has really come out of the closet in such a bold declarative way on the homophobia issues in hip hop (and hip hop serving in some sense as proxy to black culture here).

But the more direct attack and implication is to consider Kanye extending the George Bush comment in this way: "George Bush doesn't care about Black people, Black people don't care about homosexual people. (Homosexual people don't care about vaginas, but that part is neither here nor there.)" Such a line might have framed the tradition of (American?) intolerance in a more comprehensive light.

In any event, i wonder about proprietary issues when righting a wrong. Correcting an error. Obama challenging black folk is different than Bill Clinton. An old-wave feminist doing the same to women, is a similar formulation. Rappers and black people need to be more forceful and demanding in this zone. Because we are losing when we reject ourselves in this way.

Which segues to some of Jonah's extended premise in his piece. A sense of humor/jokes as indicator of progress, movement towards truth.

This makes sense in the realm of racial and sexual identity politics. Black people make black people do this and white people do that jokes. Men and women make men do this and women do that jokes. "No homo" is in fact often a funny addendum. If you can insulate yourself from the hateful part of it all, it's an amusing pithy little phrase. And certainly when used to access the even broader construct of masculinity, femininity etc., it can bring a smile. Of course, that shows the "no homo" isn't even actually about "homos" any more. But what we consider masculine and feminine. The Katy Perry "ur so gay, and you don't even like boys" sentiment. Kanye and many famous "tough rappers" are probably a little removed from knowing how to fix a car that broke down on the highway, chop down a tree and start a fire, fist-fighting, but know about the latest fashion-designers, getting pedicures, etc. No homo?

But as any dysfunctional comedian will tell you, the sense of humor, comic relief, is sourced by a sense of detachment. ironic distance. you/we couldn't make jokes about black people for a long time, because it was too raw and serious and immediate. The wounds were still open. Then they scar over, and it gets a little easier. And now, shoot, we almost can hardly tell it's there now with all the cosmetic surgery we've enlisted *cough*.

So that's progress. But again, point of entry. There's a narrative of tolerance here. Where are we progressing from? How did the story begin? Why was hip hop culture so invested in hating others in the first place? I sense this racial issue, like so many others, is a gateway to larger American or human issues. In this case my suspicion is that when we have been abused we want someone else to at some point experience the same pain/abuse. We want to be empowered by damaging someone the same way we felt damaged. If we stop and *pause* and think about it, such logic doesn't make sense; all of these abuses and wrongs are circumstantial. You can never inflict the same pain, only the particular pain for those particular people/circumstances. If you as a father abuse your son, he doesn't know the abuse you received from your father, his grandfather, any more intimately. He only knows the pain he's receiving from you. This is why the Golden Rule works practically, not only as a morally idealized notion of the universe. We can't transfer our rationalized selves, which is what the psychological scars from abuse are. There's the immediate pain (or joy), and then how we live with it and synthesize it into the new us that emerges from the experience.....

I've sprawled out into deeper waters, and want to stay swimming safely in this smaller pool.... so, no homo. i guess, much like with women, we just need a "homo" rapper who through the sheer force of his will makes all the jokes and lines premised on intolerance, obsolete.


The Changing Face of Hip Hop Homophobia [Slate]

If Obama Is The Joker, Who Is Batman?

The couple of posts I've seen with these Obama-as-Joker "socialist" pics all say the same thing: it's a striking image, that's making it way around not only on the internet, but in The Real World (so much as Los Angeles can be called The Real World), but no one knows or has any sense of what it means.

And to that I add: Ditto.




via: American Thinker, NRO