But this isn’t about sex positivity. Look at the terms of the bet. How can any three men ever determine what “all women” like? At the moment that this becomes about generalizing female sexual practices under one banner, it no longer becomes about women, but about men’s idea and projection of who they would like us to be. Moreover, clearly Jay, Nas, and TJ the DJ are having a Lil Wayne moment, RE: they just “wanna fuck every girl in the world.” Because that’s the only way they could reasonably determine the truth of their statements.

That’s from crunktastic of the Crunk Feminist Collective in her post Why Jay Electronica Can Go Choke On His Own Words.

It seems the Baracka Flocka Flames controversy has heated up since the October 26 publication of Prez N the Hood: A Hip-Hop Parody Stirs Up Issues in the New York Times (video below; article requires log-in).

America’s foremost old cranky black man, Stanley Crouch, had nothing nice to say about Baracka Flocka Flames in his recent column for TheRoot.com. He dismissed the video as ‘minstrelsy.’

That shouldn’t surprise you, of course. According to Crouch, anything hip-hop — even if it’s satirical or in parody form — is What’s Wrong With Negroes. Rather than rebut Crouch myself, I will point you to Bomani Jones’ post Stanley Crouch, I think I’m on to you….

Now I am one who thinks Baracka Flocka Flames’ “Head of the State,” is f#cking hilarious, bordering on brilliant. Part of the humor for me is that I imagine the Obamas are Grade-A sh#t-talkers behind closed doors. You see glimpses of this sense of humor when President Obama speaks. You saw it when Michelle Obama was cracking on her husband’s dirty sock habits. So I can totally see Barack Obama making off color jokes along these lines for sheer sh#ts and giggles.* Plus, James Davis does a killer job of imitating Obama’s diction, making every utterance of “nigga,” downright funny. But that’s not the only humor I see inreason I love this piece.

“Head of the State,” for those who don’t closely follow hip-hop, is based on Waka Flocka Flame‘s “Hard in the Paint.”

Yeah.

Let’s just say that if Stanley Crouch titled his next column “Waka Flocka Flame is What’s Wrong With Negroes,” I will heartily co-sign. Waka Flocka Flame not only has a stupid-a## name, but he has also said he’s in it for the money, not the craft. And if we’re talking about topical content, <ebonics>this n*gga just stay ig’nant</ebonics>. This video, as Jones points out, fits much more closely with Crouch’s idea of minstrelsy, or the performance of stereotype for commercial gain.

“Head of the State” plays off the imagery and lyrics of “Hard in the Paint,” and by doing so, I think it becomes a multi-layered, satirical critique of class and race stereotypes and hip-hop video tropes.

Let’s think about this: Barack Obama was largely raised in Kansas. He not only attended college, but has degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law — two Ivy League universities. Michelle Obama is similarly educated. So the idea of BHO unironically thug posing and rapping about his “main bitch,” and having his “own SK” is absurd. It is completely, utterly, and absolutely absurd.

And that absurdity makes “Head of the State” uncomfortable for the thinking viewer.

My second and third reactions were “Wow, this is rife with stereotypes, innit?” and “Sh*t, the tea baggers will have a field day with this.” And I suspect much of the criticism of “Head of the State,” from Crouch and others is related to W.W.W.P.T. — “What Will White People Think?” As Jones wrote, the truth is that, for better or worse, the mass media is America’s only introduction to black people.

But if you believe it’s plausible that a middle-class raised, currently upper-class, highly-educated black man, particularly the president of the United States would be chilling on the front steps of an abandoned house in a dangerous neighborhood, smoking Newports and dancing with a bottle of Smirnoff while surrounded by persons of questionable repute, I must ask who clings more tightly to the black-man-as-thug stereotype — you or Baracka Flocka?

And that’s why I love this “Head of the State,” video. It sticks a finger square in the eye of fake thug rappers who pimp gangster imagery for profit. And it sticks a finger in the eye of those who see Ivy League educated black people in the White House and manage to reduce them — and by extension all of us — to a narrow, negative stereotype.

Related:

Jay Smooth’s Raw Footage “I Forgot He Was Black.”

*Okay, raise your hand if an inappropriate HNIC joke has crossed your mind January 20, 2009.

And so, in the revised entry for rock included in the O.E.D.’s June 2010 update, Melle Mel trumps Big Bank Hank as the earliest known M.C. to “rock the mic.” Though fresh evidence could always push the usage back even further, there’s a certain justice to setting the record straight, more than three decades after the fact. Historical lexicography? It rocks.

From Ben Zimmer’s July 5 piece in the New York Times, On Language: When Did We First ‘Rock the Mic’?.

Zimmer takes a look at the use of “rock” as a verb as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, and particularly it’s use in hip-hop.

For the record: I now want to be besties with Krista Thompson, the 2009 winner of the David C. Driskell Prize and Associate Professor of Art History at Northwestern University. Her recent High Museum lecture, “Of Shine, Bling and Bixels: Toward a Post-Soul Art History,” blew me away with its analysis of contemporary artist Kehinde Wiley‘s work and the ways in which it references both pop culture and Renaissance symbolism.

If you have seen portraits of hip-hop stars featured in VH1′s Hip-Hop Honors series, you are familiar with Kehinde Wiley’s work. His portraits feature contemporary black male subjects — famous and not — in poses that replicate or give a nod to Renaissance-era portraiture.

Wiley’s portraits, Thompson says, use a hyper-luminous light source. He often oils the faces of his subjects to bring out their ‘shine.’ Wiley then places them against backgrounds pulled from 1950s era wallpaper or 1990s Martha Stewart wallpaper patterns. At once, she argues, Wiley references both Hype Williams’ shiny video aesthetic that ushered in the ice and bling era of hip-hop and American mass consumption and consumerism.

By posing these men against backgrounds of wallpaper, I think Wiley is also commenting on the ways in which we relegate black men to the background of politics and power, though they are in the foreground of contemporary pop culture. Thompson also suggests that the use of wallpaper — very domestic, very feminine — is also a way in which Wiley (who is gay) plays with notions of black masculinity.

Kehinde Wiley and the Renaissance

Thompson also tied Wiley’s work to the use of light and sheen (or shine) in Renaissance Era portraits, particularly those from the Dutch school. As she explained, oil paint was a new medium in the late Renaissance. It appeared at the same time luxury goods were arriving in Europe from abroad. Painters from the Dutch school, in particular, used light and sheen to capture the opulence and sumptuousness of these new fabrics and products and wealth.

But the faces and flesh of white European male subjects? Shine and light were never used. Shine was used to emphasize objects, not people. Yet black and African subjects from the period were frequently portrayed as ‘shiny.’ I believe Thompson argues that this was a part of the objectification and ‘othering’ of blackness that was part-and-parcel of the burgeoning trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Classism, bling and Black Folks

What struck me, however, was a comment Thompson made in response to a question from an older, obviously middle-to-upper middle class black gentleman in the audience. He asked (if I recall correctly) about the ethics of hip-hop’s conspicuous consumption culture of at a time when black folks are in such dire straits.

Thompson said, roughly: “We don’t see a driver of a BMW as consuming in the same way as someone who’s wearing a shiny watch, even if that watch cost $10.” It is about, she said, who we think should consume and who shouldn’t.

In many ways, bling and the related “ghetto fabulous” aesthetic are about visibility and asserting power through visual, material display. It’s in contrast to values of restraint and a comparatively modest display of consumption that are hallmarks of middle-class aesthetics. It’s expressed in the differences between Facebook and MySpace users. Among black people, it often plays out along generational lines.

Let me suggest that the bling aesthetic is a way for poor and/or urban black people to claim and stake visibility in a period when both white and bourgeois black flight rendered them silent and invisible.

Much of the visibility of the Civil Rights Movement — the ‘soul’ era if we use musical shifts as our markers — came from respectable Negroes: college students, preachers, prim-and-proper women of high moral character and community standing such as Rosa Parks.

I am stealing a point from feminist critic bell hooks here by arguing that the Civil Rights Movement was, in many ways, a movement of the black bourgeoisie. The goal was about access to middle-class mainstream (read: white) society and its trappings — equality of opportunity, rather than cultural transformation or revolution. When the movement stalled, thanks to the contributions of integration, bourgie-Negro flight and Reagonomics, poor and/or urban blacks disappeared, except in demonized forms (‘Welfare Queen,’ Willie Horton, etc.).

Enter hip-hop and its aspirational consumption patterns and conspicuous display. Looking rich is as important as being rich. After all, how fly can your $800 Louis Vuitton bag be if I have one too? (Don’t worry about the fact that I got it on Canal St.) How fly can your $3,000 Rolex be if my $25 rhinestone watch is way blingier? I mean I got a quarter tank of gas / in my new E Class, and Got everythaaaang / In my mama naaaame but I’m Still Fly, right?

I think this is where my point ties back to those raised by Thompson in her lecture, and Wiley’s work. Consumption on display is a way of asserting and displaying power and prestige — something which the aesthetic of bling at once adheres to and subverts.

More about Kehinde Wiley

• Kehinde Wiley’s ‘Black Light’ series, the focus of Thompson’s analysis
• A Q&A with Wiley by M.I.A. in Interview magazine
• Kehinde Wiley in New York Times Topics
• Kehinde Wiley’s profile on ArtNet

Lyrics are in English and Arabic. His English verse is kind of wack, but interesting for its look at contemporary Saudi culture and economy. I can’t judge his Arabic verse, because I’m monolingual like that. But that beat? Lovin’ it. Learn more about Qusai on his MySpace page. [Via Saudi Jeans.]

My folks don’t have actual crates, but they do have a pretty dope collection of 1970s vinyl albums. I got into a couple of Parliament albums my dad owned. And I just about wore out my dad’s copy of James Brown’s “Hot Pants.” Beyond that, however, I never appreciated these records growing up.

As an adult, my music tastes have taken an odd turn towards the 1970s and 1980s. Some of that is nostalgia for the jams of my childhood. But much of it is a desire to hear good shit. And the 1970s and 1980s heard copious amounts of good shit. Seriously: the music of the 1970s and early 1980s was so dope that it has been recycled, reborn and given extended life through hip-hop samples and rare grooves DJ sets. I know I’m stating the obvious here, but I am convinced that good music died — or rather, went deep underground — sometime around 1989 (with exceptions due to Biggie, Jay-Z, The Roots, and the ‘NuSoul’ movement).

Now when I visit my parents, I am more interested in their music collection than ever before. They have gems such as Betty Davis, Drums Of Passion and City Life on vinyl.

This time, they put me on to an album and artist I had never heard of before: Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band. The whole album is bouncy, band-style disco with surprisingly strong lyrics. Bonus? Finding two tracks that served as samples for two songs I adore: Cherchez La Femme / Se Si Bon, sampled by Ghostface Killah for Cherchez LaGhost; and Sunshower (featured below) which was sampled by M.I.A. on her track Sunshowers.

Original post

When I first wrote about GlobalGrind.com, it was in its alpha phase as a start page geared towards the hip-hop generation.

You could search pre-existing content and feeds or add your own to the GlobalGrind.com ecosystem. Think NetVibes, but with curated content that had a hip-hop perspective. Granted, the start page concept wasn’t a new idea — Yahoo! has been running a start page product for years. But I found the portal-to-the-black-blogosphere twist interesting and the ability to customize my page a compelling enough reason to return (had they worked out the kludginess of the interface).

Fast-forward 5 months and a Run’s House-debut later and GlobalGrind.com is reborn as … a Digg-wannabe?*

No really. They remade it into an ‘urban’ version of Digg — except ‘diggs’ are called ‘grinds’ and there are separate categories for “Entertainment,” “Hip-Hop Culture,” and “Gossip” (among others). And no, I don’t understand how those categories are different either.

It’s entirely possible that GlobalGrind.com could take off and be a raging success, but I am skeptical. Creating a half-a**ed rip-off an innovator rarely works.

Previously

• GlobalGrind.com launches beta
• GlobalGrind.com: Niche audience start pages?

*And they didn’t even have the good sense to run a prettied-up version of Pligg. How much of that $4.5 million investment did they burn up by redeveloping the site?