(03.07.05) When I read the Frere guest blog’s theory that IDM equals racism (“you
see IDM is actually just a whites only empty clone of hip-hop”) the
first thing that popped into my mind was Anti-Con. I mean come on, these
are a bunch of white dudes making hip-hop so pretentious it definitely
excludes social content and the music’s founders. I remember sitting
around with a DJ from 109 FM Da Bomb (Miami’s original bass radio) and
hearing him complain about Beans, he liked Freestyle Fellowship and lost
Beans around Antipop.
There’s a point where hip-hop loses its meat
and becomes an anemic animal unable to enforce change and with Beans
(who seems like a nicely arty son of a lawyer or such) he’s moved into
that arena of “post-black” that today’s painters contend in, but for
that 50% of Brooklyn’s African-Americans that’s still un-employed, the
dudes stuck in that Miami housing project that doesn’t have in door
plumbing (seriously, there are communal fountains that have
probably been there since 1850), or really anyone who doesn’t have the
money to trust fund across the world in various seedy bohemian
grottoes, such eccentricities are about as understandable as an
immigrants son going to art school.
But all that ghetto-authenticity
aside, there’s something to be said about bohemia, but it’s so damn
hard to say it in hip-hop. Maybe it’s the 30 years of “realness,” maybe
it’s the fact that many bohemians are to touchy feely, or maybe it’s
just cultural cock-block, but whatever –I can’t think of anyone who’s
nailed the feeling of bohemia in hip-hop form up till this point. So A
New White might just be a sign of the times, far from carrying any
signs of glocks, rasta-rise up slogans, or just racial pride, it’s white
boy hip-hop in it’s finest form, and instead of sounding derogatory of
the form, it seems to exceed it. This is hip-hop that isn’t trying to
exclude but instead includes a lifeline of system and symbols that
carry with it a lush valley raised suburban atmosphere that seems like
a spring cleaning of both pop and hip-hop’s bling bling culture.
By fitting outside of emo’s ennui and refusing to fake their credentials
into hip-hop’s “reality,” Subtle has found a middle ground, a point where
the hushed world of Volvo’s whispering bright eyes can muffle lil’
John’s boom into a dream like cataclysm. When I close my eyes at night
and the trains of my childhood rustle by, police sirens rise out of the
dusk, and 22″ rims push out boom-bye-yeahs of ground rustling
polyphonia while some parent’s tape of folk music pushes through
Fischer-Price speakers. This is the music that sits at the center of our
consciousness where hip-hop’s rally call fades off into vulnerability
and grad school reminiscences of glorious days gone by.
A New White is out now on Lex Records.
