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The catnip of all catnip (plus a SS-R shoutout)

mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
edited June 2012 in Strut Central
Apparently, The Onion's Nathan Rabin has decided that writing about why he's disillusioned with hip-hop is a good idea for a multi-part series.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/90s-rap-in-the-rearviewan-introduction,75848/

And let's face it, some of what he says in here sounds like a lot of the folks around Strut.

Alex Pappademas ethers Rabin and along the way, gives Strut the shoutout: http://100hundredthousandmillion.tumblr.com/ (I didn't realize he was reading Strut in '02)

I'd quote the passage but it's not easy to excerpt and still make sense. You'll just have to find it yourself.

  Comments

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    Bulworth
  • dayday 9,611 Posts
    mannybolone said:

    I'd quote the passage but it's not easy to excerpt and still make sense. You'll just have to find it yourself.

    There might be a lot more value??? more entertainment value, but also more actual enriching-the-critical discourse value??? to a multipart series in which Nathan Rabin forces himself to strap up and listen to all the lauded post-???90s rap records he can???t get into, explores what exactly it is that makes it hard for him to get into them, traces the splintering of the relatively monolithic East and West Coast sounds that defined his early experience with hip-hop into hundreds of regional and post-regional styles, examines he degree to which rap???s embrace by and of pop music has been a give-and-take as much as it???s been a devil???s bargain, realizes that a statement like ???[I]n some ways hip-hop has never evolved beyond the innovations people like Prince Paul and Q-Tip introduced when they weren???t even old enough to drink??? depends on an extraordinarily narrow definition of ???innovation,??? discovers that hip-hop???s actually really exciting right this second largely because the example of artists like Kanye West (who Rabin acknowledges as ???unique??? only to dismiss him by the end of the same sentence as a mere footnote to the towering legacies of the RZA and Pete Rock, like somebody trying to win an argument on SoulStrut in 2002) has emboldened a generation of rappers to shrug off once-rigid categorical divides??? conscious/thuggish, aesthete/hardass, revolutionary/hedonist, lyricist/pop sellout???in favor of personas built a la carte.

    Is this a paragraph or the longest sentence in history?
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    Both?
  • jamesjames chicago 1,863 Posts
    You know, The Giving Tree is a book about a dude who is so oblivious to his own self-absorption and is indulged in it for so long that in the end he is able to fool himself into mistaking it for perspective. The fact that Rabin so blithely invokes this book as a metaphor for his formative relationship with hip-hop kinda says a lot.
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    META
  • p_gunnp_gunn 2,284 Posts
    totally blows my mind someone got paid to write that.... jesus... 13 year old girl journal confessions X 36 year man old grouching = totally unreadable...
  • white_teawhite_tea 3,262 Posts
    Well, this is entering my vernacular:

    pop-locking on some seriously thin ice
  • herbacios tweedherbacios tweed 445 Posts
    p_gunn said:
    totally blows my mind someone got paid to write that.... jesus... 13 year old girl journal confessions X 36 year man old grouching = totally unreadable...

  • DJ_EnkiDJ_Enki 6,475 Posts
    The AV Club did a similar series about 1990s alternative rock that ended up being pretty good. This strikes me as kind of the same thing, except about hip-hop (though written by somebody whose style is much more insufferable). Some people outgrow it, some people age gracefully with it, some people cling to youth through it, some people remain fiercely engaged with it, obla di obla fucking da. Everybody's spoken their mind, nobody's changing their mind, yet they're still eager to rehash the same arguments every chance they get.

    b/w

    White rap journalist beef!
  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    That Pappademas thing is the funniest piece about rap music I've read in longer than I can remember.
  • DuderonomyDuderonomy Haut de la Garenne 7,793 Posts
    Preferred the gangsta-rap-meeting-conspiracy for the immortal

    As rap got worse, my guilt grew
  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    So dude's going to do a multi-part series on how he has a small dick?
  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    Ripples...

    "Also, it???s remarkable, considering their substantive differences, the way this narrative maps on to gentrification stories, too. You know the ones I???m talking about: you???re at a party and someone starts waxing poetic about how this neighborhood was great when they and their friends were the ones gentrifying it, but now that other people are gentrifying it, it???s gone to shit."
  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    Incidentally, just flicking through the comments on that Nathan Rabin piece is enough to make you weep.
  • BsidesBsides 4,244 Posts
    This is great. I havent read enough articles like this. Its great that someone is coming out with this totally original perspective..

    Its especially poignant when he uses 90's rap quotes to back up his opinions. Its really effective..here let me try...

    Back in the 90's, hip hop legend Large professor once famously proclaimed that other rappers were "fakin the funk". Now in 2012, the problem with hip hop is that not only is the "funk" of questionable authenticity, its almost entirely non existant.

    pretty good right? Bonus points for the early and incessant referencing of I used to love h.e.r. Its such a brilliant and poignant reference because the song itself was a metaphor for hip hop!

    Bravo rap journalism. This is an issue we need to see more coverage of.
  • JectWonJectWon (@_@) 1,654 Posts
    How does someone honestly feel like the "I miss the golden era" statement is worth bringing up; much less dedicating a multi article series to it?

    Dude should just say "I miss the 90's hiphop" and leave it at that.
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