"Cocaine Rap" Sasha Frere-Jones hilarious delusion

[Precious Cuts]

Ironic in that it comes from Scarface, one of the rappers you state as living by it.

yeah Im well aware. The 12" is sitting about 6 feet away from me.

 

[Grievous Angel]

do you speak for every hood everywhere, now, precious cuts?

Well, do you? For...

this is the problem with backpackers--THEY are the ones who *really believe* in what it is to "be hood." which is a construct, a myth, a lie. there's no univocal line the "hood" takes on anything.

You seem to take a fairly definitive line about what is and is not "hood" upthread.

I'm not attacking you, I'm just trying to understand your argument... seems possibly a bit inconsistent given the level of certitude you're expressing.

 

[nomadologist]

I am, of course, talking about only the backpackers I've talked to. I don't know anything about backpackers as a group, although from what I can tell, they do seem to have a strong ethos with regard to how hip-hop should be made that involves a sense of "community" that all hip hop must share, or at very least a set of common values it believes hip-hop has a duty to purport.

 

[nomadologist]

Before I was talking about what is realistic with regard to dealing cocaine, not what is "hood." There is a huge difference there.

 

[nomadologist]

I'm also waiting for someone to cite some Clipse lyrics for me where they are being utterly "debased" and saying something sociopathic. I'll be especially compelled if what they are saying is not something that can be considered a common hip-hop trope, but something infinitely worse than you normally hear in hip-hop.

 

[claphands]

I'm also waiting for someone to cite some Clipse lyrics for me where they are being utterly "debased" and saying something sociopathic. I'll be especially compelled if what they are saying is not something that can be considered a common hip-hop trope, but something infinitely worse than you normally hear in hip-hop.

While I think I mostly agree with you in this thread, you seem to have this strange fractured but absolutist coaine/hustling/drugs in hip hop apologist thing going on. One moment you're "they aren't saying coke dealing is a good thing" the next you're "it's okay if they say coke dealing is a good thing" both with complete conviction. I can't tell if you are trying to deny that the clipse are glorifying coke dealing on this album (along with defending them if they are) in some misquided attempt to defend this album from attacks on all possible fronts.

Yes at times they may be detailing a "truth" that coke is a way for people in the ghetto to move up in the world when other opportunities are less plentiful, and at others they are cautious and pensive about the trade. But throughout there is plenty of nihilistic violence/money/drug trade glorification that dominates the discourse of the album (lord willin' as well, of course [my favorite use of a curtis mayfield sample by the way]). Througout the nyt article Jones seems prettty neutral about the "evil"-ness of such moral rhymes, however, so I'm not sure why you keep both denying it's there while simulatenously saying it's okay.

What you are right to criticize is that the nyt and too many other publications large and small have been doing is buying into the whole "coke rap" subgenre thing. Jones does historicize better than some of his blogging peers, but you are right it's really absurd that he and others have decided to be part of the new journalistic trend to pretend that coke rap is a subgenre of some kind. Amusingly enough it's the favorite of folks on these types of forums to criticize this shit too (my favorite quote on another forum about a simliarly flawed article was something along the lines of "white journalist listens to hip hop album, discovers illicit drug trade"). Not that we shouldn't be in the camp of critics as well

Really that same dance between nihilism/telling it like it is about coke/crack/hustling/robbing/violence is what makes rap so interesting both contextually and in an objective formal sense (if such objectivity is possible). Not that that is all there is to the various manifestations of hip hop, but it has definitely become a dominant part of those artists/movements we could in anyway associate with gansta rap. It is, in many ways, what makes Only Built 4 Cuban Linx my favorite hip hop album oat. Speaking of which, does that get grandfathered in to the imaginary coke rap subgenre or is it just "proto-coke rap" or what. Come on Music Journalists, make up genres and trends so I can classify things!

 

[claphands]

Also I really wonder why the undisputed truth wants people to sing/rap/yell about things relevant to his apparently drug-free scantily clad woman-free life - you'd think he might want a little escapism

 

[gumdrops]

name me ONE HIP HOP ARTIST who doesn't talk about selling cocaine. please. i guarantee you that artist is someone i have NO INTEREST in listening to sonically

here's some -
lupe fiasco
q-tip
de la soul
mr lif
count bass d
kanye west
rhymemfest
ying yang twins

your loss if you dont wanna hear them.

 

[nomadologist]

I just wrote a long reply that I lost after timing out. I will try to recreate it soon, but for now, I will say--when did I say cocaine dealing was good??? I said that it was real for some people. I think the world is complicated, and there is no black and white, hard and fast rule about the "evilness" of selling drugs. Any adult should have enough life experience to realize this. Any adult who's been to a major city should have no problem understanding how the upbringing of the average inner-city teenage boy who grows up in the projects (a very negative and violent environment where gangs and drug-related activity give young men their only sense of belonging, not to mention protection from violence or the only way out of being targeted by gang members or drug dealers)--an environment that basically sets them up for failure in terms of the way white or middle class people define "success"--might lead them to make the wrong choices in life. Clipse talk repeatedly about how they started small, slinging for suppliers at age 16. (Can't be sure, but I also think they sing about making their own money so their mom didn't have to go hungry--is this from Hell Hath?) Once you get involved in those circles, it can get hard to get out.

Unfortunate? Yes. Evil? No.

I went on to write an extremely long post that talked about the formal elements of the "boast" and the "diss" and how the "badass drug dealer" trope is central to hip-hop, and how "Pusha T" and "Malice" are characters the same way a movie has characters. DAMMIT, I'm going to rewrite it in word so this can't happen again. Just lost 20 minutes of work, hehe...

 

[nomadologist]

Ying Yang twins?? are you kidding. I like them sonically, but their lyrics are NOT what I would call morally righteous. And i'll be shocked if I look into and can't find any YYT lyrics about selling coke/crack. Because it's sure obvious that they smoke it!

Aside from them, I don't like anyone on your list.

 

[wreckTech]

cocaine rap is, content & consequences aside, fun. betty crocker references are funny.

i think theres something to be said about the possibility of clipse writing cocaine rap cause it makes for the best punchlines--end of story. perhaps the social ramifications are simply not on their minds out of necessity; were they to contemplate the past & future before every verse chances are the rhymes would suck.

they probably spend a lot more time worrying about the lyrics themselves rather than whether or not the hood will cosign or if the kids will be influenced. if they wrote so the hood could see their balls and/or the parents could see their hearts we'd probably have ended up with a shitty album.

 

[nomadologist]

P.S. If I ever seemed ambivalent about whether selling drugs is evil, it's because the real question about drug dealers is "are they more sinners or sinned against?"

 

[gumdrops]

they dont rap about selling coke though, which is what you asked. neither do lil jon and the eastside boyz for that matter. so have you only ever liked gangsta rap or hip hop about criminal matters?

 

[nomadologist]

i think theres something to be said about the possibility of clipse writing cocaine rap cause it makes for the best punchlines--end of story.

Yes yes. Clipse definitely paint a picture of a cocaine utopia in their lyrics. But they're portraying the coke trade in a way that is consciously hyperreal. "Pusha T" and "Malice" are characters the Thornton brothers use to do this: of course they are not literally drug lords on the level they are fronting. But in hip-hop, hyperbole is the name of the game. Certain tropes are used as a formal backbone that the MC fleshes out with metaphors then uses as a means of flaunting his/her lyrical prowess. Especially when it comes to tropes like the "I'm a badass drug dealer" boast and the "yo mamma" type of diss: sure, these are cliches, but some of the best hip-hop lyrics I've heard are technically built on these cliched forms. They astound you with their inventive language, with the way that they can make something as cliched as a boast or a diss sound virtuosic or poetic.

The reality of cocaine dealing, in the end, is utterly banal and not the least bit glamorous for the average middleman. That doesn't mean that Clipse's coke utopia is based on an empty fantasy, though--higher up on the supply chain, there are people who lead lavish lifestyles built on money squeezed out of coca plants. If you're going to talk about drug dealing only as a trope that you use to shore up cred, to establish your lyrical potency and your preeminence, you're not going to tell the truth about how you've flipped some 20-bags of coke to 20-year-old girls on the Lower East Side, or even that you've moved some weight after you worked your way up for 5 years making deliveries for a supplier. You're going to front like you get razorblade suitcases straight from Bolivia, sit in the VIP section with Lindsay Lohan and Kate Moss at Bungalow 8, and have 5 mansions and as many boats in tropical island port cities.

Clipse are amazing because they use these tired hip-hop tropes to hold a mirror up to our society and its real ideals, they refuse to play to expectations or live up to the mammy myth where black men are supposed to be inherently wise and ennobled thanks to their suffering. Clipse paint a picture of a coke utopia that is significant in how current/relevant it is, even in the way its imagery and sonics perfectly mirror the psychopharmacology of the cocaine experience--cocaine being a drug that has dramatically surged in popularity in the past 5-10 years. The cocaine trade, on Hell Hath, is a metaphor for rampant conspicuous consumption. The psychoactive effects of cocaine are a perfect analog to late capitalism's frenzied and mindless consumer mode of being. The cocaine high is all about instant gratification. The more you do, the more you realize you are chasing the high; like the consumer under capitalism, all you feel is the the need for more. Bling culture is pictured as the aesthetic symptom of the late capitalist's cocaine-like high on consumption. Clipse don't think bling properly signifies being "hood" anymore, they declare bling dead, drained of any subversive power it may have had (that is for another post, though I always think of bling in its heyday as semiotic terrorism--luxury brands like Burberry are MORTIFIED that they are seen as primarily black or "ghetto" brands now). They're pointing out that the middle class is vanishing, black people are slowly losing any chance they may have had to join it--but people are willing to take Louis Vuitton sunglasses as a consolation prize, even if they have to sell coke to get them. They do all of this while admitting that they are part of the problem (as we all are). That is a level of honesty--and actual humility--that I respect.

Clipse are showing us that cocaine utopia, a filmic trope from way back (Scarface anyone) before hip-hop starting using it, still resonates, resonates more than ever, because it is the American dream fully realized. And they do it in some of the most evocative, gorgeous language you'd never expect to hear applied to such well-worn territory, that (imo) completely reinvigorates it. We do live in Clipse's coke utopia.

 

[nomadologist]

they dont rap about selling coke though, which is what you asked. neither do lil jon and the eastside boyz for that matter. so have you only ever liked gangsta rap or hip hop about criminal matters?

Lil John doesn't? are you absolutely sure about that? He clearly DOES drugs. I would be shocked if Lil John never sang about slinging coke.

I like hip-hop that sounds good to me, I don't like preachy shit. In any genre.

Gumdrops, do you only listen to sexist hip-hop? Because a lot of people would pick out most of your listed artists as sexist. Is that more ok than coke dealing?

 

[gumdrops]

i doubt lil jon would have sung about anything, but no, he doesnt rap or chant about selling coke. and doing drugs and selling it are two diff things.

de la soul, count bass d, even kanye, they dont preach, they just dont rap about being dealers, hustlers, or whatever. just cos something isnt gangsta shit, doesnt mean its preachy or corny 'positive' rap or whatever.

 

[nomadologist]

i just don't like kanye west at all. nothing about him. i think he can wear his crown of thorns alone somewhere as long as i don't have to see him or hear him.

de la soul isn't my thing, but i can' see why you'd like them, mr lif, i haven't heard. in general, i'm not the biggest fan of madvillian/tribe type production values. i like hot beats and it's a huge plus of the lyrics are good on top of a hot beat.

 

[minikomi]

missy?

 

[nomadologist]

i adore missy. would probably switch teams for her if she ever seemed interested in me.

 

[minikomi]

do i win a prize? hehe

meanwhile this book looks interesting...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674023552/downandoutint-20

thoughts of freakanomics kept popping up while i was reading this thread.. i'm far removed from anthing to do with crack and, for what it's worth, america but what if clipse are performing pretty much the same function as country and western performs for the white trash set i.e. glamorizing and making entertaining discourse out of something which really is not that glamorous and entertaining in the first place?

ps. how about...

tribe called quest
busta
red/meth ?