My Uzi Weighs an Ounce

All things being equal (yeah right), it might be easy for one to take to heart the ideas espoused by dangerous minds like John Lomax over at the Houston Press. It has been his contention – and I am paraphrasing (to say the least) – that hip-hop has replaced rock as the music that moves the great white masses. It has been his contention for quite some time now that we are all currently praying at the altar of Mark Ecko and stepping in line to the words of Tupac, while forever turning away from the sounds of the angst ridden youth with a guitar and a mission. I love John, he’s a friend and he’s been good to me, but sometimes he spreads the bullshit on a little thick. For one thing, hip-hop has hardly usurped rock in the minds of pasty mall-crawling Hot Topic addicts, as far as I can tell. In fact, guys like Fall Out Boy, and My Chemical Romance, and a whole host of what I call MTV metal bands seem to have done a fine job of capturing the attention of deluded teens the nation over. And let's not even get into the subject of country or pop. Sure white kids buy an assload of rap CDs, and this contributes to the falling sales of the types of music white marketers look to for signs of health in the industry; but to naggingly claim the demise of rock at the hands of hip-hop is more than myopic, it’s downright retarded.

Am I in turn downplaying the role of rap in cracker culture? I’m not saying that at all. But this contention that we should all hang up our guitars and buy a couple turntables and some gold fronts is a little premature, if not entirely half-baked. I know that for rap to have become as big as it has, it needs the cash heavy white audience to keep those sales up, and it strives to promote the negative images of black America that ultimately feed the worst kind of racism, and that’s the kind that works its way into the fiber of white culture. It goes unspoken, but it is so ingrained as to be inseparable from other regularly held views on the world at large. White audiences are lured by the sheen of rap’s flashy stylizations, but they aren’t really interested in who makes this music and what the artists are really like as people. That would require a level of acceptance that is simply not forthcoming any time soon. If white America was so keen to drop everything and totally embrace black culture and rap, then why is it that the only rap you even hear that makes much of an impact on the white masses anymore is the most overstated, misogynistic, violent stuff out there? Where’s the clamor for the intelligent, well-written, and highly creative work that is basically considered underground at this point? There isn’t one. It’s not sexy, so it gets no play. You don’t have to be a racist blowhole like Bill O’Reilly to see the problems inherent in mainstream rap.

This whole thing brings to mind the flap over how downloading was killing the industry and how we have to get all William Gibson about it and recognize that if we don't do something right away, all music will die in an orgiastic frenzy of illegal downloads. This concept, too, is complete bullshit. Sure, downloads have had a very real impact on the industry, but really, who gives a shit about the industry? This is about loving music, and it's about making music. The scum that exist to exploit art for the purposes of commerce above anything else aren't worth mentioning in this discussion. And they are the ones who want you to believe that you must go out and buy tons of CDs and continue to support their efforts to keep things from changing, from growing into something better, because as long as they control the playing field, you don't. A few weeks ago we were treated to John's cover article on the demise of the CD. Now I'm not saying CDs will never die, what I'm saying is that they aren't exhibiting their death throes quite yet. And when this topic was brought up in here (a place full of music lovers/collectors), the CD was still very much a thriving format. Sure we burn CDRs, but we also buy CDs religiously. But there's Lomax out there putting his neck out and claiming the party's over. it's not. It looks cool to claim it in print and be an alarmist, but it's a little irresponsible to be so forthcoming with bad information.

And I chalk this idea up in the same category as the one in which Lomax posits that white people need to pay more attention to the current trends in black music as though it is our obligation, without making a similar claim for black audiences. Can you imagine any black critic telling his predominately black audience that they should take more time to check out the music of Panic at the Disco? Neither can I (try though I might). So why should someone like me make the effort to check out the new Lil Wayne? I’m not into macho posturing and callous indifference to human life, so why should I like his rapping? I read an interview with that clown and he reads like a bad John Leguizamo movie (like there’s a good one). Maybe this white guilt Lomax espouses is a vestigial element of his pedigree. For those of you who aren’t familiar, John Lomax is the great grandson of the infamous John Lomax who was at the heart of preserving the sound of the Delta blues for the sake of American folk history. The work of John’s father (also named John – bit of a theme) is also well known, as he is also a music writer as well as the former manager for Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle. So yes, he knows something about black music, and to be more specific, about the importance of black music. But his passion sometimes gets in the way of reality, because while rap may be thriving, good rap has dropped off significantly in the last decade, and on top of that, whitey still buys guitars. What he should do is become the voice box for his love of music in such a fertile creative environment. This is a huge town, and he must have a fairly large audience, and he should use his soapbox to find ways to get all music lovers to broaden their horizons, to keep music at the forefront of their lives for the rest of their lives. He wastes his time when his column becomes a vent for his delusions on what's cool, what you need to listen to, why Houston isn't down with the self-promotion, and all the rest.

Not that it would be a bad thing for any music lover to expand their boundaries regardless of their ethnic background; it’s just that the idea that white music lovers should give equal attention to mainstream rap seems somewhat off base. As I’ve said earlier, you never hear black critics saying that their audiences need to really take the time to get into The Stooges or (gulp) Celine Dion; because culturally, there’s no reason for them to do so. White America has done such a good job of shutting out black America that blacks have been forced to create their own culture, whitey be damned. That’s a huge part of the birth of rap, soul, r&b, funk, and all the rest. If you aren’t welcomed at the table, then you damn sure set your own table, and that’s exactly what happened. And without another deplorable history lesson, let’s just say that we all know what happened from there. Their music was new, it was different, it was deeply emotional, it was hungry, more real, more honest, and often it was better. So eventually we began to make a seat for them at our table, but it has always been an uneasy truce. Sure we love to hear our James Brown CDs, but who ever really wanted to think of him as someone to relate to? White America is still as afraid of him after his death as they were when he was kicking everyone’s ass down at the Apollo. How much has really changed from the days of Sam Cooke and the public guise of his handsome, charming, good boy image for the sake of whites? His life is damn near a template for the current crop of black face showhorses, and until we accept black people as equal, things will never really change.

So how difficult is it to see this through to the present? Rap came on real hard in the 80's and 90's and whites ate it up. And in those golden years so much great music was being made that it was near impossible to keep up. And through this period a funny thing began to happen. With guys like Public enemy, and then NWA, and the birth of the whole gangsta movement, rap began to turn away from its white benefactors and talk about things that weren’t all booty shaking and fun. And guess what? Young white people loved it. They loved the danger of it, and they were drawn into the mythology of street life. This effect wasn’t lost on the labels either, as they were quick to exploit this phenomenon as far as it could go. What the labels knew was that marketing a romanticized image of the young, angry, violent, and ultimately untamed black man was money in the bank. And they also knew that keeping the black artist relegated to a caricature was so much easier to handle than the more creative minded artists like A Tribe Called Quest or De La Soul. Those people were more about expression of creative energy than about threatening rivals, or bragging about all their conquests, or trying to get as much money out of the label as was humanly possible no matter the cost. Because after all, there will never be a shortage of disadvantaged black men who are making bad decisions to try and get ahead. So rap evolved into its current state. Rap has come to be defined (at least in the mainstream white audiences) as cartoonish music. The rappers of today seem to have been reduced to the stakes of the modern day minstrel. And to make it worse, because it is so lucrative, the rappers play right into it. It’s the clownish, overly audacious artists that get the most play, and the most sales. Guys like Lil John, or 50 Cent are huge, but they are also representing something no actual white audience will ever really believe and that keeps us all down. The artists cater to what sells, the buyers feed into what is negative about the culture, and the labels get rich by taking advantage of this built in cash flow. It’s like Russell Simmons is the Tom Vu of hip-hop. He’s a busker, a carny who wants you to check out the two-headed rapper sequestered behind the glass where he can do no real harm. So white America gets to exploit the culture of blacks, debase their life experience, plunder their resources, and still keep their nice cars and iPhones without having to worry about ever seeing these people out in their schools and country clubs. Nice.

And all this brings me back to the idea of a black DJ, on air, laying it down over the Bed Stuy airwaves or the Compton airwaves with something to this effect:

“Yo, yo, yo y’all, this is DJ Raz El here rockin’ on the mike and bringin’ you the dopest beats around. You just heard the new MF Doom, a blast from the past with Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh with “Six Minutes,” and a little sumpin’ sumpin’ from Busta Rhymes. And now I want to turn y’all on to a track that I know is gonna’ get your booty shakin’ wherever it’s at. These dudes is straight outta Norway, and they want to tell you all about the strength of street knowledge. Turn it up homey and check out this joint from my homies in Emperor, it’s called “Ye Entrancemperium,” and it is for reals yo.”

I think you get the idea. White guilt is a sad, sad thing. I know that John’s heart is in the right place, he is a music lover and that alone says something good about him for me. I think his mistake is in wanting to extrapolate what he finds so dear in black music into the world of white music lovers. Not that I would ever tell anyone what he or she must listen to, because that’s the whole point. I can suggest stuff, put it into context, and hope for the best. I would never expect someone to oblige me just because I said it was so. And as for rock in suburbia, it’s still out there. It’s always mutating, and it peaked eons ago, but the rumors of its death have been greatly exaggerated. So when I think about where Lomax must be coming from, or what corner of the universe shapes his ideas on black and white in American music, my guess is that when you look at what someone loves from a distance - and I say this with full ironic glee - sometimes I think you could honestly say that love is really, truly blind.