TRP as Wu-Tang Warrior

[Joaquin Stick]

Not to digress overly (this really does get back to TRugglesP)

On Thu, 26 Jun 1997, Ben Freeman wrote:


> > Whatever. I don't remember TRP assaulting any journalists who said things he
> > didn't like. The Wu-Tang clan are a bunch of fuckin' worthles thugs who have
> > nothing to say, like most of rap nowadays. "Whatever happened to the
> > MC's?..."
> 
> I was just rereading this and I disagree on some levels. Sometimes
> great artists (consider Sean Penn) have difficulty with the press. 
> The whole game of rap is *about* channeling violence, isn't it? murder
> in rap is a way of channeling the tensions of street life into a
> fictional context; at least that's how I think Afrika Bambataa
> probably envisioned it when he and Debbie Harry cooked the whole
> thing up.

I agree essentially with some of this "channeling violence" thing as a
concept (after all, given a togle-switch choice between the two, I'd
rather have someone *talking* about killing someone than actually doing
it). I don't know if I agree with the notion that this is endemic to rap,
though. I think of the vast majority of old blues songs that involve a
staggering amount of gore and piles of corpses on occasion or even
something like Nick Cave's last album. Furthermore, "when he and Debbie
Harry cooked the whole thing up." I hardly think "Rapture" was the poking
out of rap's babyhead. There was a ton of stuff that didn't hit the market
until after A.B and the others had already begun to become cribhold words.
Rap is derivative (this is not a slam, mind you) of art forms that came
before it and I think it is a drastic misreading to say that it was
"cooked up" in 1976-1980.

> So the Wu-Tang Clan raps violently, i think some of their
> shit is fairly clever. And as for whatever happened to the old mcs, a lot
> of old school rap was the same cheeze with no skills "mother hubbard
> went to the cubbard" with the worser-than-worst vanilla-ice gap jeans
> posse flows... and yet somehow its revered cause its on sugar hill.

I agree. Some of their raps are fairly celver. However, some of their
"posturing" is also fairly ridiculously overblown, as far
worser-than-worst to the other extreme (as you noted in comment below).
This message is as confusing to me as Ice-T's anti-violence rants between
songs at the first Lollapalooza, all of which were delivered in front a
large tapestry displaying his image on a blazon featuring two shotguns and
a large dollar sign. Wu-Tang, like so many other rap acts have a hard time
drawing the line between clever channeling and marketable violence. In the
post-Tupac/Biggie Smalls era, this is not only artistically questionable
but possibly thanatologically unwise.
> 
> the promotion on the wu-tang album has been pretty frightening,
> admittedly. Cheezily enough, the RZA referred to himself as "Mozart"
> in an article I read in the Providence Phoenix. But i'd like to suggest
> that comparisons
> like that, and the wu-tang style in general have a bit of the
> post-modern technique to them, taking low/high art and abolishing the
> arbitrary distinctions between them. i was disappointed that such a
> great rapper had to go invalidating himself by comparing himself to
> Mozart, some trite cheezy standard of excellence in music that means
> about as much to me as the rousing chorus to that song "into the
> night." 

Boing. While I like hip-hop as much as the next whiteboyroy, to claim that
RZA invalidates himself in a comparison with Mozart is outta control. I
take his comparison in the same way that I take Phife's line about
"kick[in'] the lyric skills like Pele,"  although the fact they appear in
a promo rather than on plate makes me think that there's a little more
relevance in doing than saying. Mozart is, by most every standard, neither
"trite" nor "cheezy" and RZA needs to do a hell of a lot more good work
before he can even hold dead Wolfie's musical jock. 

> 
> And then there's the whole difficulty of black artists assimilated
> Borg-like by an overappreciative white press. "Its good... heck, i'm
> proud when those black people transcend the St Ides and crack we've
> surreptiously pumped into their hoods and make ANYTHING." 

Point taken. This is hardly Louis Armstrong's back and forth "we love you,
Louie"-"oh well, I forgive you for all that nasty stuff you said" kind of
relationship is it. If we've been hammering TP for being a part of a
reimaging campaign in the promotion of M&D, what the hell is this? I
haven't seen the white press fawning over Wu-Tang Clan yet because I can't
get past all of the stupid articles gloating about how Suge Knight is in
prison now or that the LV cops have no leads in the Tupac Shakur shooting.
Fugees/Salt n' Pepa/TLC/etc. ad nauseam are pop by the accepted standard
and would get press today just like the Platters and the Temptations got
press in the 1960s. The negative press over gangsta rap (i.e. most black
music that doesn't make MTV/Rolling Stone) is overwhelmingly greater than
any real reviews thereof. 

> 
> And while we're in white-guilt terroritory, you know half the power of
> GR is for its white guilt. 

How about the Luditzerbucht scenes from _V._? Or the South African parts
of M&D? Any writer from a family like Pynchon's should probably have a few
issues to address with collective guilt. That doesn't mean this writing
stems from a faulty motivation just b/c it doesn't acknowledge or deny
this guilt, does it?

> 
> one more thing in this rant: hiphop is so nice because it practically
> accomplishes the aims of a lot of these books we all love so much on a
> level that can be appreciated by large groups of people. it "works"
> and is "accessible." i like gravity's rainbow but it just wasn't
> written for mass consumption. a lot of rap samples *are* chosen with
> the same "ig-farben/mare's nest" eye for detail, and guess what?
> chicks dig it.

Damn right. Try listening to "3 Feet High and Rising" by De La Soul and
attempt to decode the speech in it that they developed for their vocal
style and compare that to the extensive paronomasia that Pynchon engages
in and a few more correspondences come to mind immediately. 

> you'd be more likely to pick up the ladies with the brand nubian one
> for all shirt than mason and dixon. mason and dixon is about as hip as
> kraft macaroni. in ny probably the best you could hope for would be
> a tattered copy of v. seen by some nubile owlglass-type walking by
> trying to miss the holes in the pavement. 

Yeah, Mason and Dixon pretty much only lands Sonic Youth fans. 

Here's hoping that TP secretly goes out on the town with Posdnuos and Mase
to plan their collaborative effort. THAT would set the newsgroup
a-buzzin'. Thanks for the mental jump=start, Ben...the hot weather was
starting to make me want to just watch tee-vee instead.

	D. Alfred Fledermaus