I wrote a brilliant and hilarious post about this and then… forgot it at work. LOL.
Maybe I’ll post it tomorrow after adapting it or something.
But I’ll go ahead and say some stuff tonight anyways, just because.
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It’s not about the video.
It’s about race and dominance, and the long overdue correction.
In a nutshell, it’s about the establishment’s myths, as espoused today by Nicki Minaj, and how they are clashing with the coming reality- in other words, with the new world, as embodied somewhat by Taylor Swift, but most importantly, by those that will come after her.
It’s interesting to read the mainstream media take on the controversy. Here are takes from CNN, The Guardian, Vox, and Salon.
The mainstream media viewpoint on the issue is that Nicki Minaj’s claims about black culture have merit, and that she herself has an authenticity that Taylor Swift lacks.
First- Nicki has no such authenticity. These are pop stars, not Progressive Death Metal musicians. Their careers are packaged, plasticized, and commodified in every detail. Taylor Swift’s career is the product of a huge and detail oriented team, yes, but so is Minaj’s. And so is the career of every other musician directly involved. Nobody involved in this directly is underground.
Secondly, and more importantly, is the viewpoint that Nicki’s claims have merit. They don’t.
It is not true whatsoever blacks are lacking for mainstream titles and accolades. To be blunt, they’ve received far, far more that their due, starting with the nonsensical claim that they invented rock and roll. This claim is about as truthful as any other claim of black inventiveness indoctrinated in schoolchildren (link). There is as much truth in the idea that blacks invented rock as there is in the idea that they invented peanut butter. In other words, not very much.
I mean, really. There is no connection between Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pink Floyd and Metallica with the music being made by Black churches in the 40’s and 50’s. I mean, really guys, there just isn’t.
There are some tangential similarities between blues and rock, but these similarities are small. I’m no musician, but I do know culture, and I see and hear little if anything in common between B.B. King and AC/DC. Even if some of the technical parts of the music are similar, rock music isn’t a collection of chords and scales. It’s an ethos, a movement, a philosophy, a way of life. The actual notes played by bands are almost irrelevant to rock. It seems paradoxical to say this, but it’s true.
And no, they didn’t invent rap music, either. Rap music is essentially talking over an electronic beat, which was first pioneered, like seemingly everything else, by Germans. The band Kraftwerk was I believe the first to do this seriously, and there were others across the pond who followed their lead.
It was only after Kraftwerk blew up that Blacks created hip-hop culture and “rap music”. This is the reason why the earliest rap songs, like Eddy Grant’s Electric Avenue, sound like German electronic music. It’s because that’s precisely what they were. Truthfully, blacks owe whites a much greater debt for rap music than whites do to them for rock music.
Even left/liberal sites like Huffington Post will admit this as being true. See this article.
Note that I’m not saying that hip-hop culture isn’t black. It is. But rap music isn’t and has never been. This may be confusing, but there it is.
But these points are in the historical past, which counts for nothing in the Twitterverse and the world of mainstream news sites like Salon and CNN.
Nicki’s major claim in her tweets is that today, blacks don’t receive enough credit, opportunity or positive news, which is perhaps the most off-base thing I’ve ever heard a celebrity say publicly. And the mainstream media is backing her up on this.
You know, even a casual survey of pop culture as it exists today shows otherwise. As in seemingly all claims made by the mainstream media today, the truth is the opposite of what is reported.
It is disingenuous and bizarre to see anyone make this claim, what with Beyonce being the “Queen of Pop” for something like 10 years now, and with Michael Jackson having been the “King of Pop” even longer than that.
The pop musical landscape today is clearly overburdened by an enormous mass of tired, old black rappers who simply will not go away. The public is beyond tired of them, people are sick of reading about them and their stupid antics and awful products, their cultural relevance was exhausted many, many years ago, but they simply will. Not. LEAVE. They just sit there, on the neck of popular culture, choking the life out of music and culture in general. I’m talking about the P. Diddys and the 50 Cents of the world. The Kanye Wests and the Jay-Zs. The Dr. Dres, Master Ps and Snoop Doggs.
Taylor’s popularity owes much to the fact that people think that she’ll be The One to finally push those useless, boring assholes off their pedestals. Or that she’ll pave the way for a person who actually will.
Which will happen, of course. The new, post-liberal era will be a profound rejection of this one. As it must be.
Yes, I am implying that blacks are oppressing the rest of us culturally. And I will stand by that.
Which brings us back to Minaj and her tweets. See, Minaj, being more of the Obama-era establishment than Taylor, fears this. This change. This inevitable turning of history and upending of the current staid, boring, ugly order.
Nicki’s fortunes will not survive what is coming. Taylor’s might.
In the end, Taylor is going to win this one, provided she just ignores Nicki and does her own thing.
And, of course, provided that her “own thing” is not to stand in the way of progress herself.