"Hicks"

Hmmm. Could be Metal Mike, could be Joshua Clover. N. Bedford is a ref. to Nathan Bedford Forest -- a southern civil war hero. And Crouch is, well, Stanley Crouch. The only problem is, under all the pitchforkisms, I can't tell if he likes the albums or not -- tho he does give pretty good sonic descriptions.

I personally find mock-offended reviews to be too back-patting & self congratulatory for my taste.

Why not Andre Crouch?

The article says 'Couch', though.

The key is here: "Thorne has shown an ability to work the angles within today's society—he attended predominantly black North Carolina Central University on a minority scholarship. Yet instead of using immersion in this dark world to the advantage of his brethren, he uses it in an ill-advised exercise in white self- flagellation."

What a cockfarmer.

Why not Couch Flambeau?

Because Killdozer were the real hicks from Wisconsin.

at what point do we openly acknowledge that this is a put-on?

Well I think Sterling acknowledged that from the beginning. But this is what I'm asking - to what end?

He's trying, I think, to illustrate a certain confluence in notions of "racial purity" shared by southern good ol boys, hip-hop racial uplift nationalists, and jazz cranks like crouch. Which is valid... to a point. And to go beyond the cheap shot, which he doesn't, you need to be able to differentiate between white racism and black nationalism very sharply. Lou Reed fell down on this count too in Good Evening Mr. Waldheim. Flattening of race issues = typical liberal affliction.

‘Our young white children’
‘unfortunate dominance of black popular culture’
‘raw black cultural movements’ in need of being ‘refined’
, a predominantly African-American University described as a ‘dark world’
is this N.Bedford Couch a Grand Wizard?

Killdozer! If only "The Buzzard" caught on with US youth as much as "The Rooster."

Seriously, I don't know where to begin. Is it supposed to be a joke?

If it is, the satire isn't really drawn sharply enough. I can't believe the Village Voice would print something like this. Their mailroom's probably overworked enough as it is.

I didn't see a comment on larger political issues so much as I saw a mockery of those who feel that the solution is contingent upon musical correctness.

And yes, I did see it as a fairly obvious satire, but I was afraid that some wouldn't.

There will be some even among Village Voice's hip readership who are bound to take this at face value and agree with it. If the mailroom is overflowin', I'm hoping we'll get to see some notes of support for this sensible new writer.

I think he gives himself away in his discussion of the rapper's flow; 'tis a bit of a protest-too-much situation.

I actually read this article a couple days ago, and kept wondering if it was a put-on, and wondering if I should bring ILM's attention to it. Then I forgot about it.

Maura sent me a Metafilter posting with plenty of people who took it seriously. And approved.

Straight-faced agreement with this is disturbing.

But one problem is that his/her mockery of that attitude brings it up but doesn't deal with it except to essentially call it a joke worthy of satire. I think it's far too knotty and important an issue for that to work very effectively; the "isn't it silly that people say such things about hip-hop" premise doesn't work for me in that I think the content of hip-hop really is something that needs to be thought about and talked about quite seriously. And note that part of hip-hop's very purpose is to express and/or deal with some of the Very Bad Things that go on within the American black community, so I tend not to like arguments that assume hip-hop is just like that and it's not worth talking about. Probably this reviewer just didn't feel he/she could adequately deal with all of those knotty issues, and thus just made an ironic joke of them to allow him/herself to just talk about the music itself -- which isn't exactly evil, but is a pretty big cop-out. Afraid to tackle it head- on, I suppose.

I came across the "Ugly" video context-free, recognizing the Timbaland production but knowing nothing else and even wondering, for a moment, if this was a complex gag in which a black rapper decided to have white guys lip-sync. It's fascinating and challenging imagery, insofar as it offers us a "white culture" equivalent of the ghetto-ish mentality of so much rap ... essentially an image of a racial inversion of sorts, an image of white people in circumstances troubled and poverty-stricken enough to react with the same mentalities some portions of the black community have. I like this insofar as it disconnects those mentalities from blackness and associates them with something closer to their true roots, which are poverty, denial of opportunity, inadequate education, forced long- term alienation from the dominant culture, etc., etc., etc. It's no surprise that this stuff should come from southerners, partly for the obvious reason that (a) there are a lot of black people down there, thus the hip-hop influence is stronger, but more sociologically because (b) white Americans are to black Americans pretty much as white Americans are to Southern Americans. The same issues of poverty and underdevelopment and cultural isolation and general looked-down- upon-ness apply to the South, albeit to a lesser degree than they've historically applied to blacks.

Yeah, I was thrown by the piece myself, obviously found it impossible to read w/o thinking there's a satire angle but baffled as to how to take the whole thing via ONE angle, the writer's effective enough in the first half of the piece at exaggerating a certain 'critical' stance into total silliness..
But then at points she/he wrecks it by showing off how much she/he knows about hip-hop. That's the problem, maybe, you can't satirize a viewpoint that by def. would not be discerning in its disgust for all things hip-hop related AND at the same time know the diff between the Neptunes and Mannie Fresh.
Hmm.. I think, though, what bothers me is given the writer's attempt to satirize a viewpoint that's racist & elitist & thinks the material on these records & that Bubba Sparxxx vid ought not to be funny, that these rappers should not make themselves objects of derision... does that not mean the writer thereforewould have you understand that, in fact, it is entirely appropriate that poor Southerners be objects of derision?
Maybe I am not reading properly but there is a small part of the article's argument sans a satire-reading which I find compelling. It's like the difference between a John Waters movie and a Harmony Korine movie: the first presents people w/I think a certain degree of respect/affection even if it makes fun of them, the second just wants you to stare at the cartoon freaks. And maybe if some of these albums say nothing more than 'let's stare at the white trash freaks,' they are to be criticized: not because I don't think white people should make hip-hop, but because the lack of lyrical complexity makes it bad hip-hop. I wish the writer had told us about that.

... assuming we believe a lack of lyrical complexity = bad hip hop...