I definitely share Dan’s opinion that it’s more fun to mix it up, but does that make the product less comprehensible or more interesting to the international consumer? The emergence of the modern hipster may be signaling something about young peoples’ attitudes towards creolization and mixing though.

Daniel – Wow, those are a lot of opinions! I definitely think that you are overstating the doom and gloom of the effect of commerce on culture. In fact the way I see it, in many ways they have been intertwined at their base for a long time, particularly in the post-WWII world.

When I asked my friend Adam Krims, professor and author of Music and Urban Geography about it this summer, he had this to say:

“I think that you put it extremely well when you refer to ‘capitalism as a fundamental systematic force in cultural mobilization’, and you are absolutely right to indicate that the stakes are raised as the city becomes more design-intensive. But I do think that there are limits to how specific the effects of something as vast and complex as global capital can be said to be, without resorting to other levels (in the critical realist sense); to me, tracing capitalism’s shaping force on culture is something like squinting your eyes to see the figure in those fake 3-D pictures that used to be popular some number of years ago — you have to look through things to something looming behind, and you have to ignore a lot of details (temporarily, one hopes!)”

Essentially Daniel, I feel that your arguments against popular music in general and Hiphop music specifically fall victim to the 3-D problem. In the case of Hiphop you are taking the current popular climate and retrofitting it to the history of the culture. Statements like: “hip hop would be nothing without marketing, capital and slick executives. If there was no money in it, then you can bet your bottom dollar that the street kidz wouldn’t give a brass razoo about it” totally neglects the fact this this culture emerged out of bombed out and depleted south bronx of the 70’s – the furthest thing from marketing, capital and slick executives that could possibly be imagined. It existed as its own entity BEFORE it was even on the marketing, capital and slick executives’ radar. In fact, the majority them were vilifying the culture and also arguing for its meritlessness before the under-swell of popular force cajoled them from their positions, lest they be left behind. It was the strength of the cultural uprising PRIOR to corporate involvement that predicated its popular ascendence. So while the popular climate towards urban culture has gone through a shift that is no doubt tied to commercial culture, you are definitely old enough to remember that this has most certainly not always been the case.

Cultural uprisings like Hiphop, or the reverberations of House music on the UK for example, are brought about by a critical mass of personal experiences. One could step back and call that a trend dictating the market, but again, we would have to ignore a lot of details. What Felix was looking for when he went to Chicago was the REAL THING!! A personal experience within the productive forces that created the music that he identifies with. Reconnecting the juice, with the fruit, with the tree. Thanks to Fin for making that key point.

It’s important not to overlook the minutiae in the wake of broad claims. Why this specific trend and not, say, chamber music for example? Considering the permutations of culture in the past 20 years, in my opinion, suggesting that chamber music is by some stretch of the imagination even equally real, responsive, or relevant to todays young people seems one hundred percent fatuous. It’s not that chamber music isn’t marketing itself as well – it’s that the music is not connecting with the young people who are moving music and culture forward.

Also, the rarefaction of the grassroots artist as a DIY person who rejects all corporate interest is more than slightly anachronistic. The real grassroots artists of today have grown up in a world of corporate interest, understand it and are looking to how they can use it to create something of value. The idea of fighting the system as an objective good has passed. Using the system to create good things seems to be more interesting to us.

An interesting example from my own life: I took a 9 year old to the movies the other day. One thing she said that she had noticed in her short lifespan is that there are more advertisements before films. “Why do they have all of those ads before movies now?” she asked. “They’re a waste of peoples’ time”. Even at 9 this kid was aware of the increased corporate interest in her fun and able, in her 9 year old way, to navigate it such that she could still enjoy the movie. The fact that the world is a more proprietary and commercially driven one than ever doesn’t stop us from making decisions and it doesn’t make the decisions any less valuable to us. When we consume things we just understand that there are other people making money as well, and try to make the best decisions considering that fact and knowing that we can’t know everything about every vested interest – so be it. Black and white paradigms of culture and commerce have long been coloured grey. Otherwise we couldn’t act.

It’s not that anything popular must have no cultural value, it’s rather than the cultural “value” is better appreciated one step backwards – not in the audience experiencing the gig,concert,exhibition or whatever but in the trend of audiences going to gigs, concerts, exhibitions or whatever and how they are financed, appreciated, marketed, consumed, evaluated, talked about and built on. Going to a chamber music festival makes you no better a person than someone who goes to a pop gig, but pretending that the pop music is more real, more responsive, more creative, more relevant or more whatever is completely fatuous.

All “culture” or “art” is just a product to consume and to make its promoters some cash. This in turn has social, economic and environmental impacts – and that’s where the analysis important. The rest is prejudice.

“All pop music is a slave to a myth peddled by PR teams”

“When a pop wannabe writes about their home town, it is meaningless”

“They don’t care what the music is (the sound quality of those speakers is so poor they probably even can’t tell which track or band it is) – they just want it to portray a message that they aren’t to be messed with.”

While there is certainly a lot of tension between art and commerce at the moment, the lack of nuance in your analysis is stunning – you suggest nothing popular has any cultural value whatsoever. Clearly this is not the reality.

I also think you’ve missed Felix’s point about wandering Chi listening to Larry Heard. He first sought out the social experience of a genuine Chicago house night, then had to settle for exploring the city with his iPod. So Felix didn’t put his headphones on because they were “even better than the real thing” – in fact, he felt they were a poor substitute for a real jam.

Can you imagine a hip hop track about gardening? No, because it doesn’t fit the brand, the style. That’s not creative freedom, that’s artists being dictated to by branding. Sure, no-one is telling them “don’t write about gardening – we want girls and bling”, but neither are the artists in control. What is? Nike is. CNN is. WarnerBros are. They call the shots, not “artists” – they’re bending over backwards to placate the men in suits, despite protestations of being “anti-establishment” or “counter-cultural”.

Take a walk along a deprived street or around a recreation ground of an evening in any UK town and look at the disaffected kids trying to stake out some power for themselves – to fit the bill they dress a certain way, and listen to the same music on their speaker phones. They don’t care what the music is (the sound quality of those speakers is so poor they probably even can’t tell which track or band it is) – they just want it to portray a message that they aren’t to be messed with.

That’s the real function of pop music – to portray an image about the listener. The music itself, and any “creative” input into it is meaningless (as well as laughable).

yes of course grassroots art is out there – artists who reject record deals, indie film producers who work on shoestring budgets, writers who pay for their own publishing etc – but they make a successful debut indie feature and lo and behold they fall for the fat pay packet offered to them by the scouts eager to capitalise. The internet offers great scope for art and creativity that isn’t compromised by capital – but are people prepared to forego fat profits; is the audience willing to forego glossy magazines and the trappings of mainstream “success” that we expect (and need) to confirm that our own taste is “cool” enough? I doubt it. Most us aren’t confident enough to like something on its own merits. Most of us are sheep with no personalities and need to borrow ready made personas – the EMO, the rocker, the street kid, the wall street banker, whatever. All of those go with their own ready-made instructions on what to wear, what to listen to and even what to eat.

Doin the def dances
A regular tango
It ain’t the star spangled
T-dot
It’s where a lot of dreams get mangled
It’s the best place in the world
But watch my angle

As Kardinal attempts to relate the poise of Toronto, his friends and family through song, he is communicating a particular sensibility. It is this sensibility which belongs and grows out of ‘a city’, here Toronto. And it is the Chicago sensibility that one begins to perceive while combining music and art produced from that locale with an actual walking tour of the districts. Walking is essential. Walking is essential to all discussions concerning urbanism. I don’t think that was pointed out enough in the previous comments.

The pop juggernaut is fierce and rolls on. But does it dictate what is hot or not? Keep in mind that it is in the interest of all the PR teams and labels (thought of as a federated industry) to promote the myth of, what I’ll call, “endless interest” when in fact general interest might be low. How many events promoting an album or pop star are created, invitations sent out, crowds gathered, all so the mass audience will experience an ‘excitement’ when viewing from a distance, creating hype from hum drum.

The Culture Wars are about education. Pop culture is vapid in many ways. It is ahistorical and apolitical. It is unchallenging. Overall these elements are necessary within an inflated modern society that needs neutral radio and tv. But what are we talking about when we say ‘hot or not’? Are we speaking narrowly about the tastes and fads of financially influential but position, power, and responsbility-lacking demographics who exist on the margins between childhood and adulthood? If we are speaking more broadly than that, then I think for large numbers of people what is ‘hot’ has connection to value systems, moralilty, direction, and other issues. Listen to Kardinal’s song. It speaks about that.

“My fam came from a third world island.
Where they laugh at what you call whyllin’”

Artists who are conscious about what they are putting out tend to conceive of themselves as within a whole, and they speak about that whole (industry) in a creative way wherein they define themselves by how they are different from others within that industry. Song with meta-commentary. See: Nas. “I act this way. Others act in lesser or odder ways.” So goes the general schema. These ‘national debates’ can and do occur over top of great drum arrangements, solid rhythms, back up singers, and tight production. And with Hip Hop’s ability to narrate rather than cycle through Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus like most pop music, Hip Hop is a creative movement that possesses its own methods, and in doing so is able to debate societal issues and daily living.

To conclude, this ‘debating’ has to have a concrete ‘grounding’. This is the city. In particular, it is Mobb Deep’s New York City of grime, it is Yeleen’s impoverished Ouagadougou. Through telling entertaining stories about how life is in one’s city, we, as listeners, are brought within the world that the music producers sensibly experience. And what has a great deal of rap music been about, but walking around in one’s city. Hip Hop is ‘the streets’. What do you see? What are the sounds? Who are the characters? Hip Hop offers its opinions. But primarily it poses these questions to the listener. What do you see? What are the sounds you hear? Who are the characters populating your periphery and core?

Have you not also noticed the paradox of trying to claim that cities are so great because they are a socially creative organism, and yet Felix had to appreciate Chicago through the thoroughly anti-social medium of listening to music through headphones, drowing out those pesky other people who are inconveniencing his the soundtrack to his movie of Chicago (i.e. one that is culturally produced, and bears no relation to the piss poor stain of reality).

U2 sang about “even better than the real thing”, and that’s what homogenized pop culture has done to us – we expect music with no mistakes just like on our headphones, we want to speak without fluffing our lines just like in the movies, we want it to rain when we break up, we want everyone to behave according to the conventions of cinema, romance, novels, even comics. That’s why Felix put his headphones on – because Mr Fingers is even better than the real thing.

The consequence – depression, anxiety, disappointment, divorce and family break down (your partner doesn’t live up to Angelina Jolie), endless career change (you don’t act like Michael Douglas in Wall Street), self harm, addiction…

All pop music is a slave to a myth peddled by PR teams. They dictate what’s hot and what’s not – not MySpace, not Mr Fingers, not Felix – they are all pawns in the game. Pop music and culture is endlessly reproduced consumption, it is Zamyatin’s perpetual revolution, it can never rest on its own merits – unlike art which always remains objectively “good”, pop is 100% ersatz. Take a look a remaindered bargain bucket next time and look at all that “talent” – that isn’t creative talent, they’re just a bucket full of vapid, vain wannabes seduced by hollywood, record deals, publishing advances. The creative talent was in the PR, the marketing and the management who spotted the trend, exploited the teen suckers with their pocket money, marketed it to death and then moved on. That’s the talent.

Therefore, when a pop wannabe writes about their home town, it is meaningless. It is a cypher that says whetever the listener wants it to, and says more about marketing, cultural reproduction and social stereotypes than it does about the place in question. Take an example – the UK artist The Streets grew up in suburban Birmingham, probably the least cool city in the UK. In his mega selling albums Birmingham doesn’t ever get a mention, and the artist sings in a London accent. Mentioning Birmingham just wouldn’t fit the brand that his marketing team has created for him. That’s not creative licence, that’s just being a slave to the system. You can imagine the meetings “erm Mike, we don’t think Birmingham is “the streets”. We’re thinking Brooklyn, we’re thinking London – can’t you pretend you’re from Hackney?”

No, it’s even more fun to make a new frequency with several stations, styles, discourse, people…

dp