I should note, in response to a commenter's point on my last post, that yes, obviously gangsta rap obviously has already been domesticated by the upper-bourgeoisie, becoming a tame sort of protest music for young well-off white kids who aren't really protesting anything. But there's distinction between this sort of domestication and what's happened to jazz, which hasn't just become safe - it's become highbrow. And the following (irony-drenched and NSFW) video notwithstanding, I have a tough time imagining the same thing happening with Dr. Dre. (Moreover, if it does happen - if the fortysomething intellectuals of 2030 end up dragging their griping kids to hear the N.W.A. in the Park concert series - it will be a vastly more plausible indicator of cultural decline than the highbrowfication of Miles Davis.)
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Jazz And Gangsta Rap
17 Apr 2008 04:35 pm
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I'm a young, well-off white kid who listens to rap pretty much exclusively, so this might sound like special pleading. But why is it an "indicator of cultural decline" for hip-hop to go highbrow? As Ross said, jazz followed a pretty similar trajectory -- disreputable, reputable, and then hoity-toity. So did blues and rock music. The only difference is that these genres were sanitized and domesticated (and, let's face it, whitened) when they crossed over to a mainstream audience. That didn't happen to rap, and whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing probably says more about you than it does about hip-hop.
Originally, rap was headed down the same path of being taken up by white artists, which would have led black artists to make it better or to invent something new. After "Rapper's Delight" made the Top 40 in 1979, hip white bands started rapping.
In 1980, David Byrne added a famously white rap at the end of Talking Heads' Crosseyed and Painless:
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Another rap hit on white FM radio stations in late 1980 was The Magnificent Seven by the Clash. (Rap would seem like a natural style for Joe Strummer, who wasn't that musically talented but was hugely verbally inventive.)
In 1981, Blondie had a #1 Top 40 hit with Rapture.
This process traditionally inspired blacks to make up some new style.
But then, an ideology emerged that white musicians shouldn't "steal" from blacks, and that rap was off-limits to whites (with the supremely gifted Eminem two decades later being the exception that proves the rule).
Not surprisingly, blacks then fell into a stylistic rut that we've been stuck in ever since. We are coming up on the 30th anniversary of the first Top 40 rap hit. To somebody of an older generation, that's a ridiculously long period of time for one style to dominate.
With the arrival of gangsta rap, hip-hop became to a large part a minstrel show for the amusement of whites. (Too bad about the black kids who took it seriously, many of whom are dead or in prison.)
it will be a vastly more plausible indicator of cultural decline than the highbrowfication of Miles Davis.
You mean the highbrowification of Louie Armstrong. Miles Davis was always "highbrow", even in the 50s bebop was music for intellectuals and college kids. Bebop was more like indie rock is today than it was like rap - jazz had been well tamed by the 1930s.
My clueless prediction is that if rap becomes highbrow, it'll be become so after being gentrified with whiter, more "sophisticated" lyrics.
I can't imagine suburban high school students listening to the "gangsta" stuff after becoming old and bland.
I'm not old, but I'm pretty bland. Don't believe me? I'm commenting on Ross Douthat's blog. And I'll always love rap.
Why single out Dr. Dre? He's the conservative of the rap world. Tell me "The Watcher" isn't expressing a paleoconservative sentiment:
I moved out of the hood for good - you blame me?
N**** aim angry at n**** they can't beBut n**** can't hit n**** they can't see
I'm out of sight, now I'm out of they dang reach
How would you feel if n**** wanted you killed?
You'd probably move to a new house on a new hill
and choose a new spot if n**** wanted you shot
I ain't a thug - how much Tupac in you you got?
... a tame sort of protest music for young well-off white kids who aren't really protesting anything
But they are protesting something. No one can seriously assert that these white kids are endorsing the causal misogyny and violence of these songs. Or even that they're just remixing a nice tune. Quite the opposite.
They're using irony and humor to defang the lyrics. Because it doesn't work to counter aggression with aggression. Hence the "tame" tone. It's actually a rather conservative reaction.
What was it Napoleon feared most?
It's been said more eloquently, but it bears repeating: Steve Sailer is basically retarded.
Well, there's nerdcore, which uses the styles and tropes of gangsta rap to rap about overclass culture, and not entirely with satirical intent. There's M.I.A., who if not precisely "gangsta rap", certainly raps about gangstas in the third-world and third-world diasporas, and won tons of Pitchfork love for it (plus being a brilliant sampler). Then there's the entire world of underground hip-hop, which is essentially indie rap with all you'd think that implies.
Oh! Oh! Also, the kids in BAPE hoodies are cross-fertilizing with the American Apparel electro/dancerock crowd, with lingering rave influence, that'll probably spawn something interesting before long.
There seems to be some confusion about the difference between gangsta rap and hip hop in general. They are not interchangeable. Gangsta rap is a subgenre of hip hop, and a played out subgenre at that. It was practically a fad, as it was popular for only a litle while in the 90's and hasn't been since about 1998.
What gets me is the fact that most of these commenters obviously know little to nothing about hip hop. Hearing 50 Cent and saying all of hip hop is crap is like listening to Britney Spears and saying all pop is crap.
There are both artistic and commercial ends of the spectrum, and unless you are a hip hop head, apparently all you see is the commercial side of hip hop.Listen to Black Star, Common or Lupe Fiasco and you will find music that has just as much haute-bourgeoisie potential as your favorite jazz musician.
Hip hop is essentially poetry set to music, if you don't see how that could easily become a pretentious and anti-commercial indulgence for the upper class than you are blind.
Get off your F-in pedestal ya rap hataz
Is Steve Sailer capable of saying anything that isn't blatantly racist? Black musicians are only good when they're trying to impress white people? The hell?
There is an incredible amount of lameness happening in this conversation. Want proof? Your grandparents could have had the exact same discussion - just replace the word "rap" with "rock and roll."
And as for impending cultural decline, I give you this quote which was attributed to Socrates, by Plato:
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when eleders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
Kids these days, with their bad manners and crazy music!
What I think could theoretically happen is that hip hop, at its best, could become high-brow in the way Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits became high-brow. (A fan of Cohen would likely beat me for saying that, but I'll explain it) Neither has what you'd call a conventionally great voice and I don't think they're even known for unusually great instrument skills. They're known more for their passion and songwriting skills.
Rap/Hip-hop I think does have the potential to really say things and say them with feeling. In my opinion that potential is too often unexplored, but it does exist.
However comparisons to jazz, for me, still mostly fail. Jazz is a medium much more dependent on people who can play an instrument. In some ways it was easier for it to move into the classical realm because of that. In 1950 "Charlie Parker with Strings" came out, Juilliard educated Teo Macero was doing "Third Stream", and starting in 1957 Miles Davis was doing classical influenced work with Gil Evans. (And it wasn't all white influences either. Yusef Lateef and John Coltrane started experimenting with the classical music of India around the same time) I don't think rap could logically take that route. Although possibly it could link with opera. A Hip-Hop-Opera has probably even been done.
Still mostly all that is not the world we're living in. I don't see much hard evidence that lyrical brilliance or Pan-African intellectual concepts or what have you are common in hip-hop. Sure there's a potential for brilliance in rap, and it happens sometimes, but I can understand Cosby's annoyance.
What I feel I'm seeing a lot of here, from Cosby (my comedic hero) on down, is a lazy willingness to assume the bad elements within a genre are all that the genre is. I learned my mistake with that when I discovered Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Lucinda Williams and Loretta Lynn within a genre which I once thought to be uniformly awful.
Brilliance in Rap is happening every day and in many languages and many different directions. So many directions, in fact, that it would probably be better argued that rap is not a genre at all. It is a technique which has crossed into many genres. MIA blends hip-hop, electro and East Indian sounds. Eminem has more in common with Snoop Dog than with the Beastie Boys, who integrate both jazz and punk sounds into their work. MC Chris creates awesomely funny nerd rap. Dizzee Rascal seems to be remaking rap from scratch at times (pardon the pun). Hell, I know artists without labels who have put together incredible tracks which I listen to often, even though fame and fortune never struck for them.
In short, anyone who is willing to write off an entire branch of music is operating with a closed mind. The brilliance is out there. But you'd have to be willing to learn in order to hear it.
I'm open to being wrong, I might try more in this genre.
Still the popular rap, like pop-music in general, is often pretty poor. I think the concern is that the poor rap is more harmful by promoting worse behaviors. Although come to think of it there are people concerned Britney et alia have encouraged pretty bad behavior, so maybe we are being unfair.
''It was 20 years ago today
Sgt Pepper taught the band to play
They've been going in and out of style
But they're guaranteed to raise a smile''
The high point of rap
Yo, dug -
that quote isn't from Plato, it's from Aristophanes' Clouds;
it's spoken by a character named Strong Argument (who happens to be a pedophile, which at the time meant being a conservative and old-fashioned guy, vs. these new-fangled woman-lovers);
and it's not even a quote, it's a paraphrase.
Otherwise, your point remains.
"It's become highbrow".
Ross: much of the reason my Harvard experience seems to've been much better than yours, and why I've found your book grossly unfair, can be contained in one word: Wally's.
Well, what Sailer says is not only racist, it's wrong. I've had the pleasure of speaking with some of those jazz greats (including some white ones) -- and it wasn't whites they were trying to impress with their "musical sophistication," it was each other (which applies to rappers too, although I actually agree with Ross' point -- I just think Sailer's point misses the mark).
lampwick,
Disregard previous post. The Bartleby page at first, second, and third glance seems to support the quote as genuine, but then undermines it at the very end. Thanks for the correction.
"I don't see much hard evidence that lyrical brilliance or Pan-African intellectual concepts or what have you are common in hip-hop. Sure there's a potential for brilliance in rap, and it happens sometimes, but I can understand Cosby's annoyance."
Actually, it happens (or at least it used to) a whole lot. Of course, if you just listen to the hits on the radio, you wouldn't know that, any more than you'd know that there are some great lyricists in rock from strictly listening to the hits in that genre. I suggest you buy a copy of Illmatic.
Gangsta rap, and the recent wave of really dumb yet catchy Dirty South/crunk/hyphy rap for clubs, are hardly representative of the entire genre. It's like pointing at death metal and saying that rock and roll causes church burnings or school shootings.
"Actually, it happens (or at least it used to) a whole lot." Asher
TR: I'm more open to be wrong on this than maybe it sounded. I still get the sense I wouldn't enjoy rap because it's just not my kind of thing. I don't enjoy much blues or opera either, but I certainly respect them.
Thomas: Listen to some Sage Francis, Atmosphere, or even some Fort Minor.
I think you'd even like it, if you like rock at all.
"Hip hop is essentially poetry set to music, if you don't see how that could easily become a pretentious and anti-commercial indulgence for the upper class than you are blind.
Get off your F-in pedestal ya rap hataz
Posted by jware | April 17, 2008 10:30 PM"
Very true. Part of me feels that rap feeds into and has partly grown out of the same aesthetic that the likes of Jack Kerouac and other stream of consciousness writers have created in the modern era, while also being combined with traditions like "the dozens."
While there has been a lot of rap that has been pure crap, a lot of the criticism of rap in general I hear from white conservative middle-aged guys reminds me a bit of Chris Rock's bit on how only white people are allowed to profit from pain. Think of all of the great movies made by white directors that either glorified violence (Tarantino) or showed how it is a part of life (from Taxi Driver to the Godfather to war movies like the Deer Hunter). Every artist makes art out of the fabric of their own lives and experiences. If you are young and growing up in South Central and are going to make art based in reality as you have lived it, you're probably not going to be making the new version of On Golden Pond. Look at the misogyny in country music (there is even a country band with a name like Punching a Pregnant Woman in the Stomach). It's obvious the reason why we have Congressional hearings on rap and not country lyrics is because rappers tend to be black and country singers tend to be white.
This points to how portrayals of violence can themselves be artistic. Speaking for myself, the scene I remember most vividly in Nobel-prize winning author Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians" was the humiliation and torture scene. A lot of El-P's rap album from last year, "I'll Sleep When You're Dead," is rather violent but is one of the most complex and creative pieces of popular music I've heard in a while. If you can't appreciate the compositions in that album, you are a philistine.
Besides, these days, if you want to be both "with it" and inoffensive at the same time, you tend to use the Beatles, which is why e-Trade or whoever it was had Paul McCartney's likeness in their commercials. Meanwhile, after the Manson Family murders, conservatives were blaming cultural decline on masterworks like the White Album and Sgt. Pepper's. Also, look up the lyrics to "Run for Your Life," which talk about hunting down and murdering a woman if she cheats, and compare that to the violence expressed in rap music. The difference is basically a lot more uses of the word "fuck."
Fascinating. Especially since I'm sitting here listening to the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Perhaps as Jazz evolved it became an institution. You could go to college and major in Jazz. And perhaps the death of rap will be a college music major in rap? Was it the Berklee College of Music that killed rock and roll?
Minor note: Ben Folds Five is not highbrow by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, they are the lowest-brow indie rock band imaginable. They specialize in campy brain candy like the above video. They are at the opposite end of the spectrum from, say, Jim O'Rourke--who sometimes uses heavy doses of camp and irony as well but has a much stronger musical background and is a wickedly good songwriter. As with the whole rap discussion, Ross is bedeviled by his lack of actual musical knowledge.
To pile on Steve Sailer:
About 1980 rap had not made much headway outside of New York. There was still room for black artists such as Run-DMC, Grandmaster Flash, and Public Enemy to take it to the rest of the country. Also every two or three years commercial rap does develop a "new style", usually related to production or region.
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Black musicians from Scott Joplin through Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Smokey Robinson, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and up through, perhaps, Prince tended to be at least somewhat concerned with impressing whites with their musical sophistication. This combination of creativity and anxiety helped bring about one of the great cultural efflorescences in history.
In recent decades, however, as blacks have come to believe they don't have a damn thing to prove to whites, black music has stagnated. I remember hearing "Rapper's Delight" on Top 40 radio in the 1979 and thinking, "What a catchy novelty tune! I bet this 'rap' music will be a big fad for the next 18 months or so until black artists move on to something new, the way they always do."
How naive we all were back then.
Posted by Steve Sailer | April 17, 2008 5:08 PM