blissblogger said:
i said this on the other thread but i'll put here just so it's easy for the PC-er than thou hyper-sensitive crew to refer to:
"here is a record that is SLATHERED, CAKED, with signifiers of authenticity -- overt allusions , sonic/lyrical/design etc, to street music, the subaltern, ghetto communities, guerrilla struggle, and then surrounded by a critical discourse that quite breezily took it as genuine street-level world music (something like that -- i forget the specific SFJ quote that pretty much set the tone for all later celebration of the artist)
and yet when a critic actually pays scrutiny to the very credentials that are being FRANTICALLY BRANDISHED by the artist and its label (all over new york right now there are posters advertising the album with the slogan 'pull up the people, pull up the poor') this is supposed to be an off-color (boom-boom) thing to do. an imposition of criteria and "pre-conceived notions" that could not possibly be more inappropriate and uncalled for.
im not hyper sensitive or PCer than thou (actually, this whole anti-pc ethos seems redolent of people who simply cant be bothered to get things right or learn about other cultures so they instantly adopt this anti-PC pose as an escape), but i come from a similar background to MIA, and find your grand exalter status arrogant. but then i remember your old public enemy reviews as well, so i suppose your somewhat pompous, typically patronising white upper middle class broadsheet tone should come as no surprise. i have no problem with anyone scrutinising the very credentials that are being brandished, rather with the way theyre being discussed and attacked. whats wrong with a slogan saying pull up the people, pull up the poor? would you have the same problem with 50 cent brandishing his gangsta authenticity? or do you prefer a good ol bit of street nihilism over someone actually trying to espouse some sort of politicised (no matter how vague) message? you seem awfully quick to want to put MIA in her place, tell her she knows nothing about politics or world situations or anything really, and that all she should do is make party records and insert nothing that attempts to provoke a reaction in her work. you cant see it from any other perspective but your own. i dont get why lyrics like that pull up the people slogan are quite so provocative or have incited such critical reaction, if anything theyre simple platitudes that most 'socially conscious' artists have uttered at some point in their career. perhaps MIA should just accept her lot in life and not try to say anything.
blissblogger said:
here we have a pop artifact that is limned with all this stuff to do with race and class -- but if you discuss it in these terms that's what, somehow racially insentitive or inverted snobbery?
its not discussing it thats the problem, but the way its being discussed.
blissblogger said:
i would have thought pointing out that a record that makes like it's from the projects but is in actual fact an art project (that's what she calls it-- the MIA project), i would have thought that was a fairly salient point. i would have thought that would have been within the bounds of legitimate comment."
and I-go-where-no-Gringo-Goes Diplo has been getting his fair share of flak, if you ask me
where the fuck has she said shes all about the projects or estates? she hardly mentions it in the album. and so what if its an art album? just because she calls it that or came from an art school does not make it any less authentic than if she dropped out of school after her GCSEs. unless thats your criteria for authenticity? its funny how middle classers still always fetisihise this idea of pure, undluted art or music coming from the working classes. your problem seems to be that simply because MIA has been to st martins or wherever, that automatically puts her on the same level as white musical-cultural tourists and robs her of all authenticity, but by that criteria (and i dont know what criteria for authenticity youre using), public enemy cos chuck d went to college, or that rakim isnt 'legit' because he didnt drop out of high school.
believe it or not, the experience of non white people in the UK is -gasp!- actually a bit different to white people by default, so who cares if MIA went to art school, this doesnt make her exactly the same as jagger going to LSE and then posturing as some sort of comical rebel. by your criteria, youd probably lambast black intellectual-critics like greg tate for being well educated and suggest that they simply cant speak on black issues cos theyre too far removed from the majority of working class black people in the US. if anything, MIA offers an art school perspective on what british born asian artists might do in the same way someone like organized konfusion or justin warfield or saul williams offer a hint at the black-art school perspective.