The other tragedy this week
Internets,
Last week’s attack on an Eagles of Death Metal concert in Paris (of all things) wasn’t the worst terrorist attack since 9/11 in terms of overall body count, but it felt like the most significant attack since then, maybe because people in Paris are all about eating bread, drinking wine, watching movies and not having much, if any respect for religion. Paris feels like the place I should have been born, rather than Jewish Hospital here in the shanty town.
It’s the reason why the attacks in Paris were covered so much more heavily than the attacks in Beirut and wherever else there was an attack this week, not to mention the attack (somewhere) in Africa earlier this year. Or, for that matter, those girls who got kidnapped by Boko Haram, and when Michelle Obama finally located them they were all pregnant except about five of them, who probably had faulty vagines.
That and the fact that aren’t there terrorist attacks all the time in places like Beirut? I didn’t even know there were any other attacks last week until I saw some of my more politically astute friends on Facebook, including kids I went to high school with and obscure rappers, complaining about how there wasn’t a profile pic overlay for whatever Beirut’s flag looks like (what if it’s something inappropriate?), congratulating themselves for their compassion.
More so than any terrorist attack since 9/11 this reminds me of what it felt like in the days and weeks immediately following that attack. There’s a palpable fear, combined with a blood lust, that I’m sure will eventually lead us to attack someone who didn’t have shit to do with this — the global geopolitical equivalent of putting a shoe on your wife because you lost $1,000 playing daily fantasy sports.
The general consensus is that Saudi Arabia is the one that’s actually funding this, right? But we can’t go after Saudi Arabia, because they’re our “ally.” Our business is intertwined with theirs to the point where, if we had a falling out it might fuck up the economy. It’s too complicated for me to understand, and it’s also depressing. Instead I’d rather focus on that list of the 10 best rappers of all time put out by Billboard.
What was the point of that list anyway? I finally clicked on it a few hours ago, but I didn’t have time to investigate any further, because it’s already kinda late as I’m writing this, and now that I have to work for a living I have to get to bed at a decent hour or else it might cause me to say what I’m actually thinking to someone at work. It looks like they’re running all kinds of lists: nightclubs, popular albums, Boyz II Men songs.
Billboard is supposed to be a trade publication for the music industry, but there must not be enough money to be made covering what’s the most popular song. Obviously it’s “Hotline Bling.” That’s all they’ve played on the radio for the past few months. Before that it was Fetty Wap. I guess soon it’ll be Adele? Who gives a shit? There’s only a small handful of corporate-backed BS that can ascend to that level of popularity, and like Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, no one actually likes any of it.
Sidebar: One thing that is kinda interesting that I haven’t seen covered elsewhere, perhaps because, again, who cares, is that Macklemore seems to have disappeared. He seemed poised to be ubiquitous as recently as the VMAs, in September, i.e only two months ago, but I don’t think I’ve heard that old school rap song thing he did since then. Was there also an album, or was it just that single?
Billboard’s list of the greatest rappers of all time stirred up controversy amongst the same kind of dumbasses who debated Paris vs. Beirut vs. (in cases of the especially idiotic) Mizzou for a couple of reasons: (1) there was no 2Pac; and (2) there was all kinds of other BS that didn’t have any business on a list of the greatest rappers of all time. Kendrick Lamar is on this list.
I’m assuming 2Pac didn’t make the list because his bars were garbage (literally all of them). But if I were to put together a list of the 10 greatest rappers of all time, I might still include 2Pac on the sheer basis of his influence. Almost everyone who’s come along subsequent to 2Pac is drawing from his shtick. 2Pac is the ur-LCD rapper. Even Noz once tried to seriously engage with his music (and had to bail on the project, due to quality concerns) for precisely this reason.
Putting together a list of the greatest rappers of all time without 2Pac seems like putting together a list of the top rock musicians without Elvis on it: it just doesn’t seem right.
I’m assuming some of the more controversial selections — pretty much the entire second half of the list — were a matter of trying to be inclusive. If you make a list with no girls on it someone might write a think piece, so Lauryn Hill. And you know how fans of southern rap get when that isn’t taken seriously. Kendrick Lamar is there to represent for people under the age of 30 who need to feel that rap music is still a thing, as well as people whose livelihoods depend on prolonging the myth.
The top half of the list isn’t completely beyond reproach, but at least it consists entirely of people you’d expect to see on a list of the 10 greatest rappers of all time: Nas, Rakim, Eminem, Jay Z and Biggie Smalls, who topped the list — the only thing the list definitely got right, as far as I’m concerned. If I’d made the list, I would have slid Jay and Eminem down some and added in people who should never ever not be on a list of the greatest rappers of all time, like LL and KRS-One.
Taste is at least somewhat subjective, so of course people are gonna have their own opinions, and the list of the top five rappers of all time is the oldest, corniest debate in the history of rap music. (It was played out before there were five rappers.) Obviously the idea here was to get people talking about Billboard, and I’d say they’ve more than succeeded in that regard. I’m actually more concerned with the extent of the backlash.
Between this, that garbage Drake/Future album, the aforementioned Kendrick Lamar album, Talib Kweli’s beef with Complex, Talib Kweli’s beef with Pitchfork, Talib Kweli’s beef with a ham sandwich, so on and so forth, it seems like the spirit of activism and/or antagonizing white people for shits and giggles has spilled over from the Black Lives Matter movement and whatever it is people in college are upset about to the hip-hop Internets.
People have grown as tired of sites like Complex, Pitchfork and now Billboard paying some CAC who doesn’t know from rap music to act as the ultimate arbiter of taste as they are of police brutality. As far as I’m concerned, this is just as valid a cause, if not more so, and it’s more amusing for me to write about than terrorism anyway.
If only there was a way for us to disrupt the operations at some of these publications that didn’t involve leaving the house. I might have to consult with some of the guys from the Kotaku in Action subreddit, this generation’s true heroes. #ethics
Take it easy on yourself,
Bol
Originally published at tinyletter.com.
