1. I'm assuming everyone saw at least a little of the recent nonsense where a bunch of Fox news anchors (and some other friendly folks) pretended they were outraged about Common being invited to the White House so they could continue questioning Obama's judgement.

    In case anyone missed it, here's a speedy recap:

    1) Common released a track with Cee-Lo in 1999 called 'A Song For Assata', which continues the case for Assata Shakur's innocence, while praising her perseverance and spirit

    2) Common wrote a 2007 poem entitled 'Letter To The Law' calling the Bush administration corrupt and criticizing the War on Terror.

    3) Apparently either of those things are a big deal, and lots of people lost their shit, culminating in Karl Rove calling another human being a 'Thug', and than presumably bursting immediately into flames.

    Jon Stewart has already ABLY covered this matter, but I want to bring up a side point. If people haven't yet checked it out, "A Song for Assata" is quite a touching piece of music (regardless if you agree with the premise), and it seems a particularly strange target considering another, more controversial aspect of this album has gone relatively unaddressed.

    Don't get me wrong, Like Water for Chocolate is in many ways a masterpiece. It's funky as hell, razor sharp, and confronts issues of sexism, violence, materialism and race with great insight and clarity. It's also blatantly homophobic.

    From 'Dooinit': Niggas ain't hate you, they pay you no attention/In a circle of Faggots, your name is mentioned

    From 'Nag Champa (Afrodisiac for the World)': There's rumors of gay MCs, just don't come around me with it/You still rockin' hickeys, don't let me find out HE did it

    From 'Thelonius': Plus, you rhyme like a nigga with his nipples pierced


    Now apparently this very March, Common was approached by a couple of gay fans who took him to task for lyrics like these, and he has since pledged to stop dropping gay slurs in his rhymes. It should also be noted that Like Water for Chocolate is over a decade old, and Common is certainly not the first rapper to struggle with a fear of homosexuality.

    But what we seem to have witnessed in this whole Common misdirection play is a group of generally hateful people taking a positive artist to task for a loving song about someone they hate, while letting another group that was legitimately hated on remain undefended because they still have no love for them.

    Haters gon' hate.

  2. X-Men First Class...

    Sunday, June 26, 2011


    ...was very enjoyable. But it has to be said:

    The Ginger kid got a lame looking power, and the Black dude still died first (by a mile). Stereotypes, it seems, do not mutate.




  3. I hear variations of these all the time:

    "I listen to Hip-Hop, but the good stuff - old school"
    "Modern rap is terrible! 50 Cent, Lil Wayne? Total crap"
    "New rappers are a disgrace. Soulja Boy? What happened to the four elements?"

    Now I'm fully aware that Things Ain't What They Used To Be arguments have existed since time immemorial (and will exist evermore), but I find this particular flavour of it especially corny. As in most things, money has played an important role in Hip-Hop since the very beginning, and the origins of rap music have become as exaggerated and romanticized as the American West.

    The above phrases usually allude to a time when Hip-Hop was about self-expression and revealing harsh realities, rather than making lots of money, exploiting people, and wearing lavish jewellery. The problem with this take is that Hip-Hop - both today and yesterday - has always been about all of the above. Not every MC rocks gold chains, and not every track is full of penetrating insight, but Hip-Hop (like any culture) is a chaotic mix of authenticity and posturing; materialism and art.

    This conflicted nature is demonstrated beautifully in Hip-Hop's first major radio hit "Rappers Delight" . Eventually becoming a platinum record, this hugely influential song changed the rules for everyone from Chuck D to Grandmaster Flash. It was also as unauthentic as it gets. In Can't Stop, Won't Stop, Jeff Chang carefully describes how the three members of the Sugerhill Gang were not only a manufactured group and a non-entity on the Bronx scene (until their hit broke), but used jacked rhymes for some of their lyrics. After the huge success of Rappers Delight, other crews, including the Furious Five, were so eager to capitalize on hip-hop's money-making potential that they changed their live sound to better fit a studio setting. This isn't to say that Flash & the Five were sellouts, but simply that art coexisted with money.

    With this all in mind, artists like 50 Cent take a lot of flack for being focused on killing, sex and cash, but a closer look at 50 (aka Curtis Jackson) reveals a larger picture than the cold-blooded gangsta persona allows. See, 50 also sells vitamin water. And fiction novels. And male cosmetics. This is because 50 is less of a street poet and more of a businessman who sees a market opportunity. This may be artistically dubious, but every genre has its Gene Simmons. Furthermore, even artists for whom art is actually #1 still think about money.

    50 Cent becoming popular by rapping about 'Guns, Bitches and Bling' says much less about 50's artistic soul (or lack thereof), and much more about his sensibilities as a businessman. It also says a fair amount about what many North Americans want to listen to (supply & demand and all), and that should make 50 Cent's monumental success even less baffling.

    Even years after 50's biggest hits, a certain portion of the American people still want to hear a successful businessman talk about killing people.

  4. This dude:


    ...was seriously cramping my enjoyment of Modern Family.

    I was recently introduced to this show by way of the first three episodes (sorry, late to the party), and taking into consideration the oft-tumultuous first steps most shows go through, I thought it had some really promising elements. One of them is NOT the above fellow.

    Phil Dunphy is literally the doofiest TV dad ever. That title is REALLY HARD TO EARN. In a sea of TV dads that are incompetent, unsexy lame-o's, Phil Dunphy is the prince of them all. Worse than Ray Romano, worse than Tim Allen. In his own way, this character is essentially as cartoonish and unbelievable as Homer Simpson - but less likeable.

    In the three episodes I watched, the character highlight of Phil Dunphy was being struck in the face with a toy airplane. Seriously. Other accomplishments include: Stealing another child's bike in a misguided parental lesson, Crashing-and-burning through rejecting the advances of an attractive neighbour - and still managing to get in trouble with the wife, and foolishly challenging said (athletic) wife to a footrace and failing to realize her incredibly obvious throwing of the race to nurse his fragile ego. At one point, this same wife refers to "all her kids, even the one she married" (Cue the cleaning product commercial).

    Everything about Phil Dunphy is terrible. He is awkward with women (including his wife of 16 years), ill-equipped as a father, unathletic, has a poor sense of humour, and sucks at making and doing things. The third episode attempts to come up with reasons to like this character, and the best it manages is "He tries really hard".

    The show is called Modern Family, and the other two families are actually pretty interesting. We have a gay couple raising an adopted Vietnamese daughter, and an interracial couple with a large age-gap between them. Sure there's cliche in each of these characters (cantankerous, unemotional dad; OCD, argyle-wearing gay man), but these are at worst, slightly adventurous scenarios with familiar sitcom faces. I don't expect anything seriously cutting-edge out of primetime TV.

    However. Attractive, put-together supermom married to 'lumbering man-beast' is possibly the most played-out formula on TV. Why, why, why does the zombie corpse of dork-dad hyperbole still dominate how North American culture portrays fatherhood? Why couldn't the third family be something actually modern? Why not a single-parent household?

    Doofy dad seriously needs to die, and stay dead.