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On White Men and Their Fascination with Odd Future

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Looking for a database of Odd Future’s lyrics, I came across this article last fall in The Voice by Zach Baron. I remember reading it, but I didn’t have the head space to process and write about it. Baron writes,

To condemn Odd Future for their lyrics we’d have to talk about Eminem, Cam’ron (unspeakable misogynist in rhyme), and Clipse (drug dealers who know what they do is wrong but do it anyway, at least in song)–all rappers who have long since made it into the pantheon of most working critics and music fans. “The avant-garde need not be moral,” Jon Caramanica once wrote in these pages about Cam’ron’s Purple Haze, a sentence that has been pretty influential in sorting out how me and my friends process music with reprehensible content. And it’s true. It’s also true, however, that the real line of defense most listeners have for stuff like this is they didn’t actually do it. As Jay-Z writes in his new book, Decoded, “The rapper’s character is essentially a conceit, a first-person literary creation.” He would know. And after all, Jay writes, it’s not like we actually think Matt Damon is out “assassinating rogue CIA agents between movies.”

Few thoughts:

Is saying it doing it? If we take this “well they ain’t really doing it, so it doesn’t count” logic seriously, let me ask you this.

If Sarah Palin or Michele Bachman got up and said “kill all the n-words” (the one with the ‘ers) and “kill and rape all the ‘illegals'” would that logic stand?

Would folks be willing to say “well they ain’t really doing it, they saying it.” I am inclined to think no.

People buy what makes them feel comfortable. Why does Odd Future make White men feel comfortable?

Doesn’t comparing Matt Damon to Odd Future the Clipse and Cam’ron obscure the fact that mainstream media does not feature African Americans prominently; That Black men and White men have two different, yet connected, histories in this country.

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And this is where article takes an interesting turn. Baron brings in a Jay-Z’s decoded to discuss WHO the listener identifies with. He writes,

And yet it’s disingenuous to separate Odd Future from their lyrical content, dishonest to say you can enthusiastically listen to the group without constantly encountering and processing the incredibly dark stuff they’re talking about. Why does art like this appeal? InDecoded, Jay-Z talks about how he’s heard that executives and businessmen listen to his songs about shooting people and slinging crack and use them for motivation before big meetings, PowerPoint presentations, and job interviews. The point he then makes is that with art like this you never identify with the victim, the proverbial “you”; you identify with the person speaking, and that person is a bad motherfucker, and thus so is the listener. Through this type of identification, art allows us to explore the weird frisson between reality and fantasy, the gulf between who we are and who we’d like to be.

Again.

The point he then makes is that with art like this you never identify with the victim, the proverbial “you”; you identify with the person speaking, and that person is a bad motherfucker, and thus so is the listener.

Well shit gina, I don’t know what to say.

The comments in the post are telling as well.

Thoughts?

What do you think of the “saying it ain’t doing it” logic?

Do people buy what makes them feel comfortable?

Byron Hurt Presents Barack & Curtis

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“We are Not Allowed to be Seen as People Who have Baggy Jeans
and a Hugo Boss Suit in the Same Closet“
-Michaela Angela Davis


It is interesting to see how the film turned about based on the raw footage
that was available on youtube last week.

I found Ras Baraka’s comments to be show a nuanced understanding
of Black masculinity and the general difference between how it
is lived and how it is PRESENTED to the world how it is lived.

Young Birkhold holds it down with the George Bush/50 Cent
analysis. When he said that that Hip Hop does the dirty work of, say
it with me now, White Supremacist Patriarchal Capitalism, I shuddered.

There is a distinction between Spike Lee and calling hip hop modern
day minstrelsy and saying that 50 Cent and Bush are similar and that
50 is doing the work of White Supremacist Patriarchal Capitalism.

That went to the bone gristle.

But then again, remember my post earlier this year where a white
man commented about how Hip Hop teaches teens to be afraid
of Black men. He wrote,

It seems to me, as a suburban white kid, that another problem with rap music is that it conflates black youth culture with violence. It teaches non-black listeners that black youth who listen to hip-hop and dress like rappers are likely to be violent. Recognizing that this is largely a false assumption and rooting out the biases stemming from that conflation has been hard work for me. It?s also work that I don?t think I could have accomplished when I was growing up in the suburbs.

I wish that rappers would stand up and admit that they are delivering prepacked stereotypes straight to the suburbs. Not only are they teaching black youth to disrespect themselves but rap teaches non-blacks youths to fear and disdain young blacks. -Vodalus

The great thing about this doc is that, in many ways it is an nice
counterpoint to CNN’s Black in America.

On a personal note, every since I watched Barack and Curtis, I have kept
thinking to myself, where is our narrative, where is the conversation
about our sexuality? Then it hit me. I think we are going to have to
make it ourselves.

Tracey has made a film about street harassment, Black Woman Walking,
and there is also a documentary on street harassment titled
Hey Shorty (made by young women at Girls for Gender Equity).
There is also the hollaback.nyc website. But, to my knowledge,
there hasn’t been anything done on Black Female Sexuality.

What is interesting about Tracey’s film is the range of responses
that it triggers. In the last month or so I have noticed some
interesting conversations about it at The CW Experience ,
All Hip Hop.com and What About Our Daughters and Essence.

On the strength of the fact that we are both writers, and that she is
a filmmaker, I think it is time for a short doc on Black Female
Sexuality. I am thinking we can look at the public representation of
Black female sexuality perhaps we can do one on Michelle Obama
and Karrine Steffans.

Byron has inspired me.

Feminist’s and Hip Hop Don’t Mix. Part II.

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M.dot: I have two questions.
When thinking about rappers who participate in the exploitation of the Black body (hiring video vixens to dance half naked in their videos, the use of b*tch and ho as a general word to describe women, etc), what’s the source of these overt displays of hate and sexual availability towards the Black women? As Dead Prez chants, is this really bigger than hip hop?

M.dot: Is the root of the problem the system in which these black men are allowed to express themselves under? I think that system allows it because corporations main purpose is to make $$ for its shareholders. Nothing more, nothing less.

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TMR: At the simplest core, I am relating more to our similarities of oppression that I allow certain sexist and misogynistic lyrics to be overshadowed by a deeper knowledge of oppression that no lyric can bound me by?


M.dot: Can you restate this for the non Ph.D in bellhooksian semiotics.

TMR: Saying “Bitches and niggas” can never have the same power as institutionalized racism? Now that’s some real shit. Perhaps the fact that I knowing this, on a critical level, offset the impression that these words can have on my self esteem in a way that the untrained youth don’t or can’t.

M.Dot: THis is what I want for the world. Let the music BE. Give the young bucks the abil to analyze it on their own.

M.Dot: And what about the video vixen? Am I not doing the same thing in the club? Do I need to smarten up my game and get paid for the dances I do?
TMR: I think about the 6 degrees of seperation all the time.

TMR: We’re all hoes to the capitalist society in which we live. We merely are working to pay bills though some of us are lucky to make money in a field that we thoughouly enjoy?but even in those fields we often can find conflict with integrity and self.

M.Dot: “And if we all are, then is the sh*t that we say about vixens just projecting on them what we don’t like about life and having to work in general?”

Mdot: Are you asking if I feel that they really don’t want to do this, but the need for money makes them and it is unacceptable for them to do this because they actually want to or like it?

TMR: Most of us work out of necessity not out of will. We are in a society that has used the Black female body for its own use and now that She decides she wants a piece of the profit we demoralize and demean her choice of profession?

TMR: Choice plagues and frees us all. Statistically showing, I’m not suppose to be as successful (subjective to the socially constructed definition of the word) as I am today. But my success hasn’t come without my own share of compromises of integrity. I have cooperated with my oppressors for the sake of getting my foot in the door but have I made a dent in the systematic abuse of power of my oppression? Probably not.

The gain for capital is a no holds bar game in which few apologies are made, so in that sense I hold The Man and his capitalist system accountable.

Oh but my Black rapper Brother, I hold you accountable for your actions. If these are only lyrics just to “Get By” and “Get Money” make me believe it.

Let me see you flip that money back into the system that gave you the conditions for the lyrics you write and make a difference for the next. Let me see you start programs in the hood for little girls with self esteem issues, little boys with violent backgrounds. Let me see you flip that money in a way that enhances the Black worth instead of the exploitation of it.


M.Dot: I don’t want programs, b/c in all liklihood, they are not gonna happen.
I would be satisfied w/ artist who can make dope music and young bucks w/ critical faculties.

TMR: But how can the latter happen without the investment from someone to their community?

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Do you think we let the Vixens off easliy?
Do you think we let the rappers off easily?
What did you agree or disagree with regarding the questions and the answers?

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