Nah: tbh I think "rap and country are the same genre" is a cold take at this point! Certainly plenty of people have made the same claim when dissecting the "I like every genre but rap and country" (read: I like any genre that won't make me look like a poor) meme. Were I sliiightly more in tune with either genre I would suggest another similarity, which is the critically acclaimed artist who is critically acclaimed in large part because their presentation is distinctly middle-class. (I can't name a country artist this is the case for without talking out my ass, but it is absolutely true that - to misquote David Lee Roth - music critics like DJ Shadow because music critics look like DJ Shadow.)
The Defector piece is a bit of a word salad, so I don't know how literally we should take the claims in it. Certainly Daramola's "thesis" (if you could call it that) only makes sense if you're willing to assume that there are such monolithic groups as capital-R Reactionaries and capital-R Rappers, which is obviously dumb. But also, like... would Joe Budden become a podcaster (of any political valence) if his musical career hadn't been dead for a decade? Drake and Kendrick certainly aren't becoming pundits any time soon. I don't want to say that The Breakfast Club et al have *no* cultural relevance, but they're not movers or shakers, really. They're the guys with the seismographs.
You mention Dostoevsky and the late Cormac McCarthy as examples of great conservative writers. They're certainly not isolated cases -- in the 20th century alone, we have Borges, Eliot, Waugh, Nabokov, Tolkien and Lewis, etc.
Radically artistic innovation doesn't generally align with radical politics, as seen with cutting-edge high modernists like Eliot, Matisse and Stravinsky.
Oh definitely agree. I chose McCarthy and Dostoevsky because I think they have more universal acclaim and are probably better known than some of the others. And, more importantly: they were the first to come to mind!
The other idea that comes to mind, which your essay certainly gets at, is that the conservative-progressive binary really oversimplifies complex sociocultural contexts. Both communities and individuals can simultaneously fall into both categories.
Yes, absolutely! I do believe that most Americans are socially conservative and fiscally liberal, which is the exact kind of political disposition that US media finds most incoherent or at least the disposition most often ignored.
But it's simply true that you can have a pro-life liberal and an anti-gun conservative and any other amalgamation of beliefs and ideologies. The idea that you must fit yourself wholly into a binary seems to have gotten more drastic and worse in the social media age.
I found one of the strangest bits of that quote the bit about "punk roots". Punk? The rock subgenre made mostly by and for white kids? That is no older than hip hop and arose around the same time, but among a totally different set of people? In what universe does rap music have roots in punk, and can the author go back to that dimension and stay there?
Especially ironic because I read your article while listening to Overkill, a metal band that absolutely does have punk roots and sounds absolutely nothing like any hip hop (indeed, from Body Count to nu metal, fusions of metal and hip hop seem uniquely cursed).
That's a good catch! I think he meant more that it has DIY roots, but, still, he's a professional writer! You'd think clarity would matter quite a lot more.
This might be super-obvious, but another major similarity between the two genres is how the fact that both are deeply rooted in specific communities leads to a lot of fan concerns about authenticity -- about who's from the community and who's an outsider.
I'll need to sit with this for a minute. I appreciate your thoughts, but I'm not sure I entirely agree with everything. Painting a genre in broad strokes never feels right to me. I listen to plenty of progressive hip hop groups. Are they progressive across the board, to your point, maybe not? But could you say that about any genre?
That's part of my point. I don't think any genre is one ideology or another because art is made by humans, and humans are messy and weird and have beliefs that seem contradictory or even senseless.
I don't think hip hop is necessarily conservative, just like I don't think country is necessarily conservative. I think both genres (and probably groups in every genre of music) have progressives and conservatives possibly in equal measure.
But the Defector article sort of states, through implication, that the conservative trend in hip hop has come from youtubers and podcasters, which means that it's a very recent trend. And I just don't think that that's true. And if it is true, I'd like to get more than just implication. Give us a history of progressive hip hop and why this is falling or fell out of favor!
Media critics have long been out of touch with the media they cover, but in the pre-Internet era they had opinions that relatively few could challenge on equal terms and forums. Whereas now, the assumed and self-appointed "experts" outnumber the ones with genuine knowledge and unbiased beliefs.
“Rap music is country music” is an unexpected take, but it makes sense once you think about it.
Nah: tbh I think "rap and country are the same genre" is a cold take at this point! Certainly plenty of people have made the same claim when dissecting the "I like every genre but rap and country" (read: I like any genre that won't make me look like a poor) meme. Were I sliiightly more in tune with either genre I would suggest another similarity, which is the critically acclaimed artist who is critically acclaimed in large part because their presentation is distinctly middle-class. (I can't name a country artist this is the case for without talking out my ass, but it is absolutely true that - to misquote David Lee Roth - music critics like DJ Shadow because music critics look like DJ Shadow.)
The Defector piece is a bit of a word salad, so I don't know how literally we should take the claims in it. Certainly Daramola's "thesis" (if you could call it that) only makes sense if you're willing to assume that there are such monolithic groups as capital-R Reactionaries and capital-R Rappers, which is obviously dumb. But also, like... would Joe Budden become a podcaster (of any political valence) if his musical career hadn't been dead for a decade? Drake and Kendrick certainly aren't becoming pundits any time soon. I don't want to say that The Breakfast Club et al have *no* cultural relevance, but they're not movers or shakers, really. They're the guys with the seismographs.
There are some obvious similarities and affinities between the genres.
You mention Dostoevsky and the late Cormac McCarthy as examples of great conservative writers. They're certainly not isolated cases -- in the 20th century alone, we have Borges, Eliot, Waugh, Nabokov, Tolkien and Lewis, etc.
Radically artistic innovation doesn't generally align with radical politics, as seen with cutting-edge high modernists like Eliot, Matisse and Stravinsky.
Oh definitely agree. I chose McCarthy and Dostoevsky because I think they have more universal acclaim and are probably better known than some of the others. And, more importantly: they were the first to come to mind!
The other idea that comes to mind, which your essay certainly gets at, is that the conservative-progressive binary really oversimplifies complex sociocultural contexts. Both communities and individuals can simultaneously fall into both categories.
Yes, absolutely! I do believe that most Americans are socially conservative and fiscally liberal, which is the exact kind of political disposition that US media finds most incoherent or at least the disposition most often ignored.
But it's simply true that you can have a pro-life liberal and an anti-gun conservative and any other amalgamation of beliefs and ideologies. The idea that you must fit yourself wholly into a binary seems to have gotten more drastic and worse in the social media age.
I found one of the strangest bits of that quote the bit about "punk roots". Punk? The rock subgenre made mostly by and for white kids? That is no older than hip hop and arose around the same time, but among a totally different set of people? In what universe does rap music have roots in punk, and can the author go back to that dimension and stay there?
Especially ironic because I read your article while listening to Overkill, a metal band that absolutely does have punk roots and sounds absolutely nothing like any hip hop (indeed, from Body Count to nu metal, fusions of metal and hip hop seem uniquely cursed).
That's a good catch! I think he meant more that it has DIY roots, but, still, he's a professional writer! You'd think clarity would matter quite a lot more.
This might be super-obvious, but another major similarity between the two genres is how the fact that both are deeply rooted in specific communities leads to a lot of fan concerns about authenticity -- about who's from the community and who's an outsider.
I think that's a very good point!
I'll need to sit with this for a minute. I appreciate your thoughts, but I'm not sure I entirely agree with everything. Painting a genre in broad strokes never feels right to me. I listen to plenty of progressive hip hop groups. Are they progressive across the board, to your point, maybe not? But could you say that about any genre?
That's part of my point. I don't think any genre is one ideology or another because art is made by humans, and humans are messy and weird and have beliefs that seem contradictory or even senseless.
I don't think hip hop is necessarily conservative, just like I don't think country is necessarily conservative. I think both genres (and probably groups in every genre of music) have progressives and conservatives possibly in equal measure.
But the Defector article sort of states, through implication, that the conservative trend in hip hop has come from youtubers and podcasters, which means that it's a very recent trend. And I just don't think that that's true. And if it is true, I'd like to get more than just implication. Give us a history of progressive hip hop and why this is falling or fell out of favor!
That would be something I'd like to read.
Ahh! I'm going to give this another read--thanks for clarifying! I totally agree with that.
Media critics have long been out of touch with the media they cover, but in the pre-Internet era they had opinions that relatively few could challenge on equal terms and forums. Whereas now, the assumed and self-appointed "experts" outnumber the ones with genuine knowledge and unbiased beliefs.
The most I've ever agreed with a leftist re: rap music