It's official, Nina the Singing Ex-Nun and I are going to this. It was the addition of LCD Soundsystem that swung it for me (Fiery Furnaces are good too, but I'm already seeing them next month). Yeah yeah yeah, yeah-yeah yeah-yeah-yeah...

I don't understand why it's okay

The following is something I wrote in August 2002 on Barbelith. That link won't work if you're not registered, so I'm reproducing the whole thing below (if you are on Barbelith, I recommend reading the whole thread). I'm doing this now as an introduction to something else (my response to some recent comments by and about Sarah Jones, regarding her track 'Your Revolution'). It begins with me quoting a couple of things other people on the messageboard had said during discussions on hip hop.

remorse:
“I am defitely saddened by the almost overnight switch from the four elements (mic, sneakers, turntables, spraycan) to the four sell-aments (ice, mysogony, hooks, rims). Yes, mainstream hip hop is an image based industry where an mc gets laughed at if he wears the same jacket twice, ever. Yes, females have been berated in rap looong before Mathers was in the buisness. Yes, chorus and song structure must be maintained if an "artist" wants to see any radio play at all. And Yes, like the ice, quarter-of-a-million-dollar vehicles play an important role in the status of a hip hop performer.

There are underGround artists that challage these hip hop stereotypes and I love them for it. I just think there aren't enough yet.”

DJ Plan B:
"“While it is true that some of these people (not very many at this point, at least that I see in media I read) still see hip-hop as a sub-art, the fact is that most mainstream hip-hop (or country or rock or whatever) sucks. I've been listening to hip-hop for 15 years and there isn't much angry or political hip-hop in the mainstream, but that's the way the record companies want it (it's all about the least common denom these days -- Britney, O-Town, etc.). You won't ever see The Coup, Dead Prez or El-P being plastered all over billboards with big-money backing. That's why the critics like them because they're different than the Jay-Zs and Master Ps of the world, whose only concerns are about getting paid. I guess my point is it's not the critics who are the problem (though they may not always help the situation), but rather the political and economic power structure that rewards booty-shaking, misogynist pop bullshit over artistic endeavor.”

Let's start there, with "booty-shaking, misogynist pop bullshit", and work backwards. The very use of the term “booty-shaking” as an insult despresses me, for many reasons not least of which is the implication that music that makes you want to dance is a bad thing. But let’s leave that aside for the moment and consider “misogynisytic pop bullshit”.

Here's what I think: at the point where it crosses over into r&b and pop music, hip-hop is currently the least misogynistic music in the world. It's one of the few musical genres in which women have as strong a voice as men, if not more so. Now, I'll admit that this has only really developed in the last five or ten years, but it's quite interesting that this development has occurred in tandem with the supposed decline into "pop bullshit" that the purists are always lamenting (to which I'll return).

Point is, less than a decade ago the lack of female MCs, not to mention producers, was widely berated. Now, they're everywhere, and busy kicking the blokes' arses on regular occasions. The rise of the duet and the 'answer record' have a large part to play in this. Often this takes the form of a fiercely fought battle of the sexes, sometimes with the interrogation of gender roles thrown in for good measure - and yes, sometimes this involves a large dose of misogyny and machismo from male rappers - but it's usually reclaimed and thrown back in their faces two bars later. The Rolling Stones never did *that*.

Another point - this is from an online chat I recently had with someone else on Barbelith [1], in which they summed it up better than I could:

”Women are allowed to have a wide variety of body types and still be sexy. It's the only area of pop where you can be fat, or really short, or kinda weird looking. It's the only area of pop where men are allowed to be overweight and not be ridiculed, and women are allowed to be sexually aggressive and assertive without necessarily doing it for the sake of sales, or being coy. Women are allowed to own their sexuality.”

Can you imagine the kind of open scorn that the white music press would pour on a white female rock singer of Missy’s build, let alone one who dared sing about their need to find a man with enough staying power to satisfy their sexual appetite? (Remember the things that were said about pre-skinny Courtney Love, come to think of it?) It’s interesting to think of some comparable female artists in indie today, or the bands that contain them – The Gossip, Bis, Le Tigre – and then to consider how little coverage these people get and how marginalized they are within the wider culture. Now compare and contrast with the relative standing of Missy Elliott in the hip-hop/r&b/pop world. Ta da.

Of course, the idea that women have a strong voice in pop music, r&b and rap music, and are almost entirely silenced within indie/alternative rock, is one that the (mostly white, male and middle class) indie rock press cannot allow to be considered, as realatively self-evident as it might be. So various doctrinal camouflages are invented, some of them more openly patriarchal than others. One favourite technique is for the critic to assume that he can speak for the female artist, usually in a way that devalues her: she’s stupid; she’s ‘fake’; she’s being manipulated (by men) and doesn’t realise it; her sexuality and creativity are not her own… Often these assumptions are presented without comment, as self-evident. “How do you know she’s not making her own decisions about how she presents herself?” “Well just look at what she’s WEARING!” I’d say this falls pretty squarely into the category of “misogynist feminism”, or more accurately misogyny wearing the doctrinal disguise of feminism, as described here.

Sometimes of course the misogyny is more open – see the commonplace dismissal of a pop artist’s music via the accusation that they are only liked by “little girls”. This kind of snobbery, so insidious that even Chuck D basically said it, is "if girls like it, it sucks". If young kids like it, if girls like it, if non-whites like it or if gay people like it, it sucks. From r&b to disco, from queercore to UK garage, we can see this being demonstrated without all that much in the way of doctrinal pretence from Mojo to NME. Hence pop in its arguably most pure and perfect form is an abomination to them because it is all of those things… plus fulfils an other rule, one that’s tied in to class. I also see this as being part of a broader, older trend. It's been said for the past 100 years by a self-appointed elite that culture is becoming stupider, and it always boils down to the same thing: the culture the masses like cannot by definition be any good, because they are a stupid mindless prole herd… but I’m getting kind off-topic now.

Back on point: DJ Plan B also seems to be implying that the ‘underground’ is home to a much less misogynistic culture and music. Again, untrue. The beardy backpack scene is much more of a boy’s own/only club these days than ‘hip-pop’ – look for example at the way that it’s widely disparaged to have women (or “r&b bitches” as celebrated underground rapper Edan calls them) sing on your records if you’re ‘underground’. Or look at the way ‘underground’ rappers often berate ‘mainstream’ ones for allegedly using their looks to sell records (to women or, worse, gay men – the underground is * definitely * no less homophobic than hip-pop, arguably more so) – cf the then-widely-acclaimed and ‘underground’ Canibus on pop idol LL Cool J – “mad at me cos I kick that shit real niggas feel, while 99% of your fans wear high-heels”. And we're back to my earlier point.
As another example, we might want to consider the largely unexamined way in which misogyny takes other forms in the lyrics of ‘conscious’/’intelligent’ rappers. A good example would be Black Star’s ‘Brown Skin Lady’ - a really *positive* song in which Talib Kweli goes on about respecting women who don't wear make up. Because women who wear make-up are only doing what the TV and magazines tell them to do. Silly hoes. In case the earth-mother/whore dichotomy being set up here weren't clear enough, he also has the line: "My brown lady / creates environments, for / happy brown babies..." Good little woman. Stay at home and raise the kids...

It doesn’t take much effort to detect a strong puritanical streak here. You only have to look at the way the ‘underground’ berates someone like Lil’ Kim – an artist with her flaws, for sure, but increasingly at her best the glorious bastard amalgamation of Grace Jones, Peaches & Notorious B.I.G., and incidentally probably the closest thing to a successful openly pro-queer rapper the world has yet to offer. “Ah”, says the underground, “but she dresses like a WHORE!”[2]

The remark about “chorus and song structure” is also pretty far off the mark. Hip-hop is in fact currently about the only musical genre in which artists can do weird and bizarre things with song structure and still be considered ‘commerical’. Take as an example Cam’Ron’s ‘Oh Boy’ – the kind of shamelessly poppy bling-BLING hip-hop destined for the charts that I’m sure you despise. It doesn’t really have a chorus. It doesn’t really have proper verses either – its structure consists of lines squeezed in between a looped series of vocal samples.

[1] I'm pretty sure this was Matthew.

[2] e crunk over at Spizzazz, who should get credit anyway for inspiring some of the above thoughts, recently nailed this attitude even better than I could:

"at the time ['Can't Hold Us Down'] was released all the internet shit about her was like, "oh it's obvious aguilera and lil kim have reached some kind of nadir in the trend of looking like dead-eyed prostitute freaks." no it is not fucking obvious, you creeps! maybe they are just having fun with style and you all hate women? guilty until proven innocent!"

The Big Question.

Further thoughts on the 'Milkshake' video:

Me: "All diners in America are like that."

Flatmate: "Yes, I must go there more often."

(This blog is getting so licentious recently. It happens whenever I mention music videos, oddly enough. Don't get me started on 'Drain The Blood', 'God Is A DJ' or 'Cross Bones Style'.)

luridly interesting

I rag on The Guardian's coverage of pop culture a lot, and rightly so (shitty watered-down centre-left politics + shitty bourgeois values = shitty approach to art), but every now and again it's worth remembering why it's pretty much the only UK newspaper I would ever actually buy. The last quarter has seen some really nice little interviews with bands I'm extremely keen on in the Friday Review section: Chicks On Speed, The Fiery Furnaces and now this splendid Scissor Sisters feature, which again suggests that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world if 2004 is not the Sisters' year.

"My mum comes to all our big shows in New York," says Shears. His eyes light up. He's just had an idea. "We're going to make our mothers look like fuckin' nasty, dirty hookers. I want to see them smokin' and drinkin' and fightin'. She's so excited, she'll do anything. She'll dress up as a whore if I tell her to."

Bring on Top Of The Pops!

The top 10 finest, funniest things about Zoolander - one of the finest, funniest films of our time or perhaps any other (warning - some spoilers, and these are not in sequential order):

10. "Keep pulling the sweater. Eventually it'll unravel." David Duchovny's turn as the former hand model turned conspiracy theory nut is played with such accuracy and relish that you suspect that by this point the guy really, really hated The X-Files and everything that was lame about it. "You're goddamn right [Lee Harvey Oswald] wasn't [a male model]. But those two lookers who capped Kennedy from the Grassy Knoll sure as shit were!" His reaction when, after he's painstakingly mapped-out the modeling industry's history of political assassinations, Derek Zoolander asks again "But why male models?" = particularly priceless.


9. The orgy, or more specifically the morning after, when Derek tells Hansel how he's falling for Matilda: "There was a moment last night, when she was sandwiched between the two Finnish dwarves and the Maori tribesmen, where I thought, 'Wow, I could really spend the rest of my life with this woman.'"


8. Jon Voight as Zoolander Snr, coalminer (not a professional film or television actor): "You're dead to me, Derek... as dead as your poor dead mother. I just thank the Lord she never lived to see her son as a mermaid."

Ben Stiller as Derek Zoolander: "Mer-man. Mer-man!"


7. "Here's something no-one wants to see: ugly protestors annoying beautiful celebrities."


6. The fact that Katinka (Milla Jovovich) is allowed to sneak away scot-free at the movie's end. Because nobody wants to see an immaculately well-dressed, absurdly-accented East European dominatrix brought to justice, do they?


5. Hansel! He's so hot right now! The first time I saw this film, Hansel's profile clip at the fashion awards is probably the point at which I realised I was in the presence of something special. Never has the faux-spiritual, extreme sports, cod-hippy LA schtick been better satirised. Owen Wilson deserves some kind of large and ornate medal for his role in this movie. Observe the wisdom of Hansel:

"I wasn't like every other kid, you know, who dreams about being an astronaut, I was always more interested in what bark was made out of on a tree. Richard Gere's a real hero of mine. Sting. Sting would be another person who's a hero. The music he's created over the years, I don't really listen to it, but the fact that he's making it, I respect that. I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I'm selling? No. Do I know what I'm doing today? No. But I'm here, and I'm gonna give it my best shot."


4. His evil plan exposed, Mugatu loses his shit and takes the opportunity to point out how incredibly stupid Derek is, and how he only has one look, and why hasn't anyone noticed? "I feel like I'm taking CRAZY pills!" = the perfect thing to shout at those moments when you feel you're the only one who realises that the emperor has no clothes.


3. The Walk-Off is a thing of a thing of joy, obviously. The whole concept - it's the gritty, seedy side of male modeling, the one they don't show you on TV! - well, that's obviously great. But it's sustained so well: David Bowie volunteering to compere - "This'll be your standard Walk-Off: old school rules." - the use of 'Beat It', the moves themselves, and finally Hansel's need to "go monk... I gotta go monk... Pray to the great spirit!"


2. The prelude to the Walk-Off, in which Derek and Hansel clash at a party. It starts with arguably the greatest, most successfully underplayed "I cannot believe that celebrity would parody themselves so accurately" cameo in the film, maybe ever - Winona Ryder hitting on Derek with nauseating flattery. It's like she's saying "Yes, I am a shameless trend-chasing groupie who has been almost exclusively in terrible, terrible movies for the last ten years or more. So?"

And then we have what is probably Owen Wilson's finest hour. Fresh from bathing with spider-monkeys and his entourage in some exotic location, on acid, Hansel clashes with Derek at the party and almost everything Wilson says or does is impossibly funny. "Who you tryin' to get crazy with, ese? Don't you know I'm loco?" The hand movements and whooshing noises. But best of all: "Listen to your friend Billy Zane. He's a cool dude."


1. The brainwashing sequence. Just the most jaw-dropping surreal humour, and Will Ferrell totally comes into his own here, just by managing to stay on top of it all. Everything in this sequence is perfect, from the gratuitous evil nurses and 60s spy film hypnosis booth, to the use of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Relax'. Little Cletus and the animation of the history of child labour laws - "they're silly and outdated!" The cardboard pop-ups of people like Fred Durst and Garry Shandling - "Do not be distracted by the beautiful celebrities!" In the middle of all this, the wonderful highlight of it all, comes a cry of pure, random comic gold:

"OBEY MY DOG!"