Are white people who say "I don't like hip hop" yet listen to it when white people make it really saying "i don't like black people"?

This debate is fucking boring. It's so lame, people aren't even talking past each other, they're just popping out these strawmen that were stale the first time someone trotted them out. Sasha and Jessica aren't arguing that people who hate rap hate black people. Whatsisname at Slate isn't arguing that musical taste exists in a vacuum.

Frankly, Magnetic Fields stuff is so escapist, so clearly untouched by urban America, that it does strike me as similar (in its cultural white flight) to all the creepy, interchangeable white suburban/rural dramas on TV that started with Dawsons Creek (the OC, Smallville, One Tree Hill, etc etc.)

On the other hand, I believe Stephin when he says he just doesn't give a shit about syncopation and rhythm and shit. Man just likes a good tune, and thank god, because now we have 69 Love Songs. And that being the case, his taste is going to skew white. It's problematic, but not inherently racist.

I dunno, I think Sasha and Jessica chose the wrong guy to pick on here, but can we recognize that linking taste in music to the rest of the culture isn't ridiculous?

Dudes, see the EMP thread for much more on this, including posts from Hopper and a big-ass thing I posted before I realized y'all were talking about it here.

http://www.sashafrerejones.com/2006/05/idee_trix.html

Ask Don Delillo to do the same for books, and it's not like that list should be the syllabus in universities nationwide - it would just be interesting as a reflection of literature that has resonated with him as an artist. In Merritt's case, it happened to be work that would be an appropriate tie-in with the records he released that year, and probably more fun for him to do than an interview. It's just an artist's list in a weekly magazine, is all. I love reading artists' best-of lists (music, books, whatever) for their idiosyncracies and championing of underappreciated work, not for their breadth.

And just so we're careful what we wish for in asking our songbook composers to acknowledge rock and r&b influences, would anyone like to listen to Rent?

(I'm not a fan of 69 Love Songs because I can't get over the production and Merritt's voice - so hearing the same songs on a Morning Becomes Eclectic archive was quite a revelation.)

I can't think of a better pop song about people who've been sexually abused than "Papa Was A Rodeo".

Mind you, I'm no fan of Merritt -- but it's for strictly musical reasons. (All his songs sound, to me, like demos with which he has no emotional connection. His lyrics are repetitive, and frequently embarrassing in a tee-hee-look-at-me-I-am-talking-about-sex-aren't-I-shocking? kind of way. Also, I tend to dislike synthesizers. Personal biases, blah.) But I think expecting songs that aren't about class/race/etc. to acknowledge those topics is supremely ridiculous -- that's not the point of the song, the point of the song is that someone is in some sort of unrequited love, or requited love, or whatever. And I think it is fair to say that maintaining lyrical focus within a song is particularly important to Merritt, but I think that much breadth cannot be expected of anybody.

Maybe he could write his songs as normal, only devote the bridges to Matters of Political Import? "This guy doesn't love me, he doesn't love me... / also, I would like to point out that a lot of people are homeless / something ought to be done / And if there are any racists listening to this song / Well, you guys can just fuck off, okay? / Oh, good heavens, I said "fuck"! / (synthesizer solo)"

I blame Dave Chappelle for breaking down my inhibitions.

I should clarify that the archetype of the "cracker" is from the same historical family as the redneck/white trash/wigger/nigger/gangsta/pranksta person. The invention of the word "wigger" to describe "backwards white guys trying to act backwards black guys" or something similar is redundant as we already have enough words for those types of people (redneck, cracker, good ol' boy, etc). To criticize a white person for being anti-black and then to call him a cracker is a sort of circular insult.

I find it backwards though that so much can goes on in message boards but the only thing that brings people to react morally is the idea that a bad word might be used (even objectively speaking) by the wrong race on a keyboard. Would the use of the word "cock" only be acceptable if I came from I Love Farming? I think not.

When Merritt said "I think it's shocking that we're not allowed to play coon songs anymore" it reminded me of Freepers who say "niggardly" all the time just because hey it's not "technically" offensive nudge wink.

I tried playing Merritt a track by the Southern rapper Cee-lo, called "One for the Road," a dazzling display of verbal ingenuity and wit I thought he might enjoy. Before Cee-lo actually starts rapping, there's a short introduction, in which, sounding very Southern and very black, he says, "Yeah, mm-mm-mm, yeah that sho' feel good. Hello, I go by the name of simply Cee-lo Green, how d'ya do? Welcome. I thought I'd seize this opportunity to tell you a little bit more about myself, if you don't mind. This is my vision, ya know what I'm sayin'? Check me out now."

Unremarkable and tame, at least it seemed to me, but it was too much for Merritt, who stopped the song after a few seconds of this. "I think it's shocking that we're not allowed to play coon songs anymore, but people, both white and black, behave in more vicious caricatures of African-Americans than they had in the 19th century. It's grotesque. Presumably it's just a character, and that person doesn't actually talk that way, but that accent, that vocal presentation, would not have been out of place in the Christy Minstrels." Dramatic pause to prepare for the inevitable hyperbolic quip, "In fact, it would probably have been considered too tasteless for the Christy Minstrels."

Or you know...maybe he has a different taste and cultural background. Does anyone think he'd give more time to a country act in the Shania/Toby Keith mold? This isn't exactly the first time New York musicians could be said to be out of touch with mainstream American taste (!). This is all very similar to the accusations Charlie Gillett had made towards the Velvet Underground in Sound of the City, "(describing the VU sound) deliberately primitive musical accompanyment seemed to have filtered all the black influences out of rock n roll, leaving an amateurish, clumsy, but undeniably atmospheric background." And the Velvets at least had an explicitly anti-black racist in Nico to warrant suspicion that their music wasn't black enough for critics.

Let's stop getting shocked that affluent, educated, homosexual songwriters and artists living in Manhatten bring a more European approach and taste to music and don't instantly remind everybody of America and the South especially.

Having said that, rap songs use the word "faggot" so regularly - and get a pass from critics so routinely, either by explaining "it doesn't really mean gay" (what the fucking fuck, who are you to tell people whether an abusive epithet commonly aimed at them is or isn't abusive in a given context) or just quietly ignoring it - that one oughtn't be surprised if he thinks "fuck a genre that on the whole thinks I am beneath contempt by virtue of who I am"

-- Cunga (visionsofjohann...), May 11th, 2006

Um, Cunga, I hope you are joking, because the last time I checked there were people of color living in NYC, and correct me if I am wrong, but various people of color in NYC have contributed to the music world in countless decades now. I hear that there are books out, available in the US and Europe, marketed on the internet, that have text and pictures about the contributions of these people of color from New York. I understand you can ever hear this music live, or out of car windows and such in both NYC and Europe on ocassion.

It seems more like Merritt has just chosen to isolate himself from some African-American made music. To a certain degree that is his perogative (are people requiring NYC opera singers and classical musicians and metalheads or whomever to document a multicultural i-pod song list?), but on the other hand he has published a list of what he considered to be important 20th century music, and he gives pretentious interviews and writes pretentious reviews declaiming what he thinks is important. I do not think this makes him a racist, but it does seem to allow for his tastes to be questioned.

best song ever.

"A pretty girl is like a minstrel show It makes you laugh
It makes you cry You go It just isn't the same on radio
It's all about the makeup and the dancing and the Oh,"

Of course, the next verse compares the same pretty girl to a violent crime...but then again using the image of a minstrel show as a means of ironic juxtaposition is questionable.

alert me when somebody gets called out on ilm for calling somebody "bitch" or "faggot"