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Hip-Hop's Genius: Selling a Culture to the Kids by Bob Lefsetz I've been re-evaluating my position on rap. Because, you see, rap is really just collage. With the advent of photography, it was no longer admirable to paint an exact likeness of a human being. It seemed superfluous. So we had impressionism, then cubism, then collage. Collage seemed to say it was all over. That nothing new could be done. That what counted was to assemble what had come before in a new way. Certainly by the time rap came onto the scene, rock was dead. Punks tried to make this statement, but punk didn't take. One can argue that the populace just couldn't understand it. Or, alternately, one can argue it just wasn't ear-pleasing enough. As rock soldiered on with its various offshoots, like new romanticism in the '80s, there was the advent of rap. "Rapper's Delight." "White Lines." "The Message." These tracks sounded like nothing that came before. On that level they were cool. They worked both musically and lyrically. They got play not only on the urban stations, but the super-hip white stations like KROQ in Los Angeles. Then, by 1990, rap went mainstream. The wedge was driven by the white Vanilla Ice, but soon thereafter, the African-Americans took over. Truly. Roles have seemingly been reversed on MTV. Rap is the rock of 1985, and rock is the black music of that same era. I'm sure people who looked at Picasso's collages 90 years ago thought they were a joke. ANYBODY could do this. But anybody couldn't. For great art is about the CONCEPTION! It's about the IDEA! Which is why the three-chord rock of the '60s, like "Satisfaction," was such a revolution, and why similar stuff done today is usually unsatisfying. There was an EXCITEMENT in rap that didn't exist in rock. But collage didn't last forever. Oh, it did in elementary school. Kids make collages in art class. But they resemble the work of Picasso only visually. There's none of the cutting-edge thought involved. I'll argue that there's none of the cutting-edge thought involved in today's rap. Acts are surfing the wave, the formula, that was established years ago. Sure, we've got Dr. Dre, who's stretching out. Producing tuneful music by Mary J. Blige. But so many of the rest of the acts seem like cartoons. But if this is the case, why are they so SUCCESSFUL? Because they understand the FORMULA! It's stunning when something is right in front of people's eyes and they don't pick up on it. Let's make it a bit complicated. Before I beat you over the head. Let's start with Russell Simmons. Read everything Russell says. He doesn't state that he's loving his money, loving his success, no, he's saying rap is A WAY OF LIFE! There's the key right there. But you don't have to read Russell to get it. All you have to do is watch MTV. White people are still living in the '60s and early '70s. All the white execs at labels believe in the OLD formula. They really don't even want videos. They want to put the acts on THE ROAD! Build careers. |
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