Sasha on Shadow, Diplo, Eminem & Minstrelsy

fair point vahid, well, ok then, how about dave angel? his album vs his fabulous mixtapes (check teh ravevtapes thread by the way, i put a 93 mix up)

ok everyone needs to realize that sasha is responding to a big book that sets lots of context for ideas of minstrelsy etc, and thus wanted to spend time talking about something other than what the book already did.

also i have my own problems with lots of the historic ideas about minstrelsy now prevelant in academia which i think are back-projecting more recent forms of cultural mishmashing back into a v. difft historic period and thus confuse matters quite a bit. but that's a whole nother axe to grind. however it does make sasha's point about trying to establish a continuum and then mark what and how things have changed a more interesting potential solution to this issue. but to talk about that, i think there needs to be more talk about the bigger issues of how things changed so we've got representation as indicating power (among many things) rather than the crude notion of representation AS power.

not sure if anyones said this already (i cant be bothered to scroll all the way up), but how can diplo and shadow be minstrels if their music is sounding 'white' compared to other hip hop? surely that disqualifies them from being received as the new al jolsons of rap as theyre not in 'sonic blackface'.

DJ Shadow and his Rabbit Foot Minstrels. Not a bad idea actually.

**The rich white kid practicing blackface in front of his mirror**

=

**back-projecting more recent forms of cultural mishmashing back into a v. difft historic period and thus confuse matters**

"**back-projecting more recent forms of cultural mishmashing back into a v. difft historic period and thus confuse matters**"

right...

not sure if anyones said this already (i cant be bothered to scroll all the way up), but how can diplo and shadow be minstrels if their music is sounding 'white' compared to other hip hop? surely that disqualifies them from being received as the new al jolsons of rap as theyre not in 'sonic blackface'.

-- ppp (pp...), May 28th, 2005.

I think the key quote of the Sasha piece here is: "In fact, I am more interested in the idea that Shadow and Diplo are not modern minstrels, and what kind of loss that might represent." I think he's saying that because these guys merely spin black music they like, but don't try to make music like that on their own records or make it a bigger part of identity, it's some kind of cheat or loss. Which is, I think, the most questionable idea of the whole piece.

It also doesn't help that he ignores any white rapper he doesn't like. First he admits that "making the distinction that Eminem is more blackface than, say, Limp Bizkit or Linkin Park, would not hold true in every theoretical showdown" but then says "wouldn’t there be more than two white rappers who regularly chart in the Top 10?" There are! Just not rappers that make his best of the year. And hip-hop != rap. "Hollaback Girl" is just as 'blackface' as "Just Lose It." I'm annoyed that he pulls a "these ideas have to get out to the PEOPLE!" in his rebuttal to this thread while focusing his ideas on artists like Diplo and DJ Shadow rather than ones that the people give a shit about, rather than my three interfriends.

that should be 'focusing his ideas on artists like Diplo and DJ Shadow, who only my three interfriends care about'

gah, you know what i mean.

haha, yeah, I understood what you were saying. good point.

actually 'Hollaback Girl' is probably MORE blackface than 'Just Lose It.' Eminem's whole deal was that he was raised in a mostly black neighborhood, 'this IS my culture,' etc. Gwen started in a goddamn rock band before goin' all Kelis on us (but haha then ska-rock is blackface too, ain't it?).

miccio there are white cheerleaders too, really.

these ideas need to get to the mainstream!

yeah white cheerleaders coined "hollaback"

small request: since these comments were delivered in a context an in response to very specific things could people who actually know and can illuminate on the context (or at the very least have read love and theft) post more and people who won't to pretend this has something to do with whatever they blog about post less thx.

miccio for a 'man of the people' you sure don't spend much time with them. leave the college radio booth. listen to less singer-songwriter wank. maybe actually get two parts of yr body to move at once.

damn, all it took was the word "hollaback" this time.

you do realize that getting personal in the same way every time I contradict you kind of takes the zing out, right? I mean I got defensive on the Dizzee thread (back before I provided you phrases like 'singer-songwriter' and you had that careerist fantasy) but now its just kind of predictable and sad.

and in case its not clear, I'm not saying I invented the term, just that I was using it self-deprecatingly about my own tastes before you made it your fallback in the face of dissent.

if you prick a hack, does it not bleed?

that one's kinda lost its edge too, dude.

yeah, but what about if you hack a...
oh wait, that's just gross.

You never mention how often I typo, blount. I'm actually a little self-conscious about that. Use that next time.

if you bleed a prick, does it not hack?

next comes the change of subject. like maybe what's on tv.

and then ned says there is peace.

miccio i could actually give a fuck about you, sorry, the world's got way too many backstabbing careerist fuxx to worry about any particular one (besides john bolton) right now. but if you toss out some lame indie/alt blogwank in the guise of 'populism' i'm gonna call 'shenanigans', sorry. invest in more tissues. get some fresh air.

oh you so do not have anything better to care about.

me, I'm at work watching an empty library. bored.

braves getting their ass kicked here.

and wouldn't you contradict the actual points made rather than do the same old 'yer all hacks' shtick. I mean if you wanted to get the truth out, rather than just swing at people who contradict you. Yer just pissed I made fun of a song you like.

So much time spent shit talking on this board. please. everyone on here is very nice.

somebody told me i should post on this thread so i said fuck it why not- look yall this is pretty basic shit, sasha is a smart dude but i dunno all that new yorker garbage must be gettin to him if he thinks that this is some kinda new racial recontextualization blackface shit. nobody gives a fuck about diplo, he is corny mp3 internet blog music. now i wouldnt lump shadow in with that even tho i wouldnt give two fucks about his music now cuz hes comin from a different scene, that 90s cali/bay underground with groups like latyrx and jurassic 5 and them. it was a genuine hip-hop scene not some rock critic hipster nerd dj fuckin around with street cred and black identity to make money off black folks music. that dude who writes for murder dog and dissed hollertronix a while back was speakin the truth right there, when he said that shit like the hollertronix website and all that is like when white colleges go out of their way to put black faces in their pamphlets and shit. its the opposite of back when black jazz artists had to put white people on their covers to sell records. here is where 'blackface' is comin from now- this is a bunch of new skool white uncomfortable liberals who are dying for that black cool but dont actually want to fuck with black folks or black culture in anything but the corniest most removed way. they want the sheen of it, they want black culture the extra-small t-shirt, part of that new generation of 'all genre' music nerd whose favorite shit about rap music is slang and novelty and a big one-up GOTCHA to their corny rock music friends ('actually i was listening to LIL JON!'). these muthafuckas will be the first to talk about bling bling benz kitted out knuck if you buck thowed and all that shit but when it comes to what a rapper is actually sayin they could give a fuck. its just a big mish mash of the weirdest 1% of shit that rappers actually say. now i have not heard any of diplo from hollertronixs solo shit but i read about it on the 1000 white rap blogs who are up on this shit and it sounded like it would be some garbage. at least back in the day dj shadow seemed like something different. i first read about him in vibe magazine, their end of the year issue for 96, they were talkin a bunch of bullshit about him expanding hip-hops boundries and shit. but it was still connected to rap music, he came outta a rap music crew and had respect for it. i dont know about if he does now, i have not fucked with him in a long time so i couldnt say. his earlier shit just seemed like he had been fuckin with production so he wanted to do some shit like david axelrod and isaac hayes and all that. madlib does the same shit now with all that blue note yesterdays new quintet shit, and so does pete rock kinda. i think alot of cats would do this if the market was right, generally 90s production dudes either updated their sound for how rap is now or they secretly wanna be making instrumental music. but this new internet rap nerd mp3 generation, i dont think its like that. its a conscious attempt to separate from rap music and black folks in general. what has diplo given back to the rap community at all? he basically steals music from southern artists and slightly repackages so its ok for corny white hipsters. i know white dope dealers who do the same shit- go to the poor black part of town, cop some cheap shit, and take it back to rich white folks with the price jacked up. theyll buy it cuz theres a white face on it, they dont have to fuck with any black folks. the problem is, music isnt dope. there are rappers in georgia who are strugglin to make a dollar, even artists who have gone platinum and been on top of the charts. its hard times right now, big market. for this rich white hipster to be stealin music from folks who worked hard on it, and to "fix" it for a corny rock audience, that shit makes me sick. they make instrumental albums to prove that they arent "really" like that. look at how diplo has gotta mix it with all this trendy rock music and other shit like that, sayin rap music is not good enough to stand on its own so you gotta prop it up with a bunch of bullshit. if he loves the shit so much why not just drop a rap mixtape? why not get in the rap mixtape market?? its not like that forbids white folks, except you have to actually deal with rappers and black people and deal with the fact that it might not just be trendy clued-in internet kids who listen to your shit. there are all kinda white folks in the rap scene and its not some kinda blackface shit except for this new hollertronix audience. these dudes just cant accept actually havin to commit to rap music or the culture or that maybe white folks dont deserve to be makin money for copy-pasting a bunch of mp3s and burning it to a cd-r with a corny graphic on it. everybody knows white people have got the most $$ in this country still. you can make major dough by fuckin with what white folks wanna hear, look at all those new rock bands out now with their super hip fashions and shit like that, its more 'cool' than any of that shit used to be even just like 5 years ago. until youre conscious of your place in rap as a white person you should not be fuckin with it, there is a racial history to this shit. you can get accepted 100% but you cant just make it a one-way thing. when has this muthafucka done anything for rap music? he has taken food out the mouth of rappers, thats it.

but you just said his whole audience = corny white folks who don't really like rap, so it's not like they're going to buy any of those records anyway, right? (i'm not going to bat for diplo's record, but that argument looks like a regular old anti-poseur line with a race card stuck to the front of it)

I'm amazed how much of this thread seems to sail right by SFJ's point, except for somebody to call it "the most questionable idea of the whole piece" - and since it's his *argument*, that's what it kinda oughta be. I heard Sasha's question, as posed in the context of the panel, as being whether the reason that Diplo *isn't* a more important artist is that he doesn't have the courage to back his love of black music (more in ref to southern hip-hop than to baile funk btw) with more brazen theft. You can call this a lack of talent but maybe talent includes having the sheer politically incorrect nerve to do what you want whether you have the "right" to, or not. Now, there's a weird kind of accusation of false consciousness involved there, which is difficult to process, but I found Sasha's suggestion provocative that right now there's a politesse involved in the progressive-white side of racial relations that might hobble artists' ability to get down'n'dirty with it, and that individdles like Eminem who are willing to go for it and suffer the attacks are super-rare. "These dudes just can't accept actually having to commit to rap music," nah said, and he had a lot of good points. but I think Sasha would agree with them. he was saying that publically a lot of whites aware of the history of this dynamic wonder if they have the right to make that commitment, and so they end up half in, half out, and that's not much use, or worse.

The comeback to this would be, I think, that a shortage of white rappers might be a small price to pay to see a black-dominated culture finally to get to take a dominant place in American entertainment, and it might be smart not to try to rush past this stage in the name of integration, lest that end up being just a shortcut back to white hegemony. I mean, Eminem's good, but the reason he got so much bigger than nearly all other rappers was not because he was that much better than all other rappers, y'know what I mean?

nah man i could give a fuck about posers or whatever, i could give a fuck if this cracker came from the fuckin richest part of town or if he came from the south side projects and bumped ugk in the whip back in 92, my issue is with him takin other folks music. he might be sellin it to corny white folks but if he did it proper they would be learning about the shit and who does what and what rappers are poppin, and then he would be takin some of that money and givin it back to the artists he took it from. look, i run with mixtape djs here and when they do a tape they get the music from the artists themselves with their permission, unless its like some nelly or 50 cent shit on a major label. they will crew with a rapper and promote them and you will never ever see a mixtape without a tracklist. again i need to stress i have not really heard this cats music i just know what hes on cuz of the internet goin nuts for another white boy who bumps lil jon. he cant stand on his own two feet in a rap community, its just a bunch of hipster context and the "right" packaging. and i know to yall thats probably a rockist point of view but when it comes to this kinda shit it actually is important for black folks to make money off their own music. i have the same opinion on major label heads who pimp out artists like that, im not just keepin this on some bullshit dj who stays on the internet. but right now im workin as a rap promoter and a rap critic and as somebody who tries to work with artists and get their music out there so they can eat i dont like havin to see 1000 news articles about this dumb ass white dj and actually good writers like sasha frere jones wasting their time with his bullshit just cuz white privelege strikes again. this is not even an elvis/eminem situation, which i know is what his point was. at least they were goin into it with some level of commitment. eminem has brought his crew up, he has done alot for talented rappers like proof and obie trice and 50. im just sayin, you cant come at rap music to pillage for whats hot but keep this wack defense mechanism like you gotta protect your whiteness from the black man

and yeah carl is tellin the truth on that, i mean like i said i will fuck with alot of white folks in rap music even though alot of them are comin at it with the white privelege like eminem, he eminem usedta be a tight lyricist but lets be honest it shoulda been royce instead. like in that ras kass interview where he was talkin bout how labels say he puts too many concept joints out but then look at eminem with his 'stan' and then doin garbage like 'mosh' and 'just lose it'. hes still doin good work with shit like his 2pac remix compilation, i cant hate on anybody who gives it up for pac like that. but the point is, rap music is mostly colorblind now. look at 3-6 mafia, fuckin with lil wyte, or dungeon fam with bubba, or swishahouse with paul wall. look at g-unit fuckin with all kinda white producers like alchemist and scram jones and jake one and disco d. you just gotta make tight music, its not hard. if youre a white rapper or dj and rap as a whole is not fuckin with you, its cuz youre making wack music. look at the underground cats who talk about im white, this and that white, every word out their mouth is about bein white and white frame of reference. and they hate on real rap all the time cuz theyre the white god who came to save it. and then you got the flipside of that, which is shit like diplo right there. he wont say that lil jon is wack or that 50 cent is wack, cuz you know as a whole most white kids dont even think that. honestly i respect the underground nerd rappers more than somebody like him, they make garbage music and talk 100% bullshit but at least theyre goin out there rappin. at least they give enough of a fuck to be a rapper instead of some chameleonic hipster dj who wants to make sure he never gets enough black on him or he might get caught out by the white hipster kids who pay his bills

the no-tracklist thing is fucked for sure

sorry i keep gettin cut off and i have been away from here too long so im not on top of my critical thinking game but here is the point i finally came to on this- sasha jones is tryna say that diplo is not a new minstrel cuz of his 'faceless' quality. i say bullshit, his face is all over that. he may not be changin the music, except thru remixes and blends with rock music and whatnot, but the only reason any of those kids are fuckin with it is cuz of his whiteness. i have been a white boy in the rap industry for a minute now and what every white boy eating off rap needs to know is that you have to give up your spot. you cannot take money out of black folks mouths by advantage of your whiteness, even if youre poor as fuck and the rapper youre fuckin with has got a humvee. you simply do not do that. when i get a chance to shine im immediately thinkin about who i can put on. im thinkin about my fam, my friends, im thinkin about the dopeboy who gave me a cd-r at the club last night cuz he wants out of the game, im thinkin about who i promised to keep their name ringin. nonstop i am doin free promotions, in terms of puttin up posters, doin reviews, interviews, connecting artists with mixtape djs and radio, all that. atlanta is the home of the most black owned businesses in america and i have been blessed to work with some of the greatest black businessmen and women in america. im not tryna put my face on nobody elses work. you dont get to be a white internet superstar in the rap game by spendin all day with a bunch of gucci mane posters down in south dekalb county. and if you do get your turn to shine, cuz the people that youre fuckin with finally blow up or whatever, then take it. you dont get to shine right out the gate, its not your place. you gotta be aware of your whiteness, not in the sense that you know how you can make rap whiter to sell to white kids but in the sense of how your whiteness and white history has affected rap music and black folks in america. i grew up poor as fuck but there is still a privelege afforded to me as a white person, i am better off automatically. see thats how diplo is different from a white rapper, like what sasha was sayin. hes takin the privelege of identify shift by not actually bein a part of rap music. back in high school i got all that wigga bullshit, cuz i wear my clothes a couple of sizes bigger than some white college boy i will get looked at suspicious. just by goin into that culture you will catch that, even if youre white you will get eyed by police or store security if you got baggy pants or you look like youre comin from the wrong side of the tracks. eminem might have been able to use his whiteness and subject matter to blow up but hes still a suspect to most people. hes "just as bad as them" to racists. or worse! but when suddenly youre a "cool" white hipster dj only dipping his rock music toes into rap every now and then to blacken your image up, you are exactly like those old minstrels back in the day. nobody thought they were black. at the end of the show they would take off the cork and to racists they were as good as any white man, or better cuz they were clownin black folks well. most white rappers, unless youre one of those white underground nerds who can pass for a rock musician white guy, are still runnin with black crews, comin from the black part of town, rockin chains and watches and long tees and all that shit. they dont go on stage as a rapper and then get off stage and theyre a herbish white dude again who the police are gonna leave alone. but that is what this man diplo is up to and that is your minstrelsy right there.

nah otm!

Nah.

yeah i'm not about to argue with that (x-p). i will say that it strikes me as unfair to zero in on diplo when that culture is just as much if not more reliant on and vice/fader mags etc but maybe hollertronix is a lot bigger than i think.

Diplo's pretty high profile. A year or two ago you couldn't escape the Hollertronix talk -- er, if you were a coastal hipster plugged in sort -- and it's only gotten bigger with his solo album, MIA connections, etc.

xpost And he's a shitty DJ anyways. The Hollertronix party were some of the most painful I've ever been to. The tracklist thing isn't that surprising since their whole scene hinges on "look how cool we are!" rather than any sense of craft or acknowledgement to the music they play.

Nah, are you saying acquiescing to the proscriptions placed upon you as a white person in a black milieu is always the best(or even a good) approach for everyone everywhere? In the interest of art if for no other reason I find your prescription kind of depressing, and I'm black as hell. Respect is good but don't fall in love with your shackles.
The whole 'taking food out of black mouths' argument has always struck me as a recipe for black complacency and white reverence and non-engagement(ie. I've only seen this coming out of the mouths of wackass black performers). Is that what we're shooting for? If we're gonna put all this thought into this, why not at least give a nod to the artistic ideal,whatever that happens to be? I feel like this constipative, circular conversation surrounding the white guilt is holding up a lot of hot shit that I might want to hear. Relieve yourselves! NAH!

While Diplo's actions are arguably more offensive than Eminem's, they're not closer to minstrelsy. Minstrels were low-class, their entertainment horrified the upper-class and power figures. While they could remove the cork (and Eminem can too, compare the video for "Real Slim Shady," where he mocks and frightens mainstream america, with "Like Toy Soldiers," where he's surrounded by white light as he tries to keep black people from killing each other - give him a decade and he'll be able to pull an Elvis-Nixon handshake), they were definitely getting their hands dirty and making influential alterations in American entertainment culture. So yeah, Carl Wilson (and Sasha - for all my qualms with the piece as a whole, this point has merit) really got a point when he says that Diplo on some level suffers both in relevance and art from his unwillingness to go further.

sorry, I meant "My Name Is" - shots of older white people going wtf???, not "Real Slim Shady"

I'm surprised there are no Diplo apologists noting that he has produced a track(or tracks? Not sure) for Kano. And to play devil's advocate, besides giving credit where credit is due on the mixtapes, what would going further for Diplo mean? Production duties on the next Dipset album? A Swizz Beats type record? Becoming the Prefuse 73 of the mainstream hip hop world?

haha maybe a better comparison for him than minstrelsy is Steve Rubell with a touch of Giorgio Moroder.