I wanted to post a follow up to the whoreification of the the pop industry featuring the new 50 cent single "Baby by me" complete with translations and comments (And the fact that it's little less than a lift of T.I.'s "Whatever you like" from less than two years ago). Maybe I'll do that eventually, or maybe I'll just comment that once a rapper goes solidly from content, or hard content, to how girls are his thing, that's when rap turns to hip-hop. Remember Method Man? Remember the 90s? From Gangsta, to I'llsexya. (Ok, back in the 90s it was still I'lltakeyaouttodinner. I know, lame.)
But then Tiger came out and he is just great. Nothing like that Swedish supermodel wife and mother of your two young kids just not doing it for you. You know when really attractive girls insist they aren't good looking and go to gay guys for style advice, and hair cuts, and manicures, and cuddling, and crying, and lots of other shit? How they insist no one likes them or that they are too fat or never good enough? How they have no self-esteem and let guys cheat on them, treat them like crap, or even abuse them? Well, ok.
Tiger was known for his clean image (and by known, I mean people who didn't know anything. People who were close to him, or the media or others probably knew that guy was scoring serious off-set tail. I'd love to go off on celebrities here, but I won't. They're probably just regular people who get a chance to act out the dick dreams that most regular people have.) He was also known for his privacy. People known for their privacy are sometimes nice, quit people who just want things private, want things simple. And sometimes people like privacy because they got lots of shit to hide. Tiger apparently had at least three.
Just listen to this guy.
http://www.mahalo.com/tiger-woods-voicemail
Hey it's uh, it's Tiger, I need you to do me a huge favor. Um, can you please, uh, take your name off your phone? My wife went through my phone and um, may be calling you. So if you can, please take your name off that. And um, what do you call it, just have it as a number on the voicemail. Just have it as your telephone number, that's it. Ok? You got to do this for me. Huge. Quickly. Bye."
http://news.sina.com.tw/article/20091203/2476439.html
嗨，我是，我是老虎。我真的需要你幫忙。嗯，你可以把你的名字從你的電話中刪除掉嗎？我的太太檢查了我的電話，嗯，她或許會給你電話。如果你可以的話，請把你的名字 刪掉，嗯，叫什麼來著，只用在語音留言中留下一個電話號碼就可以了，電話號碼就好了，就這樣，OK？你需要為我這樣做。非常重要。快點。好了。拜拜。
都被改過。
Yo, I think that promise of material security (but no promise of marital fidelity, etc.--ha, kinda like Tiger) for a loyal woman is a pretty common rap trope. In those Bonnie and Clyde songs, there's no promise given that dude will be faithful, except financially.
回覆刪除I mean, shit, one of the first tracks 50 blew up off was "Thug Loving," (Power of the Dollar-era, pre-shooting, pre-"Wanksta," about '99) which is the blueprint for this track. Basically thug loving = buying stuff for a down-ass girl. "Look, we can shop together, mama / His and hers / Fifth Ave shit, baby / Fendi, furs / I ain't tight with the chips, girl / I'm down to splurge / If it's ice that ya like, I'll light up ya life."
Biggie's girl was a rare exception when she said she'd love him if he was "broke or filthy fuckin' rich."
Yo, I think that promise of material security (but no promise of marital fidelity, etc.--ha, kinda like Tiger) for a loyal woman is a pretty common rap trope.
回覆刪除No doubt. A sad one in my opinion.
50 on the Thug Love track sounds incredibly like Eminem. He must have decided to go for a much less showy style after getting shot. (And he probably didn't need to constantly show off like Eminem, because he wasn't white.)
The difference between Thug Love 50 and even the horrible Candy Shop 50 (you remember that bust don't you?) is that in those tracks you have a, let's call it non-Connecticut Westchester (Stamford?, I forget) mansion feel. Thug love you still have a kid bragging in front of a bunch of guys. You still have real crude misogyny. You still have a girl getting into it with you on the track to make it feel like a collabo effort. With Candy Shop (an all-around horrible track off a generally forgettable album), you still have a kind of deep misogyny, and a kind of just pure sex track. Now you have a couple of rich guys in polo sweatervests talking about and to women how they are really hot. Now, it's one thing to pull a Nas and do it for the children, and another thing to recognize you are old, and that your audience is girls who want to blow you. You are no longer talking to your male audience anymore, and you are no longer rapping. You are doing porno for women in hip-hop form.
I think Neyo (and 50) should get called out just as I call out women for doing the "i'll make my money being a teen idol thing."
It's not that Rapping about who's the best in the business is all that meaningful or good, but it's not whoring yourself out is more than a little embarassing. At least britney can somewhat legitimately pull some post-modern feminist janet-jackson throwing off her chains spin on some of her stuff. 50, no. Neyo, no. It's one thing to call yourself a hustler working for the money and respecting the hos who are doing the same. It's another thing to whore yourself out in a really pathetic way. I'm thinking Method and Red (though they told people not to watch) or anything EPMD or someone from the 80s and into the 90s would shake their head at. People used to shake their head at the idea of someone like Diddy selling shit on HSN (no disrespect to HSN), but it seems like those people don't command things like they used to. If you ask the people who have msm attention, people like Kanye, they'd probably lament not thinking of doing HSN first.
2 things here.
回覆刪除1) KRS-One might shake his head about Diddy on HSN (would he?), but another important rap trope has always been a sort of revolutionary capitalism. Diddy on HSN is just the end point of selling tapes out of the trunk of your car-style marketing. I think a lot of 80s/90s rappers and people who were down with it from that period look at Kanye designing boat shoes for LV with a sort of awe that the kid made something out of nothing.
Yeah, I guess they're whoring, but the accepted narrative is actually that they're grassroots capitalists who struggle to make it big in a society that is still deeply prejudiced against them. And then they go back to their communities and let the riches trickle down. Whether or not that is a true description of rags-to-riches rapper stories is beside the point.
I think a lot of people are put off by the shameless hucksterism of rappers, from the dudes hustling their mixtapes in Murder Dog interviews to Pharrell trying to sell crappy t-shirts, but there's a story attached to it that a lot of people believe in.
2) I guess I mostly agree, regarding rap misogyny and the Connecticut mansion tone. Speaking of Nas... check out "You Owe Me" for the purest misogyny there's ever been in rap.
Did you see Bamboozled?
回覆刪除Does revolutionary capitalism include blackface as well? And wearing sweaters to sell your shit?
Now I'd like to believe 50 just wears sweater-vests because that was his dream all along to be some prep in CT, but if you would have found him in 97 and told him he could get big by wearing polo shirts and talking with a white accent and selling his shit to an exclusively white audience, would he do it? (Does the white audience just want the "thug image". Is doing the "thug routine" as fake and degrading as blackface or wearing a leave it to beaver costume?)
There's something about success and moving up and getting out and helping the community and yourself and setting an example. And then there's the ways you do it.
But you did it in a sleazy way, selling crack to the kids, rat-tat-tat-tat-tat, that's the way it is.
There's lame, embarassing, maybe "low-class" or even cringeworthy hucksterism, struggle, and hustling. And then there's blackface.
It's not always just about money. And when people Lil Jon make it big or Nelly decides to swipe credit cards between legs, it makes more than a few people think that there's hustling and then there's hurting.
I got no problem with t-shirt sellers and obnoxious displays or promotion at awards show or on radio interviews. I know where they're coming from. I get more nervous when I see sweater-vested 50 (not Puffy, 50 in the sweater-vest) and Jay-z exporting his clothing business to sweatshops. You think beyonce cares about child labor? If someone tells her she cares, but what about 5 years later. You really confident those two care?
I can kind of see the Diddy thing trying to be Will Smith like figure and really get into mainstream and white america as a safe guy. But, that's kind of the opposite end of the spike lee spectrum. That's the fox news black conservative way. You got to be very careful when you tread on that water. When you pull that kind of routine you got to watch bamboozled every year, as opposed to KRS-One, he can probably skip watching it altogether.