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"?

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"

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"

My point is: why would a gay artist have any interest in a genre which, with the exception of the (very) occasional Kanye, dehumanizes him constantly? (why, for that matter, would a woman?) I would expect a gay artist to be about as sympathetic to hiphop as a hiphop artist would be to National Socialist Black Metal.

Calling SM "indie rock" will getcha bruised! (ok, an ornery protest)

Just caught up with this navel-gazing 'controversy' on the Noise board, as I'd never click on this topic or a "jessica hopper" thread...

Cook in that Slate piece:

the whole of their sustained attack against Merritt is founded on the dangerous and stupid notion that one's taste in music can be interrogated for signs of racist intent the same way a university's admissions process can: If the number of black artists in your iPod falls too far below 12.5 percent of the total, then you are violating someone's civil rights.

O the fuckin' TM. Fuck jh and Frere-Jones with the same chainsaw.

It's clearly overboard to call Merritt a racist, but I've always been uncomfortable with his (not actually his, but similar to) views on music/culture dismissiveness toward musical pop culture. There's just something odd about the attitude that always seemed tied up in race, but not actually racist. There's one ILE pariah who does the Merritt dance quite often.

-- milo z (wooderso...), May 11th, 2006.

LOL! Theyyy calll the wind pa-riah..... That's logic worthy of Parentheses Man. Where's that film poll?

Really looking fwd to the new Dr. Octagon album, btw, as comedy records from all quarters are about all I can stand anymore (eg, Art Brut).

This is totally misleading. Didn't nabisco address this in the emp thread? does everyone just say 'nabisco otm' and not read what he writes? Ditto on the Zoilus post.

Yo, I can freak, fly, flow, fuck up a faggot/Don't understand their ways I ain't down with gays