arse over tit

all hip-hopped out, innit

i was just reading through the may issue of undercover. we don't get that jawn around here. but jake, while on tour, picked up a few copies for me and moms. because, yeah, the reason i was reading through a london-based hip-hop mag is because the issue includes a rather supportive profile of yours truly in the "uncovered" section. (for which i'm grateful. thanks, y'all. appreciate the shine. for real.)

it was not self-promotion (i assure you--i mean, shit, you're already here) but another piece in the magazine that provoked this post. in an interview with 1/2 of autechre, sean booth describes his grounding in mid-80s hip-hop (and cut-up music more generally, which he considers hip-hop). his opinions, if strongly worded, both demonstrate his passionate engagement with the music and express, at times bitterly, the underlying beliefs that hip-hop embodied for him during some formative years. he ends by offering some interesting, and clearly informed, critique re: contemporary hip-hop, debunking the conventional arc of its story and making some provocative aesthetic judgments. don't let the same ol' this-dude-is-an-old-man tone fool you--dude makes some good points:

Hiphop these days is just inside out compared to what I grew up with. I don't know if most kids who are into hiphop nowadays could even fucking explain what a B-boy is. It's weird. It's all about what you can get for yourself, how rich you can get yourself. It's just a nasty reflection of consumerism. It's the same sort of thing that soul music is now. Hiphop now reminds me of Alexander O'Neal in the '80s, in them big fucking stupid suits. It's gone totally arse over tit.

There's so many tunes these days, these little half bar loop hiphop things all at the same tempo with the sound all at the same kind of level. Then along comes somebody good like Jay Dee or somebody with a style and then suddenly every fucker sounds like that. You know, everyone's got them crunchy claps now and them analogue kicks. Fucking hell, get a life you bastards. I understand that they want to copy music and that's the idea of hiphop, but you're not supposed to copy other hiphop. That's just sad unless you're doing it in a referential way or you're dropping it in a tune or you're making some kind of point. That's what we grew up with anyway.

I keep reading how Run DMC are the band that introduced hiphop to the mainstream, and I'm thinking, what the fuck about Flash and stuff? What about Sugarhill Gang? All that stuff was in the charts. Kurtis Blow? Even Art of Noise, which is arguably hiphop--to me, anyway, it was at the time--all that shit was in the charts. Malcolm McLaren? All in the charts before fucking Run DMC basically took hiphop and shagged it up the arse with the worst kind of guitar idea. It's just inside out music. Everything that hiphop wasn't meant to be basically. Not that you can't make the most out of what you've got in terms of cutting up an Aerosmith tune, but doing a video and getting them to play in the video? Fuck off.

so, yeah, it's a bit on the caustic side. and, yeah, he paints a somewhat limiting picture of hip-hop, forgetting that there is nuff stuff happening off the billboard charts, including music made by other followers of his heroes (not to mention his heroes), lots of other (regional, global, and stylistic) strands of hip-hop music and culture, and an assortment of entirely new, but related, practices and spheres of activity/expression. even so, i think he puts his finger on a lot of good points. and raises some good questions.

i wonder what the hip-hop cognoscenti would say, though? (never mind the proles.) is booth an insider or outsider? does that make his perspective more or less valid or persuasive? does namedropping jay dee bolster his standing or discredit him further? i guess it depends on who you ask. but, then, why bother asking?

(y'all know where i stand on that Run DMC shit.)