"You know those jams in the park? They produced the spark. Made me feel words how I read books in the dark. I always took it to heart, loved the art..."
Late-spring/early-summer has been hectic for your favorite man of letters. 14,400 miles in the air in May between Mumbai, London, and Virginia? Excellent. Perusing the arcades of Paris in fine Benjaminian style? Magnifique. Linking up with some old friends? Great.
Keeping pen to paper? The best. The nature of my writing has been changing quite a bit over the last few months. After spending almost two years turning out relatively short reviews, I'm moving into longer format pieces -- more extensive reviews and, now, a set of long articles for PopMatters. At the same time, I'm cooking up my second master's dissertation, a 15,000-word piece on neoliberalism, hip-hop, and policing in NYC. In other words, if there seems to be an early summer drought at CanineMind, don't worry: there's a flood of stuff on the way for your extended reading pleasure.
Enough with the persona-building backstories, let's get to the monthly business: I've got the first installment of my multi-part piece on hip-hop and policing, "America's Most Policed Art Form" -- "The Rise of the Informal Mixtape Economy," courtesy of PopMatters. A video essay on inside jokes centering around MC Hammer's astoundingly terrible-great "Pop Ya Collar" (shout out to the "Committee to Elect Hammer and Wee-Wee). And, of course, some recent reviews from okayplayer.
In the spirit of inside jokes, and in keeping with the miserable weather in dear old Londres...
POPMATTERS -- Hip-hop, as any number of industry executives, gaudy videos, and endlessly self-referential rhymes will tell testify, is big business. And yet, even with its fabled rise “from ashy to classy” – leapfrogging from ghettos to rural hamlets and back again, from New York to Los Angeles, Atlanta to Houston, and all points in between – hip-hop has retained its status as Public Enemy #1: the subject of endless crusades, tirades, crackdowns, and lockdowns. Just ask DJ Drama and DJ Cannon, two prominent Atlanta-based DJs and radio personalities who spent the evening of January 16 this year cooling in sheriff’s custody on racketeering charges. The early-morning SWAT raid on their Gangsta Grillz mixtape operation – the culmination of an investigation supported by the Recording Industry Association of America – did more than confirm the high stakes involved in hip-hop’s newest, most dynamic addition, the informal mixtape economy: it solidified hip-hop’s long-running status as America’s most policed art form. (More...)
Ah, the perils of inside jokes. They start out funny, but after a while, as more and more knowing glances, elliptical comments, and general jackassery pile-up, they generally collapse under their own weight into powerful, sociability-destroying black holes. I've been involved in my share:
1. "50 CentGate" (Spring 2003): It's rare that you'll hear me say I "hate" anyone. Hate is a very strong word, and I don't throw it around lightly. So let's just say that I LOATHE 50 Cent. But even I'll admit that Get Rich or Die Tryin', his major label debut, was a titanic album. I must have listened to it once or twice a day for a good three months -- whether on my headphones, my room stereo, or the dusty boombox we kept in the weightlifting cage. Within a month, we had most of the album memorized. Within 6 weeks, we started communicating only in soundbites from the album. Scenarios: a. Lunch: One friend grabs another's sandwich, takes a bite, stares. "I'll eatcha food in broad day like it's lunchtiiime." b. Practice: Training partner fails to complete jump, gets lashed on back by bar. "Damn, homie. In high school you was the man, homie. What happened to you?!" c. Evening news: TV Reporter: "Gunfire erupted..." Friend: "I love the sound of gun-firer."
Yeah, that was annoying... and pretty sad.
2. "ChapelleGate" (Spring 2004): similar scenario to #1, just involving the infamous Rick James and Prince sketches from Chapelle. Also pretty sad when you think about it.
3. "PappadeauxGate" (Spring 2005): at Mike Jones' behest, we visited the popular Houston eatery. Waitress (looking at me, the only white guy in the restaurant): "Where are you from?" Me: "New Jersey." Waitress: "Why'd you come here?" Me: "Well, we heard that real baller's eat at Pappadeaux. We're real ballers, soooo..." Waitress (stifles laughter behind menus, leaves to compose herself)
I think PappadeauxGate is actually a sub-joke of the much longer running MikeJones/SwishahouseGate of Spring 2004 to the present.
4. "Hammer&Wee-WeeGate" (Spring 2004 to Fall 2004) aka "The Great Collar Popping":
For a brief period time, I was engaged in an ironic detachment contest of epic proportions. My opponent: a certain Johns Hopkins student known as the Ph/f[?]atmaster. The objective: search for rap videos that were so bad they were good. And were there ever some great bad ones -- Black Russians' "Back Up Out My Way" (Description: "The Black Russians have a beach party! Magoo plays football!") comes to mind. The best/worst by far, however, was "Pop Ya Collar" by MC Hammer, featuring Wee Wee. When Ph/f[?]atmaster inboxed me this one, I knew I had lost.
The video speaks for itself, but I always have to have the last word, so...
I'm not lying when I tell you we learned every pop -- by name -- and that we (and by "we," I mean the specially formed "Committee to Elect Hammer and Wee-Wee") executed them with an undeniable level of grace, fluidity, and swag. I'm also not lying when I say that I "Delivered the Pop" in a Notting Hill club last weekend... to applause, nonetheless. Popping is now just part of my DNA. I don't even have to think about it, I just do it. Wu-wei-wu.
Looking back at the video, though, I now realize that I never fully appreciated the pain, the heartbreak, and the cosmic wisdom that're packed into this song. Hammer pours his heart out and you can't help but feel bad for him. Doubly so when you see that hideous dress shirt he's wearing.
"Sounded like them good old times Reminded me of when the world was mine... Bring back them good old days We danced the night away"
"I had to get away Put it down and learn to pray Now that's the only way Now that's the only way"*
*Although I would like to note that, in following this immediately with "POP YA COLLAR MAYNE!", Hammer seems to locate his salvation not in God, but in the pop. Or perhaps God is the pop... Ever since "Pray," Hammer's theology has been kind of questionable.
Other inside jokes-cum-universal-implosions I've witnessed and/or been involved in: "ForeignDirectInvestmentGate" (Fall 2006 - Present), "Costa/AbbeyBank-CafeGate" (Spring 2006), "BalmIrahqGate" (Fall 2003), "SockPuppetGate" (Fall 1999 to Spring 2001), and the grandaddy of them all, "DoucheGate" (Fall 1997 to Spring 1999) [please, don't ask, it's a long story involving an all-boys Catholic high school that deserves a much more extensive telling than I could give here].
"I need to stop doing this blog stuff, oooooooh weeeee!"
In keeping with the obsessive-compulsive “cultural should” that jackhammers repeatedly in the back of my brain, I’ve accumulated a tidy stack of cultural objects I “really should” consume. Among the items in the aforementioned stack include:
1. Bartleby the Scrivener 2. The collected works of Stendahl 3. Madame Bovary 4. About 800 pages of Rem Koolhaas manifestoes 5. The Very Best of the Stylistics 6. A turkey sandwich 7. My ego
Count Supercool California Soul 2 as the most recent item transferred from the “should” to the “did” pile. Should I have? Yeah, most definitely. Would I have, given an alternative? Depends on what I… or, better, you (trusty reader *identified with an e-finger extending from the ether directly toward your face*) want to get out of your listening experience. (More...)
To say that I had a love/hate relationship with college would be a gross understatement: I LURVED and *haaaaa-teeeeed* virtually every moment of it, sometimes simultaneously. But rarely during my two-year period of post-baccalaureate self-questioning, self-recrimination, self-satisfaction, and various other “self-”modified activities did I ever think I had ever learned anything straight-up wrong while in school. Unpleasant perhaps; astounding frequently; pretentious almost always, but never wrong. Except for basically all of evolutionary psychology. Or maybe all of evolutionary psych isn’t wrong; maybe I’ve just finally realized, after listening to Angelique Kidjo’s Djin Djin, that – try as music executives and image consultants might to convince listeners otherwise – music isn’t like faces.
Yes. Parents, what an astounding advertisement for a liberal arts education in the 21st century. Four years, X dollars, and all I can come up with is “Listening to Angelique Kidjo’s Djin Djin made me realize music isn’t like faces.” No, the concrete on sidewalks doesn’t bother my knuckles. Why do you ask? (More...)
