Taking Sides: Public Enemy Vs Sleeper

I'm

just being honest.

Apart from the whacking big clock around his neck...

"Ay yo, David, whut wuz you doin' in dat box man!"

Just had a thought. You know the original version of this quote..

So howcome Chuck is bigging up Elvis every chance he gets nowadays? Has he changed his mind or was he fibbing in the first place?

Hmmmmm...

x-post

NEW YORK (Public Enemy Fans Website) - Public Enemy frontman Chuck D derided Elvis Presley on the group's 1989 anthem "Fight The Power," but it turns out his feelings for Presley are a little more complicated than the song suggests.
"As a musicologist - and I consider myself one - there was always a great deal of respect for Elvis, especially during his Sun sessions. As a black people, we all knew that," the rapper said.
"My whole thing was the one-sidedness - like, Elvis' icon status in America made it like nobody else counted. ... My heroes came from someone else. My heroes came before him. My heroes were probably his heroes. As far as Elvis being ' The King,' I couldn't buy that."
Chuck D spoke to Newsday about Presley's legacy for a 25th anniversary story on the singer's death.

On "Fight the Power," he said of Presley, "Elvis was a hero to most/But he never meant (expletive) to me, you see/Straight up racist that sucker was, simple and plain."

As for whether there is a modern-day Elvis, Chuck D points to Eminem.
"Eminem is the new Elvis because, number one, he had the respect for black music that Elvis had," Chuck D said. "I think he's courteous and sympathetic to black music, and, unfortunately, he's more sympathetic to black music than many black artists themselves."

(I thought that was going to be an x-post but no, Chuck doesn't even attempt to explain it)

I just suspected he was playing to the gallery back then.

However Louise Wener.. I have no quotes from her regarding elvis. Elvis Costello did do "What do I do now" though...

Louise Wener was the type of girl that 'could' have been your girlfriend.
She would have been a nightmare.

so...sleeper - as the less offensive of the two. i've only heard a couple of public enemy songs, i don't want to hear any more.

Yeah, I must admit at the time, as a callow 12-14 year old, I was a Sleeper fan; really liked the music then and well, had something of a crush on LW. Not that it was ever a case of her being similar to any possible girlfriend; there was no serious prospect of me having one then. Now, there are possibly more people like her, c.f. university, but then, well at my local northern comprehensive, erm, not really. She was I guess something different, if hardly entirely alien. ;-)

Sleeper's music now; seems tied up with the teenage crush aspect really... "The It Girl" is still listenable probably, but little else. There is one good track called "Breathe" on their last album. PE are so much more part of my musical consciousness, and lyrically, more hard-hitting and significant than Wener's minor vignettes. Obviously, chasms in the power and quality of production one doesn't have to go into here!
I guess it is fundamentally the way I have progressed: away from identifying with the modest indie aesthetic and surface charm of Sleeper, to appreciating a very wide range of sounds and music indeed. I would now not be as impressed by the soundbite 'controversies' that Ms. Wener tried to stir up; I guess I saw such things as a sign of 'character', without really having a good grasp of what that meant.
Such crushes as i had on LW - though indeed, how changed in character these are in 7 years ;-) - can now be easily set aside from the music. I don't quite so feel the need to define myself as I did then (at least internally, I associated with aspects of the early britpop... people like Black Grape and Pulp and the myriad well-known older artists I was discovering at the time). I think i'm grasping at some wider points here that I can't quite put my finger on...

re: public enemy - to what extent do you feel that the fact that they obtained a platform by offering some legitimate cultural commentary mitigates the fact that they abused that platform by spreading hatred?

are you speaking specifically about chuck d's homophobia here or is it a general comment on the oppression of black people?

i find it amazing how many (seemingly liberal) people are willing to explain away the sort of lyrical content that eminem and public enemy produced. it may be 'ironic' or 'making a point' but its still advocating violence against a segment of the society. many of the same people would (quite rightly, in my opinion) be critical of any song that encourage racism.

you come across this sort of review all the time:

Meet the G that Killed Me......Homophobia or not, the song encourages safe sex. Even more importantly, safe relationships. It is a short song, Chuck D is making a point

(from http://www.dealtime.com/xMPR-~PD-55887~PT-xMPR~RI-113013460612)

he's making a point? well, that's okay then, isn't it?

not to millions of fans who lap up every word.

and, even if he is, he offers such characters as anti-heroes (i won't say 'uncritically', because that isn't the case). and can't be hugely surprised when they're adopted as such.
i haven't seen '8 mile' - largely because it had eminem in it.

if there are people who do this they were already idiots and so the influence of Eminem can never be as powerful as critics tend to believe. i need only trot out my 'i listened to NWA and PE when i was a kid but it hasn't made me a homophobic misogynist' line really.

Hobart Paving (Ah... why didn't I discover Saint Etienne at the time...? It was only 2 years ago I really first gave them any attention):

they're still going, yknow! although a bit more slowly these days, what with sarah cracknell expecting a baby..

i remember crispian mills' comments about the swastika being a symbol of light but didn't know he was a fascist. how did that fit with his professed love of indian culture?

pulp are one of the only britpop bands i liked and still like. i remember at the time that slotting them into the 'britpop' phase seemed like an attempt to either label or market them rather than a reflection of what their music was actually like.

Haven't seen 8 Mile? You're not missing much to be honest.

clearly, it depends on the fan. it depends on the individual's capability to dissociate someone they admire from their sentiments, which may not be admirable. and that varies enormously from person to person.

ooh, that sounded very pompous...i should have said 'in my opinion, it depends on the fan'. yes, that's better.

never underestimate the power of several million idiots.

i liked 'finisterre' but felt like it should have been in a different order. it didn't quite seem to work at it was - or, it could have worked better. and get rid of that man doing all the talky bits. 'have you ever been to a harvester before' is funny. 'use a bank, i'd rather die' sounds a bit silly. i'm sure saint etienne have a bank account between them.
still, its a nice album. i like them when they're doing unashamed pop. 'tiger bay' was marvellous.

is it allowed to talk about other subjects than the thread would imply, btw? still not sure how it works here.

Total thread mutation has always been a feature of this board, so don't worry about it, Hobart!!

I think that part of the homophobia in rap stems from a battle-rap-spawned trope used to needle rivals, and nothing gets another MC or another crew more defensive and pissed-off and rattled than accusations of homosexuality. (That, plus the machismo "sissy hate" stuff.)

That's anti abuse not homophobia.

The other 'fag' is actually 'fag-hag', about a bag lady that used to hang around gay guys and report back to her friends about how funny they are, and now she's not in a position to laugh at anyone (That's two dylan nicks, including the first line up top)

So, innocent of charges here...

i'm going to treat that as a genuine question, rather than as the slightly sarcastic riposte it may have been intended as..

i'd be perfectly happy if nobody listened to eminem at all. i don't think censorship is always a bad thing. i wouldn't listen to a song with racist content - and i wouldn't expect any self-respecting radio station to play it (and they don't). perhaps the same standards could be applied to homophobia?
don't kid yourself that censorship doesn't exist already. we live in a culture where the word 'fuck' is bleeped out of songs - is bleeped out of videos on television, even if they're being played at midnight. any songs with overtly gay lyrics are less likely to be played. any songs with strong sexual content may be banned outright.

but its okay to have lyrics that encourage hatred, and violence, aka eminem. that's just fine.

and, yes, the cultural influences you imbibe as you grow DO shape your attitudes. many sub-cultures are shaped around music - people define themselves by what music they like. if an artist is popular with a certain segment of society, the attitudes they espouse are, by extension, imbued with a greater degree of acceptability for that section of society than they might have otherwise been - even if the majority of the people DON'T end up adopting those attitudes for themselves.

the attitude feeds the music, the music feeds the attitude. the two come together to help to form an identity. neither exists in a vacuum, and its ridiculous to suggest that they might.

i didn't specify that kids listening to eminem imbibed some of his attitudes, but surely that isn't too hard a scenario to envisage?

by which i mean that i didn't specify it was children who were likely to be 'corrupted' (another word i didn't use). however, from my own observations, this is the time of life when me and most of the people i know were least sure of their identity.

its lovely that you're non-homophobic and you can listen to homophobic lyrics. that's really intelligent, liberal, and broad-minded of you. but there are lots of other people who may be more likely to be swayed by this sort of message than yourself. if songs didn't work as message-conveying media, they wouldn't have been used so extensively as propaganda-spreading tools throught history. and don't underestimate the power that an anti-gay lyric can have on that teenager, unsure of his/her sexual identity, terrified of coming out, facing the attitudes of society, and the derision of his/her peers. i've been there, and these things DO have an influence.

x-post: its lovely that you're non-homophobic and you can listen to homophobic lyrics. that's really intelligent, liberal, and broad-minded of you. but there are lots of other people who may be more likely to be swayed by this sort of message than yourself. if songs didn't work as message-conveying media, they wouldn't have been used so extensively as propaganda-spreading tools throught history. and don't underestimate the power that an anti-gay lyric can have on that teenager, unsure of his/her sexual identity, terrified of coming out, facing the attitudes of society, and the derision of his/her peers.
It's incredibly lovely. So from a legislative perspective, what do you recommend for this quandary? IQ tests for ppl buying Eminem? Maturity tests?

They do on specialist reggae/dancehall shows for sure.

well, actually, i wasn't advocating anything to begin with. i was just offering that as a reason that i didn't like the artist in question, which doesn't seem so unreasonable. but - as you seem so keen to push me into Legislating For The World on this - (and thanks, by the way, i've never had so much power before...)
my recommendations from a legislative perspective:

NONE!

oh, hang on, perhaps one..
there are already laws - in the UK, at least, which discourage the incitement of racial hatred. extend these to homophobia. (there's every reason to extend these further, too, if certain groups in society feel that they're being unfairly treated).

personally, i think these laws should be there not so that governments or civil authorities should be able to 'punish' those responsible for the material, but so that individuals will have some legal back-up should they choose to complain about the material in question. its not a case of stopping the artist from writing what they choose, but it may be a case of those affected by the incitement of hatred having some ability to restrict the exhibition of that material.

what should be done about offensive content on albums? again - the laws exist for racial hatred. i challenge you to find a 'white power' album on sale at hmv. however, last time i went in to my local branch, there was, for example, a display of buju banton albums. (buju banton, by the way, wrote a song advocating the shooting of gay men. nice bloke.)

clearly, then, something IS done about albums which spread racism. i don't know what that might be. i don't know how those albums are weeded out at whatever level they're weeded out. i'm certainly not about to advocate preventing people from recording their material and i don't advocate preventing shops from selling it, either (although i do wonder why the one is acceptable and the other unacceptable).

for many artists, particularly for artists like eminem, less airplay=lower sales. there should be some recourse available to people who believe what is being played is offensive - and an incitement of hatred against people like themselves. with the legislative tweak i mentioned above, that would be present.

there. that's my solution. i don't think it is over-prescriptive, and it puts the onus on people to complain if they think what is presented is offensive rather than on governments to censor or artists to have their freedom of expression restricted (they may have their freedom of EXHIBITION restricted, but that's a different matter).

as for maturity tests.... i believe there was some talk of not selling certain albums to people under a certain age. as a general issue, i'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. with most of this material available on the internet, its also a pretty redundant thing. i'm also aware that the availability of mp3s undermines my argument - i don't see a way round that, and i feel that, for mainstream artists at least, much of their success comes from airplay rather than from internet downloading.

i notice you ignored a couple of my points - so i'll ask you questions in return for the ones you asked me:

do you think it would be okay to listen to racist lyrics?
do you think it would be okay for those lyrics to be played on national (or local, for that matter) radio and on television?

if so - do you honestly believe nobody would be affected by those lyrics?
if not - do you believe that the regulations currently in place to prevent that material being played are necessary, or do you feel that they should be removed?

do you believe that cultural attitudes and societal beliefs are shaped, at least in part, by the media? (if not, how do you explain the existence of a billion-dollar advertising industry?) do you believe that this includes music?

finally, and i don't mean this to be sarcastic, its a genuine question so i'd appreciate it if it were answered in the same spirit in which it is asked - how do you reconcile a non-homophobic political outlook with listening to songs with homophobic lyrics? is it simply a question of dissociation? and do you feel that this dissocation spoils your enjoyment of the song in question?

Some songs I disagree with and it stops me from enjoying the song ("Boom Bye Bye" for instance though that's a rubbish song anyway, incidentally Buju has distanced himself from that period of his work and the albums you saw in HMV may well have been from his more recent conscious phase). Some songs it doesn't. I'd love there to be a consistency in that but there's not. It's not even a case of disassociation exactly, I don't think "oh what a good song except for that horrible sexist/racist/homophobic bit", I just don't notice it. I find the more I listen to non-Anglophone records the less I pay attention to lyrics even when they're in English.

That's all I have to add to this debate now to be honest, I mean I just posted some Anal Cunt lyrics to another thread.

As for the last question, I kind of agree with Tico. I have a threshold, though not much music crosses it. Dr. Dre's 'bitches ain't shit' is one song (on an album I love) which is too unpleasant to listen to. Hip-hop, in my experience, isn't as nastily anti-gay as the Buju song you describe. I probably wouldn't want to listen to a song called "God Hates Fags" or "Go Kill Fags". But the usual hip-hop MO is to call your opponent Gay-Z (as someone notes above) which doesn't offend me that much. I guess the pleasure I get from the music outweighs the offensive factors.
But as a general rule, my political beliefs don't determine my aesthetic tastes (and vica versa). Do you only listen to music that agrees with your political views? I think actual politicians (like Santorum)are the problem, not Eminem. I don't think the best way to judge the quality of art is to examine its real world impact, as you do when you took sides and picked Sleeper. (Incidentally, you're wrong about that. I'm sure Public Enemy made many suburban kids far more liberal than they would have been otherwise.) The prob with this view is that tons of music has bad effects on the real world. Judas Priest made a kid kill himself, KMFDM made kids shoot up their schools, Nirvana glamorized heroin, Britney turns young girls into anorexic sluts, Negativland made some kid kill his parents, etc. (people have argued all these points, anyways).
Same with literature. Shakespeare and TS Eliot have written far more nasty anti-semitic works than PE ever did. Would you be offended by seeing The Merchant of Venice in a bookstore? And if you want to ban a work that turned a lot of people into homophobes, you should ban the Bible.
So it's a slippery slope, my friend. At some point you have to give up and say that despite Shakespeare/Eminem's offensiveness, he's a good writer. And IMO that's the best way to look at art. BTW, I'm not even a huge Eminem fan. And I doubt he's truly homopobhic. if he is, he's one of the few that would sing a duet with a flamboyantly gay man, and make a movie in which he defends a gay co-worker from a homophobic boss, dispatching the boss with the immortal line "He may be gay, but you're the faggot." That line should explain what I was trying to say earlier about hip-hop homophobia.
As for your legislation, that describes the way things work now, doesn't it? It's just that gays don't have enough political power to remove material that insults them, while blacks and Jews do. So if America was a different, less anti-gay place, people who wanted to sell records couldn't use any homophobic lyrics. But America doesn't offer gays basic rights. So worry about Santorum, not Eminem.

And that's everything I have to say on the subject. What a long fucking rant.

i actually agree with much of what you have to say. and i, too, should be working rather than going into this to the extent i have - but i'll try and answer your points.

I.e. if your parents hate gays, you're more likely to hate gays.)
not sure i agree with this one. depends on how the person relates to their parents. i know a lot of people who deliberately went against what their parents believed in. its that 'rebelling' part of growing up, isn't it?

But as a general rule, my political beliefs don't determine my aesthetic tastes (and vica versa). Do you only listen to music that agrees with your political views?

i was thinking about this last night, wondering how hypocritcal my 'you CAN'T listen to anti-gay lyrics and be a nice, fluffy, liberal' stance was. i've actually gone through my record collection and, to be honest, i think the answer is 'yes'. as i've said before, i can distance myself from the artist - see the comment about nina simone above - but not from the art. i can block out nina simone's views on the world whilst just enjoying her music but if she ever wrote a song about how gay people should be shot (she did say this in an interview - i think she was quoted out of context but then i choose to believe that because i like her music - yeah, its hypocritical, i know) i couldn't listen to that, and i'm not sure that i could listen to any album that had that track on it.

i'm not trying to say that all homophobia in hip hop is that strong, btw, although there are a few examples i could come up with, but its a useful example with which to answer your question.
equally, there's mr stephen morrissey. now, i choose to believe all this talk about him being a fascist is libellous nonsense. it suits me to believe that, and in his more recent interviews he has actually said that people misunderstood some of the songs and gestures that he's made in the past. i believe 'national front disco', for example, is a blatant piss-take of people who are far-right (it really is, if you listen to it) - but i can't play it - partly because it really is a bit rubbish, but mostly because of the way the line 'england for the english' hits me. it feels wrong, it jars the way i interact with the song, and it spoils it.
its coincidental that most of morrissey's dodgiest songs are also his worst musically. but i still don't think i'd be able to listen to a good song with something i really found offensive in there. i suppose this comes down to the way you interact with a song, and how important you find lyrics in comparison to music.

its also a question of degree, as you said. i can cope with knowing side-swipes and the odd wry comment. i can't cope with out-and-out agression or comments that appear to stem from ignorance.

i'm willing to admit that i might have been wrong about sleeper. to some degree, i'm guilty of what i have been complaining about above, and i'm dismissing public enemy on the basis of a vaguely-formed impression, and on what i've read in certain sectors of the press concerning their stance on this issue. oh, and on the comments of a certain ex-member. i DO know that there have been some odd comments made more recently (at the recent atp festival, for example) but these are, perhaps, to be weighed against other factors.
and...let's face it...sleeper WERE shite.

as for shakespeare and the bible, those are valid points. i think the reason there is a qualitative difference between those and artists recording today is precisely that the newer artists ARE recording today. a comment made five centuries ago can be taken in its historical context. a comment made two decades ago, or two months ago, is less easy to justify (not impossible, just less easy). also - its harder to guess the motive of someone writing in that historical context (see a hundred thousand phd theses - 'was shakespeare gay/ anti-jewish/anti-women' and so on.)

equally, though shakespeare is respected, he isn't really societally emulated. on the day when 'da kidz' are donning long curly wigs, dodgy moustaches and doublets, and strutting round stratford shouting 'yo, jew!' i'll take your point but, for now, although his literary stature remains undiminished, and there are lots and lots of people that would like to be able to write like that, there aren't too many people that actually model themselves upon him. that's the crucial point to me, and the reason that people like eminem have the influence they do - which i perceive as far stronger (incidentally, you're right about britney - and i don't know what the solution to that might be).

as for banning the bible - don't get me started on that. you really, really don't have the time, and neither do i.. let's just say that i think its in need of a damn good editing job. king james didn't do us any favours with his version.

i don't really agree with your points about eminem. i'm not sure what that 'he's gay but you're the faggot' comment actually means. it sounds, to my mind, kind of meaningless, or an 'he's allright, for one of THEM' sort of comment. as for eminem/elton, i believe elton john would sing with satan if he thought he'd get some publicity out of it. particularly if satan was young and reasonably well-built (marshall doesn't do much for me, but next to elton he doesn't look so bad). as for eminem - i think it was to placate people, and to suggest that he might not be anti-gay. but it stands alone as a rather strange gesture against the general attitude, demeanor and lyrical stance he displays.

legislation in the uk does not, currently, work in the way i suggested. it could be adapted to do so but that has not yet happened. i have mixed feelings about this sort of legislation, because it isn't always used in the most appropriate manner. it solves the problem we were talking about above but it would be better if broadcasters could adapt their own codes of conduct. what those might be is possibly the subject of another discussion.

finally, i'm mercifully unaware of santorum, and who he might be. i feel like i should ask, but i also feel like i don't want to know.

i'm not sure how coherently the above reads (despite having proof-read) but i'll post it anyway. i should really do some work today.

thanks for the thought displayed in your reply, and for taking my points seriously.

-- sym (shmuelm4...)

(incidentally, you're right about britney - and i don't know what the solution to that might be).

-- hobart paving (elvistear...), January 14th, 2004.

That's nice

That's nice
-- DJ Mencap (lackofinteres...), January 14th, 2004.

okay, i should qualify that. especially as we're having a conversation about prejudice.

the way britney spears has been marketed is symptomatic of a media that objectifies the female body and fetishishes thinness to such an extent that this helps to encourage the growth of eating disorders amongst young people (male and female) of a certain age. i'm aware that this is news to nobody, by the way.

britney does not turn young girls into anorexics.
i'm not sure how i feel about the 'slut' part. don't like the word very much, but as for them being sexually aware - if girls just wanna have fun, who am i to stop them?

i do feel that you've picked up on a very small aside from the above conversation - but i acknowledge that it was a glaring oversight on my part - i had remembered more the sentiment that the marketing of britney encouraged anorexia than the way it was actually worded, and i should have checked that first.

is that better?

now, we could do sexism in music while we're here. does anyone have a spare week?

Santorum = loudly homophobic Republican Senator. Also has another meaning, which you actually don't want to know. In the line "He may be gay but you're the faggot", gay = non-perjorative description of a homosexual coworker that Eminem is friends with; faggot = perjorative description of presumably heterosexual asshole boss. To understand further, watch the movie! It's actually surprisingly good and innocuous. Obv. you could argue that it's an attempt to sanitize his image, and he may not have even written those words himself. We may never know whether Eminem is a homophobe deep in his heart, and at this point, I don't care.

Nice fluffy liberal, signing off.

FUCK OFF. What a load of cock. surely you could argue, then, that Alison Moyet might inspire doughnut eating or that I should, by rights, have gone and hit the gym after seeing Peter Andre videos? What a crock of shit. Britney looks great and doesn't make anyone turn into anything.

Yeah, obviously it was something I picked out of a pretty long post, but it was kind of glaring, and I think pop fans can be credited with a little more intelligence than you're offering.

There, no mud slinging.

cman:
FUCK OFF. What a load of cock. surely you could argue, then, that Alison Moyet might inspire doughnut eating or that I should, by rights, have gone and hit the gym after seeing Peter Andre videos? What a crock of shit. Britney looks great and doesn't make anyone turn into anything.

*sigh*

go back and read it again. that was a retraction of my original comment that implied britney spears was directly responsible. put in very simple language - i don't think it was britney wot dunn it. i said it was symptomatic of a media that fetishised thinness that she had been marketed in the way she had (and i DO think she's very thin, btw, mencap - or at least she has been at certain stages of her life - i'm not implying that she, personally, has an eating disorder).

however, obviously i'm not about to try and take up the well-considered, intelligent and deeply perceptive comments c-man provided. 'what a crock of shit'... oh yes, there's no answering that..

britney does not turn young girls into anorexics.

would have made that abundantly clear.
are you just trying to elongate your thread by being offensive?

I don't see this as a particular problem though, because Britney is not an anorexic-type role model - she's curvaceous and healthy rather than skinny.

As for Peter Andre, C-Man, you're presumably much more aspirational to Brett Anderson, so maybe you take smack, avoid the suin, dress badly and proclaim "bring me an 8-year old!" at aftershows?

The thing to understand about Sleeper, and many other bands of that time, is that they were taking the piss out of themselves and pop music, in an affectionate way. I've got some charming video of Sleeper performing on TGINF, with Louise jigging about gauche-sexily in satin mini and egg-whacked hairdo. If they're taking themselves seriously there then my arse is called Geronimo Thompson.

I miss that let's-redo-pop-history-with-our-tongues-in-our-cheeks ethos, which the Pixies probably started. Now bands are taking themselves seriously again, witness the Strokes, the Distillers, and Yeah, Yeah, Yeah: please wink at me, just once, like Louise used to do.

so you don't see any playfulness or humour in what Yeah Yeah Yeahs do?

You're thinking of Brother Beyond...

ILM was a pretty weird place way back when.

I was looking for a thread on which to talk about Apocalypse '91 but this thread kinda took the wind out of my sails.

It's a great thread, cmon!