I mostly agree w/zhao (if not, a/p/u, how he argues his points). picking at the semantics of "authenticity" is forest for trees tho. manufacturing personas is a key tenet of pop. ok. the central point in authenticity + appropriation isn't whether it is or not, it's how you do it. do you respect the culture you're borrowing from, especially if you're coming from a position of relative privilege? are you giving something back (culturally or literally $-wise, by putting people on)? led zeppelin ripping off blues guys w/o crediting them or madonna strip-mining the gay underground is fucked up, but there's a million ways to take influences from music you love + be respectful about it. as far as l.d.r., I dunno about her music either way but there's something very loathsome about a girl with a millionaire father, who went to posh boarding school, making a selling point out of living in a trailer park. (I'm not into her appropriation of rap either but she's hardly the first, or millionth, person to do that so whatever. tho, unlike eminem - or the beastie boys, or kreayshawn for that matter - she hasn't/isn't exactly paying any dues back to rap for the cutural value she's extracting out of it). she's basically an american version of lily allen's (or mike skinner's I guess?) fake chav act. but some people liked lily allen too so there you go.
