It’s a video stream. I think it could count as tape, when saved, if we get a bit fast and loose with the linguistics.
Yes. We have these all over the place - like floppy disks for “save” when they haven’t been used by most people for at least a decade.
This was the thing about the criticism that made me cringe a little. There just seems to be too much, “Hey, let’s all agree that Iggy Azalea is talentless” and it sounds a bit too much like, “Hey, let’s all agree that the only reason Iggy Azalea is popular is because she’s a pretty girl.”
This particular attack - “apologize for being racist or I’ll release a sex tape” - is so misogynist. Looking over the grammy winners for best rap album, if Azalea won she would be the second woman to win, and the first to win as a solo artist.
Does she suck? I have no idea. I listened to a couple of her songs and I still don’t know. I know it’s easy to say she does. I just wish this could be left out of criticisms about racial insensitivity, because being a fantastic musician and being racially insensitive are orthogonal, I’m pretty sure.
When I was looking at that list of grammy winners for best rap album I was actually floored by how many times Eminem has won. Eminem is amazing, but if you want to talk about cultural appropriation, it’s hard not to think of him as Rap Elvis. Eminem, whatever his honest respect for the rappers that came before him, put a spin on rap that sold to wider audiences. The thing is, I don’t think that he has to have done anything wrong or to have been the villain for this to have happened.
But I’m convinced his white skin did sell albums. His totally over-the-top violence and hate on the Slim Shady EP is what got the kids to like him, and it certainly got him his share of critics, but there’s a long tradition of white people getting criticism for that kind of behaviour that runs through punk and metal and still being part of popular music. It’s a weird kind of santization - change the violence from the context of guns, drugs and gangs (real lived experiences) to the context of total psychopathy that we can comfortably enjoy without confronting anything.
I saw Macklemore note this effect in an Rolling Stone interview after his grammy win. People say “You’re the only rap I let my kids listen to” but his hit song “Thirft Shop” has swearing in it. If it were a black man saying “fuck” in the chorus of that song, I don’t think those white suburban children would have their parent’s blessing to play it at their birthday parties.
I guess to go directly to your question: I think cultural appropriate happens whether the people doing it have a respect for the culture they are appropriating or not. All artists are going to be influenced by the culture they are exposed to, and all artists deal with the tastes of the public when it comes time to evaluate their art. The cultural appropriation seems to happen more because of the latter part of that, and the intentions in the former part can’t seem to stop it.
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Nicki Minaj is a really talented rapper. She can actually rap. Really quite well. Even if you don’t like her music or hip hop, you can’t deny that she can actually rap. Do you think she lacks talent because she is a rapper or do you dislike her specifically? Are you a fan of rap music?
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I am under the impression that the Grammys are a very poor measure of rap culture but a very good measure of white perception of rap culture. So you get Macklemore winning over Kendrick Lamar.
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I would suggest that once “it” (Whatever “it” is) enters popular culture, it is no longer representative of the culture that spawned it.
It can only provide a sort of feedback effect, where whatever is recognizable to an in-group, signals to its members what their identity is to outisders.
Of course, it also injects new meaning into any culture that consumes a distoreted reflection of itself, which is then reflected in popular culture and feeds back into “real” culture.
Life imitates art and all that.
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are you saying Iggy Azalea is a North Korean hacker? Or is this actually about ethics in games journalism?
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Wasn’t Vanilla Ice the first rapper to have a #1 single, or something?
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It says something about me that I agree with this AND your whole overall point.
Possibly that I am Cynical.
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Wow. I had to look this up. Apparently this is true.
Well, I guess my overall point kind of builds in the acceptance that Iggy Azalea’s success must be partly pinned on her being a pretty white girl. But it just chafes on me when people talk like “Well of course she’s terrible.” When it comes to popular music I don’t think it’s fair to pretend you can be objective about whether it’s any good or not until at least a decade after it’s big.
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I totally agree here.
This depresses the hell out of me…
As does this…
This. One of the largest demographics for hip-hop is white, male suburban teenagers, and when Eminem came along, he was a gold mine for just this reason.
Totally agree with this too. He benefits from his white skin, but I can see his talent as well. I have no real interest in demonzing eminem, Iggy Azalea, or Macklemore, honestly (or even Vanilla Ice… okay, maybe not, cause he’s really annoying… sort of like Justin Bieber, ugh I really want to punch Justin Bieber in the face, or at least I want him and Vanilla Ice to get into a cage match to the death or something). Nor do I think that only POC can or should make hip-hop or incorporate hip-hop elements into their music… I think it’s more about the structures within the industry, and how culture is commoditized because it’s commercial.
I was also thinking about the global nature of hip-hop too. There are artists the world over, who have embraced hip-hop, often combining it with their own music cultures - so that’s an interesting thing to think about too, how people have taken this culture, and remixed it for their own needs, so to speak. I guess MIA is the most well-known example, but there is an entire world of hip-hop from any number of places and we could say the same about punk and metal too - all globalized youth cultures, that have both spread “organically” and via the recording industry.
So this is an interesting question, overall, with regards to culture. I think the way we think about popular culture is that it is created organically, by individuals, in local scenes, and then members of the scene “sell out”, and “go mainstream”, and then, it becomes a thing… but what if it’s really the oppositie or at least a much messier process. When I did my masters thesis on punk, that’s kind of what I found. The hardcore scene, which was much more “underground” in the sense that we think of it, grew out of the various older punk scenes, that were almost from the start, backed and funded by major labels (or at least subsidaries of majors - A&R guys like to think of themselves of cutting edge on the music that is out there) - the early proto-punk bands were all on majors/subsidaries of majors (MC5, the Stooges, Velvet Underground), the Sex Pistols were huge in the UK, the NYC scene was very early on getting attention - Patti Smith, the Ramones, etc. The first people to use the term punk were rock critics like Lester Bangs and Greg Shaw, people who had been part of shaping the weirder edges of the industry for years by then. Hardcore appears to be almost a reaction to the fact that some punk bands were indeed courted and signed by majors. LA (in the pre-hardcore days) seems to be the odd man out, in that the LA labels weren’t interested, despite all the talent to be had. That’s part of the reason Black Randy started Dangerhouse because the labels in LA were too dumb to sign X… I kind of see it as a much messier process. punk bands and postpunk bands (and hip-hop artists around the same time) created their own labels because after an initial wave of enthusiasm for punk bands from labels, this quickly subsided, in part because of the drop off in record sales globally after the high point in 1978. It’s a complicated question, I guess.
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So very true. First, taste in music is almost entirely subjective and what gets me going might bore you, and vice versa. Second, I think it’s more important to try and pin down what people like, and why they like it, or maybe, rather, what role does music play in their lives and how does it speak to them - and then what that might say about our society, and (for my own nefarious porpoises…) what it says about the industry that produces them…
But isn’t that…
Nah, I’ll stop right there lest I start playing Jason Lee’s character from Chasing Amy (NSFW audio for the uninitiated, trigger warning for racial slurs)
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I heard this thread was about strong female rappers.
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Not really sure where this Wendy O. Williams album fits into the scheme of things.
But, yeah, we’re white, again.
I had that on vinyl, at some point.
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Where ever the hell it wants, that’s where!!!
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I was trying to say something about this but I failed to. We talk about white people appropriating black culture in the US, but hip hop is all over the world. I’d like to think that black American rap pioneers are thrilled to see hip hop being used by other groups (e.g. Canadian Aboriginals), to tell their own stories of oppression. I think the storytelling aspect of hip hop is a big part of it’s broad appeal.
One idea I’ve heard is that the real essence of hip hop is the collaboration. Hip hop gets mixed with local cultures because it is mixable. You can make hip hop using traditional Ukranian instruments or by remixing 1950s sitcoms. It’s a musical style that isn’t tied to a particular set of instruments, and a vocal style that isn’t based on being born with a golden voice. It’s like the football of music - you can play it in the street with your friends.
(On women winning rap grammies) Women are always on the whole double-edged sword of beauty - not considered if you aren’t beautiful, not taken seriously if you are beautiful - but I don’t know if that’s more true anywhere than in music. Hence my instinctive distrust of people dissing Azalea (and in her case being white can’t be separated from conforming to the standard of beauty she conforms to).
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Yes its definitely messy, the value that mainstream success brings to any genre of music is that it narrows it down to a label with easily identifiable traits, a good example of this is Nirvana’s role in popularizong grunge, a label all popular grunge bands disavowed. Or better yet, Skrillex’s role in popularizing Dubstep.
To that extent, Dubstep is a pretty good example of this because early dubstep is pretty well documented, thanks I’m sure, in part to it being stylistically dependent on digital techniques and gaining popularity (As far as I know) on the Internet. When I first heard it I found it had more in common with ambient music than with EDM, which is what it most resembles in its mainstream form.
(I also thought it was terrible and unlistenable, but it’s won me over a bit since)
Back to my point, It seems to me that Dubstep wen’t through what is probably common with most genres, where people kept building on the things they liked about it, and bringing in outside influences, surely some of them obscure, but inevitably more and more popular ones.
It evolved in obscurity until it became palatable to a wider audience, who only learned of it through Skrillex.
That is to say that the popular conception of Dubstep has no connection to its cultural significance… Sure, I’ll believe that Skrillex knows his dubstep, but Britney’s just taking what’s popular and going with it.
If people derive any sort of identity out of their tastes in popular culture then this type of appropriation will surely drive you to seek a more “pure” form of art.
Back OT, Seems to me that Iggy Azalea dissing another rapper is just another appropriation of the most extreme elements of popular rap culture. (I don’t think she’ll be doing any drive by’s though)
How anonymous fits in with this is fascinating, its got to be in it just for the lulz (assinine in all its implications), for it to be serious about shaming Iggy Azalea would mean for Anonymous to buy into the performance aspect of the public persona of a “controversial” female rapper.
If they’re in it because they’re now SJW’s the hive mind could just release a statement saying that, for the moment anyway, they disapprove of her comments. But that would be too tipper gore for them wouldn’t it?
Instead, they up the drama factor and rail against racist comments by engaging in mysoginistic blackmail.
Its almost admirable, except that sort of thing is played out, GG wen’t down in flames justifying their own actions to themselves that way.
But maybe I’m being too charitable, they proably just found the video and thought it was a coke bottle.
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