Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Rap puts hipsters in a bind
We sometimes like the music just because it's good
Tipper Gore, thinking of the children
Dear Hipster:
We hear so much about hipsters and the obscure indie rock bands they love, but I want to take that discussion in another direction. Specifically, a direction completely apart from twee indie music featuring bearded dudes in sweaters clutching banjos. Obviously, I mean rap. Are hipsters ambivalent about, hostile to, or favorably disposed towards hip-hop?
— Stanimal
Ooh. Good one. This may take some effort, so stick with me here.
There was a time when rap music was persona non grata in polite society. Of course, this made hipsters love it that much more, because it was perhaps the most counter- of all counter-cultures at the time. Fondly do we hipsters remember the days of Tipper Gore trying to make a public enemy out of Public Enemy. Fast forward a decade or three, and the other Yeezy has long since dropped. Nowadays, anyone who doesn’t realize hip-hop is mainstream culture has undoubtedly been living under a rock since about 2000, which, as far as I can tell, is about the last time anyone really demonized a rapper in the public eye (here’s looking at you, Eminem). Because the fear of hip-hop’s many variants has all but vanished, the plaintive cry of the suburban mom —help, help, rap is corrupting our youth — no longer struggles to be heard above the thunderous bass of a modified car stereo.
These days, the main complaints you hear about various rappers follow along the lines of “Mumble rap is killing hip-hop,” which to my ears sounds more like hipsters complaining about their favorite artists selling out than the raging klaxon of social alarmism.
Put another way, any musical genre subject to a host of quasi-intellectual think-pieces from mainstream media outlets isn’t anybody’s dark horse.
This dichotomy puts hipsters in a bind. On the one hand, we can’t in good faith cop to liking popular rap or R&B artists because half the fan base is composed of comfortable, mainstream suburbanites. On the other hand, we must profess a deep loyalty to the revolutionary, anti-establishment values that so badly scared politicians and our parents back in the day. It doesn’t hurt the cause that, as normal people might do, we sometimes like the music just because it’s good. Shh. Don’t tell.
The ultimate truth is that the hipster relationship with hip-hop mirrors the hipster relationship with pop music generally. The more time passes, the more likely it is any given artist or track has passed gracefully through the gnatlike attention span of mainstream music fandom, and the more likely it is you’ll hear some hipster profess to love it. Ten years ago, I would have rolled my eyes every time that Flo Rida song about the Apple Bottom Jeans came on the radio, or the stereo at a house party. Today? For reasons both ironic and sincere, I think it’s kind of catchy. Furthermore, I think I always thought it was kind of catchy; you just never would have heard me say that out loud when it was dominating the Top 40.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Rap puts hipsters in a bind
We sometimes like the music just because it's good
Rap puts hipsters in a bind
We sometimes like the music just because it's good
Tipper Gore, thinking of the children
Dear Hipster:
We hear so much about hipsters and the obscure indie rock bands they love, but I want to take that discussion in another direction. Specifically, a direction completely apart from twee indie music featuring bearded dudes in sweaters clutching banjos. Obviously, I mean rap. Are hipsters ambivalent about, hostile to, or favorably disposed towards hip-hop?
— Stanimal
Ooh. Good one. This may take some effort, so stick with me here.
There was a time when rap music was persona non grata in polite society. Of course, this made hipsters love it that much more, because it was perhaps the most counter- of all counter-cultures at the time. Fondly do we hipsters remember the days of Tipper Gore trying to make a public enemy out of Public Enemy. Fast forward a decade or three, and the other Yeezy has long since dropped. Nowadays, anyone who doesn’t realize hip-hop is mainstream culture has undoubtedly been living under a rock since about 2000, which, as far as I can tell, is about the last time anyone really demonized a rapper in the public eye (here’s looking at you, Eminem). Because the fear of hip-hop’s many variants has all but vanished, the plaintive cry of the suburban mom —help, help, rap is corrupting our youth — no longer struggles to be heard above the thunderous bass of a modified car stereo.
These days, the main complaints you hear about various rappers follow along the lines of “Mumble rap is killing hip-hop,” which to my ears sounds more like hipsters complaining about their favorite artists selling out than the raging klaxon of social alarmism.
Put another way, any musical genre subject to a host of quasi-intellectual think-pieces from mainstream media outlets isn’t anybody’s dark horse.
This dichotomy puts hipsters in a bind. On the one hand, we can’t in good faith cop to liking popular rap or R&B artists because half the fan base is composed of comfortable, mainstream suburbanites. On the other hand, we must profess a deep loyalty to the revolutionary, anti-establishment values that so badly scared politicians and our parents back in the day. It doesn’t hurt the cause that, as normal people might do, we sometimes like the music just because it’s good. Shh. Don’t tell.
The ultimate truth is that the hipster relationship with hip-hop mirrors the hipster relationship with pop music generally. The more time passes, the more likely it is any given artist or track has passed gracefully through the gnatlike attention span of mainstream music fandom, and the more likely it is you’ll hear some hipster profess to love it. Ten years ago, I would have rolled my eyes every time that Flo Rida song about the Apple Bottom Jeans came on the radio, or the stereo at a house party. Today? For reasons both ironic and sincere, I think it’s kind of catchy. Furthermore, I think I always thought it was kind of catchy; you just never would have heard me say that out loud when it was dominating the Top 40.
Comments