Dear Mr Fiasco (if that is your real name, and I know it isn’t),
We go back, man. Way back. We were pretty tight. We grew apart for a while there, I know; you took unnecessarily loud breaths between sentences, I got annoyed and ventured into the back-catalogues of other rappers. But we were tight, man.
I thought you were the new standard-bearer of intelligent rap. Humble, poetic, more into the music than the image. One time, I cried on the bus while listening to you on my iPod; yeah, sure, maybe that’s lame, but you touched me, dude. Touched me deep. I even got that mix-tape you did with that guy from Linkin Park. It wasn’t that bad, I guess, but the point is: I actually purchased something involving someone from Linkin Park. I didn’t even do that for Jay-Z, bro. Not even for Jay-Z. But I did it for you.
Remember when I saw you at the Metro a couple of years ago? Yeah, I know you kind of showboated a little bit, and yeah, you did mess up a couple of verses. And yeah, you took your shirt off, but you kept your sunglasses on. Indoors. At night. But that was alright: the crowd loved it, and you were charismatic, poised, and skilfully on point. That night stuck with me, man, and since then, whenever live hip hop came up as a topic of conversation, I’d point to you as a prime example of how to do it right.
So when exactly did you start smoking crack?
That’s the only reason I can come up with your performance at Big Day Out. You were pompous, erratic, bewildering and yeah, maybe even a little scary. What happened, man? You used to be cool.
Okay, fair enough, I missed the start of your set, so maybe I didn’t get the contextual set-up for the finale… But my first thought when I walked into the weird slow jamz session with you pelvic thrusting on stage was, “Wow, I didn’t know R. Kelly was here.”
Standing at the centre of the stage, nodding your head like, “Yeah, I’m awesome”, and generally just revelling in your own glory for extended periods of time does not count as a performance. Unless you’re Kanye West, I guess, but you’re not. And that’s what I liked about you, man. That you weren’t like Kanye, even though you dudes were old Chi-town friends or whatever.
And so it was kind of ironic that you decided to close with a song about the vapidity of the hip hop industry, a song I used to think you believed in. But dude, yelling the lyrics, and missing every second line does not make the song more poignant. It makes it annoying. And it kind of makes you a shitty rapper.
But that wasn’t the biggest problem. Oh no. The biggest problem was that you are now, in fact, insane. What the hell was up with all that squirming around on the floor shit? What was that? Seriously, what the hell was that? Why did you lay on the floor of the stage with your legs raised perpendicularly in the air, and keep the beat by knocking your feet together in a scissor-like fashion? I don’t understand, man. Only ODB could have ever gotten away with that shit. You’re not ODB, man, not by a long shot. And if you wanted to be OMG SO ZANY, you should have been honest with me from the start. I understand that performers change and grow, but… no. No. No no no no. How you gonna play me like that?
That’s it, bro. I’m done. This is a betrayal I can never forgive. I’m actually glad I didn’t get a ticket to the sideshow this time. I’m not even worried about you retiring anymore. Oh, and I’m definitely not buying your next album.
I might download it, maybe, but only because I’m the kind of person who enjoys pressing my bruises.
I have a shameful confession to make. I love rap. Seriously. I often go weeks without listening to any music other than rap. Once upon a time, I dreamt of becoming a rapper, but that career path hit a wall in year 12 when I battled some Russian kid during class, and my teacher subsequently called me a bitch for upsetting him.
Also, I couldn’t rap for shit. Nowadays, such a small detail seems completely irrelevant.
In this era of “Apple Bottom jeans and the boots with the fur,” liking rap has become, by definition, a shameful confession. And it’s no wonder, when some 17-year-old kid posts a YouTube video of himself doing a silly repetitive dance, gets over 38 million views, and thus becomes a successful rapper off the back of what is essentially just an internet meme: Soulja Boy’s Crank That rested at number one on the American Billboard charts for two consecutive weeks.
Unsettlingly, Aussies weren’t immune to the stupidity. The song peaked at number two on our ARIA charts, and has now spent 45 weeks in the Top 40. With lyrics as powerfully emotive and insightful as “Soulja Boy up in this ho / Watch me crank it, watch me roll / Watch me crank that Soulja Boy then / SUPERMAN THAT HOOOO,” or alternatively, “SUPERSOAK THAT HOOOO,” Soulja Boy is a perfect example of what is wrong with rap.
To be great, rap needn’t be good. Neither does it have to be profound nor intellectually-driven to be entertaining or intellectually impressive. While there’s a lot to be said about intelligent rap (Nas, Blackalicious, De La Soul, The Roots, Lupe Fiasco, and Talib Kweli are amongst the most popularly named), some of the most engaging and enjoyable rap is about nothing more than — as Biggie put it in his first single —“party and bullshit.”
Take, for example, Spank Rock’s 2006 album YoYoYoYoYo: like Soulja Boy, it’s basically just about sex, partying and other frivolous stuff, yet its composition manages to be inarguably clever. Or even Wu-Tang Clan’s 2001 song Gravel Pit: it addresses no topic other than how awesome Wu-Tang Clan is, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a classic. Because the lyrics? They’re not nonsensical. (The video clip might be, but I’m letting it slide because Method Man has a lisp, yet still manages to sound harder than a furry watching Sesame Street. Also, it has ninjas and dinosaurs, together at last!)
The difference between decent pointless rap and straight-up pointless rap is in the poetics of wordplay; the skill and finesse it takes to rhythmically twist sentences so that the average listener can simultaneously be disgusted, amused, impressed and heck, maybe even a little turned on.
Eminem, the infamous enigma everybody loves to hate, capitalised off this most cleverly: he doesn’t owe his success to his novelty as a white rapper, or even to his propensity for causing controversy, although those factors probably helped. He’s successful because even when he makes songs about whack shit like sticking a gerbil up your butt, he does it skilfully.
By leaving out the skill, all Flo Rida, Chingy, T-Pain, et. al., are doing is getting rich off of insulting our intelligence. Shit, what does Lil John even do other than get mad crunk and intermittently yell “YEAH” and “H’OKAY”? How has he made a career out of that? And why the fuck did we let him?
At least we can all take comfort in the fact that it’s socially acceptable to yell unintelligibly in public about the sweat that drips down your balls while you shoot your load in a chick’s face. By those standards, the crazy homeless dude on your local street corner could be some record company’s next cash cow. Or, you know, I could finally start living my dreams. Y’ALL SKEET SKEET, GODDAMN.
