Childish Gambino

luka

Well-known member
woebot on the other hand is at that stage of life where men often feel obligated to push back against the hip
and the radical. it's a form of trolling from the opposite direction. dad trolling.

it's basically an argument between a father and his teenage son with neither occupying an entirely honest position.
 

luka

Well-known member
a large part of how anyone receives the song will depend on how they believe it to be positioned
in relation to hip-hop proper. is it sneering, mocking, is it a loving tribute, is it a more crafted artistic version of a crude template, is it just another mainstream rap video or whatever
 

luka

Well-known member
ou're saying this black man is not allowed to use the work of other black men to make a point about racial injustice.

crowley is very explicitly saying gambino is not black enough.
 

luka

Well-known member
part of it stems from the schism between street rap and underground rap and all the positioning that took place round that initial break i guess. tossing round phrases like respectability politics and so on.
 

luka

Well-known member
it represents a whole host of often contradictory things for people. spirituality, resistance, rebel music, the outlaw, sexual potency, nobility in suffering, spontaneous joy, athletic prowess, physical beauty, so on and so forth

psychologically it's a mess...
 

luka

Well-known member
and im certainly not claiming to be immune or above any of this confusion myself. just pointing out what a mess it is.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
You're saying this black man is not allowed to use the work of other black men to make a point about racial injustice
I understand Crowley to be referring to the entirety of the Gambino project as based entirely off signifiers from rap proper, rather than just this particular track

i.e. it's not that This is America is cynical posturing but that Glover wouldn't be in the position to make it w/o having leaned on rap proper + its signifiers for a decade

until recently he was making non-threatening rap (or whatever u wanna call it) that's whole thing was it's hyper self-awareness of its joke rap status making it kind of real. he is an interesting dude - I can't think of a real precedent for going from nerd outsider to serious (black) cultural figure. or Kanye is the obv one, but Glover has the self-awareness that Kanye seems to completely lack (unless u believe the fanboy theories that it's all a vast I'm Still Here performance art thing). probably partly a generational thing, but partly also not. the SNL performance was almost definitely referencing Kanye premiering "Black Skinhead", and I'm sure the 70s Al Green look (shirtless, tight pants, beard) is a highly conscious reference as well.

I have never been remotely interested in Glover's music - it makes me think of think of grumpy true school heads 10+ years ago complaining about people geeking out on Adult Swim backpack rap, but 1 million times worse - but this is pretty good + even if it's not a shattering revelation like people are making out this country can never have too many people making smart but unequivocal statements on race.
 

luka

Well-known member
should go without saying that being expected to stand for/embody/represent a set of values just by dint of your race is dehumanising in the extreme. and yet this is still a huge part of discourse around black music, explicitly or implicitly.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Postscript: It's the failing of Trap that it hasn't been able to produce something of this cultural power.
and all due respect to your wide musical knowledge in many areas, but come on man - how much trap do/have you actually listened to?

I don't listen to any trap at all but I'm still 99.99% sure that is wrong - please Crowley, Barty, etc help with actual examples

also it's the same tired argument white music cognoscenti have been making for decades privileging roots over slackness, conscious over gangsta, etc
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
still a huge part of discourse around black music, explicitly or implicitly
what I meant above, roots v slackness, gangsta v conscious, etc

every black (+ to a lesser extent other non-white) artist has to grapple with that representation question at some point in a way that white artists virtually never do

you'd indeed think that would go w/o saying at dissensus of all places. frankly I was kinda shocked at that part of Woebot's comment for that very reason.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
tbh if he keeps making stuff like/as good as This Is America, good on him, however he got here.

a fully self-aware post-Kanye is a helluva lot better than the current MAGA slavery was a choice Kanye.
 

luka

Well-known member
sure im just saying there is another pitfall on the other side of the equation in which blackness is
equated with/reduced down to slack/gangster and everything else deemed as inauthentically black.

there
a social reality in which every note played by a black musician gets dragged into these stale binaries regardless of their intentions but, y'know, sad innit
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
in which blackness is equated with/reduced down to slack/gangster and everything else deemed as inauthentically black
absolutely. I'm not trying to recreate that binary tbc.

w/earlier Gambino it specifically comes across like the kind of borrowing white rappers often get accused of. or Squarepusher's relationship to jungle proper.

Janelle Monae is a better example to me of a big current figure pushing at the boundaries of "authentic" while still drawing on various afrofuturist tropes.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Postscript: It's the failing of Trap that it hasn't been able to produce something of this cultural power.

That is a gargantuan dismissal and it ignores the fact that this man's celebrity exists far beyond music and not to mention, he is a well-regarded figure outside of that whole genre's audience. He was in essentially one of America's most critically endorsed comedy TV Shows for a few years.

I get the notion of your remark is in the fact that the music should've produced political art that's equivocal or could rival it in some ways which, again, very dismissive of a lot of the politics embedded within that don't require overt presentation, but even in any case you're failing to recognize media visibility and an ease of access he has that a lot of those artists you're claiming have failed to achieve this (if we want to call it a desirable goal) don't.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
crowley is very explicitly saying gambino is not black enough.

It has absolutely less to do with his blackness, more to do with his intent. Which is an ultimately conjectural based argument but when you look at his art and the audience who is consuming it (which just to be clear, does not appear to be the same audience as trap) you then have to ask why is it not reaching across rather than simply kind of playfully striking against the people for whom this is a lark and an amusement.

"The gosh darn black plight!"

It's tainted as well in the wake of the Kanye social media antics in that it's instantly heralded with superior value to the lack of art that Kanye's made, or even as far as the lack of satisfaction in art that Kanye's made in recent times. To be clear, the present day rap community has no shortage of artists who are explicitly taking homage from Kanye and moving it in directions more conventional to his older material (Including Gambino in many respects). The strange antagonism of ELIMINATING Kanye because he's "failed" the general public and supplanting him with artists who re-approach older ideas is baffling to me, and that Gambino's video has benefitted from that instantaneous contrast undermines the resonance in that it affirms belief of inequality and danger, not that it challenges.
 

luka

Well-known member
i want to ignore everyone else and puruse my own tangent for a little while. feel free to ignore me in return.
 

luka

Well-known member
blackness is such a powerful symbol that everyone wants to co-opt it.
http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=2594
i revived this thread partly becasue it's such a vivid example of that.
political revolutionaries want all black people to be Chuck D
liberals want all black people to be Ta-Nehisi Coates, or like, ?uestlove or something.
 
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