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Editor’s note: When we read Sasha Frere-Jones‘ recent piece on the death of hip-hop, we didn’t have a witty comeback. What we did have was one name on the brain: Das Racist. A favorite here at Flavorpill HQ thanks to their single “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,” the Brooklyn-based rap duo is one of the more exciting new acts on the scene. And as the New York Times recently said, “Das Racist’s lack of piety has become an aesthetic of its own, with songs that are as much commentary on hip-hop as rigorous practice of it.” OK. We’ll turn it over to them now.
Victor Vazquez: Flavorpill asked our publicist to ask us to write a rebuttal to Sasha Frere-Jones’ recent article Wrapping Up about the death of hip-hop, maybe because we were once called “the death of hip-hop” by a white guy who’s only rap album on his 2008 Best Albums was white rapper Why?’s album Alopecia. This is the year Carter 3 came out. I wish I could remember this guy’s name but Spinner.com freaked out and took down the article after receiving numerous comments complaining about how the reviewer could not tell the difference between the three brown people in our band.
ANYWAY…
Sasha Frere-Jones first came to my attention a couple years ago when a friend of mine emailed a link to one of his articles, A Paler Shade of White, in which he bemoans the lack of black influence and “swing” in the music of Arcade Fire. The article was filled with vague and contradictory ideas of what “black” and “white” musical tropes were and I definitely “went in” hella hard in an email that I just posted on gordongartrelle.blogspot.com for reference.
I guess I wasn’t alone in my reaction; according to Wikipedia, the New Yorker received more mail about that article than it had for any single article it had published in the preceding eleven years. At this point, I’m kind of over the idea of “going in” on the dude (pause) and I have to say I probably wouldn’t be wasting my time writing this if I didn’t think it would be a good publicity look for my band…
BUT:
Sasha Frere-Jones opens his article by admitting that “weighing in early on what academics call ‘periodization’ is a dicey proposition,” as a nominal caveat before launching into doing just that. This is a rhetorical approach that he’s used before (namely in “Whiter Shade of Pale”) and is basically just another flavor of the age old “Now, I don’t mean to be racist but [insert something racist here]” Kool-Aid.
SFJ is savvy enough to know that before pulling a “white man speaks authoritatively on black culture” move, he needs to first establish an acceptable precedent for his argument by locating it in the ideology of a credible black artist (in this case Nas’s 2006 album Hip Hop is Dead). But notice how SFJ then immediately undermines that credibility: while he could just say “Nas called it three years ago,” he instead claims that while Nas’s sentiment was correct, the proclamation was three years premature, as if to say “Nice try, Nas, but leave it to the professional (white, college-educated) music journalist to make sweeping statements about (black, ghetto-originated) music.”
Before a handful of (white) internet commenters wild on me saying “Sasha Frere-Jones is not a racist,” let me clarify that I’m not saying he’s consciously and intentionally trying to assert his superiority. I’m just trying to point out that his language is typical of that (white) journalistic voice which presupposes the (white) journalist’s authority.
Perhaps it’s first worth examining further why “periodization” is such a “dicey proposition” to begin with, regardless of how early or late. Concepts like “periods” and even “genre” are loose collections of tropes that have no inherent meaning but rather contextual meanings that are only useful to the extent to which they can help organize texts. The point at which they actually serve to define texts is when they can enter a lens of scrutiny so intense as to render them meaningless.
In the article, SFJ describes Jay-Z and Kanye’s new work and the work of Kid Cudi as “hip-hop by virtue of rapping more than sound,” describing the “sound” as mostly ”blues-based swing” (a term he also uses in A Paler Shade of White) as opposed to the “four-on-the-floor thump” or “European pulse, simpler and faster and more explicitly designed for clubs” that is “replacing” that swing. But even ignoring the fact that “rapping” is technically a “sound” (arguably the single defining “sound” of the genre, and even that is not entirely true, considering sing-rapping like Bone Thugz N’ Harmony et al.) and that music “explicitly designed for clubs” seems hardly antithetical to rap (or hip-hop or whatever you want to call it), what seems even more contradictory is that SFJ himself admits that rap is “a spinoff from New York City’s early disco culture” which is not only almost definitively about “four-on-the-floor thump” but itself shares roots with black American soul and funk.
And actual “swing” vs. “thump” argument aside, European dance music is nothing new to rap. In perhaps the most obvious example of this, Kraftwerk, the quintessential German techno band, has been sampled by everyone from Afrika Bambaataa to Jay-Z. Sampling has helped make rap’s “sound” not only diverse but literally referential in a way that serves to weaken the notion of genre as even a relevant question and make a lot of questions about origin and period seem fairly moot. All this is to say nothing of where Dancehall, Reggaeton, and Bhangra fit into all of this as other types of electronic music that are not European but that inform and are informed by “hip-hop” and further complicate its status as a genre. The more you look at the idea of genre as a collection of tropes, the less there seem to be any one single trope that holds sway over the rest.
From the griots to the dozens to the beats to Sun Ra’s “Nuclear War” to The Last Poets to Bob Dylan to the Modern Lovers to Yellowman to the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s “Give It Away Now,” to the Butthole Surfer’s “Pepper,” to Vybz Kartel… these are all arguably rap depending on how you how one chooses one’s criteria. Rap (nor anything else) needs not necessarily be viewed in terms of origins or boundaries, births or deaths. Genre is a construction whose analytical use is primarily economic in nature. The study of genre is largely the study of marketing.
Kanye and Jay-Z made popular rap albums in a solid and relatively inarguable hip-hop tradition a few years back and now they are experimenting more. It seems they didn’t ”relinquish the controls,” (whatever that means) so much as they just decided to make weird, experimental, explicitly genre-bending albums (which isn’t necessarily a surprising or new thing in rap — Andre 3000, Q-Tip, and Common made similar moves with varying degrees of success years ago) and these weird, experimental, explicitly genre-bending albums made a lot of money and seem to be pretty popular with the kids. MIA is another good example of this. You could say these types of albums help to change the game in rap as its commonly understood as a genre and across the board musically as well, yeah, but whether or not any of these releases could signal the end of an era seems like a pointless question.
SFJ pulls another “nominal caveat coupled with immediate negation of that same sentiment” number when he says that the “criminal life that Raekwon raps about may be irrelevant to [Freddie Gibbs'] gift” but then still apparently finds it worth discussing. It bespeaks a seemingly romantic desire on SFJ’s to part to conflate street cred and musical purity, or at least furthers a relatively narrow conception of “real hip-hop.”
Freddie Gibbs is hellof good at rapping, yes, but SFJ’s appreciation of Gibbs’ album-oriented work versus mixtapes using other people’s beats, his “quick” and “clean” delivery, his lack of “sentimentality or exaggeration” and his refraining from “bloated expansion and leveraging of fantasies,” and “a love of accumulation” bespeaks a narrow set of expectations of what rap should be that doesn’t seem to be willing to accept what it often is and rings of the same old romantic, rockist-cum-hip-hop-”purist,” “What’s up with all that Bling-Bling, am I right?” party line echoed by old (often white) music journalists.
Rapping on other people’s beats doesn’t have to be seen as less valid art, it can be seen as part of the tradition. Interstitial material, skits and even songs that are obviously recorded as filler do not have to be seen as less valid art but can be seen as part of the tradition (often enough, “filler” and skits contain truly avant-garde and surreal moments). The rampant materialism, and explicit consumption present in the lyrics and imagery of a lot of rap, as problematic as it can be, is a complicated issue that goes beyond the music, and is not so simple as to be solved with a stern fatherly rebuke or even a championing of more humble rap.
I could go on, but I’ll just leave the rest to Himanshu Suri, who has prepared 24 haikus in rebuttal…
1
Hip-hop dies each year.
How many lives hip-hop got?
Is hip-hop a cat?
2
This ain’t reverting
back to your mom’s disco dog.
Technology.
3
Elder statesmen! Dads!
Turn down that autotune, son!
Your jeans are skinny!
4
“Improbably weird?”
Only if you’re looking in
from the outside though.
5
Nah Right never called
hip-hop “improbably weird”.
Thanks so much, Nah Right.
6
Jay-z’s Blueprint 3
Is just as weird as Weezy.
“Hater” is real weird!
7
Where near Jay’s old hood
does Sasha Frere Jones reside?
He cough up a lung?
8
Don’t disagree with
every thing he said but
why so alarmist?!?!
9
Gucci just dropped four
mixtapes. Sounds like hip-hop is
alive and kicking.
10
Are you suggesting
there are no new ideas
left to rap about?
11
Freddie Gibbs is dope
but so is Young Dro and like
ten other rappers.
12
Has rock been dead for
ages since it too builds on
older ideas?
13
Rock seems alive to
me. I saw a great band play
last night at Glasslands.
14
Stop trying to kill
rap. Matter of fact please let
it rock. Go away.
15
8 Yahoo! answer
pages all dedicated
to the death of rap?
16
Timekeeper of pop?
Who made you the time keeper
of hip-hop, New Yorker?
17
This is how I feel
when Anon. commenters talk
rap on BK Veegz.
18
Don’t like when Pitchfork
claims authority on rap.
Don’t like when you do.
19
Leave hip-hop alone.
What is this article ’bout?
Define hip-hop please.
20
You’re great grandfather
was Edgar Wallace. Mine was
some broke brown subject.
21
Why did I think you
were biracial for so long?
Writer payola?
22
Hip-hop is not dead.
Polka is dead. It died and
is not coming back.
23
Electro-rap and
Africa Bambaataa’s not
that different man.
24
Bambaataa sampled
Kraftwerk and that was back in
1982!!!
Main photo: Jackie Roman
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44 Responses
That’s kinda less a rebuttal as taking random phrases from the article out of context. There’s a pretty interesting argument at the heart of it:
“On major commercial releases, this impulse [to swing and syncopate] is giving way to a European pulse, simpler and faster and more explicitly designed for clubs.”
Seems pretty on point, especially when you consider the whole ‘live music replacing physical sales’ trend.
[...] is surreal: Das Racist are sorta-kinda-but-not-really calling Sasha Frere-Jones a racist for saying what’s what about the death of [...]
Cry moar, Das Racist. The martyrs of all hip hop shouldn’t smoke themselves retarded and then record songs about combo fast food joints.
[...] Flavorwire: [...]
Who needs Sasha when a self-inflicted gunshot wound has done all the work?
[...] you’d just rhyme at him in some painfully sarcastic aphorisms. Well, my boys Das Racist kinda did those things already. And yet I still wanted to say something, or do something. Not sure why, but it probably has [...]
i may be missing something here, but isn't the take-home point that rap is just a little tired right now? there have been 2-3 repeat-worthy rap albums this year, and that's not racist. Plus, positionality begets dissent, particularly from the new yorker tower, and if this were written by say, das racist, on flavorpill, i wonder how reactionary people would be?
i will say though that describing interesting rap music on the basis of how "weird" it is, makes me cringe a little. lil' wayne is fucking weird, but how do we define endearing weirdness?
OH BEHAVE!
did you even read what we wrote? we never offered our band as "proof" of anything. we weren't arguing about whether hip-hop was dead or not but that the question itself seems moot and that the terms of sfj's argument seemed vague and inconsistent.
and sure, there are plenty much worse than sfj but, again, we were asked by flavorpill to write a response to this piece and figured it would be good publicity to do so. if you want us to write about something of real substance, then invite us to write for your publication on whatever topic you feel is worth taking up column inches for.
[...] I will be focusing on Vic’s non-haiku portion of the response) with sensationalist headline “Das Racist to Sasha Frere-Jones: “Stop trying to kill rap”(which Frere-Jones linked on his New Yorker blog). Despite the overstatement of this headline, with [...]
I think your music (Das Racist) has very little to do with any of the culturally important facets of hip-hop music. I will do my best not to let that skew my perspective of this article. That said, you make as many odd, unthinking generalizations in this piece as you say SFJ does in his. For the record, I didn't think the Freddie Gibbs part of that article made much sense either, and I didn't agree with all of his points, but agree with even less of yours.
"Interstitial material, skits and even songs that are obviously recorded as filler do not have to be seen as less valid art but can be seen as part of the tradition (often enough, “filler” and skits contain truly avant-garde and surreal moments)."
That is a bizarre statement…it is also wrong. Songs obviously recorded as filler ARE in fact less valid than other parts of the tradition because they are created without effort and have little artistic or cultural significance. Meaningless skits fall under the same category. Rappers who record shitty albums full of filler and skits are not doing so to make some attempt at avante garde or surrealist art…they are simply not putting in the work or effort, or not thinking in the right way to make good music. Those parts of rap are only appreciated by people who take parts of hip-hop culture that you think are not cool and adopt them in order to bestow upon themselves what Jay Smooth would call a sort of "bizarro world anti-matter coolness." People who over-analyze the shitty parts of hip-hop and interpret them as experimental or avante-garde so that they fit into some hipsterized world of ironically contextualized art. What an odd way to look at things.
a haiku is not a 17 syllable sentence.
[...] Racist attempts to start beef with The New Yorker’s Sasha [...]
Does anyone else see the hilarious irony of a group called Das Racist basically calling someone (as much as they make claims to he contrary) racist?
[...] Das Racist responds. No Bullshit. [...]
Did you just take a class in Critical Theory?
Your band sucks
I dunno man , a lotta Hip Hop bores me . Freddie Gibbs really is that good. Also, if you have never read Amiri Baraka "Blues People" or Miles Davis autobiography you should because this AESTHETIC is not new, and few rappers really do embody positive change in the way of being the spokespersons for the people of any give week month or year. So don't hate on Scha whoever the writers name is , the article was aiigh.
[...] natuurlijk zijn er dan mensen op hun tenen getrapt door het relaas van Frere-Jones. Bijvoorbeeld de groep Das Racist die er een hele rassenkwestie [...]
my argument is not based on his race, i make several points that relate to his race but the over-arching argument is more about how pointless and meaningless the article (and the argument itself) are. when someone says "hip-hop is dead" they are not only saying that hip hop is a single definable entity, but they are saying that it has a definitive beginning and end. i was just saying he doesn't make a compelling argument for either of these assertions. the white paternalistic music journalist voice was more of a pet peeve.
just because something is created with little effort doesn't mean it has little artistic or cultural significance. anyone who knows 36 chambers knows the words to all of the skits as well as they know the songs. the skits were not planned or labored over as much as the songs were but they are part of what makes the album what it is. the same can be said of the skits on three feet high and rising, ready to die, reasonable doubt, capital punishment, etc. etc. improvisation, ad-libbing, stream of consciousness are heavily integrated into much of what is considered rap music.
also you can use the words "avant-garde" and "surreal" to describe things that weren't necessarily intended to be avant-garde or surreal…
"Avant-garde represents a pushing of the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm."
rap skits pushed the boundaries of what was accepted as the norm in pop albums.
"Surreal: marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream"
take say, "heart street" off of ghostface's fishscale as one of hundreds of examples.
jay smooth is our dude. in that very same vlog you quote, he says pretty much that end of the day "hipster rap" is a meaningless term and that each group should be viewed on its own terms.
http://www.rappersiknow.com/2009/10/28/jay-electr...
[...] das rascist tells sasha frere-jones to stop trying to kill rap [...]
Amazing writing and thoughts on the subject! Great job!!
[...] Also, they fought with sasha frere-jones about his contention that hip-hop is dead (why do critics even use that tired trope any more?) and it wasn’t stupid at all. Read their response here. [...]
[...] more interesting critiques of the Frere-Jones article was written by Victor Vazquez (of Das Racist) as a guest feature in Falvorwire. Vazquez jumps on Frere-Jones for the kind of attitude I described before: SFJ is savvy enough to [...]
I like that people are reading the New Yorker to find out if hip-hop is dead. That says a more about the current state of things maybe than anything else.
[...] over the place lately — most memorably in SFJ’s latest gauntlet-toss, in turn tossed right back at him by Victor Vasquez of Das [...]
i would like to know your point of view, but it’s hidden in the article’s verbosity and poor organization. i admit it’s better than that fucking email. that fucking email. i come test you to take a little more time with this, maybe with a black marker, and post it again after you’ve made some edits.
[...] leap has so uprooted the art form that “Hip Hop” is “aging out”. Make sure to check out Das Racist’s reply) The resulting shift threatened relegating Weezy from Jay-Z’s unofficial “heir” to [...]
[...] Himanshu Suri’s 24 haikus in rebuttal to Sasha Frere-Jones’ article Wrapping Up (flavorwire [...]
To state genre is just a marketing term then argue for hiphop is to defend your share of the market. It’s also a way to build street cred I’m guessing. and good publicity $. Why wouldn’t you embrace sjf’s claim and declare all genres bunk?
“You’re great grandfather.” Nice.
Boiled down: if you’re white, don’t talk about hip-hop!
I hear what SFJ is saying – hip-hop, defined as a genre of music composed of syncopated rhythms and spoken word raps [+/- the bonethugs of the world]as epitomized by wu-tang, and nas, and snoop (pre-1996) et. al, (hellof whiteboy textbook, as you wesleyan grads would say), was THE defining ‘mode’ for commercially successful/mainstream music for about 20 (i would say 15) years. And now it is not, in the same way that Big-band/swing, jazz, (what is now prefaced by ‘classic’) rock, disco, all had their own moments (of varying length) in the sun. I don’t think this is a pointless argument, nor do I think SFJ fails to compellingly present it. In the mode that metal is ‘dead,’ to state one example given by SFJ. Sure, metal bands aren’t topping the charts, and you don’t often hear metal at a ‘mainsteam’ party or club or bar, or on mainstream radio, but at the same time the shit Mastodon and Between the Buried and Me, and Arsis, and Gorod, and Neuraxis have been writing and busting out have been fucking legendary, innovative, completely metal albums.
When you look at the state of ‘hip-hop’ today, OF COURSE there are still great rappers producing great songs (and funny, semi-surprisingly eloquent rappers making hilarious stoner jams about combination fastfood restaurants not present in the tonier areas of connecticut), but from my (admittedly white, middle-class, college-educated) experience, hip-hop (as textbook defined above) has ceded control of the airwaves, speaker cones, and earbuds of the mainstream for a decidedly more disco/techno/euro/whatever sound. I mean, ten years ago, ALL you heard at parties, wherever, was rap -juvenile, jay-z, wu-tang, whatever. And now, well, there’s a lot of Justice, Crookers, Lady Gaga, whatever. And just because Kid Cudi raps over a crookers banger or P.Diddles sponsors Felix Da Housecat mixtapes now doesn’t make those sounds “hip-hop.” They’re electro with someone rapping over them. There IS a difference. Would the verses of “Foe tha Love of Money” laid over an electro beat still be hip-hop? [shit can't find the link will post it later] well it’s not. not even close.
closing statement, since I’m on the clock: could you see New York State of Mind topping the charts is it was released these days? Or blowing up in the clubs and whatnot? I mean it’s about as perfect a hip-hop song as you’ll find, but the mainstream’s tastes have changed. I doubt that matters to you (as you expressed) and nor should it. Metal heads couldn’t give a flying fuck that they don’t get airplay, and 5 years ago, pre-Cudi and pre-Cool Kids, neither did Crookers or the Bloody Beetroots. so it goes.
That said… who am I, as a white person, to talk? Oh yeah you went to the same school as my dad btw. are you guys and santigold friends?
P.S. using Enter The Wu-Tang to justify the artistic merit of rap skits is kind of fraudulent, as the loose humor, introspection and easy rapport they have are by FAR the exception rather than the rule. You guys seriously enjoy listening to dramatic reenactments of a girl getting a cumshot in the eye (Chronic 2001.. or was it the Slim Shady LP?) or Biggie getting his dick sucked, or whatever the fuck is going on inbetween Stankonia’s tracks? Not saying skits and whatnot CAN’T be good… just that they generally aren’t, due to lack of effort. why defend that?
OK REALLY LEAVING NOW.
but for the record, i’ll sew your asshole closed, and keep feedin ya, and feedin ya, and…
i want to apologize for being all butt hurt and facetious about whiteness being a factor in describing/comprehending hip-hop. it’s a real issue, and especially the Freddie Gibbs part of the article I see where it feels wrong. i’m not trying to be a douche. that is all
[...] SASHA FRERE JONES: STOP TRYING TO KILL RAP [...]
[...] efforts by Kid Cudi and Wu-Tang clansman Raekwon, unsigned rapper Freddie Gibbs) while others questioned the entitlement of a white fortysomething to pronounce on the vital signs of a black pop genre in the first place. [...]
Fries are dead!!
I saw someone putting cheese curds and gravy on them!
And someone else putting mayonnaise on them!
You can’t shift/change/sample the fries! They must stay as they are!
If I may, I’d like to consider this argument as part of a larger debate that’s raged for years between postmodernists (here speaking as post-colonialists) and their opponents.
frere-jones says hip-hop is dead. vazquez says long live hip-hop. which one you believe depends on your definition of hip-hop. frere-jones dares to define it in his way – let’s call it the typical white, middle-aged, educated (i.e. paternalistic, arrogant, close-minded) view of hip-hop. vazquez responds by stating that you can’t give hip-hop a definitive end or beginning, so sfj’s article is pointless (Oct. 28th, 5:59 pm). in sum, he rejects the idea of defining hip-hop at all.
however, there’s more to work out about this approach. if i can’t define hip-hop because it has no definitive boundaries, then how about defining music – could me banging a tin pot without any sort of rhythm while i run around cooking dinner be music? No reason why not, once i say it’s music – and, before you deny this statement, consider how societal norms have shaped your response. we only consider music to be music because our parents said so. marcel duchamp’s urinal is the classic example of this – he displayed a urinal in a museum and declared that it was art because he said so. and who was to argue with him?
play this game long enough and you’ll be able to reject words entirely, and then life. this is the dangerous side of postmodernism’s rejection of the norms set up by white, (usually) educated men. it’s a long-overdue rejection of an Establishment that, with the protection of gobs of money, had intellectually lorded over the world for years. but the same process of “who are you to declaim on this topic” destroys postmodernist views as well, and any other belief system you’d like to propose. the only option left becomes absurdism – the meaningless of everything, including the point of victor writing his response, and me writing this comment (after all, it’s made of words too, and who’s to define those?). that’s not to say that absurdism isn’t a completely rational way of viewing the world, but it’s a pretty lousy way to go through life. why are we thinking? why are we saying what we’re saying? why are we asking why we’re thinking? there’s no absolute truth, and so there are no answers.
i know this thread died six days ago [insert trite joke about current debate here], but i’d love to hear a response from victor to the idea that the same logic used on sfj can be used equally well on him – since, just as sfj comes from a certain background producing a certain set of pre-determined assumptions which constrict his ability to declaim, so does victor. i’m sure you’ve heard my argument before, so i’d imagine you can come up with something of some substance to address it.
If Marcel duchamp recorded his piss it wouldnt be hiphop, if slick rick did it would. People that can pull off that type of piss now a day are limited. Asher Roth and Drake, their piss would be recognizably corny and soft with a faint club beat in the background or corny laughter, but listening to Eazy’s piss you could hear the miles davis in his urine with paint crumbling and bitches ride the pole.
DonQ’s comment above is the best thing i’ve seen on the internets in ages
Yo to DonQ. right on the mark! keep your comments flowing…Peace
[...] If you’re looking to have a informed conversation about Hip Hop’s enduring presence as a style that culturally and musically traverses genres (and due to this fact, it can be argued has actually removed itself from the conventions of genre) then you should strike a conversation with Himanshu Suri and Victor Vazquez of Brooklyn based rap duo Das Racist. However if you seek to retread the tired reasoning that “Hip Hop is Dead,” then you’ve found more than competent adversaries; ask Sasha Frere-Jones. [...]
Here’s another great rebuttal to the SFJ article from LA Times writer Dennis Romero
is dance music killing off hip-hop?
http://www.danceblogga.com/2009/11/is-dance-music-killing-off-hip-hop.html
In a recent New Yorker essay pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones argues that hip-hop is terming out in favor of electronic dance music, that much recent output “is hip-hop by virtue of rapping more than sound. The tempos and sonics of disco’s various children—techno, rave, whatever your particular neighborhood made of a four-on-the-floor thump—are slowly replacing hip-hop’s blues-based swing.”
“On major commercial releases, this impulse is giving way to a European pulse, simpler and faster and more explicitly designed for clubs,” Frere-Jones writes.
The piece takes a grim view of the electro-cized wave of hip-hop, yearning for a return to the early 1990s, when the genre found freedom in many forms — but usually atop the drive-train of down-tempo break-beats.
“If I had to pick a year for hip-hop’s demise,” Frere-Jones writes, ” … I would choose 2009.”
It’s a strange declaration, given its reliance on the notion of the genre’s return to four-on-the-floor dance as the main reason for its downfall. Frere-Jones even admits that much of hip-hop grew out of four-on-the-floor disco 30 years ago. His is a rockist’s lament for the days of hip-hop’s critical summit, the arms-folded time when “n—— don’t dance.”
I would argue, however, that hip-hop’s early 1990s heyday was manufactured by its commercial aspirations and the lure of money. In other words, what Frere-Jones so reverently remembers as rap’s authentic, angry, down-tempo heyday was really its major-label manufactured grab at the brass ring. While the genre started as a mutli-ethnic street culture based mostly on up-tempo dance music and a DJ aesthetic aimed at getting people off their asses, it ended up as a brooding, anti-white, exclusive culture precisely because that’s what the (white) masses wanted to buy. At its MTV-video worst, 1990s hip-hop was a young white man’s stereotypical vision of blackness.
Gangsta rap and the subsequent quasi-gangster music of B.I.G., Tupac, 50 Cent, et. al. was based on a marketing plan that was eaten up wholeheartedly by mainstream audiences at the expense of some of those rappers’ lives. But connections to true street sets was spurious. It was, in fact, the ill-fated flirtation that Tupac (a beat down of a Las Vegas gang member) had with REAL gang life that burned him. Any rapper who claims he’s gansta should then tell you what set, what street, what neighborhood he’s from. Although there are a few who would, for the most part they won’t because it’s a put on. It’s Ice Cube-level b.s. (And, in any case, a vast majority of gang members in the United States belong to Latino organizations such as Mara Salvatrucha and 18 Street, so try to reconcile that with the image being fronted in music videos, where you don’t see many shaved-head Mexican kids in “13″ jerseys).
My point is that hip-hop’s commercial heyday (and Frere-Jones is always defending the commercial) was based on a characterization of hip-hop, not on its true spirit. If anything, the party hearty tunes of Kanye West, Common and Black Eyed Peas are a return to hip-hop’s best days — the time when the genre was open to all. Even the 1980s protest music of Boogie Down Productions and the seething rhymes of Eric B. & Rakim still rocked a party.
So dancing equals the death of hip-hop? If anything, the genre’s return to its 4/4 roots has given it a new lease on life, opening it up to the very technology that is moving pop music forward — the technology that is making electronic dance music the leading edge of pop’s evolution. This is no step back, my friends. It’s a step ahead. Hip-hop fans no longer have to wear NFL apparel and brood on the sidelines. Because of Kanye, they can don American Apparel and crowd the DJ booth enthusiastically. Hip-hop has every right to claim property rights to electronic dance music and its electro (“Planet Rock”) roots. This is rap coming home to roost. It’s also hip-hop getting on the future express, as it should. Frere-Jones’ bitching about hip-hop turning its back on its tough-guy pose is like a Rolling Stone critic lamenting rock’s 1970s bonanza. Yeah, those were the days. But better times are ahead. Trust me.