Why is it this American white guy can be admired for spitting all these words forever, and never fucking up, but a conservative politician can't open his mouth without saying something racist?
And let's close with the Grammy's chosen Rapper (snicker) totally fucking up the white boy curve:
An understandable mistake but, still, really misguided. An obvious sign Camille hasn't kept up for some time.
Despite his claim of God status, Em's been out of it for years now. He doesn't want to be coasting on his name today, but he is, and that's what makes Camille's words ring so hollow. He's currently striving and failing. We love him, and all the more power to him - totally no diss - but his best work is (possibly) behind him.
But in Pop, the only "artists" standing are the two cantankerous K's these post-Grammy whites are apparently desperate to ignore: Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West. Without a doubt, nobody's made better work than they have and Kanye's Yeesus ("Soon as they 'like' you - make them 'unlike' you") wins by default, because he's the old guy with tenure.
Hip-hop is considered a safe and powerful space to tell black men's stories. Yet Eminem is the rapper best known for narratives about suicide, addiction and emotional pain.
It's easy to imagine someone who looks like Eminem, Kurt Cobain or Alexander McQueen as suffering from depression. But Lee Thompson Young? Not so much.
There's no quintessential cult movie -- a "Black Boy, Interrupted" so to speak -- where we see a black man who struggles with depression or distress. There are even fewer examples of black men seeking help. "The Bob Newhart Show," "M*A*S*H," "Frasier," "In Treatment" and "The Sopranos" are all shows involving men in or providing therapy. They are all white.
It's hard to believe what you've never seen.
The conventional narratives about black men tend to be narrow and depthless. They are often presented in two distinct and superficial ways -- as the criminal or as the incredible. Sometimes you'll see them behind bars or in the courtroom. Other times you'll see them in the limelight. Just turn on the TV and the black men you see are actual or fictional lawbreakers. Or they are superstars.
Aside from these two stereotypical identities, we know nearly nothing about the inner lives of black men. Are they complex? Are they unknowable, untouchable, undesirable or unworthy of help in our collective societal imagination?
There used to be an old saying, that "whites liked their blacks big, angry, and in a CD format."
Weird:
That's all I've ever been asking for help to make happen,...
I never met 2Pac, but the guy he's talking to at the beginning of the video is an acquaintance from Digital Underground, who's leader I am friends with.
Dead Prez on seduction.
Will Smith on the joys of Fatherhood.
Biz Markie on Betrayal.
Eminem on loving those you don't know.
Kanye West on Break-Ups.
Drake on Desire and Loneliness.
Mister Cee breaks down, On-Air, confessing his d/l activities to his fans.
This is Charles Hamilton. He's a recording artist. He's also a wee bit confused, imagining Eminem speaks to him "telepathically" and there's something "subconscious" going on between their respective record companies because of pyramids and tarot cards. I'm a little sketchy on the details,...because I got them from Charles Hamilton.
It reminds me of that video of Mitt Romney where he veers into a discussion of Jesus returning to Missouri, except that wasn't on MTV, so the interviewer didn't openly giggle once the crazy revealed itself. And, also unlike that exchange, seeing Charles Hamilton's success has allowed me to grasp a point my fellow conservatives have been making for some time:
That Romney can probably hold a head full of nuts, be a total fucking Manchurian Candidate for his cult, and still qualified to be President Of The United States.
Despite the fact Romney's skull is HUGE, I just don't know.
Can't somebody just give him a recording contract?
This is Psy, a self-described South Korean "loser" who said:
"My goal in this music video was to look uncool until the end. I achieved it."
I agree - the music's awful, too.
But what's important, here, is how popular it's become. It's a really shitty song, performed by an uncharismatic artist, in that Euro disco style that's become fashionable with tasteless, brain-dead, wife beater shirt-wearing morons the world over. And that's what I want to talk about:
How, in a cultural wasteland, everything gets turned upside-down - until shit gets turned to gold - and that's when the ignorant are "happy."
You remember this, don't you? It's Beck doing "Loser," another song that became popular despite the fact that - if he had ever shown his face in a rapping contest - he would've been kicked to the curb faster than you can say the title.
No, no, no - there was none of Eminem's "8 Mile" suffering (facing physical danger while honing his skills to a knife point just to be good enough to compete) for Mr. Scientology. Beck just spit nonsense into a microphone - with absolutely no regard for meter - and then (probably) made a phone call to David Miscavage who (probably) beat their cult's followers, until they (probably) worked the phones relentlessly enough to get this classic example of lameness on MTV, and the rest is history.
As a cult critic, I see this phenomena playing out all the time, in pretty much every sphere of life. It no longer matters if anything is good or bad, true or false, harmful or benign, but only whether the impression of popularity can be brought to bear, so those too-easily influenced by the herd mentality will gradually (and gladly) move in it's direction. It appears, to those cowardly folks, being part of a group is more important than anything else in life,…including life (or any understanding of it) itself.
Reality (like - heh - Surf Music) takes a beating when we're trapped in this milieu:
To his millions of readers, Glenn Reynolds recently declared Twilight star Robert Pattinson was a "LOSER," after Reynolds saw signs the actor was suffering under the weight of his public betrayal by his then-girlfriend and co-star, Kristen Stewart - despite the fact Stewart was publicly apologizing for hurting Pattinson so badly.
Saying you’re sorry often creates the temptation to drown in your own guilt,…If you fear this apologetic abyss more than you fear breaking up, it’s possible you’re a coward. It’s also possible you have good intuition,…
Love-of-destruction translation:
Forget whatever vileness you did to an innocent, including one you claimed to love and paraded before the world as such. In that - and anything else - you can have it YOUR WAY!
Compare the attitudes of Reynolds and Quan with the compassion of The Daily Show's Jon Stewart (below) when it comes to treatment of Pattinson, the victim in this cinema-derived romantic drama:
And why not? In our current upside-down version of reality, which is just political correctness run amok, neither Glenn Reynolds (spoon-feeding millions of followers his blinkered, and destructive, outlook) or Tracy Quan (ditto - "intuition"?) are going to call anyone on such an act as the personal destruction of another.
Unless, of course, the attacker(s) is/are outside of whatever accepted group they're in.
Which brings me to the presidential race,…to be cont'd.
"We really do find pleasure in other people being mocked and slammed. The other thing is that most people consider the whole celebrity culture a little pathological. And these kind of really raw acidic attacks on these individual celebrities, to some extent, are an indictment of celebrity culture in general."
-- Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University professor of popular culture, commenting on Eminem's latest musical offerings - which we haven't heard and expect to be awful - but, even though we don't care for his later work, we'd be hypocrites if we didn't say we welcome Rap's White Lion back to the fold, in The New York Daily News.
"We really do find pleasure in other people being mocked and slammed. The other thing is that most people consider the whole celebrity culture a little pathological. And these kind of really raw acidic attacks on these individual celebrities, to some extent, are an indictment of celebrity culture in general."
