Sasha on Shadow, Diplo, Eminem & Minstrelsy

what the fuck, asshole, what the fuck

my thing is i dont think cam is that one dimensional on drugs, that even if its always heartless and fake its still appearing in and shaded by a number of contexts. i need to listen to the record again though! but i think w rap being so dense comparatively, so many lines, that its easy for ppl to poach on, here, cams non sequiturs and then to go back and revise or reduce everything he raps abt to those terms

but, sc, i like the way you highlight ambivalence cuz rap for me, theres always shit i remember v specifically and then other shit thats notional or that i suppose i sorta remember what it ws abt, what it ws like, inside every song

Kind of disappointed the discussion moved away from the racial characteristics of non-verbal expression and how this can be detected and toward some PMRI shit about Cam'ron making it seem cool to smoke crack. (If great tragedy can't be made into great comedy I'm packing up my things and going home.)

Does someone want to, you know, tie it all together for me?

Alternately, are hip-hop artists supposed to carefully monitor the demographics of their audience and once it passes a certain percentage of white people stop being funny? I mean, in an ideal world, but...

Finally, Eminem's career arc explained.

Sure. Never heard of a ghetto pass? (I'm only partially joking)

But, what is real even? Is "I go on a lot of vacations and hang out with models" less real than "I remember well slinging rock on the corner?" Usually the actual fact of the matter is somewhere in between anyway, so it doesn't really make a difference except in the mind of the listener eating up the projected fantasy.

actually i wouldnt even suggest that a cam record contributes directly to a crack problem, altho i think he and we are implicated in smthng larger that does, just saying my suspicion is cam fans of the blogger persuasion are basically getting off on it, and ignoring it publicly

haha xpost- http://governmentnames.blogspot.com/2004/07/yo-dizzawgs-saturday-night-was-off.html

And do you think cocaine is exclusively a black problem? Do you that only blacks are misogynistic? Maybe you should check some of own assumptions, anonymous.

and cam is misogynistic, violent, greedy, hateful and self-serving. that ain't black people. that's me, and it sounds like that's you. and that's why cam'ron equally repeals me and intrigues me. that's the ambiguity that i was speaking of.

I want a watermelon.

miccio and xhuckx: officially off the hook.

i just doubt how many other facets of black life these rich white post-PC hipsters actually wanna think about besides crack sales, violence and misogyny. like, how come rock nerd/hipster white folks always choose biggie over pac?

tons of reasons, not least of which is that 99% of the time, hipsters are more interested in cleverness than in raw slice-of-life emoting (charlie parker always more popular in nerd-jazz circles than billie holliday).

how come all their fav white artists are nerdy pussies but then on the rap side its cam and lil jon?? it just feels like some white folks choose a few stand-ins for black culture and usually its hilarious ghetto fuck-ups (or intentional avant garde geniuses, depending on what kind of rap blog asshole you are)

or maybe they get their cry on to sensitive people with guitars (John Mayer, Modest Mouse, Coldplay) and their dance on to hip-hop, which if you haven't noticed is what MTV/BET/Vibe/XXL are constantly telling us is The Way It Is. i'm not saying this is an excuse, but it's not like the hipsters' take on hip-hop is any more fucked up than the rest of the world.

between all the jacked iconography and regional exoticism and nerdy messageboards and all-white parties w/ mad southern crunk jernts and nuff indie dance flava i think alot of these clued-in white kids now dont care or think about real actual black folk beyond slang, punchlines and 'entertainment'

but this is what always happens, has always happened. thanks to record stores, mail-order mix tapes, all-white parties and DJs, you can be down with whatever hip-hop you want and never have to lay eyes on a black person outside of an album cover. which usually means you're going to have a distorted view of black culture, based on the values of your own culture (in this case, valuing cleverness over authenticity), and you're going to get it wrong. it's not just these hipster kids, it's everybody.

the problem isn't that white people are listening to hip-hop, it's that white people/Dipset fans still aren't engaging with actual black people, which might make us think twice about laughing at jokes about crack. but other than chastising them for being so insular, i don't think it's fair to blame someone who gets their music criticism from their local alt.weekly for liking only Dipset. it's a problem with not enough black voices in the media, at record companies, at MTV.

(basically i'm just repeating ideas from Bomb The Suburbs now, sorry)

"based on the values of your own culture (in this case, valuing cleverness over authenticity), and you're going to get it wrong. it's not just these hipster kids, it's everybody."

how come i know all kinda regular white non-hipster kids who love pac than?! and for his authenticity instead of cleverness? how come pac is the best selling rapper of all time, for authenticity instead of cleverness?

"or maybe they get their cry on to sensitive people with guitars (John Mayer, Modest Mouse, Coldplay) and their dance on to hip-hop, which if you haven't noticed is what MTV/BET/Vibe/XXL are constantly telling us is The Way It Is. i'm not saying this is an excuse, but it's not like the hipsters' take on hip-hop is any more fucked up than the rest of the world."

what about nu metal?? i love some korn & distubed & limp bizkit cuz its crunk as fuck just like bohagen or youngbloodz or trillville or what the fuck ever. if black folks dont get to make sensitive music for non-hipster ppl how come the billboard charts is half r&b ballads at any given time?? and how come 99% of hipsters hate r&b ballads almost as much as they hate pac?

I dunno which is worse really but I know in my experience I know more 2Pac-loving insufferable "it's all about the authentic expression and experience, man, damn the man cause he's got his boot on the neck of the blacks" white people than the "ohmigod, cam's take on crack is totes rofflicious" type. Who like to rail on most R&B as sterile and overly commercial. Hipsters don't have the market cornered on willful interpretations of the black experience via their musical choices.