The author of this piece wrote it before the killing of George Floyd. (See his postscript on that score below.) Osborne notes “recent real-world events take precedence over bitching about good or bad rappers.” Your editor takes Osborne’s point but his act of imagination isn’t out of time. His refusal to buy into ugly images of black men is, in its sweet way, a contribution to the struggle against real killer cops.
It’s getting harder for me to find rap music I can vibe with. Half of the problem is just getting older—not having the energy to dig under the mainstream to the paydirt. But the other half is, well, financial? I’m at that age where—barring a winning Mega Millions ticket, or complete societal collapse—I can begin to see the basic economic trajectory of my life. The windfall of downward mobility has landed me on a rung where I can pay rent—and have a little left over for records and other small pleasures. It’d be cool if after another five years I can get to the next rung up with health insurance. It’s a gross over-simplification, but “rags-to-riches” is the stereotypical modus operandi of rap music. It’s with much bruising to my self-image that I’m moving past that personal narrative arc. But with that letting-go you can also hopefully get yourself a little sanity.
I don’t think it’s just me though. “Rags-to-riches”, the American dream really, just “ain’t it” recently. As inequality widens, or—more to the point—becomes more immediately felt, that narrative feels insensitive or mean-spirited. Already, A-list rappers like Hov get hounded by Twitter mobs for un-woke displays of opulence. Now, of course, mob justice isn’t a good ruler by which to measure the sincere convictions of the times. Those same Twitter mobs shout “Slay queen” when smaller influencers in their subcultural niche display the same sort of extravagance. Still, though, it’s there.
Perhaps more to the point is the fact that mainstream rap’s hyper-materialism just doesn’t work any more in an artistic or narrative sense—or at least not in the same way. Time was when black culture wasn’t welcome in the bedrooms or on the car stereos of normie America. Hip-hop’s sometimes-materialism felt like a collective achievement. That cultural ostracism is largely gone, and with it the illusion that there is a unified black experience. Overlaps exist, definitely—the shared experience of historical and immediate racism remains ever present. But there’s a difference between the lived experiences of a Drake, a Tyler the Creator, or a 6ix9ine. That difference gets repressed, or can’t breathe fully at least, when consumption is the main topic at hand. Everyone gets the same, psychotic endorphin rush on a shopping spree. The music suffers when, to get the full story, you have to read between the lines. Everyone is flattened into selfish, separated strivers.
In 2013, Drake boasted “My life’s a completed checklist.” At the time, it felt like a harbinger of personal creative bankruptcy. But looking back it seems like a particularly telling crack in the culture. Rap’s grand gangster Horatio Alger narrative felt a real split. A rich tapestry of diverse, developed voices should have blossomed out of void. It didn’t; at least not to the extent that it should have. Today, Drake’s albums feel like (ever longer) strung-together tableaus of disconnected singles. And where “rags-to-riches” used to be a journey, it now feels like an on/off switch. You’re either balling or you’re abject. And “balling” is a super precarious state—it’s flaunted and defended with increasing psychosis and paranoia. These narrative/psychic collapses are accompanied by technological change. Streaming stamps out physical connection to the culture. The culture, unmoored from time or place, lurches frantically around at the breakneck pace of both the meritocracy (above) or gig economy (below). It skirt-skirts between a variety of surface-level manic states.
The changes evince themselves in listeners too. Rap’s materialism is at its best when it’s a pro-social, shared joy. You live vicariously through the rapper’s success. Their success though works for you even when you’re down-and-out. It’s almost a lens through which to understand your personal, more mundane, but equally ecstatic little victories and joys. It was understood that even seemingly anti-social acts like the Geto Boys were providing the same irreal pleasure as a B-movie. Nowadays, that metaphorical identification rarely flies. The accumulation of wealth feels depressingly literal. Perceived authenticity is a singular obsession in the rap game even as actual authenticity (whatever that is) grows ever more distant. And the pleasure of listening shifts from the metaphorical and voracious to a deadly serious (ugh, forgive me) parasocial identification.
Great hip-hop always has a moral center in its bars or sound. Public Enemy, early Kanye, or less obvious spots like the Bone Thugs-n-Harmony song from which this site gets its name. Even Young Thug’s squawk, like a queer Charlie Parker solo, has a real gravity. Hip-hop needs that center because of its high artistic, almost spiritual, stakes. White music is often either purely intellectual, or a sentimental reflection of idealized life. The great innovation of African-American music is the groove. The groove doesn’t try to be a mirror. Instead, it bores a funky, ecstatic rift into a given moment—or consciousness itself. European art music tacks a hermeneutic, Faustian approach to reality. But at its best, the groove looks upon lived experience, what’s in front of you right now—as the face of God. Rap further develops that innovation—that sacred rift into the present spins round on itself and starts to speak. And not just speak, but spit bars. There’s something shamanic in the act of listening to hip-hop—headphones on, nursing a slight weedian high. Time slows, or stretches in weird directions; words wrap around each other with novel meanings and associations; the groove bubbles below like some roiling Cambrian deep. To enter that state, and instead find atomized Moloch belching out obscenities and child sacrifice is worse than blasphemy. It’s a party foul.
Bad modern rap isn’t some degradation of black culture. Black culture is doing just fine. More often, it’s an awkward, distinctly American amalgamation of white suburban tastes and desperate rappers anxiously trying to figure out what’ll get them big. For suburban kids, music is more vital and omnipresent than ever. Paradoxically though, concentrated music listening is nearly extinct as a pastime. Music for them seems more like a drug. Not even the good ones though—pharmaceuticals. Trap snares function like Xanax, Adderal and elevator muzak all in one as they navigate their formative years. And as the music biz becomes more precarious, these tastes are what Spotify execs and ultimately artists feel compelled to satisfy to keep it all running.
A writer who is actually black will have to explain the cultural meaning of Tekashi’s snitching and blatant trashing of street cred. But I know the record-breaking 43 millions views in one day of his new song “Gooba” was helped along by nearly every SAT-practicing white kid I know. I’ve been wrong before, but I don’t like Tekashi. No one likes him I guess—but more importantly I distrust the morbid cringe[i] that drives his success. In moments of ressentiment—which come frequently—I don’t hear anything particularly hip-hop in “Gooba.” I hear suburban teenage crack-bunnies gussying up their egos so as to better perform whatever evils or self-abasement the meritocracy is today demanding of them. Or that’s the function at least. I don’t mean to shit on suburban white kids too much. (Though they inhabit a fascist breeding ground; all the moms are QAnon’ers.) So, at the least– we should do better by them. And pushing that aspect of the culture to the forefront leads to a deeply crazy national milieu.
There’s only so many ways to signify success—at least when it’s defined in such narrow terms. Actual career success (which comes after) is so dependent on hype nowadays that we’re left with a rotating cast of no-name upstarts. They get their moment, parade their Gucci and furs, then get cast aside. When everyone’s a rapper it’s hard for artistry to get its due, develop, and mature. Maybe we should look to rappers who have been doing this shtick for years.
Lil Wayne had a new album out earlier this year—Funeral. The funeral(s) in question were those of rappers maybe fifteen years his younger. Lil Peep, Juice Wrld, XXXTentacion, and a hundred other lesser-knowns cut down by drugs or violence. But the album wasn’t somber on the whole. It was crass, joyful, proud—a middle-aged celebration of life. Weezy’s Loony Toons surrealism has always had moral weight (moral in an honorable sense even in its amoralism). There’s a generosity in the croak of his weird voice that puts him above comedy rappers like Danny Brown. There’s one song on the album about a recurrent nightmare he has. In it, he’s broke. He’s a clown, a fool. But there’s a wink to and rapport with his audience. Tunechi actually is a clown—and a success—and demands more respect than those who’d like to tear him down. On “I Don’t’ Sleep”, he’s going through his DM’s, looking for some companionship to bring into his “man cave.” Then he brags about mixing Addies with Cialis and going down on her. I’m probably wrong, but for me that was the first time I heard a rapper proud of how hard he goes after taking dick pills. But (you can analyze me later) it’s refreshing. There’s none of the psychotic, desperate egotism I hear in a lot of Soundcloud or incel rap (yeah, that’s a thing). Now, Wayne’s comfort with himself is definitely a privilege, and a reflection of his economic well-being. But I think it’s also something to strive towards, precisely in the midst of our normal, shitty lives. Not strive for in the sense of cutting everyone else down a la the meritocracy (in art and life). But that good will and un-self-consciousness aids our local struggles, and is (I’m paraphrasing) half the reason why things aren’t so bad for you and me as they could be.
Funeral’s emotional climax comes with “Never Mind”—a pop-rap banger of an ode to love. Or something like it—he’s working through his feelings.
I, I, got a lot on my mind
Tell my slime don’t be surprised if I cry, I cry
He said, “why?” I said, “why?”
He wonders if it is love, or lust, or just the drugs. A little later comes the line—“Vegas sucks, I’m still gambling with her, no protection”—and the joyous exclamation “Protect what?” That is truly monstrous position to take most of the time. However—-maybe it’s Wayne’s croak, or just the voluptuous soul groove in the background—it feels damn healthy compared to the paranoia and solipsism on most of my Spotify feed. A lot of rappers feel so damn uptight about clawing out their little niche in a system that’s designed to destroy them.
Millennials, Gen Z—we’re all fucked. Let’s sit with that fact and let it breathe. And figure out how to struggle joyously. Not in some Fyre Festival-type denial or escapism. But in some kinda way where we can get together and maybe build something better. The longer we watch punks like Tekashi snivel and sneer next to fat asses smeared with rainbow paint, the longer it’s gonna take. That troll shit is old; pass the blunt.
Postscript: A cop in Minnesota killed a black man by lodging his knee on the dude’s throat for eight minutes. Lil Wayne has shared his thoughts on the killing and backlash. Per Okayplayer: “I think when we see these situations,…we also have to understand that we have to get very specific… And what I mean by that is we have to stop viewing it with such a broad view, meaning we have to stop placing the blame on the whole force and the whole everybody or a certain race or everybody with a badge. We have to actually get into who that person is. And if we want to place the blame on anybody, it should be ourselves for not doing more than what we think we’re doing.”
Constant tragedies on the streets are exhausting: this pseudo-philosophical equivocation might offer an escape. Or maybe he’s just hedging his black/white audience markets. Either way, it seems like a bad time for “Good people on both sides.” RIP George Floyd.
NOTE
[i] Slay, queen…: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRBsaJPkt2Q