09/05/2024
I read an article on Now this morning about how the internet is ruining rap beefs, and I had to laugh because it feels like such a "millennials and their avocado toast" complaint. Maybe the author wasn't given enough space to share a fuller quote and to discuss it in depth, but if you're going to cite a statement like that, it would be nice to go beyond "here's the problem", and "here's why it's a problem", but also "here's what could be a fix". I'm sure the person being quoted has lots of thoughts on it, and it's a shame that the article didn't go deeper. Made it pretty clickbaity, instead of a thoughtful discussion that could have been productive.
Basically the author's source says that because casuals can drop in and out, they don't contribute anything to the culture, which sounds pretty gatekeepy to me. And on the one hand, I get it--hip hop's roots are Black, and the dilution and appropriation of Black culture is problematic, to say the least. But what does having a wider audience take away from it? How can non-Black listeners contribute to the culture, shy of becoming rappers themselves, which is arguably more appropriative?
My guess is that the source would want people to understand the cultural context of the work, and because the internet doesn't prioritize understanding (just clicks), people aren't pushed to look deeper. Having studied English lit in university, I get it. I have a copy of Oscar Wilde's "Portrait of Dorian Gray" that has sidebar annotations, and it's bonkers how much gets lost without understanding the subtle references Wilde works into his lines. It'd be like reading Shakespeare without annotations--"' sail, a sail', what does that mean?"
The best parts of the tracks that come out of these beefs are the lyrics that refer to other tracks and beefs--it continues a long literary tradition that you can find in letters to the editor in the 1800s (e.g. A Modest Proposal), in poets creating metaphors that they continue across volumes of work (Plath and her tulips), and in fiction writers being self-referential (like how a number of Stephen King's books tie together--Gerald's Game, Bag of Bones, Rose Madder, and the entire Dark Tower series). And going through the tracks to spot the references, being able to understand what's being referenced, and having that fuller context absolutely makes the work richer. Some of the wordplay requires some background knowledge for full understanding.
So yeah, while I don't know as much about modern hip hop (autotune is the auditory equivalent of chewing on steel wool for me), and my knowledge of West Coast beefs is a little lighter, I do know a bit about the older East Coast stuff. If you want to learn about the history of rap beefs, go back to "The Bridge" and "Roxanne" in the early 80s. Those are probably the two earliest. Even "Ether" is a good place to start, if you don't want to go all the way back--it's considered by many to be a high water mark for diss tracks, to a point where "ether" became a verb as a result of the track.
On this week's episode, we dive into diss tracks, particularly those from the early 80s to the early aughts, and talk a bit about the various rivalries in hip hop and gangsta rap. Fair warning, the lyrics can be homophobic and misogynistic, and there's a ton of swearing, including a bit from me. So....
