hot hot summer in hell: A VERY RAMBLING ROSE

Most importantly: “Save the Internet”
Editor’s NotE: Cosmo Baker, GLORIOUS RUB DJ and the don of our neighborhood, wears sunglasses in the daytime while grocery shopping at the supermarket. I am unsurprised, yet impressed nevertheless.
Ghostface.You probably already know it, but if Papoose, mixtape rapper, is the greatest hope for the New New York, my apologies on behalf of the boroughs. GFK did virtually no songs from Fishscale. But yes, Jodeci joint “freekn,” “cherchez la ghost” (cherchez la julianne’s swoon), “Ironman,” “CREAM” (aside: I’ve seen the Wu more times in the past year than I did for all of the ’90s). On “Holla,” Ghostface prosyletized on old R&B sounds, again requesting the lights be ternt down, this time attributing his soul love to being “a 70-yr-old dude in a little body.” In regards to hip-hop’s final sleep, K put the conventional wisdom most eloquently, and on Saturday NYC’s middle age was all laid out onstage: yng Papoose trying too hard and not enough at the same time, substituting tricks for metaphor and wit and borrowing beats to underscore his mixtape roots, I guess. Premier, old friend (jonesing for that Xtina Aguilera collabo though), mixing to invoke yesteryear and conjure his future, benchmarked, of course, with “Ante Up,” the alpha and the omega of: Brooklyn, my life, your life, songs about fucking, songs about fucking punching someone in the face. “Ante Up” came out in 2001. Slick Rick does “La Di Da Di,” a song I think my mom used to listen to when she was a wee denizen of depression-era Guadalajara. Before Ghost comes on, I spot Bob Christgau, lover of vital music, from the wings, and he looks kind of bored.
Ghost, though. I think Sean and I have discussed it before, but Ghost is the critical holy grail: you can never write even CLOSE to the piece you’d like to write about him because he’s a notoriously petulant interview, a cowing, mesmerizing presence–the man has a bathrobe collection for chrissakes–and a better writer himself than probably all music critics, everywhere. If the latter weren’t dead, I’d like to see Ghost go a little one-on-one with Italo Calvino, perhaps, or, shit, if I had a buncha money I would employ Gore Vidal to explore all his work and write a 25-page critical essay as supplement to the next issue of Hit it Or Quit it. Or maybe this is the ticket? I do not know.
Anyway, I was hanging out with Sean Fenn afterwards–he is being too generous re: my mind-speaking, but I’m proud to be Hillary Clinton’s phone-stalking constituent, at least—and besides, half the time i think ppl think I’m diatribing, insane or perhaps not militant enough, depending on who you talk to. Jon introduced me to his lady friend this weekend as a “female rap critic,” a misnomer I think except by strict definition, but what does it even mean to be a “female rap critic” in 2006? I know this: I cannot extricate thug narratives, metaphor, misogyny or the mothafucking bounce, nor can i extricate my race, gender, class, upbringing and political alignments. After the initial high, I ultimately liked “Thug Motivation” better than “Be.” I only “got” the foghorn sound Ghost blew in between songs at his fishscale show cuz “the wire” taught me about the drugs and the docks. Well, “the wire” and that one Freeway video. The only thing I really know about ‘caine involves one unfortunate night in a portland hair salon with a visiting actor, a few months before he was hospitalized for exhaustion. So if I “get” it, it makes me a better critic, yes. If I didn’t live it, it gives me a different take. I think there is the fear that behind every white kid’s apolitical “BANGIN’!” and “HOLY EFFITUDE” assessment of a Three 6 Mafia track, the storied racial history of fantasy in America lives on. What are the implications if really smart people such as myself throw out “a holy fucking shit, that track bangs” every once in awhile, or all the time, and alternately how possible is it to discuss the political context of an art form without discussing, and understanding, the social conditions that created it? What’s the function of the writer, anyway–has the writer been obsolete as true “instrument of change” since Upton Sinclair bit it, as the aforementioned Vidal once observed? These are questions i am asking myself.
And don’t forget about the CNN of the streets. Chris Ryan loaned me his “first season of the wire box set” and in our dorm (because that’s where we live, basically–you should see our living room table right now–mo’s old nyu i.d., some rolling papers, three or four bottles of wine, eighteen dirty plates, some chopsticks, an ashtray, etc.–michelle was really pleased recently because someone was rolling blunts on a copy of david brooks’ “bobos in paradise”) We rewatched the harrowing second-to-last episode last night.
When I woke up to gunshots underneath my windowsill, four right in a row like pow pow pow pow, I thought it was a dream predicated on a television show predicated on a true story–because there were no screams, no sirens, just pops that wrested me from slumber–but Michelle heard them, too, and my neighbor Luis, too, and so it was real. Three hours later, the cops. They came faster last time, but it was daylight.
OK so crack rap and “shallow criticism” are concurrent with each other, and also with this country’s overall, well, malaise (to put it FUCKING MILDLY), and some ppl are in cahoots–how many of you, or your cousins, or friends, were tempted by The Source and/or Lowrider magazines’ Army hummer–yo soy el army–and of course apathy/nihilism might be the corpo media’s false c.w., and is not all pervasive–David Banner, Jeff Chang, and this lady, for instance, can tell you as much.
But also, is this presupposing that in their youths rap critics now over 35 were busting out to activate–(am I reading into it?) and if so, can we thank chuck d and PE for that (and for ushering in black nationalist awakenings across campuses america-wide? And is the real issue with change–in blogging, attention spans, influence, the music industry, the consolidation of media (see internet-saving link above)–writer-kids and pubescent burgeoning rap-crits now who, growing up, heard jay-z before they heard run-dmc, say… I don’t know, I too would like more and deeper discourse to occur, particularly among people who in fact like ppl like Jeezy, TI, Clipse etc but also, then there are ppl like me and Sean Fenn, who currently make our living doing seven-minute interviews with global pop stars for major corporations, and spend our weekends talking lyrics in dank bars til 4 am after Ghostface shows. American life now, more than ever, is about conflict.