Is Rolling Stone racist?

Do you seriously think that Vibe is a "quote" niche magazine? Is that a more inherently racist assumption than any guess around Rolling Stone's covers?

Not that I think you're racist, Yanc3y, but I think the assertion that Vibe is "niche" is one of the silliest things I've ever seen on ILM.

Justin, Em, and Xtina are fucking great you guilty-liberal fuck.

Like okay yeah throw xtina out then elvis then the beatles then the yardbirds then ALL ROCK EVER and then um, all euro-rave, all techno not made by mills & co., all punk that's dub inflected and etc. coz that's all "stealing" and et fucking c. Then what do you have? Boring bland motherfucking segregationist seperate-but-equal cultural "purity"!!! Yeah white boys and girls can stop jacking hip-hop and R&B when rappers stop sampling music that's written using the 12-tone scale. Step, fool.

1) rich is a close friend of mine ("guilty-liberal fuck" you called him)
2) his argument above (he and i talked about this earlier today) has nothing to do with the elvis-chuck d beef or any of the rest of that tired shit, all he's saying (and correctly, i believe) is that it seems like when rs is faced with the choice of putting a black artist on their cover or their white counterpart, 120 times oughtta 100 rs picks the honky. so why is that? is it for the same reason that a million hacks have said elvis made rock big ("white america felt safe with mr. presley, unlike the dark-toned folks from which he stole his stylings")? is it cuz black faces, for some reason, don't sell?

anyway, my point is i'm not about to argue with what you say above cuz ofuckingcourse that's the case. but rich (if i can speak for him) wasn't trying for something that broad.

more to the point if asking for the "black counterpart" of em or xtina wasn't so stupid i'd dare you or him to put a credible one up. i doubt i could, just like i doubt i could find a "white counterpart" to 50 cent or haha ms. dynamite or george clinton or deltron or michael jackson (haha not and JT does NOT count. yet.). (oh and actually guilty-liberal etc. has probably been one of my #1 gripes with rich since backintheday)

the neps went all silly-funk and chickenscratch (and timbo ripoff) for JT but for usher they just gave him these gnarly orchestrated decays. okay usher can dance better but since when has RS EVER cared about that? (also asirecall we had the usher vs. jt debate some ages ago and perry stood nearly alone)

But, hey, if I were a judge on America's Next Top Model, I'd give you points for extrapolating.

Bad? Did I say bad? I don't buy Aguilera's homegirl routine. I don't think she's particularly soulful, and that's what I'd say she's shooting for. But that doesn't mean her music isn't entirely unenjoyable.

Me homophobic? Never, queer.

http://irev.net/grooverboi/ca1.jpghttp://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20030617/capt.1055828238.aguilera_las101.jpg

ho ho ho.

that dood

I can tell you that they were a fuck of a lot more Clay fans online than Ruben fans.

are you familiar with the demographics of folks that use the internet? there's probably plenty of lower class folks without internet access. there's also probably a shit load of people in alabama who don't have internet access. not to wreck on alabama, cause there are plenty of computers there, etc., but i bet that there are still a lot of ruben supporters who could give two shits about the internet.

It's particularly irritating to see the likes of Christina, Justin and Eminem on the cover because they're co-opting RECENT black art so flagrantly.

that's bullshit. i'm white. but i can safely tell you that hip-hop and r&b is as much a part of my upbringing than any black kid. it's a part of who i am. if i choose to express myself in those forms, it's totally legit. there's no co-opting. it's all mixed up.

it's choosing to force people into ghettos of white and black that's racist. leave rolling stone alone and look in the mirror.
m.

Oh you must mean, like, Vanilla Ice? Please. I'm not one of these extremist cats who disses the Beattles, the Rolling Stones or even Elvis for being influenced by black cats. The way I see it, these guys always--like Eminem--gave credit where credit was due.

Of course that doesn't mean that racism isn't at work--just that the artists aren't the sources of it--which is exactly the point this thread was trying to discuss. No one said Clay was racist--they asked was Rolling Stone racist. The problem is us--namely the critics and the white music buying public. White critics--by and large--given a choice between a black dude and a white dude performing black music capably, are prone to christen the white dude the genius.

But even critics aren't the source of the problem. Most big music publications, fuck it, most entertaiment publications are subtle outgrowths of the industry. They are moved by threats from publicists, and people who purchase large swaths of space for ads. It doesn't take genius to know that if they have to listen to black-influenced musice, white people--for a lot of reasons, some fucked up, some perfectly natural--would generally rather see someone who looks like them doing it.

The idea that black people haven't been ripped off musicly, is fairly easy to shout from the other side of the street. On a basic logical level, the music industry rips everyone off. But from the perspective of race, at the very least black people have watched thier music become semi-accepted and a viable commercial product, even as the society has consistently proven unwilling to accept the people who made it all possible. You can call that whatever you want. On my side of the street, it's called a rip-off.

P.S. As for the original question, I prefer to consider context. This is a country that has never willingly grappled with issues of race and racism in good faith. Rolling Stone is a magazine that serves people live in this country. They are pretty much doing what the societal imperative demands.

heh. to quote Ron Jeremy in _Orgazmo_: "Hence, it exploits...people!"

I do, of course, judge those artists in the day-to-day. I'm not particularly enamored with any of them, but that wasn't the point.

i’ve spent a lot of time listening to bob dylan and it isn’t remotely true

crazy to see Ta-Nehisi Coates in an ILM thread

"Joe ****er"

xp. imagine the direction his life could have taken if he had gotten really into having back and forths with geir or deej on here all day

lol

"Couldn't agree with you more, Coates."

(this is a good thread, btw)

"bob dylan can't sing" is the most boring and eternal of takes

― american bradass (BradNelson), Monday, October 21, 2019 5:26 PM (five hours ago)

^^^ so true

it is frustrating how ppl who would probably recognize what dumb reactionary bullshit the "you have to sing a certain way to be a GOOD singer" attitude is if they heard it applied to, like, bjork or yoko ono or joe strummer or howlin' wolf or whoever -- these same ppl will turn around and insist that dylan "can't sing," rather than just "i don't like bob dylan" (which is totally fine). never stops being incredibly fucking annoying.

people who think bob dylan can't sing should hear me sing "sara" in the shower

people who think bob dylan can't sing should hear bob dylan sing "sara" in the shower

I'd have to go back and figure out how this relates to the thread title, but: up to and including 1966, Bob Dylan couldn't sing brilliantly, then he couldn't sing exceptionally well up until 1974, and after that, a lot of the time, he couldn't sing.

lol xp

bob dylan is obviously one of the best singers in the history of sound recording; didn't know there was still a contrarian school on this.

it's because he's such a good singer that it's okay he's such an uneven writer.

i screamed at joe ****er