And because, you know, people shouldn't do things if their skin is not the right color.
And because, you know, it's not like I was turned off by seeing the "Slim Shady" music video in a doctor's office, even before I knew enough about popular music to have heard of Eminem or to have heard that you have to be the right color to do rap (or, really, to know what counted as "rap" at all... combination of both being young when it came out and not really having listened to anything except classical, folk songs, and a little country until 1994), and then in college suddenly realized, "wow, I like this, it's different and not as grating as other rap, and it seems to have a different kind of beat in the words," when listening to "8 Mile" in the bus, with no awareness of what it was, what the words were(I couldn't make them out), that it was by Eminem, that he is non-black, or that that last part was Not OK. It's not that it's, in and of itself, different and appeals in some undescribable way to people to whom no rap music has ever appealed. No, it's not because of any of that -- it's because we're all racist and can't stand for non-whites to be appreciated.
Of course.
(Yes, I'm referring to two different things -- 1: my constant irritation, the anger at white people whose behavior doesn't fit entirely into the category of acceptable white-person behavior, and 2: the rather odd claim (at least from my own experience, where my opinions were formed with no knowledge of the non-threatening-ness of A's lyrics or of B's on-stage antics or of C's skin color, but only with a knowledge of the sound and rhythm structures) that the reason a person would like X and not Y within genre Z is clearly that X is white and Y is not. And yes, my sentence patterns don't fit well with each other. That's because I'm thinking in grammatical cases and having some trouble keeping my pre-gist clauses in alignment. So I'm heading back to my pretty thesis translations, which have easier cases, and which I should have been doing right now anyhow.)
I commented on my blog that the only recent rappers I seem to like are the very few white ones. I don't think that's wholly insignificant (nor, obviously, do I believe it's because I hate non-whites). I'm curious if it's that they play white rappers to the white demographic (the lack of the word "nigga" in Eminem's stuff makes it more comfortable and that's likely not an accident). I also wonder if the White Male Democrat or female Republican phenomenon is at work. The phenomenon goes: if a Dem is white and male or a Republican female, they are considered moderate until proven otherwise simply by virtue of their race and gender. Are the whites referred to in the article automatically considered more "crossover" because of their race? Do record execs decide to make them so because of it? Wouldn't surprise me.
On the whole I think the author actually has a point.
Posted by: R. Alex | March 28, 2005 at 09:32 AM
It may be the case with you. I don't know what anyone looks like except for Eminem, and even him I couldn't pick out of a lineup unless he were the only white guy. And I can't hear the lyrics in rap or most hip-hop etc. I just notice something has a different sound, with no idea of the words or the appearance of the singer/rapper. Of course, that may all be illusion, and it may in fact not be different at all, and somehow some magic vibes are being transmitted to make me subconsciously aware of what the voice on the radio looks like... but that does sound far-fetched!
(And I don't know how it is for other people. People who know the race of everyone before they choose what to play may well have a bias based on the race of the people!)
Posted by: Adrianne Truett | March 28, 2005 at 02:15 PM
My former roommate could give lectures on the difference between "east coast" and "west coast" rap and that might account for the "grate" factor (west coast, which includes Eminem, is more rythmic from what I understand, while east coast is more "hard core"... though I'm probably overgeneralizing). Eminem got me on his second CD, which was produced by the masterful Dr. Dre (who is extremely talented in pulling in just the right sound). Since Dre has taken on new projects, I don't care much for Eminem amymore. But I can't get in to his more recent projects and they are black, so I don't know.
I didn't mean to imply anything about you since you said pretty straight-forwardly that you didn't know Eminem was white. I thought Insane Clown Posse was black when I started to like their music. I think the record execs might take race into account when it comes to deciding where to go with a certain artist, either picking up white rappers and so on with more general appeal or taking a "blank slate" act and pulling him in a more poppish direction.
Posted by: R. Alex | March 28, 2005 at 02:51 PM