Sometimes simple ignorance crosses over into overt racism -
Barbie!!!!
Friday, June 17, 2005
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Tag! You're It.
I've been watching some TV lately, something I don't do unless I'm away from home, and I'm noticing commercials for this new Tag Body Spray (they don't seem to have their own web site, so you'll have to settle for this). The thing is (and I'm sure I'm far from the first to notice), the commercials A) are clearly aimed at the hip hop generation, including one in which a pan-racial bouquet of beautiful women converge on a handsome young black male who, as we all know (wink) is actually a psychological stand-in for handsome (I swear) young white men such as myself. And this conveniently leads us to point B), which is that
TAG MEANS FUCK!!!!!!
I must applaud the manufacturers for their savvy. I mean if you came right out and named your man-perfume "Cumshot" or "Buttsex" (nhjic) there might be a few prudes coming out of the woodwork to protest. But by using the oh-so-underground lingo of this thing all the kids call 'hip hop', the manufacturers of Tag have managed to get their point across (i.e. Our Product Will Get You Laid) without overtly crossing any of our culture's many boundaries as regards sexuality.
So, kudos to them, even though I do feel a little durrrrrrty.
TAG MEANS FUCK!!!!!!
I must applaud the manufacturers for their savvy. I mean if you came right out and named your man-perfume "Cumshot" or "Buttsex" (nhjic) there might be a few prudes coming out of the woodwork to protest. But by using the oh-so-underground lingo of this thing all the kids call 'hip hop', the manufacturers of Tag have managed to get their point across (i.e. Our Product Will Get You Laid) without overtly crossing any of our culture's many boundaries as regards sexuality.
So, kudos to them, even though I do feel a little durrrrrrty.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Who buys hip-hop?
O-Dub has a post covering what is, for me, one of the most important questions in all of hip hop. I know I've personally referenced the 70-80% white purchase rate in both (undergraduate) academic work and on this blog, and while I felt I had a pretty solid reference for it at the time, and still feel from a strictly logical standpoint the number must be close to correct, I certainly support the quest to find the whole truth and nothing but. It sounds like Kitwana mostly asks questions rather than doing new research, but I'm still interested in reading what he has to say.
Wang himself asks questions, but his are spot-on enough to be as valuable as any research:
That in a nutshell is the underlying assumption that I've operated on for a long time, or at least what I've suspected and worked to prove or disprove. It makes intuitive sense and there is a lot of evidence for it, more subjective and subtle than mere consumption statistics. First, you have the representations of white rap consumers that pop up, in films like "Whiteboyz," "Office Space," and "Florida's Most Wanted," or in those new "Poser Mobile" commercials - images of clownish appropriators of hip hop culture who seem to be interested in the culture strictly insofar as it allows them to act thuggish either in their minds or in real life.
The other evidence I have access to is my own subjective enjoyment of certain types of hip hop. I first got into hip hop via the artistically progressive and abstract wing of New York artists revolving around Company Flow, Kool Kieth, Mike Ladd, Anti-Pop Consortium, etc. I was fascinated by their complex lyricism, and by the wierd, experimental sounds underneath them. But in the last couple of years, I've made a quick progression through Public Enemy to Wu-Tang to Biggie to Jay-Z, and at this point I get a lot of pure pop-style pleasure out of the exploitative hip hop on the radio (though I still love my experimental shit, too).
On the one hand, listening to this kind of music is like playing cowboys and indians, or, for a more direct comparison, it's like imagining yourself being a rock star when listening to Def Leppard or Van Halen - the musicians mostly play a part that allows the listener to play along. Just ask David Banner, who has a Master's degree but decided there was more fun to be had playing the character of an ig'nant fool on record. I'll leave it up to other people to say whether Banner and those like him are right or wrong in their choice, but you can't deny they're part of a long tradition of playacting.
The problem is how much this particular form of playacting is tied up in race. The role that thug-rappers play directly invokes a lot of longstanding stereotypes of black people as wild, uncontrollable, violent, sexually overactive, impulsive, etc, and a big part of the fantasy for white listeners is tapping into that imagery. My starting point on the issue was just the one that Wang hypothesizes - that it was white consumers who had pushed the form towards gangsterism and away from 'consciousness'.
A position I've been coming closer and closer to, though, is that a lot of this also applies to black listeners, who get a certain amount of enjoyment out of re-affirming a self-image that, of course, has both a positive and negative side. Sometimes it's not so bad to be seen/see yourself as intimidating, unpredictable, or (in particular) a sexual tyrannosaurus rex. Of course, there's also the fact that society may leave black men few other choices of how to be. It's a vicious cycle, one which may be re-enforced just a little bit extra by the white boys who pitch in on its perpetuation. It's very hard, though, to know whether or to what degree quantifying that influence in strictly consumption terms will help us to resolve the question.
Wang himself asks questions, but his are spot-on enough to be as valuable as any research:
For example, why does this matter? For a moment, let's go back to presuming the 70% stat was, in fact true. This could serve one of two purposes (at least) . . .
2) It's "proof" that if hip-hop has gone to hell in a handbasket, it's not because the Black youth community has decided to embrace sex, drugs, violence and general nihilism, it's because that's what voyeuristic white kids want and since white kids are the main consumer demographic, record labels push their albums to fill that consumer desire.
That in a nutshell is the underlying assumption that I've operated on for a long time, or at least what I've suspected and worked to prove or disprove. It makes intuitive sense and there is a lot of evidence for it, more subjective and subtle than mere consumption statistics. First, you have the representations of white rap consumers that pop up, in films like "Whiteboyz," "Office Space," and "Florida's Most Wanted," or in those new "Poser Mobile" commercials - images of clownish appropriators of hip hop culture who seem to be interested in the culture strictly insofar as it allows them to act thuggish either in their minds or in real life.
The other evidence I have access to is my own subjective enjoyment of certain types of hip hop. I first got into hip hop via the artistically progressive and abstract wing of New York artists revolving around Company Flow, Kool Kieth, Mike Ladd, Anti-Pop Consortium, etc. I was fascinated by their complex lyricism, and by the wierd, experimental sounds underneath them. But in the last couple of years, I've made a quick progression through Public Enemy to Wu-Tang to Biggie to Jay-Z, and at this point I get a lot of pure pop-style pleasure out of the exploitative hip hop on the radio (though I still love my experimental shit, too).
On the one hand, listening to this kind of music is like playing cowboys and indians, or, for a more direct comparison, it's like imagining yourself being a rock star when listening to Def Leppard or Van Halen - the musicians mostly play a part that allows the listener to play along. Just ask David Banner, who has a Master's degree but decided there was more fun to be had playing the character of an ig'nant fool on record. I'll leave it up to other people to say whether Banner and those like him are right or wrong in their choice, but you can't deny they're part of a long tradition of playacting.
The problem is how much this particular form of playacting is tied up in race. The role that thug-rappers play directly invokes a lot of longstanding stereotypes of black people as wild, uncontrollable, violent, sexually overactive, impulsive, etc, and a big part of the fantasy for white listeners is tapping into that imagery. My starting point on the issue was just the one that Wang hypothesizes - that it was white consumers who had pushed the form towards gangsterism and away from 'consciousness'.
A position I've been coming closer and closer to, though, is that a lot of this also applies to black listeners, who get a certain amount of enjoyment out of re-affirming a self-image that, of course, has both a positive and negative side. Sometimes it's not so bad to be seen/see yourself as intimidating, unpredictable, or (in particular) a sexual tyrannosaurus rex. Of course, there's also the fact that society may leave black men few other choices of how to be. It's a vicious cycle, one which may be re-enforced just a little bit extra by the white boys who pitch in on its perpetuation. It's very hard, though, to know whether or to what degree quantifying that influence in strictly consumption terms will help us to resolve the question.
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