Gavin
booty bass intellectual
I don't understand... Doctors have been prescribing downers as a cure for housewife boredom for decades.
'you are what you own' - how rap just reinforces the status quo
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I don't understand... Doctors have been prescribing downers as a cure for housewife boredom for decades.
Freakaholic
not just an addiction
you mean, like in Mexico?
Gavin
booty bass intellectual
I think the Puritan pleasure-hating guilt complexes the U.S. cultural heritage produces practically requires some sort of pretense for almost any kind of drug use, a kind of ritual atonement or something.
Mr. Cheese
Paternal Reassurance
So the bottom line is that people are concerned with rap’s garish flaunting of material goods while remaining oblivious of the very same behaviour being extolled — albeit less conspicuously — in pretty much every other sphere of society too? Can it not be, though, that they are right in some proximate way? That it’s not the flaunting, but the conspicuous way in which it’s manifested, that is regrettable? Such a viewpoint does not preclude the validity of the usual shibboleth about rap bringing society’s depraved underbelly to the fore, exaggerating our basest impulses, exploring modern life through a cartoonish lens, etc., but its advocates — I would imagine — are anxious about the specific effect some of these specific “exaggerated”, “cartoonish” manifestations have on a specific social group: impoverished, impressionable, inner-city adolescents.
Gavin
booty bass intellectual
Yes, but it's simply not true that everything else is less conspicuous. Turn on literally any TV show: makeover shows, My Super Sweet 16, Pimp My Ride, Laguna Beach/OC, soap operas, car commercials, Stella Artois (slogan: "Perfection has a price"), the Simple Life. It's literally everywhere, and some of the aforementioned are more conspicuous than rap. Fuck, what about the "white tee" trend; not exactly about flaunting pricey duds a la Manolos on Sex and the City
Honestly I'm more interested on the specific effects of grinding poverty on such youth, not what they watch on TV (though I am interested in that). More suburban kids watch rap videos and buy rap CDs than kids in the hood, so I'm not comfortable taking the "critique rap to save the poor ghetto youf" position since I think it distorts too much. If anything ghetto youf can read these images more critically (and in very different ways) than a suburb kid who only sees blacks on BET. Like how many people understand that videos now are mainly for displaying a) new fashion trends and b) new dance steps? 'Burb kids are getting the vicarious black teen party vibe, but the "impressionable" inner-city teens can actually two step and walk it out for a minute.
rockypoppy2
wtf?
otm. id say youth crime is more a product of a desire to make money (and the very real condition of surviving in a consumer society) than a desire to emulate mtv. and its not 50cent's fault that almost all emphasis in modern life is on monetary wealth. if you got it flaunt it and all that
slackk
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Eh, the braggadocio in rap has always reflected the society it's in. As people have previously said, it just so happens that our current climate is more materialistic, image obsessed and "me" than nearly everything else that's come before it.
Just walk around london, liverpool wherever and stare at billboards, stare at shopfronts. shit is screaming "money is key". and it is, but not to this extent. A hugely capitalist society wonders why the poorest lust after what it can't have and resort to crime to obtain it?
It's just scared to look at itself. And as much as the Guardian's the paper I actually buy when I forget it's free on the internet, it's just as fucking guilty.
Just walk around london, liverpool wherever and stare at billboards, stare at shopfronts. shit is screaming "money is key". and it is, but not to this extent. A hugely capitalist society wonders why the poorest lust after what it can't have and resort to crime to obtain it?
It's just scared to look at itself. And as much as the Guardian's the paper I actually buy when I forget it's free on the internet, it's just as fucking guilty.
art mirrors life, and historically artists rarely challenged the existig power structure. that was the point with my Mozart comment. he certainly went with the flow in terms of aristocratic power and hierarchy of his day, and probably did his share of flaunting wealth and popularity as well.
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
The ability of the Guardian editorials to decry the evils of consumer capitalism in the same issue that their magazine section is telling you about the best places to buy to let and which designer coffee mugs to own this autumn is really quite funny.
Erm, I buy it for the TV guide...
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
Heh.
Similarly, apropos bigging yourself up, I detest the way in which broadsheet journalists are increasingly being touted, or touting themselves, as 'personalities'. I don't want to see their airbrushed mugs at the top of the article I'm reading, nor to be told in which other areas of life they have achieved sparkling success. The former is an irrelevant distraction and the latter, if true, should already be evident to me.
Demanding respect before you have earnt any sticks in the craw. And once you have earnt it, you no longer need to demand it.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Because, in Britain at least - and I suspect in the US as well - it's overwhelmingly (or at least, disproportionately) black inner-city kids who get involved in serious gang violence, and the music they listen to is overwhelmingly hip-hop and its various derivative forms.
Obviously there are very important economic factors in this too, before you point it out to me, but they influence the social factors just as the social affects the economic.
swears
preppy-kei
slackk
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I wouldn't suggest all the poor resort to crime because it's a ridiculous assertion, not my point at all. The point I'm making is that it's a status driven culture and growing up with fuck all with a shitty education pushes people to do things.
Lads I know from when I was really fucking young try to sell coke because it's viewed as an easy route to making the kind of money that will elevate them to what they see as a decent platform. That's got more to do with wanting status and shit they couldn't afford and seeing the people we bought weed and that from dressed to the nines. As a young lad, you pay a lot of attention to that.
I'd appreciate it if you didn't start slinging that "you're a racist" shit at me when you don't know me either thanks.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
That's clearly bollocks. Ever heard of the aristocracy?
rockypoppy2
wtf?
i think polz is referring to the New Age, working mentality of the american dream, 1920 onwards, when you'd work a lifetime to pay off a house, you finally own it, and theres no one to live in it.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Maybe that's the case (is it, polz?), but he didn't say "from the 1920s to the 1960s", he said "before the 1960s", which is a lot different.
(And surely what you describe is just the opposite of 'new age'? Don't you mean 'New Deal'? I'm confused here.)
rockypoppy2
wtf?
i dont know either. just chatting crap. bored at work.