hiphop discourse

[Phil Wise]

Hi Doug

The thread itself probably doesn't relate, specifically, but it certainly
could with a little
argumentation, which could focus around the politics of some of the
politicised groups and artists, or the preterition of many of its proponents
or counterforce type content (how many obscenity controversies are we going
to get? - A-and how far can a name like Ol' Dirty Bastard signify?)

In addition, and partially in response to the jbor post as well, you can
learn a lot about postmodernism by listening to someone like eminem (talk
about the death of the subject, he's always switching between masks, and I
doubt anyone can say that his lyrics advocate anything without removing it
from its context).  Yet eminem's characters, including the ones he
constructs around his stage name and his real name, represent the movement
of the commodity in the society of the spectacle - it will do anything to
get noticed and distributed, there is very little to check its path, and I
take that be a political message the text invites.  That's not to say that
much that's political's actually said, just as the critique of
hypermasculinity in many male hardcore rappers' songs remains implicit.  The
songs take pains not to "mean", not to have a centre, and yet they can
signify in this way, however incompletely or provisionally.  I do think that
by in large the rappers have control over these meanings, that they are, at
the risk of committing a literary sin, intentional.

I didn't participate in the Pynchon and postmodernism discussion, but that's
how I see GR's method of meaning, always mitigated by unreliable narration,
paranoia etc, always destabilising itself, and yet signifying powerfully at
the same time.  It is pomo that doesn't destroy history, politics, ethics,
religion, and so is as "modernist" as it is "post". Paranoia (modernism/
centred, absolute meaning [if you can find it]) vs anti-paranoia
(postmodernism/ nihilism/ absolute non-meaning/ pure freeplay of the
signifier), or something in the middle, a provisional or incomplete set of
meanings that sometimes seems creatively paranoid, and is sometimes more
playful?  But comes from the bottom up, nonetheless.

'S all very general, I know, but broadly speaking rap throws up some of the
same issues that Pynchon grapples with, I think.  Despite what some critics
have said, I think Pynchon genuinely loves Rock 'n Roll and expresses this
in Vineland (when my favourite character, DL, sings "Kick Out the Jams", I
see no reason not to take this at face value - the insertion of a
revolutionary anthem into a book about totalitarianism).  Which, by the way,
while I'm kinda rambling discursively here, you all probably know this, but
there's a record by Peter Stampfel and the Bottle Caps (ex Holy Model
Rounders, very much a Pynchon contemporary) called "The Peoples' Republic of
Rock and Roll", which came out in 1989.

Phil


----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Millison" <DMillison at ftmg.net>
To: "Pynchon-L (E-mail)" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 8:46 AM
Subject: RE: hiphop discourse


> At the risk of drawing fire for merely asking the question, how does this
> hip-hop thread relate to Pynchon?
>
> I would love to see the topic related in a meaningful way to Pynchon or
his
> works, by the way, if for no reason other than to give my hip hop-loving
> teenaged son one more reason to read TRP.
>
>