Dame Dash + A Unicorn = Love

I don’t have MTV so if this is ancient history, SARS*… but like, have you seen this video for “Pull My Hair Out?” (SCROLL DOWN)
Sasha pointed out Kanye’s daffy bear suit on the cover of “College Dropout.” Celebrity DJ Samantha Ronson’s video stars a gesticulating Toonces wearing a princess crown. Is Dame Dash going coo-coo for cocoa puffs? Will he appear in Ronson’s next video wearing a toucan outfit? I hope so! The video is, in fact, on some Freedom From vs. Cody Critcheloe vs. a fourth-grader’s-bedroom-aesthetic art direction. (But it is not as surreal as Salvador Dali vs. Walt Disney, screwed and chopped.)
The song is a non-entity, kind of Veruca Salt mid-’90s throwawayable guitar rock, which is disappointing because as the only/first (socialite) (super rich) (white woman) (of Foreigner lineage/sister of Mark) Rock Musician on Roc-a-Fella Records, Samantha Ronson’s got more flint for the critical shotgun than Miz Phair. Also, Duncan Sheik is lauded.
This month’s “Nylon” magazine says her record initially included loops and samples but that approach was scrapped because, according to Ronson, “I steered a lot farther away from hip-hop on Roc than I would have if I were on another label. It would have been too contrived, the whole white girl doing hip-hop thing. I just want to rock.”
(Earlier in the interview, the writer asks if her Roc connections “might scare potential fans away,” and Ronson replies, “I played a show in NY and all these MCs were there. Label don’t mean shit.” Contradictions!)
So it looks like she’s suppressing her instinct to be hiphop in order to be taken more seriously, because as we have seen, white women rapping is a sticky matter, stickier than white men rapping– next/lower-than on the reverse-totem pole of cross-cultural go-ahead. Entire publishing empires are banking on shit like this, but suffice to say your average hiphop consumer would probably rather hear the NKOTB christmas album, or Pauline Oliveros Deep Listening, before hearing white ladies rapping. (Unless, of course, the white ladies rapping are rapping for irony’s sake. Then a whole non-hiphop audience comes into play.) As a result, Celebrity DJ/Rock Artist Samantha Ronson, who by her own admission above believes white girls rapping is gimmicky, wiped clean the loops and samples in her record. This is a shame because the above song could have used a little scratching for snazz. Then again, it’s possible it would have just sounded like Beck.
*phonetic abbrev for “sorry,” time-sensitive. I believe only myself and my housemate ever used this term actively, back when three people had SARS but it got reported like it was Paris Hilton. I cannot even tell if this joke is in bad taste anymore.
THINGS TO BOYCOTT:
My boss just saw crazy M. G–son’s crazy uber-conservative crucifixtion film, and said it was easily ten times more violent than Kill Bill. “Yes, but was it anti-Semitic?” you ask? And he responds, “Yes; and it was, in fact, anti-EVERYONE.” The Braveheart hath thrown his javelin of hate upon the world.
THINGS TO NOT BOYCOTT:
The awesome Grey Album (see previous post)