chiefs o' the morning

FROM November 24, 2004

Except for good old T.I., who is charismatic and the ladies LARVE, and the fact of Juvenile et crew bringing up an eight-year-old in full army fatigues to join in on the chorus of "Slow Motion" ("Oh! I like it like that/she workin that back/I dont know how to act/move it slow motion for me"), the show last night was boring. My seatmate groused that Atlantic (Recs.) proffers C-list rappers and that's gaudi's truth, but what's worse is that the C list is cookie-cuttered from the megalo-capitalist playbook of exploitation, trickery and mascotting; parading women, kids, and ODB up there like fox suits at a Nets game. I felt sad for that little kid, who's got a terrible load of messages to overcome if he wants to develop outside this labyrinthine masculinity = war = sex jail. I felt sad for Juvenile, who's given himself over to it. I thought about humanism, and my friends, and the fight, and I just wanted to leave.

So I did. I left to see Dipset at SOB's. It was the usual crowd of Hot 97 ticket winners, label employees and various members of Wu-Tang (what, no Catchdubs?), except it was only 1/3 packed. Two major visual points: 1. They were giving away free Sizzurp, which smells of tart Hawaiian Punch and comes served on the rocks. 2. There was a tiny and briefly visible contingent of homo courting--dudes sharing furtive sensual touches and tense sideways glances, but shelving both ideas after a hot minute. The down-low is not how you break bread at a Dipset show. Diplomats themselves were there, but filed back onto their Journey-sized tour bus and bounced without performing.

Parts of this world feel so ugly to me right now. It feels personal. It is antithetical to my best hopes for humanity. It is a reflection and a catalyst. And Cam "no homo" 'ron is the defining energy at this particular blip on the NY timeline; he seems to own both New York and New York media (which, I surmise, are two seperate entities). Purple Haze reviews coming soon to a grocery-line mag stand near you. He is so the rap vanguard: sardonic, drops eight bars in onomatopaeiac monosyllables and they make sense, uncharted metaphor, cadence like pop rocks. And yet he's so conservative: chauvenist, homophobic. Me, I am going to figure out a way to use Cam'ron's lyric "I'm a sexist" as an entry point for actual dialogue.

Tell me if this is all in binary. I am deathly afraid of proffering binary arguments. Or C-lists.