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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Slightly OT: Isn't this a little like the blues?
Slightly OT: Isn't this a little like the blues?
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Komuso
347 posts
Jul 11, 2014
1:34 AM
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Why is Watching White People Cover Rap Songs Using Acoustic Guitars so Nauseating?
"The other day I stumbled across a strange phenomenon - people covering hip-hop songs using acoustic guitars. This is not a new thing - back in the day when Radio One's Live Lounge was semi-listenable, The Automatic covered Kanye West's "Gold Digger" and I've been washing my ears out ever since. Anyway, thanks to the advent of YouTube we can now watch white people murder rap songs until they sound like Jack Johnson b-sides anytime we want. Every video is fairly distressing; not just because people drop racial slurs but because you can see in their pained expressions that these waspy kids think they're releasing some kind of hidden beauty that you couldn't already find in the originals. They're all really proud of themselves. This is basically Ed Sheeran's legacy. Blame him for everything you're about to see below."
The worst bit: He sings the "provocative" sample from Blades of Glory.
"The worst bit: This is actually a pretty high-end production; they're performing on a radio show. With that in mind this is potentially the worst one in this whole list because it's not just some teenager putting a video on YouTube, it's actual grown adults who thought it would be a great idea to turn a Jay Z song into country music."
The worst bit: This is quite good - if quite good means ruining every part of the song and turning it into something that wouldn't even make those rare Saddle Creek record collections that are released every once in a while.
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Paul Cohen aka Komuso Tokugawa
HarpNinja - Your harmonica Mojo Dojo
Bringing the Boogie to the Bitstream
Last Edited by Komuso on Jul 11, 2014 1:52 AM
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Honkin On Bobo
1211 posts
Jul 11, 2014
9:12 AM
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This thread can only go bad, on so many levels and from so many angles, so I'm just gonna shut up here.
PS i realize that by commenting the thread gets bumped to the top, so in part I guess this is a plea to my fellow forum members, dont let this thread go off the rails.
out
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Goldbrick
525 posts
Jul 11, 2014
9:30 AM
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I am amused
You cant mess up music that already sux
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Thievin' Heathen
331 posts
Jul 11, 2014
9:46 PM
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You almost had me convinced I wouldn't even want to click on it, but i could not resist. If I came across it in a coffee shop or some street corner I would stay to hear it.
Why dis someone else's form of artistic expression.
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kudzurunner
4777 posts
Jul 12, 2014
5:01 AM
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Komuso:
To be frank, my moderators were alarmed by this thread and the contacted me to ask if it should be shut down. The problem is the presence of the incendiary n-word.
I went to the article you linked and took a listen to the first video, then took a listen to the original. My attitude towards culture has always been: walk directly and fearlessly towards the stuff that upsets everybody, listen to it, think about it, and try to figure out why it's upsetting everybody. I think you've done a good thing by pointing us towards this stuff.
People on this forum have made clear, many of them, that rap music nauseates them. I've made clear that I don't personally enjoy most rap--it's just not my thing--but I'm an historian of black music (I've published on blues, country, and jazz) and therefore I've got a basic interest in rap as a cultural phenomenon, even if I'm not interested in attending rap shows, or buying the music, or, god forbid, rapping myself.
I think the conversation between the following two videos--the rap original and the white cover/parody/adaptation--is really interesting. Others here may not find it interesting, but I find it interesting:
I don't personally "like" either of the videos. I don't like that kind of music. But I'm fascinated by it.
The first thing to be said is that the word "cover" doesn't really describe what the second video (I'll call them Rblack and Rwhite) is doing. A cover, strictly speaking, is a white copy of a black original, released hot on the heels of the original with the intention of stealing all the sales (or in this case, views) of the original. In this case, the original has 14 million views and the "cover" has 7,000 views. No contest. We're talking about a star vs. one guy's little adaptation.
I was amazed to discover that that Rwhite is copying, word for word, the actual language of Rblack's rap. Some--many?--might argue that that original language, A$AP's, is degraded and degrading, even a kind of willful self-caricature. I'm talking about the black original. What kind of language is that? The guy likes to fuck bitches and he's letting us know it. We get it. And? I don't blame anybody who says "Is that supposed to be music?"
But obviously Rblack means what he says in some profound way. He is, or is posing as, a young black man from the inner city who is gonna get his, or is already getting his. Deprivation breeds fantasies of endless pleasure. He's reduced the hierarchy of needs to the couple of things that will make him feel great right now: fucking and bitches. There SHOULD be a song about that. His version is a kind of drug--a trance-creating homage to what he sees as The Good Stuff.
Rwhite's version is...well, the language, the words, are exactly the same. But it's also totally estranged. The heavy bass is gone. The rhythmic background is gone--changed into what I guess you'd call singer/songwriter strumming. Emo guitar? The vocal delivery is entirely different. Rwhite has, in effect, "whiteguyed" the song. He's not doing the standard Eminem wigger thing to it. He's not trying to "be black." He's not trying to talk black (i.e., modify his voice to sound street), walk black, gesture black. He's taken the words from Rblack, but that's all. Everything else is different. He's completely estranged the song, in that respect, from its origins, its original intent.
I think that's an interesting move. It's worth talking about what it achieves, if anything. Do we hear Rblack differently after we've heard Rwhite, for example? Maybe A$AP Rocky gets disgusted with his own language, for example, and decides to quit rap? Maybe Rwhite's version is a way of telling Rblack--and all of us--that the rap thing has now been completely played out.
I don't know. I'm just asking
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Jul 12, 2014 5:03 AM
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kudzurunner
4778 posts
Jul 12, 2014
5:21 AM
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Obviously the energy between Rwhite's version and Rblack's version is generated partly--maybe even, for some, largely--by the fact that Rblack, using the word "nigga," is just doing what rappers do. He's firing off in-group language, street-stuff, as a way of saying "This is who I am, this is where I stand, this is how I represent myself and my world." He's trying to celebrate himself and his world. He's saying "I'm all the way down here, standing tall, motherf---er."
Rwhite, on the other hand, is--weird as it sounds--being genuinely daring in a way that Rblack is not. He's daring us to condemn him for the simple fact that he's used the n-word exactly as many times as Rblack but as a white guy, not a black guy. He is indeed putting on a kind of rough stree-voice when he does this, but I hear it as a white voice, a Gangs-of-New-York Bowery Boys kind of voice: tough-ass white guy. The n-word sounds completely weird and estranged, coming out of his mouth. He doesn't MEAN any of those words, does he? They're not his words. And that's completely his point, sort of. They're just....words. Somebody else's words. Nobody can begin to pretend that he's "covering" the song--as in, trying to create his own legit, rap-sounding version.
So it's a what? A parody? A satire? It's certainly a transformation of Rblack's original. But it's also, in a weird way, a straight-up replication. I think it's extremely important to Rwhite's effect that he has gotten every single word of the original (more or less); that he's not adding or subtracting anything from the script. This gives what he's done a certain kind of abstract, formal perfection. He's said, "Here's my reading of the script." He's like a dramaturge who decides to have Beyonce sing one of Lady Macbeth's speeches. It's exactly the same as the original, but also completely different.
Of course, there's nothing at all original about the idea that a white guy might try to appropriate, burlesque, a black guy's musical performance. It's one of the oldest tricks in the American cultural vocabulary. So some might cry "Minstrelsy!" But it's a different kind of minstrelsy. If it's minstrelsy, then it's one that deliberately pulls the original waaaaaaaaaaay over to the White Side, rather than trying to ape (so to speak) black stylistics. It abstracts one specific element of the black performance--the words themselves, in order--and changes everything else around.
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kudzurunner
4779 posts
Jul 12, 2014
5:39 AM
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Ah: one last point. Why does Rwhite's transformation of the original upset everybody? That is a very interesting question. And there are too many good answers.
One answer: white people aren't supposed to use THAT WORD. He's violated a taboo. Violated taboos nauseate people. Rblack, rough as his language is, isn't violating anything. He's just doing what we expect rappers to do. Twenty-five years ago, his language would have been shocking. But there's been a lot of water under the bridge by now. Rblack's "obscenity" has by this point become standard cultural fare. Rwhite's version, by contrast, is...shocking. Because he's violating what has recently become a big, fat cultural taboo.
Second reason: Because he's mixing two things, two styles, that aren't supposed to go together. The French sociologist Pierrie Bourdieu once said something like "All tastes are fundamentally distastes." He also said that nothing offends people so much as the mixing of two things that people feel should not be mixed. It's the mixing of the scared and the profane. Meat and dairy, if you're kosher. Rwhite has done that. He's mixed rap with something much, much whiter, but in a way that isn't obviously a parody (i.e., SNL style). That's upsetting to some people who want their genres separate.
I wonder who Rwhite's version upsets more: blacks who love rap or whites who love rap. My guess is the latter, and for a reason: white rap lovers who hear Rwhite's version surely have a voice in their head shouting "That guys isn't me! He's NOT me! I love rap music! I wouldn't mix my white stuff with it like that! I want my rap pure!" Rwhite's version is completely impure, in that sense.
Some will surely try to downrate Rwhite by saying "He's terrible." Meaning that he can't rap, can't really sing. Bad musician. But that won't work. I don't think that he's pretending to be a great musician. He's just doing what he's doing. He's not trying to rap. He's not trying to be Eminem, or Drake. He's engaging in an experiment. And THAT might upset some people--people who say, "The original video MEANS WHAT IT SAYS. It's playing for REAL, dammit."
But is it, in fact, playing for real? Or is the original Rblack video just one big profitable pose? And isn't Rwhite's version, which is clearly a kind of thought-out pose (white Emo guy plays tough white guy reaing the hip hop script), just doing a "white" version of what the black guy is doing? Aren't they both just....poses, finally?
Here's the thing: Rblack's version is INSISTING that it's "real." That's important to it. Rwhite's version is quite clearly not "real." It's abstract. It's saying "Doesn't it sound strange when I take those words and do this to them?" It's an entirely different kind of cultural challenge.
My claim is that Rwhite's version actually IS a cultural challenge in a way that Rblack's version is not. I think people feel that, in fact. It's not as simple as saying "Rwhite is satirizing Rblack." That would look more like this:
No, Rwhite isn't doing that. And that, to my mind, is why he's upsetting people, and why he's doing something genuinely interesting.
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Komuso
349 posts
Jul 12, 2014
6:00 AM
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Kudzu
Thanks for taking the time to analyze and your responses.
It will take me some time to digest but I agree with your point re: "walk directly and fearlessly towards the stuff that upsets everybody, listen to it, think about it, and try to figure out why it's upsetting everybody."
To be honest I didn't even cop to the "The problem is the presence of the incendiary n-word."
My initial thought on seeing it was "wow, this is kind of like the white people playing blues thing".
I'll have a more thorough read of your analysis and digest.
One thing: I think you need to distinguish different categories between covers, or versions as you distinguish them more accurately as.
Ones that are trying to be "genuine" and "emotive" but doing it in alternate style (such as the original article was referencing - leaving aside the issue of subjective artistic judgement - which as some point out is useless anyway) and versions that are recreating the original in another genre while also not taking themselves as seriously as the alt.genre.emo.covers in the first case.
The second category are not intending to be parody but are usually musically slick productions having fun with music and culture bending, which is a little different from the introspective seriousness of the first category that can sometimes appear to be an unintended parody.
There may also be some other categories as well.
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Paul Cohen aka Komuso Tokugawa
HarpNinja - Your harmonica Mojo Dojo
Bringing the Boogie to the Bitstream
Last Edited by Komuso on Jul 12, 2014 6:27 AM
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Goldbrick
527 posts
Jul 12, 2014
6:56 AM
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As a former radio dj - i will say this-
The recording industry loves rap because it is the cheapest music to produce with very little downside.
No musicians, no real studio time etc.
Promo is done in strip clubs, dance clubs and word of mouth
Being a rapper is the new sport star, lotto dream in the hood. Anybody can "spit" and if you od or get shot doing it -street cred and great publicity
rap is just poorly done, lowest common denominator for
the most part and glorifying a degrading ( to the average middle class person regardless of color ) lifestyle
Other people will copy it. Some dumb ass will pay for their local university to offer a course in it etc.
I hazard a guess that most of us on the board are middle aged white men( majority of blues fans) and dont relate to it
Remember 'fuck da po-lice" then make big bux playing one in the movies.
Its all a game- you are in trouble when you start analyzing and taking it seriously. Just dig or pass it by.
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Komuso
350 posts
Jul 12, 2014
7:35 AM
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"I hazard a guess that most of us on the board are middle aged white men( majority of blues fans) and dont relate to it"
Personally not a rap music fan but I'm interested in all culture. I can relate to the irony in this though:
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Paul Cohen aka Komuso Tokugawa
HarpNinja - Your harmonica Mojo Dojo
Bringing the Boogie to the Bitstream
Last Edited by Komuso on Jul 12, 2014 7:44 AM
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Goldbrick
529 posts
Jul 12, 2014
7:46 AM
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Yo dawg daz wat I be spit-in.
Just call me by my street name "yung jewsy"
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JustFuya
323 posts
Jul 12, 2014
8:43 AM
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I look at the first video as nothing more than a young fella developing his chops with what he knows. To his credit, the inflections are his own. I started out singing Irish Folk using, heaven forbid, my Grandfathers' brogue.
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Frank101
14 posts
Jul 12, 2014
10:04 AM
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Golly, what kind of a world would it be if anybody were to just pick up their guitar & play what they want to ...
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Frank
4805 posts
Jul 12, 2014
11:02 AM
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This cover was written and originally performed by a 61 year old rapper, ENJOY :)
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JustFuya
324 posts
Jul 12, 2014
11:21 AM
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Will rap go the same way as punk? The Blues are forever.
Last Edited by JustFuya on Jul 12, 2014 11:27 AM
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Frank
4807 posts
Jul 12, 2014
11:25 AM
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-that band that did the 99 thing song was excellent :)
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nacoran
7861 posts
Jul 12, 2014
1:12 PM
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Tori Amos has an interesting album of covers where she takes a bunch of popular songs and by singing them as a woman puts them in a whole different context, often pointing out how creepy the songs really are.
I'm all about people challenging cultural barriers as long as that is what they are doing. In the context of these videos I'm not sure that is what they are doing, because there isn't enough context to tell if they are Eliot Rodgers in the making or someone who is actually trying to deconstruct the language. It's particularly complicated in these examples because it's not just the n word, but some really misogynistic language as well, and the white kid may not be the right one to deconstruct that.
There is a general rule in comedy- you can attack people safely from below, but not from above. If you are poor, you can make fun of rich people. If you are rich, you will get in trouble for making fun of poor people. You can make fun of your own group in ways you can't make fun of other groups.
This applies to stuff that isn't aimed at being funny too. I'd love to see the message in this rap taken on, but I think a white guy isn't the right person for it, in my opinion, since the part that, at least in my opinion, needs to be addressed isn't that black guys can use the n word.
The second video Komuso posted, the guy at least addresses it at the end by pointing out the misogyny.
Of course, there is another thing going on here too. There is the musical change. Personally, I love hearing songs reinterpreted. I like some rap. Not a lot, but some. I like hard rock. I like some pop. I find I very frequently like it when I hear it stripped down to an acoustic sound.
I like both versions of this (not rap)-
edit- Sometimes genres can turn you off. Sometimes hearing covers is a great way to get into the good music in those genres. My favorite version of Teen Spirit is a Tori Amos cover. Outkast wasn't really on my radar until I heard the cover. I have a friend who is usually fairly open minded, but I played the Outkast video for him and he said he didn't like rap. I was dumbfounded, since, although it's a black guy performing, it's not rap.
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Nate
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Last Edited by nacoran on Jul 12, 2014 1:16 PM
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