Notes on Andover's Rap Video

Over at Grantland:

Last week, the Internet weighed in on "The Andover Song" with chuckles, snark, and furrowed-brow curiosity. The prevailing sentiment seemed to be: Let’s drag every bit of this video around a manicured lawn and play ultimate Frisbee over its carcass. Die, Andover rap video! Die!

But there are lessons to be learned here, ones valuable enough to be taught at a prep school. We can break the issues up into “Not a problem” and “This is a Problem."



1. Not a Problem: Earnest rap

The most immediate cringe-factor with this video is how earnest and cloying it is. But the “genre” of earnest rap (or “educated rap”), in itself, is not a problem. Overstuffed, too-literal rap suffers from a disconnect between teaching and being cool. Sort of like a history teacher putting on skinny jeans, a leather jacket, and aviators to teach you about Freddie Knuckles (that’s Nietzsche, btw). But the teacher is not the problem. It’s the execution.

We should encourage fearlessness when it comes to trying too hard. Earnest failures are the ones that count. If it comes from an authentic place, the execution can be worked on. The dude with the braces and Celtics shirt, well, if you can say “the school molds to everybody like a mattress pad” and not snort on yourself in the process, you’re probably a well-meaning, glass-half-full dude who should be given a chance to lose the braces and develop a sense of style. No less than Jay-Z, Eminem, and Kanye were mediocre emcees when they started. Why? Too earnest. Jay was an overzealous fast-rapper. Em was boring and just overwrought w/rhyme schemes. And Kanye, well, we know the story.

(CONTINUED ON GRANTLAND)

Watch the Diploma: Andover Rap Video [Grantland]

The Daily Beast Records, Featuring The Notorious John Forté

So yeah, that mean Tina Brown is Diddy.

You know we had to do a remix, right....

Ti-Na, come out and plaaaay-ayyyy ...

Exeter, Stand Up!!!

But like, for real tho, when I think about my own assimilated resume (Choate's first Obama, book that will shatter earth space time continuum, etc.) I talk to my imaginary Carlton friend -- assimilateds often have an imaginary Carltons, cause we're all Will Smith in our minds -- and I'm like, "yo Carlton, I was thinking about how my facebook profile would be even hotter if I, like, actually went to jail, and if I, like, didn't just rhyme but had real success as an emcee." Exeter, Fugees Credits, plus Jail, that's a perfect storm of hot-like-fire realness. That's like the TAN Trifecta: You want suit-and-tie sensibility, I got you. Oh, I got to rock this crowd in Brooklyn, wordemup. Oh, you want me to teach and talk to these kids on the street, I'm feeling that.

That's being strapped for the war ahead, no matter what happens. And that's Forté right now ...

John and I were in Prep 9 together, we were never ace-ace boom, but we were cool, and there's only like 25-30 of us. And Prep homeys are fairly tight and fraternity-like with ours; I always got a pound for a Prep dude, and vice versa. So I'd be interested in this story regardless, but I think there's probably more here since so many of us Preps have followed the same formula: go to prep school, do the college thing (with hit-or-miss achievement levels) and then step out, at least for a minute, to do some creative shit, most likely hip hop.

I'm getting a feeling with this current leveling-of-all-fields apocalypse going on, something like The Daily Beast Records is not necessarily far off from reality. Maybe this is the jumpoff right here, in which case regardless of your feelings about the song it's kind of hot just to realize how Forte's video on The Daily Beast is a kinda-sorta iconic snapshot of America in 2009 ...


John Forte "Runnin Up That Hill" from The ICU on Vimeo.

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