December 2004 Archives

ASHANTI!

NOTE: Sasha would like to give me credit for my taste in A-list R&B, as well. Thank you, Sasha. Let it be known I am all about R&B lists A, B, Q, V, and Z. Even Z^b. Also, if you want me to expound on Erykah Badu's Worldwide Underground as my favorite album of the 21st century, feel free to DIAL J FOR FIRE. Or just read this.

This is probably the right time to recommend Dina Rae's version of Akon's "Locked Up" from the woman's point of view.

Here's a way to donate. Here's another. And another.
To donate in New York.
Direct route.

$5 buys an emergency health kit for one person for three months.

Top 20 Tracks Most Listened To During the Hours of 10 am-6 pm Weekdays, according to the iTunes "Play Count" function on JS' work computer, Aug-Dec 2004, based largely on the catalogue available to me via my job.
(Or, What Does It Mean That I Love So Many Prodigy Tracks?)

1. "Tick Tock" by Alchemist featuring Nas and Prodigy, 27 times
* Nas, on a half-crap verse, rhymes herb/word yet again, but reconciles it with his lustily sung chorus; thank you Nasty. Now explain to me how I get my "tits hot from this hip-hop." Like, would this be an isolated incident? My tits heat up while the rest of my body stays at room temperature? Does the L I have just lit keep my chest area warm? Do I lean over the heater? Dear Mr. Wizard, I really want to know.

2. "Do it for You" by Slim Thug; 20 times
* What i like about the above two songs together: they're the summer-hot, sticky soul that is my steely. Love songs to place and time rendered with equal melancholy (the latter about fantasy, the former about reality), heavily apparent in the production--you can hear the NY humidity making overcast in the Queensbridge joint, with Prodigy in subtly desperate appeal for the listener to believe his truth. Meanwhile, on s.thugga's number, after he sears through every second of verse so breezy blue, the synth fragment in the break is Houston-hot, the kind of car-reflection hot that can burn out your retinas.

3. "It's a Craze" by Alchemist feat. Mobb Deep; 12 times
*In this episode, our boy Al has positioned himself at the helm of Dr. Who's radiophonic workshop, left dusty by the Neptunes, for isolated gravity-free synths at the top of the range. Handclaps slice right through the bass. He overlays with filtered arena cheers at the end, so there's this strange, dual-vertigoed feeling of being alone in a small room watching a blow-out party through a crystal ball. the track kinda bends at the corners and refracts.

4. "The Poverty of Philosophy" Immortal Technique, 12 times
* inspiration.

5. I've Just Begun Having my Fun" Britney Spears; 11 times
* Bloodshy & Avant, producers, have no qualms with hitting the "strings" setting on the synth mid-track... bet they're familiar with techniques of classical composition. (I surmise this based not on the strings, but on the gentle/playful tug-of-war between each instrument.) I even believe I love Britney's voice in this song; she's vamping kinda gritty, lyrics about sowing her oats as she simultaneously embarks on her first (and hopefully not last!) marriage. For selfish reasons, I also hope she keeps up her camel lite habit, gets deep and gravelly like Joni and Marianne by the time she's 52.

6. "Peachfuzz" by KMD; 11 times
7. "What a Nigga Know?" by KMD; 11 times
8. "Who Me?" by KMD; 11 times
* peace to KMD, subroc RIP, extra special love to jody watley.

9. "Star Bellied Boy" by Bikini Kill; 9 times
* Kathleen Hanna on her finest caterwaul.

10. "Oh!" by Sleater Kinney; 8 times
* was one beat slept on? i have no idea; i was living in portland when it was released, and the city practically threw a friggin parade. it's their most hopeful album (with songs written right after corin tucker gave birth to her first baby, so I'd be worried if it were otherwise) and this increasingly ecstatic chorus: "nobody lingers like your hands on my heart/nobody figures me like/ you figure me out.. don't worry/you got it!" makes it all sound so simple. maybe it is.

11. "Strawberry Julius" by Bikini Kill 7 times
* KH channels at least 7 different vocalists, and it's a revolt/take-back-the-night song about abuse and healing. My favorite BK song ever.

12. "Hold you Down," by Illa Ghee, Prodigy, Alchemist, Nina Sky 7 times
13. "Thun & Kicko" by Cormega + Prodigy 7 times

14. "You know how I do" by Taking Back Sunday 7 times
* does emo have its own seperate language? I'm not talking about the language of the oppressor or whatever, nor am I talking about teen-language on relationship melodrama. I mean: there is a whole common dialect for emo singers. It's part The O.C., part disenfranchised white mallrats, part novocaine drawl and 100% dramatic overemphasis on vowels. The TBS singer dude epitomizes it here, in this song, impassioned chorus: "WE-ee. Won't Sta-annd fooah. HA-azy EYES ANYMOOOOOOOAH." Real earnest-like. I generally dislike Taking Back Sunday, but this song (and this song only) makes me feel small for ever having the "emo is disingenuous" thought. (Vict'ry records, maybe. Taking Back Sunday, I don't know. Ezra, if you're reading, feel free to argue.)

15. "Graduation Rap" by Vanilla, Jade & Ebony (from the ghost world soundtrack) 6 times
* this could only come from the twisted mind of the great dan clowes. It's 32 seconds long bass track ode to high school graduation and becoming "members of the general population."

16. "Funky Mule" – Ike & Tina Turner, 5 times
* My friend JB is constantly searching for the world's funkiest bassline, this instrumental contains one of them. It's in the break, as well it should be; the guitar makes a little triad melody, like nanny-nanny-boo-boo, and is answered with a walking bass so glass-breakingly, guts-deep in the funk.

17. "This whole funky world is a ghetto" – Bobby Patterson 5 times

18. "Turn off the radio" DPZ, 5 times
I vote yes on DPZ cribbing old production and dropping radio-ready revolutionary beats.

19. Gwen STefani "What You waiting for " Jacques lu cont remix, 5 times
* jacques makes a mediocre song great just by simplifying and switching keys. better and more new order in quality than the actual new order-assisted song on gwen's full alb.

20. "All that + A Bag of Chips (strings remix)" Hil St Soul, 4 times
* Sasha recently told me he could always rely on me for his second-rate R&B needs. I took it as a compliment.

For Xmas, I received a pair of portable binoculars.

I am not kidding.

Prepare to be spied on, suckahS.

Right now: K Sanneh on NY NPR-station repeat airing of Brian Lehrer hour. Topic: rockism. K is playing Fabolous "Breathe," revels in telling Brian Lehrer it samples Supertramp.

Mandy Moore's session guitarist calls in, is anti commercial production, rants against the process of making commercial beats and slapping them on a video with good choreography. K responds: "I hope Mandy's not listening."

BEST PART: Show's ending. Brian Lehrer winkily says, "We've been here with Kelefa Sanneh, Pop Critic of the New York Times. He's a rock star in our book.. or whatever the next generation will call you." K, with his signature glee, exclaims, "I wanna be an R&B star!"

PHONE CONVERSATION:

MY MOM: "How are you?"

ME: "Totally depressed... everyone I know is out of town. I am in my barren apartment reading the Times."

MY MOM, dryly: "Go to the top of the Empire State Building, maybe you will meet someone."

She then recounts a story about Darryl, her friend who comes over and shovels her driveway. Darryl is driving a truck with no windows; someone smashed them out a couple months ago, and he hasn't been able to find replacements, on account of his truck being thirty-some years old. He can't really afford it anyway. So he just drives around in the cab, naked to the wind, Witch's tit, in't it, frostbite weather out there. He rambles through the snow up to my mom's house today, anyway, one mile from where he lives, and he must have been cold, because when he got there, he jumped right out of his truck and ran inside without saying anything, breathing on his hands, like he was trying to melt ice cubes. Darryl's had a rough year, she says. His truck, in addition to having no windows, is about to go. He was working at this ranch a couple miles out of town, and the foreman said he'd sell him his old car, a Lincoln Continental. Much, much more reliable than the junkyard Ford he's been driving around, the one that barely makes it to the ranch. "I'll just take 100 bucks out of your pay every week," the foreman tells Darryl, "and when we get to $1200, you can have the car." So after Darryl puts in three months of hard labor, they get to the $1200... but when he asks for the car, the foreman reneges on the deal. He doesn't want to sell the Lincoln Continental anymore. So Darryl says, "All right, give me the rest of my pay back, then." But the foreman, he doesn't think that's fair. Because you see, Darryl's been living at the ranch.

"His truck couldn't make it all the way out to the ranch, because it's about to go," my mom tells me, "so the foreman said he could sleep there five nights a week until he paid off the Lincoln."

The foreman doesn't think it's fair to give Darryl the $1200 back, because Darryl's been living there at the ranch five days a week for three months, and he figured he oughta pay some rent. For staying there. Even though the ranch is huge. And rich. Wyoming rich, where wealth means land you can see for miles—you own acres, sage and rolling hills; you probably own the frost on the blue-orange horizon, or you probably feel that way—and cattle, and horses to ride around, and evergreen trees dusted with snow, and a lake frozen like glass, and a creek (maybe you call it Indian Creek, or Dead Indian Creek, even). And sunken fireplaces, high ceilings and and extended-cab pick-ups with satellite radio. CMT shit. Picturesque. What the Wyoming Chamber of Commerce wants you to see when your brochure comes in the mail. Some ranchers own peacocks, their eyes and feathers like jewels in the window at Bergdorf's.

There's really nothing Darryl can do about it. His pay was under the table, in cash. But even if it was tax-legal, it's not like he could've sued—he didn't have enough money to fix the windows in his truck, I mean, where would he get the money for a lawyer? All he can really do is walk out on the job with a shred of dignity left.

That was eight months ago. He's been doing odd jobs since. For fun, he comes down to the track where my mom works, but he doesn't ever place any bets, and he doesn't drink, either. He just likes the company.

So my mom says how are you doing for money, and Darryl says I'm down to my last three dollars, so she gives him half a ham and some tamales, then he shovels the walk and she gives him twenty bucks. My mom tells me, "I don't really do anything to help the homeless because that's just not my thing, but I help out my friends when I can."

Happy Holidays from Reba McIntyre's Daughter!

p.s. someday I will tell you about the time I was six years old and met a drunken Charlie Daniels.

Tomas is one of the most stand-up humans we have ever known. Now he has a blog.

New Year's Eve, whatever. On Thurs 12/30 at SOB's in NYC: Basement Bhangra, featuring not only the illustrious DJ Rekha, but my people from Portland, DJ Anjali and the Incredible Kid, who are wholly responsible for PDX's rather large bhangra/Bollywood/Asian garage following. I am controlling your mind now **YOU WILL GOOOOOO****

I must clarify what I wrote about Andrea Dworkin in an email the bright light that is Troublecrunk posted on his blog, especially for those uninitiated to her work. I am not trying to undermine her intellect, as many people have done before and in no way do I believe pushing discourse left is a bad thing, obviously. Quite the contrary; I think her radicalism was and continues to be a survivalist tactic, a way to coax rights for women out of a hostile/indifferent status quo. I think her writings are the life-cry of a very brilliant human woman, a life-cry that is necessarily loud and strong, so she doesn't die from her memories as a prostitute and battered woman. Also, I agree with, and feel deeply, 99.99% of what she says, but my note on her hetero-sex intercourse stance: basically because I cannot wrap my head around the sex-is-violent essay-lecture in Our Blood. When I have more time I will re-read it and write about it here. Also, anyone who's read Dworkin and wants to discuss it, please email me, link to left.

Hello, I'm still learning and trying to do good.

And as for the porn. Dworkin says:

"Pornography is so important, I think, because of how it touches on every aspect of women's lower status: economic degradation, dehumanisation, woman hating, sexual domination, systematic sexual abuse. If someone thinks she can get women economic equality, for instance, without dealing in some way with the sexual devaluation of women as such, I say she's wrong; but I also say work on it, try, organise; I will be there for her, as a resource, carrying picket signs, making speeches, signing petitions, supporting lawsuits for economic equality. But if she thinks the way to advance women is to organise against those of us who are organising against sexual exploitation and abuse, then I say I don't respect that; it's horizontal hostility, not feminism. Women willing to let other women do the so-called sex work, be the prostitutes, while they lead respectable professional lives in law or in the academy, frankly, make me sick. I concentrate my energy, however, on uniting with women who want to fight sexual exploitation, not on arguing with women who defend it."

On the First Amendment argument:
"Here, burning a cross on a black person's lawn was recently protected as free speech by the Supreme Court. It's obviously a big subject, but the First Amendment, which keeps Congress from making laws that punish speech, doesn't say, for instance, that I have a right to say what I want, let alone that I have a right to say it on NBC or CBS. After I have expressed myself, the government isn't supposed to punish me. But women and people of colour, especially African-Americans, have been excluded from any rights of speech for most of our history. In the US it costs money to have access to the means of speech. If you're a woman, sexual assault can stop you from speaking; so can almost constant intimidation and threat. The First Amendment was designed to protect white, land-owning men from the power of the state. This was followed by the Second Amendment, which says, ". . . and we have guns". Women and most blacks were chattels, without any speech rights of any kind. So the First Amendment protects the speech of Thomas Jefferson, but has Sally Hemmings ever said a word anyone knows about? My own experience is that speech is not free; it costs a lot."

The Alligator Lounge, Wmsbg, Brooklyn, where Steven wanted to have his birthday get-together because they offer one whole free pizza per drink. Tiki lounge decor, now tiki-alligator-Xmas themed, with an alligator-victim mannequin glued to the wall, handless and red-paint bloody, but wearing a cheerful necklace of blinking christmas lights. Yes, one free whole pizza per drink. I don't know how they stay open, except they charge $3 per diet coke.

So I spend about $135 in soda, purchased from a man Chris T. refers to as "The Brotender." He's wearing a sleeveless white undershirt (the kind that sweatshop-conscious softcore pornographers American Apparel knowingly term "boy beater"), despite it just barely topping freezing outside and bt-dubs, I don't want to see your pit hair if you are touching my food, dude, gross. I feel as though the Brotender's fraternity years were probably the best years of his life--he has a real "hazing" vibe about him. Everytime I order from the Brotender, he leers and calls me "baby," as in "what do you need, baby" and "here you go baby" and "I'm not charging you for this one baby"--every time. Finally I'm like, "why are you calling me baby" and he's like, "I'm just being friendly" and I say, "please stop" and he's like "ok." The bar is packed, and I listen, and he addresses every other woman there as "baby," too.

About ten minutes later, Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time" comes on the juke. Brotender leaps atop the bar, and to the horror of his unwilling audience, he is holding a protruding stack of white styrofoam cups to his pelvis like an erect dick. He starts slow-grinding, fake-masturbating and screaming, "Oh Britney, oh Britney! Oh, oh ohhhh." On the final chorus, as 1000 multitracked Britneys appeal to "give me a siiiiiiiign," Brotender jerks off the white cups so they tumble down-- a styrofoam orgasm, cups raining all over the people standing around the bar. The song's still going, but I imagine I hear the trebly clops of styrofoam cups hitting tile. Everyone is staring; no one knows how to respond. Some people laugh uncomfortably.

I ask Chris, "What has occurred in that man's life, from conception up to this moment, that led him to believe that was an okay thing to do?" He says, "I was wondering that same thing," and then "Are we still in New York?" and we both kind of blink at each other.

Congratulations to my mom, who won two Tim McGraw tickets from the radio, for his show next July in Cheyenne, WY. She was caller 15.

"Live Like You Were Dying" is advice Jessica gave me a couple months ago, which is a great concept—and, intoxicated by idealism, led me to make a couple of extremely stupid, confessional phone calls. Under the wrong circumstances, "Live Like You Were Dying" is the sober person's equivalent to drunk dialing.

I think you're supposed to apply it to things like sky-diving and Rocky Mountain climbing and doing 2.7 seconds on a bull called Fu Manchu.

The Women in Heavy Music page is a super reference.

Oh goodness.. the gentle, erudite and gifted expatriate Jace Clayton has a blog. Here, he illuminates a possibly Marxist point about scripts in M.I.A.'s live show by quoting Kafka en Espanol. Sigh.

Theee best band in Portland, Orygone, Nice Nice, who use one guitar drumset and 59,000 pedals to sound like Timbaland and Neu's jam band in 2052, have A SONG IN A PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS AD.

In less interesting news, my old housemate Connie and I have pix in the back of the Adidas/XLR8R DJ book Bedroom Rockers. We are helping the editor, designer and photographer of the book to do keg stands. Enabling, essentially. More famously, there is a full photo spread of Hua's apartment and crates in there. They have privileged us to his set-up and I'm starry-eyed.

But hey, how about the Blazers' music director? I mean, last year they booked the All-Girl Summer Fun Band at halftime. Not my fave twee on the planet, but at least Tag Team got a coffee break.

"Omarion" is the new "binoculars."

Etymology:

"Our weekend plans are so binoculars, I require a higher resolution to imagine their blinding-hot shine.

Shall I bring a telescope?

Are we up in the planetarium?

So Omarion."

NOTE: I do not expect this to take off, in mine or any other lexicon.

1. Beardly Omarion has been replaced by babyface Mario as the lusty lusty in the celeb preteen scene.
2. As a word, "Omarion" does not have the same "i mean business" syntax as binoculars.
3. I love Omarion because he is so unaware of his own dorkiness. Not quite the right quality to express something so bananas awesome you have to sit on your hands to keep from tearing your own heart from your chest. Close—but not quite.

I wrote this for The Pixies.

The Pixies were Omarion, binoculars, retarded, it-started, badonkulous, etc. I am overly mistrustful of nasty nostalgia and its aspiration-killing side effects, and I went in with a skeptic's mind. I attach too many memories of heartache, afterschool herbalism, group fanzine stapling, tortured poetry writing and flashlight toga parties to Black Francis' deathscream making lover's rhythms on Kim Deal's smoking-angel timbre for this to just be REUNION TOUR '04. This is huge. This is my formative years, graying and under stage lights with a fog machine. SO, accompanying my deep, intense excitement was my cursed, finger-wagging sub-voice, going, "Dude, do not lionize tonight's performance simply because The Pixies were your teen entry into Art Bell, Spanish surrealist art, the subtlety of good seduction, Mexican Catholic imagery in contemporary popular music, Dick Dale, sex, and David Lynch movies, not to mention the glue that bonded you w/yr boyfriend of the years 1996-'99.

The show must be great on its own."

We sat in the second-tier balcony, and The Hammerstein Ballroom was a sea of heads. Reiussed back catalogue and Fight Club accounted for some of them, but surely they were mostly old-schoolers. I am obsessed with how kids growing up in small towns heard about punk and indie rock in the pre-Nirvana/pre-internet mainstream, ca. the years 1987-1991, partly because I was one of those kids. The Pixies were one of the first bands of the '90s weirdo intellectual punk wave that had decent distribution. I wondered how many formerly small-town heads bought Come on Pilgrim cassettes from the Sam Goody, or ordered Doolittle from Columbia House tear-outs in Rolling Stone because they hadn't yet discovered punk-rock mail order. I got Trompe Le Monde for $6.99 from a returns bin at Musicland in the Frontier Mall, Cheyenne, Wyoming. Ah.. the '90s... baby-dolls, back then, 'fore I wrote this blog, I usedta hadda type my life on paper and photocopy it! Moveable Type is the new Kinko's.
Love,
Grandma

But whatever, anyway. It felt like a renewal of vows; songs I've heard like 4000 times glimmered with new context. They were playing them like they believed their songs could exist anew. They loved them and let them live, resurrected for their continued worth and relevance in the world. Little presents in a little basket! Quail eggs!

They opened with their cover of Lynch/Badalamenti's "Heaven," Kim singing the verse sweetly, aware of the deep irony of the song and their whole existence. ("In Heaven, everything is fine…") They barreled through "U-Mass," "Bone Machine," the impossibly voracious "Crackity Jones," their cover of Jesus and Marys "Head On"; there was no sense that they broke up ten years ago or that the music had already ossified in some kind of canon. I was totally scurred this was going to be Mick Jagger cock-strutting but they barely moved, barely looked at one another; they were rigid, and still they seemed to play harder and louder than on the records, even. Doolittle and Surfer Rosa, got em covered. Midway through "Hey," the tempo melted and slowed a little—Black Francis' "UH!"S invoked all the sexual pathos I imagined it could. His lyrics are all rhythm and death shrieks; I bounced. During "Vamos," Joey Santiago performed his well-documented drumstick-assisted/feedback solo, and while Black Francis and Kim and David Lovering sat in the shadows near or on the drumset—kinda chubs and all wearing the same shit as '92, Kim chain-smoking until her honey vox were coated in rasp—I was like, "I cannot believe these Massholes are the coolest people in America right now, but they are." Then I had another fucked up moment of Clinton-era wish-listing (nostalgia whatevs, it really was better) and we went home.

They did not play enough from my favorite album, the noisiest/poppiest/UFOiest Trompe Le Monde, nor did they play three of my favorite songs, "I've Been Tired," "River Euphrates," or "Alec Eiffel." But they got hits.

Favianna Rodriguez and Oakland's East Side Arts Alliance are having a political poster sale in NYC on Weds. I am partial to Soviet constructivist poster art, and these folks have combined it with Diego Rivera and Brent Rollins Ego Trip aesthetics. I am loving their Zapatistas US stylee.

Ridonculous band posters by Aesthetic Apparatus. I bought some of these for Ezra one year and he liked them so much, he drove me to Texas.

Here is how I feel.

I am sick in the apt, sleeping, reading back-issues of teen mags and choosing courses from the NYU spring sem "it is cheaper if you don't go for credit, but fuck a degree anyway" catalogue, and listening to lots of music but deriving the most pleasure from M.I.A. Arular. Mid-morn, my throat started closing in on itself, and I decided it was okay if "Bucky Done Gun" was the last song I ever heard before I died. Because I was about to. I cannot elaborate on any of this because I am on hard drugs.

Theraflu, hi, what is happening.

You will just have to read the review officiale. But oh my, that song is the realization of a feverdream. She's like, "NYC, :London, Kingston, SILENCIO!" then she samples... the brass section from ABC 1984 Olympics theme? What is that?

On the third day, my fever broke and I hit my loco/indoors threshold. Hombre del F-J inspired a journey into manhattan to see Fade to Black at the only theater where it is still showing, Two Boots cinema on 3rd and Ave A.

Two Boots is a chain pizza restaurant distinguished by a wacky font. The movie screen is the size of a yardstick. It was 5 pm, I was the only person in the theater, and so I pretended I was at the concert. Two fingers up for Biggie. "Crazy in Love" and Jay looks PUMPED, like he's getting away with something. He touches Beyonce's hip and the look on his face is pure elation. Obviously I do not blame him; it is but one in a series of maddeningly charming Jay-Z moments. Missy's part in "Is That Yo Chick" is marred by an oddly timed backing track, but it's Missy Elliott and her charisma must be caught on tape. If you have not seen Honey, and you probably haven't, rent it immediately and fast-forward to her part, it is five minutes of genius.

Rick Rubin has a taxidermied bison in his studio, which is less cool than Yes renting a cow, only because dead, preserved animals stink more than live, manure-y ones. I know; my mom's friend was a taxidermist. Lots of Wyoming aggro huntermen have elk heads mounted above their fireplaces, but mom's dude was pure slice-em-up bloodlust. His home decor was themed "CARCASS": elephant hoof ottomans, tortoise-shell ashtrays, leopard rugs, monkey paws, a sign at their basement door that said "RUMPus Room," which captioned THE ASS OF A GAZELLE, the plasticky body of a blue fucking marlin.. anything once-livng and stuffable was a piece of furniture to this dude. His house smell was verboten and gamey like a leather shop, like "what died?" Everything in your path, you maniac.

I don't know who he was selling to, but it was the '80s, so he had a big shop (cursoring googling says he was world-renowned) and he was loaded, of course. The shop's prized, not-for-sale examples of dude's artful taxidermist precision and creepy disdain for life were: the regal body of a GIRAFFE, and an aggravated grizzly bear, mid-roar. That could've been very Museum of Natural History, until you take into account the carnage I witnessed by like, second grade. They let me go into the sewing room. Would you like to know one reason I do not eat meat?

The taxidermist's son is now raking in beaucoup dollares as a world-famous sculptor of Wyoming wildlife. I grew up with this stuff so I think it's awful, but feel free to comment if your life is changed by this whimsical bronze cast of a mountain lion at play.

The Victory records Urban Assault Vehicle: a branded SUV, meant for extending the sell-by date on Taking Back Sunday's failed-relationship toddler-faces. It's kin to rap labels' airbrushed ad-vans— but, dressed in camo and ready to fire, it also takes a cue from El Army's cross-promotion with Lowriderand The Source mags. Militaristic punk and hip-hop, indoctrinating kids into the perpetual war culture with block fonts aflame and extremo superlatives. Next step: plants.

I'll report back once the SI listserv has commented.

Naming vs. solving: I've got more to answer to, but 'til then, here's a little bonus context.

Oh my! C'n'P in the news part three: We* made Jimmy Draper's Bay Guardian top 10 list! Proud to be in such good company as number 5, "Gwen Stefani," number 9, "Preteen girl mimicking Kelis, Mean Girls" and number 10, "a campy, goth-country group named after a Golden Girl." Gracias, Senor Draper.

Also: Tiny, O-Dub, and Jeff "his amazing book made me cry on the subway" Chang.

* I

Last night.

I rapped some of his lyrics because I like the way they make my lips smack together. "Y'all fakin the fizzle. I'm cakin for shizzle. Fuck a sizzler steak. My steak stay sizzled." I didn't rap the parts about bitches or brain. I rapped those parts 'cause they were sharp. But smarts aren't the sole reason to like somebody. They're not even the best reason.

I've got to stop doing that.

We were seeing Cam'ron yet again, this time in Harlem, at the filming of a Pay-Per-View Dipset concert. Please, everyone, remind me never to attend a concert filming for the rest of my life. If New York rap shows operate on DJ Screw time, televised New York rap shows are like sludging through a Robitussin comedown: you must wait indefinitely for normalcy to commence, and in the interim, you are mildly uncomfortable, and not convinced you aren't crazy.

Cam'ron. Promoting Purple Haze, in Cross Colours style (but not philosophy): the letters "69" knitted across the front of his sweater in red and, along the sleeves in yellow, "RAW LOVE." (Say, didn't you have some songs about what ills "raw love" begets, Cam?). Hat cocked sideways. Calm. Good breath control. I sat with Sasha in the first row of the lower mezz. From up above, Cam looked short, but the TV lights burned bright light over everything, so we could make eye contact.

The first or second single from Purple Haze, "Shake," is a date song straight from the Dashboard Confessional lawbook of misogynistic courting rituals. Code 47-1: if the lady-object says she doesn't want to get with you, she's either lying or a tease. Witness: "Ma, you straight frontin. Let's get the date jumpin. See ya booty panties. Ma, shake som'n." The beat is spare and aggressive, woven through with a scary synth section that implies the backing soundtrack for Doom II: on a dangerous hunt and stalking through crosshairs. For the performance, Cam and Juelz Santana paraded out their entry in the hot new "performing babies as rap accessory" movement: onstage, a boy who couldn't have been older than six, somebody's kid and adorable, his neck bedazzled in diamond Dipset charms, sang the chorus to "Shake." "Move your hips and lick your lips," he sang, moon-faced, in a soprano six years off from puberty. (There might be a lyric in there about cutting, but I can't decipher the chorus' sample; it's pitch-shifted and chipmunky, but not in the pleasurable way like Terror Squad's "Take Me Home.") At the song's end, the little boy said to Cam, "Where's my money?" Cam responded, "You want to get paid now?" and handed him three stacks of fake hundreds before he trotted offstage.

Cam'ron plays a mighty lyrical hopscotch but topically, he reinforces the same old oppressive values--which is nothing new, either to himself or concrete-cold rap. Distilled, his raps are about badassiness, bitches he is fucking, bitches who will fuck him despite his admitted sexism, his lack of real self-respect (based on his reaction to women who—against all odds—respect him: "Bitches say I'm the man, I tell 'em 'nevermind.'") and, last but not least, his refined taste in designer clothing. His drug of choice? Cocaine. The bourgie drug. Sell it; don't smoke it. It sounds like a glossy Al Pacino character, maybe, but Cam'ron's "movie real": he's an ex-high school basketball star turned ex-drug dealer and, as a 28-year-old in NYC (or Jersey, whatevs), he IS a zeitgeist. He represents the consciousless hedonism that lots of dudes my age want to indulge; I think they see it as a kind of freedom.

(If I am feeling fair, I will say it's maybe freedom from having to forge out a whole, developed, plural self, when all signs to masculinity read "one option." It's telling that when men attempt to drop the hypermasculine, ubertuff shell and cry en masse, it becomes a genre unto itself: E-M-O. That said, can we also introduce the concept of "owning one's actions"?)

Whether a product, a trap, or the eye of a hurricane: Cam'ron's lyrics and persona validate male irresponsibility. And that's easy to pick apart in the abstract, get high-minded and theoretical about it, like we were talking Jackson Pollock or Godard or Baudelaire—what's yr take on Cassavetes?—or some equally talented but repellant shareholder in the he-man/woman haters club. I wish on the grave of Simone de Beauvoir that it were all theories and abstractions. But this, this right here is the really real. When that male irresponsibility translates into action that affects YOU, PERSONALLY, you maybe won't want to rap along, so much. And I say unto you: violent, invasive, irresponsible and ugly behavior has cut great holes into my life and the lives of the people I love, from birth to adulthood, and it will probably continue to do so until my body is cold in the ground. We have lived through abuse, sexual assault, and abandonment, and we have toiled with broken spirits because of it. I don't want to build up a tolerance to those things. They are unacceptable.

(For those beefing over the fact that I am not dropping grafs on Fallujah, let me get Alastair Cooke Connections on you all and point out that GEORGE W. BUSH, the figurehead of roughly one-half of America's beliefs and values, is the QUINTESSENCE OF NIHILISTIC MALE IRRESPONSIBILITY. And Cam'ron IS coming from the same macro-culture—the selfsame bourgeois patriarchy that sanctions aggressive war in the name of capital. GW tricked half the country into believing this war state is a normal, acceptable MO, partly just by acting like it was.)