What's he on about now?

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   Wednesday, September 15, 2004

IT'S A WHITE THANG

I was telling my friend and colleague Jeff about the new Chris Rock special I rented last week (and it's brilliant -- please do the same). Specifically, we talked about his bit on no longer being able to "intellectually defend" hip-hop. It was nice to hear someone else say it for once.

I don't know if it's age or just my own utter whiteness but I used to like rap music, or at least find it interesting even if I didn't automatically take to it. Public Enemy were brilliant, Ice-T was fiery, Young MC was funny and Run-DMC were the masters. But these days, hip-hop's unyielding flow of misogyny, money-grubbing, homophobia and narcissism does very, very little for me.

What's especially irritating is the implication that feeling this way makes one a racist. Jeff tells me about filling out a university residence application that asked about his musical tastes. He checked 'country' for 'likes' and 'urban' for 'dislikes'. The girl he handed the form to looked it over and assured him that he probably wouldn't have a black roommate then. Jeff was appalled at the obvious presumption that he was some hillbilly redneck.

Me, I once told a guy at the record store that I didn't care for rap and he replied, "Oh, so you're not into black music." I was irked. Does owning numerous CDs of Prince, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, Charlie Parker, Marvin Gaye and many others not count as liking black music?

"Yeah," said Jeff, "I've got my Lionel Richie CDs."