hipsters and hip hop

my man dj eleven described hipsters best. "everyone in williamsburg looks like they gave themselves a haircut," he told me.

but enough about hipster haircuts...let's talk about hipster musical tastes.

so unfortunately I stumbled upon the blog / village voice columns of brooklyn hipster (i fucking hate how they all perpetrate like they are from bk), tom breihan, courtesy of my hater brother. now i don't know tom personally, but after reading a little bit of the stuff that he has written i've come to the conclusion that he is a cooler-than-you hipster who doesn't quite get it...

first i read this review of the big daddy kane, little brother, mf doom show. now im not trying to say that you have to love doom or LB. you don't. but the "fuck underground hip hop" tone of the article is unmistakable. and granted, he makes some good points about rap fans, and the lousy state of underground hip hop, but i think his disdain goes a little bit far.

then he wrote this snide column about dilla's death. now granted, i always thought nerd-rap dudes sweated dilla a little bit too hard, but there was no question in my mind that dilla was a dope hip hop producer and personality. but tom thinks dilla was totally overrated and a bad rapper. the latter point is especially maddening because critiquing dilla's technical prowess as a rapper misses the point. dilla had personality. the nerd rap fans dont get how you can be a good rapper and not have word play like monche. tom, who hates the nerd rap fans, gets super-nerdy about dilla's lyrical prowess.

why doesn't tom get dilla? actually, i think he just claims not to get it. i think he's doing whatever he can to separate himself from the legions of nerd-rap backpackers that seem to be everywhere now.

if you check out your boy's friendster profile, you see whats going on. he lists his favorite artists as, "Jay-Z, Three 6 Mafia, the Hold Steady, Sleater-Kinney, Diplo, Mountain Goats, Chamillionaire, Fugazi, Rancid, Young Jeezy." the mountain goats? i don't even know who that is. that doesn't seem hip hop to me. seems like music snobbery (or the models for hipster haircuts).

now im not saying he doesn't really love this music. he does. i'm just looking at his commentaries on hip hop along with the fact that southern crack rap is whats hot among the hipster set. and it has me thinking...

it used to be that these i-know-more-about-music-than-you types would put Mos Def and Common as their rap interests. no more. too many white people listen to common. it's not hip anymore. white people listening to crack rap is what's hot on the streets now. now its about southern stuff. the stuff that they used to laugh at. or that maybe they started listening to because they thought it was funny but really got to liking it.....

now i'm not trying to knock the young jeezys of the world. that shit is cool. the houston shit is cool. lil' wayne is one of the best out now in my opinion. im a hip hop dude so i appreciate all kinds of different rap music. and granted, NY hip hop is stale right now, and a lot of what's going on down south does seem fresher and more exciting than the NY backpack scene.....

but let's be honest. when one sees hipsters checking for chamillionaire and project pat, that just screams, "i wanna be cool." and common, mos, little brother and doom just aint cool anymore, because white people like it.

it's really kind of weird....so many black hip hop fans are talking about how much of the down south "crack music" promulgated by CORPORATE AMERICA (how hip is that?) reaffirms standard stereotypes of black people. some would even say its a modern-day minstrel show. (sidenote--i'm not dissing the artists, but the labels--more on that another day).

but here you have a bunch of white hipsters in williamsburg totally digging on this shit. can't they see the problem? its one thing if a white rap fan digs on public enemy or mos def, or jay z. but for white people to talk about how great the crack rap is, and talk about how lousy so much of the more conscious shit is strikes me as a touch strange.

just because you think it makes you cool, doesn't change what this crack music is. so tom and all of his white, critic fans who sing the praises of young jeezy, etc. at the expense of other more positive hip hop, are really just doing what white people have done for hundreds of years, praising negative depictions of african americans, and saying that the positive depictions suck...

ah...hipsters....can't live with them, can't get them to stop leeching off the stuff that you really love and that they think makes them cool.....