It's Bigger than Hip-Hop

David Segal published an article in the New York Times this weekend comparing hip-hop to conservative talk radio pundits. I'm not particularly interested in commenting on his points--that rappers and pundits both have huge egos, verbal skillz/skills, and are often getting in feuds with other rappers and pundits, etc. I'm more interested in noting that this is the second prominent article in recent months comparing hip-hop to some larger trend in the cultural world. The first one was Marc Lynch's article in Foreign Policy, comparing beefs between rappers to beefs between nations. Lynch's article got a ton of attention when it came out in July. I wonder, what is the next political or social idea that can be explained with a convenient reference to hip-hop? I vote for health care reform! I'll even start you out: "The public option is just like MP3 downloading." Now, go!

I will say one thing about Segal's article in the Times. If you're going to compare hip hop and conservative punditry, it might make sense to mention the huge fight between Ludacris and Bill O'Reilly. And, if you're going to specifically compare Jay-Z to Rush Limbaugh, you may have wanted to listen to Jay-Z's most recent album, in which he specifically takes on both Bill O'Reilly and Limbaugh himself. This is from the track "Off That."

Please tell Bill O'Reilly to fall back
Tell Rush Limbaugh to get off my balls
This is 2010 not 1864.

I'll leave it at that.

Place Them In a Box Until a Quieter Time

The John Edwards/Rielle Hunter affair took a musical twist this last weekend. Andrew Young, an Edwards staffer who had previously claimed to have fathered Hunter's baby, said in a book proposal that Edwards attempted to comfort Hunter by saying that after his wife Elizabeth died from cancer, Edwards would marry Hunter in a rooftop ceremony in New York, with the Dave Matthews Band providing the wedding music. Do you think they know Pachelbel's Canon in D?

Authenticity?

Apparently, today I'm supposed to be listening to the remastered Beatles albums and playing the new Beatles Rock Band game. Instead, I'm listening to the Beatles on vinyl. My versions of A Hard Day's Night, Something New, and Beatles VI were bought for 99 cents each at a record store on Bleecker Street in the Village, in a section called "Wreckords"--they were so cheap because they couldn't vouch for the condition of these, as opposed to the quite high prices they were commanding in the rest of the store for (apparently) pristine copies of Curtis Mayfield albums. And it's true that these records have a few scratches and a skip or two. But to my ears, they still sound pretty brilliant.

(My copy of Abbey Road I bought back in Fargo, and I stole my mom's copy of Sergeant Pepper. As always, thanks mom!)

What's Life Without the Occasional Detour?

After all of these years, Bob Dylan still keeps us guessing. Far from calming down in his old age, he's certainly done some things to surprise us in recent years. In 2003, he appeared in a Victoria's Secret ad, for which his song "Love Sick" served as the soundtrack. Controversy ensued.



A few years later, Dylan's appearance in a commercial for the Cadillac Escalade raised some more eyebrows among his fans who are less than enthused about gas-guzzling SUVs.



In recent weeks, I've learned of a couple of things relating Dylan that have made me scratch my head. Taken separately, each one isn't terribly eccentric. But taken together, I have to wonder if he's in a particularly mischievous mood right now.

First came the news that he was detained by cops in Long Branch, New Jersey--on the charge of being an "eccentric-looking old man" and wandering around looking at houses before his gig with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp. The cops didn't recognize him, apparently, but someone on his crew vouched for him and all was forgiven. Insert your own Henry Louis Gates reference here.

Then came word, from his excellent "Theme Time Radio Hour" that Dylan might be lending his dulcet tones to a car company to be the voice of their GPS navigation system. Well, I can certainly say that I, and many other Dylanaholics would certainly buy that. But it seems pretty likely that was a joke.

Now, I hear that Dylan, the former Jew, former evangelical Christian, and current . . . (well, like anything else in his life, who the hell knows what his current religious proclivities are?) is releasing a Christmas album this year. A strangely conventional gesture for a man who has never been very conventional. But he's donating all the profits from the album to charity, which is a nice touch. And I really hope this means that we'll get to hear him growling through "O Little Town of Bethlehem" in supermarkets, pharmacies, and department stores very soon.