Sasha on Shadow, Diplo, Eminem & Minstrelsy

('we' = people in general)

xp: i donno maybe im wrong but i swear i saw sales figures for '84 that showed thriller and can't slow down as having very similar numbers. i'm sure thriller's outsold it since.

I've posted this before, its an excerpt from elijah wood's book on the blues but i think it applies to critics too. Certainly not in the exact same way, but i do think that writers are constantly distorting the way we see the past.

The neo-ethnic movement was nourished by a spate of LP reissues that for the first time made it possible to find hillbilly and country blues recordings in white, middle-class, urban stores. The bible was Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music...Smith was specifically interested in the oldest and most-rural sounding styles, and set a pattern for any future folk-blues reissue projects by intentionally avoiding any artist who seemed consciously modern or commercial...

Far from balancing this taste, the other record collectors tended to be even more conservative. Much as they loved the music, they were driven by the same mania for rarity that drives collectors of old stamps or coins, and many turned up their noses at Jefferson or the Carters, since those records were common. (Ed. note: Like Rick James, bitch!) To such men, the perfect blues artist was someone like Son House or Skip James, an unrecognized genius whose 78s had sold so badly that at most one or two copies survived. Since the collectors were the only people with access to the original records or any broad knowledge of the field, they functioned to a great extent as gatekeepers of the past and had a profound influence on what the broader audience heard. (Ed. note: Like Freestyle Fellowship or Bun B, bitch!) By emphasizing obscurity as a virtue unto itself, they essentially turned the hierarchy of blues-stardom upside-down: The more records an artist had sold in 1928, the less he or she was valued in 1958.

Pitchfork: When Hollertronix started to go global, did you catch shit for being a white kid who was playing dirty south records?

Not really. People, like, say Swisha House for instance, they respect what I do, [and] I have a really good connection with Murder Dog Magazine...it took me a while to really get [to] all of the underground, say, Houston artists, but they really love what I do. They're all about me, they're showing me Mp3 a capellas and stuff because they kinda see me as an outlet for something different. Southern hip-hop is really just looking for a new way just to be out, 'cause there's so much going on and there's so much talent. But a lot of it's getting watered down now and they see me as a breath of fresh air. But for a while I did get flak from the intellectuals up in the North.

I just e-mailed dj/rupture, 'cause I wanted to connect with [him]: We were crossing paths a lot, and he had something on his blog which was like a "Hollertronix co-opted black culture" kinda thing, and I wasn't really pissed about it but I don't really know the guy. I was just starting a discussion on it with a lot of people because I think it's important to talk about things like that, but at the same time, I just wanted to meet him and say I'm really honest about what I do and I love the music that I play, and nothing about me is trendy. We've had three e-mails now and he seems like a really cool guy and we have the same friends, but I think it's important to have a dialogue about that kind of thing because it's obvious that I'm a white dude who's playing a lot of black music. But I think I'm just playing good music.

this 'i'm giving southern rap a new way to be out' is kinda specious - i suspect it's a very generous phrasing of "giving southern rap a new white moneyed hipster audience" (even if this is the case, it isn't necessarily meritless! but yeah, we're talking about tracklistless mixes and anonymous mp3s, not really very sincere promotional vehicles)

I'm watching Diplo's 'Florida' DVD as we speak and any suggestion that he's either blackening or whitening his music or his vision on this is nutty. This ain't black music. It ain't white music. This is FUN (and 'Indian Thick Jawns' is about tittays).

Hahahaha! I can't believe I've been ignoring this thread. There is some crazy shit on here.

so yeah, i like sasha's sense of historicity, his sense that rap is music that uniquely has continued (benzino notwithstanding) to ground itself in black america and remain largely black-produced/performed (if not always owned) far longer than prior forms of initially black music -- and this is *significant*.

Now that we're IN that new century, with a public that's intelligent enough and vocal enough to call horseshit when music is being hijacked. So while "hip hop" is now synonymous with pop music (WTF is Sasha getting at with "we have only two significant, while Billboard Top 10 superstar rap acts, almost thirty years into the game"? SIX of the current top ten pop singles are hip hop influenced/produced), there is still a vocal and active subset of artists that are keeping rap current and pointed to the streets. That's more a function (I think) of the times than the music necessarily. It's not as if blues or ragtime COULD be black produced and performed when clubs were segregated and the records were entirely run by whites, eh?

in the same way, i don't think the non-hip-hop but hip-hop-influenced pop singles you reference (not sure which ones) are perceived as "race music" the same way lil' jon is (gwen stefani? kelly clarkson?)

And has anybody noticed that frikkin' BABY BASH has TWO top twenty pop hits right now?

i think it's fair to ask HOW and WHY and if it's at all related to the shift in diplo's music from mixtape (race music: trina and trick) to album (non-race music: martina topley-bird).

(i am ignoring "diplo rhythm" because i think dancehall and grime and baile funk are functioning more like exotica in that context)

I haven't listened to the radio since I was fifteen or so; not meaning to be dismissive, just sayin' that I'm not claiming to be any kind of an expert on what passes for radio airplay rotation. I'm just goin' by the charts. I do find it hard to believe that Gwen isn't getting hip hop airplay; is that actually right?

It's on heavy rotation on Mpls's Clear Channel, urban/hiphop/RnB/whatever station, for what that's worth....I imagine that indicates most of CC's hiphop stations are playing it alot....

The problem here is what SFJ defines as significant. He ignores Beck, Timberlake, Stefani (whose "Rich Girl" and "Let Me Blow Ya Mind" hook count as well), Linkin Park, etc. etc. cuz they don't do hip-hop in the most obvious fashion, even though its an integral element to their current appeal.

bingo bango. now let's all to Bellagio.