Friday, October 8th, 2010
Fiasco Friday and Rap Artist Protests :: The Agony Of Victory
Why are these people smiling? They have different reasons.
Lupe Fiasco’s third album “Lasers” finally has a release date. After more than 2 years, dozens of songs, a 30,000 signature petition, and threats of a protest next Friday at the Atlantic offices in Manhattan, his album will finally be available on March 8, 2011. A single is being rushed out in about two weeks.
The announcement comes a week before a mass protest organized by Richard Baker and dubbed “Fiasco Friday” was slated to take place. As of this morning, over a thousand signed up through the protest website to attend. No announcements have been made yet as to whether the protest will still go on next week.
Fiasco Friday was simply the most prominent in what seems to be a growing trend of rap artist protests against their labels. Big Boi and Nas have both been involved in similar fights with their labels about albums that they say the companies have wanted to leave on the shelf.
Nas’s beef with Def Jam over the release of “The Lost Tapes Vol. 2″ hit a new height with a withering letter to Def Jam execs that hit the web yesterday. Nas even made a veiled reference to Fiasco Friday. In an email headed “PUT MY SHIT OUT” Nas wrote:
Honestly, nobody even cares what label puts out a great record, they care about who recorded it. Yet time and time again its the executives who always stand in the way of a creative artist’s dream and aspirations. You don’t help draw the truth from my deepest and most inner soul, you don’t even do a great job @ selling it. The #1 problem with DEF JAM is pretty simple and obvious, the executives think they are the stars. You aren’t…. not even close. As a matter of fact, you wish you were, but it didn’t work out so you took a desk job. To the consumer, I COME FIRST. Stop trying to deprive them! I have a fan base that dies for my music and a RAP label that doesn’t understand RAP. Pretty fucked up situation
This isn’t the 90′s though. Beefing with record labels is so 15 years ago. @ this point I just need you all to be very clear where I stand and how I feel about “my label.” I could go on twitter or hot 97 tomorrow and get 100,000 protesters @ your building but I choose to walk my own path my own way because since day one I have been my own man.
Nas and Big Boi’s situations are slightly different from Fiasco’s. In both cases, their labels have used the exclusivity and copyright clauses in the artists’ contracts to try to force them to release the works the label wanted to see. In Big Boi’s case, Jive wanted an Outkast record. In Nas’s case, Def Jam wanted a new Nas album. (Nas and Damian Marley’s “Distant Relatives” project was also reportedly held up for months for this reason.)
Lupe Fiasco is a mid-level artist, which is a bad level of hell to be caught on these days. Read more
posted by Jeff Chang @ 10:25 am | 0 Comments
Thursday, September 30th, 2010
It’s History
Monday, September 13th, 2010
On Hip-Hop Criticism, Race and Generation :: Richard Beck Vs. Thomas Chatterton Williams
Here is a compelling piece by Richard Beck in the new N+1. Along with Nitsuh Abebe’s “Decade In Indie” piece and Rachel Maddux’s “Is Indie Dead?” piece, this is some seriously passionate, seriously good writing.
They are good because of their risk and ambition, their desire to take on Big Questions in this age of microniched segmented superserved thinking, good because they can also be granular, especially attuned to not just the fit but the fiber of the subjects, good because when we think they’re wrong they are even more worth debating, good because those of us lucky enough to have book contracts or tenure or steady work or at least be on the other side of 35 ought to be jarred out of our smug righteousness over having solved similar such–but never the same–questions in our own youth, and even more out of our narcissistic despair over wasted young minds.
Rich Beck’s target here is Thomas Chatterton Williams’s book, Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture, in which Williams describes his relationship with his dad and his attempt to come clean from a foul lifestyle he ascribes to hip-hop.
In many respects, Beck’s piece does to the book what PG&E did to San Bruno. It is overkill. It is true that Williams’s thin book doesn’t merit the weight of Beck’s response. But then Rich has a lot to say–about the uses of hip-hop, identity and race, and most of all, the aesthetics of hip-hop music.
I find myself disagreeing with Beck’s premise that thinking about hip-hop should only amount to thinking about music, because we’ve come too far by now. Thinking about hip-hop is also thinking about race and generation and identity.
But Beck is right that the good thinking about the music may be getting lost–at least in terms of what’s being published on dead trees (because the WordPresses and Movable Types are full of granular discussion about the music). The last third of his essay offers a template for what could be a lifetime of interesting work on the aesthetics of hip-hop.
If he chooses to pursue it, Beck’s theory will have to make much more intellectual space for the voice, specifically the Black voice, at least if the focus is on North American hip-hop music–this is a problem with most of the mid-90s British writing on hip-hop that seem to be his inspiration. But I read his point in the here and now as a correction.
But I’m most moved by another of the points Rich makes:
Given the racial climate of the early 1990s, it was probably inevitable that newspaper columnists and Congressional candidates would use hip-hop as an excuse to attack “black people,” (Jeff note: those are his quotes) or to defend them, or to diagnose their problems, or to argue that their problems just weren’t worth addressing at all, because of the hopelessness of the whole thing. But politicizing debates is what politicians are supposed to do (it is literally their job). Cultural critics and academics had the chance to do better, and failed.
The throat-clearing face-saving thing to do would be to stammer, “B-but we tried.” For the record I don’t have any illusions that the columnists or the politicians on the other side felt any remorse about the “hopelessness of the whole thing”; they simply wanted to use culture as a weapon against youths of color and they succeeded. In any case I certainly saw CSWS as my attempt to “do better.”
Yet the criticism stands.
Often one generation will invoke Santayana like Jim Jones: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
But when the next generation has a chance, it often retorts, “What has your past left me?” It’s a question both Chatterton Williams and Beck are asking.
Fair enough.
posted by Jeff Chang @ 10:46 am | 0 Comments
Thursday, September 9th, 2010
Facing Race Conference In Two Weeks
Another event to announce…this one’s gonna be amazing.
Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Van Jones, Tim Wise and Maria Teresa Kumar–and that’s just for starters. How about Rich Medina, Kamau Bell, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, John Murillo, as well?
In Chicago.
Click above for info or here.
posted by Jeff Chang @ 11:13 am | 1 Comment
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
THE RECORD Opens Today!
Jeroen Diepenmaat’s “Pour des dents d’un blanc éclatant et saines” (2005)
Big ups to Trevor Schoonmaker on the opening today of his museum-size ode to vinyl, “The Record”. If you’re wondering how hip-hop can reconfigure the art space, here’s one outer edge. Trevor’s been at this for years, and to see his vision finally coming to fruition in the beautiful Nasher Museum is gratifying.
(Trevor was also the driving force behind the groundbreaking Fela: Black President exhibition at the New Museum back in 2003, which is still echoing through to the beautiful set for our favorite Broadway play.)
So many of our favorite folks in life and art are repped here and in the museum events it’s hard to know where to start: Dave Tompkins, Mark Anthony Neal, Fatimah Tuggar, DJ Rekha, Malick Sidibe, Christian Marclay, Lyota Yagi, Carrie Mae Weems, Ujino Muneteru, and the 9th Wonder. The list goes on. Where else could you see Mingering Mike and Ed Ruscha together?
If you can’t make it out, the Nasher has a great B-Side website that includes links to that classic YouTube video series on how records are made and Barkley talking about his record collection. I have a little essay in the catalogue and I will admit that makes me a tiny bit proud of myself today.
posted by Jeff Chang @ 12:17 am | 0 Comments
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
Style Wars Restoration Benefit Event
For the NYC fam (Brooklyn represent!) here’s an amazing event. One night only. On the big screen. It’s being put together by Henry Chalfant to raise money to restore the classic hip-hop film he made with the late great Tony Silver, “Style Wars”. Changed my life. Help Henry and the fam get it back out to change many more!
posted by Jeff Chang @ 3:19 pm | 0 Comments
Monday, August 30th, 2010
E.L. Doctorow On The State Of The Arts & Artists
E.L. Doctorow has a brilliant essay in this week’s issue of The Nation on where American artists and arts are now at this point in history. An excerpt:
Artists in America don’t usually band together. They are independent entrepreneurs of their imaginations. They create universes of which they are the sole occupants. They may influence one another, they may be bundled by critics as members of an aesthetic movement, but they work alone and think alone, and if they gather on social occasions, like the members of any trade, it is for warmth, for they all know how few of them there are and how unseen by most of the population.
But there are critical moments in our national life when artists do come together as a constituency…
(snip of a beautiful passage on artists in the 1930s)
So here now today, in a new century, is this assemblage of artists, poets, musicians and playwrights, and we must ask what is the crisis today that impels them, in all their brilliant individuality, to present themselves as a group show?
The fact is that some terrible deep damage to the nation was done in the aftermath of 9/11. The government that swung into action misdirected its response and, with devious arguments to the American people, took us to war. In short time it had adopted the policies of an authoritarian state. Americans found themselves the sponsors of torture, and of the endless imprisonment without trial or counsel of presumed terrorists; they learned well after the fact that they themselves were subject to secret illegal surveillance by their government, and they saw their Constitution disdained with the unilateral abrogation of international treaties such as the Geneva Convention, though such treaties are constitutionally “the supreme Law of the Land.” All these measures were claimed as wartime expedients and promoted with a propaganda of fear. At the same time, the scientific evidence of global warming was ignored, religious literalism was put in the way of medical advance, regulatory agencies were given over to the very industries they were to regulate and, rife with wartime corruption, this government left to wallow an American population severely alienated by gross economic inequalities, the forces of wealth thriving at the expense of the middle class and the shrill demagogues of right-wing radio and television shouting down all principled disagreement with what was happening. The resulting trauma to the American people’s sense of themselves and their country is still being felt. We have not wanted to believe that a sitting president and his advisers could have so given themselves to an agenda of social, economic and environmental deconstruction, and with such relentless violations of constitutional law as to render themselves, definably, as subversives.
(snip, you just gotta go read it)
…All of this together would seem to define a national identity crisis, a terribly weakened sense of ourselves as a proud citizenry in charge of our lives—a calamity of heart as bad as what America suffered in the Great Depression.
Under these circumstances, our art, literature and music, all of which comes up from the bottom, uncensored, unfiltered, unrequested—the artists of whatever medium always coming out of nowhere—does tell us that something is firm and enduring after all in a country given to free imaginative expression that few cultures in the world can tolerate.
Read it in full here.
posted by Jeff Chang @ 3:27 pm | 0 Comments
Saturday, August 28th, 2010
The End Of Darkness?
Not here to give idiots any more earned media–except to say “Hmmmm, ‘End of Darkness’, MLK evocation…and all this Beck/Tea Party/idiot BS is not about race?” OK.
But more to the point, I’m back. Saying HEY after another summer of our national discontent to give you a quick update on what’s up in my world.
I’ve been working furiously on Who We Be: The Colorization of America and so the good news is you can expect to see some of the fruits of that in the coming months, as well as more writings.
Since I will be doing a lot of heavy lifting for the book–and a couple of other huge projects I’ll be telling you about soon–you won’t see much of me publicly over the next several months. If you’re interested in that, check the Dates page.
But I will be back around here a bit more. I’ll be working on updating The Reader with more articles I’ve done over the years.
For everything else, you can always follow me too at my Twitter feed at Zentronix.
Back to school, back to work, back to fighting the idiots. See you soon.
posted by Jeff Chang @ 6:45 am | 0 Comments
Friday, June 4th, 2010
MIA v. Hirschberg
And MIA wins.
Here are the details on MIA’s takedown of Hirschberg. The offending interview snippets are actually posted now on her website. Which BTW all but confirms that everything we suspected about the piece being pre-written was true.
Hirschberg’s response that MIA’s posting of their interview was “fairly unethical and infuriating” is hilarious–this from a celebrity writer. Anyone who has been in the business knows that publicists often record interviews themselves as a kind of insurance against these kinds of situations. It’s a standard practice, and if Hirschberg is upset that Maya–who showed up apparently without a publicist this time–didn’t disclose the recording to her she may have a point, but hardly a cause. It’s all fair play.
Bonus: In true 21st century TMZ fashion, the thing turns on an order of truffled french fries.
Even better is Nitsuh Abebe’s must-read “Why We Fight” piece in Pitchfork on MIA and the yokes of “authenticity” and “political art” that she needs to actually advance her work. It’s entitled “The Trouble With Maya.” I’ve followed Abebe for a long while, and I have tended not to agree with him more than I have, but there’s no doubt that he’s at the top of the game. May he be as influential as he already is important.
A snippet:
Maya Arulpragasam is not a politically sophisticated thinker. Or if she is, she doesn’t always talk like it.
In Arulpragasam’s defense, this may or may not be a bad thing. After all, people don’t need to be “sophisticated” to be right. People don’t need to be nuanced or thoughtful to say something important. (Sometimes sophistication is a way of keeping people powerless– ignoring anyone who doesn’t speak your diplomatic language.) And people definitely don’t need to be any of those things to release good music. Hirschberg isn’t much interested in the music; in that sense, the piece is like reading breaking news that Public Enemy’s politics may have been– get this– somewhat messy or incoherent. And politics is important, but so are love, sex, religion, and how we treat one another as human beings– all topics we’re often fine with pop musicians acting out in ways that are contradictory, unsubtle, or problematic. We don’t need musicians to be “right” so much as we need them to be resonant– and at least not objectionably wrong.
And in art, there are different versions of that. Being bad with politics– holding an indefensible position– can make you “wrong.” Being bad with symbols and gestures– in other words, being bad at pop– might just make you uncool or embarrassing. It’s funny: Half the praise M.I.A. gets comes from the space between those two things, which makes it kind of perfect that negative reactions to this article do, too. It’s this weird blur between whether she’s politically wrong or just embarrassing and sophomoric. Moral wrongness versus pop wrongness. So is she politically irresponsible, or fraudulent, or annoying, or none of the above?
If one measure of good artistry can be the amount of good writing it provokes, MIA is certainly the most important artist in a long while.
posted by Jeff Chang @ 7:29 am | 0 Comments
Friday, May 28th, 2010
On Tar Beach
Just hours after Obama’s news conference, Talib Kweli + Hi-Tek + The Roots were right on time on last night’s Fallon. Check them performing “Ballad Of The Black Oil”. Alternative title, “How To Wreck More Than Just Some Nice Beaches”.
+ Download a preview of The Roots’ new album: “Dear God 2.0″.
+ If you don’t have the Reflection Eternal album yet, you’re buggin.
+ Speaking of wrecking nice beaches, check Dave Tompkins + Monk One’s Bonus Beach Mix. You need Dave’s book. Summer reading. Just find a nice beach. Don’t wreck, relax.
+ From The Not Relaxing Department: MIA is on the cover of Sunday’s Times Magazine. More of the “radical chic v. entertain us please” angle which really isn’t a dichotomy or a tension at all, just two different ways of expressing the same underthought, cheap, and narratively deadening point-of-view. Plus…a pull quote:
“Maya has a unique tomboy-meets-ghetto-fabulous-meets-exotic-princess look that, like her music, manages to combine sexy elements (lingerie peeks out from under her see-through tops) with individual flourishes (she designs elaborate patterns for her nails) and ethnic accents (the bright, rich prints of Africa are her wardrobe staple).”
Why Lynn Hirschberg? No more comment.
+ The real question of the day: Joe Conason asks why not simply nationalize the oil industry?
In these times, give thanks for the music and the art.
posted by Jeff Chang @ 8:50 am | 0 Comments
Previous Posts
- Me in LARB + Who We Be Update
- In Defense Of Libraries
- The Latest On DJ Kool Herc
- Support DJ Kool Herc
- A History Of Hate: Political Violence In Arizona
- Culture Before Politics :: Why Progressives Need Cultural Strategy
- It’s Bigger Than Politics :: My Thoughts On The 2010 Elections
- New In The Reader: WHO WE BE PREVIEW + Uncle Jamm’s Army
- Hip-Hop, Copyright + Cultural Legacy, Part 2 :: A Conversation With Angus Batey
- Hip-Hop, Copyright + Cultural Legacy, Part 1 :: A Conversation With Angus Batey
Feed Me!
Revolutions
- DJ Nu-Mark :: Take Me With You
DJ Nu-Mark remixes the diaspora…party ensues! - El General + Various Artists :: Mish B3eed : Khalas Mixtape V. 1
The crew at Enough Gaddafi bring the most important mixtape of 2011–the street songs that launched the Tunisian & Egyptian Revolutions… - J. Period + Black Thought + John Legend :: Wake Up! Radio mixtape
Remixing the classic LP w/towering contributions from Rakim, Q-Tip + Mayda Del Valle - Lyrics Born :: As U Were
Bright production + winning rhymes in LB’s most accessible set ever - Model Minority :: The Model Minority Report
The SoCal Asian American rap scene that produced FM keeps surprising… - Mogwai :: Hardcore Won't Die But You Will
Dare we call it majestic? - Taura Love Presents :: Picki People Volume One
From LA via Paris with T-Love, the global post-Dilla generation goes for theirs…
Word
- Cormac McCarthy :: Blood Meridian
Read this now before Hollywood f*#ks it up. - Dave Tompkins :: How To Wreck A Nice Beach
Book of the decade, nuff said. - Joe Flood :: The Fires
The definitive account of why the Bronx burned - Mark Fischer :: Capitalist Realism
K-Punk’s philosophical manifesto reads like his blog, snappy and compelling. Just replace pop music with post-post-Marxism. Pair with Josh Clover’s 1989 for the full hundred. - Nell Irvin Painter :: The History of White People
Well worth a Glenn Beck rant…and everyone’s scholarly attention - Robin D.G. Kelley :: Thelonious Monk : The Life And Times Of An American Original
Monk as he was meant to be written - Tim Wise :: Colorblind
Wise’s call for a color-conscious agenda in an era of “post-racial” politics is timely - Victor Lavalle :: Big Machine
Victor Lavalle does it again!
Fiyahlinks
- ++ Total Chaos
The acclaimed anthology on the hip-hop arts movement - ARC
- Asian Law Caucus | Arc of 72
- AWOL Inc Savannah
- B+ | Coleman
- Boggs Center
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