Blog Blog Baby

I was drivin', in my 5.0, when some radio caller suggested that all of Edmonton be subjected to four minutes and thirty-one seconds of the worst rap song ever created. It reminded me of my favorite added-in scene in the Two Towers (right?) when Saruman talks about how the orcs were actually elves who were tortured and mutated, using the wonderfully worded "foulcraft," into the Uruk-Hai. That's really what's happening here. You have a truly great song, Under Pressure, brutalized and punished into this horrible perversion then BASTARDIZED EVEN FURTHER by having it "sung" by a white chap from Dallas with less street cred than mysef when I wear that khaki-collared shirt-sweater combo that's keeping the Gap in business. His true name, Robert Matthew Van Winkle, is the whitest, cleanest most suburban name this side of Daniel Joseph Abraham, a random name I just made up.

Ice Ice Baby reached it peak in 1991 when it was nominated for a Grammy for Best Solo Rap Performance. In a tight race between two formidable opponents, the Iceman's dreams of Livin' Large in an ice manshion on an ice throne with, I suppose, Iced Babies at his command were smashed/melted when the much-coveted honour went to MC Hammer for his memorable and inspiring melody, U Can't Touch This. I was 10 that year and like all 10 year olds, my ability to pick out pure raw talent from the otherwise over-marketed, under-talented, purely manufactured music industry was impeccable. Sure, lots of people my age will giggle, blush, and shyly admit that Vanilla Ice is a guilty pleasure for them. Fine. I owned one of his tapes. I knew ALL the lyrics and loved saying "word to your mother" which, like most stolen ghetto sayings, may have made sense sometime but now it's just fucking nonsense. It's still a guilty pleasure for me and one that I dance to at every wedding and mouth the lyrics to in the car when some fool requests in on the radio. Until some black dude pulls up next to me at the light.

***Tangent: I don't think this is racist but if you think so I'll be happy not to listen. I like rap music. Rap culture has become garish and unconscionable but there's lots of great rap out there that's funny, skillful, true to its rebellious political roots and isn't about bitches and ho's. I don't apologize for liking rap because to me it's just catchy music that I can listen to at the gym and distract me from Naked Changeroom Man and his Neverending Wrinkles of Horror. Yet whenever I'm at the gym, listening to some Bumpin' Tunes, and a black dude walks by I feel like I should listen to something else. I feel like a poser, a foolish suburban middle class white kid listening to music born out of poverty, oppression and prejudice. That's how I see rap music, at least at its best and most meaningful, as statement music, written and performed by people whose past and present were full of inexplicable injustice, fear, ignorance and hate. That's why Ice Ice Baby is a truly guilty pleasure. It's both a catchy song from my youth and a song that, in its attempts to emulate, succeeds only in mocking it's own genre and with it the spirit and soul of rap's history. After that flash of white guilt at the gym subsides and I realize my own ignorance, common sense takes over and reminds me that Dr. Dre represents all blacks the same way Kid Rock represents all whites and changing music would merely affirm that foolish (and unsettling, in the case of Kid Rock) statement. Man I hate Kid Rock. Just die already. In my mind, those kind of sudden reflex thoughts aren't racist but merely ignorant. And yet, because it's an ignorant thought that manifests itself from my own guilt and shame over centuries of racially-charged mistreatment by British whities like me, is it a "bad" thought? Can a person be ignorant yet in a way that manifests itself not negatively but rather just unnecessarily cautiously? Sure, why not.

The mainstream music industry is based on style over substance and manufacturing false images for lesser artists rather than developing and promoting bands with something to say (not Bono, go back to Ireland and eat potatoes you sanctimonious asshole), and as such make it easy to deride any depictions of the music industry that celebrates artistic integrity. The whole Vanilla Ice construct was unfortunately not a mockery or satire of hip hop culture and if he were to come along today, he'd be called a genius for creating a persona that mocks the materialism, mysoginy and machismo that characterize contemporary rap music. Since it was played straight one can only say, in the wordsmithing skills of Todd Bertuzzi describing his actions that crippled a fellow player, "it is what it is." I have a lot of respect for the history and origins of rap but, like many, little for the industry which allows it to exist. It becomes somewhat of a quandry, to appreciate the painter but not the museum. It's a dilemma, how to extrapolate the good from the bad while each acts as a symbiot for the other. How to mock The Man without using The Man's resources? Good thing The Man is an idiot.