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

About TAN: Web Hunk, 4.0

The Houston Chronicle included Patrice Evans, TAN, The Assimilated Negro in their gallery of Web Hunks today. Indeed, as you suspected, the Apocalypse is nigh!

Since I don't want to just be ogled as a savory hunky piece of melanin-meat laptop. Here are some links:

Hip Hop Stuff:
Will "Keeping It Real" Ever Go Right?
Is Elzhi Deeper Than John Updike?
Maybe We Should Just Hand Hip Hop Over to the Ladies?

Racial, Post-Racial Stuff:
Black People film boobs like this, White People film boobs like that
The 4 Horsemen of the Post-Racial Apocalypse
Negropedia Brown and the Case of the World White Web

Matrices, Video, and Random Hits & Misses on/for Gawker stuff:
The Morality Matrix
A Bronx Tale: In Search of Sonia Sotomayor
Does Weed Have "5" On the Economy?
miscellany

House of Hot-Ass Interviews: including The Roots, Sasha Grey, Larry Wilmore and, uh, still more... (?)

100 Things About TAN: this is kinda old, but, y'know, has a personal facebooky touch.

What Else???
sports head: not so much recently, but for nbc new york, deadspin, fanhouse and others in the past. I also think the Mets Are Better Than Sex.

I've done readings: about letters to my genitals, and sex on shrooms.

book deal, "Negropedia" is no longer the title, fyi.

There's more if you want to noodle around, but I'm guessing that should be plenty to scare you away at this point. But before you go: PLEASE SUBSCRIBE -- i don't blog-churn out volumes, but there is more, bigger, better in store. And Subscriptions allow you to keeps tabs from a safe distance, and maybe I won't have to whore my body out for internet celebrity currency. it's like saving an african baby, except i went to prep school and live in nyc.

When Naked in France, Is It Better to Be Sexy or Funny?

oooh la la, oui oui oui:

Make The Girl Dance "Baby Baby Baby" ( official video )

ha ha ha, hee hee hee:

Prom Night In Mississippi

How old are you?

Did you go to your High School Prom?

Was it integrated?

I'd imagine that last one to come across as sort of a joke question -- is it integrated??? do you mean like cavemen and dinosaurs? these are the jokes people -- But for Charleston High School in Mississippi, it's a legitimate query. They just had their first "integrated" prom a couple years ago. The story of it serving as the old world grist for Paul Saltzman documentary "Prom Night In Mississippi".

Here's some pub copy on it:

The film deftly weaves together student-made videos, interviews, and fly-on-the-wall moments with scenes of school officials, parents and Morgan Freeman himself, as white and black members of the Charleston senior class work together to organize the groundbreaking dance. While students prepare for the big day, seemingly inconsequential rites of passage suddenly become profound as the weight of history falls on teenage shoulders. We quickly learn that change does not come easily in this sleepy Delta town, as Freeman’s generosity ends up fanning flames of racism among several generations of Charleston residents.

And a video clip:



Some thoughts:

1.Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. These people are from The South: The reason to watch the film is to get a little glimpse of this small Southern town, and see how anachronistic it is. Like going to the Museum of Natural History and the dinosaurs are casually talking about their lives of swamps and eating each other. It's interesting, but you can't truly relate/empathize/connect to something living behind a glass wall. It's like: hello, Mr. T-Rex, i don't want to be a dinosaur-chauvinist hater or anything, but y'all might want to step outside the museum. realize no one complains about the swarming pterodactyls anymore. Go on the internet. meet new friends. Like that, but y'know, with real people involved.

The whole story is Morgan Freeman paying for the school's prom to take the burden off the tradition of separate proms at this school. But some of the people - parents! - still organized their own White Only prom. Which they did not allow the filmmakers to get footage of. Which was supposedly attended by 30 people or so. So i don't know, if they started a facebook group "White Only: Dancing and Hanging Out, for one night", you'd prob get like 30-40 people. Maybe the same people. Actually, definitely not the same people. I guarantee those people are going to be opening their free sample AOL test DVD in a few months from now. Facebook eta circa 2014.

I'm being mean, but I'm sorry, I do not understand the South. Baldwin wrote in essays about how he changed as a writer, as a black man, after visiting the south. Eddie Murphy joked, "don't go down to texas, they'll f you up". I can't front, I'm a little scared of it; you either get changed, or f'd up/dead.

I just wonder if it will in fact be a matter of time, and these were cavemen times. Or if there is something in the DNA, the genetic makeup of the geographical culture, or somesuch.

2. Generation Gap: The kids are a lot more sane. When I think about the kids, I don't think the DNA issue is a question. Then again, a lot of the crazier thinking people in the film, or alluded to in the film, did not actually get face-time. It's telling to something that the more backwards thinking folk are not oblivious, feel some sense of shame or embarrassment. They're not young Israelis boldly pushing their drunken shimmering worldview. They prefer to pop their racist zits in private.

Mostly the kids seemed annoyed, frustrated by the parents. But still respecting them, in most cases. Which then feels like "nothing to see here", and probably deflates some of the dramatic tension in the film. Watching Paint Dry have you met Town Watching/Waiting For Olds To Die,... that sort of thing. The kids are cute, not weird, aside from general high school age weirdness, and definitely not the problem.

3. Driving Mr. Freeman: The doc starts off with Morgan Freeman talking about growing up in the town. And the tradition. And how it was stupid, etc. And how we was going to propose to get involved. Which he did. The thing is once the kids are diagnosed as normal kids, he's kind of the star/engine of the film. But once he gets the ball rolling, that's all we get from him. There's a meeting in the auditorium when Shawshank Redemption talks to everyone and tells them what he wants to do. All the kids are treating him like he's Will Smith instead of Morgan Freeman. But he doesn't turn the Will Smith on. There's a stunted emotional investment that begins to emanate from him. Maybe it's just how things worked out, but it could/should have probably been more a little more autobiographical. Or at least Freeman giving more context and background to the town history. Helping us understand The Aliens from The South. But he mostly becomes the hollywood name that gets the film through the process. It's a little disappointing.

All in all I'd say, if you want to go to the museum, but from the comfort of your home. Check it out. There are worse ways to spend 90 minutes than looking at old people and normal people behind the glass.


Prom Night in Mississippi website

Related:
Jena 6: From the Noose to the Red Carpet

KRS, I Knew, Duh, But I Did Not Know Buckshot and Talib Had Off The Dome Skills Like This

I think there is an objective philosophical argument to make for dropping "freestyle" as our textual indicator of off-the-dome skills. It muddies the clarity of our folklore/storytelling. It will be confusing *in the future*. But it's also an argument that's tough to make with conviction, cause I do agree, with many, that whatever you call it -- "freestyle" -- is the pinnacle of the hip hop culture. Professor Chang once said "hip hop is the art of the impossible", and freestyle is the most transparent, immediate practicing of that. A good freestyle is that perfect form of spontaneous literature. And as readers, consumers you have a sense when you're seeing the *real* shit.

Two samps below:





But for real, I always thought Buck and Talib were "written freestyle verses" types. And I'm not quite certain with Buck if that was all off the top, I mean if it was, he's sick and immediately moves up a pay scale or two.

Hate to be Grumpy Old Men about it, but def don't see it that much from the young boys. Here's Drake, "freestyling, on Flex. Not off the dome. Off the cellphone. I like Drake, but y'know, it's not the same. KRS and Buck got 20-somethingK views, on two clips, Drake has gone gold with this one. Huh?

Got Beef, The Game Vs. Jay-Z: Satellite Just Went Down

"A wise man once said don't argue with fools/ cause people from a distance can't tell who is who"
-Jay-Z

So a couple days ago, somewhat surprisingly, the hegemonic Jay-Z did actually speak out on the whole beef with "The Game", and he wasn't particularly stately about it saying bluntly, "tell groupie, get over it".

The Game, who when not barking in front of the Hov estate has been tussling with Bow Wow in ALL CAPS, was probably delighted to get wind of Jay taking notice, and subsequently gave an *exclu-clu-clusive* to the Boodah Brothers where he fires back.

It's more of the same, which is to say childish blather from someone not playing in the same league really. Like if the kid who dunked on LeBron recently started talking to the press about how he is a better all around ball player than James. ...As I'm writing this, I sort of feel like I'm too biased to Jay, but Game calls Jay ugly, old, and wonders why he doesn't have a child "is he firing blizzanks or somethin'". It's like, come on, really? For 15 minutes, that's all you got? Firstly, ugly, besides being childish when repeated ad infinitum, is irrelevant when this guy is marrying (married?) a girl widely considered "the hottest chick in the game". Nextly, hello, we're all gonna get old. Thirds: Game's bio talks about a history of child abuse, from presumably too-young parents, ... so the final stab seems particularly short-sighted.

He also says a lot of ridiculous nonsense implying Jay would be wise to let the beef marinate for his (Jay's) own publicity. Meanwhile Jay's talking about never having a record deal again. Uhhhhm, ok ....

Besides the fact that no one respects this kind of lowball superficial kind of attack in hip hop, even from Jay-Z himself (c.f Jay backlash when he dropped Supa Ugly); I really don't understand this "hardcore" position from someone who was on Change of Heart. Like seriously, if you go down the "keep it real" gangsta road all the time, every things is going to end with people playing that clip and laughing. If you do that kind of show you have to be a little emo with your persona. only option. Game doesn't seem to have the capacity or heart for keeping it real real.

All that said, the beef between Game and Jay in and of itself is a non-starter, but the fact that NPR and mainstream media picked up this political interpretation of the beef does mean it might have an incidental ancillary benefit for Jay's chasing of history. There's gold in them thar hip hop hills if you get MSM folks to think about it the right way. Since no one is confusing Jay's star for west coast repping Game, it probably does benefit Jay's interplanetary status to have an extra satellite hovering in his orbit.

The Game Responds to Jay-Z's Groupie Talk [2dopeboyz]