Are white people who say "I don't like hip hop" yet listen to it when white people make it really saying "i don't like black people"?

LL Kool J. (Started on the same label, too, with a similar tendency towards rock sounds.)

But you're right, there aren't a lot of them.

-- oops (don'temailmenicelad...), June 28th, 2005.

Really? I still remember the whole Professor Griff fiasco, among others...I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd be interested in which aesthetics and values you're referencing.

Oh sorry, I misunderstood. Good call.

Thanks for making me burst out laughing & nearly choke on my dinner.

I think Tim's point, which I agree with, is that rock audiences tend to only like hip hop that is endorsed and approved by mainstream rock critics, general MTV rotation, college radio, etc.

Doesn't MTV play a fair amount of hip hop and rap these days? I don't watch much of it (no TV :( ) but I feel like when I do flip through the channels at my friend's house, I see a lot more rap videos being shown on it than there were even 5 or 6 years ago.

Maybe think of the Stones et al. as reminding me of Eminem, and work backwards (the Stones also remind me of bits of Public Enemy and Kool Moe Dee and Spoonie Gee).

Anyway, there's a double effect going on: if you're a republican voter and a republican politician tells you to care about something, you're more likely to at least think twice before disagreeing. On the other hand, if you're a republican politician and a republican voter tells you to care about something, you're also more likely to at least think twice before disagreeing.

So there are two levels of identification: specific case-by-case values/positions (which we might consider to be roughly analogous to styles and values in music) and the sense of identification with a communitarian discourse around values, which allows you to say "I'm a republican/democrat/indie fan/rap fan" etc. Each mutually reinforce but can also manipulate and mutate the other.

Obviously not all pro-choice republicans are going to become pro-lifers just because they are republican. In the same way not all people who like/dislike hip hop are going to do so purely on the basis of the dictates of the musical discourse in which they primairly move. In both cases there are multiple factors to be taken into account, as well as space to make a personal decision based on what can be very complex personal beliefs and ethical/aesthetic values etc. At the same time, if I was a republican who was undecided on this issue, wouldn't I be likely to give strong weight to the arguments of my pro-life republican friends, who seem to be in accordance with many of my other values?

Thing is, I kinda doubt Rocket From the Tombs, the Electric Eels, or the Contortions ever got played much on Detroit rock stations! (Or even the Sex Pistols, when I was living there.) (And I had no idea that "My Name Is" did either, until now.) (But I DO understand how Eminem partakes in a punk aesthetic -- like, wishing violence upon his Mom and stuff - that most rappers never would.)

I agree with the first part but not with the second. I think you're giving both politicians and critics too much credit for listening to their "constituents." At least I hope most music writers don't bend and capitulate every time they get nasty LTEs.

Parents they just don't understand.

Tim, I half agree with you, but I want you to take in what Oops and I are saying. People respond to content. That is, if a Republican gatekeeper said, "You should listen to and appreciate Eminem because he's got a song where he rapes his mother," this would not impress his constituents, whereas if a punk-rock gatekeeper said the same thing, it would impress his constituents.

(Hey, cool, I've got constituents.)

Do you care for me
Like once I cared for you
Honey come and be my enemy
So I can love you too
Sick boy sick boy fading out
Learning to be cruel
Baby with me in the heat
Turn me loose on you

Eminem lyric from "My Name Is":

This guy at White Castle asked me for my autograph
So I signed it, "Dear Dave, thanks for the support, ASSHOLE!"

I trust you're out there shaking hands and kissing babies.

rock audiences tend to only like hip hop that is endorsed and approved by mainstream rock critics, general MTV rotation, college radio, etc.

And one of the reasons for this is that rock audiences tend to be similar (culturally, socially, emotionally) to the critics et al.; they've self-selected themselves as people who pay attention to critics, for this reason.

Structural musical taste, like politics, doesn't work by getting influential people to say that white is black (ie. "Eminem espouses conservative moral values when he pretends to rape his mother") but by changing what it is that people consider to be important in politics/music. Your Eminem/Punk example is a good one: the punk rock gatekeeper, if he were to elaborate, would say: "ignore the content relating to rapping and samples and guntalk, focus on the content relating to mother-raping!" - ie. the "content" of a particular piece of music will depend on what you seek to get out of it.

The Eminem example is a good one: Elton John doesn't congratulate Eminem for hating homosexuals, but he does congratulate him for "bucking the trend" and "saying things no-one else will" etc. ie for Elton John the "content" is read through a matrix of values that emphasises artistic free speech and rebellion over respect for others' sexual orientation.

Likewise frequently the "content" of current street hip hop for a lot of reformed rap-haters starts off being the interesting sonics and only gradually extends to the rapper's flow and persona.

That might be true for people who, well, read rock criticism and seek out reviews and are like most ILMers. But that arguement doesn't hold water for 'casual' (for lack of my brain coming up with a better word) white music fans who listen to Eminem and Beastie Boys but not rap by black artists.

Interesting example. Why does Eminem get the benefit of the doubt but not other instances of homophobia, misogyny, and gunslinging misanthropy?

No I wouldn't. I tell people to listen to the musical relationships and think of them as incipient social relations, actually.

Of course, I might play the authenticity card and tell the reader that if he doesn't like Spoonie Gee, Kool Moe Dee, Public Enemy, and Eminem, then he doesn't like real punk, but only the stuff that dresses up like punk.

(I can be really obnoxious when it serves my purposes.)

This puts it better but I'm not sure if it means something different to what I'm saying - ie. saying "here are three ways that Eminem is like punk" also says "here is how to listen to Eminem as if he were punk" ie. "here is what to listen for in Eminem".

It actually does at that!

So you should like the Pistols because they're sweet like the Crystals (if you overlook all the noise and caterwauling and destruction, that is).

Walter, I actually think that rock and hip-hop have a lot in common emotionally, and I think the trouble rock fans have with hip-hop is that the latter has moved beyond them formally. (That is, some rock and some hip-hop have a lot in common, though by now those two genres encompass several universes each.) I don't see why a Beasties fan wouldn't like Cypress Hill (who had a minor hit last year with a song based on a Clash sample), but I can see how the Beasties are easier on his ears.

Yes I agree with this!! So then I'm not sure where we disagree. What am I saying that seems odd?

See, I believe it was the very last major case of "white guy=rock, black guy=rap, even if all sonic evidence points to the contrary" industry thinking. The very thinking that Eminem's debut, in effect, ended. Rock radio never played his singles again after that. But for those first several weeks, they did.

*still doubt that these so-called gatekeepers have as much impact on people's tastes as walter and tim do

not true at all - whfs in balt/dc played "the real slim shady" pretty heavily, if i remember, and i believe continued playing many of his singles as he kept releasing albums. i stopped listening to that station a few years ago, but i seem to remember even something as late as "without me" getting airplay.

Oops I think I understand yr resistance now. I don't see myself as being outside of this process at all! My tastes have totally evolved according to the sorts of groups i've moved amongst and ideas I've been exposed to. I too really dislike attempts to distinguish between sheep listeners and liberated listeners. What is ILM if not a "community" that does the exact same thing that e.g the alt/indie rock "community" does? How else would people be able to complain about the "hivemind"?

And Ned is right, it's not at all about individual gatekeepers (can't remember who used that word first) so much as an entire structure of ideas and ways of thinking about music that you get from radio, magazines, television, your friends, your workmates, the bars you go to etc. etc. The success of eg the Beastie Boys is helped along by all of these - not just cover stories in Spin, but also friends making copies of Hello Nasty for eachother etc.

Because he's obviously smarter than that but he's an artist in love with provocation/uses ghetto tropes incidentally as grist for his creative mill/some other shit that halfway makes sense...

I mean, yeah he obviously is some of that but why does that realization(or rather, examination) require such a leap of faith when it comes to the hordes of black rappers with similiarly complex and disparate personas is the question that gets soft-pedalled in discussions like these if it comes up at all. The fact that if you lined them up in front of the casual non-rap fan(who has heard of them), Nas would=50 Cent=Snoop=Mike Jones=Busta Rhymes=Ghostface=Ludacris, and it's the black skin that's papering over wildly differing levels of playfulness, bravado, malice, imagination, etc. of their respective musical packages. I don't know at what level the "let's at least listen to the white guy" meme is being maintained or furthered, and if the only problem was sloppy assignment on the critical chessboard(in "purely" musical terms) it would be a massive improvement, as it stands there's plenty of space made for 'those rappers over there' but very little actual consideration and engagement is afforded at all(and listening /=engaging) and the reason why has a lot more to do with the question at the top of the thread than most of this discussion belies.
Speaking personally, it's a red flag when someone lists Paul Boutique as "the greatest rap album ever" without apologizing and identifying themselves as clueless dilettantes, at which point I'm willing to swallow an oopsish scenario with Beastie Boys as 'perfectly reasonable point of entry' but not without rolling my eyes.

You're probably right; but it probably did cross their feelings: something felt indie or alternative or modern rock about "My Name Is," probably, some emotional resemblance (and the white skin color could have contributed to the feelings as well). And also, the song doesn't move in the way that hip-hop tends to move, even Eminem's other tracks (in fact that's why I don't like it as much as "The Real Slim Shady"). It's more of a talk than a rap. And one of the things that may have made it feel "rock" is that the voice sounded white.

In regard to the question that started this thread: It's not surprising that a rock fan would hear something that rings his bell in Eminem and the Beastie Boys. Like attracts like.

What if said person is highly knowledgeable about and enjoys the more canonical (i.e. black) hip-hop albums, but just likes that particular album a little more?

Licensed to Ill. Way better.

I think you're too quick to assume it has to be one but not the other. To make a simple and not too carefully thought out analogy, taste in music is probably somewhere between taste in food and taste in literature: on the one hand some stuff just tastes nice (per food), but on the other, how we judge good/bad music is very much bound up in all the other music we've heard, and the way we've been "taught" to listen to it (per literature).

Even with food, there are some tastes you can get used to if you stick at it and even begin to approach in a very formalist manner (see wine tasting) so it's not totally unmediated enjoyment. It's not like adults start drinking a glass of wine with their meals because their taste buds spontaneously start responding well to wine at a certain age.

That said, people who drink wine do genuinely enjoy it: it's just that their enjoyment is following a model of enjoyment they have been encouraged to adopt. And of course this model would never have been adopted so widely in the first place if wine wasn't amenable to be enjoyed. But that doesn't change the fact htat drinking wine is a social practice. There is no primal cause for this practice, no person whose taste was totally unshaped by social factors, any more than peer group pressure at school starts with one kid, or the pressure to "keep up with the Joneses" actually starts with one family of Joneses.

how we judge good/bad music is very much bound up in all the other music we've heard

this is I think, for the majority of the population, the greatest determing factor in what music people do and do not like. it ties together our two arguments: most white people grew up listening to rock and this has shaped their aesthetic musical preferences. then it all snowballs and fold back on itself, as people interact with one another, particularly those within their social circles who have presumably grown up exposed to similar music.