Lex Brown
Uncool World
Questlove says it all well.
American hip-hop is usually based on imitation, and it is meant to produce artists who are users of the existing tradition, not creators. And because of that, black culture in general—which has defaulted into hip-hop—is no longer perceived as an interesting vanguard, as a source of potential disruption or a challenge to the dominant. Once you don’t have a cool factor any longer—when cool gets decoupled from African-American culture—what happens to the way that black people are seen?
Doing the Math
Up until 9th grade, math was one of my favorite subjects. Like most people, I loved the palpable rightness of its solutions. Then I went to a magnet science & tech high school, and suddenly I sucked at math because big brain robotoid kids with underdeveloped social skills were the majority of the student body.
Rank Culture
My initial reaction to ArtRank (see below) was one of disgust—An every-day, 2k14 kind of disgust that also gets called forth when I see the ungodly short shorts of teenagers today, which are as discomfiting as they are fascinating when you think about the exact point at which an ass becomes a leg.
It seems every generation finds there’s always more cheek to show…